They moved up along precipices now. And then at the edge of a sheer drop, the ground cracked suddenly beneath Ram’s feet; Skeelie grabbed him, Fawdref lurched, pressing him back. They stood pushing against the wall of stone behind them, Skeelie very white, Fawdref unwilling to move away from Ram. The wolf’s warmth, so close, was comforting. Ram looked at the broken precipice, and down to the mile-deep valley into which he would have fallen. Into which the rock had fallen clattering, then, without sound. They had not heard it hit. He picked up a stone, meaning to drop it down, but the thought sickened him. Skeelie said, “I thought the ground moved—before the cliff broke.” She was chilled into silence. They stared at the edge where stones had sheered away as cleanly as if they had been hit by an ax. And Fawdref looked at Ram with pain. Ram knew he felt the agony of not having foreseen that falling stone.
The near accident confused Ram. They both should have known, should have seen what HarThass was about. The Seer had ways of secrecy that were terrifying. Ram knew that to be tired decreased his powers, and that angered him too. There were such subtle skills yet to learn, ways to avoid his weaknesses—but how could he learn them here, when his job was to keep them safe on the mountain?
The clouds hung low and heavy. There had been rain farther down, their clothes were wet and cold. Resolutely they moved on, following the narrow precipitous trail along the cliff until, late in the afternoon, the trail ended suddenly and sharply. Only a steep drop lay ahead. The cliff wall on their right, which continued upward a long way, was sheer, broken only by wrinkles of stone inches wide, far too narrow for even an agile goat to climb. Ram swallowed. “We can’t go back! There isn’t time to go back, the Seer’s army will sweep into Burgdeeth, Jerthon—Jerthon will need the help of the Runestone. I must—I must hold that power against the Seer. . . .”
Fawdref stood leaning over the lip of the trail, staring down into the valley. Cautiously the children looked, and there across the far green valley floor an immense snakelike shadow writhed. “Gantroed,” Ram breathed. The shadow oozed closer to the cliff wall directly beneath them, then disappeared into the shadow of the cliff itself.
Skeelie whispered, “Can it climb the cliff?”
“Of course it can. You know what it’s like, those legs—they can grip anything.”
Fawdref turned his steady gaze on Ram, then looked upward. He spoke in Ram’s mind with an intention that chilled Ram; Ram touched the pale, soft fur along the wolf’s muzzle, then laid his head against the great rounded skull, swept by the power of Fawdref’s thoughts—swept by terror at what Fawdref meant to do.
“You could do it alone, but you can’t . . .” He stared at Fawdref. “You can’t balance with our weight. It’s too sheer, a goat couldn’t . . .”
Fawdref let him know that he could.
Reluctantly Ram shed his pack. He felt weak and uncertain. They could die here—and they must not die. He slipped the last of the mountain meat into his tunic, then began to remove his sword belt; but Fawdref nosed it back. They could hear a crunching sound from the cliff below, heard some rocks break away. Ram dared not look down at the valley again. He glanced at Skeelie and knew she felt the same. He felt Fawdref’s strength reach to steady him. He was weak with terror. He would rather fight the gantroed, he would . . . Fawdref nosed at him again. He looked into Fawdref’s eyes, then at last he climbed obediently onto the great wolf’s back, all power within him silent now, withheld in mortal fear; he was a tiny child again, wanting comforting.
He turned to look at Skeelie. She was so deathly white he thought she could not do it.
Skeelie shed her pack and laid herself atop Rhymannie’s back, her legs bent and gripping, her arms tight around the bitch wolf’s neck, her face in Rhymannie’s thick coat. Her eyes were closed tight.
Ram felt the lump of the wolf bell wedged between his ribs and Fawdref’s back and forgot helplessness then, beginning to pour all the skills he knew into the bell’s power—the bell was not a vessel to command wolves now, but a source of strength for them all.
*
HarThass dismounted. A soldier took his reins and led his horse onto the scow. The wind was still, the narrow inlet clear and calm. On the other side, Farr looked small and ragged. Both scows smelled so strongly of fish it was no wonder the horses balked. It had taken the fool Farrians half the morning to get their catch unloaded and the scows ready for passage. He boarded the larger scow and stood at the rail.
The water was the color of dead grass, but clear enough; he could see the dark shapes of the sunken islands deep down, and the outline of Opensa’s sunken towers. He caught a sense of alarm suddenly from the young Seer, AcShish, and reached out to see why the swarthy boy stood staring so intensely toward the mountains.
HarThass let the vision fill his mind; then slowly he began to smile. He saw the wolves crouching, preparing to scale the sheer cliff, the children clinging. He saw the gantroed hidden below them, seeking, sliding up the sheer wall, led and nurtured by the aura of dark that he, HarThass, had so skillfully woven around the children, taught his apprentices to hold. The aura moved with them constantly up the mountains, bringing the gantroed now, out from its slimy stone den into daylight it may not have touched for centuries. He raised his hand—he could flick wolves and children from that wall in one quick surge of power, into the gantroed’s jaws.
Yet, did he want to kill Ramad so soon? Might he not, even yet, seduce the boy into turning back? Or, better, seduce him into bringing the Runestone down the mountain to him? A moment of uncertainty gripped him. He stared blindly up toward Tala-charen, seeing the wolves crouched.
And then quickly he sent his powers in a dark sudden surge. The gantroed writhed more agilely up that rock wall toward the children. He would turn them back, delay them, weaken them further. . . . Let them live yet awhile.
But he met a jolt of violence, sickening him: his own force was gripped and twisted back. He stared into the element of dark and saw Jerthon facing him, laughing. Laughing! He trembled with fury; he would see Jerthon burn. He felt his five apprentices drawn taut against Jerthon, and still their power, all together, was not sufficient Those slaves! Those damnable, fracking slaves. And they stood as one with the wolves and with that impossible boy and his bell, grown stronger, grown beyond tolerating.
*
Jerthon forgot the pot of molten bronze in his hands as he knelt before the forge fire, his mind, his very soul on the dark peaks, caught in battle as he stood with Ram to drive HarThass back, to slow the gantroed as the great wolf crouched to leap. He pulled the silence of death from the far world of night and flung it down on HarThass, pulled the force of earth from the mountains themselves, from the morass of stone and sent it down on the Pellian to snarl his web of terror and the insidious illusion of uncertainty he spun. And Fawdref tensed.
Ram, his face against the great wolf’s shaggy neck, could see the sky out beyond the cliff, the peaks far below, see dark clouds rolling closer. He felt Fawdref measure the spans, one above the next, gauge where each foot would strike and cling. Once Fawdref made that first surging leap there could be no stopping or his weight and Ram’s would pull them back to spill them into the valley. His first momentum must keep them moving upward in one terrible, straining effort until they stood at last safe on the crest—or until they failed, and fell.
The wolf sprang suddenly upward in a rending surge of raw power that took Ram’s breath, an explosion from crouching haunches that lifted them high up the cliff, clinging, paws scrabbling, leaped again, straining up and up the mountain, leaning into the cliff’s side. Again upward . . .
Rhymannie mimicked him, came flying up. Each leap Fawdref made, she made also as Skeelie clung in empty terror.