But they could not hold Venniver long. He rose, came at them bleeding. She faced him sword drawn, as Jerthon whirled and had him in a grip like steel. She stared into Venniver’s eyes, could not speak, his hatred chilling her through. Would Jerthon kill him?
But Jerthon backed away from the guards, Venniver his captive. “He can’t hold that rabble forever.”
“Even—even with the power of the stone? Ram—”
“Even with Ram’s power, in that one shard of jade. HarThass’s apprentices are well trained—out there somewhere. Can’t you feel them?” He glanced at Venniver, held tight against him, then at her, appraising her. “This one will buy our freedom. If it is freedom you want.” He was watching her, but she could only look at Venniver. His hatred was terrible, she stared back at him, sick. Yet that hard, confining shell around herself had cracked away. Something new was determined to live, something beyond what she had known with Venniver. Something more real and urgent than anything in her life. She looked at Venniver and swallowed, looked away. Her tears were mixed with rain, salt and bitter.
She stood beside Jerthon and, in a power she had never admitted, never wanted, she held with him, held the soldiers back. A power that rose, now, from the very core of her being. She stayed the guards, the Pellian Seers, her mind coolly linked with Jerthon’s. They forced Venniver down the street toward the band of mounts that waited, guarded by Dlos. Some of the horses were saddled, some roped together. Derin and Saffoni led horses forward. Tayba could not speak for the effort she made to hold strong against the Pellian forces, against Venniver’s stifled guards. How long she could hold, she did not know.
Slaves were coming out of the dark, some leading the soldier’s horses. The rain had slacked, nearly ceased. She saw men carrying wounded, felt out with Jerthon in quick assessment. He said, “Drudd? Pol?”
“Yes. We are here,” Drudd said, lifting a wounded man up. “Trane is dead. And Vanaw. I don’t think . . . where are the women?”
Derin rode up, leading saddled horses. “They . . . Barban and Hallel are dead.” Her voice caught. “Cirell is here, with Dlos. We . . . must we leave our dead?”
“Yes,” Jerthon said shortly. The rain had ceased. The clouds began to part so that a little light touched the hurrying band as they mounted and sorted themselves out. Tayba could feel Jerthon’s effort with her own, holding their pursuers.
Were there still horses there in the dark street that could be used to pursue them? More slaves were coming. But they were not slaves, she thought suddenly. They were free now. At last, all accounted for, they rode quickly out of Burgdeeth, Venniver tied to his mount, furious and silent, his bleeding staunched with rags.
They turned him loose somewhere above Burgdeeth, to struggle home on foot as best he could. Then they loosed their waning hold on the soldiers and guards and heard them shouting back in the town for horses they would never find.
*
Ram and Skeelie lay on their stomachs in the deep window of the room where they had slept, staring down the steep side of Tala-charen at the wild, empty land. Ram said, “We’ll go down this way, come out in that long valley.”
“But we came the other way, into the other side of the mountain. How—”
“I think . . . I just feel that we can. We’ll have to see. Those stairs—didn’t you wonder how Tala-charen could crack apart but leave the rooms untouched? Didn’t you—”
“Oh, I figured that out,” she said offhandedly. “There, where the mountain bows out. The crack is in there, the other side of the caves.” She stared at Ram, giving him a picture.
She had waked at first light to climb up onto this sill and lie so, looking out at the sun-touched peaks of the lower mountains to the northwest, Tala-charen’s shadow cast long across them. She had seen where the crack in Tala-charen might be. She had slid down from the sill and gone down the spiraled flight to the next room, and the next below it. There the wall was cracked too, the gantroed’s bones pushing through. She had reached in among those bones to search with blind fingers; but no shard of jade had she found, had turned away at last disappointed. Nothing in that dark crack but bones and more bones. She turned to look at Ram.
“Why did the stone shatter? After all that climb and nearly getting killed, the cliff, the fiery lake—if you were meant to have the stone, why did it shatter?”
“It just did,” he said simply. “No one planned it. I wasn’t meant to have the stone—the time was just right that I seek it.”
She only stared at him.
“You don’t think . . . ? The forces on Ere . . . everything was right for me to seek out the stone, but no one planned that I do it. And no one said, ‘Now we will shatter it.’” He watched her, frowning a little. “Mostly it was HarThass’s power, though. He waited too long, he played me too long, like a clumsy fisherman. And then when it was too late he threw all his power into the shattering of the stone, to destroy it. And with the other forces there, wheeling, all that power . . .” He spread his hands. “It—is shattered.”
“But those others, those who came and held the stone then. That wasn’t accident, Ram!”
“Yes it was. It was accident. All—all those forces, balanced like that for an instant, threw—threw us outside of time. And those who desired the power for good—somehow they got through. Maybe—maybe there were others among them. I don’t know. Now,” he said with awe, “in other times there are shards of jade like this one. Power, Skeelie. All strewn across time. Because of accident, because of a clashing of powers—because of one Seer’s lust for power that tipped the scale.”
“What—what will happen because of it?”
He stared out over the mountains silently, longing to See all of time spread before him just as the nameless peaks were spread, but seeing only peaks. “No one . . . no one can know, Skeelie.”
“How can you be so sure? How can you be sure, Ramad of Zandour, that there is not one force making—causing all this to happen?”
“Nobody is sure,” he said patiently. “There is one force. But it is made of hundreds of forces. You can feel it—a Seer can. But it doesn’t make things happen. They just happen. Forces balance, overbalance—that is what makes life; nothing plans it, that would take the very life from all—all the universe.
“But something—something judges,” he said with certainty. “In all of it together, there is a judgment.”
Fawdref came to push close, and Ram put his arm around the great wolf’s neck. “But it is the strength of the force in our little desires for good and evil, Skeelie, that balances and counterbalances and makes things happen. Makes life happen.” He stared hard at her. “It is not planned! Like—like a recipe for making soap!”
He looked out across the unknown mountains, and she could feel in him the challenge of those forces. He tousled Fawdref roughly, making the great wolf smile. Out there—across the unknown lands and back behind them in the seething, warring countries—there was all of life: to explore, to come to terms with in his new power. What could he do, what good could he help to draw from the balancing, ever-changing forces of Ere? She wanted to be with Ram in this, wherever he went, whatever forces he touched.
He took her hand, and they started down out of Tala-charen toward the north.
They emerged on the other side of the mountain from the place where they had started, stood blinking in the bright sun.
The wolves tasted the air, gave the children a parting nudge, and went to hunt Ram and Skeelie started up the long valley, wishing they had horses. “I think,” Ram said, scanning the mountains on either side, “I think. . . .” He knelt found a small stone, scraped away grass, and began to draw on the ground. “Here we are in the valley.” He drew mountains, another valley, a narrow way around mountains and then a valley beyond that, very wide, dotted by lakes of fire and steaming geysers. And beyond that again, cliffs. Then at last a round valley through which the Owdneet flowed. “They are there; they are beginning to pack up. They will come this way, Jerthon knows we are here. Mamen . . .” He began to smile. “Mamen knows! Mamen Sees us, Skeelie!”