Skeelie watched him go and swallowed. She stared down over the land, the lovely land. The hills above Burgdeeth and Kubal were blackened, scarred; but they would be green again. Even in a few weeks, she knew, the green would begin to come. In the far distance a gray smear showed the outline of Carriol’s cliffs and the ruins; and the sea was a bright streak in the dropping sun. Lovely. She bit her lip. Would she see all this again?
Oh, maudlin girl! Do get on! What are you dawdling for? Maybe you can’t even find a way into—a way . . . She set her jaw against fear, shouldered her pack, and began to climb up the old trail toward the grotto. Did the wolves know she was here, did they sense her? She could get no feel of them.
At sunset she stood ready to enter the mountain. She looked back over the land once more, softened in the falling light, took flint from her pack, and a lantern. She struck feeble light that lurched across the rock, adjusted the lantern, and entered the tunnel.
She journeyed through the dark tunnels, through caves, with only her lantern to lead her, came at last deep inside the mountain to the ancient grotto. It rose all in darkness touched only faintly by the last light of evening through its openings on the far walclass="underline" high openings, there near the distant ceiling. Here, twelve years before, she and Ram had stood. She knelt, stricken suddenly with the pain of remembering. She wept alone in the great grotto, wept for Ram.
At last she lifted her face, stared absently at the light-struck stone where her lamp stood. Had she come all this way only to weep? She rose and went on through the grotto and out another portal and up across a grassy hill. The moons had not yet risen. Her lantern guided her, catching at the tall, still grass. She stood at last, lantern raised to look, before the dark face of a building made against the mountain, all of black obsidian. She entered into the great hall that was the second grotto. Here lay the hidden picture stones, the hidden parchments secreted by the gods in ages far past—in ages where she might yet stand this night, she thought, shuddering.
She began to search among the caves and small rooms, her lantern throwing arcs of light across the carven stone, searching for hidden doors, for passages. She felt into niches, into cracks in the natural stone, searching. She would find it, a parchment, a stone tablet, something bearing the runes of magic, something to unlock the secrets of Time. Something to help her bring Ram home. Ram—and Telien. She meant, fiercely, to find it. She would not leave these caves until she had; would leave them only in a time so far from this time—where Ramad was, where Ramad had been swept.
Caves of Fire and Ice
Part One: The Lake of Fire
From The Mystery of Ramad, Book of Carriol. Signed Meren Hoppa. Written in Carriol some time after her escape from the caves of Kubal.
The battle of the Castle of Hape was ended, the Hape defeated and the castle burned to ashes and flame-blackened stone. Ramad of Carriol rode away from that victory surrounded by the wolves who had fought so fiercely beside him. He stood that night high on a cliff beside his supper fire as, before him, come out of Time itself, appeared the white-haired time-wanderer who called himself Anchorstar. But even as they spoke, Time warped again; and Ramad beheld the face of his true love, the face of Telien. He held her but an instant before they were whirled away on Time’s tide, flung far, one from the other, into Time’s ever-surging reaches. Lovers destined to wander forever apart upon Time’s dark unpredictable shores? Who could say? Perhaps no Seer could predict such a thing.
Many mourned Ramad, gone from his own time. And never would he return there. Skeelie of Carriol mourned him, the brother of her spirit, the lover she wanted but could not have, mourned him for three long days before she armed herself to follow Ramad through the barrier of Time. Determined to follow him, to find a way across that dark, capricious threshold.
Alone, she went into the high caves of Owdneet where lay buried secrets that might guide her across Time’s currents, and she carried the silver sword Ram had forged for her. Though he loved another, she would follow him; she could do nothing less. The misery without him was too great.
ONE
She had been seven days in the caves, wandering in darkness. There was light enough in the great central grotto, daylight, then the light from Ere’s moons on most nights. But away from the grotto, deeper in the mountain, in the small caves and tunnels where she searched, no light came, and her oil lamp hardly cut the darkness. The silence in the low, tight tunnels was absolute and cold. She had squinted over stone tablets carved with the history of Ere, crouched frowning in the dim light to unroll and study parchments stacked one atop the next, row on row of them in stone niches in the cave walls, but had found as yet no trace of the runes for which she searched. Patiently she rolled each one up again, more discouraged each time.
Her food was nearly gone. She was sick of dried mountain meat, dry mawzee cakes, the metallic tasting cave water. And the lamp oil was running low. Soon she would have to leave the caves to hunt, or there would be no fat to render into oil. She could not search for anything in darkness. But hunting would take precious time, for all the rising peaks had been black and withered when she came up the mountain seven days before. There would be little game. In the caves, the air still smelled of smoke. She fingered her bow, ran an exploring finger over the silver hilt of her sword and remembered painfully when Ram had forged it. They had been children then, come recently out of Burgdeeth. She had carried it all these years, fought and killed with it, had fought the Herebian raiders these last months, with the sword so much a part of her she hardly remembered it had been made by Ram’s hand. Now she remembered, sharply and painfully, as Ram’s face filled her thoughts, his dark eyes intent and serious, a thatch of his red hair falling across his forehead, the line of his long, lean face caught in firelight as she had last seen him in painful vision, before he was swept into Time.
She picked up the lantern, sighing, and turned deeper into the mountain.
He did not love her, could never love her. Because of Telien. If she found him with Telien in some idyl far in Time, she could only turn away again to lose herself in Time unending, in desolation unending. And yet she must follow him, she could do nothing else.
Who knew where Time had swept him, or to what purpose? Truly to follow Telien? Or had some evil reached to touch Ram, to open Time to him?
She searched for long hours, hardly pausing to eat. She had all but lost her sense of time. Night was no different than day. She slept little, wrapped in her cloak for an hour or so, always cold. Woke and went on until she grew exhausted or very discouraged, slept again. There was enough lamp oil for perhaps four more fillings.