*
Ram wandered alone in the dark between the outbuildings and pens. He could smell the pigs plainly, and the goats. The music and singing faded to an almost-tolerable blur. He could have done without it altogether. Hermeth had taken one look at his black expression and left him. Skeelie had hung around, annoying with her silent concern. He felt a twinge of guilt. Well, but Skeelie understood. She always knew his pain. Yes, and that in itself was annoying. He stared up at the sky, immense and distant, and cold desolation touched him, the reality of Telien’s fate sickening him nearly to madness: Telien, captive in a horror worse than any death could be; Telien trapped now as he had never dreamed possible. Was she aware of her possession yet unable to battle it? Or had her spirit been crippled, or destroyed?
*
Hermeth found Ram some time later still among the sheep pens and sties. He went to stand beside him, stared absently at the waning moons, watched pale clouds blow across the stars. The singing came faint and cool, muffled by stables and grain rooms. Neither spoke. Ram leaned tiredly against the sty fence, and Hermeth watched him. Ramad of wolves. Ramad, hardly aged since he fought by Macmen’s side twenty-three years gone. The clouds shifted to cover the moons, then uncovered them suddenly so moonlight marked the flaming hair of the two Seers. Ram’s olive skin and dark eyes and the slight dishing of his face were in sharp contrast to Hermeth’s paler, square face and clear blue eyes fringed with pale lashes. Hermeth uncapped a flask of honeyrot. Ram sipped at it absently. Hermeth frowned. “You cannot tear yourself from the image of her, Ramad, from the horror of her possessed. You will not rest until you have followed her. But you . . .” Hermeth took a sip of the honey-rot and capped it. “You do not know how or where to look, how to find your way into Time in the direction she—the wraith—has taken.”
Ram nodded, caught in misery. He stared bleakly into the night.
“There is a story in Zandour about a man called the Cutter of Stones. It is said by some that he is evil. I do not believe that. I think he is a magical person.”
Ram turned for the first time to look directly at Hermeth.
“A Seer, yes,” Hermeth answered his silent question. “But a Seer with special skills. It is said that he cut, from one large stone, five golden stones called starfires that could . . .” He was stopped by Ram’s look. “What did I say? Why does the mention of starfires—?”
“Don’t stop! Get on with your story!”
“It—it is a tale from herders in Moramia. Five starfires that can hurl a man into Time and carry him—well, just carry him. . . .” Hermeth swallowed. “But you have already been carried into Time.” He watched Ram with slow realization. “You—you carry the starfires! You . . .”
Ram reached into a fold of his tunic, drew forth his hand, and held it palm up so the faint light of the moons caught gleaming upon three pale amber stones, cut and faceted, their cool light increasing, deepening at their centers then blazing out suddenly like fire. “Starfire,” Hermeth breathed, staring. “Then, Ramad, you have known the Cutter of Stones.”
“No. The starfires were given me by another. A man called Anchorstar. He said they were given to him by someone he trusted, but he did not name that man. Perhaps it was the Cutter of Stones, perhaps not. Tell me of the Cutter of Stones.”
“It is said the Cutter of Stones can shape Time to his own uses when he chooses.”
“Where can I find such a man?”
“It is told that one cannot find him, cannot seek him out, that he dwells outside of Time and will bide you come to him only if he chooses. But with those starfires—if they can touch Time, can’t you . . .”
“The starfires seem sometimes to lead me, but more often only to confuse and twist that which I attempt. Though— though perhaps, after all, they led me to you. Perhaps it was the starfires that led us into the dark wood where Telien—where Telien . . .” Ram bent his head. “I do not know.” He stared at the starfires coldly, then said with pent-up anger, “Led me to Telien too late.” He looked up at Hermeth. “Could—could this Cutter of Stones be evil?” He dropped the starfires into his tunic with sudden distaste. ‘Tell me all you know of him.”
“I know little more. It is said that if you need him, and if he deems your need a true one, he will call you out of Time to come to him.” Clouds raced across the moons in white veils, and as Hermeth turned to look up, a sudden vision came around them, cold as winter. The sty fence disappeared, the villa. The land itself seemed to swim and fold around them and shadows raced across it sparked with silver light. Other, denser shadows rose as a fog might rise from hidden ground, shadows that were figures surging together in the midst of ephemeral winds; they saw young Seers, Children of Ynell, many and many of them: Children soon to be born, perhaps already conceived, Children walking out across Ere carrying light within their souls. Hermeth and Ram saw them struck down, saw them flee before dark warriors; flee to Carriol or northward up over the wild black peaks away from Ere into the unknown lands. They saw other Children living in silence, hiding their skills for fear of death.
They saw Children lying as if dead, asleep with some mind-bending drug, lying on stone slabs in a dark underground place. And the very breath of the wraith pervaded that place so that Ram almost cried out. Did Anchorstar, too, lie there bound in mindlessness? Surely the sense of him was there; but then the vision faded.
For long afterward, Ram could not free his mind from the inexplicable weight of that vision.
*
Skeelie dozed and woke in a cold tub. She got out shivering, wrapped herself in a blanket, and huddled before the dead fire. When at last she stirred up the embers and laid on new kindling she felt muzzy, vaguely hungry, and wished she had eaten more supper. Streaks of light came through the shuttered windows and snatches of song from the courtyard, muted and pleasant. She huddled to the fire and soon began to feel warmer, crouched there absently admiring the bright colors of the Zandourian rugs, the pattern of the bedcover. The bed linen, turned back white and smooth, invited her. She rose at last, yawning, and began to prowl the room. In a corner behind a dressing screen, new leathers had been laid out for her, and fresh underlinen, a soft wool tunic, new boots. The sight of them, and the thought of Hermeth’s kindness, made tears come suddenly and surprisingly. Someone cared. She caught her breath in a sob that amazed her and stood clutching the leathers, bawling like a child.
Why should someone’s kindness make her cry? You’re tired, Skeelie! Stop it! Stop crying and get into bed! Yet she knew she was not crying just over the clothes and Hermeth’s kindness, that she was crying for Ram, for a kind of gentleness that Ram could never show her.
If only Ram needed her now—as a friend. Instead of going off alone. At last, exhausted with crying, she climbed into bed. In spite of her misery, she took pleasure in the clean sheets, appreciated the gentle softness of the bed. Wriggling down, she let the bed soothe and ease her, clutched the pillow to her and slept almost at once.
For nine days they remained in Zandour, idle as sheep, eating prodigious and succulent meals, riding the countryside just for the pleasure of it, sleeping long and unbroken nights. Skeelie took so many hot baths her skin seemed permanently wrinkled; she luxuriated in her comfortable room, in her new leathers, and in the simple new gowns Hermeth brought to her. Her body began to feel like something human again, fed and clean and rested, the scabs and little wounds healing, and pampered with soft fabrics. Her senses were pampered with the handsome, well-furnished hall—not elegant but well appointed—with the bright tapestries and rugs, and with the neat farms of Zandour and the rolling green sheep pastures. How long such an idyl might last was impossible to guess. Skeelie simply soaked it all up while she could. Though Ram did not do the same. In spite of good meals and the luxuries he had long been without, he was morose, steeped in painful thoughts of Telien. Even occupied with teaching Hermeth the ways of the runestone, Ram had too much time to think; he would sit in the evenings alone beside the fire, preferring his own company and silence, or go skulking off into the night by himself in spite of anything Skeelie and Hermeth might think of to divert him.