The wolves were seldom seen; they had gone to hunt the cliffs up on Scar Mountain, making Skeelie stare away toward that towering mass with a wild, persistent curiosity. The very existence of Scar Mountain there so close, of Gredillon’s house only a short ride away, made her taut with questions. What would the house be like if she went there now? In what time had she stood there? Before this time of Hermeth? Or in a time still to happen? She didn’t know. It didn’t matter; what mattered was that Gredillon’s house, or perhaps some power from Gredillon herself, had given her the gift of truly touching Ram’s early life. That would always be with her. Had Gredillon sent her the clay bell through some powerful manipulation of Time? And what was Gredillon? White-haired Gredillon—was she one of Cadach’s children just as Anchorstar must surely be? Skeelie wondered, if she returned to Scar Mountain now, whether she would find answers to such questions. But she did not return. Something she did not question prevented her, turned her away from that thought, willed her to let the sleeping house be.
Nor did Ram go to Sear Mountain, though surely he must long for the house of his childhood. She could not sense what he felt; his thoughts were closed to her, sunk in desolation. And then on the night of the ninth day, when Ram had been gone longer than usual and it was going on to midnight. Hermeth went to search for him, and did not return.
Skeelie sat immobile beside the fire after Hermeth left her, muzzy with too much honeyrot, disgruntled with Ram’s difficult ways, in spite of knowing how he suffered for Telien. She dozed, awakened, dozed again, and still neither Hermeth nor Ram returned. At last she lit a lamp, took up her sword, and went out into the night, her unease making her cross.
She found Ram in the darkness of sheds and sheep pens. Moonlight cast a thin outline across his shoulders where he knelt. What was he doing kneeling beside a sheep pen in the middle of the night? Then she felt, suddenly, the sense of something very wrong, a sense of hollowness; felt Ram’s shock and his terrible remorse. Felt the sense of death. Saw then that he knelt beside a body. She went to him without speaking.
Hermeth lay beside the sheep pen, twisted and unnatural in death. Her hands began to shake. She felt the sense of his death like a blow, sudden and sharp, not wanting to believe. Someone she had just been talking with, sitting before the fire with, could not be so suddenly lying dead in the night, in the mud.
But of course he could be. Why had she sensed nothing, back in the hall? She stared at Ram’s white, twisted face not understanding anything. When Ram spoke at last, his voice was hoarse and flat.
“She has come here. Telien has come. The wraith—it— has taken the strength from Hermeth. Taken the life from Hermeth.” She thought he would drown in his pain. “How can it have become so strong, to do such a thing, Skeelie? I don’t understand. It could not have done this before, at Tala-charen.” He paused, stared at her. “Did it draw strength from the stones, there in the wood?” His voice was hoarse, near to tears. “Or from NilokEm, before he died? Not— not from Telien. She was so weak, so very frail and weak.”
“She was frail of body, Ram. But Telien’s spirit— she . . .” Skeelie could not finish.
“When she came out of the night I wanted . . .” He bit his lip, turned his face away. “I wanted only to hold her, to comfort her. I couldn’t believe . . . She was so pale. Great circles under her eyes. She—she was so close to the end of her strength. As if the wraith did not dare let her faint. She—it stood looking at me. It has new power, Skeelie. It has learned to sap the strength from a man like a . . .” Ram swallowed. “Like a lizard sucking out the strength from a creature and leaving a bare shell.”
“But she . . .” Skeelie stared at him, knowing suddenly and clearly that the wraith had not come here for Hermeth. “She came for you, Ram.”
“She—was so near to failing of strength altogether. The wraith knew he could not get me to kill Telien. Worked it out that it could take a man’s strength to replenish itself. Thought that, because Telien and I—because we . . . that it could make me give in to it, that it would be easy to drain my body of strength, make me—give myself to her.”
She felt a guilty elation that Ram lived, that it was Hermeth lying dead and not Ram. “But how . . .?”
“Hermeth came upon it—upon us. He battled by my side. We—we battled together, and then suddenly Telien’s color heightened, she stood straight, seemed altogether different, healthy, alive. I—I thought she had come back. I thought she had defeated the wraith. I reached out to her. And too late I saw . . .” He drew in his breath. ‘Too late I saw Hermeth fall. Just—just fall, Skeelie. And she—she reached to put her arms around me, to—to draw me to her. I—I went to her. Wanting her, Skeelie. I knew what she was. She held me. It was . . . I could not let her go. But then I—I began to resist her, to battle her until she drew back. She looked at me with a hatred I can never forget. And then she—she was just suddenly gone.” His face filled with pain. “I don’t know how long I’ve been here—how long ago that was. Forever. For Hermeth, it will be forever.”
The moons had gone. Ram and Skeelie carried Hermeth’s body back to the hall and began to wake Hermeth’s men, wake the families who helped in the hall and kitchen. Lamps were lit. Hermeth was laid on a bench in the hall before the dead fire. Those who came knelt immediately, as if no man wanted to stand taller than Hermeth in this moment. Messengers were sent throughout the town.
They made his grave upon a hill at first light. Processions streamed out of the village from all directions in absolute silence: Folk cleanly dressed and carrying little bowls of grain in the traditional gift for the winged horses who might come over Hermeth’s grave to speak with him and carrying little bowls of fruit and meats to leave there on his grave for the gods, for if fate smiled, the Luff’Eresi might come too in a last rite to Hermeth. The ceremony itself was simple enough. Ram spoke solemn words, as did Hermeth’s lieutenants, the five Seers among them bowing their heads in a last gift of power to Hermeth. Ram held the runestones tight, wanting power for Hermeth now in these moments, wanting to lend Hermeth strength; thought he knew that already Hermeth had left his body, left this place to move into another place and time, another sphere; that there was no need for the power of Seers, of the stones; but still they gave it.
Ram turned away at last from the bare earth that covered the grave like a scar against the green hill. Hermeth’s men and the entire city of Zandour followed him down the hill in silence. The wolves, who had come at Hermeth’s death down out of Scar Mountain, stood last upon the hill and raised their voices in a wailing lament, in a death song that trembled the sky and would long, long be remembered in Zandour. And then the wolves came down, too, from Hermeth’s grave, and his body was alone there beneath the rising sun.
They would carve and lay a slab of granite, the people of Zandour, to mark the place where Hermeth lay. A little child, staring back up the hill, said, “He can look out now over the sheep meadows.” But no one thought Hermeth was there to look out. He was in another place that they could not yet fathom.
“He left no children,” Skeelie said, mourning. “No wife—no young Seers.”
“There are other Seers, that handful among his lieutenants.”