Then he showed them, abruptly, a vision of Telien that made Ram catch his breath and draw away from them in painful silence.
“Yes, Ramad, you search for Telien. You search for the wraith of the dead Yanno, who gave his soul to the drug MadogWerg in the caves of Kubal. Who would have destroyed Anchorstar and many more, except for the skill of a few young Seers—young Seers wielding the runestone that Telien brought with her out of Tala-charen.”
Ram stared at him. “The runestone she . . . but then that runestone is found!” He watched Canoldir, perplexed. “She had—she did not remember.”
“Telien did not—will not find it. And that time is yet to come, Ramad, in the way of your lives. I could tell you that that runestone is found in that future time; and yet all Time can change at the whim of forces that even I—who move outside of Time—cannot understand truly. Let us say that that stone is, in all likelihood, found.” He paused, watching them; then idly he began to brush the crumbs from the sliced bread into a little heap and spread them out with one deft movement of his palm, began to draw in the thin veil of crumbs, one thin line across, bisected by another. When he looked up at last, he had scribed the little circle of crumbs into nine sections, eight fanning out, and one in the center. Ram sat staring at the sketch. Skeelie was silent, following Ram’s thoughts. Just so had the shattered runestone of Eresu lain in Ram’s palm, in nine jagged pieces. “It had a center stone,” Ram said with amazement. “I remember now; but I did not remember. I remembered well that there were nine shards of jade, but not that one was a center stone. Gone. Gone from my mind. I see it clearly now, one long, oval stone. The center—the core of the runestone.” He raised his eyes to Canoldir. “A golden stone—amber . . .”
“Yes, Ramad. The core of the runestone, just as Time has a core about which it weaves endlessly.”
Ram drew from his tunic the leather pouch and spilled its contents onto the table. The two jade runestones. The three starfires. But suddenly the starfires were four. His hand paused in midair. He looked up at Canoldir again with cold shock. “Telien’s starfire? Telien’s . . . You brought it here! Is Telien . . .”
“It is Anchorstar’s,” Canoldir said quietly. “Anchorstar has no need for such a stone now. Anchorstar moves in his own time, thirty years beyond the time in which you mourned and buried Hermeth of Zandour, Ramad. Perhaps Anchorstar may move in Time yet again, but only shallow slips through Time, I feel. I think that he will not need the power of the starfire in that time to which he truly belongs. That time in which he was bred by Cadach. For Cadach, too, born twice upon Ere, wandered Time, bred his children through Time, in different times by different women, before he turned his powers into an evil that was his undoing.
“The starfire belongs with you, Ramad. You have need for all the starfires together, in the semblance of the one stone. Perhaps that need in part is simply to signify that in some time yet to come, you will join the stone itself. Make it whole again.”
“You seem very certain.”
“I am not certain. But if your powers seek out sufficiently well, if your powers, your commitment, are strong enough, unswerving enough—then that very force can change and realign forces moving upon Ere, can well bring you, at some time not yet clear, into the realm of all the shards of the jade. And then, Ramad, all powers may align with you—the powers you can touch but do not fully comprehend. If you are strong enough, all powers may draw in as they did at the splitting of the jade, atop Tala-charen. But this time the jade might be fused again into one whole stone. I do not say this will happen. I say that it is possible. It will depend on you. There is something in your blood, in your breeding, that belongs to the stone and its joining.”
“If all depends on me, is Anchorstar’s mission of no concern then? Does he search for that one stone in vain?”
“Anchorstar’s mission is urgent. All powers, all forces, must move as one, Ramad. You may be the last key in the final joining, or someone close to you may. But the powers and strengths of all who move in this battle are of urgency. Anchorstar’s mission is a part of the whole; the mission that consumes him now is to battle that which has gone awry. He moved with such intensity that he has all but forgotten that which has occurred before. Other times have become as a dream to him. His ruling passion, now, is to find that lost shard of the runestone and to aid those Children made captive by forces uglier than any that have yet touched the Children of Ynell.”
Canoldir picked up the starfires, placed them on the table before him, and began to arrange one next the other in the way they had been cut. Fitting perfectly, they made a rough oval but with a hole where one stone was missing. “The starfire that Telien carries.” He then took up the two runestones. “Now tell the runestones for me, Ramad. Count them.”
Ram pushed his bowl aside, gave Skeelie a long questioning look, then, unexpectedly, a comforting one. “The stone that I brought out of Tala-charen is lost in the sea, off the coast of Pelli.”
“Yes.”
“The stone that NilokEm brought out of Tala-charen and passed down to the dark twins is the stone in your left hand, given me by Hermeth.
Canoldir nodded.
“The stone in your right hand, the wraith dug out from beneath the mountain Tala-charen.”
“Yes. You took it from the wraith at the moment that it possessed Telien.”
Ram studied Canoldir. Did this man care that Telien had been taken by the wraith, that her very soul was captive? But why should he care? What was Telien to him?
“Continue, Ramad. What I care about is not of moment here. I would not have brought you here had I not intended to help you pursue Telien. Though I care for more than that. I care for the fate of the stones. And I care for a coupling you do not dream of; and of which I will know a long sorrow.”
Ram watched him, unable to make sense of his words. “What coupling? What do you speak of in such riddles?” Yet the sense Skeelie caught from Canoldir’s thoughts was so disturbing she upset her mug, occupied herself for some time mopping it up with her napkin.
Canoldir said softly, “Continue, Ramad, with the naming of the stones.”
“The—the stone that Telien brought from out Tala-charen when she was first flung into Time, that stone is lost somewhere in darkness and she could not remember where. ‘Lost in darkness. Found by the light of one candle, carried in a searching, and lost in terror,’“ Ram repeated.
“That prediction, Ramad, is one of the wonders that moves through Time unchanged. Ever, ever changing are the winds of Time, ever nebulous and moving. And yet moments among those winds, words or predictions sometimes, the fate of a man sometimes, can move through those winds unchanging even as the swirling storms of Time change. ‘Found again in wonder,’ the prediction says. ‘Given twice, and accompanying a quest and a conquering.’ That is four stones, Ramad. What of the other five?”
“The fifth is the starfires, of course.”
“Yes. Though the starfires do not hold the same magic as do the other runestones. The starfires know only their own magic, they know only the work of the core, which they are; they know only the magic to plunge into the core of Time.” Canoldir lifted the ale pot from beside the hearth and poured out more of the spiced liquor into their empty mugs. “Five stones, then. Five you have accounted for. And what of the other four?”