He dropped his blanket and pack inside the smaller, rougher shelter, then turned back to the abyss and stood staring down, wanting to go down at once and pursue Dracvadrig and kill him, but knowing he must learn the abyss through visions first, learn Dracvadrig’s nature better. Yet impatience ate at him and made him edgy. He began to pace. Shorren paced close to him, nuzzling him frequently as a mother would pat an unruly child.
They had been following Dracvadrig for twenty days, sensing the runestone Dracvadrig carried, Lobon drawn by the pull of the stone until he was nearly mad with it. They had climbed the face of Eken-dep following the master of Urdd, had stood halfway up the glacier only to see Dracvadrig transform himself from man to fire ogre and move on over the ice unfeeling of the cold, then at last transform himself into the dragon of fire he was famous for and leap from the glacier on giant wings laughing the laugh of a man. They had watched the creature fly down then into the abyss of fire; and there in the abyss Dracvadrig waited now, and Lobon would kill him there.
He had scant knowledge of Dracvadrig’s nature. He knew only that the firemaster’s skill at shape-changing was rare, and that the firemaster’s cruelty was absolute. Was the creature a man, or a demon? Had Dracvadrig been born of living creatures? Or born of the elements of the abyss itself, born of fire and of sulfurous stone? Or born perhaps as twisted offspring from the seed of the mindless fire ogres?
Lobon cared little what the creature was, he knew only that Dracvadrig must die. If Skeelie were here, she would say, You had better learn quickly Dracvadrig’s nature, learn quickly what you face. He thought of his mother and scowled, could see too plainly her thin, fine-boned face, the dark knot of hair falling over one shoulder. He felt the sense of her strength, in spite of his anger at her. They had parted in fury, not speaking; and later when he was away from her, he had not been able to bring himself to reach out in vision to mend that rift. Nor would he mend it now.
Yet it was Skeelie, thin and strong and torn apart inside, who had stood beside him here twelve years ago and seen Ramad die. Her suffering was as much a part of him as was his own.
Even so, he could not reach out. Her words when he left her had struck him like firebrands. “You are too driven by fury! It is madness to try alone! You need other Seers, there are those who would help you. You have only to reach out to them. Your pride is too great, your anger too sharp; you warp your judgement by such wrath. No matter that Canoldir feels he must let you go; you court failure, Lobon, to go alone in such violence of mind!” They had stood staring at one another locked in the burning torment born of love and of pain. Then he had turned and left her, left the home of Canoldir, left the ice mountains, and gone out of that land of Timelessness into a land where Time ran forward as men know it, the three wolves leaping down over ice cliffs leaving the rest of the pack to join him. And, once again in common time, he had begun to search out Dracvadrig by the sense of the runestone he carried, feeling the stone pull at him and not asking himself why it did.
After Dracvadrig flew away from the ice mountain, it had taken Lobon and the wolves three days to make their way back down the glacier and another day to reach the valley, across land so desolate it might never have known water or growing seed. Now, at the brink of the abyss, Lobon began to feel clearly the desire with which Dracvadrig coveted his own four stones. He knew the firemaster would kill for them, and the knowledge infuriated him. “You are as good as dead!” Lobon said softly. “You are as dead as if the blood were already draining from your body,”
But a voice rose thundering from the abyss, the shock of it like a sword slash. “You are insolent, son of Ramad! You are untried and ignorant and weak!” Cold sweat touched Lobon. “What makes you dream, son of a bastard, that you can take my life!”
Slowly Lobon stepped down to a lower, jutting lip along the precipice. Shorren moved with him and tried to press him back. Far below, a flaming river ran. Smoke drifted across broken rock. Shapes were lost in heat-warped air. There was no movement except drifting smoke. He tried to sense the direction of the voice, but Dracvadrig’s laughter echoed, directionless. “Do you imagine, child of a bastard, that you can see me when I do not choose to show myself? Do you imagine that you can kill me?”
“I will snuff your life, master of Urdd,” Lobon shouted, “as surely as a wolf can snuff a rock hare! And I will own the runestone to which you have no claim!”
“Ah, and you are heir to its joining!” Dracvadrig mocked, his laughter cold. “Think you to join that stone, bastard’s child? You? When the powers of seven generations have prevented that joining? The dark powers will prevent it, bastard’s whelp, perhaps until Time ceases. The stone will never be joined until the dark itself chooses to join it for its own use!”
“What care I for any such joining! I care only for the pleasure of seeing you die!”
“You are a fool, son of Ramad. And I take pleasure in that!” The firemaster’s voice echoed harshly, then the abyss was silent. The weight of the towering black cliff seemed to bear down like lead toward Lobon. Silence spanned to eternity, and the firemaster did not speak again.
Only when Lobon moved back from the rim at last did Shorren ease her weight against him. He took the scruff of her neck in his hands, and she turned and locked her teeth on his arm, gentle as the fluttering of moths. Once the wolves had gone to hunt, Lobon gathered greasebrush and animal droppings and built a small fire in the lee of the rock shelter they had found, then sat warming himself, looking across the abyss toward the deepening sky and the line of mountains beyond, where no man he knew of had ever ventured: not Ramad, not even the man who lived outside of Time who was his mother’s lover. When the sun dropped behind the white face of Eken-dep, the rock-strewn valley changed from a place of sharp, humping shadows to one of flat, subdued light. The tumbled boulders seemed to recede and to shrink in size.
The evening turned chill. The emptiness of the land was overpowering. He leaned close to the fire, stricken with the idea suddenly that he might be the last man alive in all of Ere, alone at the edge of unknown spaces, unknown realities. Did death seep out of the abyss to give him such thoughts? He tried to put his unease aside, but the sense of Dracvadrig pushed around him to chill his mind until he felt heavy and inept.
Then at last he felt Dracvadrig drawing away from him, as if the firemaster was distracted or had turned his attention toward another. It seemed to him the firemaster was reaching out in another direction, touching a consciousness far distant. Lobon’s mind quickened with interest, and he reached out toward that same vision, tried to immerse himself in the image that Dracvadrig’s mind seemed to conjure so sharply and in the rush of voices that accompanied it, disjointed and confused. All shifted senselessly, though Dracvadrig was mingling with the scenes comfortably enough, as if he had done this before. Where? Where were these Seers he conjured? Surely these were Seers, whose minds Dracvadrig touched so deftly. How could they remain unaware of the firemaster?
The creature had blocking skills, powerful skills. He felt Dracvadrig begin to beguile one mind in particular, and to turn and shape its thoughts as if he were shaping clay. A girl. Young. Lobon could see her face, fine-boned, thin; dark hair falling across her shoulders loose and tangled as if from sleep. And her eyes were startling, huge and lavender like the wings of the mabin bird. Her skin was lightly tanned, but a streak of white shone where her hair parted behind one ear. Her cheeks were ruddy, the whole essence of her as brilliant in coloring as was the mabin bird. She was unaware of Lobon’s scrutiny, and seemed aware of Dracvadrig only vaguely; though she was disturbed by him and by the darkness he drew around her, for she shuddered as if from a brutal touch. Yet there was an emptiness within her, too, something soft and malleable that made Dracvadrig easily welcome in spite of her revulsion. Lobon sensed people around her, the activity of a town. He could hear the sea crashing close by. He tried to touch the lower, dreaming levels of the girl’s mind, tried to seek as Dracvadrig sought; but he could not touch her. Why did the dragon seek her out? What did she have that Dracvadrig wanted? Then suddenly the vision vanished, the sense of Dracvadrig faded. Lobon was alone, shivering in the cold darkness.