From the entrance to our rock home, gazing southwest, we could see in the far distance beyond the cliff and beyond the white apron of the glacier, a peak rising so high and alone that Ram felt sure it was Tala-charen. He could feel a power from that peak that seemed to reach toward our desolate valley, a power he felt was linked to the runestone. He was more and more certain that a shard of the runestone lay down in the burning chasm, and sometimes he felt a presence down there, too, as if a living thing were watching us. I could not speak my fears to him, nor would I turn him aside. I knew I might see him die, but I would not hinder what he must surely do. We went again and again into the pit. It was a place of mystery, of shifting smoke, the changing lava flows and the falling stones tearing away the land so our way was never the same. We saw fire ogres there with flame playing across their thick, wrinkled hides, ogres only the heaviest arrows could kill. And something larger and infinitely more evil lay in that abyss, a creature formed perhaps from the heart of the abyss itself. Something that watched us at first only half-alive, that followed the sense of our movements, followed the sense of power from the runestones Ram carried with ever growing interest, as if it were slowly acquiring life, slowly becoming more powerful.
Could the stone that lay in that abyss have nurtured such a creature? Could a shard of the runestone, if it lay long enough immersed in that evil place, have bred evil? Bred a creature that, on sensing Ram’s four runestones, quickened to life further and thirsted for ultimate power? Or was there another explanation? And how did the runestone get into the abyss? And when?
The creature moved unseen, eventually tracking us and tracked by us. Over the years its power became stronger and the sense of its size seemed to increase. And then at last the sense of its name came to us. It called itself Dracvadrig. We sensed that sometimes it was like a man, sometimes like a great worm. And it had about it the essence of death. Had it risen from death or near death? Was it a creature like the wraith, perhaps? The wraith had once been a man, given over to the drug MadogWerg and to the evils that grew from it. Was this thing in the pit the same, a man unable to die, growing after his body’s death into another form? Had it lain in the pit long after its death, its moldering body couched around the runestone before life came seeping back sufficiently for it to rise and watch us, and to grow slowly into the monstrous dragon that we saw at last? I do not know. I only know that it was Dracvadrig who killed Ram.
I did not go with Ram into the pit that day, nor had for some days, for Lobon was ill with fever. Torc and Rhymannie were excellent nurses, but I could not leave Lobon when he was so sick. Ram gave into my hands the four runestones so that I could help him with their power, and I stood watching as the twelve wolves descended with him into the abyss. I had no premonition that Dracvadrig would rise that day to show itself, that it would at last challenge Ram. I sent my power with them, and later I stood reaching with all my force into the battle Ram waged against the creature. Even Lobon’s young, untrained power came strong then, to defend Ram, our powers focused through the runestones in a battle soon turned desperate, then terrifying, the wolves leaping and tearing at the dragon as it flailed and twisted in battle, its screams of fury echoing across the pit and between the mountains. And the power of the stone it possessed struck against Ram and against the stones I wielded with a force that made me reel with its intensity. I used every power, every force I knew, felt Ram’s furious, angry battle, his powers linked with mine against the creature as if we stood side by side. Lobon, his face flushed with the fever, had come to stand beside me, his power raging against the dragon, more power in that moment than I had thought any child could contain.
But our powers were not enough. Ram’s strength was not enough, nor the wolves’ fierce and continued attacks. Perhaps other forces fought beside the dragon, forces of the dark. I felt that this was so, and wondered if they had watched us longer than we ever knew.
Ram was wounded. He lay dying. He was dead before I reached him. Climbing and running down into the pit, I could only think over and over, If only I had been with him battling with sword as well as with the stones.
But I cannot dwell on that. It likely would have made no difference. Yet I do dwell, am sick with it even yet. I wake sometimes seeing him die, and cry out into the night before I can stop myself.
I lashed together a sapling drag to bring Ram’s body out. Five wolves stood guard over him. Seven wolves lay dead. Fawdref lay dead, his dark coat smeared with blood, his body torn by the dragon’s claws. Torc and Rhymannie were badly hurt. They limped out slowly, not able even to keep pace with the drag. As I turned away from the scene of battle after my first climb, I saw the wounded dragon creeping toward me. I spun and raised my bow, but the creature was hurt and clawed at the cliff then slipped and fell deeper into the pit. Suddenly it stayed its fall, with leathery wings raised, and beat its way clumsily skyward, twisting as if at any minute it would fall again. It must have been near to death at that moment, not to have come after the stones I held close inside my tunic, yet it flew up out of the pit, scrambling and clawing at the stone walls, and disappeared over the farther lip of the abyss where lay the unknown lands. Whether it returned to the abyss or not, I do not know. But every creature returns to its nest.
We buried Ram and Fawdref and the six young, strapping wolves who died with them in the stone room that had been our first home, made a cairn of that place, and covered the entrance with rocks. Lobon worked in stoic silence, ignoring his fever, carrying rocks to secure his father’s grave. Five days later, when Lobon was well and the bitch wolves had begun to heal, I set fire to the larger, sapling hut that Ram and I had built together and burned it to the ground. Then we went away to the east, where lay the city of cones, Lobon and I and five wolves, silent in our mourning; Lobon so broken by Ram’s death that it was many months before he could shed a tear.
We remained among the people of the city of cones until the pain of Ramad’s death began to heal for me. Lobon, even at six years old, was filled with such cold fury that I felt it would never abate.
Then, as I mourned in the city of cones, Canoldir spoke to me across Time. He spoke again and again, this man who lived outside of Time, and at last he helped me to see life around me once more, and I was glad for his caring.
We came to Canoldir at last, after nearly two years, came in an instant of Time, Lobon and I and the wolves, an instant of dizziness and shock, moving across Time and outside of Time to stand suddenly in Canoldir’s villa, where I had stood only once before—beside Ram.
Canoldir is gentle with me. He is helping me to heal as much as ever I will be healed, until I join Ram again in some life yet to come to us.
*
Excerpt from pages written some time later in Skeelie’s life with Canoldir:
And even now, though I dwell outside of Time and have touched knowledge that was before closed to me, I do not know what Dracvadrig is. Canoldir thinks he was once a man, that he stood in Tala-charen at the moment of the splitting and received a shard of the runestone; that he let the darkness lure him with that stone until he was drawn into the evil caverns of Urdd; that he grew there in evil until at last he took the dragon form in a dull, half-somnolent life. And then, awakened by the powers of Ramad’s stones, came again fully alive, this time in a rising, lusting evil. Surely there was a strength beyond the power of one shard of the runestone in that abyss when Dracvadrig killed Ramad; it was as if the powers of dark dwelt with him, and strengthened him.