*
Meatha’s sudden vision came so strong she was unaware of having stopped on the stone stairs. A vision of fear struck her so sharply she cried out a silent warning and didn’t know to whom she cried. She blocked at once from the people moving past her up toward the citadel. She was unaware of the sea light glancing through a portal, did not notice people pause to look at her. Fear, crushing fear from someone, filled her; then she was aware of Lobon, saw his angry scowl, his tousled red hair, her vision of the abyss so real she might have been standing beside him.
How intense he was, his dark eyes fierce as an animal’s, the tangle of his red hair wild as windborne fire. He unnerved her, attracted her, and she was terrified for him. She felt his willful rebelliousness—and she knew his spirit intimately in that moment, a spirit raw, wanting, and untamed. Knew the danger that waited so close, unseen. And, in spite of his danger and his vulnerability, she felt the power that dwelt about him, and she puzzled at it. And then suddenly she knew what it was, and she stood wide-eyed, not believing. Then having to believe: This Seer carried runestones hidden beneath his bloody tunic. Four shards of the runestone of Eresu.
And she knew with a sudden wildness matching his own, with a rising sense of her own power, that she must tame this man; and that she must have the stones. That to take the runestone that hung in the citadel alone was not enough. She saw her mission suddenly as whole and complete: Everything was linked, all the stones were linked; she must have them all, if ever she was to help Ere. The last hint of her self-doubt fled; she had touched power now, and she would hold to it. She began to plan.
First she must rescue the stone that hung in the citadel. She could never make the council understand that she must take it, that only through carrying it into battle could Kubal be defeated. No one in Carriol was willing to take the stone from its safe place. Once she had that stone then—then she must retrieve the stone that Alardded would surely bring from the sea. And then the stones this young Seer held, deep in the fiery pit. It was all so clear, so essential. As if a pattern of her destiny had been laid down long before she was born: to discover the stone in Burgdeeth and bring it here; then, in Carriol, to learn the skills she would need, and at last to carry the stone and its mates in a final, powerful defeat of the dark forces she so hated. She was so engrossed in what she must do that she forgot her fear for Lobon, or that he was in danger, could think only of her role in Ere’s salvation.
To rescue the stone in the citadel, she must have the mare. She could not escape without a winged one to carry her. Michennann must come, in spite of her reluctance. She pressed her back against the cold stone of the stairwell and brought the vision of Michennann around her sharply until she felt as if she herself stood in the far green field where Michennann grazed.
*
Michennann stood with dripping muzzle. She had been feeding on lilies in the water meadow. Now she looked southeast toward Carriol, held within her the sweep of Meatha’s whispering mind, urgent and irritating, then laid back her ears and shook her head, not liking the demanding summons.
She was a beautiful mare, the color of deep storm. Across one shoulder blazed a streak of white that ended beneath her dark mane. Her eyes were dark, the lashes silver against endless depths of darkness, her wings when she lifted them against the morning sky were silver, though they shadowed down to night where the feathers overlapped. She acknowledged Meatha’s presence with annoyance, examined deeply Meatha’s purpose; bowed her neck and tucked her head down in hard defiance. The girl’s quest had a darkness to it, a darkness Michennann wanted no part of, though she and Meatha were old friends. Friendship was one thing, this stealthy darkness quite another. What had changed Meatha? Or did she not see the dark that touched her?
Meatha scowled at the mare’s resistance. What was wrong with Michennann? She pressed harder still, then too late she realized her error, for the mare had drawn away from her completely and closed her mind with a stubborn will, her tail switching with anger.
Meatha drew back, too, and waited. She would not be put off. When the mare had calmed somewhat, she touched her mind more gently, carefully began to soothe Michennann, to calm her. Slowly she gentled and quieted her own driving force and washed away the tension, softened the tension between them until at last their minds could link in a smoother flow. She soothed the mare and soothed her, until after some moments Michennann relaxed satisfactorily; her ears went forward, she lifted one forefoot wet from the marsh meadow and gazed without fury into the southeastern sky.
Michennann held in suspension the last of her unease, the shadow of her reluctance. She let lie at bay the darkness that had now submerged itself beneath Meatha’s gentleness—but she would not forget it. She felt the danger in what Meatha was about, her fear unformed and nebulous but very real.
But she would follow Meatha. For the sake of something she could not put shape to, she knew she would follow her.
She turned to stare at the band of winged ones who stood silently at the other end of the meadow and spoke to them. They moved uneasily, but they did not reply. Michennann pushed back the unease, like rain-blindness, that shadowed her thoughts. She bowed her neck, and broke suddenly from a standstill into a gallop. She was skyborne in three strides, her neck stretched out, her dark nose cutting the wind.
*
In vision, Meatha Saw the mare lift skyward, and she turned away with satisfaction; though still she held a tight, gentle snare of power around Michennann, drawing her toward Carriol. She was aware once again of folk passing her on the stone stair. She let her blocking ease for a moment as her tension eased, turned to follow them, sharpening her blocking again at once.
It would not be easy to sit among others with her secret filling her and yet maintain the constant blocking needed to shut out master Seers. But the urgency of her mission seemed to give her power, and now she felt capable of anything.
Michennann would graze out on Fentress unnoticed until they could depart—until Alardded had departed for Pelli. Her timing must be perfect. Not too soon, not until Alardded was just on the verge of bringing up the drowned runestone. Too soon, and she could be discovered, Alardded alerted. She joined the meeting at last with reluctance, sat down near the entry, and looked over the heads of those in front to where the five master Seers sat circling the stone table. The runestone moved slightly in the sea breeze. She dared not look directly at it for fear her expression would give her away. Alardded and Bernaden had left a space between them, and a man stood respectfully behind the stone bench there, facing the five council Seers with obvious awe. A tall, pale man with a curiously small head and thin shoulders, larger in the trunk and hips, heavy legged—rather like a bag of grain with most of the grain run to the bottom. He was the reason for the meeting: a man brought to Carriol unexpectedly, a prisoner rescued from Kubal. He came from a land they had thought uninhabited, from the unknown lands inside the Ring of Fire. His voice was loud for such a weak-looking person. He answered Alardded’s questions simply, artlessly.
The city he had come from was as remarkable as he, a city of stone cones naturally formed, perhaps by the volcanoes, and the cones hollowed out by patient carving to make dwellings. Here he had lived all his life. His name was Fithern. He answered their questions carefully, but glanced again and again at the suspended runestone, could not keep his eyes from it, and at last Alardded stopped the questions and allowed Fithern to speak as he would. He was silent for a long while, then he spoke hesitantly but with excitement.
“She carried such stones as that! She carried two of them, and a handful of golden ones, too, stones like stars on fire.” There was utter silence in the citadel. No Seer moved.