The Shattered Stone Page 5

  “But if that’s true, then what we’re going to do—try to do—could well be part of something else. Something even larger.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know what it is?”

  “No. But again I think that in time we may find out.”

  They had reached the hut now, and though Ivo had many more questions, he did not have a chance to ask them for there was too much to do to prepare for the journey. One of the things that Jartan had done was to weave three flat baskets out of osiers and fix them with slings so they could carry them on their backs. While he and Neva began baking faring-bread—flat cakes that would keep for some time—he had Ivo and Liall hollow out gourds to use as water bottles. For, he told them, they would find no food or water in the desert.

  Though Liall knew of the Wendery Hills, he had never been there so that evening Jartan drew a map on a piece of bark showing them the route across Morven and the approach to Tarec. It would, he thought, take them about three days to cross the desert. They should travel early in the morning and late in the afternoon, resting during the middle of the day when the sun was hottest. And they should, if they could, avoid the Hiltis, the wandering people who lived in the desert and were hostile, not only to strangers, but to one another.

  The next morning they filled the water bottles and packed the baskets with faring-bread, which they had wrapped in leaves. They also put in some of the dried fruit that remained from their winter store.

  “You will need more of a weapon than that,” said Jartan as Ivo picked up his staff. “Here.” And taking his sword from the pegs on which it rested over his bed, he held it out.

  “Your own sword?”

  “You used it well the other day, and I know you will not use it again unless you must. It’s mine no longer. It’s yours.”

  “Thank you, Jartan,” said Ivo, touched, and he buckled it on.

  “I have one for you, too, Liall,” said Jartan. “It may not be the equal of the one you lost in the battle, but it is a serviceable blade.” And he gave him one of the practise swords, which he had sharpened. Liall thanked him also, slipped it into his sheath, and they set out for the cave.

  Mistress Silvia was waiting for them, and she was not alone. Greymane was with her and Ronno and Lura and their cubs and Dahga and Sim and Stekka the stag. In fact, most of their friends were there, gathered in a great circle around the entrance to the cave.

  “Stop that,” said Ronno to his cubs, who had been playing with Sim and now ran clumsily towards Ivo and Neva, barking a greeting. And as they became quiet and came back to him, “We heard that you were leaving and wanted to say goodbye to you.”

  “You’ll be coming back, won’t you?” asked Sim.

  “Of course we will,” said Neva. “Good morning, my lady.”

  “Good morning,” said Mistress Silvia. “I take it that you’re ready to go.”

  “Yes, my lady,” said Ivo.

  “I have some things for you. This is for you, Neva.” And she gave her a packet of dried herbs. “And these are for all of you.” And she gave them each a travelling cloak woven of spider’s silk. They thanked her and folding them small, packed them in their baskets.

  “Jartan has told you how you should go?”

  “Yes, my lady.”

  “There are things he could not tell you—dangers that you will face. But,” and she looked at Ivo and Neva, “you two at least are as prepared for them as you can be.”

  “I know, my lady,” said Neva.

  “Yes. You have known it for some time. But what you do not know is how much hangs on what you are trying to do.”

  “We have guessed that it is important,” said Ivo.

  “It is more than important. And not for just Andor and Brunn. More than that I will not say lest, instead of giving you strength, it make you anxious. But wherever you go and whatever happens, my thoughts and my love will go with you.”

  “And our thoughts will be with you, my lady,” said Neva. “With all of you.”

  “No, child. They will not. For when you leave here, you will forget everything you do not need to know for your quest.”

  “We will not forget you,” said Neva. “We could not!”

  “You will—until you see me again.”

  “But we will see you again, will we not?”

  “If your quest is successful. If it is not, then that will be only a small part of the loss we all will suffer. And now come here.”

  Neva went to her, and she looked into Neva’s eyes for a moment, gravely and tenderly, and then embraced and kissed her and did the same to Ivo.

  “Fare you well,” she said. “And you, too, Liall.”

  “My lady,” he said. She held out her hand to him, and he dropped to one knee and pressed his lips to it.

  “I will go with you to the edge of the forest,” said Jartan and set off across the glade. They followed him, pausing when they reached the far side and looking back. Mistress Silvia had not moved. She sat there, beautiful and regal, surrounded by all the creatures, great and small, of the forest. Then they went on again.

  Jartan led the way through the trees, past oak, ash and pine, until they came to a stand of birches that bordered the heath. He looked at Neva and Ivo as Mistress Silvia had done, his craggy face softer than they had ever seen it. Then, without a word, he embraced them and forcing open the magic barrier, stood aside as they and Liall went past him out of the shelter of the forest.

  THE QUEST

  Chapter 6

  It was pleasant out on the heath. The sun was behind them and the turf was firm but yielding underfoot. They were walking due west, Ivo between Neva and Liall.

  Ivo took a deep breath, enjoying the clean scent of the forest pines that the breeze brought to them, and glanced at Liall who smiled at him. Then he looked at Neva. Her stride was just as long and easy as Liall’s, but she was frowning slightly.

  “Is your basket too heavy for you?” he asked.

  She raised the pack basket a little higher on her back but shook her head.

  “Then what is it?”

  “Nothing,” she said.

  Ivo did not press her. When she was ready to tell him what was wrong, she would. He looked ahead. The forest came to an end a long bowshot ahead of them. At least there was a break in it, and the trees on the far side seemed to grow less thickly. In the open space, something dark moved; something quite large or they would not be able to see it at that distance. As Ivo looked at it, wondering what it was, a faint uneasiness came over him; a foreshadowing of something disturbing that he could not identify anymore than he could the dark, shifting shape in the center of the open space.

  Neva and Liall were looking ahead also, clearly as puzzled as he was. They went on and, seeing the charred tree stumps, realized that the reason the area was open was that this part of the forest had been burnt down. At the same time the dark mass broke apart and resolved itself into a dozen or more vultures and carrion crows that rose heavily into the air and went flying off with hoarse cries.

  They were at the edge of the Burnt Place now, and near its centre where the birds had gathered were the skeletons of three horses, all that remained of their ghoulish feast. A little to the left, out on the heath, were five grave mounds, each with a sword thrust into it to identify it. Liall walked over to one of them, his face sober.

  “This is Rendel’s,” he said.

  Neva and Ivo said nothing.

  “It is on our side of the border,” he went on, “and besides the riders from Brunn would not have buried them. That means that my uncle sent men here to look for my body and must know now that I am still alive.”

  “Yes,” said Ivo. And after a moment, “There’s nothing that can be done here. Let’s go on.”

  Liall nodded, and they set off again, continuing westward. Liall was frowning now, too, and finally he said, “I know that I was wounded, Ivo. That you rescued me, and Neva took care of me afterwards. But I can’t remember anything else: how you saved me
or where you took me after that.”

  Though the sun was warm, Ivo suddenly felt chilled and a little ill. He knew now what had been disturbing him, why he had felt uneasy.

  “I can’t remember either,” he said.

  Liall stopped and stared at him.

  “You can’t?”

  “No.”

  “That’s impossible! I was hurt and was probably unconscious for a while, but you weren’t. How could you not remember?”

  “I don’t know, but I can’t. Can you, Neva?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Was that why you were looking upset before?”

  “Yes. It suddenly came over me that while I knew who I was and who you and Liall were, I didn’t know anything else.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Oh, I know where we’re going and why: to try and find the stone on the top of Tarec and see if we can bring peace to Andor and Brunn. But that’s all. I don’t know how I know that or where we lived before we started on this journey.”

  “Nor do I,” said Ivo. “I can’t remember anything before the moment when I asked you if your basket was too heavy for you.”

  “You mean you can’t remember your childhood, who your parents are or where you lived?” asked Liall.

  “No,” said Ivo. “Can you?”

  “Of course. I remember everything until a short while ago when I was out hunting with Rendel. A farmer told us about a fox that had been raiding his chickens and we went after him.” He paused. “Then there’s a blank. I came back here looking for someone or something, and Rendel and my guard followed me and that’s when we were attacked.”

  “You’re not so badly off as we are then,” said Ivo. “You can’t have lost more than a few days, but Neva and I have lost everything—all the years we’ve lived. And it’s frightening.”

  “It’s more than frightening,” said Neva, her voice unsteady. “It’s not just the years that have been lost. I feel lost, too. For when you don’t know who you were, you don’t know who you are.”

  “But you do know who you are,” said Liall. “You’re Neva and Ivo.”

  “What does that mean?” said Ivo. “They’re merely names. The first question you asked us was, ‘Can’t you remember your parents or where you lived?’ And we can’t. That’s all gone.”

  “Not forever. I’m sure it will come back to you.”

  “When?”

  “It depends on why you can’t remember. And I think it’s because a spell was put on you.”

  “A spell?”

  “Yes. Parts of the forest are said to be enchanted. You may have wandered into it and been ensorcelled.”

  “But then you must have been too. And if so why have you only forgotten a few things while we have forgotten everything?”

  “I don’t know. But something else occurs to me. I have a feeling that whatever happened to us has something to do with the stone.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because it is the one thing we all remember. And if that is so, then isn’t it possible that when we find it, the spell will be lifted?”

  “I suppose it’s possible,” said Ivo. “What do you think, Neva?”

  She shrugged. “Who can tell? In any case, we have little choice. We can’t go back because we don’t know where to go, so we might as well go on.”

  “To Tarec?”

  “Where else?”

  “Very well.” The look on her face wrung his heart, and he moved towards her. “Neva …”

  “Don’t!” she said sharply. “There’s nothing you can say that will help.” And she started forward again. Ivo and Liall exchanged glances.

  “I’m sorry,” said Liall. “I know how deeply disturbing it must be. And still I’m sure that in time you will remember. After all, you’re not alone. Though it’s gone at the moment, you and your sister both share the same past, have the same memories, and …”

  “Sister?”

  “Well, Neva is your sister, isn’t she?”

  “I don’t know,” said Ivo slowly. “I suppose … Yes, she must be.”

  They went on after her. And though they walked quickly and soon left the Burnt Place far behind them, the sense of desolation that had come over Ivo there remained with him. Lost, Neva had said. That was how he felt too. Lost, suddenly cut off from everything he had been. And along with that sense of loss, there was something else—an additional feeling of deprivation that was all the more disturbing because he could not identify it.

  The forest to their right began to thin out, the trees becoming more spindly and growing farther apart, and the grass of the heath became drier and the bare places more frequent. Then all at once, they were at the end of the heath and Morven was before them. It stretched out ahead of them and to the right and left as far as they could see, a waste of white sand without a tree or blade of grass anywhere.

  They paused there for a moment, studying it, and Ivo forced himself to think of what he did remember instead of what he didn’t.

  “As I recall, we’re to go due west, and it should take us three days to cross.” Neva and Liall nodded. “We have three water gourds. I suggest that we use one each day and that sparingly.”

  Again Neva and Ivo nodded, and adjusting their pack baskets, they went forward. There would be no difficulty about keeping their direction. Since the morning sun was still low, their shadows pointed the way for them. But the walking here was much harder than it had been on the heath, for the sand was soft and they sank into it almost to their ankles. As they plodded on, climbing any low dunes that they encountered and going around the ones that were too tall, Ivo found himself wondering how they all knew that it would take them three days to cross the desert. Clearly they had been told so, but by whom? Again and again he tried to think back, recall a face or a place, but he could remember nothing before that moment on the heath when he first began to sense that something was wrong.

  On they went following their shadows, their eyes narrowed against the glare of the sun on the white sand. But as the sun rose higher, their shadows became smaller until, when it was directly overhead, they disappeared.

  “I think we should rest now,” said Neva, pausing in a hollow between two dunes. “We were told we should in the middle of the day.”

  “Here?” asked Liall.

  “It’s as good a place as any,” said Ivo. “There’s no shade anywhere.”

  “No,” said Neva. “But there are our capes.”

  As soon as Neva mentioned them, Ivo recalled them also. Unslinging their baskets, they took out the capes. They were silvery grey and very light but seemed to be strong. When they put them on, they found that they had hoods, which they raised to protect their heads from the sun, and, thus shielded, they were more comfortable than they had been since they had left the heath.

  They found dried fruit and flat cakes wrapped in green leaves in their baskets and they ate a little of each. But though they were not very hungry, they were thirsty. None of them had touched their water gourds since they had entered the desert, and they decided that on this first day they would use Ivo’s. He took it from his belt, unstoppered it and gave it to Neva. They each drank and then stretched out with their backs against the dune and rested.

  Ivo had closed his eyes to rest them after the glaring of the sun and he must have fallen asleep for when he opened them the sun was no longer overhead. He woke Neva and Liall, and they went on again, this time walking towards the sinking sun.

  They trudged on all afternoon, going steadily westward. They kept their capes on, the hoods raised, and found that this did much to make the heat bearable. When the sun began to set, they stopped again beside a large dune, ate and finished the water in Ivo’s gourd.

  They sat there, watching the sun go down and the stars appear. They were very bright and in the clear air of the desert they seemed to be very close. Once the sun was gone, it began to get cold; but they discovered that though the cloaks were light in weight they were warm. The three wondere
d, as they had before, what the cloaks were made of and where they had come from.

  Ivo lay there for some time, looking at the stars and thinking about many things, but mostly about Neva. He had watched her through most of the day, concerned lest their desert crossing prove too much for her. But she had kept their pace with no difficulty, and when they stopped she seemed less tired than Liall.

  Liall was asleep now, but Neva, lying next to Ivo, did not seem to be for he heard her stir.

  “Can’t you sleep either?” he whispered.

  “No.”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  “Probably what you are.”

  “All the things we don’t know.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think, as Liall does, that a spell was put on us?”

  “It seems likely. How else could we have forgotten everything but what we’re to do?”

  “But who could have put it on us? And why?”

  “If we knew the one, we’d probably know the other. But while it may make things difficult for us, I don’t think it was an evil spell. At least I don’t think whoever put it on us is evil.”

  “Neither do I. There’s one other thing.”

  “Yes?”

  “Liall seems to think we’re brother and sister. Do you?”

  It took her so long to answer that he was afraid she wasn’t going to. But finally,

  “Yes,” she said. “I do.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we’ve both forgotten the same things, much more than Liall has. But more important, while I like Liall, I don’t feel I know him very well. But I do feel I know you, everything about you. That we’ve always been together.”

  “Yes,” said Ivo. “I feel that way, too.”

  He settled back, trying again to catch a glimpse of what lay behind the curtain that cut them off from the past, but he could remember nothing. All he had was this day and the sense that he and Neva were very close. And as he thought about all the things that seemed familiar to him—the way she moved and frowned and talked—he fell asleep.

  The sky was just becoming pink when they woke the next morning. They ate and drank some water, and as soon as the sun was high enough to give them their direction they set off again westward. About mid-morning the dunes became smaller and fewer and finally disappeared. With no need to climb them or go around them, they were able to travel faster, walking steadily towards the line, wavering in the heat, where the endless stretch of white sand seemed to meet the sky.