Storm at the Edge of Time (6 page)

Urkar stood, sweeping an arm around the perfect circle of stones. “I was chosen to bring this about. I
channeled forces that terrified me with their enormous power. But the design was good; it could have held back the storm, perhaps, for eternity.”

His voice broke, and he sat down. After a moment, Arni said, “Could have?”

Urkar's reply was flat and strained. “Those who wielded the destructive power fought us. Before our pillar was ready, they drew the storm toward it. Our structure had been built and the forces were flowing, but the strength of any pillar is in its core, and that—they shattered.”

“Did the storm break, then?” Arni asked in awe.

“No; the pillar, this stone circle, endured. And even shattered as it was, the core still remained within it, adding slightly to its strength. But that has vanished now, because the core is gone. Once again a storm is building, sweeping this way, and now little remains to hold it back.”

Jamie frowned as she tried to follow the story. This fellow, she tried to assure herself, was a madman—or, more likely, he and the rest of it were a nightmare. But neither lunatics nor nightmares let you go when you want out, so for the time being she might as well make what sense she could of this.

“But if you have that much power,” she said, “you could repair the pillar thing, couldn't you?”

“No.” He stared at each one, his eyes the color of Arctic ice. “But you could.”

Now Jamie knew this was a nightmare—or worse. Beside her, Arni was babbling about magic quests while Tyaak was going on about force fields and holographic projections.

Raking a hand through his mane of hair, the older boy said, “Even if I accepted this magic scenario, which I do not, I am the wrong person for your little game. I am a Kreeth, training to be a galactic navigator. I am—”

“Stubborn and blind!” Urkar cut in. “Have you never once seen something or done something which you could not explain with your crippled ‘science'? Come now, the truth.”

“No, never! Stellar navigation is an exact science. I could not possibly …” Tyaak slowed, then lapsed into a frightened-seeming silence.

Eyeing him curiously, Jamie spoke up. “Look, Mr. Urkar, you're wrong about me. The only thing I've ever
wanted to do with the supernatural is to see ghosts. I don't want to
do
it. I don't want scaiy powers like that, and I don't have them! Whatever you need done, you'll just have to do it yourself.”

“I can't!” he shouted. “Oh, all three of you are family, all right: as stubborn as they come. I'm not going to waste any more time with words. I'll show'you!”

Urkar jumped to his feet and clapped his hands. Abruptly the fire snuffed itself out, leaving nothing but a glowing cloud of smoke. The cloud thickened and spread like dense mist. Slowly at first, then faster, it began to spin around them. Jamie felt Arni move beside her and grab her hand. Even Tyaak came a step or two closer.

Now the mist was spinning at such a dizzying rate, Jamie felt it draw the air from her lungs, the sight from her eyes, and even the thoughts from her mind. She wanted to scream but couldn't draw breath.

She had almost blacked out when the spinning suddenly stopped, throwing them all into a heap on the heathery ground.

Jamie opened her eyes to see Urkar struggling to free himself from the folds of his sealskin cape. He staggered to his feet. “Sorry, I think I got a little overhasty. Didn't gauge things right. But I haven't looked back here … in a long while”

“Where is …” Jamie started to say, but she fell silent. The utter stillness and the impossibly bright stars were gone. Overhead, a vast clear sky was tinged with approaching dawn. A steady sea breeze tangled her hair and carried with it the crying of gulls and a sound that might be distant song.

She looked around. They were still standing in a complete stone circle, but rather than seeming ideal and eternal, the stones looked raw, as if newly hauled from the earth and not yet worn by wind and rain.

Stretching off on all sides, the moorland seemed unbroken by roads or fields or even houses. On the lochs, not a single boat could be seen, only swans and white-fringed waves.

The singing voices were louder now, and Jamie could see a procession of people, clad in browns and grays, wending their way toward the circle. She stepped back into the shadow of a stone, but Urkar shook his head.

“No need. They can't see or hear us. This is the day of the circle's consecration. For an entire summer, the people of the island labored to build it. I selected the stones and determined their placement, and the others dragged them here and raised them while I fashioned the core. From the one grove of trees on the island, I chose three saplings. Then, with all the power I had, I fashioned them into three staffs embodying the forces of life—of air and earth and water. With spells and incantations, I wove the three into one, a single staff ending in three finials: a leaping fish, a soaring hawk, and the arched head of a horse. There, you can see it now.”

Jamie and the others looked closely at the procession. Its head had already reached the deep newly dug ditch surrounding the circle. In the lead was a man wearing a sealskin cape—a short man with curly black hair and beard tinged with gray. Jamie gasped. It was Urkar.

This other Urkar held a wooden staff. Its shaft was
twisted and braided, and at the top were three carved figures.

Singing a clear rhythmic chant, the procession crossed the earthen causeway and entered the circle. As they did, some glanced to where the four watchers stood, but they clearly saw nothing except stone and heather. It's like being a wraith, Jamie thought with a shudder. Beside her, Arni jumped and waved his arms about, delighting in invisibility, until Urkar hissed, “Be still and watch.”

Now the people were forming a circle within the circle of stone. Alone in its center stood the visible Urkar. As he raised the staff to the pale lavender sky, a chink of gold glinted on the rim of the eastern hills. Slowly the sun rose higher, and so did the chanting voices. The waiting stones turned from gray to gold.

The invisible Urkar turned to his companions. His voice was dry and bitter.

“Looks peaceful, doesn't it? A happy sacred ceremony completing this great work. Ha! That's how it would seem to those without the power to see more. But I did have the power, and so do you. Tiy. Look beyond this flat picture to the creative forces straining to connect with these stones and to those other forces seeking to destroy that tie. It's all there.”

He began to hum a sharp piercing note that sliced into Jamie's mind and set her thoughts vibrating with it. The scene in front of her seemed to thin. The more she concentrated, the thinner it became, until the figures seemed nothing but faded paper cutouts against a background that was darkening by the second.

Black clouds were boiling over the horizon, rushing
forward with speed greater than the wind's. The seething edges were rimmed with pale green lightning. The three children shrank against the stones, but the crowd of people seemed totally unaware of what was bearing down upon them.

“What's happening?” Arni whispered.

Urkar's voice was harsh. “The forces of destruction trying to prevent this work of creation. They were too strong, too swift. Watch.”

The man holding the staff looked uneasily over his shoulder at something those around him couldn't see; then he raised his voice in a new, urgent chant. The stones in the circle began to glow, not with sunrise but with inner power. Brighter and brighter they grew, until they became giant crystals of light. Then, like a fountain, their radiance shot upward, columns of light piercing toward the stars.

Inside the circle, the people took no notice even of this, though the man in the center again looked behind him and changed the speed of his chant. Raising the staff against the swirling, dark sky, he brought it down sharply, driving its point into the earth. The staff, too, began to glow, and thin tendrils of light began spreading from it over the ground toward the ring of stones.

Then came the thunder: a cataclysmic explosion that shook earth, sky, and sea and set the stones tottering. At last the people seemed to notice something. They scanned the sky to see if a distant storm was coming.

Like a vengeful spear, lightning struck, a bolt of vivid green shooting from the mountainous blackness. It pierced the glowing staff and, in an explosion of light,
burst it apart. The cry of its bearer was lost under a final concussion of thunder.

When Jamie's sight recovered from the blast, she again saw the summer morning. But now the people were crying and wailing, picking themselves up from the ground and staring in horror at what lay before them. Their leader was sprawled, a charred heap in the heather. Nearby, three smoldering gashes showed where the sundered parts of his staff had burned their way into the earth.

A girl with raven-black hair gave a pained ciy and ran forward to kneel by the body. But all life had been burned from it.

Jamie realized she was clutching both Arni and Tyaak. Instead of pulling away, she looked in wonder at the man beside her. His lined face was damp with tears.

“Uthna, my daughter. She, too, had the power, and it is through her that, in time, it came to you. But I had clouded her sight that day. I spared her from seeing the threat that was gathering and the danger in that final ceremony.”

Abruptly he looked away from the scene and stared over the moors. His whole body was trembling, and Jamie almost wanted to put an arm around him.

Struggling to control his voice, Urkar continued. “They buried me that day, there in the center of the circle. The three pieces of the staff were left where they had fallen, hidden beneath the quickly healing heather.”

“Then—the evil won?” Arni said, aghast.

Urkar shook his head. “No, not entirely, not then. The creative magic was weakened, but the shattered
staff still remained within the circle, adding some of its power to that of the stones.

“And, of course, I was there, too. My task had never been completed, so I remained to watch over this pillar of life, to help it hold back any looming storm.

“For centuries I succeeded. Within the circle, my power remained strong enough to thwart any threat from magic or from evil intent. But time was at work too. Stones toppled; some were hauled off; and, far worse, one by one the three buried staffs were found and removed. No magic was involved, simply ignorance and chance, so I was powerless to stop it.”

“Couldn't you just go get them back?” Arni asked.

Urkar gave a frustrated sigh. “No, there is nothing much left of me except power, and even that is strongest in this circle. I can leave its bounds, but only in some other, weaker form.” Abruptly he turned back to face them. “But you three are alive. You have physical bodies of your own, and you carry a power as great as mine.”

Arni smiled broadly. “So
we
are going to bring back the three sticks?”

“Yes.”

Tyaak shook his head, violently sweeping the air with his dark crested mane. “What if we do not choose to go?”

Urkar spun upon him. “Choose? Did I choose to devote my life, not to family and friends, but to building a massive circle of power? Did I choose to die for it? Did I, a person with all the patience of boiling water, choose to spend eternity guarding that circle? No! I did not choose the power I was born with or the time I was
born into—and neither did you. Of all my descendants, only you unlikely three happen to be alive at the right times to have even a hope of retrieving the staffs. You are untaught, yes, but together you may have enough raw power to manage it. But don't mistake me. It is not a choice I am giving you. It is an assignment.”

Tyaak continued to argue, but Jamie had stopped listening. Suddenly a trembling smile spread over her face, and she burst in, “You're a ghost, aren't you?”

“What? A ghost? Nonsense, I have better things to do than mope around haunting people.”

“But you died. I saw it.”

“Of course I died. At some point in the stream of time, every one of you has died.”

“Don't try to hide it in science fiction gibberish,” Jamie said firmly. “You died, but you're still around. So you're a ghost.”

Urkar gave an exasperated snort. “You are impossible! Look, will it make you happier somehow, having me be a ghost?”

Jamie smiled evenly. “All my life I just wanted to prove that I could see a ghost if one was around. If I've finally won that one, I might be willing to take on a little something more.”

Urkar tore at his hair in annoyance. “All right, all right! I'm a ghost. Boo! Now, can we get on with it?”

When the gray mist swirled them away, it was at a more leisurely pace than before. Fighting dizziness, Jamie tried to concentrate on the instructions Urkar was giving them, but it was harder and harder to follow the words. His voice became a distant blur blending into a steady roar. The roar of wind.

She was lying on the heather within a broken stone circle. It was daytime, cold and wet. Jamie pulled herself up.

“Right,” she said aloud. “I hit my head and have been having majorly weird dreams all night. I'd better get back before my folks call the police.”

She strode off toward the road, then staggered to a halt. At the same moment she'd noticed that the road wasn't paved, that not as many stones were toppled as
ought to be, and that she was wearing leather boots and a coarsely woven blue dress that hung below her knees.

“No!” She spun around. Her two young companions were still there. Arni was wearing what he had been, but now Tyaak was in a similar outfit. The half-Kreeth angrily threw back the wool hood from his bristling hair and glared about.

“Where is Urkar? Gone! Well, that lunatic may have dumped us here—whenever ‘here' is—but I do not choose to stay. I do not choose to be part of this whole bizarre species!”