The Illearth War t1cotc-2

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  It was a wet land, latticed with waterways like exposed veins in the flesh of the ground, overgrown with fervid luxuriance, and full of subtle dangers-strange, treacherous, water-bred, and man-shy animals; cunning, old, half-rotten willows and cypresses that sang quiet songs which could bind the unwary; stagnant, poisonous pools, so covered with slime and mud and shallow plants that they looked like solid ground; lush flowers, beautifully bedewed with clear liquids that could drive humans mad; deceptive stretches of dry ground that turned suddenly to quicksand. All this was familiar to the Bloodguard. However ominous to human eyes, or unsuited to human life, Sarangrave Flat was not naturally evil. Rather, because of the darknesses which slumbered beneath it, it was simply dangerous-a wild haven for the misborn of the Land, the warped fruit of evils long past. The Giants, who knew how to be wary, had always been able to travel freely through the Flat, and they had kept paths open for others, so that the crossing of the Sarangrave was not normally a great risk.

  But now something else met the gaze of the mission. Slumbering evil stirred; the hand of Corruption was at work, awakening old wrongs.

  The peril was severe, and Lord Hyrim was dismayed. But neither the Lords nor the Bloodguard were surprised. The Lords Callindrill and Amatin-the Bloodguard Morril and Koral-had spoken of this danger. And though he was dismayed, Lord Hyrim did not propose that the mission should evade the danger by riding north and around Sarangrave Flat, a hundred leagues from their way. Therefore in the dawn of the ninth day the mission descended Landsdrop, using a horse trail which the Old Lords had made in the great cliff, and rode eastward across the grassland foothills toward the main Giantway through the Sarangrave.

  The air was noticeably warmer and thicker than it had been above Landsdrop. It breathed as if it were clogged with invisible, damp fibres, and it seemed to leave something behind in the lungs when it was exhaled.

  Then shrubs and low, twisted bushes began to appear through the grass. And the grass itself grew longer, wetter. At odd intervals, stray, hidden puddles of water splashed under the hooves of the Ranyhyn. Soon gnarled, lichenous trees appeared, spread out moss-draped limbs. They grew thicker and taller as the mission passed into the Sarangrave. In moments, the riders entered a grassy avenue that lay between two unrippling pools and angled away just north of eastward into a jungle which already appeared impenetrable. The Ranyhyn slowed to a more cautious pace. Abruptly, they found themselves plunging through chest-deep elephant grass.

  When the riders looked behind them, they could see no trace of the Giantway. The Flat had closed like jaws.

  But the Bloodguard knew that that was the way of the Sarangrave. Only the path ahead was visible. The Ranyhyn moved on, thrusting their broad chests through the grass.

  As the jungle tightened, the Giantway narrowed until they could ride no more than three abreast each of the Lords flanked by Bloodguard. But the elephant grass receded, allowing them to move with better speed.

  Their progress was loud. They disturbed the Flat, and as they travelled they set waves and wakes and noise on both sides. Birds and monkeys gibbered at them; small, furry animals that yipped like hyenas broke out of the grass in front of them and scurried away; and when the jungle gave way on either side for dark, rancid pools or sluggish streams, waterfowl with iridescent plumage clattered fearfully into the air. Sudden splashes echoed across still ponds; pale, vaguely human forms darted away under the ripples.

  Throughout the morning, the mission followed the winding trail which careful Giants had made in times long past. No danger threatened, but still the Ranyhyn grew tense. When the riders stopped beside a shallow lake to rest and eat, their mounts became increasingly restive. Several of them made low, blowing noises; their ears were up and alert, shifting directions in sharp jerks, almost quivering. One of them-the youngest stallion, bearing the Bloodguard Tull — stamped a hoof irrhythmically. The Lords land the Bloodguard increased their caution, and rode on down the Giantway.

  They had covered only two more leagues when Sill called the Bloodguard to observe Lord Hyrim.

  The Lord's face was flushed as if he had a high fever. Sweat rolled down his cheeks, and he was panting hoarsely, almost gasping for breath. His eyes glittered. But he was not alone. Lord Shetra, too, was flushed and panting.

  Then even the Bloodguard found that they were having trouble breathing. The air felt turgid. It resisted being drawn into their lungs, and once within them it clung there with miry fingers, like the grasp of quicksand.

  The sensation grew rapidly worse.

  Suddenly, all the noise of the Flat ceased.

  It was as Lord Callindrill had said.

  But the Lord Amatin's mount had not been a Ranyhyn. Trusting to the great horses, the mission continued on its way.

  The riders moved slowly. The Ranyhyn walked with their heads straining forward, ears cocked, nostrils flared. They were sweating, though the air was not warm.

  They covered a few hundred yards this way-forcing passage through the stubborn, mucky air and the silence. After that, the jungle fell away on both sides. The Giantway lay along a grassy ridge like a dam between two still pools. One of them was blue and bright, reflecting the sky and the afternoon sunlight, but the other was dark and rank.

  The mission was halfway down the ridge when the sound began.

  It started low, wet, and weak, like the groan of a dying man. But it seemed to come from the dark pool. It transfixed the riders. As they listened to it, it slowly swelled.

  It scaled upward in pitch and volume-became a ragged scream-echoed across the pools. Higher and louder it went on. Through it, the Lords shouted together, “Melenkurion abatha! Duroc minas mill khabaal!” But they could hardly make themselves heard.

  Then the young Ranyhyn bearing Tull lost control. It whinnied in fear, whirled and sprang toward the blue pool. As it leaped, Tull threw himself to the safety of the grass.

  The Ranyhyn crashed into the chest-deep water. At once, it gave a squeal of pain that almost matched the screaming in the air. Plunging frantically, it heaved itself out of the pool, and fled westward, back down the Giantway.

  The howling mounted eagerly higher.

  The other Ranyhyn broke and bolted. They reared, spun, pounded away after their fleeing brother. The jerk of their start unhorsed Lord Hyrim, and he only saved himself from the dark pool by a thrust of his staff. Immediately, Lord Shetra dropped off her mount to join him. Sill, Cerrin, and Korik also dismounted. As he jumped, Korik ordered the other Bloodguard to protect the Ranyhyn.

  Runnik and his comrades clung to their horses. The Ranyhyn followed the injured stallion. As they raced, the howling behind them faded, and the air began to thin. But for some distance, the Bloodguard could not regain control of their mounts. The Ranyhyn plunged along a wide path which was unfamiliar; the Bloodguard knew that they had missed the Giantway.

  Then the leading Ranyhyn crested a knoll, and blundered without warning into a quagmire. But the rest of the great horses were able to stop safely. The Bloodguard dismounted, and took clingor lines from their packs. By the time Korik, Cerrin, Sill, Tull, and the Lords reached them, the free Ranyhyn were busy pulling their trapped kindred from the quagmire.

  Seeing that the other Ranyhyn were uninjured, the Lords turned to the stallion which had jumped into the pool. It stood to one side, champed its teeth and jerked its head from side to side in agony. Under its coat all the flesh of its limbs and belly was covered with blisters and boils. Blood streamed from its sores. Through some of them, the bone was visible. Despite the determination in its eyes, it whimpered at the pain.

  The Lords were deeply moved. There were tears in Hyrim's eyes, and Shetra cursed bitterly. - But they could do nothing. They were not Ramen. And they could find no amanibhavam, that potent, yellow flowered grass which could heal horses but which drove humans mad. They could only close their ears to the stallion's pain, and try to consider what course the mission should take.

  Soon all the other Ranyhyn were safe on so
lid ground. They shed the mud of the quagmire easily but they could not rid themselves of the shame of their panic. Their eyes showed that they felt they had disgraced themselves:

  But when they heard the whimpering of their injured brother, they pricked up their ears. They shuffled their feet and nudged each other. Slowly, their eldest went to face Tull's mount. For a moment, the two spoke together, nose to nose. Several times the younger Ranyhyn nodded its head.

  Then the old Ranyhyn reared; he stretched high in the ancient Ranyhyn expression of homage. When he descended, he struck the head of his injured brother powerfully with both fore hooves. The younger horse shuddered once under the force of the blow, and fell dead.

  The rest of the Ranyhyn watched in silence. When their eldest turned away from the fallen horse, they nickered their approval and sorrow softly.

  In their own way, the Bloodguard were not unmoved. But High Lord Elena had given the need of the Giants into their hands. To the Lords, Korik said, “We must go. The mission waits. Tull may ride with Doar.”

  “No!” Lord Shetra cried. “We will take the Ranyhyn no deeper into Sarangrave Flat.” And Lord Hyrim said, “Friend Korik, surely you know as much as we of this force which forbids us to cross the Flat. Surely you know that to stop us this force must first see us. It must perceive us, and know where we are.”

  Korik nodded.

  “Then you must also know that it is no easy matter to sense the presence of human beings. We are mere ordinary life amid the multitudes of the Sarangrave. But the Ranyhyn are unordinary. They are stronger than we-the power of life bums more brightly in them. Their presence here is more easily seen than ours. It may be that the force against us is attuned to them. The Despiser is wise enough for such strategy. For this reason, we must travel without the Ranyhyn.”

  “The mission requires their speed,” Korik said. “We lack the time to walk.”

  “I know,” Hyrim sighed. “Without mishap, we would spend at least one full cycle of the moon at that journey. But to ride around the Sarangrave will take too long also.”

  “Therefore we must ride through. We must fight.”

  “Ride through, forsooth,” Shetra snapped. “We do not know how to fight such a thing-or we would have given it battle already. I tell you plainly, Korik-if we encounter that forbidding again, we will lose more than Ranyhyn. No! We must go another way.”

  “What way?”

  For a moment, the Lords gazed into each other. Then Lord Shetra said, “We will build a raft, and ride the Defiles Course.”

  The Bloodguard were surprised. Even the boat loving Giants chose to walk Sarangrave Flat rather than to put themselves in the hands of that river. Korik said, “Can it be done?”

  “We will do it,” Shetra replied.

  Seeing the strength of her purpose, the Bloodguard responded to themselves, “We will do it.” And Korik said, “Then we must make great haste while the Ranyhyn are yet with us.”

  So began the great run of the Ranyhyn, in which the horses of Ra redeemed their shame. When all the riders had remounted, they moved cautiously back to the true path of the Giantway. But then the Ranyhyn cast all but the simplest caution to the wind. First at a canter, then galloping, they ran westward out of the peril of the Sarangrave.

  This was no gait for distance, no easy, strength-conserving pace. It was a gallop to surpass the best fleetness of ordinary horses. And it did not slow or falter. At full stretch, the Ranyhyn came out.of Sarangrave Flat under the eaves of Landsdrop before moonrise. Then they veered away just east of southward along the line of the cliff.

  On the open ground, their running became harder. The rough foothills of Landsdrop cut across their way like rumpled folds in the earth, forced them to plummet down and then labour up uncertain slopes twenty times a league. And southward the terrain worsened. The grass slowly failed from the hillsides, so that the Ranyhyn pounded over bare rock and shale and scree.

  The moon was nearly full, and in its light Mount Thunder, ancient Gravin Threndor, was visible against the sky. Already it dominated the southern horizon, and as the mission travelled, it lifted its crown higher and higher.

  Under its shadow, the Ranyhyn mastered both the night and the foothills. Breathing hoarsely, blowing foam, sweating and straining extremely, but never faltering, they struck daylight no more than five leagues from the Defiles Course. Now they began to stumble and slip on the hillsides, scattering froth from their lips, tearing the skin of their knees. Yet they refused to fail.

  In the middle of the morning on the tenth day, they lumbered over the crest of one ankle and dropped down into the narrow valley between Mount Thunder's legs-the valley of the Defiles Course.

  To their right at the base of the mountain was the head of the river. There rank black water erupted roaring from under a sheer cliff. This was the Soulsease River of Andelain transformed. That fair river entered Mount Thunder through Treacher's Gorge, then plunged into the depths of the earth, where it ran through abandoned Wightwarrens and Demondim breeding dens, Cavewightish slag and refuse pits, charnels and offal grounds and lakes of acid, the excreta of the buried banes. When it broke out thick, oily, and fetid at the base of Gravin Threndor, it carried the sewage of the catacombs, the pollution of ages of filthy use.

  From Mount Thunder to Lifeswallower, the Great Swamp, nothing lived along the banks of the Defiles Course except Sarangrave Flat, which grew thickest on either side of the Course, flourishing on the black water. But high in the sides of the valley were two or three thin streams of clean water, which nourished grass and shrubs and some trees, so that only the bottom of the valley was barren. There the Ranyhyn rested at last. Quivering and blowing, they put their noses in a stream to drink.

  The Lords disregarded their own weariness, went immediately in search of amanibhavam. Shortly Shetra returned with a double handful of the horse-healing grass. With it she tended the Ranyhyn while Hyrim 'brought more of it to her. Only when all the great horses had eaten some of the amanibhavam did the Lords allow themselves to rest.

  Then the Bloodguard turned their attention to the task of building a raft. The only trees hardy enough to grow in the valley were teaks, and in one stand nearby three of the tallest were dead. Their ironwood trunks showed what had happened to them; when they had grown above a certain size, their roots had reached down deep enough to touch soil soaked by the river, and so they had died.

  Using hatchets and clingor ropes, the Bloodguard were able to bring down these three trees. Each they sectioned into four logs of roughly equal length. When they had rolled the logs down to the dead bank of the Course, they began lashing them together with clingor thongs.

  The task was slow because of the size and weight of the ironwood logs, and the Bloodguard worked carefully to make sure that the raft was secure. But they were fifteen, and made steady progress. Shortly after noon, the raft was complete. After they had prepared several steering poles, they were ready to continue on their way.

  The Lords readied themselves also. After a moment of melding, they bid ceremonious farewell to the Ranyhyn. Then they came down to the banks of the Defiles Course and bid Korik launch the raft.

  Two of the Bloodguard fastened ropes to the raft while the others positioned themselves along its sides. Together, they lifted the massive ironwood logs, heaved the raft into the river. It bucked in the stiff current, but the two ropes secured it. Cerrin and Sill leaped out onto it to see how it held together. When they gave their approval, Korik signed for the Lords to precede him.

  Lord Shetra sprang down to the raft, and at once set about wedging her staff between the centre logs so that she could use its power for a rudder. Lord Hyrim followed her, as did the other Bloodguard, until only the two who held the ropes remained on the bank. Lord Shetra began to sing quietly, calling up the Earthpower through her staff. When she was ready, she nodded to Korik.

  At his command, the last two Bloodguard sprang for the raft as the current ripped it away.

  The raft plunge
d, swirled; the boiling water spun it out into the middle of the river.

  But then Lord Shetra caught her balance. The power of her staff took hold like a Gildenlode rudder in the hands of a Giant. The raft resisted her, but slowly it became steady. She piloted it down the torrent of the stream, and in moments the mission rushed out of the valley back into the grasp of Sarangrave Flat.

  Free of the constriction of the valley, the Defiles Course gradually widened, slowed. Then it began to wind and spill out into the waterways of the Sarangrave, and the worst of the current was past.

  For the rest of the afternoon, Lord Shetra remained in the stern of the raft, guided it along the black water. The riverbed bent and twisted as the Defiles Course became more and more woven into the fabric of Sarangrave Flat. Side currents ran into and away from the main stream, and rocky eyots topped with tufts of jungle began to dot the river. When the pace of the Course grew sluggish, she used her staff to propel the raft; she needed headway to navigate the channels. By evening she was greatly weary.

  Then four of the Bloodguard took up the poles and began thrusting the raft through twilight into night, where only their dark-familiar eyes could see well enough to keep the raft moving safely. Lord Shetra ate the meal Hyrim prepared for her over a small lillianrill fire, then dropped into slumber despite the stink and spreading dampness of the river.

  But at dawn she returned to work, plying the Defiles Course with her staff.

  However, Lord Hyrim soon came to her aid. Alternately they propelled the raft throughout the day, and at night they rested while the Bloodguard used their poles. In this way, the mission travelled down the Defiles Course until the evening of the twelfth day. During the days, the sky was clear, and the sunlight was full of butterflies. The raft made good progress.