The Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Book One

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  When Liand complied, the light revealed him plainly. He was a young man, perhaps half her age, with broad shoulders and sturdy, workman’s hands, wearing a jerkin and leggings of rough wool dyed the hue of sand. Thick leather sandals protected his feet. His features reminded her distantly of Sunder, the only Stonedownor whom she had known well: he had Sunder’s blunt openness without the bereavements and guilt which had complicated her friend’s native simplicity. And he was characteristically brown-skinned, brown-eyed. Above his square jaw, imprecise nose, and eager gaze, his loose hair and eyebrows were a startling black, as dark as crow’s wings.

  His mouth seemed made for smiles; but he was not smiling now.

  “I witnessed your capture,” he told Linden gravely. “The Masters were not gentle with you. And I cannot conceive what you must have endured in the fall of the Watch. Indeed, I cannot conceive how it is that you yet live.”

  Dropping his eyes, he observed noncommittally, “The Masters may comprehend that wonder, but they answer inquiries rarely—and never when what has transpired surpasses our experience. To justify your captivity, they say only that Anele requires their care, and that you opposed them.”

  He did not need to add that he was eager to hear a better explanation. His excitement was plain in the feigned relaxation of his posture, the quick clench and release of his hands. However, she was not ready to put him in peril. Anything that she revealed might turn the Haruchai against him. Hell, they might decide to treat him like they did Anele. She could not take that kind of chance with him: not yet.

  And she did not know if he were truly as guileless as he appeared. The health-sense which she had regained and lost again would have discerned his essential nature. Without it, she had to be more careful.

  “Maybe we can talk about that later,” she answered. “There’s a lot at stake, and right now I don’t know who I can trust and who I can’t.” To forestall an interruption, she went on more quickly, “I was here once before, but that was a very long time ago. I gather my name doesn’t mean anything to you?”

  The Stonedownor shook his head.

  “Thomas Covenant?” she continued. “Sunder son of Nassic, the Graveler of Mithil Stonedown? Hollian eh-Brand?”

  The First of the Search? Pitchwife?

  Liand shook his head again. “This is Mithil Stonedown. These other names I have never heard.” He hesitated, then asked, “What is a ‘Graveler’?”

  Linden swallowed indignation. Those damn Masters had suppressed everything. If the people of the South Plains had forgotten the lore on which their lives had once depended—

  Controlling herself with difficulty, she told Liand, “You see my problem. Too much time has passed. If you don’t even know what a Graveler is—” She sighed. “I can’t tell you who I am, or what I’m doing here. You wouldn’t understand unless I explained the whole history of the Land first.”

  Liand leaned forward, undaunted by her response. “But you are able to explain that history. The Masters do not speak of such things. If they are asked, they do not answer.

  “Linden Avery, I would do anything that might serve you, if in return you would share with me the Land’s past. I know naught beyond the small tale of my family and Mithil Stonedown for a few generations only, a few score years. Yet I have—”

  Abruptly he stopped; pulled himself back from his enthusiasm. “My heart speaks to me of greater matters,” he said more warily. “Simple fragments of the Land’s lost tale would content me. There is little that I would not do for you in exchange.”

  His words nearly broke down her defenses. An offer like that—She could have taken advantage of him shamelessly.

  Betray the Masters for me. Help us escape. Guide us. I’ll tell you stories that will turn your head inside out.

  She might be able to find her son.

  Surely the Haruchai deserved no restraint from her? God, no. In the name of their own self-esteem, they had deprived the Land of its history and power; its access to glory. They deserved anything that she could do to subvert them.

  But she knew better. Stave’s convictions may have offended hers; but that did not detract from his essential worth: his rigorous honesty and candor; his readiness to judge himself more stringently than he judged anyone else.

  And—

  Unhappily she told herself the truth.

  And Liand was no match for them. They were the Haruchai, preternaturally potent, and defiantly uncompromising. If she set him against them, they might kill him. They would certainly damage his spirit. She would have his pain on her conscience, and would gain nothing.

  In spite of Jeremiah’s plight, she could not turn her back on her own scruples.

  Restraining herself, Linden gazed into the Stonedownor’s face. “Convince me,” she countered quietly. “Tell me what you were about to say. ‘Yet I have—’ ”

  Liand hesitated. Apparently she had asked him to take a significant risk. Her nerves stretched as he debated within himself. In a moment, however, his excitement—or his trusting nature—won out.

  He glanced around quickly; leaned forward. Lowering his voice to a whisper, he said, “I have ascended the Watch, though the Masters forbid it. I have seen a vast pall of harm upon the Land, a dire cloud which I cannot now discern. And I have beheld the peaks of the south rise mighty and glorious above that pall, fraught with majesty. I have ached to sojourn among them, to taste their rare substance with my own flesh, though such savors may destroy me.

  “Surely at one time the Land itself was home to similar marvels.”

  He brought tears to Linden’s eyes: she could not quench the burning he inspired. He had stolen a brief glimpse of something that should have been readily apparent to everyone in the Land at all times. Ignorant of what his people had lost, he did not grieve over it as she did. Nevertheless the loss was real, and abominable.

  She wanted to match his honesty with her own, in spite of the danger to him.

  “Liand—” Roughly she rubbed back her tears. “I can’t explain things to you right now. Not here,” where any Haruchai might overhear her. “But I’m in trouble, and I need help.

  “I knew the Masters a long time ago. They remember me. They were my friends then, but I don’t think I can trust them now. They’ve changed. I want to hear anything you can tell me about them.”

  Anele snorted as if in disgust, but did not speak.

  Liand’s stare showed his concern. “I do not understand,” he admitted. “Your knowledge of them is surely deeper than mine. They seldom answer our inquiries. Indeed, they seldom speak. I know only what all in Mithil Stonedown know, and that is little. There is a place which they name Revelstone, though what it may be, or where, they do not say. Upon occasion, they sojourn there, and return.” After a pause, he finished, “I have observed no alteration in them.”

  She sighed. “All right. I’ll ask it a different way. What do you know about Lord Foul the Despiser?” She searched his face. “The Grey Slayer? The Masters call him Corruption.”

  At the back wall, Anele flinched, then covered his head with his arms.

  The Stonedownor gave her a perplexed frown. “I fear that I know nothing. I have never heard these names.”

  “There,” Linden responded bitterly. “That’s my problem.

  “The Land has an ancient enemy. If he isn’t immortal, he might as well be. Over the centuries,” the millennia, “he’s done more harm than I could possibly describe. And you’ve never heard of him.

  “The Masters know more about him than I do, and I know him too damn well.” The Despiser had found an echo of himself in her, and had nearly destroyed her with it. “He’s here. He’s still here. But they don’t talk about him.

  “Liand,” she told the young man as openly as she could, “that terrifies me.”

  Stave had explained his position only too well, yet still she could not comprehend it.

  “This Lord Foul,” Liand asked uncertainly, “this Despiser? He remains among us? What has he done?�
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  Unable to contain her fear and anger, Linden rasped, “He has taken my son.”

  Her words seemed to shock the Stonedownor. He straightened his back; clasped his arms over his stomach. Alarm darkened his frank gaze.

  Anele whimpered softly to himself as though he feared to be overheard.

  “That’s my problem,” she repeated. “Lord Foul has my son, and you’ve never heard of him. The Masters want you ignorant. They think they can defend the Land by themselves, even though they’re no match for him.

  “I’ve got to find my son. To do that, I need help. But I didn’t tell Stave about him. I don’t want to turn the Masters against me. If they knew the truth—what I have to do—” She was already sure that she would not be able to search for Jeremiah without Earthpower and the Staff of Law. “I’m afraid they’ll try to stop me.”

  More quietly, she concluded, “I need to make some decisions. I can’t just sit here.” And Anele required freedom. “Anything you can tell me might help me make up my mind.”

  Plainly out of his depth, Liand unfolded his arms and spread his hands. “Linden Avery, I know not how to reply.” Uncertainty confused his gaze. “To me as to all my people, the Masters have ever been what they are. Upon occasion, as I have said, they are absent from Mithil Stonedown. More commonly they are not. They do not aid us in tilling the soil, or in harvesting crops, or in gathering fruits. They neither tend the weak nor succor the infirm. Yet they countenance all that we do. In no way do they intervene in our pursuits, or alter our lives.”

  Linden studied him sharply. “But you said they forbade you to climb Kevin’s Watch.”

  “Yes,” he admitted. “That they have done.” His expression suggested that until this moment he had not considered the prohibition unusual. It was merely one more item on a long list of things which the Masters did not explain. “I did not dare to defy their command until a sojourn of some days took them from among us.”

  As Liand spoke, a cloud seemed to pass over the sun. The light reflecting through the doorway grew dim, bleeding illumination from the room. Shadows obscured his face as he added, “And they discourage wandering. They say that our lives are better lived in proximity to Mithil Stonedown.”

  Then his tone quickened. “Yet we have horses because the Masters provide them.” Apparently he considered it important to describe the Haruchai fairly. “Our herd is too scant to be replenished by breeding, and they say that we must have means to bear tidings swiftly at need.”

  After a brief pause, he said, “Also they aid us against the kresh. And—”

  “Kresh?” interrupted Linden. That name was new to her.

  “The yellow wolves,” Liand explained, “more terrible in size than the grey wolves we know, and savage beyond description. Our old songs and tales speak of a time when no such beasts harried the Plains. For three generations, however, or perhaps four, kresh have fallen upon us at intervals, hunting blood in fearsome packs. Lacking the aid of the Masters, we could not withstand them.

  “In this our mounts are precious. At any warning—often it is the Masters themselves who warn us—we ride abroad to gather our people so that we may make defense in Mithil Stonedown.”

  Linden had expected the light to improve as the cloud drifted past; but it did not. Instead twilight gathered in the room, and a faint chill breathed past the open curtain. The weather was changing. When she glanced away from Liand to check on Anele, she saw that the old man had begun to shiver.

  For a moment, she yearned for percipience so keenly that she could not continue. In the Land as she had once known it, the simple touch of the air on her cheek would have told her what the deepening gloom presaged.

  But aching for her lost health-sense weakened her as much as the loss itself. With an effort, she set the pang aside.

  “You said sometimes the Masters go away. For days?”

  “Upon occasion,” the Stonedownor affirmed. “Other absences are less prolonged.”

  Revelstone was three hundred leagues away. Even on horseback, the journey would take more than a few days.

  “Do you know where they go?” she asked. “I mean, when they aren’t going to Revelstone. Why do they need to go anywhere?”

  Liand shrugged. “They are the Masters. They reveal little, and explain less.

  “However,” he added more slowly, “at times they accept my company, when my duties permit it. Thus I have learned that in certain absences they searched for your companion.”

  Linden caught her breath. In this also, Anele had told the truth.

  “I know not,” Liand went on, “why they have attended so to the capture of one frail old man. Nor am I able to describe how he has eluded them. I could not have done so in his place. Yet it is certain that their desire against him is no recent wish.”

  She nodded in the gloom. The sun’s light had faded further, and as it did so the air grew noticeably cooler. Soon she might start to shiver. Liand’s account was consistent with what both Stave and Anele had told her.

  How had the old man been able to evade capture? She could not imagine. Like Liand, she would have been helpless to foil the Haruchai.

  If she wanted to escape, she needed to learn Anele’s secret.

  He had mentioned dark, fearsome creatures. Lost things, long dead. Creatures that forced him to remember—

  That question would have to wait. Something that Liand had been about to reveal nagged at her. Instead of pursuing his sporadic travels with the Masters, she said, “A minute ago, you started to say something else. You mentioned kresh and—?”

  He frowned, momentarily confused. “Kresh and—?” But then his expression lifted. “Ah, yes. I meant to add that the Masters aid us also against the Falls.”

  As if to himself, Anele muttered, “Caesures.”

  “Go on,” Linden urged the young man.

  Liand sighed. “By some means which we do not comprehend, and which the Masters do not explain, they discern the Falls at great distance. We are scarcely able to behold the Falls when they are nigh, yet the Masters perceive their presence and their movements from afar. Destructive as they are, and unpredictable to us, they might well have torn us from life if the Masters did not forewarn and guide us.”

  The Stonedownors could not detect the caesures because they had been blinded; yet the Haruchai had not so much as mentioned Kevin’s Dirt to Liand’s people.

  Cursing to herself, Linden asked, “Could you see the Fall that broke Kevin’s Watch?”

  Liand shook his head. “We could not. The distance was too great for our eyes. We only guessed at its presence when the spire fell.”

  She understood none of this. What did Lord Foul gain by it? Nevertheless the yellow smog baffled her less than did the caesures. If she could not imagine its ultimate purpose, she could grasp the nature of its evil. But the migraine aura which had shattered Kevin’s Watch was another matter. She had seen that it was potent and harmful; but what was it for?

  Groping, she probed further.

  “You said you’ve had trouble with kresh for three or four generations. How long have you had to worry about Falls?”

  “Four score years, perhaps, or five. Falls are more”—he grimaced—“remarkable than kresh, fearsome though the wolves may be. They disturb our lives more profoundly.” Liand thought for a moment, then offered, “If I question my people, I may be able to determine the time of their first appearance among us.”

  Eighty or a hundred years. Three or four generations. Caesures and kresh had begun to afflict the South Plains at about the same time.

  “What do the Falls do?” Linden asked intently.

  The young man’s mouth twisted again. “They are destructive, as I have said.” He did not enjoy the taste of his memories. “Trees and shrubs are often blasted, and crops are ruined as though plows by the score had torn through them. At times we have been brought near to starvation by the loss of our fields, and winter has been cruel to us because we could find little wood to feed our
fires.” He sighed. “Beyond question the aid of the Masters has enabled us to endure.”

  His voice held a note of fatality as he concluded, “Stone may withstand a Fall, though it does not do so repeatedly. But any beast or bird or human that nears a Fall is swallowed away and does not return.”

  Linden stared at him. Swallowed away? Actually devoured? God! No wonder Anele was terrified—

  Fearing Liand’s answer, she asked, “How often do you see Falls?”

  He shrugged uncomfortably. “We cannot foretell them. They are not constant. However, the interval between them is commonly measured in years. Some pass, harmless, across the Plains. Others disappear among the mountains, or emerge from them. It is rare that a Fall enters this valley.”

  As he spoke, Linden winced at an abrupt flash of intuition. Caesures had begun to afflict the Land, say, ninety years ago. Covenant had told her that roughly a year passed in the Land for every day in her ordinary world. And three months had passed since she had restored a white gold ring—

  Was it possible? Behind Liand’s shrouded form, and the blank stone walls, and the gloom, Linden seemed to see Roger’s mother in her hospital bed raising her fist against herself. Had Lord Foul taken hold of Joan’s mind so completely that she had been able to reach across the barrier between realities with wild magic? Had Joan caused the Falls by beating out her pain on the bones of her temple?

  If so, the danger was about to get a lot worse. She was here now; able to strike directly at the Land.

  And Linden was inadvertently responsible. Nothing in her experience had prepared her for the possibility that Joan’s madness might have power across such distances.

  Even the Staff of Law—if Linden could somehow contrive to find it—might prove useless against such wrong.

  Her voice shook as she asked, “Do the kresh ever attack while you’re threatened by a Fall?”

  How far did Joan’s insanity—and Lord Foul’s machinations—extend? Kevin’s Dirt effectively masked the caesures. Did the Falls similarly disguise the peril of the wolves?

  “I have beheld one such attack,” Liand admitted, “no more. Yet when they neared the Fall, the kresh attempted flight. Those that failed were consumed.”