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

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  With an effort, one bone and joint at a time, he roused himself. By small increments, he dragged his eyes up to the level of Covenant’s ring hanging inside her shirt. There he fixed his gaze, staring blindly. When he finally found his voice, he spoke as if he were addressing that small metal band—

  —appealing to it as though it represented the life of the Land, and might forgive him.

  His own recollections had broken him once before. Now they threatened to tread the shards of his mind underfoot.

  “A simple choice I made. Ah, simple. Such simplicity gives birth to woe, and its outcome is lamentation. In my place, a wiser man might have deemed so much harm sufficient. Yet I was not content, for with one choice I made another, again a simple one. I left the Staff of Law in the covert of my cave.

  “I wished to preserve it from harm until I had gazed upon this thing of wrong, and determined my best course. So I assured myself. Was I not in my own flesh a being of Earthpower, capable of much? Surely I would be safe enough until I had learned to name the evil.

  “Yet the truth—”

  There remorse seemed to close his throat, and he could not continue. Linden murmured soothingly to his bowed head; tried to project her support into him so that he would be able to go on. And gradually he felt her encouragement; or his need to finish his story grew stronger. When he had mastered himself, his quavering voice resumed.

  “Ah, the truth was that I left behind the Staff because with power comes duty. I feared that if I bore with me the implement of Law, I would be compelled to measure my littleness against the thing of wrong. And I knew that I would fail.

  “Thus I went out to my doom, leaving behind the Staff.”

  Liand and the Manethrall moved closer to hear him: the plaintive ache of his tale had become almost inaudible. Even the ur-viles drew near. Only Stave listened with his arms folded as though his heart were a fortress.

  “Alas, the evil which I there beheld was one you also have witnessed.” Briefly the old man found a bit of strength, and his voice rose. “Among the Masters they are known as Falls. Others name them caesures. They are a spinning of vile power, an illimitable bane, and when I had beheld it I was appalled.” Then his energy faded, and he lapsed to whispering. “No, more than appalled. I was stricken immobile. My littleness un-made me.”

  Weak and sorrowing, he gave his pain into Linden’s embrace; let her hold him so that he could reach an end.

  “There the caesure took me. Its evil swept over me, and when it had passed my life and all that I had known had been swept away. Only the shape of the Land remained to me. These mountains. The valley of the Mithil. The reach of the South Plains. All else had ceased to exist.

  “Oh, Mithil Stonedown endured, but it was no longer my home. Its folk knew nothing of the Land that I had known. All of my loves and lore had been effaced. The very stone on which I stood was not as I remembered it.

  “And the Staff of Law—

  “Ah, the Staff also had ceased to exist. It had vanished, lost by my folly. This Land knew nothing of it, and Law itself had given way to Falls and Kevin’s Dirt.”

  Oh, Anele. Hugging him, Linden found that she could still weep, although he did not. Her tears dropped to his old head and dripped away, unregarded.

  “That is the harm from which I flee, though I bear it with me always. I have lost the Staff of Law. It was my given birthright, entrusted to my care, and I failed it. I was too fearful for my task. The blame for the Land’s plight is mine.

  “I am marked for damnation, and yet I cannot so much as die. If Sunder my father had known what the outcome of his love would be, he would have buried Hollian my mother beside the Soulsease, and the Land would have been spared the ill which I have wrought.”

  When he was done, Linden simply stood and held him for a long time. She did not know how to comfort him. She could only bear witness to his bereavement.

  Yet she had heard him: she knew that he needed more. For that reason, she told him softly, “I understand. I believe you, Anele.” The stone on which he stood would not have permitted falsehood. “Now I know the truth. You said it yourself. You’re the Land’s last hope.”

  There was no one else who could even attempt to locate the Staff again.

  10.

  Aided by Ur-Viles

  When Linden said it, she knew it to be true, although she could not have explained how she knew—or how it could be true. She was in no condition to question herself. Anele’s need for forgiveness had nearly exhausted her.

  He knew where the Staff had been lost.

  She could not continue to support him. Fortunately something in her voice roused him a little. He lifted his head from her chest, made an attempt to straighten his legs.

  “Did I? It may be so. Why otherwise am I precluded from death?”

  He was the son of Sunder and Hollian—which made him three and a half thousand years old.

  Unless—

  Intuitive perceptions hunted for clarity within her, but she was too tired to concentrate on them.

  “Old man,” Stave put in without warning, “hear me. Linden Avery has granted you credence. The Haruchai do not.”

  In response, all of the ur-viles began to bark at once, apparently reacting to what they had heard. Their voices meant nothing to Linden, however: their speech resembled no language she knew. She turned a questioning look toward the Manethrall; but the woman shook her head.

  “They comprehend us, but cannot form words in our tongue, and we know not how to grasp theirs.”

  Stave ignored the exchange. “Have you made search?” he asked Anele. “Have you returned to your cave?”

  Linden wanted to sigh, Oh, leave him alone. Don’t you think he’s been through enough? But the old man rallied before she could reply.

  “What else have I ever done,” he answered like a spatter of gall, “since the accursed day of my failure?” He had grown sane enough to feel affronted. “The cave remains. I have searched it over upon occasions without number. I wander from it in despair, and in despair I return. Every span of its stone and dirt I have probed with my eyes and touched with my hands, even tasted with my tongue. The Staff is not there. No hint or memory of it is there. It passed out of knowledge when the Land I knew was erased by the evil of the Fall.”

  Then he turned to face up the rift. “You will betray me,” he muttered. “I must not abide your presence.” A moment later, he shuddered. “And these creatures”—he indicated the ur-viles—“are harsh to my distress.”

  In Mithil Stonedown, he had spoken of Lost things, long dead, creatures that had forced him to remember—

  Gathering strength by the moment, as though he had left his frailty in Linden’s hands and was no longer hampered by it, he strode up the bare rock and began once again to climb the rubble.

  Stave started upward as well, clearly intending to reclaim the old man. But the Manethrall stopped him with a frown. “Two days you have granted us, Bloodguard. We will ensure that your prey is not lost to you.”

  At her word, the Haruchai nodded and let Anele go.

  Linden’s health-sense was gone: she could no longer read her companions. Even the power of the ur-viles had faded from her nerves. Their blades had become mere lambent iron, eldritch and undefined. The Ramen might have been honest or treacherous, and she would not have known the difference.

  Gazing after the old man, she asked the Manethrall, “You’ve met him before. How much do you know about him?”

  “Little or naught,” replied the woman. Her tone remained stern, but her severity seemed to be directed at Stave rather than Linden. “We only pity him. Therefore when by chance our paths have crossed, we have given him what succor we may. However, he accepts little, and trusts less. He flees when he has been fed or healed. For that reason, we have not comforted him as we wish.”

  “Will he be all right,” Linden continued, “climbing by himself? I don’t want to lose him. He’s too important—”

  She had only beg
un to grasp how important.

  “Do not fear for him,” the Manethrall responded. “He is accustomed to this place. And we will watch over him. Since you wish it, and because I have given my word to the sleepless one, he will be returned to you at need.”

  Her kindness brought another moment of tears and blurring to Linden’s eyes. If these Ramen had treated Anele so, she would trust them for a while. Apparently their convictions and purposes were more humane than Stave’s.

  “I’m sorry,” she told the Manethrall. “You and your people saved our lives, and I haven’t even thanked you. I’m Linden Avery. Stave calls me ‘the Chosen’ because that’s what I was called the last time I came to the Land.”

  The woman used her rope to tie back her hair, then bowed as she had not bowed to Stave, with her hands before her head and her palms turned outward, empty of danger. “Linden Avery,” she said in the nickering voice she had used earlier, “Ringthane, be welcome among us. I am Manethrall Hami of the Ramen, and they”—she indicated her companions where they tended their injured—“are my Cords.

  “Your words suggest a tale which we will hear eagerly. However, we will not burden you with the telling of it until we have gathered at the Verge of Wandering, according to the word that I have given the Bloodguard. For the present, you are weary and in need. Before we ascend, we would offer you what aid or comfort we may.”

  Linden hardly knew how to ask for what she needed. Help me find Jeremiah. Lead me to the Staff. Tell me why you distrust Stave. None of that would enable her to do more climbing. Instead she answered indirectly, “You know Anele and Stave.” Well enough, anyway. “This is Liand son of Fostil, from Mithil Stonedown.” She nodded toward the young man. “Anele was a prisoner there. He helped us escape.”

  As if for the first time, she noticed the streaks of blood on his left arm. They leaked from under his slashed sleeve: she could not see how badly he was hurt. But the tearing of his sleeve suggested claws.

  Infection, she thought dully. Sepsis. If his wounds were not treated—Without percipience, she could not guess how grave the harm might be.

  The Manethrall granted Liand a gracious bow, which he returned, emulating her movements awkwardly. He had already shared dangers and seen wonders far outside his experience, and his eyes sparkled with excitement.

  “You honor me, Manethrall Hami. The Ramen are unknown in Mithil Stonedown, but you are doughty and generous, and would be made welcome”—he glanced pointedly at Stave—“if the Masters permitted it.”

  She frowned at this reference to Masters. “Thank you, Liand of Mithil Stonedown. We will trust your welcome, if not that of the Bloodguard.”

  Fearing that Stave might take offense, Linden put in, “With your permission, Manethrall, I want to look at your injured. Where I come from, I’m a physician. I don’t have any drugs or supplies with me, but I might be able to do something for them.” Uncertainly she added, “You lost lives for us. I want to help, if I can.”

  Hami shrugged. “As you will, Ringthane. But your aid is not necessary. The Ramen are hardy, and I have taught my Cords the care of such wounds. Also”—a fierce grin twisted her lips—“our grievance against all kresh is ancient and enduring, ill-measured in mere centuries. Had you not been threatened, we would have assailed them still.”

  Linden wanted to ask, And the ur-viles? Would they have joined you? But she was too weary for such questions. Murmuring, “Thanks,” she gestured for Liand to join her as she crossed the gutrock to join the Cords who were treating their hurt comrades.

  They nodded to her courteously when she squatted among them, but did not pause in what they were doing.

  They were nine, and none unmarked by the battle. However, they had suffered only scrapes and scratches, bruises. The wounds of the other five were more serious. Torn flesh hung in strips from the arms and legs of two of them, a man and a woman. Fangs had ripped grisly chunks out of one man’s shoulder and another’s thigh. As severe as those hurts appeared, however, they were small compared to the injuries of the fifth Raman.

  The woman had been nearly eviscerated.

  Three Cords labored to keep her alive. The rest tended the other four.

  “Damn it,” Linden muttered to herself. Peritonitis for sure. Even if the woman’s intestines were not too badly rent, and could be sewn intact back into her abdomen, she would develop a killing infection almost at once. Indeed, all of the wounds would turn septic: the claws and teeth of the kresh assured that.

  Fire, she thought. We need a fire.

  And then: hurtloam.

  With an effort, she swallowed the fatigue clogging her throat. “Do you know hurtloam?” she asked the Cords.

  “We do,” one of the men answered, abrupt with concentration. He appeared younger than Liand: too young for such work. Strain and pride stretched a pallor across his cheeks. All of the Cords were little more than adolescents. “It is not found here.” Not among these broken stones. “Nor do we often bear it with us. Its virtue slowly fades when it is lifted from the earth, and we lack the lore to sustain it. But we are Ramen. That which we have must suffice.”

  From a pouch at his waist, he sifted into his palm a few sprigs of what appeared to be dried ferns or grass. Petals lay among them: the same flowers that Manethrall Hami wore around her neck. The Cord separated one sprig from the others, returned the rest to his pouch. Then he spat onto the herb in his palm; and at once a sharp tang pricked Linden’s nose.

  “This is amanibhavam,” he told her, “the flower of health and madness. Fresh, it is too potent for human flesh, bringing ecstasy and death. Dried, however, it may be borne.”

  Rubbing the damp herb between his hands, he wiped it into the gutted woman’s wound.

  She gasped in pain; and Linden nearly gasped as well, shocked by the crudeness of such care. Damn it. She needed her health-sense; needed to know what amanibhavam was and did.

  The suffering of the Ramen hung about her head; agony stifled by pride and fortitude. The other Cords had similar pouches. They dabbed bits of saliva and fern under strips of ripped tissue and bound the skin back into place with cloth bandages; rubbed the same mixture as though it were a sovereign poultice into bitten shoulders and thighs. She had witnessed miracles of healing in the Land. With percipience and power, she had wrought a few herself. But this—

  The last blood of the dead oozed from their wounds to stain the gutrock. Its lost scent tightened the back of her throat. They had died brutally, mangled almost beyond recognition. One had had her face ripped away. Another’s spine had been crushed in the massive jaws of a wolf.

  These dead and injured young people had saved Linden’s life. She remembered evil; but on a purely visceral level, she had forgotten the real cost of Lord Foul’s malice.

  Staggering, she heaved herself upright. “Manethrall,” she breathed urgently. “Hami. They’re going to die.”

  The Manethrall came smoothly down the stone to consider the plight of her Cords. Then she met Linden’s troubled stare. “It may be so,” she admitted sadly. “Kresh are in all ways dire and filthy beasts. Yet amanibhavam has rare virtue. It may yet redeem these wounds. We can do naught else in this place. We must depart.”

  “No.” Linden shook her head unsteadily. “It’s too dangerous. We can’t move them.” Especially the gut-torn woman. In a rush, she added, “Liand and I know where to find aliantha.”

  Hurtloam was out of the question. Without percipience, she would not be able to identify it. And Liand had never seen it.

  Manethrall Hami raised her eyebrows. “That would be a benison. Is it near?”

  Linden gestured down toward the Mithil valley. “Send one of your Cords with me,” she urged. “Or with Liand, if I’m too weak. They can bring some back.”

  “Will they return before nightfall?”

  Linden swallowed roughly. “No.”

  “Then I will send no one. You have knowledge of the Land, but mayhap you do not know these mountains. With the setting of the sun, a
wind as harsh as ice will blow here. Lacking shelter, they”—she meant her injured Cords—“will perish. Also you may succumb, for you are not hardy.

  “We must ascend. Beyond the rims of this cleft, we will be capable of shelter and fire.”

  Fire to boil water, cauterize wounds, burn away as much infection as possible. There was no wood for fuel in the rift.

  Linden felt a pang of despair, and she faltered.

  “Or we could go down,” she offered hesitantly. “Get out of the wind. Find aliantha.” Do what Stave wanted. “Mithil Stonedown will help us.”

  Severity sharpened the Manethrall’s face. “Ringthane, we love the Land. It is the long dream of the Ramen that we will one day return there—to the Plains of Ra and Manhome, where we belong.” Her voice implied a suppressed outrage. “But we will not enter any place where these Masters hold sway.”

  Turning away, she added, “My Cords will endure, if they are able. They are Ramen.”

  Stave regarded her impassively, as though he did not deign to take umbrage.

  Linden could not imagine what grudge the Ramen held against the Haruchai. However, she herself feared to return to Mithil Stonedown. Stave had surprised her by promising the Manethrall two days. In her experience, his people neither compromised nor negotiated.

  When she had absorbed the hard fact that she could do nothing for the Cords—that all her years of training were useless here—she sat down to save her strength. The shadows in the rift approached true twilight, and the tops of the walls seemed too far away to reach. She did not believe that she would be able to climb so high.

  Dumbly she watched one of the Cords treat Liand’s arm. She had become certain that the Ramen meant him no harm.

  The Cord applied a touch of amanibhavam and saliva to the gash, then bound it with a bandage of clean cloth. As he felt the effects of the poultice, Liand frowned at first, then gradually relaxed into a smile. “I know not what other benefits this grass may have,” he told Linden when he had thanked the Cord, “but it assuredly softens pain. For that I am grateful.”