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

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  She was a physician, a giver of care. Her response to pleading and need reached as deep as any pain. And Joan’s violence, against herself as against time, was a form of supplication. In the only language which remained to her, Joan cried out her long madness, her self-loathing, and her hunger for release.

  Linden’s years in Berenford Memorial had taught her that the form in which damaged people repulsed aid expressed with terrible eloquence the nature of their wounds. In her own crippled way, Joan needed Linden’s intervention as badly as Jeremiah did.

  Linden could not contain her voiceless wailing; had no control over her agony. The cold white emptiness burned as fiercely as scoria, and she had no hands with which she might have reached out to Joan. But she was not helpless.

  Despair and isolation and gnawing searched her to the root of her soul. She could do the same. If she had no power herself, she would use Joan’s.

  Riding the force of her own anguish and empathy, Linden tuned her heart to the pitch of Joan’s madness.

  It was possible: she knew that now. As if accidentally—as if accidents were possible for a soul in such pain—Joan had raised Anele like an echo inside Linden, a knell of death and life. With his appearance and his pleading to guide her, Linden could choose to participate in each new exertion of Joan’s ring.

  And she knew how to do so. Once before, briefly, she had been trapped in Joan’s mind. She had met Joan’s ghouls and specters; Joan’s tormentor. She could find her way because Lord Foul—perhaps unaware that he was aiding her—had allowed her to hear the true name of Joan’s pain.

  Knowing that name, Linden added Joan’s agony to her own, and became stronger.

  She had no means to impose her will on Joan; could do nothing to stop the remorseless blows which Joan struck against herself. Joan still lived in the Land, still inhabited time: Linden did not. But Linden had no desire for that form of power. Instead of trying to stay Joan’s hand, she used her presence in Joan’s mind, her comprehension of Joan’s despair, to tap into the force of Joan’s blasts.

  With Joan’s wedding ring, Linden summoned her companions.

  She could find them. If they had not been severed from themselves by anguish, shredded by the cruelty of the caesure’s avatars, she could hope to touch them. They were mounted upon Ranyhyn, as she was. And they were warded in some fashion by ur-viles, whose lore encompassed enormous transgressions of Law.

  If she still endured, surely they did also?

  Through Esmer, the ur-viles had promised to aid her. The loremaster had mingled its strength with hers. It had sucked memories from Anele’s wounded forearm. And Esmer had suggested that the creatures could communicate with the Ranyhyn.

  Thus she may hope to be guided—

  With wild magic which she siphoned from Joan’s violence, Linden turned against the current of the caesure and called the ur-viles to join her.

  They had made Anele remember—

  At first, her borrowed and oblique argence accomplished nothing. In spite of its purity, it did not repulse the fire ants, or soften the cold, or ease Joan’s desolation. Linden remained in her prison, tormented by ruin.

  But then Joan made a whimpering sound which brought the skest scurrying to her side; and Linden rode the bitter whiteness on Hyn’s back. The mare trotted through the cold confidently, as though she had always been there and knew exactly where she was going; as though she had waited only for Linden to rouse herself from some unexplained stupor.

  The Ranyhyn’s breath sent thick gusts of steam curling past her shoulders to Linden’s face, filling Linden’s nose with the scent of cropped grass; reinforcing the bond between them. Thus tangibly Hyn seemed to recreate the lovable world which should have existed instead of the Fall’s chaos.

  Oh, yes.

  Lord Foul preached despair. But Linden Avery the Chosen was not helpless.

  Again she called out to the Demondim-spawn.

  Joan’s whimpers became moaning, nascent sobs. The skest fretted around her, sensing distress which their compelled attentions could not relieve. But now her silver blasts were shot through with blackness and vitriol like streaks of poison in mortifying flesh.

  Beside Linden, Anele sat Hrama’s back with an air of disdain, as though the caesure’s afflictions were trivial.

  Opposite him, Liand huddled over Rhohm’s neck like a man whose back had been broken. Linden feared to meet his eyes. She could not bear to see how badly he had been hurt.

  Still dark acid insinuated itself throughout Joan’s violence. The frigid wasteland appeared to break apart like floes of ice, calving smaller chunks of loneliness; and through the cracks and breaches shone streams of midnight.

  The gnawing insects of the caesure’s swirl became hornets again; vibrating augers loud for the taste of Linden’s frailty. Stave held himself stolidly erect, impassive as stone. Under him, Hynyn stamped his massive hooves and tossed his head, imperiously demanding release, while the hornets attacked the encroaching obsidian and burst into flames.

  Mahrtiir’s gasping sounded like a splash of blood. Pain crippled his Cords.

  Now Joan sobbed aloud, beating at her forehead repeatedly to invoke blasts and breakage. Turiya Herem multiplied her torment. Her skest blundered over the rocks, aimlessly dissolving and reforming themselves. For one brief moment in the tangible Land, her power had become darkness, and she could not expend her pain.

  Ur-viles surrounded all of the riders. Their barking chant was palpable in Linden’s ears, a solid thing rife with power, at once frantic and resolute, tattered and untorn. Fed by their lore, vitriol swelled in the caesure, defying the white void and the hornets; enforcing the distinction between chaos and identity.

  Then Anele clenched his fist, shedding a thin drop of blood from the gouged flesh of his forearm. As one, the ur-viles seemed to redouble their vehemence.

  Together the Ranyhyn lifted their heads. To the beat of the harsh chant, they began surging into the teeth of formication and cold; plunging against the current of severed time.

  For a while which might have been an instant or an eon, Linden feared that the Demondim-spawn would falter. That the Ranyhyn would lose their way. That Joan’s unanswerable madness would regain its efficacy. That the hornets howling into and through her flesh would devour the last of her sanity.

  Then the migraine aura of the Fall parted on either side of her, and she and her companions ran onto solid earth under a bright sky as though they had been spit out from the belly of Hell’s own leviathan.

  6.

  The Staff of Law

  Convulsed with relief, Linden slumped from Hyn’s back, stumbled to her hands and knees, then sprawled facedown on the stiff grass as though she sought to embrace the Earth. At that moment, the ordinary solidity of the ground seemed infinitely precious; as healing as hurtloam.

  She heard retching nearby. Without looking, she knew that Liand and both Cords had also collapsed from their mounts. She sensed them distinctly, in spite of the aftershocks, the residual excruciation, of the caesure. Sick with distress, Liand and one of the Cords—Bhapa—spewed bile and anguish onto the hardy grass.

  The grass was tough because it needed to be. The soil in which it grew was thinly layered over old shale. It received comparatively little rain, and that moisture was soon leached away. Nevertheless its sharp-edged blades grew thickly enough to soften the ground. When Linden breathed, she did not inhale dust, but rather the clenched dampness of roots and the prolonged heat of late summer.

  She had been so cold—Now the warmth of the day was bliss, soothing her abraded senses.

  Mahrtiir was in no better condition than the other Ramen, but he did not vomit. Instead he lowered himself carefully from the back of his mount and walked away from his companions, tottering as breakably as an old man. His stiffness told Linden that he was ashamed of his weakness and wanted to distance himself while he recovered.

  Stave also dismounted, although he displayed none of the battered nausea which afflicted
Liand and the Ramen. Rather he seemed essentially whole; proof against pain and distortion. Only his involuntary limp showed that he could be hurt.

  “Chosen,��� he said near Linden’s head, “are you able to move? We have survived the Fall. That feat deserves acknowledgment.” His tone admitted that he had not expected so much from her. “I know not when we are, but where is plain. Arise and gaze about you.”

  She did not lift her head: the sun’s comfort held her. Ignoring the Master, she continued to cast her percipience around her, verifying in the most tangible way possible that she was still alive—and intact.

  Only Anele remained mounted, apparently studying his surroundings blindly. She could not tell whether he recognized what he saw.

  As for the great horses, they gave no sign that they had just endured an extraordinary ordeal. Hrama seemed content to stand still, providing a safe seat for Anele. The other Ranyhyn had scattered slightly, giving each other room to crop the dry grass. Occasionally one or another of them tasted the air as if searching for the scent of water.

  In the background of Linden’s awareness, the ur-viles barked quietly among themselves. They may have been discussing the situation, or debating what should be done now. Like Stave, they did not appear to have suffered in the Fall, although their weariness was obvious.

  But the Fall was gone, leaving no evidence of its passage.

  Linden and her companions had been marooned.

  “Chosen?” Stave asked more insistently. “It is not well to delay. If we have indeed entered the past of the Land, then we must be wary that we do not alter it in some way, endangering the Arch of Time. We are neither seers nor oracles. Our actions may have consequences which we cannot foresee.”

  Still she did not rise to answer him. As she tested her circumstances, she caught a hint—the merest whiff—of wrongness.

  It did not arise from the air, which held only the rising heat of a summer morning. The Ranyhyn certainly had no wrong in them. Nor did her companions, in spite of their lingering hurts. And the ur-viles, like Stave, exceeded her evaluation.

  The suggestion of wrongness, of imposed and unnatural harm, seemed to arise from the earth under her.

  And it was familiar—

  Abruptly she surged up onto her hands and knees; pressed her fingers through the grass to touch the dirt. “Here,” she told Stave softly, almost whispering. “Put your hands here. Tell me what you feel.”

  A slight frown knotted the Master’s brows as he knelt in front of her and eased his fingers into the grass.

  “Linden?” croaked Liand. Hunching over his stomach as if it were full of broken glass, he crawled weakly toward her. “What is amiss?”

  But she was concentrating too hard to speak; and Stave did not reply. Uncertainly Liand worked his hands into the grass as well, trying to feel what they felt.

  Yes, Linden thought as she probed the ground. Familiar. And wrong. Its touch evoked a kind of visceral memory; a recall too deeply buried for consciousness, and too disturbing to be forgotten.

  It breathed along her nerves, suggesting echoes of rain and pestilence; of fearsome deserts and terrible fecundity.

  Then Liand gasped sharply and snatched back his hands. “Heaven and Earth!” he panted. “That is evil. A great wrong has been done here.” Wrapping his arms around his stomach, he struggled to contain his nausea.

  Stave met Linden’s gaze and nodded in confirmation.

  At last, she lifted her hands from the grass. “Not just here,” she said harshly. “Everywhere in the Land.” Everywhere west of Landsdrop and Mount Thunder. “That’s the Sunbane.”

  Her senses had found traces of Lord Foul’s assault upon Law, persistent and vile.

  “Indeed,” Stave agreed without inflection. “The Haruchai have not forgotten it. Yet already in this time it is long past.”

  She knew that he was right. Any more recent atrocity would have left its effect closer to the surface. Nevertheless her dire recollections of the Sunbane hit her hard. At its height, it had transformed every living and lovely aspect of the Land into a victim of torture; an instance of unforgivable hurt.

  “But it’s fresh enough to feel,” she muttered. Then she swallowed her past. More quietly, she asked, “How long ago do you think it was?”

  Everything depended upon that. If the ur-viles had misread Anele’s memories—or if the Ranyhyn had erred—

  Stave considered the question. “I cannot speak with certainty. Ten score years, perhaps more. Not more than fifteen.” Then he shrugged. “So I estimate.”

  Between two and three hundred years? Surely that was long enough—? Surely Linden and her companions had not arrived before Anele lost the Staff?

  She trusted Stave’s perceptions; but still her nerves needed reassurance. Even this distant reminder of the Sunbane afflicted her with dread. Raising her head, she flicked a quick glance toward the sun.

  It arced across a blue sky already flattened, deprived by depth, by heat and haze. Around it, high clouds made noncommittal shapes against the azure. But it showed no sign of the disturbing corona which had defined the effects of the Banefire.

  Nor did the sky betray any indication of Kevin’s Dirt. Here, at least, her health-sense would not be taken from her.

  Her stomach still squirmed on the brink of rebellion, but at last she felt strong enough to ignore it. Gathering her courage, she rose to her feet to look around her.

  Anele drew her gaze. He sat loosely on Hrama’s back, head bowed and arms dangling, as if he had fallen asleep. In that posture, the angle of the light across his shoulders caught at the raindrops which remained on his cloak, transforming them into a net of pearls; a web woven of reflections and prophecy.

  And behind him mountains piled into the heavens, holding up their granite heads in defiance or refusal. The foothills of the range were no more than a league distant.

  Percipience and the position of the sun told her that she was facing south. Therefore these mountains were part of the Southron Range. Off to her left, a spur of peaks jutted past her northward: to her right, the cliffs and peaks retreated into the southwest. However, she recognized none of the vistas.

  She had entered a region of time and place where she had never been before.

  Stave would tell her what he knew, if she asked him; but she did not. Instead she set the question aside temporarily. Other concerns compelled her attention.

  Clenching her teeth against the aftereffects of the Fall, she turned to her companions.

  Stave and Anele were essentially well, but the Ramen and Liand were another matter. Of them all, only the Manethrall had been able to stand; and he could no longer do so. Now he sat with his back to his companions a short distance away, hugging himself and rocking back and forth like a battered child.

  Pahni sprawled where she had first fallen, too shocked to move. Bhapa had crawled a few paces from his vomit: he lay curled into a ball around the memory of his pain. And Liand was in little better condition. His momentary contact with the Sunbane’s residue had cost him the last of his endurance. He had collapsed supine with his hands over his face, panting softly.

  The fact that Linden could remain upright testified to the dark lore and blood of the ur-viles. Their power had protected her from the worst of the caesure.

  Remembering that the loremaster had cut her, she glanced down at her hand and saw that the small wound had already closed. No, more than that: it had sealed completely, leaving behind nothing more than a faint scar to mark what the ur-viles had done for her.

  At one time, they had been the bitter enemies of the Land. Now their desire to serve her was beyond question.

  Unfortunately her companions had not received the same eldritch gift. Apart from Stave and Anele, they were in no condition to go on. They needed rest, perhaps hours of it. And aliantha, if she could find any—and if they could force themselves to swallow it.

  Hurtloam would restore them, of course. Or the Staff of Law. In this time and place, she m
ight as well have asked for Covenant’s resurrection.

  But the ur-viles might be able to provide vitrim. If they had not exhausted themselves—

  Even after all that they had done for her, she felt strangely reluctant to approach them; timid in the face of their bestial forms and their black past. Nevertheless she walked cautiously toward the loremaster.

  The creatures stopped their low barking as she approached. They turned their faces toward her, sniffing wetly. Their ears twitched. The thin slits of their mouths looked as cruel as cuts.

  A few paces from the loremaster, she halted. Staring at the creature’s forehead to avoid the sight of its wide nostrils, she said uncomfortably, “I hate doing this. It feels disrespectful. I can ask you for help, and you can’t even tell me how to thank you. You certainly can’t ask me for anything. And you’ve already done so much—”

  Then she admitted, “But Stave is right. Everything we do here is dangerous. And the longer we stay, the more dangerous it becomes. We should get started, but we can’t. Liand and the Ramen are too sick to ride.”

  In response, the loremaster made a gesture that she could not interpret. Her health-sense told her nothing except that the creature was alien to her; beyond explication.

  Then, however, the loremaster wove its hands as though in invocation; muttered a few guttural sounds which seemed to hang in the air, telic and oddly resonant. Almost at once, an iron bowl as black as obsidian took form in its palms, apparently transubstantiated from within the creature’s flesh.

  The bowl held a fluid that gave off the musty aroma of vitrim.

  Because she was touched and did not know how else to express her gratitude, Linden sank to her knees in order to accept the bowl from the loremaster’s hands.

  The ur-viles spoke in unison, barking a response which told her nothing. The raw sound could have been a curse or a paean—or a warning.