When her power touched the surging creature, she staggered. The sheer vehemence of the skurj struck her like a physical blow. God, it was strong—
Putrefaction clogged her throat: she could hardly breathe. She tasted similarities to Roger’s bitter scoria. But the forces which confronted her now were worse; purer. They resembled the ruddy extravagance of volcanoes: tremendous energies barely contained by the world’s friable shell.
As it came, she read the nature of the skurj. Mindless as cyclones and earthquakes, the monster was a product of organic magic. It had been born in magma: it throve in infernos and molten stone. And it ate the living earth. The earth’s flesh sustained its savagery. Yet it was not an inherent evil comparable to the Illearth Stone. Nor did it exist outside the bounds of Law, as did the Viles and their descendants. And it did not intend ruin: it had no intention except appetite.
Over the course of millennia, however, all of the skurj had received the legacy of Kastenessen’s rage. During his Appointed Durance, they had been transmogrified; harnessed to his service. From him, they had inherited perversion. Goaded by his hate, they had become havoc and insatiable sickness.
The creature rising to devour trees and dirt and Linden did not reason, and knew no fear. Therefore it could not be turned aside. It would eat and eat, afflicting everything in its vicinity with rot, until the very Earth was torn open at last.
Gasping at the stench, Linden felt her courage fail. She could not move or think. Around her, a wide span of the watercourse and the forest boiled and frothed, immedicably diseased. The Staff was useless to her. The skurj consumed her flames; swallowed or ignored her power.
Covenant had told her to find him. Lord Foul and the croyel held Jeremiah. She and all of her companions were here because she had decided to take the Land’s fate into her own hands. Now she was helpless. Before she saw Kastenessen’s beast for the first time, it had already defeated her.
For an instant, the fabric of reality seemed to rip like a fouled tapestry. The ground pitched and heaved; dropped her to her knees. The pustulent reek of mortification filled her lungs, her nerves, her wailing mind.
Then the skurj erupted from the earth, and she gaped into its avid mouth.
It rose as tall as a Giant above her, and as thick as a cedar. Its hide was as heavy and hot as slag: the entire length of the creature emitted a terrible heat. Yet the hide shed no light. Even the tremendous kraken maw and gullet gave no illumination. Only the teeth, the fearsome fangs, long as stakes, curved and keen as scimitars, row after row of them filling the jaws: only the teeth shone. They burned with a sick red slashing radiance like lamps along the passage into hell.
Linden did not move. She believed that she could not. Her weakness was her birthright: her parents had spent their lives so that she would receive and accept their last gifts.
Nevertheless she was not the woman she had once been; the emotional cripple who had watched, frozen, while Jeremiah had surrendered his hand to Lord Foul, and Covenant had sacrificed himself for Joan. Her heart had become stone—and the stone held.
She did not move, but she could whisper. Gazing into the fanged throat of slaughter, she murmured. “Melenkurion abatha. Duroc minas mill. Harad khabaal.”
The skurj arched over her, mindless and savage. Its lambent teeth strained toward her. It could have swallowed her in a heartbeat. Yet it did not strike. Hearing her, it hesitated, caught by the potency of the Seven Words.
Then Clyme appeared on the poisoned ground beyond the skurj; and the suddenness of his arrival wrenched Linden from her paralysis. He was a Master, a potential antagonist. But he was also Haruchai: he would not hold back. Already she saw him gather himself to spring at the monster.
One touch of that fierce hide would burn the flesh from his bones. One flash of those wicked fangs would sever his limbs.
She was on her feet before she heard herself howl. “Clyme, no!” Screaming the Seven Words, she flung the full strength of the Staff at the skurj. Every scrap of her desperation and weakness and Earthpower she transmuted to fire and hurled against the creature.
Frantically she unleashed strength enough to set Salva Gildenbourne ablaze. But the focus of her terror and resolve was so single-minded that none of her flames touched the trees.
The skurj reared above her. Its jaws stretched to devour her inadequacy. For a moment or two, however, a handful of heartbeats, her coruscating incendiary repulsion sufficed to stop the beast. Although it ate her power, she lashed it with more force than it could consume.
Hampered by fire and the invocation of Law, the skurj reached toward her with its bright fangs—and failed to strike.
“Clyme!” Stave shouted: a stentorian roar which Linden scarcely heard. “Humbled! Preserve the Stonedownor! His orcrest may serve to distract this abomination!”
The skurj forced Linden backward step after step. Its brute force, prodigious and incapable of dismay, threatened to overwhelm her. Among the roots of Melenkurion Skyweir, she had outfought the combined theurgies of Roger and the croyel. But there she had drawn directly upon the EarthBlood: Earthpower unconstrained by mortality and fragile flesh. Here she had only herself.
Then Clyme turned from the creature and ran westward into the trees, followed by Bhapa and then Branl. When she saw that only Stave remained with her, in instant danger, Linden felt a touch of relief. Retreating, she grew stronger.
Grimly she poured torrential fire into the creature’s jaws; down its gullet. She was Linden Avery the Chosen. With no resources except the Staff of Law, the Seven Words, and her own granite, she had survived Melenkurion Skyweir’s convulsion. And Caerroil Wildwood had completed her Staff. Nothing limited the puissance available to her except her own abilities; her circumscribed humanity.
Still she retreated. She had no choice. The creature was too strong: she could not hold it back entirely. But her moment of defeat had passed. As the jaws of the skurj blazed toward her, she reached deeper and deeper into herself for power.
Half of the beast’s serpentine length remained buried beneath it. Balancing as if it were coiled, the creature thrust itself forward. With every violent movement, the fangs burned closer to Linden, and the ground boiled and rotted.
Stave stood directly behind her; supported her with his hands on her shoulders. In part, he gave her his intransigence, his unyielding Haruchai valor. But he also steadied her as she stumbled backward over sand and rocks. Unable to fight the creature himself, he preserved her from falling.
In gratitude and extreme fever, Linden howled the Seven Words, and hurled conflagration as intense as a solar flare at the skurj—and learned the real purpose of Kevin’s Dirt.
Within its definitions—within the bounds of Earthpower and Law—the Staff had no limits except those of its wielder. And Linden’s doubt and terror had passed. She had been annealed in her battle with Roger and the croyel: she was prepared to unleash any amount of flame against the skurj. It was not alone. Doubtless more of its kind rushed to assail her. She would have to slay them all. The Land’s life as well as Jeremiah’s depended on her. She did not mean to fail.
She should have been able to ask the Staff for as much Earthpower as she needed.
But she had forgotten the cloying pall of Kevin’s Dirt. The blindness, the truncation of percipience, which it imposed was only one of its effects. Fighting for her life, she discovered that Kevin’s Dirt hampered other forms of Earthpower as well.
It restricted her fire.
During her battle with Roger and the croyel, Kevin’s Dirt had not constrained her. It had not existed in that time. And it had not prevented her from extinguishing caesures, or from slaying Cavewights and kresh, because those exertions had not required as much raw force as she sought here. Caesures violated all Law: all Law aided her against them. And Cavewights and kresh were perishable, as prone to immolation as any man or woman or child.
But now—God!
Kevin’s Dirt had been created for this: to inhibit the uttermos
t use of Earthpower. Linden was not being driven backward because she was human and weak, but rather because her attempts to summon the full resources of the Staff were clogged by a ubiquitous fug of wrongness.
And this skurj was only one. There would be more.
Stave was right: Linden needed a distraction. She needed to risk Liand and the orcrest and perhaps all of her companions. She could not stop even one of these monsters with Earthpower. She would die in moments if she did not cast the Staff aside and oppose the skurj with wild magic.
But that would take time. She had not begun to master Covenant’s ring. And white gold defied Law. By its very nature, the Staff would hamper her. It might block her altogether. Even if she surrendered it to Stave, she might not be able to invoke the wild magic that destroys peace swiftly enough to prevent the skurj from crushing her.
Stave! she cried in silence because she could not stop howling the Seven Words. Get Liand!
Stave could not hear her thoughts. She had to rely on his instinctive comprehension of her peril. She would falter and die if Liand did not distract the creature.
Just for a moment. Please.
I am not going to lose my son!
Her task should have been impossible. Without Stave’s support, she would have fallen. Nevertheless she continued to block the monster’s jaws, opposing its fury with fire and utter dismay.
Dimly she heard a voice that was not hers. Somewhere in the distance, Mahrtiir yelled, “Ringthane!” as if the word were a battle cry.
Another roar answered his, as loud as the crushing of boulders.
Then the Manethrall crashed into her from the side; drove her staggering through the stream to collide heavily with the bank of the watercourse.
At once, her power collapsed. The breath and stench were driven from her lungs: she nearly lost her grasp on the Staff. In the sudden cessation of flame, night closed like a tomb over the forest. Only the fangs of the skurj still shone, gaping for prey.
Linden twisted to the side. She clutched for Covenant’s ring.
Between her and the monster’s maw, she saw in silhouette the mighty form of a Giant. Limned by rows of ravenous burning, he advanced on her with his arms raised over his head. In his hands, he gripped a longsword taller than she was, a wave-bladed flamberge.
We are not alone. Others also are lost.
The Giant’s features were a contorted yammer of rage and insanity as he swung his sword, trying to hack Linden in half.
9. The Long Journey of the Lost
Stunned by her impact with the bank of the watercourse, Linden could not breathe. She had no capacity for power. Every Giant whom she had ever known had been her friend: bluff, kindly, humorous, extravagant of heart. Some of them she had loved. She would have felt a rush of joy if she had heard that those sea-and stone-loving people had returned to the Land.
The figure looming over her with butchery in his hands was unmistakably a Giant. He was at least twice her height, twice as broad, and muscled like an oak. His weathered features looked like they had been chiseled from brown marble. Even the cropped cut of his beard might have been shaped stone.
Yet he could not have belonged to the race that had called the people of the Land “Rockbrother” and “Rocksister” in friendship and mirth. She had seen Giants in every extreme of desperation and agony, outrage and sorrow, yearning and fear, as well as in affection and laughter and comradeship; but she had never seen one raving with madness, or frantic for bloodshed.
She could not save herself. The wave-lined blade of his longsword plunged toward her: it would hit with the force of a guillotine. Her shocked heart would not have time to beat again.
When Mahrtiir had knocked her aside, he had fallen with her. But he had rebounded to his feet in the same motion. More swift than she would ever be, he confronted the Giant, gripping his garrote between his fists. Eyeless and human, he may nonetheless have hoped to loop his cord over the flamberge, alter its arc.
The sword was sharp iron: it would sever the garrote as though the Manethrall and his weapon did not exist.
But Stave was faster than the Manethrall—and far stronger. Cartwheeling past Mahrtiir, he intercepted the Giant’s blow with his feet; slammed his heels against the vicious plummet of the Giant’s hands.
Deflected, the longsword hammered into the earth a hand span from Linden’s shoulder.
The Giant’s might buried his blade halfway to its hilt. Raging, he snatched it back to strike again.
Stave landed on his feet. At once, he leapt at the Giant’s arms, trying to pin them together; hamper the Giant’s next blow.
The Giant jerked him into the air as if he were a trivial encumbrance.
In that instant, the skurj surged forward. It sank its fangs into the Giant’s shoulder.
All light vanished as the terrible jaws closed. Linden sensed rather than saw the beast heave the Giant upward and shake him, driving its bite deeper.
She felt Stave spring clear; felt Mahrtiir search eyelessly for an opening in which he could use his garrote.
She heard the Giant howl—
—in fury: not in pain.
Now she discerned that he was armored in stone. He wore a cataphract of granite slabs which had been fused together by some Giantish lore. Briefly the stone protected him.
But the skurj fed on earth and rock: it chewed through the armor. Cruel curved fiery teeth searched for flesh and muscle and bone. In spite of the Giant’s tremendous strength, his entire arm would be torn away.
Still his screams were rage rather than excruciation.
He had just tried to kill Linden. But he was a Giant, a Giant. Instinctively she scrambled upright to defend him. Wielding the Staff with both hands, she hurled a frantic yell of flame at the creature.
In the sudden blaze of Earthpower, its multiplied fire reflecting from the stream’s turmoil, she saw the jungle along the eastern edge of the watercourse erupt with Giants.
They arrived too abruptly to be counted. Linden recognized only that they were all women; that they, too, wore stone armor and brandished longswords; and that Galt was among them.
They attacked like an explosion.
One of them hacked with a massive stone glaive at the monster’s jaws. Some act of cunning or magic had hardened the sword. A single blow cut the mad Giant free. Ruddy horror splashed from the exposed fangs.
Another woman slashed iron through the thick hide of the skurj, spilling viscid blood that reeked of rot and disease. Then she plunged her fist into the wound—into the living magma—as if she sought to rip out the creature’s heart. The monster’s heat tore a shout of pain from her throat; but she did not withdraw.
A third Giant chopped at the beast’s body where it emerged from the ground as if she were trying to fell a tree.
Dumbfounded, Linden remembered that Giants could endure fire, even lava—at least for a short time. In their caamora, their ritual of grief, they purged sorrow by immersing their flesh in flames and anguish.
By that means, Covenant had released the Dead of The Grieve. Saltheart Foamfollower had enabled him to cross over Hotash Slay.
Nevertheless she snatched back her own blaze so that it would not interfere with the creature’s assailants.
When the skurj dropped the raving Giant, he rolled to his feet. Swinging his flamberge, he charged at Linden again.
Only Mahrtiir stood between her and the shaped blade.
By the light of the Staff, she saw the Giant clearly. Flagrant lunacy gripped his features like a rictus: his desire for her death burned in his eyes. And some time ago—a year or more—his face had suffered an edged wound. A deep, scarred dent crossed his visage from above his left eye and over the bridge of his nose into his right cheek. It gave him a crumpled look, as though the bones of his skull had tried to fold in on themselves.
He was no more than two quick strides from her, near enough to have slain Mahrtiir if he had noticed the Manethrall, when one of the women clubbed at his temple with th
e pommel of her longsword. At the same time, Stave kicked a leg out from under him. He fell so heavily that the ground lurched.
He tried to rise, still gripping his flamberge. But the Giant who had struck him stamped her foot down on his blade; and another woman pounced at him, landing with her knees on his back.
A heartbeat later, the Giant who had freed him from the skurj joined her companions. Like him—like all of the Giants—she wore armor of stone. Dropping her glaive, she reached under her cataphract and drew out two sets of iron shackles. With the help of the other women, she forced his arms behind him and secured his wrists together. Then she fettered his ankles.
As soon as he was bound, his captors jumped back. He hauled his knees under him, heaved himself upright, surged to his feet. Without hesitation, he charged at Linden again as if he meant to kill her with his teeth; bite open her throat.
Grimly the Giant who had shackled him punched him in the center of his forehead.
Her blow stopped him; may have stunned him: it seemed to alter his rage. His roar became urgent gasping. “Slay her!” he pleaded hugely. “Are you blind? Are you fools? Slay her!”
He did not appear to be aware of his damaged shoulder.
Muttering bitterly, one of the other women jammed a rock into his mouth to gag him. Then she pulled back his head and pushed down on his shoulders, forcing him to his knees.
The Giant hacking at the creature’s trunk had nearly cut through it; but still the skurj fought, flinging fetid gouts of blood in all directions. Its fangs flared murderously despite its maimed jaw. Where its blood struck armor, the sick fluid frothed and fumed, but did not corrode the stone.
Other Giants slashed at the monster. However, they did not press their attacks. Instead they distracted the beast so that it did not turn its teeth against the woman who had thrust her arm into its viscera. Her shout had thickened to a strangled snarl of pain, but she continued to grope inside the skurj, trying to grasp some unimaginable vital organ.
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