The Runes of the Earth

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  How had they grown so frail?

  They were caked in dust, but the blood which had marred her right palm was gone. Like her other wounds, the cut she had inflicted on herself had been healed. Even the blood had been scoured away. Still the sight of her hands disturbed her. Something was wrong with them.

  She was too tired to think.

  She had lost Anele.

  Surely he was around here somewhere? She had saved herself. Surely she had done the same for him?

  Vaguely she lifted her eyes to the cerulean expanse of the sky. Northward only the crests of the hills defined the horizon, their slopes blurred by trees and brush. Behind her, however, mountains lambent with sunlight piled into the heavens. The more distant peaks held snow.

  When she glanced back down at her cut palm, she realized that she could not discern whether it had healed cleanly. She could not tell whether the nerves were whole, or the tendons. If blood flowed in the veins, it lay beneath the reach of her perceptions.

  From the Watch, she had not been able to see the ground. The whole region had been covered by a smog of wrongness. Now nothing obscured her view in any direction. Yet the sun shining down on her had lost its impression of beatitude. It might have been any sun in any world.

  Suddenly frightened, she dropped her hands to the stone edges under her, probed their rough planes with her fingers—and felt only cool stone, superficial and crude; mute; lifeless.

  The Land’s yellow cerements had vanished—

  —taking her health-sense with them. She had lost her sensitivity to the Land’s rich vitality and substance. A remnant of her percipience had endured after she had regained consciousness: now it was gone.

  Goaded by new fears, she forced herself to her feet, standing awkwardly on the broken stones so that she could search for Anele.

  The rubble covered the hillside where it had fallen. Above her, massive fragments of granite balanced precariously on other stones of all sizes. She had not felt Anele slip away. For all she knew, wild magic had burned out his life. Or he might have been crushed under the jagged menhirs around her.

  He was all she had.

  But then, ten or fifteen paces above her on the slope, she spotted a hand clutching at the stone as if it groped for help.

  Without her health-sense, she could only see its surface; could discern nothing about the body to which it belonged. Yet it moved. The fingers searched feebly at the rocks.

  In a rush, Linden scrambled toward it.

  She was weak, and haste made her careless. She slipped repeatedly on the treacherous rubble, fell; caught herself and climbed again, panting with urgency. Without her boots and jeans, she would have scraped her legs raw; but she took no notice.

  When she reached the stone where the hand clutched, she found Anele among the wreckage behind it.

  He lay on his back, blind eyes staring whitely upward. With both hands he clawed vaguely at the granite as if he sought to dig his way out of a grave. His breath labored painfully through his filthy beard.

  “Anele,” she gasped thinly. Bending over him, she tried to force her senses into him; tried to see beyond the surface of his seamed, unwashed skin. But of the madness and Earthpower which had defined him earlier she caught no glimpse. He was closed to her now.

  Oh, God. She did not understand.

  A moment of sharp grief overtook her, and her vision blurred as she mourned the loss of her health-sense. For her, the beauty had gone out of the world. And she had tasted it so briefly—

  During her previous time in the Land, percipience had exposed her to evils against which she had no armor and no weapons. The Sunbane and samadhi Raver had nearly shattered her spirit. Nevertheless she had learned to treasure such discernment. It had shed light into beauty as well as evil. It had enabled her to understand why Covenant loved the Land. It had taught her to view healing in a new way, less as a repudiation of death and more as an affirmation of life. And it had given her purpose, a reason to continue striving when her burdens, and Covenant’s, and the Land’s, seemed more than she could bear.

  A Raver had told her, You are being forged as iron is forged to achieve the ruin of the Earth. You have been chosen, Linden Avery, because you can see. But Lord Foul had misjudged her. Because she could see, she had learned to loathe and oppose him. In the end, her health-sense had made her effective against the Sunbane.

  She had lived without it for ten years now, but she treasured it still. For a while, the loss of it rent her heart.

  However, she had no time for grief. The hole in her shirt and the scar on her chest changed nothing. She needed answers; understanding. And she hungered for companionship. Therefore she needed Anele.

  She repeated his name more strongly. “Can you hear me? Are you all right?”

  He jerked as though she had slapped him. “You!” For a moment he rubbed at his eyes as if he wanted to force his blindness aside. Then he rolled over and lurched upright. “You are here.” Coughing at the dust in his throat, he leaned against the boulder behind which he had lain, braced his feet on a canted shelf of stone. “I did not delude myself. You have saved me.”

  Before she could respond, he fumbled toward her. Instinctively she reached out to help him. One of his hands found her arm, gripped it hard. With the other, he reached up to explore her face as if he thought that he might recognize her by touch.

  In spite of herself, Linden flinched. But the old man held her.

  “The Law of Death was broken,” he murmured, apparently speaking to himself while his fingertips traced her expression, “long ago.” He held his head cocked to one side, considering her eyelessly. “The Law of Life was sundered in Andelain. Such things are possible.”

  She stared at him, baffled at first by the change in his manner. The angle of his head suggested a derangement of some kind. Yet his madness had apparently passed with the smog. He sounded sane now, in possession of himself.

  Capable of answers.

  “I’m Linden,” she told him at once. “Linden Avery. I just got here. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of me. I don’t know what’s going on. But I—”

  Abruptly he dropped his hand. With one trembling finger, he pointed at Covenant’s ring hanging outside her shirt.

  “And you have power. That is well. You will have need of it.”

  His words disturbed her as if they had been pronounced by an oracle. He had become strangely knowledgeable since the collapse of the Watch. She did not know how to approach him.

  “I was worried,” she responded awkwardly as she slipped the ring back under her shirt. “You disappeared while we were falling. I was afraid you were dead.”

  He cocked his head farther. “I feared you. You might have been—” He shuddered; and with his free hand he rubbed the top of his head roughly. “The folk of this region are kindly toward me. Kevin’s Dirt blinds them, and they cannot see me. Upon occasion they grant me food and shelter. But they are not blinded. If any Master came upon me, I would be taken and doomed. Therefore I did not seek you out.”

  Cautious with him, Linden did not ask him to explain who they were. That question could wait. First she needed to know more about his mental state; his apparent recovery. Gently she inquired, “ ‘Kevin’s Dirt’? What’s that?”

  In spite of her care, he winced. Suddenly impatient, he demanded, “You have beheld it, have you not? From the Watch? An evil which concealed all the Land? That is Kevin’s Dirt.”

  “Yes, of course,” she replied, confused. “A dirty yellow cloud, like smog. But it’s gone now.”

  Anele snorted. “It is not. You are merely blind.”

  Floundering, she said, “I don’t understand.”

  With a jerk, he cocked his head over to the other side. “Do you behold me now? Do you discern what I am?”

  “Of course—” she began, then stopped herself. “Not the way I did,” she admitted. There the distortion of his mind, and the Earthpower in his veins, had been plain to her. Now she could not detect t
hem.

  “You are blind,” he repeated scornfully. “Kevin’s Dirt blinds you. On the Watch you stood above it. It could not affect you. Now—” He smacked his lips as if in disdain or regret. “You are unaware of it because it blinds you. You do not see me. Only the Masters—”

  Abruptly he tightened his grip on her forearm. Without transition, his manner became fearful. “Do they come?” he whispered. “I have no sight, and their stealth exceeds my hearing.”

  Although he could not watch her, Linden made a show of looking around the hillsides, studying the slope of rubble. “I don’t see anyone. We’re alone, at least for now.”

  Anele clutched at her with both hands. “They will come.” His voice shook. “You must protect me.”

  That was the opening she needed. Taking him by the shoulders, she held him firmly. “I will. I’ve already promised that. And I’ve kept you alive so far. No one will hurt you, or trap you, while I can do anything about it.”

  Slowly his features relaxed. “From the breaking of the Watch,” he responded softly, “yes. With power. Such things are possible.” He released a low sigh. “I have failed my power. It was given into my hands, but I have betrayed that trust.”

  His Earthpower? Linden wondered obliquely. Had “Kevin’s Dirt” deprived him of his nature, as it had blinded her health-sense? Or did he refer to something else?

  But she did not pursue such questions. Instead she broached her own needs. “That’s right,” she began. “I saved you. Now you can help me.

  “Anele, I’m a stranger. I was here once before, but that was a very long time ago. Now everything has changed.” She appealed to him as she had so often appealed to her patients, asking them for hints to guide their treatment. “You have to understand that I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know anything about Kevin’s Dirt, or Masters, or that sick aura—”

  “The caesure,” he offered helpfully. If his eyes had been whole, they might have been as bright as a bird’s.

  Linden nodded. “All right, that caesure. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what it does,” except cause harm and dread. “I can’t even imagine what Lord Foul is trying to accomplish—”

  At the Despiser’s name, Anele winced again. Shrugging her hands away, he crouched against the stone. His head turned fearfully from side to side: he might have been trying to locate a threat.

  “The Grey Slayer,” he breathed. “Maker of Desecration. He seeks to destroy me. He sends his caesures to achieve ruin. Kevin’s Dirt blinds the Land. The Masters name him their foe, yet they serve him and know it not.”

  “Anele.” Linden stooped to his side, sure now that he was still mad. “I said I would protect you.” She did not believe for a moment that the Despiser’s caesures were aimed at him. “You know how powerful I am.”

  Carefully she touched him again, stroked his shoulder, hoping to convince his nerves, if not his faulty mind, that he was safe with her.

  “But Lord Foul has taken my son. My son, Anele.” This old man had once been someone’s son, cherished as she cherished Jeremiah. If he could remember—“I have to get him back.”

  For Jeremiah’s sake, she risked saying, “That means I have to find the Despiser.”

  Anele did not respond. She could not be sure that he had understood her. Nevertheless some of the tension in his shoulder eased.

  “I don’t know how to do that.” She took a deep breath and held it for a moment to steady herself. “I have a white gold ring. I have power. But I can’t help my son if I don’t know where Lord Foul is. I can’t even imagine where to look.

  “Anele, I need answers. I need you to answer my questions.”

  Still the old man did not speak. However, he appeared to be considering her words. She fell silent herself, trusting her hand on his shoulder to communicate what she could not.

  After a while, he shifted so that he could sit with his back to the stone. His scrawny legs sprawled pitifully in front of him. His feet were twisted and scarred, gnarled with old injuries and calluses. He must have lived without the benefit of sandals for many long years.

  At last he said, “You have a son.” His voice was a forlorn sigh, filled with decades of bereavement and suffering. “His birthright has been torn from him. Mine I have lost. I am not worthy of protection. I live only because I am the Land’s last hope.

  “Ask your questions. I will attempt to answer.”

  Oh, Anele. His reply caught at Linden’s heart. The last hope? Was that possible?

  What had happened to him? How had he been so badly damaged?

  Still striving for caution, she asked in a musing tone, “ ‘Kevin’s Dirt.’ Why is it called that?”

  He leaned his head to the other side and looked around, apparently searching for an explanation. “These stones do not know,” he replied gruffly. “Kevin Landwaster they know, the last of the Old Lords. The Ritual of Desecration is written within them. But Kevin’s Dirt is a human name. It is too recent to be discerned here.”

  Linden did not understand. She was too tired; and the mounting ache of her many bruises confused her. She, too, had known the High Lord. Kevin’s shade had accosted her in Andelain, trying to persuade her to turn against Thomas Covenant. The dead Lord had believed that Covenant’s intentions would damn the Land.

  His tormented spirit had been difficult to refuse. He was familiar with despair; as familiar as Linden herself. Yet in the end she had set her doubts aside to join Covenant against the Despiser.

  Kevin’s Dirt. It was not a good omen that Lord Foul’s blinding shroud had been named for the man who had helped perform the Ritual of Desecration.

  While Linden tried to comprehend Anele’s response, the old man continued to study the shattered rocks blindly. After a while, he asked, “Are you content? I must not remain here. They will discover me.”

  She made an attempt to go on. “How long—” But her throat closed, choked by auguries and dust. She had to swallow several times before she could ask, “How long has the Dirt been up there?”

  Her companion shrugged. “Twenty-five score years? Fifty score? The bones of the Earth do not regard such details.”

  “And these caesures?” she pursued. “Have they been around that long?”

  He shook his head. “I read nothing certainly. It appears that they have hunted the Land for perhaps five score years. No more than that, I judge.”

  “And you?” Linden asked. “How old are you?”

  Anele sagged as though her question diminished him. “The stones do not know.” An undercurrent of bitterness ran beneath the surface of his tone. “I also am too recent. And I cannot answer you. My recall is disturbed. Have my parents perished? Did I receive my birthright from their failing hands?” He sighed again. “I am uncertain.”

  The more he spoke, the more confused he seemed.

  “But you said the caesures hunt for you,” she objected. “If they’ve been around for a hundred years, they must have appeared before you were born. You aren’t that old.”

  “Did I? It may be that I did.” By degrees, his bitterness lapsed into mourning. “My mind wanders betimes.

  “Certainly they did not threaten the Land when I was born.” His head fell further to the side as if he lacked the strength to hold it up. “Yet I cannot be so aged. I have been harried beyond endurance, lost and alone, footsore and battered and hungry to the marrow of my bones. It is not possible that I have lived so long. My flesh could not have borne it.”

  Softly he finished, “The caesures do not desire me. I am scant threat to the Grey Slayer. Yet I fear them utterly. If they take me, I am doomed and damned.”

  As Anele spoke, Linden’s frustration grew. He had been born before the caesures began, yet they were older? Impossible. Clearly she could not trust his apparent sanity. His mind existed in fragments dissociated from each other, and he had lost the ability to combine them into a coherent whole.

  Pausing to gather her resolve, she gazed around at the rocks and hillsides
. If or when someone came to investigate the collapse of Kevin’s Watch, she did not want to be taken by surprise. Then she returned her attention to Anele.

  “What do they do,” she asked, “these caesures?”

  “They sever,” he answered. “Dislocate. I cannot name it. Five score years is too short a time. These stones do not speak of it plainly.”

  Sever? Dislocate? Vexation tugged at her restraint. With an effort, she fought it down. “The stones speak to you? You can read them?”

  In spite of Kevin’s Dirt? Did his inherent Earthpower give him that discernment?

  He turned to face her squarely. His white eyes regarded her like closed shutters, concealing the strange rooms of his mind. “Look about you,” he said with a touch of his former impatience. “The truth is visible here.”

  Ah, visible, she groaned to herself. To him, perhaps: not to her. In crucial ways, she was as blind as her companion. And she felt so weak—She had eaten nothing for several hours; drunk nothing. And since then she had been stretched to her limits.

  She only continued questioning Anele because she could not imagine where she might find food or water.

  “All right,” she murmured. “You already know I can’t see whatever is in the rocks.” She had never been a woman who could read stone. “Never mind that. Earlier you said the Law of Death was broken. And the Law of Life. What did you mean?”

  “Only what all folk know.” His air of impatience grew as he answered: he may have felt as frustrated as she did. As if he were reciting part of a liturgy, he intoned, “High Lord Elena wrested Kevin Landwaster from beyond death. She drank the Blood of the Earth and coerced him with the Power of Command. Thus was the boundary which distinguishes the end of life made fragile. In her folly, she violated the Law of Death.”

  Linden had heard such things from Thomas Covenant.

  But then Anele faltered. “The Law of Life—” For a moment, he fell silent, angrily slapping the top of his head with both hands. Next he rubbed his face roughly. “Do I read or remember? Nothing is certain, nothing sure. Have I heard a tale? Do the stones remember?” His impatience vanished, engulfed in sorrow. “The fault is mine. All this”—he gestured wildly around him—“Kevin’s Dirt and caesures, the Masters and the dread fire of the skurj. All the Land’s pain. The fault is mine.”