The Runes of the Earth

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Homes which had been left empty? She frowned to herself. It made no sense. Why would any foe wish to damage empty dwellings?

  “I considered your need for escape,” Liand continued, “and my desire to aid you. Then I stole away. Leaving the Masters and my people to regard the storm, I hastened to the stables for a mount. Gathering all that I could to assist your flight, I rode in search of you.”

  Linden studied him, trying to understand. “All right. I get that.” She could read the nature of his emotions readily enough, but not their content, their causes. “But why did you head south?”

  He had found her too easily.

  The Stonedownor shrugged. “You had no mount. If you sought escape northward, the Masters would shortly ride you down, and no aid of mine would free you.

  “Also,” he added a bit sheepishly, “the storm lay there, and I feared to hazard it.”

  Perhaps his reply should have eased her anxiety. The Haruchai might not reason as he did. Surely they did not remember her as a woman who fled from eldritch storms?

  Yet her trepidation increased as she considered the young man. The Masters had deprived him of a kind of birthright: he lived in the Land, but knew nothing of its power or peril. His desire to join her would have consequences beyond his comprehension.

  Gritting her courage, she placed one hand like an appeal, a hint of exigency, on his thigh.

  “That’s not enough, Liand. You still haven’t answered my question. Not really. Mithil Stonedown is your home.” It was all he had ever known. “Everyone and everything you’ve ever cared about is there. Why do you want to risk all that for me?”

  He did not hesitate. To this extent, at least, he was prepared for her questions.

  “Linden Avery,” he replied gravely, “I might answer that I find no satisfaction in the life of my home. I sense the greatness of the Land, but I know nothing of it, and I crave such knowledge.

  “Or I might answer that I mistrust the Masters, for it is plain that their knowledge is great, yet they reveal nothing.

  “Or I might answer that I have no family or attachments to hold me.” His tone hinted at loneliness. “My father and mother had no other children, and both have fallen to time and mischance in recent years. Nor have I found other loves to fill their place in my heart.”

  Again he looked away. When he faced Linden once more, his yearning had found its way to the surface. Stiffly he told her, “I might well answer so, for it is sooth.” Then he appeared to lose resolve. Ducking his head, he murmured awkwardly, “Yet there is another truth, of which I do not presume to speak.”

  She nearly turned away from his discomfort. It was too obvious: his open nature held no concealment. And she could so easily have let the matter drop—

  Yet she did not release him, in spite of his vulnerability. She had her own qualms, her own conscience: she could not set them aside merely to gain aid from a man who could not imagine what his assistance might cost him.

  Roughly she knotted her fingers in the rough wool of his leggings. “I’m sorry. That’s still not enough. You have friends and neighbors who feel the same way, you must have, but they aren’t here. I need to hear the rest.

  “I can see it in you. I just don’t know what it means.”

  Liand appeared to groan inwardly. However, it was not in his nature to refuse her probing, regardless of his own unease. And he had a palpable courage which enabled him to tell the truth.

  “In my life,” he said, “I have beheld wonders.” The words seemed to come slowly from deep within him. “Linden Avery, you are one. The storm which provided for your escape is another. The Falls are both wondrous and dire. And the sight from Kevin’s Watch of the shroud which blinds the Land fills my dreams with fear.

  “But it is the memory of the strange being whom the Masters named Elohim which impels me to your side. His words are a knell within me, though I was but a child when I heard them.

  “All that he said lies beyond my ken. Yet I comprehend clearly that he has prophesied our doom. And I grasp also that he did not speak only of Mithil Stonedown. His words pronounced the destruction of the Land.”

  The angle of the sunlight filled Liand’s eyes with shadows as he gazed down at Linden. “I am as I appear to be, merely a young man among my people. But I have seen that the Land is lovely. I wish to defend it. And if I am too small for so great a task, still I will not be content until I have learned the name of our doom.”

  Now he did not look away. She wished that he would. His undefended innocence wrung her heart, and she did not want to witness his reaction when she answered him.

  Quietly, almost whispering, she said, “Liand, listen to me.” Her fingers tugged at his leggings of their own accord, urging him to understand her. “I can’t let you help me unless you hear what I have to say.

  “You called me a wonder, but there’s nothing wonderful about me. I love the Land. I love my son.” In spite of her bereavement, she loved Thomas Covenant. “I try to keep my promises. And I’m carrying a power I don’t know how to use. That’s all there is.”

  Grimly she spared herself nothing. “But it’s worse than that. In my own life, I’m already dead.

  “Do you see this?” Releasing his leg, she used both hands to show him her shirt. “It’s a bullet hole. I was shot through the chest. I’m only alive because this is the Land.”

  Because she had healed herself. And because Joan had summoned her.

  Liand stared at her, plainly unable to grasp what her assertions entailed.

  “On top of that, it looks like the whole Land is against me. The Masters don’t mean me any harm, but they’re deaf to everything I care about.” The weight of her concerns grew as she listed them. “You’ve seen Kevin’s Dirt. You know the caesures, the Falls. There are kresh and Elohim and Sandgorgons and Ravers.” Anele had mentioned skurj, whatever they might be. “There are at least two lunatics with too much power,” Roger and Joan. “And there’s Lord Foul, who has my son.

  “Do you want to know the name of your doom? Do you really? It’s the Despiser. He’s trying to destroy the entire Earth.”

  The mere act of speaking such words seemed to bring the peril nearer. Yet she could not stop. Liand needed to know what he risked in her company.

  “And as if all of that weren’t enough, the Staff of Law has been lost. It’s the only weapon I know of against Kevin’s Dirt and the Falls, and it disappeared after only a couple of generations. I need it back, but I have no earthly idea where to look.”

  Raising her hands, she clenched them into fists between her and the Stonedownor as if to fight off his growing chagrin.

  “Do you think the Land is bigger than the Masters have ever told you? Do you think the danger is more terrible than anything you’ve ever imagined? You have no idea. Men with the power of gods could scarcely stand against what Lord Foul is doing, and I can’t begin to compare myself with them.

  “I need your help, Liand. That’s painfully obvious. I’ll be glad for your company. But if you’ve got some confused notion that all we have to do is escape the Masters, you should go home now. They are the least of our problems.” Absolutely the least. “If you come with me, I can’t promise you anything except anguish and death.”

  There she stopped, shaken by the danger of what she had said. If Liand chose to turn away now—as he should—she would have nothing except Covenant’s ring and her failing health-sense and Anele’s fractured guidance to aid her.

  But she had struck a spark of anger in the young man. He glared at her, squaring his shoulders and straightening his back until he appeared to tower over her, bright with sunshine.

  “Linden Avery,” he retorted sternly, “have you not said that you sojourned to Mithil Stonedown once before, in years long past? At that time, did it appear to you that the folk of my home were careless of their word, or lightly swayed from the path of their convictions and desires?”

  She shook her head helplessly, remembering Sunder with rue and admirati
on. The Graveler she had known had held fast to all his choices, regardless of their consequences. Without him, she and Covenant would not have survived—

  “If they did,” Liand went on, “then we have come far from that time, and do not regret what we have become.” Every upright line of his frame seemed to reproach her. “I am not so flighty of heart that I would recant my wish to aid you merely because the peril is great. I do not merit your doubt. And I will not abandon you.”

  Linden bowed her head to hide her sudden tears. His unexpected dignity made him impossible to contradict. And she saw now, without warning, that he was taking the same stand that she had taken ten years ago, when she had involved herself in Covenant’s ordeal with Joan. Covenant had warned her in the simplest and most honest terms, You don’t know what’s going on here. You couldn’t possibly understand it. And you didn’t choose it. But she, too, had refused to be dissuaded.

  She had paid a high price for her intransigence. Yet she had learned to regret none of it. Even her time in Revelstone, when samadhi Raver had touched her soul with evil, had proven to be worth the cost.

  She had neither the foresight nor the wisdom to assure Liand that he was wrong now.

  Blinking her eyes clear, she looked up at him again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way. I don’t doubt your honesty—or your word. I can see the kind of man you are. I’m just trying to be honest myself.

  “I’ve been where you are. I met a man who needed help. I wanted to help him,” needed to help him. “And I could never have imagined what I was getting into. If I’d known how bad it was going to be, I don’t think I could have done it.

  “But I wouldn’t be who I am now if I hadn’t refused to abandon him.”

  As she spoke, the young man’s indignation eased. The way his shoulders relaxed told her that he accepted her apology. “I hear you, Linden Avery,” he replied firmly. “I am content to aid you.”

  “Good,” she repeated with more conviction. “In that case, we should go. I’ve already wasted too much time.”

  They might make better progress while Anele slept. She could not predict how he might react when he awakened.

  Liand nodded his agreement. With his heels, he nudged Somo into motion.

  Now they will hunt you down—

  Summoning her reserves, Linden trotted at his side as he began to angle across the hillside toward higher ground.

  8.

  Into the Mountains

  At first the climb was not arduous. The slopes had not yet swelled to true foothills, and Liand ascended them at a slant, aiming for the head of the valley. Nevertheless the joy of the Land’s health and vitality continued to fade from Linden’s muscles, and she began laboring to match his pace. Hurtloam had healed her, but it could not give her stamina. Inevitably her new strength diminished.

  Before long, however, as she and her companions rounded a hilltop on their way to the next rise, something ahead of her tugged at her senses; and when she looked toward it, she saw a clump of aliantha.

  No wonder she loved the Land. Its providence delighted her.

  Without urging, Liand guided his mount toward the low shrubs.

  They had twisted limbs and dark green leaves shaped like a holly’s; and beneath the leaves grew clusters of viridian fruit the size of blueberries. Under the Sunbane, she had never found more than a single bush in any one place, but here they had proliferated into a group of six or eight. Perennial and hardy, and resistant to all Lord Foul’s depredations, they produced treasure-berries in every season, even during the winter—or so Covenant had once told her.

  When she and her companions reached the clump, Liand might have dismounted; but Linden asked him to remain where he was so that he would not disturb Anele. The old man’s need for rest was as palpable as an ache. Gathering berries eagerly, she handed some to Liand, then placed several in her mouth.

  They tasted like a gift, the distilled essence of the Land’s natural beneficence: light and sweet, with a flavor of peach followed by a refreshing suggestion of salt and lime. Her whole body seemed to sing with appreciation as their savor and juice washed the strain from her throat.

  One by one, she dropped the seeds into her hand and cast them around the grassy slope as she had been taught, so that more aliantha would grow to nourish the Land. And from the pinto’s back, Liand did the same. Seeing him do so comforted her. Apparently his people had retained that aspect of their birthright, whatever else they may have lost.

  At another time, she might have wished to linger here, relishing the taste of the berries. But the certainty that the Haruchai would come after her rode her pulse as if her heartbeats were the rhythm of feet and hooves. And when she looked back down the valley, she saw the thunderheads over Liand’s home dissipating at last, their violence expended. The search for her, and for Anele, would begin soon—if it had not already commenced.

  Leaving some of the treasure-berries behind for others who might need them, Linden and Liand resumed their flight.

  Now the terrain piled upward more strenuously, accumulating toward the heights. Liand’s path had temporarily diverged from the watercourse; but Linden measured their progress by watching how the mountains towered ever more grandly over them, single peaks and massifs jutting urgently into the heavens. Ahead of her, the Mithil’s Plunge loomed until it seemed to pour from the heart of the range, bearing the private thunder of mountains in its writhen turmoil.

  She could see no sign of any path behind the Plunge. Already the roar of the water seemed to barricade the way against her.

  And when she reached it, what then? Behind the fall: across the more obdurate foothills beyond it to the steep fan of scree: up that precarious slope to the concealment of the rift. And what then? She had no clear plans. In a general sense, she proposed to work her way eastward among the mountains until she could regain the Land somewhere beyond the remains of Kevin’s Watch. Then, if she had baffled the pursuit of the Masters, she might head toward Andelain, hoping to find an unspecified form of insight or support.

  The vagueness of her intentions frustrated her. But what else could she do? Liand knew only Mithil Stonedown and its environs; nothing about the larger issues of the Land. And anything that Anele might comprehend was masked by madness.

  She wanted to find the Staff of Law; but she had no idea how to look for it. It had already eluded the meticulous searching of the Haruchai.

  Prompted as far as she knew by nothing but prescience, Jeremiah had constructed images of Mount Thunder and Revelstone in her living room. Perhaps he had meant them as hints; guidance. But she did not know how to interpret them.

  Then a tug of the breeze brought spray to her cheeks; and when she looked up into the water’s buffeting roar, she saw that she and her companions were approaching the base of the Mithil’s Plunge.

  The cataract pounded down from its heights as though it were driven by anger as well as eagerness; as though the cold force of the peaks filled the torrents with a fury for spring and renewal. Liand shouted something to her, pointing, but she could not hear him through the tumult. Spray chilled her in spite of her exertions: her shirt had begun to stick to her skin. Looking where Liand pointed, however, she saw that the waterfall tumbled free of the cliff-face for several hundred feet before it smashed into the head of its ravine. Still she would not have imagined that a passage existed behind the Plunge if her companion had not urged her forward.

  Behind him on the mustang, Anele had awakened. As if he could see, the old man studied the waterfall intently, but he showed no alarm. Beads of moisture clung in his hair and whiskers, and sunlit sparks of reflection transformed his face as if he were being made new.

  As they ascended, the spray became as thick as rain, and the water’s tumult seem to blare away every other sound.

  A stone’s throw later, Liand dismounted; helped Anele to the ground. Panting against mist that threatened to fill her lungs, Linden climbed to join them as the Stonedownor unpacked a blanket from his
supplies and wrapped it over Somo’s eyes, protecting the pinto from panic. Then he looped the reins around his hand and pointed again. His yell barely reached her.

  “There!”

  She made no effort to see what he indicated. She felt that she had begun to suffocate, smothered as much by the water’s weight as by its roar and spray. Liand meant to lead her behind that cataract. If they allowed its force to touch any part of them, it would snatch them down, crush them to pulp.

  Unable to answer, she simply nodded and waved Liand ahead. As the young man pulled Somo into motion, she joined Anele; took his arm as if to remind him of her promise. Then she began to move toward the Plunge, forcing her way down a throat of sound.

  Anele accepted her grasp. Perhaps in his blindness he trusted her as he did Liand. Or perhaps he was already familiar with this passage. In his long years of hiding and fear, he might have discovered it for himself.

  Gradually Liand guided them nearer and nearer to the waterfall; but Linden did not so much as glance at it. It frightened her profoundly. Her clothes clung to her now, entirely soaked. Sodden hair straggled across her face. She had difficulty keeping her eyes clear. The complex thunder of the fall seemed to pull at her, urging her toward its touch.

  Clutching Anele as much for her own protection as for his, she followed Somo’s hooves behind the massive curtain of the Mithil’s Plunge.

  At first, she could not see: the water’s roar seemed to efface light. But then reflected illumination from the ends of the passage leaked through the spray, lifting her way out of the darkness.

  Liand led her onto a ledge in the cliff-face, wide enough to be traversed safely, but complicated with piled stones and small boulders, as well as with moisture and moss as slick as ice. She had to test her footing carefully as she moved, holding back her weight until she had confirmed that the sole of her boot would grip the next step. Constantly the water howled at her to fall, and fall, and fall again. She had entered the demesne of irrefusable forces. Reality seemed to deliquesce along her nerves, soaking into her clothes and running from her skin in rivulets, chilling her heart.