The Runes of the Earth

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Although he did not move, he seemed to rise to meet her as if her touch had evoked him in some way; called him up from an abyss to speak to her.

  “How was it possible?” he panted as if he were answering her. “I was not blind. Not deaf.” Echoes of hunger chased his words away. “I felt the wrongness of it. A thing which severed Law from Law. Yet I—

  “Why am I not slain? I do not merit life. How is it that I am permitted to continue, when I have imperiled all the Land?”

  Abruptly Somo’s hooves clattered on the plain stone. Tugged forward by Liand, the pinto came to Stave’s side and halted, blowing froth and trepidation from its nostrils. Its eyes rolled wildly. If Liand had not gripped the mustang’s reins, held them hard, Somo might have wheeled and fled into the jaws of the wolves.

  “Anele.” Urgently Linden grasped the old man’s shoulders, rolled him over so that he lay on his back. If he had truly become sane at last—“Go on. Keep talking. I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.”

  Distant howls beat about her head, resounding from the cliffs to harry her. The wolves had already swarmed halfway to her position. Any hope, however irrational, that she and her companions might outrace the pack was gone.

  Even Stave’s transcendent skill and force could not meet so many slavering predators. Liand had a Stonedownor’s bulk of muscle: he would give a good account of himself before he went down. Somo’s hooves might stop a few wolves. Nevertheless the end would be swift and savage. And soon.

  Stave’s warning no longer mattered. If Linden could not summon wild magic against the kresh, she would never help anyone again, or anything: not Anele; not Jeremiah; not the Land.

  Still she knelt beside the old man. His moonstone eyes stared at her sightlessly. He needed to talk. She knew of no other way to lance the psychic suppuration of his pain.

  Tears smeared grime into his beard, down the sides of his neck. “It seemed a small thing,” he said brokenly. “Such a small thing. Yet I have wrought such evil—”

  “Anele!” she breathed like a cry, “make sense! You’re sane now. I can feel it. For God’s sake, tell me something I can understand!”

  He must have heard her. Abruptly his attention turned to her. Although he could not see her, he gulped in surprise, “I know you. You are Linden Avery the Chosen. The Haruchai has said so. You accompanied Sunder my father as he bore the corpse of Hollian my mother into Andelain and life.”

  Linden gaped at him as though he had shocked the air from her lungs. He might have spoken in an alien tongue: she recognized each word individually, but together they conveyed no meaning.

  “That’s impossible,” she protested.

  Impossible.

  God in Heaven—

  How much time had passed since she had traveled with Sunder and Covenant into Andelain, and seen Hollian reborn? Stave could tell her, if she asked him. Millennia, certainly.

  This was Anele’s sanity?

  Now Stave stood beside her. He gazed down at the old man like a denunciation. “It cannot be,” he announced flatly. “He remains mad, though he appears sane. Do not heed him.”

  “What—?” She surged erect to confront the Haruchai. “You want me to ignore this?”

  Stave faced her steadily. He hardly seemed to blink.

  “Linden Avery, you must not harken to him. He is mad. And the kresh will soon be upon us. You must flee. If you do not, the hope of white gold will be lost to the Land. The Stonedownor and I will strive to provide for your escape.”

  When she did not move, he said in a tone like a shove, “You must flee now.”

  Compelled by his appeal, she turned to look down the slope.

  As the kresh boiled over the rubble, they moved from deep shade toward the borrowed light of the sky; and for the first time Linden saw them clearly.

  The sight staggered her.

  They were yellow, as Liand had told her, the hue of pestilence. And they were huge. God, they were huge: taller than ponies at the shoulders. A fulvous fire shone from their hot eyes, and their gaping fangs seemed to slather acid across the rocks. To her senses, their fury for death was a scream pouring ahead of them up the rift.

  They horrified her. Lord Foul drove them somehow: their ferocity was the febrile hunger of scourged animals. When they had ripped away her flesh, they might turn on each other to quench their coerced savagery.

  Yet through her dismay she heard Anele murmur, “Linden Avery the Chosen. You alone—” Tears spilled ceaselessly from his eyes, although he did not sob. “You have known those who trusted me. You alone may comprehend what I have done.”

  So saying, he altered everything.

  Instantly Linden shrugged off her shock and horror. Before all else, she was a physician; and Anele had suffered too much. She could not abandon him now: this window into his shame and pain might never open again. Somehow she had to help him unlock the bars which had closed his mind.

  When the kresh attacked, she would trust herself to repulse them with white fire. Surely the same instincts which had preserved her during the collapse of Kevin’s Watch would come to her rescue again?

  In a rush, she stooped to the old man and helped him to his feet. Then she positioned herself so that she could watch his face as well as the rising tide of kresh.

  “Tell me,” she urged him softly. “I’m listening. I won’t leave you. Tell me what happened.”

  A frown intensified Stave’s scar. For a moment, he appeared to consider the merits of simply snatching her into his arms again and running upward with her; leaving Liand and Anele to die. But then he shrugged slightly.

  Without haste or fear, he called Liand to him; readied the Stonedownor and Somo to fight for their lives.

  Liand cast Linden a look fraught with apprehension. But he showed no hesitation as he plucked a pair of stone knives from Somo’s packs and braced himself against the multiplied howling of the kresh. Events had not granted him time enough to learn regret.

  Anele clung to her with supplication on his face. Tears still ran like blood from his eyes, although he spoke more steadily.

  “This stone remembers,” he told her. “Therefore I remember. I am Anele son of Sunder and Hollian.” The child Hollian had carried in her resurrected womb. “In Mithil Stonedown I was born to them. I came to life in their care and their love.”

  It was impossible: all of it. For him, sanity was only a more profound form of madness. Nevertheless he invoked names which Linden could not ignore. In spite of the danger, she listened to him as if they stood leagues rather than moments away from the charging pack, and had no cause for fear.

  “Though they made their home in Mithil Stonedown, their concern was for all the Land.” Again Anele’s voice took on the cadences, the implied threnody, of the stone. The advance of the kresh might have ceased to exist for him. “The Staff of Law had been entrusted to them, and they knew what was required of them. Indeed, they felt no wish to shun it, for their task was one of healing, and its necessity lifted their hearts.”

  Facing him, Linden tried to estimate the speed of the wolves. How much longer could she delay before she reached for fire? She had already sacrificed any margin for failure. If Covenant’s ring did not answer immediately to her hand, she and her companions would be lost.

  Still Anele spoke as if he were oblivious to everything beyond his incomprehensible sanity.

  “I was born after the passing of the Sunbane, yet I recall its ravages, for the harm was vast, and my parents journeyed throughout the Land for many years, bearing me with them. From earliest childhood, I watched them wield the Staff for the Land’s healing. From them, I learned of love and hope and courage, and of commitment to beauty.

  “And I learned also to be astonished at them, though they did not desire to astonish me.”

  “Linden Avery,” Stave instructed distinctly, “you must not heed him. The old man is entirely mad.”

  The kresh had come so near that their fangs seemed to reflect the sick fire in their e
yes. Their massive shoulders heaved as they bounded closer: in another moment their claws might strike sparks from the rocks.

  Yet Anele was saying, “Their past you know. Ere I was born, Sunder and Hollian had already accomplished the most wonderful deeds. Knowing nothing of wild magic and true Law, they had nonetheless given themselves utterly to the Land’s redemption. So great was their love and devotion that even death did not stand against them. I would not otherwise have found life.”

  Now, Linden thought, now, and as she came to readiness her last doubts slipped away. Anele might be a demented old man, but he had known Sunder and Hollian, whom she had loved. If this were madness, she preferred it to sanity.

  In some sense, the last remnant of the One Forest had restored to Sunder his wife and unborn son.

  Holding Anele’s blind gaze as the stone held his mind, she reached into herself for argence—

  —and could not find it.

  Covenant’s ring hung inert against her sternum; uninvoked. Though her entire being cried out in mute and sudden anguish, she felt no power anywhere within her. Three times before, Covenant’s vast fire had answered her needs. Yet now, with Anele’s life, and Stave’s, and Liand’s in her hands, her desperation called up no response from the hard metal.

  The exertion of wild magic had never been a conscious choice for her. Without the guidance of her health-sense, she did not know how to transcend the constraints of her thinking mind.

  Before her dismay could find its voice, however, a concussion like the shattering of tremendous bones shook the rift, and a blackness more fathomless than ebony and midnight blossomed between the cliffs. It had the force of a great conflagration: in spite of its blackness, it shed illumination like flame, silent and blazing, and as ruddy as magma.

  At the first touch of the blast, she feared that the storm which had threatened Mithil Stonedown had found her; that ruin had begun to thunder down. For an instant, all of the cleft around her shone, etched out of shadows until every bulge and edge and cranny seemed to blaze with fire. Stave and Liand and even Somo stood erect in the blare of heat and flame as if they had been transformed.

  At once, the advance of the kresh collapsed onto itself in bestial panic. Taken unprepared, momentarily blinded, they flinched and shied away, stumbled under each other’s paws, wedged themselves between rocks. Terrified, they lashed out with fangs and claws, trying to drive back the strange violence which had fallen upon them.

  Then the red light was quenched, and darkness swept back down the rift, redoubled by the sudden cessation of fire. The wolves might have vanished: only a tumult of snarls, yelping, and fear remained to define their presence.

  Holding her breath, Linden braced herself on Anele’s voice and waited to regain her sight.

  “They loved me dearly,” he insisted as if he were deaf to the kresh, blind to fear, “Sunder and Hollian. They shared with me the glory and loveliness of the Land, which they made new from the devastations of the Sunbane.”

  Gradually the sky’s afternoon glow macerated the darkness.

  “When I came to manhood, they taught me all that they had learned of the Law and the Staff.”

  First one and then another, the kresh took form from the shadows.

  “It was always their purpose that I should inherit their task when they had grown old and weary, and they taught me with all their hearts.”

  Then a shudder seemed to run through the pack. Between one heartbeat and the next, the wolves reclaimed the scent of their prey.

  “Also they had learned much from the Haruchai, and from the far-sojourning Giants, and this as well they granted to me as my birthright.”

  Hurtling up from the rocks, the leading kresh launched themselves in pursuit again.

  Now Linden knew that she was powerless. Her hope of wild magic had failed her: she had no time to learn its use. But she also knew that she and her companions were no longer alone. She had recognized the force of that concussion. Earlier a similar force had enabled her to escape from the Masters, and had damaged only empty homes.

  Some lore-wise being or beings had fired this blackness to delay the hunt. So that help could reach her—?

  Without warning, men and women appeared among the stones as if they had reshaped themselves like Elohim from within the granite itself.

  “Alas for the Land!” groaned Anele softly. His past gripped him, and he regarded nothing else. “Loving me as they did, my parents did not understand that I had learned to be astonished.”

  Ten of them, or more: as many as twenty? Men and women, short, slim, with swift lines to their limbs and dark hair sweeping like wings about their heads. Some of them stood between Linden’s companions and the pack: others rose up among the wolves.

  Knotted in their hands they held lengths of thin rope like garrotes.

  Tears streamed from Anele’s eyes. “Returned to life in Andelain, I was born of flesh and Earthpower.”

  They were too small. None of them stood more than three hand spans taller than the kresh; and the wolves carried more weight. Bits of rope could not master fangs and claws: fewer than twenty men and women could not oppose so many of the great beasts. Yet the newcomers attacked without hesitation.

  “I knew my nature, for my own strength answered to the strength of the Staff, and all the Land sang to me of its vitality and grandeur.”

  Liquid with swiftness and precision, each man and woman flipped rope around the neck of a wolf, then leaped past it. Linden expected to see the kresh shrug off their assailants. But the newcomers used the wolves’ bulk and momentum to augment their own. Some of the beasts went down, writhing against strangulation. Others heard their own necks snap as they died.

  “Nevertheless I had been astonished beyond bearing, amazed to the core of my spirit.”

  Again the rush of the pack collapsed in turmoil. Wolves collided with each other in their frenzy to rend their assailants. They sprang to attack, and their jaws closed on fur rather than human flesh. All of the men and women disappeared under a thrashing chaos of wolves—

  “I knew beyond doubt or appeal that I could not equal the example of my parents.”

  —and reemerged riding the backs of kresh, their garrotes cutting into the necks of their ravening mounts.

  “Though I labored at emulation eternally, I would never rise to the greatness of their deeds.”

  Linden wanted to shout Stave’s name. Neither he nor Liand had moved. Liand’s inexperience might have done more harm than good; but Stave, at least, should have joined the newcomers. He was Haruchai: surely he could have slain wolves with his bare hands?

  “And in time I grew to understand that I required a different path.”

  Instead, however, the Master turned away. Striding up the exposed gutrock, he approached Linden. “Beware, Chosen!” he called through the struggle of fangs and ropes. “The evil has been roused. We are assailed!”

  With one hand, he pointed up the rift behind her.

  Behind her?

  “The wolves—!” she protested. In moments, her unexpected defenders would all be dead. Kresh would surge past the fallen to leap on Liand and Somo.

  Nevertheless Stave’s manner compelled her. Releasing Anele, she looked back over her shoulder.

  At once, the old man fell silent. Perhaps he had recognized this new threat, in spite of his blindness. Or perhaps he could not speak without Linden’s attention to anchor him.

  Down the broken slope like a wave of dark chrism flowed a compact wedge of black forms, barking to each other in guttural voices.

  They resembled creatures she had once known, the Waynhim that had defended Covenant’s quest amid the ice and cold of the Northron Climbs. Like the Waynhim, these beings had long, hairless torsos and short limbs, better formed for running on all fours than for walking upright. Pointed ears perched atop their bald heads. And they had no eyes. Instead moist gaping nostrils filled their faces above the cruel slits of their mouths.

  But these creatures were mu
ch larger than the Waynhim. Their skin was an unilluminable black, the color of obsidian and murder. And they carried knives of bitter iron: knives like fangs, with bloodred blades which seethed like vitriol.

  Their wedge seemed to concentrate their power. The creature at its tip held a short iron staff, almost a scepter, pointed like a spike at one end. With this instrument the leading creature could wield the force of the whole formation.

  The scepter seemed to splash acid over the rocks as the wedge swept downward. Its power hit hard against Linden’s last percipience; struck sparks into the sudden tinder of her fear.

  “Urviles!” Stave told her firmly. “The old evil. Against their might we cannot stand. Only wild magic may ward us.

  “You must strike down the loremaster. There”—he pointed again—“at the focus of the wedge. Otherwise we perish, and the Ramen with us.”

  Ramen—? she wondered dumbly. Had she heard that name before?

  She had seen ur-viles: she recognized them now. Long ago, they had turned against Lord Foul and been punished by the Sunbane. With Sunder and Hollian, she and Covenant had been attacked by a horde of them made monstrous and insane. They had caused Hollian’s death. Indirectly, they were responsible for her resurrection—and Anele’s.

  Yet these creatures were not monstrous. Dire though they seemed, they remained themselves: nothing had twisted their given nature.

  “I thought they were dead,” she panted. Surely Lord Foul had destroyed them all? They had betrayed him by creating Vain.

  “As we did,” Stave replied. “We cannot account for them. We know only that they are Demondim-spawn, servants of Corruption.

  “Chosen, you must strike at them while you may.”

  Like Anele—if the old man spoke the truth—they did not belong here. Somehow they had appeared out of time.