The Runes of the Earth

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “Chosen,” Stave put in impassively. “The Ramen do not hear you.”

  What—?

  “Indeed,” Liand confirmed acidly. “They have gone ahead. The Master’s words have driven them away.”

  Linden gaped into the black mass of ur-viles, trying to see past them. “Why?” She was blind in the shrouded rift. “What are they doing?”

  She could not believe that the Ramen had forsaken her.

  “I do not know,” Stave answered. “Their purposes are hidden.”

  “Yet if they do not guide us,” Liand muttered, “we cannot escape this place. We do not know the way.”

  Linden turned from the innominate threat of the ur-viles.

  “Stave, I don’t understand you.” He was no more than a vague shape in the night: indistinct; beyond persuasion. “They saved our lives. You acted like you respect them. You even compromised with them, which is more than you’ve been willing to do for me. And now you want to pick a fight?”

  Darkness and cold made the aid of the Ramen essential.

  If Stave felt endangered by the ur-viles, his tone did not show it. “Linden Avery, you do not accept us. For that reason, perhaps, you are quick to place faith in these Ramen, though you know nothing of them. Yet I mistrust them. You should understand that I have cause.”

  He may have been asking her to take sides.

  “What cause?” she countered.

  “You have not known the Ranyhyn,” he replied. “And spoken words cannot contain their worth. They are”—he hesitated briefly—“or perhaps were among the most precious of the Land’s glories.

  “The great horses of Ra were Earthpower made flesh. Their beauty and power played no small part in the wonder which bound our ancestors to the Vow, and the Bloodguard rode them in pride and service. Their absence diminishes us. Without them, the Land is incomplete, and our care can never suffice to make it whole.”

  He paused, then continued more severely, “The Ramen were the tenders of the Ranyhyn. Perhaps they continue in that devotion. Yet where are the Ranyhyn? Why have the great horses not returned to the Plains of Ra? And why do the Ramen conceal themselves among these mountains, consorting with ur-viles and succoring madmen, when the Land is their home, and the Ranyhyn are needed?”

  Strictly he finished, “I fear Corruption’s hand upon them.”

  He had called the ur-viles a great evil. For that, also, he had cause.

  “Are you sure?” Linden demanded. “Do you see it?” The Haruchai were proof against Kevin’s Dirt, and mere night could not blind the other dimensions of health-sense.

  “I do not,” he admitted. “Yet we are the Masters of the Land, and must consider such perils.”

  “Linden.” Liand’s voice shook in the cold. “We cannot remain here. This wind will undo us. And our cloaks and blankets are with Somo, behind us. We must continue to climb, and attempt to discover the way.”

  Damn it. He was right. The Ramen had left her and her companions in an untenable position.

  For his sake, however, she said, “We’ll be all right. They haven’t abandoned us. They’ll help us when we need it.”

  Grimly she determined to try the broken slope with her own hands and feet. She had had enough of Stave. If the ur-viles did not stand in her way—

  But they continued to block her path. As she started forward, several of them began to bark more loudly. From the clotted darkness of their formation, one of them confronted her, holding an object in its hands.

  “Chosen,” Stave said: a warning.

  If she were in danger, surely he would be able to sense it?

  The ur-vile extended a blurred shape toward her. It may have been a small cup.

  Liand grabbed her arm. “Linden. No. They are ur-viles. Demondim-spawn.”

  Until this evening, he had never heard of such creatures. Like Ramen and Ranyhyn, the One Forest and Ravers, they had not existed for him even as legends.

  Linden shook off his hand. “They saved us,” she breathed.

  She had already accepted aid from Lord Foul himself.

  “And they are descendants of evil,” Liand objected. “The Master has said so.”

  Haruchai did not lie.

  Yet the ur-viles barked at her insistently. The nearest creature prodded its cup at her hands.

  Their rank, decayed odor repulsed her. It seemed to blow against her skin like the steam of a corrosive—

  —bringing another scent with it, musty and potent: an aroma compounded of dust and age and vitality.

  She knew that smell. For a moment, the memory troubled her; elusive, fraught with bloodshed and loss. Then it returned in a rush of clarity.

  The Northron Climbs and bitter cold, accompanied by Cail and Giants. A preternatural winter brought down from the north by arghuleh. And a Waynhim rhyshyshim, a gathering.

  To Linden and her companions, the Waynhim had given succor and safety; warmth and rest and food. And a dark, musty drink which had nourished them like distilled aliantha.

  “Stave,” she murmured in wonder and surprise, “that’s vitrim. They’re offering us vitrim.”

  “Vitrim?” asked Liand. “What is vitrim?”

  Stave stood beside her opposite the Stonedownor. “Are you certain? The Haruchai have not forgotten Cail’s tales of the Search for the One Tree. He spoke of vitrim. But ur-viles are not Waynhim.”

  She could have asked him to take the cup for her; sample its contents. She did not doubt that he would do so, trusting his senses and strength to protect him from any subtle poison. But she was fed up with suspicion, and already had too many enemies.

  Abruptly she opened her hands for the proffered cup.

  The ur-vile placed cold iron in her palms and stepped back, still barking. Perhaps it meant to encourage her.

  So that she would not falter, she raised the cup at once and sipped from it.

  The liquid tasted like dust and neglect: she had difficulty swallowing it. Nonetheless it seemed to fill her flesh with excitement; eagerness transformed almost instantly to sustenance as soon as it touched her stomach. With every beat of her heart, the cold lost its grip on her. The edges of the wind still drew tears from her eyes; but now they were tears of relief and possibility.

  A kind of giddiness came over her, and she nearly laughed aloud. “Here,” she said, handing the cup to Liand. “Try it. You’ll like it. If you can ignore the taste.”

  He hesitated, hampered by confusion.

  “Go on,” she told him. “Just a sip.” Rejuvenation in waves washed her weariness aside, riding the scend of her pulse. Light seemed to shine from her nerves, mapping its own life within her. Liand should have been able to discern the glow she emitted.

  Stave certainly could.

  The young man would not refuse: she knew that. He had already wandered too far beyond the boundaries of his experience, and had no one else to guide him. Cautiously he eased the iron cup to his lips and tasted its contents.

  The Master did not move or speak. Instead he faced the ur-viles as though he were carved of darkness.

  For a long moment, Liand remained motionless over the cup. Then, softly, he began to laugh: a quiet, clean sound like the sweep of a broom brushing away cobwebs and anxiety.

  “I am astonished. The savor is indeed unpleasant. I have tasted brackish water and dying mosses which were kinder to my tongue. Yet it outshines aliantha in my veins.

  “Linden Avery, I would not have believed it possible.”

  She nodded gladly; but before she could reply, the nearest ur-vile retrieved its cup, then retreated among its fellows. At once, a larger creature bearing a pointed iron rod like a jerrid stepped forward: the loremaster. Instinctively she braced herself, uncertain of the creature’s intentions.

  But the loremaster only barked at its weapon, and gradually a crimson flame flowered from its tip, blooming until it resembled the blaze of a torch. Soon the fire shed a pool of incarnadine over the broken tumble of the slope; and Linden realized that the lorema
ster meant to light the way.

  The ur-viles were still trying to help her. Spilling red illumination on all sides, the loremaster and its followers began to retreat up the rubble as if to draw her and her companions forward.

  According to Stave, they were a great evil. And they should all have died millennia ago. Lord Foul had certainly tried to destroy them. Yet, impossibly, they were here. Like Anele, they seemed to have been displaced in time. If Anele’s account of himself could be trusted—

  Linden glanced at Stave; at Liand. The Master regarded her flatly, conceding nothing. But Liand nodded. “Let us go. This vitrim warms me strangely. While its virtue endures, we would do well to escape the wind.”

  Linden faced the loremaster. “Lead the way. We’ll follow you.”

  Manethrall Hami had told her that the creatures understood human speech.

  In response, they retreated farther; and she began to climb after them, lifted over the rocks by their weird encouragement.

  Even with their help, the climb was painful and prolonged. Vitrim was not hurtloam; it gave her energy, but could not heal sore muscles or aching joints.

  Before long, her legs began to tremble, and her balance wavered in the sullen light. Nevertheless she was glad that she no longer needed Stave to carry her. She could not afford to be dependent on him.

  The ur-viles had given her more than sustenance. The illumination in her veins had enabled her to reclaim some necessary sense of herself.

  Still the ascent was arduous. Gradually she grew numb, worn down by the effort of forcing her boots upward, scraping her shins and palms over the jagged memories of the rocks, expending her given warmth and strength. Anele’s past, and the One Forest’s, ceased to pain her. The strange aid of the ur-viles lost its disturbing eloquence. As she climbed and climbed, the rift and the wind and the darkness shrank down to a splash of crimson light, a precarious tumble of stones. If anyone spoke to her, she no longer heard them.

  At some point, one of the Ramen appeared. Perhaps Hami had sent the young man back as a guide. Then the way became steeper; more perilous. Linden might have been scaling a precipice from which she could have slipped at any moment to fall for the rest of her life. But she did not slip—or her companions upheld her—and after a time the wind lost its flensing edge. Then she found herself kneeling on soil and grass instead of stone, under a fathomless expanse of stars.

  There she could walk more easily; and Liand or one of the Cords supported her when she sagged. Several Ramen accompanied her now, although the ur-viles had vanished somewhere, leaving her to darkness and starlight. Eventually she rounded a hill into the shelter of an escarpment lambent with fires.

  Ordinary campfires of brush and wood, three of them, shed warmth and flames against a jut of stone which protected a hollow at the base of the scarp; and around them were gathered several Ramen, more than Linden remembered. Some of them tended their injured comrades, boiling water and preparing salves. Others readied food, while still others devised lean-tos to soften the last of the wind, or gathered bracken for bedding. Linden smelled amanibhavam and stew.

  While she could, she went to help the Ramen clean and bandage the wounds of Cords who had nearly died saving her life, and Liand’s, and Anele’s.

  The old man had reached the camp ahead of her, guided here by Ramen if he had not found the way on his own. Already he lay in one of the lean-tos, apparently sleeping, felled by exhaustion.

  Linden aided the injured until she found the young woman who had been nearly disemboweled.

  The woman lay on her back near one of the campfires; unconscious; pallid as wax. Several Cords squatted around her. Someone had placed a strip of leather between her jaws. She must have needed it earlier, to help her endure the jostling climb from the rift. Now her lips hung slack around it, baring her teeth.

  Without her health-sense, Linden felt fundamentally truncated. She did not need percipience, however, to know that the woman’s condition had worsened. The Cords had lifted flaps of torn skin and muscle aside so that they could attempt to cleanse the wound; and through the pulsing ooze of blood, Linden saw that the claws of the kresh had ripped into the woman’s intestines and liver. In addition, a number of the fine ducts which connected the liver and the bowel had been severed: they leaked bile into the blood. That alone could cause the wound to mortify.

  Linden needed a scalpel and sutures, clamps and sponges, IVs—and some very powerful antibiotics.

  She had nothing.

  With boiling water the Cords had made a salve of their amanibhavam. Surely they were right about its healing properties? But even so—She knew of nothing in the Land except hurtloam which might be potent enough to save this woman’s life.

  Or wild magic, if she had known how to raise it—and if she could have wielded its fire with exactly the right delicacy and precision—and if she could have seen what she was doing—

  Sighing to herself, she asked the nearest Cord, “Is there any hurtloam around here? Can you find it? Or do you have some other way to treat her? She’ll die if we don’t do something soon.”

  At once, the Cord jumped to his feet and hastened away, apparently intending to consult with Manethrall Hami. The other Ramen stared at Linden, mutely asking for her help.

  Grimly she set aside her exhaustion. “All right,” she murmured. “I need soft cloth. Something to soak up the blood and bile. And more boiling water. We’ll use your salve when we’ve cleaned her as much as we can.”

  Two of the Cords withdrew promptly. One returned with several pale brown blankets which he tore into strips. The other brought an earthenware bowl full of steaming water.

  Trusting her instincts, Linden took the first strip of cloth, showed it to the Cords. “Here’s what we’re going to do.” When she had dipped the cloth into the bowl just enough to moisten it, she lowered it softly into the puddled bile along the woman’s descending colon. By increments, the fabric absorbed splotches of red and yellow; stains of mortality. When it was sodden, she lifted it away; wrung it out over the grass; dipped it again into the bowl.

  “Do it gently,” she instructed the Cords. “We want to clean out as much of this mess as we can. Especially the bile”—she pointed—“that yellow ooze.”

  They nodded. Three of them joined her, setting moist cloths in the wound to sponge up small amounts of fluid, then squeezing out as much as they could and repeating the process.

  The woman’s bleeding slowed as they worked: she had already lost too much blood. She needed a transfusion as badly as antibiotics. But Linden had no means to provide it.

  She did not notice that an audience had gathered until Liand said her name in a way that made her lift her head. As far as she could tell, they were all there, Liand and Stave, Manethrall Hami, perhaps as many as thirty other Ramen: everyone except Anele. They studied what she did with uncertainty in their eyes; but none of them sought to interfere.

  The intensity of their attention reminded Linden that she did not know the injured Cord’s name. She knew none of their names, except Hami’s.

  Liand cleared his throat. “Linden,” he repeated. “The Ramen know a place where ‘hurtloam’ may be found. The Manethrall has sent Cords. But it is five leagues distant, and the way is difficult. They cannot reach it and return before midday.”

  He hesitated, then asked, “Will Sahah live so long?”

  Hami may have nodded: Linden was not sure. She returned her blunted gaze to the young Cord. Sahah, she thought. A young woman named Sahah with her guts ripped open: younger than Liand, hardly more than sixteen. If she had not been in such pain, she would have looked like a girl.

  Abruptly Linden’s hands began to shake, and a blur of weariness filled her gaze. “I don’t know. Probably not.” If she did, she would spend her last hours in agony. “Unless amanibhavam is some kind of wonder drug.”

  Sahah.

  But there was nothing more she could do: not without power. “That’s enough,” she told the Cords helping her. “Now y
our salve.” The Ramen had said that it was too potent for human flesh. “Give her as much as you think she can tolerate.”

  Somehow she struggled to her feet. If Liand had not put his arm around her, she might not have been able to stand. “Close the wound,” she added. “Keep her warm. And give her water, if she can swallow it.”

  Falling blood pressure might kill the Cord before sepsis and trauma took her.

  “Linden Avery,” said the Manethrall firmly. “You are in sooth a healer. Yet you feel distress. Do you fear that you have failed Sahah? That she will perish because your care does not suffice?”

  Linden nodded dumbly.

  “It may be so,” Hami admitted. “I think not, however. Ringthane—” She faltered momentarily. “How may this be said? You have strange lore. I cannot know its extent.”

  Linden might have murmured something; but the Manethrall was not done.

  “There is a shroud of evil upon the Land. Mayhap you know this. It is one reason among several that we do not return to our ancient homes.

  “It hampers discernment.”

  Again Linden nodded. “Kevin’s Dirt.”

  “You have felt its bale,” Hami explained. “We do not. For you, sight and touch and scent are constrained. You cannot see what is plain to us.”

  Unsteadily Linden reached out to Hami; gripped the Manethrall’s shoulders for support. Blinking to clear her sight, she tried to understand Hami’s kindness. “See—?”

  The Ramen were like the Haruchai? Still able to see?

  “Indeed,” the Manethrall answered. “You do not perceive that the pall of Sahah’s death has been diminished by your care. Nor do you discern the surpassing balm of amanibhavam. You cannot see that her end is no longer certain.”

  Fatigue and relief clogged Linden’s throat. She could hardly find enough breath to ask, “How—?”

  “Ringthane?”

  Linden had spent barely a day and a half in the Land; and already too many people had died for her. But Sahah might live?

  She tried again. “How can you see?”

  Now Hami understood her. “It is no great wonder. Among these mountains, we stand above the ill which you name Kevin’s Dirt. It does not hinder us because it does not touch us.”