The Runes of the Earth

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Again he limped into motion.

  “Wait!” she repeated. “What do you mean? What’s going on?” His air of refusal frightened her; and fear anchored her against the gyre of the Ranyhyn. “We’re both here. Aren’t you supposed to drink, too?”

  Urgently she hastened after him.

  He might not have stopped, but Hyn and Hynyn flashed past in front of him, so near that he had to halt in order to avoid a collision. Then they blurred away, indistinct as hallucinations. They seemed to be submerged in the gathering darkness, barely perceptible from any position of clarity.

  Stave waited for her to join him. His vague shape in the gloaming conveyed a sigh. When Linden reached him, he pronounced, “This horserite is not for me. I was made to accompany you only so that I might provide for your safety at need.”

  Now the galloping of the horses no longer frayed her attention. Instead it called to her like a demand; a form of supplication too proud for pleading.

  “How do you know that?” she countered. “Hyn and Hynyn are Ranyhyn. Do you really think they couldn’t take care of me?”

  “I am Haruchai,” he replied as if that answer sufficed. “We have no need of horserites.”

  His manner seemed to add, Or of waters which blend minds. Among themselves, his people had used a mental form of communication for millennia.

  “Oh, bullshit.” Feigning anger to mask her concern, Linden put a hand on his shoulder, pulled herself or him around so that she could peer into his darkened face. “Why not? You people are the Masters of the Land. You’re responsible for it. And this is a warning. You said so. The Ranyhyn brought High Lord Elena here to warn her.” Hundreds of them. Not just two. “Don’t you think you need every warning you can get?”

  “We do not,” Stave asserted. “We have heeded the lesson of Kevin Landwaster. We find no value in despair.”

  She could see nothing of his expression; but his aura seemed like a rejection carved in stone.

  “No,” she protested as if she were sure. “No.” Her hands insisted at his shoulders. “Bannor heard what High Lord Elena said, but none of you heard the warning.”

  Again Hyn and Hynyn pounded past, circling the valley with frenzy and fervor glaring in their eyes; the passion of beasts that could not beseech. Somewhere behind the clamor of their hooves, Linden seemed to hear the distant distress of thunder.

  “Sure,” she went on, “Kelenbhrabanal’s despair didn’t save the Ranyhyn. I get that. But what did?

  “It wasn’t anything grand. It wasn’t Lords or Bloodguard or white rings or Staffs. The Ranyhyn weren’t preserved by Vows, or absolute faithfulness, or any other form of Haruchai mastery. That was the real warning.”

  “Linden Avery?” Stave sounded implacable, ready for scorn.

  But she had come too far, and needed him too much, to falter now. “It was something much simpler than that. The plain, selfless devotion of ordinary men and women.” The Ramen. “You said it yourself. The Ranyhyn were nearly destroyed until they found the Ramen to care for them.

  “They wanted Elena to understand that she would be enough. She didn’t need to raise Kevin from death,” or give up sleep and passion, “or do anything else transcendent,” anything more than human. “All she had to do was trust herself.”

  In dreams, Covenant had told Linden the same thing.

  Unreadable in the darkness, Stave stared at her. For a long moment while Hynyn and Hyn raced each other around the valley, he said nothing. Then, with careful precision, he asked, “And do you not deem white gold transcendent?”

  To that she had no answer except, “Maybe it is. I’m not sure. Maybe it’s nothing more than the person who wields it.” But she did not stop. “Isn’t that beside the point? If nothing else, don’t you need to know why Hyn and Hynyn are alone? Don’t you think it’s important that there aren’t more Ranyhyn here?”

  She could not be sure that he had heard her, or that he cared. A moment later, however, she discovered that she had reached him, in spite of his certainty. Without a word of acquiescence or acknowledgment, he turned to hobble in the direction of the tarn.

  Again thunder muttered threats in the distance. The air felt charged with power and turmoil, thick with static and expectation, as though the potent waters of the tarn were disturbed by advancing storms.

  Holding her breath to contain the labor of her heart, Linden hurried to Stave’s side; walked with him toward the tarn. Around them, Hyn and Hynyn constricted their circle as if they were focusing their frenzy inward, onto their riders.

  Oh, Covenant, she prayed in silence, I hope this is what you wanted. You told me to do something unexpected.

  This was the result.

  The force of the black waters seemed to accumulate against her at every step. She could discern it clearly enough to know that it was neither toxic nor tainted. Rather it was an expression of Earthpower purer than anything she had ever experienced before. Nonetheless its sheer strength exceeded her. She could not define its nature or guess its effects. It was too extreme for human flesh.

  Yet Elena had tasted these same waters as a young girl, undefended by the lore and resources of Lordship.

  Linden’s eyes bled tears as she and Stave reached the rock-knuckled edge of the tarn.

  Communion. Blending. The Ranyhyn wanted to share their minds with her. Their frenzy—

  “Stave.” She had to drag her voice up from the bottom of her chest. “Maybe I should go first. In case—”

  She could not explain what she feared.

  Energy seemed to crackle across the surface of the tarn: incipient lightning; imminent hysteria. In those unreflecting depths, no stars existed. Instead, stark blackness stretched down into the marrow of the world.

  “There is naught to fear,” answered the Master. “The Ranyhyn wish only to enlighten you. They will not make you mad.”

  Although they might break her heart.

  Stooping without hesitation, he lowered his face to the tarn.

  His example drew her with it. In this place, with so much at stake, she could not bear to be left behind.

  The touch of the water on her lips and tongue was as cold as fire. When she swallowed it, it burned within her like a blaze of absolute ice.

  Then she surged upright and began to run with the Ranyhyn, run and run frantically, flinging herself like ecstasy or abjection around the dell as if she had gone out of her mind.

  4.

  Heedless in Rain

  Linden Avery and Stave of the Haruchai returned to the Verge of Wandering in a scourging rain. Huddled on the necks of their Ranyhyn, they rode into the encampment of the Ramen as if driven by flails, while behind them harsh winds lashed the wracked peaks, and a downpour as bitter as sleet cut into the vale from all directions, twisted to chaos by the tumbling gusts of the storm. Occasional thunder harried their heels. At intervals, shrouded streaks of lightning turned the massed thunderheads the color of bruises and madness: a swollen, livid hue shot through with argent like unfettered wild magic.

  They had been away for two days and a night.

  Alerted by scouting Cords, or by some instinctive link with the great horses, a throng of Ramen accompanied by Liand hastened from their shelters to greet the Ranyhyn and their riders.

  Stave was able to dismount without aid, although he wavered on his feet. Cold and cruel exposure combined with the aftereffects of his wounds had eroded even his great strength. Perhaps he would have spoken, if words would have sufficed to succor his companion—and if he could have made himself heard through the pummeling torrents.

  But Linden’s fingers had to be pried from their grip on Hyn’s neck. She had to be dragged bodily from Hyn’s back. In Liand’s embrace and the support of the Ramen, she hung stiffly, unable to move: rigid with mortification, and chilled to the bone; so cold and deprived and lost that she could not even shiver. She only remained clenched, and breathed in shallow, dying gasps, and wept like the rain, ceaselessly.

  Hyn’s steaming w
armth was all that had kept her alive. Perhaps at some time earlier in the day, she had sustained herself with white fire. Stave would know, if she did not. But long hours ago the storm had whipped her capacity for power to tatters and rent it from her. If she had not lain along Hyn’s neck and clung there, desolate and unyielding, her flesh would have failed her. There was malice in the gnashing rain, the fanged wind, and she could not have endured it without her mount.

  Half weeping himself, and frantic, Liand carried her to the nearest shelter, the nearest cookfire, helped by Bhapa and Pahni. Eager to be of service, Char brought armloads of wood and baskets of dried dung to stoke the flames. Hami trickled warmed water between Linden’s pallid lips while the Stonedownor stroked her throat to help her swallow. With unexpected tenderness, Mahrtiir bit into two or three treasure-berries, removed the seeds, then kissed the pulp and juice into her helpless mouth.

  Accepting no assistance, Stave staggered into the shelter so that he, too, would be warmed. And both Hyn and Hynyn shouldered their way in among the Ramen, although the sod roof was too low to let them hold up their heads, and the stallion’s shoulders almost brushed the lattice of the ceiling. Together they watched over Linden. Their concern steamed the rain from their coats.

  Then Linden gagged; swallowed convulsively; gagged again; and some of the rigor seeped from her muscles. By slow degrees, the warmth of the water and the potency of the aliantha eased into her abused body, while the high heat of the fire wiped cold from the surface of her skin. Her pallid cheeks gradually acquired a hectic flush, stricken and febrile. Shivers began to surge through her, first in brief tremors like the aftershocks of a catastrophe, then in longer and more vehement waves, seizures violent enough to make her thrash in Liand’s arms.

  It appeared that she might rally.

  After a time, the Ranyhyn withdrew as if they had been reassured. Turning away from the encampment, they disappeared into the teeth of the storm. Most of the Ramen did them homage as they departed. But Mahrtiir continued to prepare aliantha with his teeth; Hami offered small, steady sips of water to Linden’s involuntary swallowing; and Bhapa and Pahni gently chafed her hands and feet, striving to restore her circulation.

  Stave had seated himself on the opposite side of the fire. He, too, shivered heavily for a while, in spite of his toughness. But when the Ramen offered him warmed water, he drank it: he accepted a few treasure-berries, a little rhee and stew. Soon he stopped trembling, and his brown skin lost its rime-gnawed hue. A dullness like the glaze of exhaustion remained in his eyes, but he had sloughed away the worst effects of the storm.

  Then Manethrall Hami asked him quietly, “Will you speak now, Bloodguard? The Ringthane cannot reveal what has befallen her. Nor is she able to guide our care. The hurt of wind and rain and cold we understand, and will tend. But a fever rises in her which we do not comprehend. It is an ague of the spirit, beyond our ken. We fear to harm her.

  “Will you not tell us what has transpired?”

  The Haruchai turned his closed features toward Hami. “Let the Chosen speak of it,” he answered, “if she is able.” Behind its exhaustion, his voice hinted at chagrin and old shame. “I will not.”

  Perhaps Liand would have replied with indignation or pleading. But he contained himself for Linden’s sake, as did the Ramen, so that she would not be disturbed.

  She seemed to sleep for a while. Her shivers receded somewhat. Then she opened her eyes briefly and stared about her with a terrible dismay, although she did not truly regain consciousness. When the moment passed, however, she began to breathe more easily. Hami cajoled more water between her lips, which she swallowed without gagging. The pulped aliantha which Mahrtiir placed in her mouth she swallowed as well. Little by little, she became visibly stronger.

  Chills still wracked her without surcease, but now their character changed. The cold gradually lifted from the marrow of her bones, the depths of her lungs, the core of her internal organs; but another fever took its place. She continued to shiver because she had fallen profoundly ill: an ailment so deep that it appeared almost metaphysical.

  The Ramen would have given her hurtloam, if their small store of the eldritch mud had not been expended. They would have treated her with amanibhavam, if they had not feared that it would prove too potent for her—or that it was the wrong kind of febrifuge for her needs.

  At last Liand was reduced to simply murmuring her name as he held her, repeating, “Linden. Linden,” as if by that unadorned incantation he thought he might exorcise the fever from her soul.

  Still she continued to rally. When next she opened her eyes, they were bright with fever, disconsolate as stars; but a faint patina of consciousness blurred their dismay. As if deliberately, she gulped at the cup of water Hami held to her lips. Then her tremors became coughing, and she struggled to sit up in order to clear her lungs.

  Liand let her rise, although he held her shoulders so that she would not slump toward the fire or fall to the side.

  “God, Stave,” she coughed weakly. Her voice sounded tortured, fatally hoarse, as if she had spent innumerable hours screaming. “Those poor horses—

  “Oh, my son.”

  Tears streaked her cheeks, although she had no strength for weeping.

  She needed time to recognize where she was. Leagues and mountains and brutal rain had intervened between her and the horserite; and at first she could recall only Stave, identify only his face across the lashing flames: the man who had accompanied her against his will.

  If he had seen just a fraction of what she herself beheld—

  But the horserite itself existed only in fragments. That she could not remember: not immediately. Not until she had reconstructed laboriously, in pain and sorrow, the links which connected her to this forgotten shelter, this lost heat; these unimagined faces, half-familiar and doomed. Shivers shattered the past, left it lying around her like splinters of broken glass.

  In fever she seemed to pick them up one at a time to lacerate her aggrieved heart.

  Hyn—

  Very well, she remembered Hyn. The mare had kept her alive. Hyn was Earthpower defined in flesh, at once glorious and suppliant; revered and vulnerable. And Hynyn, who had borne Stave—

  And the black tarn, its waters lightless as despair.

  She was not ready.

  Someone whom she may have recognized appeared to offer her a small bowl containing pulped treasure-berries. She ate a little of the vibrant fruit and grew stronger.

  Covenant had once said, There’s only one way to hurt a man who’s lost everything. Give him back something broken.

  She would have preferred to remember the storm. She had been forewarned—and did not know how to bear it.

  So. Stave: Hyn and Hynyn: the bitter tarn.

  And running—

  —around and around the floor of the vale as if her heart would burst: as fervid as the Ranyhyn, if without their frantic speed, their fluid power. Together they pounded their shared visions into the beaten ground. She should have been able to grasp the chemical transactions taking place within her. Her health-sense should have allowed her to name the deep potency of the tarn. But her consciousness, her willing mind, had vanished at the first taste of those waters. She had become one with the Ranyhyn; no longer herself.

  Only two of them. Not because the others had spurned her, or Stave, or this horserite; but because they felt too much shame. Hyn and Hynyn had been elected to bear the guilt and remorse and risk of their great kin.

  Elected for sacrifice—

  Beyond question, Linden preferred to remember the punishment of the storm.

  Yet memories of the storm could not protect her. The blast which had broken over the mountains during the night had only hastened the fading of her transfiguration; only soaked and lashed and chilled and, finally, numbed her; only restored her mortality. And mortality was no excuse. It could not protect her from the consequences of what she had seen; or of what she meant to do.

  Only death had that po
wer.

  She could not choose death. Not while the Despiser still held her son. Therefore she remembered. One by one, she retrieved whetted shards from the ground of her mind and cut—

  Hyn and Hynyn, brave as martyrs. The mind-blending waters of the tarn, cruel and unutterably cold. Running.

  Millennia of shame.

  And Jeremiah.

  Oh, my son.

  “Ringthane,” said a voice which may have sounded familiar. “Linden Avery.” Was it Manethrall Hami? Hami, who had been left behind days ago, behind vast mountains of despair? Linden could not be sure. “You must speak. You are ill. We know not how to succor you.”

  Was she ill? Oh, yes. Absolutely. But it was not an ailment of the body. Although everything within her shivered convulsively, she had spent too much time exalted by Earthpower to suffer from merely physical fevers.

  She was sick with visions: the memories and prescience of the Ranyhyn.

  In some sense, the great horses transcended the Law of Time. They knew when they would be needed. They knew how far they would be required to go—

  Hands gripped her shoulders, attempting to steady her. A man’s voice—Liand’s?—murmured her name repeatedly, called her back to herself.

  She feared that he would stop if she could not answer. Between tremors, she tried to say, “The tarn.”

  She thought that she spoke aloud. Certainly her strained throat felt the effort and pain of sound. But she could not hear herself. The loud rain on the roof of the shelter muffled her voice.

  “The horserite.”

  Around her, Cords echoed, “Horserite,” as though in awe that she had been so privileged. Softly the woman’s voice, Hami’s, said, “As we deemed. The Ranyhyn possess insight needful to her.”

  They did not understand. How could they? They barely existed, rendered vague by shivering. Linden could not focus her eyes on them. Only Stave seemed fully real to her beyond the intervening flames: as irrefutable as stone.

  “Just Hyn and Hynyn,” she croaked hoarsely. No other Ranyhyn. “The others couldn’t bear it. They’re too ashamed.”