The Runes of the Earth

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Surging to her feet, she turned roughly away and strode past her companions down the hillside toward the dry streambed.

  So that she would not blunder into the shimmering, she watched for it askance, approaching it cautiously. Whoever or whatever had placed the barrier there might have no desire to do harm. It or they might recognize the presence of white gold. Hell, they might even recognize her. The ur-viles had certainly done so.

  She had to take the chance.

  Liand followed a step or two behind her, murmuring her name as though he did not know how else to aid her. And Stave walked at her shoulder. At a word from the Manethrall, Bhapa and Pahni unslung their waterskins and went to offer water to the Demondim-spawn. Mahrtiir himself followed Linden, Liand, and Stave down the slope.

  This time, the ur-viles uttered no warnings. All of her companions seemed to understand what she meant to do.

  A few paces from the watercourse, Linden stopped. She no longer needed to sense the mirage obliquely: she could feel its implications like a faint tingle on the skin of her face. When she had chosen a steady place to stand, a stretch of bare dirt where the thin soil did not shift under her feet, she lifted Covenant’s ring from under her shirt and wrapped her fingers around it. Then she closed her eyes and went looking within herself for fire; for the hidden door which opened on wild magic.

  She should have been able to find it. She was certainly desperate enough. And twice now she had summoned argence by conscious choice. But the knowledge that she had failed in the caesure hampered her concentration. The possibility that she might fail once more—that she might never again have access to the power she needed—blocked her from clarity. She could not rediscover the door.

  A low breeze skirled around her, carrying heat to her skin, drawing sweat from her temples and ribs. The pressure of the sun made her feel weak, denatured like the lore-serpent. Instead of white fire, she found a sensation of nausea twisting in her guts as if she were dehydrated or ill.

  Abruptly all of the ur-viles began to bark. Their raucous shouts held a note of alarm. Startled, Linden looked back up the slope toward the creatures.

  The loremaster had rejoined them. As weary as its fellows, it could barely support itself on all fours. The stain of dust on its eyeless face gave it a stricken aspect, as if it had caught a scent which appalled it.

  The heads of all the ur-viles were turned, not toward Linden and the streambed, but in the direction of the open plains.

  Liand gasped softly; and Stave said with sudden harshness, “Attend, Chosen.”

  Wheeling to face northward, Linden muttered involuntarily, “Oh, hell. What’s he doing here?”

  Less than a stone’s cast below her, Esmer came striding up the hillside. He moved smoothly, easily, ascending the slope with unspoken puissance. His gilded cymar flowed like water on the breeze, alternately caressing and concealing his limbs. The strange fabric seemed to shift in hue with each step, modulating from the bright blue-and-gold of sun-burnished waves to the ominous shade of storm-frothed seas.

  The plain shock of his appearance here, millennia before his proper time, made Linden feel like retching.

  He was headed toward a point midway between her and the ur-viles. As he drew near, however, he paused as if to consider both groups. Then he advanced on the Demondim-spawn with a spume of hauteur in his eyes.

  Some of them struggled to rise. Others cowered on the ground, nearly groveling. Only the loremaster managed to haul itself erect. With its scepter in its hands, it confronted Esmer’s approach unsteadily; but the iron looked cold, inert. To Linden’s eyes, the creature seemed too weak to withstand a blow—or even a rough word. Esmer’s vast power would sweep the loremaster from the face of the hills.

  And still she could not find the door—She had lost her access to wild magic entirely.

  When he reached the ur-viles, Esmer stopped, clenching his fists on his hips. “This is abject,” he sneered. “Has the mighty lore of the Demondim become so frail? And do you dare to set yourselves against me? You do well to grovel, lest my betrayals destroy you utterly.”

  The loremaster responded with a bark of defiance. But Linden felt no force from the creature; no strength at all.

  As if he had decided to begin a slaughter, Esmer stooped suddenly to slap a prone ur-vile with the palm of his hand.

  Linden felt her heart laboring in her chest. Esmer’s palm struck between the creature’s shoulder blades. She expected a gout of blood; expected to see the ur-vile’s spine shattered. But instead a small iron bowl appeared in Esmer’s hand. He seemed to have snatched it out of the ur-vile’s flesh.

  From the bowl, she sensed the unmistakable must and potency of vitrim.

  Pacing imperiously among the creatures, Esmer carried the bowl to the loremaster and thrust it at the big ur-vile. “Drink,” he commanded. “Drink, and may the Seven Hells consume your bones. This weakness is intolerable.

  “You are needed.”

  Then he turned his back on the creatures to stride like an act of violence toward Linden and her companions.

  She breathed in hard gasps, trying to quell her nausea. Esmer’s conflicted emanations left her half stunned: she could hardly think. What was he doing here? How had he come?

  And why was he so angry?

  Fearlessly Stave stepped forward to stand in front of Linden. After an instant’s hesitation, Liand joined him. Muttering Ramen curses, Mahrtiir placed himself shoulder-to-shoulder with Stave and Liand. And Pahni and Bhapa followed Esmer down the slope. The set of their faces said that they were ready to sacrifice themselves, if they were needed.

  The Ranyhyn had accepted Esmer. He had been the friend of the Ramen—

  “Stand aside!” he barked at Linden’s guardians. For a moment, he sounded like an ur-vile, guttural and enraged; and distant lightnings glared in his eyes. “This delay is fatal. The defenders of the Staff are unsure of you. And they are blinded to white gold. Already they prepare to abandon their covert. They will flee if they are not given battle.

  “Then will you be betrayed in earnest, and nothing will undo the harm that I have wrought.”

  He could easily have gone around Linden and her companions; but he seemed to need a kind of permission from them.

  Or from her.

  “Go ahead,” she breathed, although she hardly heard herself. Her head reeled. The defenders of the Staff—? She wanted to challenge him; demand an explanation. The Staff was here? But surprise and confusion seemed to compel her acquiescence.

  Some part of him wanted to help her.

  He had already betrayed—?

  When she spoke, Stave, Liand, and Mahrtiir stepped out of Esmer’s way. He swept past them scornfully, ignoring Linden as if she had fulfilled her role and no longer had any significance.

  Together, she and her companions turned to watch him approach the dry streambed.

  He did not pause as he neared the shimmering. Instead he plunged into the crease between the hills like the onset of a gale.

  And like a gale, he tore reality asunder.

  A tremendous concussion shook the ground. For an instant, dirt and grass and rocks sprang into the air like waterspouts, force-driven geysers. Unable to keep her feet, Linden pitched headlong down the slope; landed with dust in her eyes and mouth. Liand fell beside her: even Mahrtiir staggered to his knees. Only Stave contrived to remain upright.

  The blast passed quickly, leaving in its wake a rain of broken stones, rent grass, clods of soil. Blinking desperately to clear her sight, Linden saw Esmer standing undisturbed in the bottom of the watercourse, facing up the ravine. The fall of debris came nowhere near him.

  She coughed convulsively at the dust in her lungs; but she made no sound. Liand appeared to call her name, yet his voice did not reach her. The concussion had taken her hearing.

  And—

  Oh, God.

  The sand on which Esmer stood was no longer the bottom of a small ravine. The crease between the hills was gone; ripped out of
existence. In its place stood a wider streambed, higher and more rugged walls. As the slopes rose on either side, the walls piled upward, forming a deep cut in the bedrock of the hills—an incision filled with shadows and implied peril.

  At the end of the cut, fifty or a hundred paces up the ravine, gaped the broad mouth of a cave. It seemed as full of darkness as a sepulcher.

  Esmer, Linden tried to say. God in Heaven. Esmer! But she heard nothing.

  Then Stave came to her side. His hands clasped her shoulders, lifted her to her feet as if she were weightless. His lips moved, conveying nothing.

  Liand scrambled upright a moment later. He shook his head, raised his hands to his ears. Fear flashed in his eyes as he realized that he had been deafened. In a rush, he flung his arms around Linden and held her close as if to assure himself that she was whole.

  Their deafness would pass: she knew that already. The concussion had only shocked her auditory nerves. If her eardrums had ruptured, she would have felt more pain. In a moment, Liand would discern the same for himself.

  Struggling against his embrace, she turned to see what Esmer was doing.

  At the same time, the ur-viles launched themselves down the slope, galvanized by alarm or vitrim. Their jaws worked: they appeared to bark frenetically. In spite of their weariness, they held their blades glowing in their fists. As they hastened toward the new ravine, they managed to form a ragged wedge.

  At the point of the wedge, the loremaster staggered weakly, hardly able to keep its balance. Nevertheless its scepter seemed to ache with power, and dark vitriol glistened on the surface of the iron.

  Esmer gave them a jeering glance, then returned his attention to the cave at the end of the ravine.

  Made visible only by its own intensity, by the discrepancy between its force and the calm of summer, a shock wave lashed through the air from the mouth of the cave. Channeled and focused by the rough stone of the walls, it struck at Esmer like a scourge; fell on him with such vehemence that Linden almost saw the flesh stripped from his bones. She expected him to fall backward in a clutter of disarticulated limbs.

  At the last instant, however, he erupted like a burst of sunfire, blinding and incandescent.

  Then Linden was blind as well as deaf, lost in a glare that blotted out vision. Heat licked through her clothes as though the air had become flame.

  Yet somehow she broke free of Liand’s grasp and began to run, sightless and desperate, in the direction of the ravine. This had to stop. The Staff was in that cave. Its defenders were not her enemies.

  When she could see again, she squinted through a chaos of splotches and power-echoes, and found Esmer standing unharmed a few strides ahead of her, wrapped in disdain as if it were armor; as if the force unleashed against him were no more than a petty affront.

  Covenant’s ring bounced against her chest as she landed heavily in the sand of the watercourse. No! she cried silently at Esmer. Stop this! Get out of here! They aren’t our enemies!

  But she did not pause to see whether he heard her; heeded her. Thrusting him aside, she staggered frantically up the ravine.

  No! she cried again, appealing now to the beings hidden in the cave. Please! We don’t want to fight you. We won’t fight you!

  Confused by phosphenes, little suns and nebulae, she could not see her footing clearly. Sand shifted under her boots, and rocks tripped her, making her stumble. Still she ran.

  In the darkness ahead of her, another shock wave gathered, powerful enough to be palpable through the residual burning of her skin. If it struck her, she would suffer the rent flesh and scattered bones which she had imagined for Esmer. Yet she did not stop.

  Before she reached the mouth of the cave, however, and the shock wave ripped through her, she heard a howl in spite of her deafness, a cry of warning in Esmer’s voice. So suddenly that she could not avoid colliding with him, he appeared between her and the poised assault.

  He faced into the cave, obviously shouting something which once again she did not hear. With one hand, he pointed urgently at the ring swinging on its chain outside her shirt. With the other, he directed a wall of force back down the ravine, a barrier which prevented Linden’s companions and the ur-viles from following her.

  Beyond his forbidding, Liand and Bhapa appeared to call for her; and Pahni clung to them both as if she had lost her voice. But Stave and Mahrtiir had already flung themselves up the hillsides beside the ravine, seeking to bypass Esmer’s barrier. In the streambed, the ur-viles concentrated their wedge, preparing an acid counterstroke.

  Linden turned her back on them to continue struggling toward the cave.

  Esmer caught her arm to restrain her—and at once released her as a small form emerged from the darkness within the cave.

  Of her own volition, she halted.

  The figure before her was a Waynhim.

  She recognized it instantly, although ten years had passed since its kind had saved her life and Covenant’s in the Northron Climbs. But she had never expected to see one of them again. She had believed that all of the Waynhim, every community or rhysh, had gathered long ago to oppose the depredations of the arghuleh. There most of them had perished, overpowered by the unexpected might of the ice-beasts.

  Had enough of the creatures survived to form one last rhysh?

  If so, they were absolutely not her enemies. Throughout their long existence, they had served the Land with all the cunning of their strange lore.

  But they had always been the deadly foes of the ur-viles—

  Like the rest of its kind, the Waynhim was smaller than any of the ur-viles: standing erect, its head reached no higher than the center of her chest. And its skin was an ambiguous grey, a color which would have looked pale in direct sunlight, but which appeared darker, tinged with illness or sorrow, in the shadows that filled the ravine. Yet the creature could only be a making of the Demondim. Its pointed ears perched high on its bald skull; its entire body was hairless; and instead of eyes, two wide damp nostrils gaped above its lipless mouth.

  It stood just outside the cave. Its mouth moved as though it were speaking; but if Linden had been able to hear she would not have understood what the Waynhim said.

  The ur-viles must have known that the Waynhim were here as soon as they had detected the scent of the Staff. Without Esmer’s intervention, they and the Waynhim would have already attacked each other.

  Esmer replied to the creature: a buzz of implied noise in the bones of Linden’s skull. Again he indicated Covenant’s ring. This time when the Waynhim spoke, she heard a low spatter of sound like the phosphenes which lingered in her vision, complicating the shadows.

  The rasp of Esmer’s voice returned; but she did not realize that he had addressed her until he gripped her shoulders and turned her to face him. Like the Waynhim’s, his mouth moved incomprehensibly.

  With gestures, she tried to tell him that she could not hear.

  Esmer scowled in vexation, and his green eyes seethed. He said something over his shoulder to the Waynhim, then spoke as if he were issuing commands to Linden’s companions. But he did not wait for a response. Instead he raised his hands to her ears and tapped them lightly with his fingertips.

  The ur-viles held their formation, waiting.

  For a moment, Esmer’s touch tingled on Linden’s eardrums. Then she was struck by a blare of sound as loud and compulsory as the calling of sirens.

  Suddenly she could hear the strident apprehension of Liand’s breathing, the harsh chanting of the ur-viles. Pahni’s whispers seemed to roar up the ravine. In spite of their sure-footedness, Stave’s and Mahrtiir’s movements along the rims of the walls sounded like the grinding of boulders.

  When Esmer asked, “Now do you hear?” he might as well have yelled in her face.

  She flinched. “Too loud.” Her own voice bellowed at her. She clamped her hands over her ears. “It’s too loud.”

  Esmer looked stricken; inexplicably ashamed of himself. Then he covered his chagrin with a feigned s
neer. “It will pass.”

  Before she could reply, he turned to bark something at the Waynhim.

  Clamorous as an avalanche, Stave and Mahrtiir landed in the sand of the ravine. Confused by the exaggeration of her hearing, Linden feared that they would hurl themselves at Esmer; or at the Waynhim. But they ignored Cail’s son, and her. Instead of attacking, they bowed deeply to the grey creature.

  Their actions left Linden momentarily weak with relief.

  Esmer seemed vexed, but he did not regard the Haruchai and the Manethrall. When the Waynhim had answered him, he faced Linden again.

  “Wildwielder,” he said darkly, “I have introduced you and your companions. As much as I am able, I have explained your purpose here. This is their reply.

  “Your name they acknowledge. They know the ur-Lord Thomas Covenant’s companion against the Sunbane. By their lore, they have learned of her role in fashioning the Staff of Law. And assuredly they understand the importance of white gold. For the sake of the great good that she accomplished at Thomas Covenant’s side, in the name of the wild magic that destroys peace, and because I have spoken on your behalf, they concede that you are indeed Linden Avery the Chosen, as you appear to be. Therefore they will make you welcome.”

  Gradually the volume of Esmer’s voice receded to a more bearable level. Lowering her hands, Linden found that she could hear him now without discomfort. Stave’s and Mahrtiir’s feet no longer sounded like thunder as they crossed the sand toward her.

  “They concede as well,” Esmer continued, “that you have passed through a rupture in the Law of Time. Their lore speaks of this peril. And I am able to compel their belief. They cannot deny my knowledge of such powers.”

  His tone darkened to bitterness as he said, “The Haruchai also they recognize, and the Ramen. They, too, will be welcomed, as well as the Stonedownor, for the same reason.”

  Esmer paused while a look of savagery mounted in his gaze. “But never,” he concluded, “will they permit the presence of ur-viles in their covert. And they will not give the Staff of Law into your hands.”

  Stave nodded as though he had expected this, and approved. But Mahrtiir glared a warning at the Waynhim, and his sore fingers hinted at his garrote.