Stephen R. Donaldson

I
to Jennifer Dunstan
the princess of my heart
Acknowledgments
My particular thanks to John Eccker, who went
"above and beyond the call" after the first draft and
never looked back.
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever
As a young man-a novelist, happily married, with an
infant son, Roger-- Thomas Covenant is inexplicably
stricken with leprosy. After the last two fingers of his
right hand are amputated, medications arrest the
progress of Covenant's affliction, but he is taught that
his only hope of survival lies in protecting himself
obsessively from any form of injury. He is devastated
when his wife, Joan, abandons and divorces him in
order to protect their son from exposure.
Other blows to his emotional stability follow. Fearing
the mysterious nature of his illness, the people around
him cast him in the traditional role of the leper: a
pariah, outcast and unclean. In addition, he discovers
that he has become impotent-and unable to write.
Grimly he struggles to go on living; but as the pressure
of his loneliness mounts, he begins to experience
prolonged episodes of unconsciousness, during which
he appears to have adventures in a magical realm
known only as the Land.
In the Land, physical and emotional health are
tangible forces, made palpable by an eldritch energy
called Earthpower. Because vitality and beauty are
concrete qualities, as plain to the senses as size and
color, the well-being of the physical world has become
the guiding precept of the Land's people. When
Covenant first encounters them, in Lord Foul's Bane,
they greet him as the reincarnation of an ancient hero,
Berek Halfhand, in part because he has lost two
fingers, and in part because he possesses a white gold
ring-his wedding band-which they know to be a
talisman of great power, able to wield "the wild magic
that destroys peace."
Shortly after he first appears in the Land, Covenant's
leprosy and impotence disappear, cured by
Earthpower; and this, he knows, is impossible. And the
mere idea that he possesses some form of magical
power threatens his ability to sustain the stubborn
disciplines on which his survival depends. Therefore he
chooses to interpret his translation to the Land as a
dream or hallucination. He responds to his welcome
and health with Unbelief: the harsh, dogged assertion
that the Land is not real.
Because of his Unbelief, his initial reactions to the
people and wonders of the Land are at best dismissive,
at worst despicable (at one point, overwhelmed by his
reborn sexuality, he rapes Lena, a young girl who has
befriended him). However, the people of the Land
decline to punish or reject him for his actions. As
Berek Halfhand reborn, he is beyond judgment. And
there is an ancient prophecy concerning the white gold
wielder: "With the one word of truth or treachery, / he
will save or damn the Earth." Covenant's new
companions in the Land know that they cannot make
his choices for him. They can only hope that he will
eventually follow Berek's example by saving the Land.
At first, such forbearance conveys little to Covenant,
although he cannot deny that he is moved by the
ineffable beauties of this world, as well as by the
kindness of its people. During his travels, however,
first with Lena's mother, Atiaran, then with the Giant
Saltheart Foamfollower, and finally with the Lords of
Revelstone, he learns enough of the history of the Land
to understand what is at stake.
The Land has an ancient enemy, Lord Foul the
Despiser, who dreams of destroying the Arch of Time-
thereby destroying not only the Land but the entire
Earth-in order to escape what he perceives to be a
prison. Against this evil stands the Council of Lords,
men and women who have dedicated their lives to
nurturing the health of the Land, to studying the lost
lore and wisdom of Berek and his long-dead
descendants, and to opposing Despite.
Unfortunately these Lords possess only a small
fraction of the power of their predecessors. The Staff
of Law, Berek's primary instrument of Earthpower,
has been hidden from them. And the lore of Law and
Earthpower seems inherently inadequate to defeat
Lord Foul. Wild magic rather than Law is the crux of
Time. Without it, the Arch cannot be destroyed; but
neither can it be defended.
Hence both the Lords and the Despiser seek Thomas
Covenant's allegiance. The Lords attempt to win his
aid with courage and compassion: the Despiser,
through manipulation. And in this contest Covenant's
Unbelief appears to place him on the side of the
Despiser.
Nevertheless Covenant cannot deny his response to the
Land's apparent transcendence. And as he is granted
more and more friendship by the Lords and denizens
of the Land, he finds that he is now dismayed by his
earlier violence toward Lena. He faces an insoluble
conundrum: the Land cannot be real, yet it feels
entirely real. His
heart responds to its loveliness-and that response has
the potential to kill him because it undermines his
necessary habits of wariness and hopelessness.
Trapped within this contradiction, he attempts to
escape through a series of unspoken bargains. In Lord
Foul's Bane, he grants the Lords his passive support,
hoping that this will enable him to avoid accepting the
possibilities-the responsibilities-of his white gold ring.
And at first his hopes are realized. The Lords find the
lost Staff of Law; their immediate enemy, one of Lord
Foul's servants, is defeated; and Covenant himself is
released from the Land.
Back in his real world, however, he discovers that he
has in fact gained nothing. Indeed, his plight has
worsened: he remains a leper; and his experience of
friendship and magic in the Land has weakened his
ability to endure his outcast loneliness on Haven Farm.
When he is translated to the Land a second time, in
The Illearth War, he knows that he must devise a new
bargain.
During his absence, the Land's plight has worsened as
well. A number of years have passed in the Land; and
in that time Lord Foul has gained and mastered the
Illearth Stone, an ancient bane of staggering power.
With it, the Despiser has created an army which now
marches to overwhelm the Lords of Revelstone.
Although the Lords hold the Staff of Law, they lack
sufficient might to withstand the evil horde. They need
the strength of wild magic.
Other developments also tighten the grip of
Covenant's dilemma. The Council is now led by High
Lord Elena, his daughter by his rape of Lena. With
her, he begins to experience the real consequences of
his violence: it is clear to him-if to no one elsethat she
is not completely sane. In addition, the army of the
Lords is led by a man named Hile Troy, who appears
to have come to the Land from Covenant's own world.
Troy's presence radically erodes Covenant's self-
protective Unbelief.
Now more than ever Covenant feels that he must
resolve his conundrum. Again he offers a bargain. He
will give the defenders of the Land his active support.
Specifically, he will join Elena on a quest to discover
the source of EarthBlood, the most concentrated form
of Earthpower. But in return he will continue to deny
that his ring holds any power. He will accept no
responsibility for the ultimate fate of the Land.
This time, however, the results of his bargain are
disastrous. Using the Illearth Stone, Lord Foul
slaughters the Giants of Seareach. Hile Troy is only
able to defeat the Despiser's army by giving his soul to
Caerroil Wildwood, the Forestal of Garroting Deep.
And Covenant's help enables Elena to find the
EarthBlood, which she uses to sever one of the
necessary boundaries between life and death. Her
instability leads her to think that the dead will have
more power against Lord Foul than the living. But she
is terribly wrong; and in the resulting catastrophe both
she and the Staff of Law are lost.
Covenant returns to his real world knowing that his
attempts to resolve his dilemma have served the
Despiser.
Nearly broken by his failures, he visits the Land once
more in The Power That Preserves, where he discovers
the full cost of his actions. Dead, his daughter now
serves Lord Foul, using the Staff of Law to wreak
havoc. Her mother, Lena, has lost her mind. And the
defenders of the Land are besieged by an army too
vast and powerful to be defeated.
Covenant still has no solution to his conundrum: only
wild magic can save the Land-and he cannot afford to
accept its reality. However, sickened at heart by Lena's
madness, and by the imminent ruin of the Land, he
resolves to confront the Despiser himself. He has no
hope of defeating Lord Foul, but he would rather
sacrifice himself for the sake of a magical, but unreal,
place than preserve his outcast life in his real world.
Before he can reach the Despiser, however, he must
first face dead Elena and the Staff of Law. He cannot
oppose her; yet she defeats herself when her attack on
him draws an overwhelming response from his ring-a
response which also destroys the Staff.
Accompanied only by his old friend, the Giant
Saltheart Foamfollower, Covenant finally gains his
confrontation with Lord Foul and the Illearth Stone.
Facing the full force of the Despiser's savagery and
malice, he at last finds the solution to his conundrum,
"the eye of the paradox": the point of balance between
accepting that the Land is real and insisting that it is
not. On that basis, he is able to combat Lord Foul by
using the dire might of the Illearth Stone to trigger the
wild magic of his ring. With that power, he shatters
both the Stone and Lord Foul's home, thereby ending
the threat of the Despiser's evil.
When he returns to his own world for the last time, he
learns that his newfound balance benefits him there as
well. He knows now that the reality or unreality of the
Land is less important than his love for it; and that
knowledge gives him the strength to face his life as a
pariah without fear or bitterness.
The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant

For ten years after the events of The Power That
Preserves, Covenant lives alone on Haven Farm,
writing novels. He is still an outcast, but he has one
friend, Dr. Julius Berenford. Then, however, two
damaged women enter his life.
His ex-wife, Joan, returns to him, violently insane.
Leaving Roger with her parents, she has spent some
time in a commune which has dedicated itself to the
service of Despite, and which has chosen Covenant to
be the victim of its evil. Hoping to spare anyone else
the hazards of involvement, Covenant attempts to care
for Joan alone.
When Covenant refuses aid, Dr. Berenford enlists Dr.
Linden Avery, a young physician whom he has
recently hired. Like Joan, she has been badly hurt,
although in en
tirely different ways. As a young girl, she was locked in
a room with her father while he committed suicide.
And as a teenager, she killed her mother, an act of
euthanasia to
which she felt compelled by her mother's illness and
pain. Loathing death, Linden has become a doctor in a
haunted attempt to erase her past.
At Dr. Berenford's urging, she intrudes on Covenant's
treatment of his ex-wife. When members of Joan's
commune attack Haven Farm, seeking Covenant's
death, Linden attempts to intervene, but she is struck
down before she can save him. As a result, she
accompanies him when he is returned to the Land.
During Covenant's absence, several thousand years
have passed, and the Despiser has regained his power.
As before, he seeks to use Covenant's wild magic in
order to break the Arch of Time and escape his prison.
In The Wounded Land, however, Covenant and
Linden soon learn that Lord Foul has fundamentally
altered his methods. Instead of relying on armies and
warfare to goad Covenant, the Despiser has devised an
attack on the natural Law which gives the Land its
beauty and health.
The overt form of this attack is the Sunbane, a malefic
corona around the sun which produces extravagant
surges of fertility, rain, drought, and pestilence in mad
succession. So great is the Sunbane's power and
destructiveness that it has come to dominate all life in
the Land. Yet the Sunbane is not what it appears to be.
And its organic virulence serves primarily to mask
Lord Foul's deeper manipulations.
He has spent centuries corrupting the Council of
Lords. That group now rules over the Land as the
Clave; and it is led by a Raver, one of the Despiser's
most ancient and potent servants. The Clave extracts
blood from the people of the Land to feed the Banefire,
an enormous blaze which purportedly hinders the
Sunbane, but which actually increases it.
However, the hidden purpose of the Clave and the
Banefire is to inspire from Covenant an excessive
exertion of wild magic. And toward that end, another
Raver afflicts Covenant with a venom intended to
cripple his control over his power. When the venom
has done its work, Covenant will be unable to defend
the Land without unleashing so much force that he
destroys the Arch.
As for Linden Avery, Lord Foul intends to use her
loathing of death against her. She alone is gifted or
cursed with the health-sense which once informed and
guided all the people of the Land by enabling them to
perceive physical and emotional health directly. For
that reason, she is uniquely vulnerable to the
malevolence of the Sunbane, as well as to the insatiable
malice of the Ravers. The manifest evil into which she
has been plunged threatens the core of her identity.
Linden's health-sense accentuates her potential as a
healer. However, it also gives her the capacity to
possess other people; to reach so deeply into them that
she can control their actions and emotions. By this
means, Lord Foul intends to cripple her morally: he
seeks to transform her into a woman who will possess
Covenant in order
to misuse his power. Thus she will give the Despiser
what he wants even if Covenant does not.
And if those ploys fail, Lord Foul has other stratagems
in place to achieve his ends.
Horrified in their separate ways by what has been
done to the Land, Covenant and Linden wish to
confront the Clave in Revelstone; but on their own,
they cannot survive the complex perils of the Sunbane.
Fortunately they gain the help of two villagers, Sunder
and Hollian. Sunder and Hollian have lived with the
Sunbane all their lives, and their experience enables
Covenant and Linden to avoid ruin as they travel.
But Linden, Sunder, and Hollian are separated from
Covenant near a region known as Andelain, captured
by the Clave while he enters Andelain alone. It was
once the most beautiful and Earthpowerful place in the
Land; and he now discovers that it alone remains
intact, defended from the Sunbane by the last Forestal,
Caer-Caveral, who was formerly Hile Troy. There
Covenant encounters his Dead, the specters of his long-
gone friends. They offer him advice and guidance for
the struggle ahead. And they give him a gift: a strange
ebony creature named Vain, an artificial being created
for a hidden purpose by ur-viles, former servants of
the Despiser.
Aided by Waynhim, relatives of the ur-viles, Covenant
hastens toward Revelstone to rescue his friends. When
he encounters the Clave, he learns the cruelest secret
of the Sunbane: it was made possible by his
destruction of the Staff of Law thousands of years ago.
Desperate to undo the harm which he has unwittingly
caused, he risks wild magic in order to free Linden,
Sunder, and Hollian, as well as a number of Haruchai,
powerful warriors who at one time served the Council
of Lords.
With his friends, Vain, and a small group of Haruchai,
Covenant sets out to locate the One Tree, the wood
from which Berek originally fashioned the Staff of
Law. Covenant hopes to devise a new Staff with which
to oppose the Clave and the Sunbane.
Faring eastward, toward the Sunbirth Sea, Covenant
and his companions encounter a party of Giants,
seafaring beings from the homeland of the lost Giants
of Seareach. One of them, Cable Seadreamer, has had
a vision of a terrible threat to the Earth, and the
Giants have sent out a Search to discover the danger.
Convinced that this threat is the Sunbane, Covenant
persuades the Search to help him find the One Tree;
and in The One Tree Covenant, Linden, Vain, and
several Haruchai set sail aboard the Giantship
Starfare's Gem, leaving Sunder and Hollian to rally
the people of the Land against the Clave.
The quest for the One Tree takes Covenant and
Linden first to the land of the Elohim, cryptic beings of
pure Earthpower who appear to understand and
perhaps control the destiny of the Earth. The Elohim
agree to reveal the location of the One Tree, but they
exact a price: they cripple Covenant's mind, enclosing
his consciousness in a kind of stasis, purportedly to
protect the Earth from his growing power, but in fact
to
prevent him from carrying out Vain's unnamed
purpose. Guided now by Linden's determination
rather than Covenant's, the Search sets sail for the Isle
of the One Tree.
Unexpectedly, however, they are joined by one of the
Elohim, Findail, who has been Appointed to ensure
that Vain's purpose fails-and to bear the consequences
if it
does not.
Linden soon finds that she is unable to free Covenant's
mind without possessing him, which she fears to do,
knowing that she may unleash his power. When events
force her to a decision, however, she succeeds at
restoring his consciousness-much to Findail's dismay.
At last Starfare's Gem reaches the Isle of the One
Tree, where one of the Haruchai, Brinn, defeats the
Tree's Guardian. But when Covenant, Linden, and
their companions approach their goal, they learn that
they have been misled by the Despiser-and by the
Elohim. Covenant's purpose is in fact the threat to the
Earth which Cable Seadreamer has foreseen.
Covenant's attempt to obtain wood for a new Staff of
Law begins to rouse the Worm of the World's End.
Once awakened, the Worm will accomplish Lord
Foul's release from Time.
At the cost of his own life, Seadreamer succeeds at
making Linden aware of the true danger. She in turn
is able to forestall Covenant. Nevertheless the Worm
has been disturbed, and its restlessness forces the
Search to flee as the Isle sinks into the sea, taking the
One Tree beyond reach.
Defeated, the Search sets course for the Land in White
Gold Wielder. Covenant now believes that he has no
alternative except to confront the Clave directly, to
quench the Banefire, and then to battle the Despiser;
and Linden is determined to aid him, in part because
she has come to love him, and in part because she fears
his unchecked wild magic.
With great difficulty, they eventually reach Revelstone,
where they are rejoined by Sunder, Hollian, and
several Haruchai. Together the Land's few defenders
give battle to the Clave. After a fierce struggle, the
companions corner the Raver which commands the
Clave. There Seadreamer's brother, Grimmand
Honninscrave, sacrifices his life in order to make
possible the "rending" of the Raver. Then Covenant
flings himself into the Banefire, using its dark theurgy
to transform the venom in his veins so that he can
quench the Banefire without threatening the Arch. The
Sunbane remains, but its evil no longer grows.
When the Clave has been dispersed, and Revelstone
has been cleansed, Covenant and Linden turn toward
Mount Thunder, where they believe that they will find
the Despiser. As they travel, still followed by Vain and
Findail, Linden's fears mount. She realizes that
Covenant does not mean to fight Lord Foul. That
contest, Covenant believes, will unleash enough force
to destroy Time. Afraid that he will surrender to the
Despiser, Linden prepares herself to possess him
again, although she now understands that possession is
a greater evil than death.
Yet when she and Covenant finally face Lord Foul,
deep within the Wightwarrens of Mount Thunder, she
is possessed herself by a Raver; and her efforts to win
free of that dark spirit's control leave her unwilling to
interfere with Covenant's choices. As she has feared,
he does surrender, giving Lord Foul his ring. But when
the Despiser turns wild magic against Covenant,
slaying his body, the altered venom is burned out of
Covenant's spirit, and he becomes a being of pure wild
magic, able to sustain the Arch despite the fury of
Lord Foul's attacks. Eventually the Despiser expends
so much of his own essence that he effectively defeats
himself; and Covenant's ring falls to Linden.
Meanwhile, she has gleaned an understanding of
Vain's purpose-and of Findail's Appointed role. Vain
is pure structure: Findail, pure fluidity. Using
Covenant's ring, Linden melds the two beings into a
new Staff of Law. Then, guided by her health-sense
and her physician's instincts, she reaches out with the
restored power of Law to erase the Sunbane and begin
the healing of the Land.
When she is done, Linden fades from the Land and
returns to her own world, where she finds that
Covenant is indeed dead. Yet she now holds his
wedding ring. And when Dr. Berenford comes looking
for her, she discovers that her time with Covenant and
her own victories have transformed her. She is now
truly Linden Avery the Chosen, as she was called in
the Land: she can choose to live her old life in an
entirely new way.

Prologue
"my heart has rooms"
1.
Mother's Son
"No, Mr. Covenant," she repeated for the third time.
"I can't do that."
Ever since he had entered her office, she had wished
that he would go away. He gazed at her as if he had not
heard a word. "I don't see the problem, Dr. Avery."
His voice cast echoes of his father through her, flashes
of memory like spangles off a surface of troubled
water. "I'm her son. I have the right. And it's my
responsibility." Despite the differences, even his
features dragged a tangled net across her heart,
dredging up aches and longing. "She's nothing to you,
just a problem you can't solve. A burden on the
taxpayers. A waste of resources you could use to help
someone else." His eyes were too wide-set, his whole
face too broad. The flesh of his cheeks and jaw hinted
at self-indulgence.
And yet
If he were clay, only a slice or two with the sculptor's
tool, only a line of severity on either side of his mouth,
and his cheeks would look as strict as commandments.
A squint of old suffering at the corners of his eyes: a
little grey dust to add years to his hair. His eyes
themselves were exactly the right color, a disturbed
hue like the shade of madness or prophecy. Oh, he
could have been his father, if he had not been so young
and unmarked. If he had paid any price as extravagant
as his father's
He was certainly insistent enough to be Thomas
Covenant.
He seemed to face her through a haze of recall,
reminding her of the man she had loved. The man who
had risen in fear and fury to meet his harsh fate.
Avoiding the young man's gaze, she looked around the
walls of her office without seeing them. At another
time, the strict professionalism of this space might
have eased her. Her displayed diplomas, like her tidy
desk and heavy filing cabinets, served to vouch for her.
She had found comfort among them on other
occasions. But today they had no effect.
How many times had she held Thomas Covenant in
her arms? Too few: not enough to satisfy her hunger
for them.
She still wore his white gold wedding ring on a silver
chain around her neck. It was all that she had left of
him.
"I can reach her, Dr. Avery," the son continued in a
voice which was too bland to be his father's. "You
can't. You've been trying for years. I'm sure you've
done your best. But if you could have reached her, she
would be sane by now. It's time to let her go. Let me
have her."
"Mr. Covenant," she insisted, "I'll say it again. I can't
do that. The law in this state won't allow it.
Professional ethics won't allow it."
I won't allow it.
Joan Covenant was as unreachable as her son claimed.
She might as well have been catatonic, in spite of every
conceivable drug and therapy. In fact, she would have
died long ago without constant care. But she was not
"nothing" to Linden Avery. If Roger Covenant
believed that, he would never understand the woman
who stood in his way.
His mother was Thomas Covenant's ex-wife. Ten years
ago, Linden had watched Covenant trade his life for
Joan's-and smile to reassure her. That smile had
ripped Linden's heart from its hiding place, rent away
its protective lies and commitments. Sometimes she
believed that everything she had now done and become
had started then. Covenant's smile had triggered a
detonation which had blown her free of her own
parents' hunger for death. The new woman who had
emerged from that explosion loved Thomas Covenant
from the bottom of her soul.
For his sake, she would not abandon Joan.
Yet now Roger Covenant sat across her desk from her,
demanding his mother's re
lease. If she had been the kind of woman who found
the folly of the misguided amus
ing, she would have laughed in his face. Where did he
get the nerve? Hell, where did he get the idea?
"I'm sorry." Apparently he wanted to be polite. "I still
don't see the problem. She's my mother. I'm her son.
I'm willing to take care of her. How can the law
object? How can you, Dr. Avery? I don't understand
why she and I haven't already left."
She turned away for a moment to look out the window.
It gave her an unilluminating view of the parking lot,
where her worn old car crouched over its rust, waiting
for the day when its welds would fail and it could
finally slump into scrap. She had kept it only because
it had carried her to her first encounters with Thomas
Covenant.
If Roger would not leave, surely she could simply drive
away? Go out to her car, coax its engine to life, and
return to Jeremiah?
No. If she had wanted to be a woman who fled
whenever her job became difficult, she should have
bought herself a more reliable vehicle.
Old habit lifted her hand to press the hard circle of
Covenant's ring through her blouse. Sighing, she faced
his son again.
"Let me try to be plain. Whether or not you
understand is beside the point. The point is this. Unless
and until you bring me a court order signed by a judge
instructing me to release Joan Covenant to your
custody, she stays where she is. End of discussion." She
gazed at him expectantly. When he failed to take the
hint, she added, "That's your cue to leave, Mr.
Covenant."
Don't you understand that you're not the only person
here who cares about her?
However, she doubted that Roger Covenant cared at
all for his mute mother. His oblivious manner, and the
incipient madness or prophecy in his eyes, conveyed an
entirely different impression.
He had explained that he had not come for Joan
earlier because he had not been old enough. But he
had passed his twenty-first birthday yesterday. Now he
was ready. Yet Linden believed intuitively that he had
some hidden purpose which outweighed love or
concern.
In his unwavering insistence, he reminded her of some
of the more plausible psychotics she had known in her
tenure as chief medical officer for the Berenford
Memorial Psychiatric Hospital. But perhaps he
suffered from nothing more treatable than terminal
narcissism, in which case he was telling her the simple
truth. He could not "see the problem."
This time, however, something in her tone-or in the
conflicted fire mounting behind her eyes-must have
penetrated his strange unction. Before she could offer
to call Security, he rose to his feet as if he
comprehended her at last.
Immediately she stood as well. She saw now that he
was an inch or two shorter than his father, and
broader in the torso. For that reason, among others, he
would never evince the particular gauntness, the cut
and flagrant sense of purpose-all compromise and
capacity for surrender flensed away-which had made
Thomas Covenant irrefusable to her.
He would never be the man his father was. He had too
much of his mother in him. His carriage exposed him:
the slight looseness in his shoulders; the tension which
compensated for his poor balance. His arms seemed
full of truncated gestures, expressions of honesty or
appeal cut off prematurely. Behind his insistence,
Linden heard hints of Joan's weakness, forlorn and
fundamentally betrayed.
Perhaps his real desires had nothing to do with his
mother. Perhaps he simply wanted to prove himself his
father's equal. Or to supplant him
Having gained his feet, however, Roger did not admit
defeat. Instead he asked, "Can I see her? It's been
years." He offered Linden an affectless smile. "And
there's something
I want to show you."
In spite of her impatience, she nodded. "Of course.
You can visit her right now." Strangely, his apparent
emptiness saddened her: she grieved on his behalf.
Thomas Covenant had taught her that ignorance-like
innocence-had no power to ward itself against harm.
Because Roger did not understand, he could not be
saved from suffering.
When he saw Joan's unique plight, either his
incomprehension would hold against her or it would
not. In either case, the experience might convince him
to leave Linden alone.
For that reason, she gestured him toward the door.
She had already done her rounds, and her paperwork
could wait. Certainly her patients had no immediate
need of her. At its heart, Berenford Memorial existed,
not to heal its occupants, but to help them heal
themselves.
Suddenly cooperative, as if he had gained an
important concession, Roger preceded her out of her
office. Now his smile struck her as reflexive; an
unconscious expression of eagerness.
Closing the door behind her, Linden led him through
the edifice where she did the work with which she
attempted to fill Covenant's place in her heart. His
place-and the Land's
Inadvertently she remembered the sound of
Pitchwife's voice as he sang,

My heart has rooms that sigh with dust And ashes in
the hearth.

At times the contrast between her experiences with
Thomas Covenant and her years at Berenford
Memorial discouraged her. Surely her contest with the
madness of her patients could not compare with the
sheer glory of Thomas Covenant's struggle to redeem
the Land? Nevertheless she closed her throat and
continued guiding Roger toward Joan's room. The
ache he elicited was familiar to her, and she knew how
to bear it.
Her life here was not less than the one she had lived
with Covenant. It was only different. Less grand,
perhaps: more ambiguous, with smaller triumphs. But
it sufficed.
A short corridor took her out of the Hospital's small
administrative wing and across the lobby, past Maxine
Dubroff's reception/information station. Maxine
worked there nine hours a day, five days a week: an
aging woman who looked like a stork and smiled like
an angel, responding to everyone who entered
Berenford Memorial with unfailing solicitude. She was
a volunteer who had simply attached herself to Linden
one day after Linden, on call in ER as she was every
third night, had saved the life of Maxine's husband,
Ernie. He had been kicked in the chest by a horse:
Linden had
found and removed a sliver of bone from his left lung.
He had recovered to teach the horse better manners;
and Maxine had been at Linden's service ever since.
She smiled now as Linden and Roger Covenant
crossed the tiled lobby. In spite of Roger's presence,
Linden replied with a smile of her own-less seraphic
than Maxine's, but no less sincere. Maxine reminded
Linden that she was not alone in her dedication to her
work. Like Linden herself, and most of Berenford
Memorial's staff, Maxine had committed herself to a
need which the county acknowledged but could not
meet.
Ten years ago, Joan had been snatched from Thomas
Covenant's care by a group of people who were-in the
county's eyes-demonstrably insane. For weeks these
individuals had nurtured their lunacy and destitution
openly, begging for food and shelter and clothing,
calling for repentance. Then, one night little more than
twenty-four hours after Linden had arrived in town to
accept a job at County Hospital, they had kidnapped
Joan, leaving Covenant himself unconscious, his home
splashed with blood.
They had taken her into the woods behind his home,
where they had apparently planned to kill her in some
bizarre ritual-a rite which included burning their own
hands to stumps in a bonfire built for the purpose.
Although no one except Linden knew the truth, that
rite had achieved its intended aim. It had lured
Covenant into the woods on Joan's trail. There he had
exchanged himself for her, and been killed.
In the life which Linden had lived here, she had known
him for scarcely thirty-six hours.
After his death, however, the people who had arranged
his self-sacrifice had regained some measure of
ordinary sanity. Their charred hands and starved
bodies had been horrible enough. Those injuries had
stretched County Hospital's limits. But the burden of
their damaged minds, their aggrieved spirits, had
proved harder for the citizens of the area to bear.
Collectively the county felt responsible.
In public, most people admitted that they had failed to
care for the most desolate and fragile members of their
community. Surely unbalanced mothers and fathers
would not have thrust, not just their own hands, but
the hands of their children as well into the flames if
their destitution had not been neglected by the more
stable souls around them? Surely those wounded men
and women would have eschewed such violence if they
had been offered any other recourse? No matter how
many demented preachers urged them to fanaticism?
Listening to children in cruel pain sob through the
night taught the well-meaning people of the county to
desire some form of prevention.
Yet this sense of communal guilt ran deeper than most
people would acknowledge. On some level, the entire
county understood that the terrible events leading to
Covenant's murder would never have happened if he
had not been shunned and execrated, forced into the
traditional role of the outcast, the pariah. He had been,
inexplicably, a leper: he had what the doctors called a
"primary" case of Hansen's disease, one with no
known etiology. Such cases were rare, even by the
standards of an illness as rare as leprosy, but they
occurred often enough to suggest the wrath of God;
punishment for sins so vile that they sickened the
sinner.
Viscerally frightened and full of loathing, people had
spurned Thomas Covenant as if he were a carrier of
corruption. For over a decade, he had occupied Haven
Farm on sufferance: seeing no one, never coming to
town, avoided by his neighbors; occasionally harassed
by the county sheriff, Barton Lytton; uncomfortably
tolerated by his own lawyer, Megan Roman;
befriended only by Julius Berenford, then chief of staff
at County Hospital. Indeed, the county's repugnance
for Covenant's illness would have driven him into exile
if he had not once saved the life of a snakebitten girl.
In addition, however, he made significant
contributions to the care of the county's
indigentsmoney which he earned by writing novels
about guilt and power. In effect, he had supported the
very people who brought about his death: the same
people, presumably, who had driven his ex-wife mad.
Therefore he was tolerated.
Then he was gone, irretrievable, leaving only Joan and
Linden behind.
Dr. Berenford believed that he had been too silent
while Covenant lived. Afterward he raised his voice.
Impelled by her own regrets, Megan Roman acted on
his words. And the voters and politicians of the county
felt more responsible than they cared to admit. They
lobbied the state legislature: they passed mill levies:
they applied for grants.
Eventually they built Berenford Memorial Psychiatric
Hospital, named for Julius when he had slipped away
in his sleep one night five years ago. And they
appointed Linden as Berenford Memorial's CMO. She
was the only one among them who had accompanied
Covenant to his last crisis.
Now she presided over a small facility of twenty beds,
all in private rooms. Her staff included five nurses, five
orderlies, one janitor, one maintenance man, and a
coterie of part-time secretaries, in addition to
volunteers like Maxine Dubroff. Berenford Memorial
had two psychiatrists on call. And one physician-
herself-with a background in emergency-room
medicine and family practice: trauma, triage, and pink
eye.
From the lobby, she guided Covenant's son upstairs to
the "acute care" wing: ten beds devoted to patients
who were inclined to injure themselves, assault the
staff, or run away at random opportunities. Instead of
proceeding to loan's room, however, she paused at the
top of the stairs and turned to face Roger.
"A moment, if you don't mind, Mr. Covenant. May I
ask you a question?" When he had seen his mother, he
might not give her another chance. "The more I think
about it, the less I understand why you're here."
Again his smile seemed merely reflexive. "What is
there to understand? She's my mother. Why wouldn't
I want to see her?"
"Of course," Linden countered. "But what inspired
your desire to take care of her?
That's not as common as you might think. Frankly, it
sounds a little"-the term she wished to use was de trop,
existentially dislocated-"daunting."
In response, Roger's manner seemed to sharpen. "The
last time I saw her," he replied precisely, "she told me
that if she failed I would need to take her place. Until
yesterday I didn't have the resources to do that."
Involuntarily Linden caught her breath as the bottom
of her stomach seemed to fall away. "Failed at what?"
Long ago, Joan had sought out Thomas Covenant-no,
not sought out, she had been sent-in order to teach him
despair. Despite her terrible plight, however, and her
thirst for his blood, she had failed absolutely.
"Isn't that obvious?" Covenant's son returned. "She's
here, isn't she? Wouldn't you call that failure?"
No. For a moment, Linden's heart quailed. Memories
beat about her head like wings: she felt harried by
furies.
Her face must have betrayed her chagrin. Solicitously,
Roger reached out to touch her arm. "Dr. Avery, are
you all right?" Then he dropped his hand. "I really
think you should let me take her. It would be better for
everyone."
Even you, he seemed to say. Especially you.
Take her place.
Ten years ago, empowered by all of those hands thrust
into the flames, all of that ceded pain, as well as by the
fatal rush of Thomas Covenant's blood, a bitter
malevolence had pierced the reality of Linden's life. It
had drawn her in Covenant's wake to another place,
another dimension of existence. The psychiatrists on
call at Berenford Memorial would have called it a
"psychotic episode"-an extended psychotic episode.
With Covenant, she had been summoned to a realm
known as the Land, where she had been immersed in
evil until she was altered almost beyond recognition.
During the black hours of that one night, before Julius
Berenford had found her with Covenant's body, she
had somehow spent several months outside-or deep
within-herself, striving to win free of her own
weakness and the legacy of her parents in order to
preserve the beauty of a world which had never been
meant for corruption.
Now Roger's words seemed to suggest that she would
have to face it all again.
No. Shuddering, she came back to herself. It was
impossible. She was flinching at shadows, echoes.
Roger's father was dead. There would be no second
summons for her. The Land was Thomas Covenant's
doom, not hers. He had given his life for it, as he had
for Joan, and so its enemy, the dark being known
variously as a-Jeroth, the Grey Slayer, and Lord Foul
the Despiser, had been defeated.
Trusting in that, Linden set aside her alarm and faced
Covenant's son.
Roger's implied threat she ignored. Instead she asked,
"What do you mean, you have the `resources' to take
her place?"
"It's simple," Roger replied. He seemed to
misunderstand her without being aware of it. "I'm
twenty-one now. I'm of age. Yesterday I inherited my
father's legacy.
"Of course," he explained as if Linden might have
forgotten, "he left everything to my mother. Haven
Farm. His royalties. But she was declared incompetent
when she was committed here. Ms. Roman-you know
her, my father's lawyer-has been trustee of the estate.
But now it's all mine." His smile hinted at self-
satisfaction. "Once I've persuaded you to release her,
she and I will live on Haven Farm.
"She'll like that. She and my father were happy
there."
Linden swallowed a groan. Thomas and Joan
Covenant had lived on Haven Farm until his leprosy
had been diagnosed. Then she had left him, abandoned
him; divorced him to protect their son from his illness.
No doubt she had believed that she was doing the right
thing. Nevertheless the knowledge of her own frailty-
the awareness that she had broken her vows when her
husband had needed her most-had given the Despiser a
foothold in her soul. Her shame was fertile soil for the
seeds of despair and madness.
And when she had been deprived of every conscious
impulse except the desire to taste her ex-husband's
blood, Covenant had cared for her on Haven Farm
until the end. The idea that Joan would "like" living
there again nearly brought tears to Linden's eyes.
And Roger had not answered her real question.
"That isn't what I meant," she insisted thickly. "You
said she told you to take her place if she failed. Now
you have the resources do that."
"Did I?" His smile remained expressionless. "You
must have misheard me. Now I can take your place,
Dr. Avery. I have enough money to care for her. We
have a home. I can afford all the help I need.
"She isn't the only one who failed."
Linden frowned to conceal a wince. She herself had
failed Joan: she knew that. She failed all her patients.
But she also knew that her failure was beside the point.
It did nothing to diminish the value or the necessity of
her chosen work.
And she was sure that she had not "misheard" Roger.
Abruptly she decided not to waste any more time
questioning him. For all practical purposes, he was
impervious to inquiry. And he had nothing to say that
might sway her.
Surely he would leave when he had seen his mother?
Without challenging his falseness, she drew him
forward again, toward Joan's room.
Along the way, she explained, "This is where we keep
our more disturbed patients. They aren't necessarily
more damaged or in more pain than the people
downstairs. But they manifest violent symptoms of one
form or another. We've had to keep your mother
under restraint for the past year. Before that-"
Linden temporarily spared herself more detail by
pushing open Joan's door with her shoulder and
leading Roger into his mother's room.
Out in the hall, the characteristic smell of hospitals
was less prominent, but here it was unmistakable: an
ineradicable admixture of Betadine and blood, harsh
cleansers and urine, human sweat, fear, floor wax, and
anesthetics, accented by an inexplicable tang of
formalin. For some reason, medical care always
produced the same scents.
The room was spacious by the standard of private
rooms in County Hospital next door. A large window
let in the kind of sunlight that sometimes helped fragile
psyches recover their balance. The bed occupied the
center of the floor. An unused TV set jutted from one
wall near the ceiling. The only piece of advanced
equipment present was a pulse monitor, its lead
attached to a clip on the index finger of Joan's left
hand. According to the monitor, her pulse was steady,
untroubled.
On a stand by the head of the bed sat a box of cotton
balls, a bottle of sterile saline, a jar of petroleum jelly,
and a vase of bright flowers. The flowers had been
Maxine Dubroff's idea, but Linden had adopted it
immediately. For years now she had arranged for the
delivery of flowers to all her patients on a regular
basis, the brighter the better. In every language which
she could devise or imagine, she strove to convince her
patients that they were in a place of care.
Joan sat upright in the bed, staring blankly at the
door. Restraints secured her arms to the rails of the
bed. Her bonds were loose enough to let her scratch
her nose or adjust her posture, although she never did
those things.
In fact, one of the nurses or orderlies must have placed
her in that position. Fortunately for her caregivers,
Joan had become a compliant patient: she remained
where she was put. Pulled to her feet, she stood.
Stretched out on the bed, she lay still. She swallowed
food placed in her mouth. Sometimes she chewed.
When she was taken into the bathroom, she voided.
But she did not react to words or voices, gave no
indication that she was aware of the people who tended
her.
Her stare never wavered: she hardly seemed to blink.
Standing or reclining, her unfocused gaze regarded
neither care nor hope. If she ever slept, she did so with
her eyes open.
Her years of catatonia had marked her poignantly.
The skin of her face had hung slack on its bones for so
long now that the underlying muscles had atrophied,
giving her a look of mute horror. Despite the program
of exercises which Linden had prescribed for her, and
which the orderlies carried out diligently, her limbs
had wasted to a pitiful frailty. And nothing that
Linden or the nurses could do-nothing that any of the
experts whom Linden had consulted could suggest-
spared her from losing her teeth over the years. No
form of nourishment, oral or IV, no brushing or other
imposed care, could replace her body's need for
ordinary use. In effect, she had experi-
enced more mortality than her chronological years
could contain. Helpless to do otherwise, her flesh bore
the burden of too much time.
"Hello, Joan," Linden said as she always did when she
entered the room. The detached confidence of her tone
assumed that Joan could hear her in spite of all
evidence to the contrary. "How are you today?"
Nevertheless Joan's plight tugged at her heart. A sore
the size of Linden's palm stigmatized Joan's right
temple. A long series of blows had given her a deep
bruise which had eventually begun to ooze blood as the
skin stretched and cracked, too stiff to heal. Now a
dripping red line veined with yellow and white ran
down her cheek in spite of everything that could be
done to treat it.
When the bruise had first begun to bleed, Linden had
covered it with a bandage; but that had made Joan
frantic, causing her to thrash against her restraints
until she threatened to break her own bones. Now
Linden concentrated on trying to reduce the frequency
of the blows. On her orders, the wound was allowed to
bleed: cleaned several times a day, slathered with
antibiotics and salves to counteract an incessant
infection, but left open to the air. Apparently it calmed
Joan in some way.
Roger stopped just inside the door and stared at his
mother. His face betrayed no reaction. Whatever he
felt remained closed within him, locked into his heart.
Linden had expected surprise, shock, dismay,
indignation, perhaps even compassion; but she saw
none. The undefined lines of his face gave her no hints.
Without shifting his gaze, he asked softly, "Who hit
her?"
He didn't sound angry. Hell, Linden thought, he
hardly sounded interested
She sighed. "She did it to herself. That's why she's
restrained."
Moving to the side of the bed, she took a couple of
cotton balls, moistened them with sterile saline, and
gently began to mop Joan's cheek. One soft stroke at a
time, she wiped away the blood upward until she
reached the seeping wound. Then she used more cotton
balls to dab at the wound itself, trying to clean it
without hurting Joan.
Linden would have cared for her carefully in any case;
but her devotion to Thomas Covenant inspired an
extra tenderness in her.
"It started a year ago. Until then we kept her
downstairs. She'd been unreactive for so long, we
never thought that she might be a danger to herself.
But then she began punching at her temple. As hard as
she can."
Hard enough to wear calluses on her knuckles.
"At first it wasn't very often. Once every couple of
days, no more. But that didn't last long. Soon she was
doing it several times a day. Then several times an
hour. We brought her up here, tied her wrists. That
seemed to work for a while. But then she got out of the
restraints-"
"Got out?" Roger put in abruptly. "How?"
For the first time since he had entered the room, he
looked at Linden instead of at Joan.
Avoiding his eyes, Linden gazed out the window. Past
the institutional profile of County Hospital next door,
she could see a stretch of blue sky, an almost luminous
azure, free of fault. Spring offered the county days like
this occasionally, days when the air reminded her of
diamondraught, and the illimitable sky seemed deep
enough to swallow away all the world's hurts.
Today it gave her little comfort.
"We don't know," she admitted. "We've never been
able to figure it out. Usually it happens late at night,
when she's alone. We come in the next morning, find
her free. Blood pumping from her temple. Blood on
her fist. For a while we had her watched twenty-four
hours a day. Then we set up video cameras, recorded
everything. As far as we can tell, the restraints just fall
off her. Then she hits herself until we make her stop."
"And she still does?" Roger's manner had intensified.
Linden turned from the window to face him again.
"Not as much as before. I can get you a copy of the
tapes if you want. You can watch for yourself. Now it
only happens three or four times a night. Occasionally
during the day, not often."
"What changed?" he asked.
Gazing at him, she remembered that his father had
done everything in his power to protect both Joan and
her. Roger's stare conveyed the impression that he
would not have done the same.
Her shoulders sagged, and she sighed again. "Mr.
Covenant, you have to understand this. She was going
to kill herself. One punch at a time, she was beating
herself to death. We tried everything we could think
of. Even electroshock-which I loathe. During the first
six or seven months, we gave her an entire pharmacy
of sedatives, tranquilizers, soporifics, stimulants,
neural inhibitors, beta blockers, SSRIs, antiseizure
drugs-enough medication to comatize a horse. Nothing
worked. Nothing even slowed her down. She was
killing herself."
Apparently something within her required those
blows. Linden considered it possible that the Land's
old enemy had left a delayed compulsion like a
posthypnotic suggestion in Joan's shattered mind,
commanding her to bring about her own death.
Not for the first time, Linden wondered what Sheriff
Lytton had said or done to Joan during the brief time
when she had been in his care. When Julius Berenford
had driven to Haven Farm after Covenant's murder,
he had found Joan there: confused and frightened,
with no memory of what had transpired; but able to
speak and respond. Wishing to search for Covenant
and Linden without interference, Julius had sent Joan
to County Hospital with Barton Lytton; and by the
time they had reached the hospital Joan's mind was
gone. Linden had asked Lytton what he had done, of
course, pushed hire for an answer; but he had told her
nothing.
In
"And she was getting worse," Linden went on. "More
frantic. Hysterical. She hit herself more often.
Sometimes she refused to eat, went days without food.
She fought us so hard that it took three orderlies and a
nurse to fix an IV. She began to lose alarming amounts
of blood"
"What changed?" Roger repeated intently. "What did
you do?"
Linden hesitated on the edge of risks which she had
not meant to take. Without
warning, the air of Joan's room seemed crowded with
dangerous possibilities. How
much of the truth could she afford to expose to this
unformed and foolish young man? But then she
tightened her resolve and met his question squarely.
"Three months
ago, I gave her back her wedding ring."
Without glancing away from him, Linden reached to
the collar of Joan's nightgown and lifted it aside to
reveal the delicate silver chain hanging around her
neck. From the end of the chain, still hidden by the
nightgown, dangled a white gold wedding band. Joan
had lost so much weight that she could not have kept a
ring on any of her fingers.
Roger's smile hinted at sudden hungers. "I'm
impressed, Dr. Avery. That was obviously the right
thing to do. But I would not have expected-" He
stopped short of saying that he would not have
expected such insight from her. "How did you figure it
out? What made you think of it?"
Committed now, Linden shrugged. "It just came to me
one night.
"I don't know how much you know about the end of
your father's life. For the last two weeks before he was
killed, he took care of Joan." On Haven Farm. "She
had already lost her mind, but she wasn't like this. In
some ways, she was much worse. Practically rabid.
The only thing that calmed her was the taste of your
father's blood. When he needed to feed her, or clean
her, he would let her scratch him until she drew blood.
Sucking it off his skin would bring her back to herself-
for a little while:'
Behind Linden's professional detachment, a secret
anger made her hope that she might yet shock or
frighten Roger Covenant.
"Now she hits herself, Mr. Covenant. She wants the
pain for some reason. She needs to hurt herself. I don't
know why. As punishment?" For her role in her ex-
husband's murder? "It certainly looks like she's
punishing herself.
"And she won't tolerate a bandage. Her own bleeding
seems to comfort her. Like a kind of restitution- It
helps her regain a little balance. I tried to think of
some way to sustain that. If restitution calmed her, I
wanted her to have more of it.
"Her ring," the symbol of her marriage, "was the only
thing I had that I could restore."
At the time, Linden had placed the chain around
Joan's neck with acute trepidation. The language of
that gesture could so easily have been misinterpreted;
taken as a reminder of guilt rather than as a symbol of
love and attachment. However, Joan had lapsed into
her comparatively pliant trance as soon as the ring had
touched her skin.
Since then Linden had often feared that she had made
a terrible mistake: that it was
precisely the reminder of guilt which calmed Joan:
that Joan's catatonia endured because she had been
fundamentally defeated by the touch of white gold.
Nevertheless Linden did not remove the ring.
Joan's present trance was all that kept her alive. She
could not have survived her battering desperation
much longer.
Roger nodded as if Linden's explanation made perfect
sense to him. "You did well. Again, I'm impressed."
For the first time since Linden had met him-hardly an
hour ago-he seemed satisfied. "I can see why you're
reluctant to let anyone else take care of her."
At once, however, he resumed his irrational insistence.
"But you've done all you can. She won't get any better
than this unless I help her."
He raised his hand to forestall Linden's protest.
"There are things you don't know about her. About
this situation. And I can't explain them. Words won't-
" He paused to rephrase his point. "They can't be
conveyed in words. The knowledge has to be earned.
And you haven't earned it. Not the way I have.
"Let me show you."
She should stop him, Linden thought stupidly. This
had gone on too long. Yet she did nothing to intervene
as he approached the bed. He had touched a forgotten
vulnerability to paralysis deep within her.
Gracelessly he seated himself as close to his mother as
the bed rail permitted. A touch of excitement flushed
his cheeks. His respiration quickened. His hands
trembled slightly as he undid the restraint on her right
wrist.
Flowers cast splotches of color into Linden's eyes, deep
red and blue, untroubled yellow. A few minutes ago,
she had known exactly what kind of flowers they were;
now she had no idea. The sky outside the window
seemed unattainable, too far away to offer any hope.
The sunlight shed no warmth.
Joan stared past or through Roger vacantly. Linden
expected her to strike herself, but she did not. Perhaps
the fact that her hand was free had not yet penetrated
her subterranean awareness.
Roger lifted his palms to Joan's cheeks, cupped them
against her slack flesh. His trembling had become
unmistakable. He seemed to quiver with eagerness,
avid as a deprived lover. Unsteadily he turned her
head until he could gaze straight into the absence of
her eyes.
"Mother." His voice shook. "It's me. Roger."
Linden bit down on her lip. All the air in the room
seemed to concentrate around the bed, too thick to
breathe. In the bonfire where Joan's captors had
destroyed their right hands, she had seen eyes like
fangs look out hungrily at Covenant's impending
murder. At the time, she had believed that they held
malice. But now she thought that the emotion in them
might have been despair; an emptiness which could
not be filled.
"Mother."
Joan blinked several times. Her pupils contracted.
With an effort that seemed to stretch the skin of her
forehead, her eyes came into focus on her son.
"Roger?" Her disused voice crawled like a wounded
thing between her lips. "Is it you?"
Suddenly stern, he told her, "Of course it's me. You
can see that."
Involuntarily Linden recoiled a step. She tasted blood,
felt a pain in her lip. Roger
sounded disdainful, vexed, as though Joan were a
servant who had disappointed him. "Oh, Roger."
Tears spilled from Joan's eyes. Her free hand fumbled
to his shoulder,
clutched at his neck. "It's been so long." Her face held
no expression: its muscles
lacked the strength to convey what she felt. "I've
waited so long. It's been so hard. Make
it stop."
"Stop complaining." He scolded her as if she were a
child. "It isn't as bad as all that. I had to wait until I
was twenty-one. You know that."
How-? Linden panted as if she had been struck in the
stomach. How-? How had Roger reached Joan?
How could Joan have known anything?
"I've been good," Joan responded, pleading. "I have."
Her damaged voice seemed to flinch and cower at his
feet. "See?"
Dropping her arm from his neck, she flung her fist at
her bruised temple. Fresh blood smeared her knuckles
as she lowered her arm.
"I've been good," she begged. "Make it stop. I can't
bear it."
"Nonsense, Mother," Roger snorted. "Of course you
can bear it. That's what you do." But then, apparently,
he took pity on her, and his manner softened. "It won't
be
much longer. I have some things to do. Then I'll make
it stop. We'll make it stop to
gether."
Releasing her cheeks, he rose to his feet, turned toward
Linden.
As soon as he left the bed, Joan began to scream-a
frail, rending sound that
seemed to rip from her throat like fabric tearing
across jagged glass. As if in sympathy,
the pulse monitor emitted a shrill call.
"You see, Dr. Avery?" he remarked through his
mother's cries. "You really have no choice. You have
to let her go with me.
"The sooner you release her, the sooner I can free her
from all this."
Over my dead body, Linden told his ambiguous smile
and his bland eyes. Over my dead body.
2.
Gathering Defenses
"Outside," Linden ordered him aloud. "Now."
 She was fortunate that he complied at once. If he had
resisted, she might have
hit him, trying to strike the certainty from his face.
As soon as she had closed Joan's door behind her, she
wheeled on him. "You knew
that would happen."
Joan's screaming echoed in the corridor, reflected by
the white tile floor, the un
adorned walls. Her monitor carried its alarm to the
nurses' station.
He shrugged, untouched by Linden's anger. "I'm her
son. She raised me." "That's no answer," she retorted.
Before she could go on, a woman's voice called out,
"Dr. Avery? What's wrong?"
A nurse came hurrying along the hall: Amy Clint. Her
young, diligent face was wide
with surprise and concern.
Roger Covenant smiled blandly at Amy. "Give her a
taste of that blood," he sug
gested as though he had the right to say such things.
"It'll quiet her down."
Amy stopped. She stared in dismay at Linden.
"Ms. Clint"-Linden summoned her authority to
counteract Amy's shock-"this
is Roger Covenant. He's Joan's son. Seeing him has
upset her."
"She's never-" For a moment, the nurse fumbled to
control her reaction. Then she
said, more steadily, "I've never heard her scream like
that." Joan's wailing ached in the
air. "What should I do?"
Linden took a deep breath, mustered her outrage. "Do
what he says. Let her taste
her blood." To ease Amy's consternation, she added,
"I'll explain later.
"Now," she insisted when the nurse hesitated.
"Right away, Doctor." With distress in her eyes, Amy
entered Joan's room, shut the
door.
At once, Linden confronted Roger again. "You didn't
answer my question."
Still smiling as though his mother's screams had no
effect on him, he held up his
hand, asking Linden to wait.
Moments after Amy had entered the room, Joan
suddenly fell silent. The abrupt
end of her cries throbbed in the hallway like an
aftershock.
"You see, Dr. Avery?" replied Roger. "I'm really the
only one who can take care of her. No one else is
qualified" Before Linden could protest, he added, "I
knew what would happen because I'm her son. I know
exactly what's wrong with her. I know how to treat it.
"You can't justify keeping her now."
"You're wrong." Linden kept her voice down. "I can't
justify releasing her. What you just did is
unconscionable."
"I reached her," he objected. "That's more than you
can do."
"Oh, you reached her, all right," Linden returned.
"That's pretty damn obvious. It's the results I object
to."
Roger frowned uncertainly. "You think she's better off
the way she is." He appeared genuinely confused by
Linden's reaction.
"I think-" Linden began, then stopped herself. He was
beyond argument. More quietly, she stated, "I think
that until you bring me a court order to the contrary,
she stays here. End of discussion.
"The front door"-she pointed along the hall-"is that
way."
For an instant, anger seemed to flicker in his
dissociated eyes. But then he shrugged, and the
glimpse vanished.
"We'll resolve this later, Dr. Avery," he said as if he
were sure. "There's just one more thing.
"Can you tell me what happened to my father's
wedding ring?"
Without transition, Linden went cold. In the Land,
Covenant's white gold ring was the symbol and
instrument of his power. With it, he had wielded wild
magic against the Despiser.
Roger wanted more than a chance to take his mother's
place. He wanted his father's theurgy as well.
"I understand he always wore it," he went on, "but it
wasn't found on his body. I've asked Megan Roman
and Sheriff Lytton, but they don't know where it is.
It's mine now. I want it."
Old habit caused her to raise her hand to the
irrefusable circle of the ring under her blouse. Roger
meant to bear white gold to the Land so that he could
tear down the Arch of Time, set Lord Foul free. The
Despiser had already renewed his assault on the
beauty of the Earth, and an ordeal that had nearly
destroyed Linden once before was about to begin again
No. No. It was impossible. Such things had exhausted
their reality for her ten years ago.
Nevertheless she believed it. Or she believed that
Roger Covenant believed it. And if he believed it
He smiled his vacant smile at her.
-then she could not afford to let him know that she had
guessed his intent. If he
realized that his plans were endangered, he might do
something she would be unable to prevent.
Already she might have given away too much. He
could have seen the ingrained
movement of her hand.
People were going to die
A heartbeat later, however, she recovered her courage.
"I have it," she answered. She
did not mean to diminish herself with lies. And she
would not disavow her loyalty to
his father. "I've had it ever since he died."
Roger nodded. "That's why Sheriff Lytton didn't find
it."
"Your father left it to me," Linden stated flatly. "I
intend to keep it."
"It belongs to me," he countered. "His will left
everything to my mother. I inherited
it yesterday."
She shook her head. "No, you didn't. It came to me
before he died. It isn't part of his
estate."
In fact, Covenant had not handed her the ring directly:
she had retrieved it when
the Despiser had slain him with its argent fire.
Nevertheless she considered it hers as
much as if he had wedded her with it.
"I see." Roger frowned again. "That's a problem, Dr.
Avery. I need it. I can't take her
place without it. Not entirely. And if I don't take her
place, she'll never be completely free." He seemed
unconcerned that he had revealed so much. Perhaps he
did not consider
Linden discerning enough to understand him.
"But it's not my problem," she said precisely. "We're
done here. Good-bye, Mr.
Covenant. The door is-"
"I know," he interrupted. "The door is that way.
"Doctor Avery"-now he sneered her title-"you have no
idea what you're interfer
ing with." Then he turned and strode away.
Oh, she had some idea. Despite his power to disturb his
mother, he clearly under
stood nothing about the woman who opposed him. But
she could not imagine that
she had any advantage over him.
She could only guess what he might do next.
Urgently she wanted to know how he had earned his
knowledge.
Her stomach clenched as she reentered Joan's room to
explain the situation as best
she could to Amy Clint.
'the time she returned to her office, her resolve had
hardened, taken shape. She could not allow herself to
be drawn into Roger Covenant's mad designs,
whatever they might be. She had made her life and her
commitments here: people
whom she had chosen to serve and love were
dependent on her. And Joan deserved better than
whatever her son might do to her.
Linden had to stop Roger now, before he carried his
intentions any further. To do that, she needed to know
more about him.
She also needed help. Joan was not her only
responsibility. She had other duties, other loves, which
she did not mean to set aside.
Clearing space on her desk, she pulled the phone
toward her and began to make calls.
First she contacted Bill Coty, the amiable old man who
ran what passed for security at County Hospital. He
was generally considered a harmless, ineffectual
duffer; but Linden thought otherwise. She had often
suspected that he might rise to a larger challenge if he
ever encountered one. Certainly he had made himself
useful during the crisis following Covenant's death,
when the hospital's resources had been stretched by
burn victims, concerned citizens, and hysterical
relatives. His characteristic smile twisted with nausea,
he had soothed some people and shepherded others
while shielding the medical staff from interference.
And he could call on half a dozen volunteer security
"officers," burly individuals who would rush to the
hospital if they were needed.
"I know this is going to sound odd," she told him when
he came on the line, "but I think there's a man in the
area who might try to kidnap one of my patients. His
name is Roger Covenant.
"You remember his mother, Joan. He thinks he can
take care of her better than we can. And he doesn't
seem to care about legal niceties like custody."
"That poor woman." For a moment, Coty sounded
inattentive, distracted by memories. Then, however, he
surprised Linden by asking, "How violent do you
think this Roger is?"
Violent-? She had not considered Joan's son in those
terms.
"I ask, Dr. Avery," the old man went on, "because I
want my guys ready for him. If he's just going to break
a window and try to carry her off, any one of us can
stop him. But if he comes armed-" He chuckled
humorlessly. "I might ask a couple of my guys to bring
guns. I'm sure you know we aren't bonded for
firearms. But I don't want a repeat of what happened
ten years ago."
Linden scrambled to adjust her assessment of Roger
Covenant. "I'm not sure what to tell you, Mr. Coty. I
just met him this morning. I don't think he's in his
right mind. But nothing about him seemed violent,"
apart from his emotional brutality toward his mother.
"Guns might be an overreaction."
Could she be wrong about Roger's intentions? Was she
inventing the danger? That was possible. If so, he
hardly deserved to be shot for his dysfunction.
"Whatever you say, Doctor." Bill's tone suggested no
disappointment. Apparently he did not fancy himself-
or his volunteers-as gunslingers. "We'll start to keep
an eye
on her room tonight. Unless he's stupid, he won't try
anything during the day. I'll make sure one of my guys
is on duty all night."
Grateful as much for his lack of skepticism as for his
willingness to help, Linden thanked him and hung up.
Could she leave the matter in his hands? she asked
herself. Did she need to do more?
Yes, she did. Joan was not Roger's only potential
victim. If something happened to Linden herself,
Jeremiah would be lost. He was entirely dependent on
her.
The simple thought of him made her glance out the
window at her car. She felt a sudden yearning to forget
Joan and go to him; make sure that he was all right
Sandy would have called if he were not.
Roger did not know he existed.
Her hands trembled slightly as she dialed Megan
Roman's number.
Megan had been Thomas Covenant's lawyer, and then
his estate's, for more than twenty years. During much
of that time, her diligence-as she freely admitted-had
been inspired by shame. His leprosy had disturbed her
deeply. She had felt toward him a plain, primitive,
almost cellular terror; an innominate conviction that
his disease was a contagion which would spread
through the county as it would through her own flesh,
like wildfire.
But she was a lawyer, a thinking woman, dismayed by
her own irrationality. While he had lived, she had
waged a running battle with her alarm, continuing to
work for him because she was ashamed of herself. And
after his death she had become a staunch and vocal
advocate for the kind of tolerance and social
responsibility which had eluded her during his life.
The bloody events that had brought about his murder
should not have been allowed to happen. Like Julius
Berenford, she had made a personal crusade out of
trying to ensure that they never happened again.
Linden considered Megan Roman one of her few
friends. Certainly Megan had always given Linden her
assistance unstintingly. After Jeremiah's maiming by
his stricken mother, and his troubled history in the
county's various foster facilities, his adoption had
posed a legal tangle that Linden could not have
unsnarled for herself.
While she waited for Megan's receptionist to put her
call through, Linden had time to wonder why Megan
had not already contacted her about Roger Covenant.
As his father's executor, she must have been dealing
with him for years.
"Linden" Megan had a professionally hearty phone
manner that Linden disliked. It sounded false to her.
"This is an unexpected pleasure. What can I do you
out of?"
Vexed in spite of herself, Linden responded bluntly,
"Why didn't you warn me about Roger Covenant?"
At once, Megan changed her tone. "Oh, God. What
has he done?"
"You first," Linden insisted. She needed a moment to
absorb Megan's immediate assumption that Roger had
done something. "Why didn't you warn me?"
"Well, shit, Linden," Megan muttered uncomfortably.
"Will you believe that it
wasn't any of your business? He's a client. I'm not
supposed to talk about him." "Sure," Linden
conceded. "But that's not the only reason you didn't
tell me." Clearly Megan distrusted him
The lawyer hesitated, then asked, "Will you believe
that I just didn't think of it?" "No. That I won't
believe. I've known you too long."
"Well, shit," Megan repeated. "What good is having
friends if they know you too
well to believe you?
"All right, all right," she went on as if Linden had
objected. "I didn't tell you because"-she faltered
momentarily-"well, because I was trying to spare you.
I know, you're a big girl, you can take care of yourself.
But he's Thomas Covenant's son, for God's sake. That
means something to you, something I don't
understand."
Deliberately Linden bit at her sore lip. That smaller
pain steadied her.
"You don't talk about it," Megan said more harshly.
"You hardly knew him. You've always said you just
wanted to help him with Joan. But whenever I ask you
about it, you don't really answer my questions. Instead
I get the distinct impression that you had more at stake
than you let on. He looms for you somehow. Your
whole face changes when his name comes up.
"I don't know what his son means to you, but I
thought it might be something
painful." Her tone conveyed a brusque shrug. "So I
wanted to spare you.
"Now it's your turn,' she added before Linden could
respond. "'Warn' you? Why
should I need to warn you about anything? What has
he done?"
But Linden was reluctant to describe Roger's
encounter with his mother. She feared
hearing the experience put into words.
"He came to see me an hour ago," she said slowly. "He
thinks I should give him custody of his mother."
Words would make it more real. "And he's very
insistent ... ," Linden trailed into uncertainty.
"Yes?" her friend prompted.
"Megan, you're going to think I've lost my mind." She
touched Covenant's ring for courage. "He made me
believe that he intends to take her if I don't let her go."
When Lord Foul put forth his power, people died. The
beauty of the world was torn apart. He had to be
stopped here.
"Oh, God," Megan groaned. "Made you believe it
how?"
"I don't know how to explain it," Linden admitted.
After all these years, she could not now suddenly tell
Megan what had happened to her during Covenant's
death. If she did so, she would lose all of her
credibility. "Will you believe that he just gave me a
bad feeling?
"I've been working with unbalanced people for a long
time, and I think I have an
instinct for it. He's off-kilter somehow. And I know for
a fact that he didn't listen to a thing I said.
"He seems obsessed with the idea of taking care of
Joan. Nothing else affects him. As far as he's
concerned, she belongs with him. End of story. I'm
afraid there aren't any ordinary social or legal or even
practical considerations that will hold him back"
Megan did not reply for a long moment. During the
silence, Linden heard a ticking sound like a heartbeat
along the phone line. Then it stopped. At last Megan
said slowly, "In fact, I do believe you. I have a bad
feeling about him myself. And I can't explain it, either.
"Do you know-?" She paused, apparently gathering
her thoughts. "We started corresponding three years
ago. He wrote to me when he turned eighteen. At that
point he was still technically a ward of the state-his
grandparents never actually adopted him-but the
welfare people found it easier to let him start
managing his own affairs.
"He wanted to know everything about his father's
estate. How much money there was, where it came
from exactly, how it was invested, what kind of real
property was involved. He wanted to make all the
arrangements to take possession of the estate the
minute he turned twenty-one. He understood that
much about the law, at any rate. And he wanted to
know everything I could tell him about his father
personally. Hell, he even wanted to know about you,
even though you hardly knew Thomas Covenant."
Linden stifled an impulse to ask Megan what she had
told Roger. Instead she looked out the window again.
Her car seemed to call to her, insisting that she drive
home; that Jeremiah needed her protection.
"But he never said a word about his mother," added
Megan. "Based on our correspondence and
conversations, I would have thought he didn't know
where she was. Or care."
He had not discussed Joan with Megan because he had
not wanted to forewarn anyone.
Linden forced herself to turn away from the window.
"So what do you know about him? Has he talked
about himself at all?"
"He doesn't volunteer much," Megan responded. "But
he answers direct questions. You may know some of
his background."
In fact, Covenant had told Linden a little about Joan's
past; but she did not interrupt Megan to say so. When
Joan had divorced Covenant, she had moved back to
her hometown to live with her parents. For several
years, apparently, she had striven to relieve her shame
with conventional forms of exoneration: counseling,
psychotherapy. When that approach had left her pain
untouched, however, she had turned to religion:
religion in more and more extreme forms.
"According to him:' Megan began, "he doesn't
remember much of his early life. But I got him to tell
me a bit about that commune she joined. I guess that
was about a year before she came back here.
"He says the commune called itself the Community of
Retribution. Reading between the lines, they sure
sound like a bloody-minded group. They didn't believe
in salvation for people who acknowledged their sins
and accepted God's grace. They thought the world was
too far gone for that, too corrupt-" Megan muttered a
curse under her breath. "It needed violence,
bloodshed, sacrifices. Ritual murder to destroy sin.
"Anyway, that's how I interpret what he told me.
According to him, they spent most of their time
praying for revelation. They wanted God to tell them
who had to be sacrificed. And how."
In protest, Megan demanded, "Where do people like
that come from, Linden?" Thinking about Lord Foul,
Linden replied, "From despair. They're broken by
their own hollowness. It makes them implode."
Roger and Joan had studied fanaticism in the same
places, from the same sources. But his was of another
kind altogether.
"I suppose you're right," Megan conceded. "I don't
really understand it.
"The way he tells it," she went on, "he didn't
understand it, either. It didn't touch
him. He was just along for the ride. What was he? Shit,
nine years old?" She swore again, softly.
"Then-?" Linden prompted.
Her voice heavy, Megan said, "After the better part of
a year watching hysterics work themselves into a
lather, Joan took Roger back to her parents and left
him there. I guess she'd had her revelation. He never
saw her again. And I got the impression that his
grandparents never talked about her. He knew she was
still alive. That's all.
"I asked him if he had trouble adjusting to a normal
life after all that. You knowmiddle school, ordinary
teachers and classmates, clothes, homework, girls.
Hell, he'd just spent a year helping the Community of
Retribution pick its victims. But he said it was easy."
Sourly Megan concluded, "He said-this is a direct
quote-'I was just passing the time."'
"Until what?" asked Linden.
"That's what I wanted to know. If you believe what he
says about himself, the only thing he's actually done
since Joan abandoned him is wait for his twenty-first
birthday. So he could inherit his father's estate. That's
it.
"Why it matters to him, I have no idea." Megan's tone
conveyed her bafflement. "Or what he wants to do
with it. He has nothing to say on the subject. He
doesn't seem to understand the question."
Linden probed at her sore lip with the tip of one
finger. It was no accident that she had become Joan's
keeper, caretaker. With every nerve of her body and
beat of her
heart, she knew how Joan felt. She, too, had been
paralyzed by evil; left effectively comatose by the
knowledge of her own frailty. Like Joan, she knew
what it meant to have her mind erased
But somehow Roger had made his mother look at him.
Still groping for comprehension, Linden said, "I
assume he graduated high school. What's he been
doing since then?"
"Shit, Linden," Megan growled. "It's easier to get him
to talk about the commune. But I pushed him pretty
hard. He says he took some classes at the local
community college. Pre-med, apparently. Biology,
anatomy, chemistry, things like that.
"And," she added in disgust, "he worked in a butcher
shop. Thomas Covenant was one of the most
remarkable men I've ever known, not to mention a hell
of a writer, and his son worked in a butcher shop.
`Just passing the time' until he could live off his
father's accomplishments.
"You make sense out of it," she finished. "I can't."
He wanted to take his mother's place. And his father's.
"That isn't much help," Linden said distantly.
"I know," Megan sighed. "But it's all I've got."
As steadily as she could, Linden replied, "If you can
believe it, he says he's been waiting all this time for
Covenant's estate so that he'll have money and a place
to live while he takes care of Joan. He's obsessed with
the idea. It may be the only thing he thinks about. He
believes he can reach her."
Abruptly she leaned forward against the edge of her
desk. "Megan, he has to be stopped." An urgency
which she could not control crept into her voice. "I'm
absolutely sure about that. There's something about
him that scares me. I think he's dangerous. With his
background-" She shuddered. "We all know perfectly
decent people who've been through worse. But this
place:' Berenford Memorial, "has plenty of patients
who haven't been through as much. What only bends
one person breaks another. And I think he's broken."
Unwilling to say more, she repeated inadequately, "He
has to be stopped."
At once, Megan's manner became crisper, more
businesslike. "You say dangerous. Can you give me
anything more concrete than that? Anything I can take
to a judge? I can't get a restraining order unless I have
something solid to go on."
In response Linden wanted to shout, Tell the judge
people are going to die! But she controlled herself. "I
don't suppose you could just ask him to trust my
instincts?"
"Actually, I could," Megan answered. "In this county,
anyway. You have a fair amount of credibility." Then
she reconsidered. "But even a judge who thinks you
hung the moon will want some kind of evidence. He
might give us a restraining order for a few days on
your say-so, but that's all. If we don't offer him real
evidence before it expires, we'll never get another
one."
0
Linden sighed to herself. "I understand."
Again she considered dropping the problem, washing
her hands of it. She could leave work right this minute,
if she chose. No one would question her. God knew she
was entitled to a little time off every once in a while.
And Joan's claim on her did not run as deep as
Jeremiah's.
He was her adopted son: he filled her heart. Nothing
could replace him, Indeed, his irreducible need for her
only made him more essential to her. Simply
remembering the way his hair smelled after she
washed it for him could bring tears to her eyes.
Anything that threatened her endangered him
profoundly. Any attack on her would find him in the
line of fire: at risk because she loved him, and he was
dependent on her.
He had already been damaged enough.
But she also belonged here. All of her patients had
already been damaged enough.
And Joan did not deserve what Roger intended for
her.
Quietly Linden asked Megan, "Can you think of
anything else?"
Megan hesitated. "Well," she said uncertainly, "you
could call Lytton-"
Linden had already thought of that. "He's next on my
list." Barton Lytton had been
county sheriff for nearly three decades. If anyone had
the knowledge and experience to
stop Roger Covenant, surely he did?
"Be careful with him, Linden," Megan cautioned. "He
isn't what we might call a fan of yours. As far as he's
concerned, Berenford Memorial is just a liberal ruse to
keep crooks out of jail. From his point of view, that
practically makes you an accessory."
"I know." Linden was familiar with Lytton's attitude.
However, she hoped that he might feel otherwise about
Joan. How could he not? Beyond question he had
played a part in her condition. For the sake of his self-
regard, if for no other reason, he might be willing to
protect her now.
"Call me after you talk to him." Megan's voice held an
undercurrent of anxiety. "I want to know what he
says."
"I will." Now Linden was in a hurry to get off the
phone. Her urgency had shifted its focus. She needed
to get in touch with Sandy.
She was about to thank Megan and hang up when a
new concern occurred to her: a possibility like a touch
of foresight. Quickly she added, "Call my pager if you
need to reach me."
Roger might call Megan, trying to enlist her aid"I
will," replied Megan. "I always do."
Finally they hung up.
Staring blindly around her office, Linden looked for
some way to contain her primitive alarm. She had
made it clear to Roger that he could only obtain his
father's ring by theft or violence. He did not know that
Jeremiah existed. Nevertheless she under
stood obsession well enough to be sure that her own
claim on the ring meant nothing to Roger.
Inadvertently she had placed her son in peril.
A butcher shop-?
Instead of calling Sheriff Lytton, she dialed her home
number. Helpless to do oth
erwise, she counted the rings while she waited for
Sandy Eastwall to pick up the phone. Sandy answered
after the third. "This is Sandy." Brusque with
concern, Linden asked, "Is Jeremiah all right?"
"Sure he is." Sandy sounded worried, troubled by
Linden's manner. "Why wouldn't
he be?"
Linden could not explain. "Has anything happened
this morning? Anything out of
the ordinary? Phone calls? Someone at the door?"
"Nothing important;" Sandy replied defensively.
"Sam called. He wants to know if
Jeremiah can come Tuesday instead of Monday next
week. I was going to give you the
message when you got home."
Linden wished to soothe Sandy, but other
considerations impelled her. "And Jeremiah?" she
insisted.
"Sure," said Sandy again. "He's fine. Why wouldn't he
be? I've done everything-"
"I'm sorry," Linden put in hastily. "I didn't mean
that. Of course you haven't done anything." In fact,
Sandy's unquestioning regard for Jeremiah, like her
cheerful attendance to his needs, was precious to
Linden. "I trust you. I've just been worried about him
this morning for some reason." Trying to account for
herself in terms that would make sense to Sandy, she
said, "You know those feelings you get sometimes?
Out of the blue, you suddenly think that something
bad has happened to someone you care about?"
"And they're almost always wrong." Sandy's tone
conveyed a mollified smile. "But that doesn't make you
feel any better. I know what you mean.
"I'll be especially careful today;" she assured Linden.
"Just in case,"
For a moment, Linden hesitated on the verge of telling
Sandy about Roger. She wanted Sandy to understand
her fears. But Sandy was easily frightened; and
Jeremiah would not be better off if she panicked.
"Thanks, Sandy," Linden said instead. "I appreciate
it."
Abruptly she stopped, caught by the same anxiety
which had urged her to insist that Megan page her.
Without transition, she asked, "Is there any chance
you could be on call tonight? We have a situation here
that might need me."
If Bill Coty's men caught Roger lurking around the
hospital
"Sure." The request was routine between them. Sandy
often stayed with Jeremiah when Linden was needed
at night. "I don't have any other plans."
Occasionally Sandy went out with Sam Diadem's son;
but she always gave Linden plenty of warning when
she would not be available.

Mustering gratitude to counteract her apprehension,
Linden thanked Sandy again and put down the phone.
Thomas Covenant had watched over his ex-wife with
all of his considerable strength and intransigence, but
he had not been able to prevent her abduction. If
Roger had designs on Covenant's ring, Linden hardly
trusted herself to stop him. Sandy would pose no
obstacle at all. And Jeremiah might be hurt in the
struggle.
Grimly determined now to organize every possible
resource, she put in a call to Sheriff Lytton.
Unfortunately Barton Lytton was "unavailable"
Linden was promised that he would call her back.
With that she had to be content.
For the rest of the morning, she struggled to
concentrate. She wrote up her rounds; returned phone
calls; read or reread a sheaf of advisory faxes on how
to treat some of her patients; signed requisitions for
medications and supplies. Studiously she did not look
out at her car.
When the pressure to do something, anything, about
her gravid fears became too severe to be pushed aside,
she went to check on Joan. But she found no relief
there.
Over lunch, she pumped Maxine shamelessly for
gossip, hoping that some rumor of Roger's actions or
intentions had plucked a thread in Maxine's vast web
of friends. Uncharacteristically, however, Maxine
knew less than she did herself. In a town as small as
this one, it was difficult for anyone to visit a lawyer-or
wander onto a longabandoned property-without being
noticed; remarked upon. Yet somehow Roger
Covenant had escaped comment.
Afterward Linden tackled more of her procedural
duties. But she cancelled her sessions with her patients,
as well as her remaining appointments. The thought
that Sheriff Lytton might ignore her vexed her too
much for such responsibilities.
To her surprise and relief, however, he did call her
back. As soon as she picked up the handset, he said,
"Dr. Avery?" He spoke in a good-of-boy drawl,
perhaps for her benefit. "You wanted to talk to me?"
"Thanks for returning my call, Sheriff." Now that she
had her chance, Linden felt flustered, unsure of
herself. He was decidedly not a "fan" of hers.
Somehow she would have to persuade him to take her
seriously.
"We have a situation here that worries me," she began
unsteadily. "I hope you'll be willing to help me with
it." Taking a deep breath, she said, "I believe you've
spoken to Roger Covenant?"
"Sure have;" he replied without hesitation. "He came
to see me yesterday. Pleasant
young man. Son of that writer, the leper who lived on
Haven Farm." He stressed the word leper trenchantly.
"He came to see you?" Her voice broke. She had
assumed that Roger had phoned Lytton. Had he
known that she would call the sheriff? That he would
need to forestall her?
"Sure. He's new in town," Lytton explained, "but he's
going to be here from now on. He says he'll be living
on Haven Farm. Seems he inherited the place. It's been
abandoned so long, he didn't want me to think he's
some vagrant squatting where he doesn't belong.
"Like I say, he's a pleasant guy."
Pleasant, Linden thought. And plausible when it suited
him, that was obvious. No doubt to Lytton his
explanation sounded perfectly reasonable.
Her sense of peril mounted, carried by the hard labor
of her heart.
But she did not quail. Medicine had trained her for
emergencies. And she was Linden Avery the Chosen,
who had stood with Thomas Covenant against the
Land's doom. Men like Sheriff Lytton-and Roger
Covenant-could not intimidate her.
As if she were merely making conversation, she asked,
"What did you tell him?"
Lytton laughed harshly. "I told him to burn it to the
ground, Doctor. That leprosy shit isn't something he
should mess around with. His mother did him a favor
when she moved out of that house."
A flash of anger pushed away Linden's fear; but she
kept her ire to herself. Calm now, settled and cold in
her determination, she continued, "Did he happen to
say why he wants to live there? Did he explain why he
came back?"
"No, he didn't. And I didn't ask. If he wants to live in
the house where he was born, it's none of my business.
I told him what I think of the idea. We didn't have
anything else to talk about."
"I see." For a heartbeat or two, Linden hesitated,
unsure of her ground. But then she informed Lytton,
"I ask because he came to see me this morning. He told
me why he's here."
"Do tell;" Barton Lytton drawled.
"He wants custody of his mother," she said, praying
for credibility. "He wants to take care of her."
"Well, good for him," retorted Lytton. "He's a dutiful
son, I'll give him that. Too bad you can't just release
her, wouldn't you say, Doctor?"
"Not without a court order," she agreed. "That's why
I called, Sheriff." Summoning all the force of her
conviction, she said plainly, "He made it clear that he
doesn't intend to wait for legal custody. If I don't
release her, he's going to take her."
"Take her?" Lytton sounded incredulous.
"Kidnap her, Sheriff. Remove her by force."
I
"Don't make me laugh." Lytton snorted his scorn.
"Take her where? He's going to live on Haven Farm.
He's probably putting clean sheets on the beds right
now.
"Suppose you're right. Suppose he sneaks her out of
your precious `psychiatric hospital' while Bill Cory is
taking one of his permanent naps. Half an hour later,
you call me. I send out a deputy, who finds Roger
Covenant at home on Haven Farm, spooning Cream of
Wheat into his mother's mouth and wiping her chin
when she slobbers. That's not kidnapping, Doctor.
That's an embarrassment." The sheriff seemed to
enjoy his own sarcasm. "For you more than for him,
maybe.
"Tell me the truth now. Is that really why you called?
You're afraid Roger Covenant might kidnap his own
mother? You've been working in that place too long.
You're starting to think like your patients."
Before Linden could tell him why he was wrong, he
hung up.
3.
In Site f her
ton was wrong: Roger Covenant was not a "pleasant
young man." He was dangerous. And Joan was not his
only potential victim.
But her outrage accomplished nothing, protected no
one; and after a few minutes she set it aside. The
sheriff could not know what his disdain might cost. He
had never been summoned to take his chances against
despair in a world which baffled his comprehension.
He lacked the experience, the background, to react
effectively.
Although she chose to excuse him, however, her anger
did not recede. It had settled to a thetic hardness in the
center of her chest. Damn him, she repeated, thinking
now of Roger rather than the sheriff. His year with the
Community of Retribution must have done him such
harm- And of course he had been raised for weakness
by his grandparents as well as by his mother.
Why in God's name did he want Covenant's ring? If he
took Joan somehow, he
would also gain possession of her wedding band. It,
too, was white gold, no doubt essentially
indistinguishable from her ex-husband's. Surely it was
white gold itself that mattered, an alloy apt for wild
magic, not any specific piece of the metal?
What difference could it make whose ring Roger
wielded when he took Joan's place?
Thomas Covenant probably would have known the
answer. Linden did not.
Was it possible that Lytton was right? Had she
misread Roger? By any ordinary measure, this
explanation made more sense. Anyone except Linden,
anyone at all, would have accepted it without question.
And she had at least one other reason to believe that
she was wrong: a reason she had not yet had time to
consider.
Leaving her anger in her office, she went to the staff
lavatory to splash cold water on her face and think.
With the door locked and her cheeks stinging, Linden
Avery contemplated her wet features in the mirror
over the sink. She was not a woman who studied her
appearance often. When she did so, she was
occasionally surprised or bemused by what she saw.
This time she was taken aback by the alarm that
darkened her gaze. She seemed to have aged in the last
few hours.
In some ways, the past decade had marked her
noticeably. Oh, her hair retained most of its wheaten
luster, trammeled by grey only at the temples. The
structural harmony underlying her features made her
look handsome, striking, in spite of the years. She had
what men called a good figure, with full breasts, slim
hips, and no unnecessary weight-a womanliness which
had seemed gratuitous to her until she had met and
loved Thomas Covenant. The right light gave the
ready dampness in her eyes radiance.
But her once-delicate nose had become prominent,
emphasized by curved lines of erosion at the corners of
her mouth. That erosion seemed to drag at her
features, so that her smiles often looked effortful. And
the knot between her brows never lifted: apparently
she frowned even in her sleep, troubled by her dreams.
Nevertheless if she had examined her face yesterday
she might have concluded that she wore her age
lightly. Her days with Thomas Covenant, and her
years with Jeremiah, had taught her things that she
had never known about love and joy.
Now, however, she saw hints of Joan's mortality in her
troubled scrutiny. Roger's intrusion had brought back
more than her memories of struggle and pain in the
Land. He made her think as well of her own parents:
of her father, who had killed himself in front of her;
and of her mother, whose pleading for release had
driven Linden to end the suffering woman's life. Like
Joan, if in her own way, Linden had known too much
death, paid too high a price for living.
If she had been asked to explain why she worked for
Berenford Memorial Psychiatric Hospital, instead of
practicing some other form of medicine, she would
have
7191
Damn the man.
For a while, she stormed mutely at the unresisting
walls of her office. Lyt
replied that she was here because she understood her
patients. Their damaged spirits were eloquent to her.
At the moment, however, she had more immediate
concerns. Her dilemma, she thought as she watched
water drip from her cheeks and jaw, was that she
might be wrong about Roger Covenant. Her time with
his father gave her at least one reason to doubt herself.
She had seen no harbinger.
Before her first encounter with Thomas Covenant, she
had found herself unexpectedly striving to save the life
of an ochre-clad old man with thin hair and fetid
breath. When at last he had responded to her frantic
CPR, he had pronounced like a prophet, You will not
fail, however he may assail you. There is also love in
the world. Then he had disappeared into the strange
sunlight on the fringes of Haven Farm.
Do not fear, he had commanded her. Be true.
Less than thirty-six hours later, she had fallen to the
summons of the Land. At Covenant's side, she had
been assailed and appalled past bearing. But in the end
she had not failed.
And ten years earlier, Thomas Covenant had met the
same prophet himself. Walking into town in a
desperate and doomed attempt to affirm his common
humanity, he had been accosted by an old man with
compulsory eyes and an ochre robe who had asked
him, Why not destroy yourself? When Covenant had
responded to the man's manifest need by offering up
his ring, he was refused.
Be true, the old man had instructed him. You need not
fail.
Shortly thereafter, Covenant had been drawn to the
Land for the first time. His devotion to Lord Foul's
defeat had finally cost him his life. Nevertheless he,
too, had not failed.
So where, Linden had to ask herself, was the old man
now?
If Roger's intentions threatened the Land in some way,
surely that ragged figure must be somewhere nearby?
And if he did not appear to forewarn her, surely Roger
could not be as dangerous as she feared?
Deliberately she chose to believe that. Roger might
well attempt to take his mother. But as long as the old
man did not accost Linden, the Land was safe-and
neither she nor Jeremiah were truly at risk.
Pulling a couple of paper towels from their dispenser
by the sink, she dried her face
and hands. Then she returned to her office to call
Megan again, as she had promised. When she had
done that, she warned her staff to call Security as well
as her if Roger
put in another appearance. But she could think of no
other precautions to take.
If the old man appeared, she would have to choose
between the Land and Jeremiah.
She could not challenge Lord Foul in the Land's
defense without abandoning her son;
and that she would not do. No matter how many
people died, or how much beauty was destroyed.
riving home after work, she involuntarily scrutinized
every face she saw, every figure she passed. Anxiety
daubed her peripheral vision with ochre, added years
and desuetude to every man whom she failed to
recognize. Yet she saw no sign of peril.
And soon she reached her home: a small two-story
wooden-frame house she had bought when she had
decided to adopt Jeremiah. Parked in her short
driveway, she remained in her car for a few minutes,
granting herself that brief opportunity to set aside her
concerns in order to concentrate on her son.
The gratitude that she so often felt when she came
home helped settle her attention. She did not have to
care for her house herself. A neighbor whose son she
had treated after a crumpling car wreck tended the
lawn for her. The family of a woman who had been one
of her early successes at Berenford Memorial supplied
her with maintenance, patching her roof when it
leaked, conditioning her heat pump for the changing
seasons, repainting her walls every few years. And
twice a week an appreciative wife came in to clean,
cook, and do laundry: simple thanks for Linden's
attention to her disturbed husband.
Linden valued the help. It simplified her life
enormously. And she was grateful that she lived in a
community that honored what she did.
In addition, her gratitude for Jeremiah was too great
to be contained in words. He was the center of her life.
He gave her a use for the capacity for love which she
had learned from Covenant; from Sunder and Hollian,
the First and Pitchwife; and from the Land. His mere
presence seemed to validate her. He was like a flower
which had bloomed within her, fragile and
inestimable. She could not have removed it, or turned
away, without tearing herself open. The fact that its
petals had been crushed in the Despiser's fist, and had
never regained their natural shape and scent, only
caused her to cherish him more. As long as he
remained to her, she would never entirely lose heart.
Thomas Covenant had told her that some decisions
could not serve evil, no matter how severely they
appeared to harm the Land. When he had been
summoned to Revelstone's last defense, he had refused
to comply: not because he had no love for the Land,
but rather because a little girl in his present world had
been bitten by a rattlesnake and needed his help. That
refusal had delayed his arrival in the Land by many
days. And during those terrible days many of the
Land's most valiant champions had fallen. Yet the
conditions of the delay had enabled him to challenge
Lord Foul in ways
which might never have been possible otherwise. In the
end, Covenant's rejection of the Land for the sake of a
little girl had provided for the Despiser's defeat.
Fervently Linden prayed that Covenant's promise
would hold true for her as well.
With that, she left her car, climbed the steps to the
front porch, and let herself into her home.
The door admitted her to Jeremiah's domain; and at
once she had to duck her head. During her absence,
the short hallway which joined the living room on one
side, the dining room on the other, and the stairway to
the second floor had been transformed into the site of a
high, ramified castle of Tinkertoys.
Turrets of wooden rods and circular connectors rose
above her on both sides. If she had not ducked, she
would have struck her head on the flying rampart
stretched between them. Other ramparts linked the
turrets to a central keep: more turrets proliferated
beyond it. The whole edifice was at once enormously
elaborate, thick with details like balconies and
bartizans, and perfectly symmetrical, balanced in all
its parts. Its strangeness in her entryway, a pedestrian
place intended for the most ordinary use, gave it an
eldritch quality, almost an evanescence, as though
some faery castle had been half translated from its
own magical realm, and could be discerned by its
outlines in slim rods and wheels like a glimpse into
another dimension of being. Seen by moonlight,
blurred and indistinct, it would have seemed the stuff
of dreams.
As perhaps it was. Jeremiah's dreams-like his mind
itself-lay beyond her reach. Only such castles and his
other constructs gave her any hint of the visions which
filled his head, defined his secret life.
"Sandy?" she called. "Jeremiah? I'm home."
"Hi," Sandy answered. "We're in the living room.
"Jeremiah," she added, "your mother's home."
One of the things that Linden appreciated most about
Sandy was that she consistently treated Jeremiah as if
he were paying attention.
Smiling, Linden worked her way between the turrets
to the living room.
Sandy put down her knitting as Linden entered. "Hi,"
she said again. "We were going to put the Legos away,
but I wanted you to see what he made." She gestured
around the room, pleased by what her charge had
accomplished.
Linden was accustomed to Jeremiah's projects.
Nevertheless this time she stopped and stared, stricken
with shock. At first she could not grasp the import of
what she saw.
Sandy sat in an armchair in one corner of the room.
Opposite her, Jeremiah knelt on the floor as he usually
did when he was not busy, feet splayed out on either
side of him, arms across his stomach with both hands
folded under them, gently rocking.
And between them
From the floor up onto an ottoman in the middle of the
rug, he had built a mountain of interlocking Legos.
Despite the stubbornly rectangular shape of the Legos,
and their
uncompromising primary colors, his construct was
unmistakably a mountain, ragged ravines cut into its
sides and foothills, bluffs bulging. Yet it also resembled
a titan kneeling at the edge of the ottoman with its
elbows braced on the ottoman's surface and its crown
raised defiantly to the sky. A canyon widened between
its legs as its calves receded into the floor. The whole
structure stood almost to the level of Linden's
shoulders.
The mountain or titan faced the sofa; and there
Jeremiah had been at work as well. He had adjusted
one of the seat cushions so that its corner jutted
outward; and out onto the floor from that corner as
from a promontory he had devised another castle.
However, this one was entirely unlike his towering,
airy construct in the entryway. Instead it resembled a
wedge like an extension of the cushion's corner-a
wedge which had been hollowed out rather than built
up for habitation. Its high walls were marked with tiny
windows, clever ramparts, and delicate battlements, so
lifelike in spite of the materials from which they had
been formed that they might have been limned from
memory. And at the tip of the wedge stood a sturdy
watchtower, nearly half the height of the wedge itself,
connected to the main castle by a walled, open
courtyard. In the base of the tower, and again in the
base of the high keep, he had built entrances like
tunnels, guarded by gates that closed like teeth.
"Jeremiah," Linden gasped involuntarily, "oh,
Jeremiah," while all her fears rebounded through her,
and her heart labored in her throat as if she might
choke.
She had seen such shapes before. She recognized them,
even though they had been constructed of bright
plastic, all flat sides and right angles. The resemblance
was too exact for confusion. The mountain was Mount
Thunder, ancient Gravin Threndor, its bowels full of
Wightwarrens and buried evil. And the castle was
Revelstone beyond question, Lord's Keep, delved from
the gutrock of its mountain promontory by Giants
millennia before she had known it during her time
with Thomas Covenant.
She had seen them, but Jeremiah had not: never in his
life. He had not accompanied her to the Land after
Covenant's murder.
Yet somehow he seemed to know such places
His knowledge alarmed her. During the years that she
had been his mother, he had produced hundreds or
thousands of constructs; but until now none of them
had hinted at the Land in any way.
"Linden?" Sandy asked anxiously. "What's the
matter? Is something wrong? I thought you would
want to see-"
Although Linden had gasped his name, Jeremiah did
not look up at her or react to the sound of her voice.
Instead he rocked himself gently, blankly, as he always
did when he was not assembling one of his constructs-
or tearing it down. He must be finished with this one.
Otherwise he would have been difficult to deflect from
working on it.
Dear God! she thought in dismay and outrage. He's
threatening my son. Lord Foul
meant harm to Jeremiah.
7
Ignoring Sandy for the moment, she moved to kneel in
front of Jeremiah. There she put her arms around him
as if her mere embrace might ward him from the
Despiser's malice.
Passively he accepted her hug without touching her, or
turning his head, or focusing his eyes. She only knew
that he noticed her on some level-that his nerves felt
her presence if his mind did not-because he stopped
rocking until she let him go.
Although she had known him for ten years, and had
been his adopted mother for eight, he still gave her
only the subtlest of indications that he was aware of
her existence.
However, she had long ago accepted him as he was.
Subtle indications were enough for her. She loved him
intensely enough for both of them.
"Linden?" Sandy repeated. "Have I done something
wrong?"
Linden closed her eyes, took a deep breath to steady
herself. "I'm sorry," she told Sandy. "I didn't mean to
scare you. There's nothing wrong. You haven't done
anything. It's just another of those feelings. When I
saw all this"-she swallowed convulsively"I panicked. I
can't explain it."
"I understand." Sandy's relief was evident. She loved
Jeremiah: Linden did not doubt that. "Don't worry
about it." Then she asked, "Is there anything I can do-
?"
Linden tried to put aside the shock of seeing
Jeremiah's construct, but it clung to her. Seeking
reassurance, she opened her eyes and looked into his
face.
He gazed past or through her exactly as Joan did,
blankly, without any shadow or flicker of cognizance.
Yet the effect on Linden was entirely different. He was
so much more active than Joan, demonstrated so much
more capability, and was at times so much less
compliant, that Linden often forgot this one
resemblance between them.
She had witnessed his growth since he was five, and
had cared for him in every possible way since he was
nearly seven, studying each increment of change over
the years. She had brushed his teeth and washed his
body, wiped his nose, bought him clothes, dressed and
undressed him. She had seen him take on size and bulk
until he was nearly as tall as she was, and weighed
slightly more. She had watched his features shift from
the starved and haunted shapelessness of the
unregarded five-year-old who had placed his right
hand in the bonfire at Lord Foul's command to the
lean definition of a teenager. His eyes had the muddy
color of erosion runoff. His first few whiskers marked
his passive cheeks. Saliva moistened his open mouth.
In spite of his blankness, he had the face of a boy on
the verge of manhood, waiting for sentience to give it
meaning.
When Linden had satisfied herself that the eerie
impulse that had inspired him to construct images of
Mount Thunder and Revelstone had not caused him
any discernible distress, she rose to her feet and turned
to Sandy.
Sandy Eastwail was a young woman, perhaps twenty-
eight, still living with her par
ents and apparently content to do so. After high school
she had trained as a practical nurse; but she had taken
care of Jeremiah for seven years now, and exhibited no
ambition to do anything else. Responsibility for one
charge instead of many, and always the same charge,
seemed to suit her emotional instincts and warm heart,
as well as her natural complacence. Although she
dated Sam Diadem's son, she showed no particular
impulse to get married. As far as Linden could tell,
Sandy was comfortably prepared to tend Jeremiah for
the rest of her life.
That unlikely attitude was high on Linden's list of
reasons for gratitude.
"If you don't mind," she asked, answering Sandy's
offer to help, "can you stay long enough to get his
Legos put away? I have something I need to do." Then
she added, "You can leave the Tinkertoys. I like that
castle. And it's not in the way."
"Sure" Sandy responded with an uncomplicated smile.
"I'll be glad to.
"Come, Jeremiah," she said to the kneeling boy. "It's
time to put your Legos away. Let's get started."
Crouching to the floor, she took one of the many
cartons clustered at the side of the room and set it near
Mount Thunder's ankles. Then she detached a piece
from the construct and placed it in the carton.
That was all she had to do to trigger Jeremiah's hidden
awareness. At once, he left his knees and moved to
squat beside the carton. With the same unhesitating
meticulousness with which he built his constructs, he
began to disassemble Mount Thunder, arranging the
Legos in compact rows in their carton as he removed
them.
Linden had spent many hours watching him do such
things. He never moved quickly, never appeared to feel
any hurry or tension-and never paused for thought or
doubt. She herself might have needed two or three
hours to put away so many Legosor to put them away
with such precision-but he moved so efficiently, using
his maimed hand as deftly as the whole one, that his
Mount Thunder appeared to melt away before her
eyes. He would probably be done in forty-five minutes.
Because she needed to speak to him, hear his name in
her mouth, she said, "Thank you, Jeremiah. You're
very good with Legos. I like everything you make with
them. And I like the way you put them away when it's
time."
Then abruptly she turned and left the room so that
Sandy would not see the sudden tears in her eyes, or
notice the lump of love and fear in her throat.
While Jeremiah took Mount Thunder apart, and
Sandy resumed her knitting, Linden went upstairs to
master her alarm.
He's threatening my son.
She had tried to believe that there would be no danger
unless the old man in the ochre robe appeared to warn
her. But she no longer trusted his absence to mean that
anyone was safe.
Alone in her bedroom, she asked herself for the first
time whether she should flee.
She could do that, in spite of her responsibilities. The
necessary arrangements would require nothing more
than a few phone calls. She could pack and drive away
in an hour or two; take Jeremiah out of harm's reach.
In fact, she could make her calls when she had driven
far enough to avoid any conceivable peril.
Lord Foul was threatening her son.
Roger Covenant had no idea that Jeremiah existed.
Nevertheless it could not be an accident that Jeremiah
had created images of Mount Thunder and Revelstone
on the same day that Roger had demanded his
mother's release.
And if Linden was wrong? If Roger proved to be as
harmless as Barton Lytton claimed? Why, then she
could simply bring Jeremiah home again, with no
damage done.
Aching to protect her son, she gave serious
consideration to the possibilities of flight.
But the prospect shamed her. And she had learned the
necessity of courage from the most stringent teachers.
Love and beauty could not be preserved by panic or
flight.
The ruin of Jeremiah's hand was in some sense her
fault; and she did not believe that she could bear to see
him hurt again. But he was not the only one who had
been maimed that night. And Thomas Covenant
himself had died for the same reason: because she had
failed to intervene. When she had seen what was
happening, she had been appalled by horror, stunned
motionless. In dread she had simply watched while
Covenant had smiled for Joan; while men and women
and children had sacrificed their hands to the
Despiser's malice; while the barriers between realities
had been torn asunder by blood and pain.
Now she knew that that night's evil could have been
prevented. When she had finally broken free of her
dismay and charged forward, toward the bonfire,
Lord Foul's hold on his victims had been disrupted. If
she had acted sooner, that whole night's carnage might
have been averted. Even the Land might have been
spared
If she fled now, no one would remain to stand between
the Despiser and more victims.
She did not mean to be ruled by her fears again. Not
ever. No matter how severely Roger Covenant
provoked her.
Here, however, she faced a conundrum which she did
not know how to untangle. To flee for Jeremiah's
sake? Or to remain for her own, and for Joan's, and
for the Land's? Trapped by indecision, she found
herself sitting on her bed with her hands over her face
and Thomas Covenant's name on her lips, listening as
if she were helpless for sounds of danger from
downstairs.
There were none. Occasionally the distant murmur of
Sandy's voice reached her. At intervals a car drove
down the street. Erratic gusts of wind tugging past the
eaves of the house suggested a storm brewing. She
heard nothing to justify her gathering appre
hension.
Sighing, she told herself that in the morning she would
make another attempt to enlist Lytton's aid. Or
perhaps Megan could sway him. For tonight she would
watch over Jeremiah with all her vigilance, and let no
harm near him.
By now, he had probably finished with Mount
Thunder and begun to separate the pieces of
Revelstone. Nothing in his manner had suggested that
Gravin Threndor and Lord's Keep held any
significance for him. As far as she could tell, his life
remained exactly as it had always been, despite the
Land's strange intrusion into his lost mind.
This was how he had spent his time for years: he put
things together and took them apart. Indeed, he
seemed incapable of any relationship except with
physical objects which could be connected to each
other. No human being impinged on his attention. He
did not react to his name. If he was not involved in
making one of his constructs, he simply knelt with his
feet angled outward beneath him and rocked himself
soothingly with his arms across his stomach. He
walked only if he were raised to his feet and led by the
hand. Even animals found no focus in his muddy gaze.
Presented with Tinkertoys, however, with Legos,
Lincoln Logs, or an Erector set, or any other form of
nonmechanical object designed to be attached to or
inserted into other nonmechanical objects, he became
a wizard. The castle in the entryway, and the models of
Revelstone and Mount Thunder in the living room,
were only today's examples of his talent. By the
hundreds, by the thousands, obsessively, he devised
structures of such elegance and imagination that they
often made Linden hold her breath in wonder-and of
such size that they sometimes filled the available space.
Perhaps they would have expanded indefinitely if he
had not run out of materials. And yet they always
appeared complete when he did run out, as if somehow
he had calculated exactly what could be done with the
Legos or Tinkertoys at hand.
Often Linden sat with him while he built his edifices.
She had conceived a method of playing with him; of
producing a personal reaction from his inattention
toward her. She would take a piece-a block or
connector-and place it somewhere in his construct. He
would not look at her when she did so-but he would
pause. If by his inarticulate standards she had placed
the piece incorrectly, he would frown. Then he would
rectify her mistake. But if by chance she had set the
piece where it belonged, he would nod slightly before
he continued.
Such indications assured her that he was aware of her.
TWO years ago, guided by a flash of intuition, Linden
had spoken to Sam Diadem about Jeremiah. Sam ran a
small assembly-line business that produced wooden
playthings for children, primarily rocking horses,
marionettes, and various wooden puz-
I
zles in strange shapes which interlocked to form balls,
pyramids, and the like. At her urging, Sam had
discovered that if he left Jeremiah alone with a supply
of ready parts, Jeremiah would quietly and steadily
produce finished toys. He would not paint or package
them, and never played with them. But they were
always perfectly assembled.
Now Jeremiah "worked" in Sam's shop two mornings
a week. His "pay" Linden spent faithfully on K'NEX,
or 3-D jigsaw puzzles of palaces, or more Legos and
Tinkertoys.
Some of the psychologists whom Linden had consulted
called Jeremiah's condition a "dissociative disorder."
Others spoke of "hysterical conversion reactions" and
"somatoform disorders." His symptoms resembled
autism-specifically, he appeared to be an autistic
savant-yet he could not be autistic. Autism was
congenital, and beyond question Jeremiah's condition
had been induced by trauma. His natural mother had
described him as "a normal boy" before the bonfire-
whatever those words might mean in her deranged
lexicon. Certainly none of the known therapies for
autism had produced any change in him.
Memories of that trauma still woke Linden at night,
sweating, with cries which she had failed to utter
locked in her throat.
His natural mother was a woman named Marsha
Jason. She had had three children, all adopted now by
other parents-Hosea, Rebecca, and her youngest,
Jeremiah, prophet of woe. She had chosen that name,
apparently, because her husband had abandoned her
during her last pregnancy.
For the first few years of Jeremiah's life, Marsha
Jason had subsisted at the mercy of various welfare
agencies. In one form or another, she had kept herself
and her children alive through the charity of
strangers. And then, when her self-pity and
ineffectiveness had reached unendurable proportions,
she had discovered the Community of Retribution.
From that point onward, as she proclaimed afterward,
she had had no control over anything that happened.
She must have been brainwashed or drugged. She was
a good mother: without brainwashing or drugs, she
would never have sacrificed her dear children to the
Community's mad crusade against Thomas Covenant.
Had she not been victimized of her own right hand at
the same time? Surely she did not deserve to have her
sons and daughter taken from her; placed in foster
care?
Yet she had not been able to deny that in the last weeks
before Covenant's murdersoon after Joan Covenant's
departure-she and her children, along with perhaps
thirty other members of the Community of
Retribution, had left the commune and made their way
toward Haven Farm, supporting themselves by
beggary when they could not gain donations by
preaching. Entranced, perhaps, by some form of mass
hysteria, they had snatched Joan from her ex-
husband; had slaughtered a cow so that they could
splash his home with blood. Then they had taken her
into the woods be
hind Haven Farm and built a bonfire. When Covenant
had at last appeared to redeem Joan, Mrs. Jason and
her children had been the first to hold their right
hands in the blaze, Hosea after his mother, then
Rebecca, and then five-year-old Jeremiah.
With years to study the question, Linden still could not
explain how ordinary adults, much less their
uncomprehending children, had been impelled to
endure the pain long enough to burn the flesh from
their bones. But the fact remained that Marsha Jason,
Hosea, and Rebecca had done so. Jeremiah had been
damaged almost as badly. And after them, more
worshippers had followed.
And in the bonfire, Lord Foul had emerged to claim
Covenant's life.
Linden still too easily remembered the Despiser's eyes
as they had appeared in the bonfire, carious as fangs.
She would never forget his figure forming in the deep
heat of the blaze. Alive with fire and offered pain, he
had stopped her life in her veins. And she had
remained paralyzed while the leader of his
worshippers had set a knife to Joan's throat, intending
to sacrifice her if Covenant did not surrender himself.
Then Covenant had retrieved Joan from her doom;
and Linden had at last broken free of her immobility.
She had rushed toward the bonfire, striving frantically
to block the knife from his chest. But the worshipper
with the knife had struck her senseless; and as she lost
consciousness she had seen the blade pound into
Covenant's heart.
A few hours or a lifetime later, in the dawn of a new
day, Dr. Berenford found her where she lay beside
Covenant's corpse. Mrs. Jason had rousted him from
his home, seeking treatment for herself and her
children. He and Sheriff Lytton had discovered Joan
asleep in her bed in Covenant's house, all memory of
the night's events apparently gone. While Lytton had
taken Joan to County Hospital, Julius had searched
the woods behind Haven Farm until he located Linden
and Covenant.
Thus he had spared her any accusation that she had
played some role in Covenant's death. Legally, of
course, she had not. Morally, she knew better.
She had suffered acutely during the long months of
that one night. Nevertheless she had gone into surgery
as soon as Julius had driven her back into town.
Together, they had spent interminable hours fighting
to save as many flame-savaged hands as they could.
For Hosea and Rebecca, Linden had been able to do
little except amputate. With Jeremiah, however, she
had met somewhat more success. Through simple
stubbornness as much as by skill, she had found a way
to save half of his thumb and two of his fingers: the
last two.
They remained shorter than they should have been.
Yet they were strong now: he could use them. To that
extent, at least, she could forgive herself for what had
happened to him.
At the time, she had given no thought to other forms of
restitution. The particular sense of responsibility
which she had learned from Covenant and the Land
had as-
serted itself slowly. After the initial crisis, she had
occupied herself for months adjusting to her new life:
to the county itself; and to her work at County
Hospital. And then Julius had involved her in the
complex efforts that had eventually led to the
construction of Berenford Memorial Psychiatric
Hospital, and to her appointment as its chief medical
officer.
Nearly two years passed before she recognized the
residual ache in her heart for what it was: not grief
over Covenant's death, although that pang never lost
its poignancy, but rather a hollow place left by the
Land. Her parents had dedicated her to death, but she
had transcended their legacy. Now she realized that
her new convictions and passions required more of
her. Her work with her patients suited her abilities;
but it did not satisfy the woman who had sojourned
with Giants, contended with Ravers, and opposed the
Sunbane at Thomas Covenant's side.
She wanted to heal as well some of the harm which
Lord Foul had done in her present world. And she
needed someone to love.
She had heard Pitchwife sing:
My heart has rooms that sigh with dust
And ashes in the hearth.
They must be cleaned and blown away
By daylight's breath.

She could not allow the hollow place within her to
remain unfilled.
Her own damaged childhood had taught her an intense
empathy for children forced to pay the price of their
parents' folly; and before long she remembered
Jeremiah Jason. She had already done him a little
good. Perhaps she could do more.
When at last she tracked him down and arranged to
meet him, she recognized immediately the missing
piece of her heart, the part which might make her
whole. His little face spoke to her as clearly as a wail.
She knew what it was like to be a conscious prisoner
inside her own skull, defeated by power and malice.
The Clave and Ravers had victimized her in that way.
Indirectly the Elohim had done the same. The thought
that Jeremiah might be in a comparable state,
knowing and alone within his mental cell, wrung her
utterly.
In the Land, she had been called "the Chosen." Now
she did the choosingDoggedly, with Megan Roman's
help, she pursued Jeremiah through the legal and
bureaucratic snarls of the county's floundering foster
care until he was made her son.
At first, the task she had assigned to herself was
arduous and costly, in spite of Sandy Eastwall's
assistance. The closure of Jeremiah's mind rebuffed
any penetrationHe was lost, and her love could not
find him. If he had so much as wept, she would have
celebrated for him, rejoiced in that victory over an
intimate ruin. But he did not
weep. Nothing breached the hard stone wall of his
plight. His only response to every situation was an
unresisting absence of cooperation. He did not stand,
could not walk. Voiceless and alone, he could not
engage in a child's necessary play; and so she had no
lever with which to spring him from his prison.
And then one day- The memory still brought tears of
joy to her eyes. One day in his pediatrician's office,
surrounded by toys enjoyed by other children, he had
suddenly reached out uninvited to place one bright
wooden block upon another. When he was satisfied
with what he had done, he had positioned another
block; and then another.
Within an hour, hardly able to contain her excitement,
Linden had bought him a mountain of blocks. And
when she had seen him use them to build an
impromptu Greek temple, she had rushed back to the
store to purchase Lincoln Logs and Tinkertoys.
There his life had changed; and hers with it. In a few
short weeks, he had learnedor relearned-to stand so
that he could reach higher, build higher. And mere
months later he had regained his ability to walk,
seeking to move around his constructs and position
pieces more readily.
His newly discovered gift transformed him in Linden's
sight. With every construct, he built hope for the
future. A child who could play might someday be set
free. And his strange talent seemed to have limitless
possibilities. Connecting one Lincoln Log or Tinkertoy
to the next, he might at last devise a door to his prison
and step out into her arms.
She would not, she swore to herself now, would not
sacrifice that hope, or him, for any purpose. Roger
Covenant had to be stopped. But if she were forced to
a choice between Jeremiah and Lord Foul's other
victims, she would stand by her son.
Thomas Covenant had believed that the Land could
not be damned by such decisions.
Linden was still afraid, but her indecision had passed.
Deliberately she readied herself to go back downstairs.
On the way, she heard Sandy call, "Linden? We're
done with the Legos. Is there anything else you need
before I leave?"
In the living room, Linden greeted Sandy with a smile;
tousled Jeremiah's hair where he knelt, rocking, beside
a tall stack of Lego boxes. "No, thanks. You've done
done enough already." To Jeremiah, she added,
"Thanks for putting your Legos away. You've
a good job. I'm proud of you"
If her reaction gave him any pleasure, he did not
reveal it.
When Sandy had gathered up her knitting, Linden
walked her to the door. "I can't thank
you enough," she told the other woman sincerely. "I
can't explain what came over me today, but it shook
me up. I really appreciate everything you've done."
Sandy dismissed the subject with a comfortable shrug.
"He's my sweetie.' Over her shoulder, she asked,
"Aren't you, Jeremiah?" Then she finished to Linden,
"I'll see both of you tomorrow, if you don't need me
tonight."
Refraining from more unnecessary thanks, Linden
ushered her outside and said good night.
For a moment after Sandy left, however, Linden did
not return to Jeremiah. Instead she leaned against the
door and considered the castle which had transformed
her entryway. It seemed to contradict her fears, as
though it had the power to guard the sanctuary that
she had made for her son.
elieved for the first time since she had met Roger
Covenant, she heated a
casserole and fed Jeremiah while she ate. At intervals
she paused to talk about anything she could think of-
horses, Sam Diadem's toys, places of wonder in the
Land-hoping that the sound of her voice would also
feed him, in its own way. When he stopped opening his
mouth for the spoon, she took him upstairs to bathe
him. Afterward she dressed him for bed in his-actually
her-favorite pajamas, the sky-blue flannel shirt and
pants with mustangs ramping across the chest.
In his bedroom, she took a moment, as she often did, to
marvel at how he had decorated it.
One day two or three years ago, she had purchased a
set of flywheel-driven model racing cars that featured
tracks which could be snapped together into structures
as elaborate as roller coasters, complete with loop-the-
loops and barrel rolls. She had been drawn to the set
because it included materials like plastic Tinkertoys
for building towers and pylons to support the tracks.
And because Jeremiah appeared to prefer large
projects, she had bought every set in the store, four or
five of them.
He had shown no interest in the cars. In fact, he had
disappointed her by showing no interest in the tracks,
either. He had not so much as touched the boxes, or
turned his eyes toward them.
Maybe he needed time, she had told herself. Maybe his
occult, hidden decisions required contemplation.
Reluctant to surrender her hopes, she had carried one
of the boxes up to his bedroom and left it there for him
to consider.
That night he had gone to bed still oblivious to the box.
The next morning, however, she discovered that
during the night he had opened it and used every
available piece to build towers on either side of the
head of his bed. Through the towers he had twined
tracks twisted into implausible shapes. And-
uncharacteristic of him-the construct was plainly
unfinished. He had run out of parts before he could
connect the towers and tracks to each other above the
head of his bed.
At once, she brought the remaining boxes up to his
room. Like the first, they were ignored all day. And
like the first, they were opened during the night; put to
use. Now supports like drawbridges and catwalks
extended along the walls, under the window, over the
bureau, and past the closet toward the door. Sections
of track linked themselves and their pylons like the
ligaments of some self-proliferating rococo robot.
The racing cars themselves lay in a clutter on the floor,
unregarded. And still he obviously had not completed
his design.
After a fervid search, Linden finally found a few more
sets. Fortunately they sufficed. When Jeremiah had
used every last plastic beam and connector, every
section of track, he was done.
Now towers festooned with curlicues of track reached
up on either side of his bedroom door to meet in an
arch at the height of the lintel. Raceways in airy spans
linked those structures to the ones which he had
already finished. Yet the design would have been
useless to its cars. The track through all of its loops
and turns and dives formed an elaborate Mobius strip,
reversing itself as it traveled so that in time a finger
drawn along its route would touch every inch of its
surface on both sides.
She had never asked him to take it down. Surely it was
special to him? Why else had he only worked on it late
at night, when he was alone? In some sense, it was
more uniquely his than anything else he had built.
Respecting what he had accomplished, she left it as it
was. Cheerfully she ducked under its spans whenever
she needed to reach his closet.
The racing cars remained where she had placed them,
arrayed like a display on top of his bureau. She hoped
that one day he would take an interest in them; but
they were still meaningless to him.
Shaking her head now in familiar astonishment at his
arcane gifts, she settled him into bed and asked him
which of his books he would like her to read. As ever,
he did not respond; but on the theory that the
adventures of a lone boy triumphing over impossible
odds might convey something to his snared mind, she
took out one of his "Bomba the Jungle Boy" books and
read a couple of chapters aloud. Then she kissed him,
adjusted his blankets, turned out the light, and left him
to sleep.
In one respect, at least, he was a normal boy, even a
normal teenager: he slept deeply, unself-consciously,
his limbs sprawling in all directions as though they
belonged to some other body. Only on very rare
occasions did she find him awake when she checked on
him before she went to bed herself. And she never
knew what had roused or troubled him.
If this had been some other night, she might have used
her time to catch up on some paperwork, or perhaps
read. But tonight she was not alone. A throng of
memories accompanied her through the house: they
seemed as restless and compelling as ghosts. In
particular, she recalled Thomas Covenant's gaunt face
and stricken
eyes, as dear in their own way as Jeremiah's
undefended slackness, and as precise as etch-work.
Others also she could not forget: Sunder and Hollian;
the Giants of the Search; all her friends in the Land.
Thinking that she would spend an hour alone with
them, sharing at least in memory her gratitude and
grief, she went downstairs to the kitchen to heat water
for tea. Steaming mint might console her while she
ached.
As she boiled water and prepared a teabag, filled a
cup, she chose to concentrate on the Giants. She found
consolation in remembering their open hearts, their
long tales, and their ready laughter. She had not seen
the First of the Search and her husband, Pitchwife, for
ten years. No doubt in their own world they had
passed away centuries or millennia ago. Nevertheless
they had a healing power in her thoughts. Like
Jeremiah's faery castle, they seemed to defend her
from her fears.
They alone had willingly accompanied Linden and
Covenant to their confrontation with the Despiser.
They alone had stood with Linden after Covenant's
death while she had formed her new Staff of Law and
unmade the Sunbane; begun the restoration of the
Land. And when she had faded away, returned to her
old life, they had carried with them the hope that she
and Covenant had made for all the Earth.
Thinking of the First and Pitchwife reminded her that
her worries were like the difficulties of caring for
Jeremiah, or of working at Berenford Memorial:
transient things which could not disturb the choices
she had made.
She would have gone on, drawing solace from her
memories; but an unexpected idea stopped her.
Perhaps it would be possible to hide Joan from Roger.
If the nurse on duty, Amy Clint's sister Sara, moved
Joan to another room-no, to a spare bed in County
Hospital-Roger might not be able to find her.
Certainly he would not be able to search for her
without attracting attention. Bill Coty or one of his
men-or even Sheriff Lytton-would have time to
intervene.
Then what would Roger do? What could he-?
He would have no difficulty discovering Linden's
address.
The phone's shrill ring startled her so badly that she
dropped her cup. It hit the floor as if in slow motion
and bounced once, apparently held together by hot
peppermint tea splashing past its rim: then it seemed
to burst in midair. Shards and steaming tea spattered
around her feet.
None of her friends called her at home. Neither did her
colleagues and staff. They all knew better. When they
wanted or needed to get in touch with her, they dialed
her pager
The phone rang again like an echo of the shattered
cup.
Roger, she thought dumbly, it was Roger, someone
must have given him her number, it was unpublished,
unlisted, he could not have found it out unaided. He
meant to impose his insistence on the private places of
her heart.
And then: no, it was not Roger. It was about him. He
had done something.
Something terrible
The phone rested on an end table in the living room.
She pounced for it as it rang
a third time. Snatched up the handset; pressed it to her
ear.
She could not make a sound. Fright filled her throat.
"Dr. Avery?" a voice panted in her ear. "Linden? Dr.
Avery?"
Maxine Dubroff, who volunteered at the hospital.
"I'm here." Linden's efforts to speak cost her a spasm
of coughing. "What's wrong?"
"Dr. Avery, it's Bill-" Maxine's distress seemed to
block the phone line. What she needed to say could not
get through. "He's- Oh, dear God."
Linden's brain refused to work. Instead it clung to the
sound of Maxine's voice as if it needed words in order
to function. Still coughing, she managed to croak out,
"Slow down, Maxine. Tell me what happened."
Maxine sucked in a harsh breath. "Bill Coty," she said
in pieces. "He's dead."
The room around Linden seemed to veer sideways. Of
course Maxine knew Bill: she knew everyone. But if
the old man had collapsed at home
Linden had asked him to protect Joan.
"Shot." Maxine's voice came through the handset,
jagged as chunks of glass. "In the head. By that-that -"
She paused to swallow convulsively, as if her throat
were bleeding.
"Maxine." Linden fought down more coughing. "Tell
me what happened."
"I'm sorry, Doctor." Now Linden heard tears in
Maxine's voice. "I'm just so upsetI should have called
you sooner. I came as soon as I heard the sirens"-she
and Ernie lived only a block and a half from Berenford
Memorial-"but it didn't occur to me that somebody
hadn't already called you. I wanted to help. Ernie told
me you were worried about trouble. Bill called him
about it. But I never expected
"That young man. The one who was here this
morning. He shot Bill Coty."
Ice poured along Linden's veins. Her hands started to
shake. "What about Joan?"
Again she heard wind thrashing under the eaves of the
house. One of the kitchen windows rattled plaintively
in its frame.
"Oh, Linden." Maxine's weeping mounted. "She's
gone. He took her."
Automatically Linden answered, "I'll be right there,"
and put down the handset. She could not think: she
was too full of rage. The old prophet had betrayed her.
He had given her no warning at all.
Apparently he no longer cared what happened to the
Land.
The sirens were police cars, then: Sheriff Lytton
responding too late to Berenford Memorial's call for
help.
Bill Coty must have failed to rally enough of his
volunteers to Joan's protection. Or he had simply
cared too much to forget about her when he went off-
duty
Hands shaking wildly, Linden picked up the handset
again and dialed Sandy Eastwall's number.
For the first time in years, she wished that she had
bought a cordless phone. She wanted to rush upstairs
and check on Jeremiah while she waited, shivering, for
Sandy's voice.
Buffeted by wind, the front door thudded dully against
its latch. Surely nothing had happened to Jeremiah
since she had left his room? But Bill Coty had been
shot-by Roger. Who obviously had a gun.
Linden had told Bill that Roger was not dangerous
enough for guns. Now she knew better.
Providentially Sandy answered the phone almost at
once. "Hello?"
"Sandy, it's Linden. I'm sorry, I'm needed at the
hospital. It's an emergency." Bill Coty was dead
because Linden had underestimated Roger's madness.
Sandy did not hesitate. "I'll be right there."
"Thanks." Linden hung up and headed for the stairs.
Joan's son would be in a hurry now. He meant to
precipitate the crisis for which his heart hungered
immediately.
With her hand on the knob of Jeremiah's door, Linden
paused to gather herself. How could anything have
happened to him? Scarcely twenty minutes had passed
since she had put him to bed. Yet she feared for him.
Her whole body trembled at the possibility that Roger
wished him harm.
Easing open the door, she peered into his room.
Light from the hall behind her reached across his floor
to the raceway towers guarding the head of his bed.
Between them he lay outstretched, his blankets already
rumpled and twisted around him, one arm extended
like an appeal. He made faint snoring sounds as he
slept.
Roger had shot Bill Coty in the head.
Linden's trembling grew more acute. She shut the
door and hurried downstairs to
wait for Sandy.
At the bottom of the stairs, standing amid Tinkertoy
spires and buttresses, she heard the front door rattle
again as if someone outside struggled to open it. Sandy
could not have arrived yet-and in any case, she always
rang the doorbell. Nevertheless Linden ducked under a
rampart to unlock the door, pull it aside.
Wind slapped into her face, snatched tears from her
eyes. The gust felt unnaturally cold; and abrasive, full
of grit. A storm was on its way, a serious storm
In the porch light, Linden saw Sandy lean toward the
house as if she were tacking through the wind. Gusts
plucked at her coat so that it fluttered like a loose sail.
Swept forward, Sandy mounted the steps to the porch.
Linden let her into the house and pushed the door
shut, then said, "That was fast."
Light chased the shadows from Sandy's face. Strain
pinched her mouth, and her eyes were dark with
doubt.
"Are you all right?" Linden asked quickly.
"I had a feeling-" Sandy began, then stopped herself to
attempt an unconvincing smile. "Whatever bothered
you today must be catching. It came on me while I was
driving home. I couldn't relax-" She smiled again,
more successfully this time. "I knew you were going to
call. I already had my coat on when the phone rang."
Then her expression resumed its indefinite distress. "I
hope nothing bad has happened."
"I'll let you know," Linden replied to avoid
explanations. "I'll call as soon as I can."
Sandy nodded. She appeared to be listening to the
wind rather than to Linden.
Still shivering, Linden took her own coat from the
entryway closet, belted it around her, and impelled
herself out into the night.
When she had pulled the door closed after her,
however, she paused where she was until she heard the
lock click home. She could not imagine what had
unsettled Sandy's usual phlegmatic calm, but she was
fiercely glad of it. Scared, Sandy would be particularly
cautious; and Linden desired every scrap of care
which Sandy could provide for Jeremiah.
She needed that reassurance to help her bear the
inchoate conviction that she was abandoning her son.
She yearned to flee with him now, take him and run
Surely Roger was unaware that she had a son?
She had to close her mouth and squint her eyes against
the grit in the wind. Clutching her resolve around her
like another coat, she forced herself to hasten down off
the porch and across the lawn to her car.
A hard gust nearly tore the car door from her hand as
she pulled it open. She stumbled into the driver's seat
as if she had been shoved. The door resisted her tug for
an instant, then slammed shut after her. At the impact,
the car staggered on its springs.
The starter ground briefly before the engine came to
life. With as much caution as she could muster, she
backed out into the street and turned toward the
hospital.
For a block or two, the wind left her alone. Then it
staggered the car again, whining in the wheel wells,
striking the hood and trunk until they vibrated. The
street lamps lit dark streaks in the air like handfuls of
dust thrown along the leading edge of a gale. They
swirled when they hit the car, curled momentarily on
the windscreen, danced away.
Fortunately Berenford Memorial was not far. And
street lamps were more common in the center of town:
they seemed brighter. Nevertheless dust tainted the air
in swift plumes and streamers, scattering into
turbulence at the edges of the buildings. Scraps of
paper twisted like tortured things in the eddies.
Past the bulk of County Hospital, she wheeled into the
parking lot between it and Berenford Memorial. From
the lot she could not see the front door. But three
patrol cars had reached her domain ahead of her.
Their lights flashed empty warnings into the night.
Blinking hard at the dust, and at the wind's raw chill,
she hugged her coat around her and hastened along
the walk toward the front door. She could have used
the staff entrance and saved herself thirty yards, but
she wanted to enter the building as Roger must have
entered it, see the sequence of what he had done.
Around the corner of the building and along its front
she hurried. The front steps she took two at a time,
nearly running.
Lit by the lights from the small reception lobby, as well
as by its own lamps, the outer door seemed to appear
in front of her as if it had been swept into existence
from some other reality. She was reaching for its
handle when she saw the ugly hole torn in the metal
where the lock had been. From the hole, cracks spread
crookedly through the glass.
Berenford Memorial's entrance had two sets of heavy
glass doors, one inside the other. At night the outer
door was kept locked. The people who worked here
used the staff entrance and their own keys. Visitors
after dark had to ring a doorbell which summoned the
duty nurse or an orderly; and they were not admitted
until they had introduced themselves over the
intercom by the door.
Apparently someone had refused to let Roger in.
Sara Clint was the duty nurse: who were the orderlies?
For a moment, distracted by Roger's violence, Linden
could not remember. Then she did: Avis Cardaman
and Harry Gund. Harry would have been useless
against an intruder. He was a frecklefaced young man
with an ingratiating demeanor and a positive genius
for paperwork; but he tended to flinch whenever he
heard a loud voice. Avis, however, was a huge and
compulsively responsible man whose gentle manner
concealed his prodigious strength.
Linden had often suspected that he could have
intimidated the paint off the walls, if he had considered
it a threat to his patients.
If Roger had taken Joan in spite of Avis
How many other casualties had he left in his wake?
Snatching a quick breath for courage, she heaved open
the outer door, then the inner, and strode into the
lobby.
The space was crowded with police officers: Sheriff
Lytton and at least six of his deputies. They all looked
toward her as she entered.
Behind them, Harry Gund attended the reception
desk. His manner seemed at once frightened and
defiant, as if he had shamed himself in some way, and
now sought to make amends with a display of attention
to duty. Near him stood Maxine Dubroff and her
husband, Ernie, their arms around each other.
In a rush, Linden scanned the lobby past the shoulders
of the officers, but she saw no sign of Sara Clint.
Helplessly she wondered how her patients were
reacting to gunshots and turmoil.
Just inside the door, nearly at her feet, Bill Coty
sprawled in his life's blood. He still wore his navy-blue
Security uniform, with his walkie-talkie and his
nightstick attached to his belt. A splash of blood
obscured the useless silver of his badge. But a small
holster at his belt was empty.
In one slack hand, he held a can of Mace: the only real
weapon sanctioned by County Hospital's insurance.
Apparently Roger had not given him time to use it.
Strands of his white hair showed through the wreckage
of his head. Roger's bullet had smashed in his left
temple. The exit wound in the back of his skull was an
atrocity of brains and bone. A dark trickle across his
cheek underscored the dismay in his sightless eyes.
Instinctively Linden dropped to her knees beside him;
reached out as if she believed that the touch of her
hands would somehow bring him back to life. But the
sheriff stopped her.
"Don't touch him!" Lytton barked. "Forensics hasn't
been here yet."
As if there could be any doubt about the cause of
death.
Briefly Linden covered her face as if she could not
bear the sight of Bill's lifeless form. Almost at once,
however, she dropped her hands; and as she did so her
trembling fell away as if one aspect of her ordinary
mortality had sloughed from her. The crisis was upon
her now: it smelled of copper and ashes. Grimly she
rose to her feet to meet it.
Bill had been shot so long ago that most of his blood
had already dried. How much time had passed? Half
an hour? An hour?
How much of a head start did Roger have?
"Dr. Avery," growled Barton Lytton when she faced
him. "It's about time."
He was a blunt, fleshy man with a gift for seeming
bigger than he actually was. In fact, he stood no taller
than Linden herself; yet he appeared to loom over her.
No doubt that contributed to his incessant reelection:
people thought of him as dominant, effective, despite
his real stature. Typically he wore mirrored aviator
sunglasses, but now they were shoved into the breast
pocket of his khaki shirt opposite his badge. Various
heavy objects dragged at his belt-a radio, a cell phone,
handcuffs, Mace, a handgun the size of a tinker's anvil,
spare clips-making his paunch appear larger than it
was.
"I-" Linden began. She wanted to say, I tried to warn
you. But the look in his eyes, haunted and raging,
closed her throat. They were the eyes of a man in
trouble, out of his depth, with no one to blame but
himself. Roughly she swallowed some of her anger. "I
came as soon as I could."
"Dr. Avery!" When she spoke, Harry Gund left the
reception desk to push his way through the clustered
officers. "Thank God you're here. I've done everything
I can, but we need you.
"This is real bad, Dr. Avery," he told her earnestly.
"Harry," Lytton muttered: a warning.
Harry ignored the sheriff. Ordinarily he was
deferential in the face of authority; but now his need to
exonerate himself overshadowed his timidity.
"We couldn't stop him." His voice trembled with the
aftereffects of dismay and shock. "We tried-Avis and
me-but we couldn't. I didn't let him in. He rang the
doorbell, used the intercom. He was smiling, and he
sounded just as reasonable as could be. But I
remembered your orders"-which he must have heard
from Sara"and didn't let him in."
"Harry," Sheriff Lytton rasped again. He reached out
a thick hand to silence the orderly.
Linden interrupted the sheriff. "He was here. You
weren't. Let him tell it.''
Lytton dropped his hand. His shoulders appeared to
slump as if she had made him smaller.
A moment of gratitude flashed in Harry's eyes.
"I tried to stop him," he repeated. "But he had this
gun, this huge gun. He shot the lock.
"I yelled for help. Then I tried to get behind the desk
so I could use the phone. But he pointed his gun at me.
If I did anything, he was going to shoot me.
"He kept smiling like we're friends or something."
Linden listened carefully, setting her own thoughts and
her secret knowledge aside. Roger had to be stopped.
He's in my mind, Joan had once told Thomas
Covenant, and I can't get him out. He hates you.
"Then Bill Coty came in." Harry's tension mounted as
he continued. "He wasn't
supposed to be here. He's off duty, isn't he? But he had
his Mace, and he held it up like it could stop bullets.
He told him to put the gun down."
The harm that Roger could do was incalculable.
"Avis was there," Harry said, trembling now. "And
Mrs. Clint. They must've heard me yelling." Or the
sound of Roger's handgun. "Avis wanted to do
something, you know what he's like, but she made him
stay where he was.
"Bill was scared, you could see that, but he kept telling
him to put the gun down, put the gun down. He just
smiled and smiled, and I thought he wasn't going to do
anything, but all at once he pointed the gun at Bill and
fired, and Bill went down like someone kicked him in
the head."
Linden closed her eyes slowly, held them shut for a
moment to contain her regret. She had told Bill that
Roger was not dangerous.
Harry was saying, "That's when Avis ran at him, even
though Mrs. Clint was yelling at him to stop. Avis tried
to tackle him, but he just turned and hit him with the
gun, hit him so hard his head bounced."
Deliberately she opened her eyes again.
Behind Harry, Sheriff Lytton waited with badly
concealed impatience. His officers listened as if they
were stunned, although they must have heard Harry's
story earlier.
Where had Roger acquired such murderous skills?
"Avis fell down," Harry said, shaking. "He had blood
all over him.
"Then he wasn't here anymore. I didn't even see where
he went, but he took Mrs. Clint with him. He made her
go.
"I called the sheriff right away, right away. I was
going to call you, too, but I had to take care of Avis "
Belatedly Linden noticed another pool of blood off to
the side of Bill's body. Drying smears marked the front
and sleeves of Harry's pale-green orderly's uniform.
He must have taken Avis' head in his arms, cradled the
big man like a brother.
"He kept bleeding-" Harry's voice shivered on the
verge of hysteria. "I couldn't make it stop. I called
Emergency, I told them stat, Avis was dying, I couldn't
look at Bill but I thought he was already dead.
"I did everything I could, Doctor." His eyes implored
Linden to tell him that he was not to blame. "Honest, I
did."
His appeal touched her, but she had no room for it.
At the back of the lobby, Maxine released herself from
Ernie's arms. Moving between the silent officers, she
came forward to stand beside Harry, place a
reassuring hand on his shoulder. Her kind face
regarded him sadly.
The officers began to shift their feet and look around
as if they were rousing themselves from a trance.
I
"Dr. Panger has Avis in surgery," Maxine told Linden.
"He may have bone splinters in his brain."
Linden nodded an acknowledgment-Curt Panger was
more than competent_ but she was not done with
Harry. "Did you see him leave?" she asked quietly.
"Oh, yes," Harry answered. "Right after I called
Emergency. He had Joan, and Mrs. Clint. Joan went
with him like she wanted to go, but he had to keep his
gun pointed at Mrs. Clint. I hid behind the desk so he
didn't see me."
Lytton cleared his throat fiercely. "He has a hostage,
Dr. Avery." His voice seemed to grate against his teeth.
"We're wasting time here. I need to talk to you."
Linden turned her attention to him at last. "And I
need to talk to you." The fact that Roger had taken a
hostage meant that he was not finished yet. If he had
simply wanted his mother, a hostage would only slow
him down.
He intended more harm.
Sara Clint was a good nurse, levelheaded and
compassionate. She had a husband and two daughters.
She did not deserve this.
Joan herself did not deserve it.
"Fine," Lytton growled. "So tell me just how the hell
you knew this was going to happen."
"Not here," Linden countered. "In my office." He was
more likely to tell her the truth if they were alone.
Stifling an impulse to hurry, she took a moment to ask
Maxine to call for a nurse to replace Sara. She did not
want to leave Harry on duty alone in his condition.
Then she beckoned for the sheriff to follow her and
headed toward her office.
His heavy boots stamped behind her on the tile as if he
were cursing.
In her office, she sat down behind her desk, anchoring
herself on her medical authority. She wanted Barton
Lytton to know that she was not a woman whom he
could intimidate.
He began at once. Towering at the edge of her desk, he
announced in a rough voice, "I need to know what you
know. We have to find that little shit." He glowered
down at her as if she could free him to act on his
outrage and frustration. "He sure as hell won't take
her to Haven Farm. Not unless he's begging to get
caught. The Clints are decent people. I'm not going to
let him get away with this.
"Tell me now, Doctor. How the fuck did you know
what he would do?"
The sheriff was wrong. Roger expected to be caught;
wanted that for some reason. Why else did he need a
hostage?
"I knew," she retorted firmly, "because I pay
attention." The haunted ire and need in his eyes had
not changed, but now it did not sway her. "I could see
as soon as I met him that he was unstable. He kept
repeating that he wanted to take care of Joan, but his
manner was all wrong. He didn't act like a loving son.
The way he talked convinced me that the only thing he
really cared about was getting her away from here.
"I tried to tell you. He wants to do something to her."
Lytton propped his fists on her desk, leaned his bulk
onto his arms. In spite of his posture, however, his eyes
flinched. "You're not helping, Doctor," he said softly.
"Telling me I fucked up doesn't do shit for Sara Clint.
We've got to get her back.
"I need to know where he's going. Hell, he could be
halfway out of the county by now. I can call in help.
We can set up roadblocks, try to stop him. But there
are too many small roads. We can't block them all.
Hell, we don't even know what kind of car he drives.
That fool Gund was too scared to look.
"And while we're sitting at roadblocks, he can hole up
anywhere he wants. We'll never find him. Until he's
already done"-Lytton swallowed hard-"whatever the
fuck
he has in mind.
"It's too late to tell me I should have listened to you.
Tell me how to find him."
Linden recognized the justice of his response. In some
sense, she respected it. But she was not moved. The
look in his eyes disturbed her. Their mix of fear and
fury seemed to promise butchery.
Terrible things might happen to Joan and Sara if
Lytton tried to kill Roger
Linden held the sheriff's gaze until he looked away.
Then, distinctly, she said, "There's something I need to
know first."
"Are you shitting me?" he protested. "Roger
Covenant has a fucking hostage, he has Sara Clint! We
need to move! What can you possibly need to know
first?"
Linden did not relent. Instead she said precisely,
"When Julius Berenford found Joan on Haven Farm
ten years ago, she was sane. She couldn't remember
what had happened to her, but she could talk. She
could function, at least to some extent. But by the time
you delivered her to County Hospital, Sheriff Lytton,
she was a vegetable. Entirely out of reach. If we didn't
take such good care of her, she would have died years
ago.
"What happened while you were driving her back into
town? What changed her?"
With a jerk, Lytton pulled himself upright. A sudden
flush darkened his cheeks. Glaring at the center of
Linden's forehead, he said, "We've had this
conversation, Doctor."
"Yes, we have," she insisted. "But I need a better
answer. It's time to talk about it. Tell me what
happened"
Her pager chirped at her, but she ignored it. She had
come too far and waited too long to let Barton Lytton
evade her now.
Darkness spread down Lytton's neck, staining his skin
with threats. Yet he could not conceal his fear. His eyes
seemed to cower in their sockets. Linden thought that
he
0
might refuse to answer; but she had underestimated
his rage-or his shame. Abruptly he bared his teeth as if
he were grinning. His eyes found hers in defiance.
"Oh, it's nothing much," he answered between his
teeth. "I didn't hurt her or anything, if that's what you
think.
"Of course, I cuffed her. She was a fucking accessory,
for God's sake. For all I knew, she'd killed her damn
ex." He faltered for an instant, wincing. Then he
rasped, "After that, I made her ride in back."
The back of a police car: the cage. Bars between her
and the front seat. No handles inside the doors. Like a
dangerous criminal.
After what she had suffered
"She asked me why," he went on. "She was fucking
hysterical about it. So I told her." Linden stared at
him. His gaze held a throng of conflicts. Her pager
signaled again;
but now she could not force herself to glance away
from him. "Told her-?"she asked weakly.
"The truth, Dr. Avery." His tone was thick with
disgust. "Her ex was a fucking leper. And she was
married to him before she knew he had it. She
probably had it herself. Hell, she probably still does. If
nothing else, she's a damn carrier.
"I made her ride in back because I didn't want to be
infected."
Linden heard him clearly. He was trying to sound
justified. But he failed. The plain cruelty of his actions
defeated him.
Before she could react, he leaned over her desk again.
"That upsets you, doesn't it, Doctor. You don't think I
should have been so mean to her.
"Well, fuck you. We should have talked about your
complicity in that murder ten years ago. You're an
accessory too, but the sainted Julius Berenford
protected you. The two of you hid the truth. I'm the
sheriff of this county, and you didn't let me do my job.
"Now you're at it again. But this time you won't get
away with it. I'll find them without you. And when I
do, I'm going to make damn sure you get your share of
the blame."
Then he stood up and wheeled out of her office. Before
he reached the lobby, he started shouting orders at his
deputies.
Linden swore to herself. She could have told him
where to look for Roger. She should have. But she did
not trust him. He was too eager for violence. His
solution to Joan's dilemma might leave no one alive.
Her pager beeped again, insisting on her attention.
Reluctantly she looked down at its display.
For a moment, she did not recognize the number. She
stared at it, frowning, while she pushed the button to
make the pager stop chirping. Who-?
Then she had it: Megan Roman. That was Megan's
home phone number.
She groaned under her breath. She did not feel equal
to the challenge of telling
Megan about Bill and Joan and Sara.
But what else did she propose to do, now that she had
driven Barton Lytton
away? Go after Roger on her own? No. She would not
risk her life-risk abandoning
Jeremiah-in that way. And it was possible that Megan
would be able to help
She might know someone in the State Highway Patrol.
Or, better yet, the FBI. Kid
napping was a federal crime, was it not? Megan might
be able to have Joan's plight, and
Sara's, taken out of Lytton's hands.
Swallowing her reluctance, Linden reached for her
phone and dialed Megan's
number.
The lawyer picked up almost instantly. "Yes?"
"Megan, it's Linden."
"Linden," Megan cried at once, "where are you?"
Her urgency seemed to knock Linden back in her seat.
She heard crises in Megan's
voice; dangers she had not imagined. Quickly she
asked, "Megan, what's wrong?" "Damn it, Linden!"
Megan yelled back. "Listen to me. Where are you? At
the
hospital?"
"Yes, I-" Linden began, floundering.
"Then go home!" Megan demanded. "Right now! No
matter what you're doing. Lis
ten! I heard what happened. Roger and Joan. Sara
Clint. Bill Coty.
"I've-" Abruptly she faltered, fell silent. Dead air filled
the phone like keening. "Megan?" Linden urged her
friend. "Megan?"
"Oh, Linden." Without transition, Megan's voice
changed. Now she sounded like
she was in tears. "I've made a horrible mistake.
"I mentioned Jeremiah to Roger. A few days ago. He
was asking questions about
you. I told him you have a son."
Somewhere in the background of herself, Linden
started screaming.
5.


qe Cost (Love anfDespair
She saw everything with a terrible clarity. The edge of
her desk looked sharp
enough to draw blood. Across its surface, sheets of
paper in confusion whetted each other to the
incisiveness of anguish. The clock hanging on the wall
above her seemed to jut outward, its hands as stark as
cries. In her grasp, the black plastic of the phone's
receiver looked desperate and fatal. Its cord coiled
about itself, binding her to Megan's voice.
She had lost her chance to flee with Jeremiah. It would
never come again.
Her friend was saying, "Linden, I am so sorry."
She was saying, "Go home now. Maybe I'm wrong.
Don't take the chance. Don't let
this become any worse than I've already made it. No
one else needs you the way he
does."
Linden did not reply. If she had, Megan would not
have heard her: she had already dropped the handset.
Borne along by screams, she left her office at a run.
The skirts of her coat flapped behind her like Furies.
Stop, she tried to tell herself, go back. Assume he has
Jeremiah. Get Lytton's help. Tell him where to look,
make him take you with him, with your help he might
find Roger in time.
But she did not stop running, or turn. The voice of her
own sanity could not reach her. She flung aside the
staff door, and the wind caught it: she might have
cracked the safety glass. But she did not pause to close
it. Instead she raced headlong for her car. The wind
battered at her; struck tears from her eyes. The heels
of her shoes slapped the sidewalk awkwardly, making
her stumble. One of them flipped from her foot. She
kicked the other away and ran on.
He is threatening my son!
How far ahead of her was Roger? Half an hour? An
hour? Even half an hour was too much.
As she neared her car, she tugged the keys from her
coat pocket. The wind seemed to snatch them out of
her fingers: they dropped to the pavement in a
buffeted arc through the false illumination from the
light poles. Without pausing, she stooped to retrieve
them.
She did not need to unlock her car: she seldom locked
it. Gusts and turbulence resisted her momentarily,
then tumbled away to let her pull open the door, slide
into the driver's seat.
As soon as she had closed the door and shut out the
wind, she began to quake. Her hands faltered and
shook like scraps of paper enclosed with gusts. She
could not fix her fingers to the right key. It fumbled
from her grasp as she strove to push it into the
ignition. Her heart beat interminably while she
struggled with it.
Raging through her teeth, she clutched the keys in her
fist and punched the dashboard hard enough to gouge
metal into her palm.
If she failed I would need to take her place.
Jeremiah needed her. No one else needs you the way he
does.
She thumbed the key into the ignition; cranked the
starter. The old engine roared to life like an act of will.
Violent as gunfire, she aimed her car out of the
parking lot and jammed her foot down on the
accelerator.
Roger did not know this town. He did not know where
she lived. Even given directions, he would have to
drive slowly, peer through the darkness for street signs
and house numbers. And Sara Clint- Joan would not
resist him, she was already lost. But Sara would do
whatever she could to escape him, frustrate him. He
could not make an attempt on Jeremiah unless he
controlled her somehow.
He could not move quickly. If Linden did not reach
her house ahead of him, she might catch him while he
was there.
If Sandy had been forewarned
The wind or her tires shrieked through a corner. The
car lurched on its springs. Again she punched the
dashboard. Damn it, she should have called Sandy
from her office; or asked Megan to do it for her. She
had been too long away from the Land. She had gotten
out of the habit of fighting against Despite.
Three more houses. Two. Then she reached her home.
Tires squalling, her car slammed to the curb. She
made no effort to pull into her driveway, or park
sanely; did not turn off the engine. Lightning shrieked
overhead, a static discharge rubbed to life by the
pressure of the wind. It left a glare across her vision as
she shoved out of the car and saw the door of her
house gaping open to the night.
Jeremiah-!
She seemed to rush forward in sheets and tatters, lifted
by wind and slapped at the front of her house. The
lawn and the steps were nothing to her. She noticed
only the door banging on its hinges and the bullet-torn
lock; only the ruined castle which lit
tered the entryway.
Roger had left all of the lights on as if to welcome her
home. Of course. How could he have known where to
look for Jeremiah? He must have held Sandy at
gunpoint While he searched from room to room. Or
else he had killed-
Fearing more blood, Linden scanned the Tinkertoys
quickly, the living room carpet, the hallway to the
kitchen. But she saw nothing to suggest that he had
harmed Sandy.
He had another use for her life.
She took the stairs three at a time, surged upward in
her fluttering coat and her exposed feet to confirm her
worst fears.
Every light blazed. Roger had been into every room,
left no part of her home unviolated. The whole upstairs
shone as if she were being welcomed to a wake. He had
searched
Jeremiah's bed lay empty. Roger Covenant had not
touched the racetrack and towers. He had disturbed
nothing. He had taken only her son. There Linden
stopped running.
Her terror and fury did not let her go. Instead they
seemed to drive her into another mode of being, onto a
new plane of existence. Between one heartbeat and the
next, she ceased to be the Linden Avery who could
panic or be paralyzed. In that woman's place, she
became Linden Avery the Chosen, who had
transcended Ravers and despair in the name of those
she loved.
She knew what Roger would do. And she had already
made all of the choices that would be required of her.
Deliberately, sure of herself now, she went to her
bedroom to change her clothes. She could not go to
meet the Despiser barefoot, clad only in her loose coat
and the impersonal blouse and skirt she had worn to
work.
That room also Roger had violated. He had swept
everything off the top of her bureau and dressing
table; emptied her drawers onto the floor; rummaged
out the contents of her closet. Cosmetics, earrings, and
shampoos complicated the floor of her bathroom.
He wanted something more than Jeremiah from her.
He could no longer surprise her: she had already
guessed the truth. He had hoped to find his father's
wedding band.
Now she knew why Roger had taken Jeremiah. It was
not simple malice; a desire to hurt her for refusing
him-or for opposing the Despiser. Jeremiah had no
worth in himself: no power, no ring. And Roger did
not need another hostage to protect him from Sheriff
Lytton's outrage. Jeremiah's only value was to Linden
herself.
Roger wanted him as leverage against her. Either here
or in the Land, Roger intended to use her son to extort
what he needed from her.
Would he have claimed Jeremiah if he had found her
ring? Perhaps. It was possible that white gold lost its
power if it were stolen, or reft by violence. She did not
knowor care.
Steadily, without haste, she stripped off her clothes. As
she did so, she found a dull pain throbbing in the palm
of her right hand; and her touch left slight smears of
blood
on her skirt and blouse. When she looked at her hand,
she saw crusted blood around a crescent cut into her
palm, a small rent of vulnerability. She had cut herself
when she had punched the dashboard with her keys in
her fist.
If she failed I would need to take her place.
From the litter on her floor she selected comfortable
jeans, a warm red flannel shirt that Jeremiah had seen
her wear many times and might recognize, and a pair
of sturdy boots. Soon she was dressed very much as
she had been when she had followed Covenant into the
night behind Haven Farm in order to rescue Joan.
Her coat she rejected. It could not protect her from the
mounting storm. Without it, she went back downstairs
to call 911.
Speaking precisely, she told the operator to give
Sheriff Lytton a message. Roger has taken my son. He
has another hostage, Sandy Eastwall. Look for him on
Haven Farm.
Now that she had stopped running, she no longer
feared what Lytton might do. He had harmed Joan out
of spite, not malice, because Julius Berenford-and
Linden herself-had made him feel emasculated after
Covenant's murder. With so many lives at stake, he
would act with more restraint. And she needed his
help. She was no match for Roger's gun, or his
madness.
There were other people whom she could have called,
Sam Diadem and Ernie Dubroff among them. Megan
Roman would have begged for a chance to make
restitution. But Linden was unwilling to risk any more
innocents.
Leaving her house as she had found it, she strode down
the steps and across the lawn back to her car.
The wind seemed to grow stronger by the moment. She
had to lean against it in order to walk forward. Stark
in the cloudless dark, friction lightning streaked
among the treetops. She had never seen a storm like
this before: it appeared to rip at the laws of nature,
altering realities with every strike. When she gained
her car, she was vaguely surprised to find that it still
ran; that the street itself had not been torn apart. She
half expected the trees to crash and fall under the force
of the wind and the lightning.
Her car shuddered at every blast, as if at any moment
it might shiver itself to scrap; yet it brunted
stubbornly ahead. A few blocks took her to the main
street through the center of town. From end to end, the
whole town looked deserted. There were no other cars
at the intersections, no vehicles moving anywhere.
Every inhabitant of the area had gone to ground like a
threatened animal. If Sheriff Lytton or his deputies
were abroad, Linden saw no sign of them.
Alone, she passed the phone company offices, the
town's only department store, the county courthouse.
The sheer intensity of the wind seemed to dim the
streetlamps, truncate their illumination; but for a
moment lightning etched the courthouse out of the
crowded night, casting a bright wail across the old
columns which upheld the roof. In the harsh white
glare, the giant heads atop the columns gaped like
ghouls.
I
Thomas Covenant had lost his marriage there. He had
nearly lost his home. And Linden had adopted
Jeremiah
How far ahead of her was Roger now? How much
harm could he inflict before she caught up with him?
She clung to the steering wheel, forcing the car
forward. Sweat stung her gouged palm.
Abruptly every lamp along the street let out an
incandescent blare and went dark. Midnight seemed to
tumble out of the sky, filling the town as all the lights
failed. Lightning must have hit a transformer
somewhere; or a tree had fallen across the power lines.
The beams of her headlights appeared to sag to the
ground directly in front of her, unable to penetrate the
sudden blackness. Reacting on instinct, she stamped at
the brakes, and her car slewed to a stop.
At once, however, she punched the accelerator again,
battling the wind for speed. She knew this road: it had
few intersections and hardly curved between town and
Haven Farm. And Haven Farm itself was only two
miles away. Clearly she did not need to worry about
traffic. If the mounting gale did not blow her off the
road-and if lightning did not strike her
Roger was already there: her fears discerned him too
vividly for her to believe otherwise. She seemed to see
him through her windshield, his bland unction whetted
to eagerness, his teeth bared. He had reached the
farmhouse. He was inside. With one hand, he dragged
Jeremiah along: the other brandished his gun. In her
imagination, terror flashed from Jeremiah's eyes, and
his slack mouth quivered on the verge of wailing.
She could not see Sara or Sandy; could not guess what
Roger would do without electricity. Perhaps his
madness had grown so lucid that he did not need light
Gusts kicked the car hard, and its front wheels seemed
to lift from the road. Lightning brought the pavement
to life, then snatched it away into darkness. Fighting
for control, Linden shoved down on the gas and went
faster. She was afraid that Lytton might reach Haven
Farm ahead of her-and afraid that he would not.
Roger's actions would become more extreme as time
passed.
There, on her right: the dirt road that served as Haven
Farm's driveway. A quarter of a mile away beyond
open fields, invisible against the wood which clustered
around Righters Creek, stood the small farmhouse
where Thomas Covenant had lived. Linden knew it
well, although she had not been there for years. In
memory she had preserved its rooms. Even now, with
Jeremiah in danger and her nerves primed for battle,
she could see Covenant's flagrant eyes as he had
striven to prevent her from sharing his peril.
And there, not twenty yards from the main road, lay
the spot on which she had swallowed nausea and fear
in order to save the life of the old man in the ochre
robe
-who had told her to Be true
and who should have by God warned her that
Jeremiah's life was at risk.
Wheels skidding in the dirt, she drove toward the
house through winds that gathered a tornado's force.
Then the scant reach of her headlights found one wall
of the farmhouse. It had once been white, but over the
years neglect had peeled the paint away to grey wood,
and a few of the boards had sprung from their frame.
No light showed in the windows: apparently the power
failure covered this whole section of the county.
Otherwise, she felt sure, Roger would have left every
lamp lit here as he had in her home, welcoming her to
his handiwork.
In a spray of dirt that disappeared instantly along the
wind, Linden stopped.
Beside the house stood a dark sedan: Roger's car. He
had closed the doors, but left the trunk open. Its
interior light gave off a faint glow that seemed to efface
the rest of the vehicle, so that only the trunk retained
any reality in this world.
Only the trunk and whatever Roger had transported
in it
For a moment, she thought that he must have carried
Jeremiah there; and she nearly burst raging from her
car. But, no, Roger would not have done that, for the
simple reason that there was no need. Like Joan,
Jeremiah would have caused him no trouble, put up no
resistance. Regardless of what happened, her son
would have remained rocking wherever he was put,
passive and doomed.
Roger must have used the trunk to contain Sara or
Sandy. Or both
Linden saw no other cars. Either the sheriff had not
received her message in time, or he had elected to
ignore it.
Still she did not hesitate or hurry.
Leaving her headlights on, she turned off her car,
grabbed the keys, and surged out into the wind.
Behind his blankness, Jeremiah would be terrified. She
could not know what he remembered of his terrible
past; but on some level, he might recognize what was
being done to him now. Or he might believe that he
had been returned to that cruel time when his mother
had given him into the Despiser's power.
Cries which he would not be able to utter for himself
filled Linden's heart as she pushed through the blast to
the back of her car. Again she had trouble handling
the keys: they dug at her gouged palm as she fumbled
to open the trunk. Then she jammed the right key into
place.
From the trunk she took her medical bag and a heavy
flashlight, and turned toward the house.
A sizzling flash snatched the house into light, rendered
it stark and bleached against the black night. Without
warning, gusts caught in the trunk of Roger's sedan.
The lid slammed shut like the jaws of a trap.
She wanted to clutch for courage at Covenant's ring
hanging against her sternum,
but she needed both hands. Grimly she thumbed the
switch of the flashlight. Like her car's headlights, its
beam seemed to fall ineffective to the ground. It barely
reached the house; cast no illumination at the front
door.
Wind snapped her sleeves against her arms. Holding
the flashlight before her like a weapon, she advanced
on the dark farmhouse.
He is threatening my son.
Her light traced the outlines of the door. It had no
windows, offered her no way to see past it. Its panels
had held their paint better than the wall, and that
white made the door look somehow newer than the
rest of the house, fresher: a portal pulled forward in
time by recent use.
Shifting the flashlight in her grasp, she used two
fingers and the tip of her thumb to test the doorknob.
It turned easily; and at once the wind ripped it away,
kicked the door open inward. It hit the limit of its
hinges hard enough to shake the frame.
Her flashlight could not penetrate the darkness. Wind
and dust lashed more tears from her eyes. She had to
rub the moisture away with her wrist before she could
step over the threshold, force the beam of her light into
the house.
The open door let her into the living room.
If she had not remembered the room so clearly, she
might not have recognized it. Seen in the brief gleams
and streaks cast by her flashlight, it seemed ruined,
uninhabitable: the scene of an earthquake or some
other catastrophe. Amid funnels of winddriven dust
lay chunks of plaster from the ceiling and broken
boards from the walls. The couch against one wall had
been gutted, eaten alive by rats and roaches. Its
stuffing blew like snow among the dust devils. Shards
from shattered windows lay on the armchairs, the
coffee table, the rank carpet. Sections of the walls
looked like they had been blown apart by shotguns.
Roger Covenant had made no attempt to pretend that
he and his mother would actually live here. If anyone-
Megan Roman, Sheriff Lytton, Linden herself-had had
the foresight to visit his intended "home," they would
have seen the truth beyond any possible contradiction.
At first, Linden could find no sign that Roger and his
victims had been here. Any marks which they might
have left in the dust had been blown to confusion. But
then she noticed darker patches among the room's
debris. She had taken them for clotted dust and dirt.
Now, however, she saw that they clung to the floor as if
the wind had no power over them. Some of them
caught a moist gleam from her flashlight.
Crouching to examine them, she found without
surprise that they were blood: viscid and thickening,
but still wet, recently shed.
"God damn you," she muttered at Roger through her
teeth because she already
knew what he had done; knew what he was doing.
"You will not get away with this."
Linden had sworn that he would claim Joan over her
dead body; but she had not kept that oath. She had
talked herself out of taking her fears seriously enough.
Now she knew better. She would not make that
mistake again.
In God's name, that bland bastard had not even had
the decency to slaughter an animal instead
Knowing the truth, and dreading it deep in her guts,
she tightened her grip on her bag and went forward,
into the short hallway which connected the living room
and the kitchen.
The kitchen was as bad as the living room. Half the
windows had been blown out. Splintered fluorescent
bulbs intensified the litter of glass, plaster, and broken
cabinets on the floor. And knives and utensils:
whoever had cleaned out the house after Covenant's
death-Megan Roman?-must have neglected the
kitchen. Open drawers had spilled their contents like
scree.
Here, too, Linden found smears and puddles of blood.
She should have been terrified for Jeremiah, but she
was not. Her fears were certain: Roger's intentions for
her son would not end so soon.
He had not yet had time to offer Jeremiah to the
Despiser.
From the kitchen another short passage led to three
doors, a bedroom, the bathroom, and another
bedroom. Her flashlight showed the way in splashes of
illumination. Dark drips and smears marked the floor
as if Roger had blazed a trail for Linden to follow to
the end of the hall.
She did not have far to go to reach the last room,
where Covenant had cared for Joan. Six forthright
strides: ten hesitating steps. The door stood open
ahead of her, inviting her deeper into the night. Even
though she knew what she expected to find, her dread
mounted.
She clung to the handle of her bag. Its weight
comforted her. She had neglected it ten years ago,
when she had followed Covenant into the woods after
Joan. It might
have helped her then, counteracting her terror.
Perhaps it would aid her now.
Stabbing her light ahead of her, Linden approached
the open door; stepped past the
edge of the frame.
With a splintering crash like rent heartwood, lightning
struck somewhere nearby: so near that she seemed to
feel the impact in her stomach. For an instant, fierce
white filled the hall as though it shone straight through
the walls into her eyes; as though in that moment the
hallway and Linden herself had been ripped into
another reality by the accumulated ferocity of the
blast. Every hair on her body seemed to stand on end
as darkness recoiled over her, stifling her flashlight,
leaving her blind. The ripe reek of ozone shouted in
her nostrils.
She had time to think, God, that was close
Then her struggling flashlight brought the room
beyond the door back into being.
She gazed inward at more ruin, the wreckage of a
dwelling that had been left without love or care for ten
years: fallen plaster and sprung floorboards, broken
window glass, drifted refuse and dust. Abandoned so,
the bedroom looked toxic, fatal, as if during his years
here Thomas Covenant's illness had seeped into the
walls.
Like the cushions of the living room couch, the
mattress on the single bed had been torn apart by time
and vermin. Briefly Linden seemed to see the bed as it
had lain since Joan's abduction and Covenant's death;
forlorn and unused. But then her flashlight asserted its
tangible vision; and lightning glared from the
windows; and she saw the truth.
On the bed lay Sara Clint, desolate in her own blood.
Beside her head, a large kitchen knife had been driven
into the remains of the pillow. Perhaps Roger had
found it here, and had used it because it had belonged
to his father. It stood like a marker at Sara's head. A
warning
Involuntarily Linden dropped her bag. It could not
help her now. No medical power would undo Roger's
cruelty.
Blood dried on the edges of the cuts which had been
made in Sara's uniform, soaked from the wounds in
her flesh. As Linden stepped into the room, she saw
more and more places where the white fabric had been
sliced through; and at first she feared that Sara had
been cut and cut and cut until she had simply bled to
death: slowly, helplessly; in terror. Sara's wrists and
ankles had been secured to the bed frame with what
appeared to be duct tape. She could not have avoided
Roger's knife to save her soul. Then, however, Linden
saw the raw wound that grinned under Sara's chin
across her carotid arteries. Roger had pulled his blade
through her life there, ending it quickly.
Apparently he had wanted more blood than he could
gather from less fatal cuts.
Or he had known that he was running out of time
Had he seen Linden's headlights approach from the
road? How far ahead of her was he?
She should go after him: now, before he increased his
lead. She could move more swiftly than he did. She did
not have to drag Sandy Eastwall along, shepherd both
Jeremiah and Joan. She might be able to catch him
before he carried out the next phase of his madness.
Before he butchered Sandy as he had Sara, to open the
way for the Land's destruction, and Jeremiah's.
She would go. She would. As soon as she had given a
moment of shock and grief to Sara's corpse. The nurse
deserved that much. She had been among the best
people at Berenford Memorial. And her husband
Linden should have been able to smell blood. Not at
first, her nose full of ozone. But that heavy scent was
gone now, torn away by conflicting winds which
seemed to tumble through the walls. Surely standing so
near the bed she should have been able to smell Sara's
blood?
She could not. She smelled smoke.
As soon as she became aware of it, it seemed to gather
strength: the fug of burning wood; smoke like the
malice of the Despiser's bonfire. Tension mounted in
her chest. She must have been holding her breath; or
smoke had already begun to ache in her lungs. Now
her flashlight caught wisps of it amid the gloom.
Tendrils curled toward the bed until the winds clawed
them apart.
Dear God! That blast of lightning-the one which had
blinded her outside this room. It must have struck the
house
All this dry, untended wood would burn like tinder.
For an instant, her peril trapped her as it had ten
years ago, when she had failed to save Covenant's life.
The thought that Roger had re-created Lord Foul's
blazing portal here, with her snared in its center,
stunned her like a fist to the heart. Roger might be
outside at this moment, waiting for her agony to open
the way
Then she remembered that he still lacked his father's
ring; and she surged into motion. Snatching up her
bag, she retreated from the room to hasten toward the
kitchen.
Already worms of fire gnawed at the edges of the
boards between the bathroom and the other bedroom,
Covenant's room, glowing in the benighted space.
Before she could take a step, a blast like the slap of a
hurricane struck the house, and the whole building
staggered.
The door to Covenant's room jumped from its latch
and blew open. At once flame like a breaking wave
tumbled along the sudden release of air into the hall: a
roar of torment from the throat of the house. Heat
struck at her face, a palpable blow. Staggering herself,
she fell backward against the end of the hall. Rotten
boards flexed at the impact.
The hungry howl mounted. A tumult of flame
cascaded from Covenant's room, barricading the hall.
She could not escape that way. The fury of the heat
warned her: if she strove to pass, she would catch and
burn like an auto-da-f6.
Smoke piled toward her, too thick already for her light
to dispel. Ducking under it, she sprang back into the
room where Sara Clint lay. Instinctively she swung
shut the door, although she knew that it would not
protect her. For a moment, she gaped at air which had
already lost its capacity to sustain her. Then she
rushed to the nearest window.
Half of its glass had cracked and fallen long ago. She
used her bag to break the rest from the frame. Then
she tossed the bag and her flashlight to the ground
outside. Bracing her hands on the sill, she climbed out
through the window. Scraps of glass tore fresh blood
from her right palm.
Sitting on the sill, she dragged her legs out of the room,
dropped to the ground. She landed with a jolt that
jarred her spine, as if she had fallen much farther; but
she kept her balance. Gasping for good air, she
retrieved her bag and her flashlight, and stumbled
away to put distance between herself and the blazing
house.
Helpless to do otherwise, she left Sara for cremation.
When the heat no longer hurt her skin, no longer
threatened to set her hair on fire, she turned to watch
Thomas Covenant's home die.
Now gouts and streamers of flame poured from all of
the windows. Fire licked between the roof's remaining
shingles, showed in the gaps which marred the walls.
Every lash of wind spread the flames, intensified the
conflagration. Sparks gyred into the sky and were torn
away. In minutes the structure would collapse in on
itself, reduced to ash and embers by the eerie storm.
From Linden's perspective, Roger's sedan seemed too
close to the house. Surely it would catch fire as well?
Her own car might be safe
In the flagellated light of the blaze, she saw no sign of
Roger Covenant or his other victims.
He had not gagged Sara. Jeremiah must have heard
her cries. Sandy and Joan must
have heard them. Perhaps Joan was beyond caring:
Sandy was not. And for JeremiahRunning now,
frantically, Linden turned her back on the roaring
house and headed
into the woods behind Haven Farm.
Wind kicked at her legs, tried to trip her among the
first trees: it caught at her clothes. She knew where
Roger would go, now that he had destroyed his father's
home, his father's example of concern and devotion.
She had not returned to these woods since the night of
Covenant's murder, but she was sure of them. Where
else could Roger go, if he wished to undo his father's
self-sacrifice?
The woods twisted like a thrown ribbon among the
fields of the county, following the crooked course of
Righters Creek. Scrub oak, sycamore, and ivy crowded
against each other along the gully of the stream. As
soon as she had outrun the light of the burning house,
she had to slow down. The wind or a fallen branch or a
gap in the ground might trip her.
Gusts of wind flung limbs and leaves at her face,
confused her senses with the wet odor of rotting wood
and loam. Repeatedly her bag banged into her leg. Her
flashlight was ineffective against the scourged dark. It
had a will-o'-the-wisp frailty; cast only enough light to
lead her astray. No trod ground opened in any
direction: the woods were cut off from the world she
knew. If she had not been sure, she might have
wandered there for hours.
But she had forgotten nothing of the night of Thomas
Covenant's death: she fol
lowed her memories. The wind whipped branches to
bar her way, sent tangles of ivy
reaching for her neck. But she could not be turned
aside.
Roger's pace would be slower than hers. He could not
be far ahead of her. Standing somewhere else in these
woods, on a hillside above Righters Creek,
Thomas Covenant had once seen a young girl
threatened by a timber rattler. On his
way down the slope to help her, he had fallen-and
found himself summoned to Rev
elstone. Yet he had refused the Land's need. Instead he
had chosen to do what he could
for the child in his own world.
Roger would avoid such a place. The ground itself
might retain too much of his
father's courage. But Linden clung to it in her mind as
she forged among the trees,
following her faint light through the rending wind.
She had every intention of refusing the Land, if she
had to; if Roger left her no other choice.
Lightning flared and snapped overhead, flooding the
woods and then sweeping them into darkness.
Repeatedly she pressed the heel of her right hand
against the uncompromising circle of Covenant's ring.
She needed to assure herself that she still possessed one
thing Roger wanted; one talisman with which she
could bargain for Jeremiah's life.
Her cut palm stung whenever she shifted her grip on
the flashlight. Its plastic case had become sticky with
her blood. How far ahead of her was Roger? A
hundred yards? A quarter of a mile? No, it could not
be so far. She remembered the way. He was already
near his destination.
Over my dead body.
Then the ground began to rise, and she recognized the
last hill, the final boundary. The cluttered terrain
climbed to a crest. Beyond it, the ground dropped
down into a hollow, deep as a stirrup cup, its sides
steep and treacherous. Within the hollow nothing
grew, as if decades or centuries ago the soil had been
anointed with a malign chrism which had left it
barren.
As Linden reached the crest, she half expected to find
fire burning below her. Roger could have readied a
conflagration here. Not tonight: he had not had time.
But he might have begun to prepare for this night
from the moment when he had first known what he
meant to do.
However, there was no fire; no light of any kind. In the
bottom of the hollow, she knew, lay a rough plane of
exposed stone like a rude altar. Covenant had been
sacrificed on it: she had fallen there herself. But she
could not see it now. Her flashlight's beam did not
reach so far. Before her, the ground seemed to sink
away into deeper blackness like a plunge into an abyss.
Then lightning split the heavens; and in its shrill silver
glare she saw the hollow as if it had been etched onto
her retinas. When night closed back over the flash, she
saw the scene still, limned in argent and terror.
Flecks of mica in the native stone glittered so that
Roger Covenant appeared to stand amid a swath of
sparks. He faced up the hillside toward Linden as if he
had been expecting her-and had known exactly where
she would appear. His smile had the empty pleasantry
of an undertaker's.
In his right hand, he held a gun as heavy as a
bludgeon, pointing it at Sandy Eastwall's head. She
knelt on the stone beside him, her hands clasped over
her heart in prayer. Her features were swollen,
aggrieved with tears.
She knew her peril. Roger must have forced her to
watch while he had shed Sara Clint's blood, preparing
the way
At his back stood Joan, her head bowed in submission.
Around the betrayed sticks of her arms and legs, her
nightgown fluttered like a pennon.
With his left hand, Roger gripped Jeremiah's wrist.
The boy's maimed hand dangled in his captor's grasp.
He held his free arm over his stomach, rocking himself
as best he could on his feet. His lost eyes stared at
nothing.
In the image burned onto Linden's retinas, sparks
surrounded them all like a nimbus: the first touch of
power which would translate them to ruin.
She could see nothing except dismay. Her flashlight
hardly revealed the ground at her feet. Wind rushed
wailing among the trees, lashed their limbs to frenzy.
Its gusts seemed to cry out her son's name.
"Jeremiah!" she called like an echo of the storm. "I'm
here! I won't let him hurt you!"
At once she plunged down the hillside, heedless of the
dark.
Again lightning hit the night. Stone and sparks seemed
to reel toward her as she rushed downward. In the
flash, she saw fresh blood stream from Joan's right
temple. Joan had smeared the blood into her mouth.
Without that lunatic strength, she would surely have
collapsed.
"My dear Doctor," Roger answered, "I have a gun. I
don't see how you can stop me."
Linden heard no strain in his voice, no effort to
outshout the wind. Nevertheless his words reached her
as though he had spoken them directly into her heart.
She jerked to a stop half a dozen paces from him. Her
flashlight reached the plane of rock now, found four
dim shapes poised in the dark. Its beam seemed to
concentrate of its own volition on the black weight of
Roger's gun.
"Linden!" Sandy gasped, "Oh, my God, he killed Mrs.
Clint, back in the house, he cut her apart-"
With a negligent flick of his wrist, Roger swung the
gun against Sandy's head. She sagged to the side;
nearly fell.
"You don't talk now," he informed her, smiling
through another wrench of lightning that seemed to
endure for a heartbeat too long. "This is between me
and the good doctor. You don't have anything more to
say."
Wind shoved at Linden's back, urged her forward. She
held her ground. She wanted to spring at Roger and
tear the smile from his face; but she understood the
danger too well. He needed nothing from Sandy now
except her blood. He could pull the trigger
at any moment, any provocation, to supply his desires.
With an effort, Linden turned her flashlight away
from the gun and Sandy's
stricken face toward her son.
More lightning rent the night. The blasts were growing
more frequent, fiercer; ac
cumulating toward a convulsion which would crack
the boundary between realities. In
silver fire, she saw Jeremiah gaze blindly through her,
his sight and his mind impris
oned. Horses reared uselessly across the blue flannel of
his pajamas. If Roger's grip on
his wrist caused him any pain, he did not show it.
He still held his free arm across his stomach, the hand
closed into a fist. Lightning
and the wan touch of Linden's torch caught a brief
flare of red from his fist: the artifi
cial red of bright paint, as raw as a cry.
The next furious flash showed her clearly that he
gripped one of his racing cars in his
tight fingers. He must have picked it up from his
bureau as Roger dragged him away. Forgotten
screaming rose in her. When he had been captured,
her mute, blank,
helpless son had reached out
On some level, he must have understood his danger.
At any other time, she would have wept at the sight;
but now she had no tears. The
moisture which the wind and her whipped hair drew
from her eyes was only water, not
weeping.
"You bastard!" she yelled at Roger through the gale.
"What do you want?" She knew what he wanted.
He gazed at her. "Don't embarrass yourself, Doctor."
His voice reached her effort
lessly. "You already know."
At his back, Joan made sounds that might have been
pleading; but Linden could
not identify words through the wind's roar and the
sizzling ire of the lightning. "Linden," Sandy panted,
"get help. He has a gun. He'll kill you, he's going to kill
all
of us. You car'-"
"Yes!" Linden shouted at Roger to forestall another
blow. "I know! I have it." It hung
on its chain against her chest. "But I don't
understand."
"That's right. You don't."
He struck again, despite Linden's attempt to distract
him. This time, Sandy
slumped to the stone and lay still. Respiration stirred
her chest slightly. Blood oozed
through the hair on the side of her head.
Nothing touched Roger's bland smile.
A bolt of lightning struck the ground scarcely twenty
feet from the plane of rock. It
burned in the air, impossibly prolonged, for two
heartbeats; three. Static flashed along
Linden's skin as if she were about to burst into flame.
In the hot core of the blast, she saw two curved yellow
marks that might have been
fangs. Or eyes.
Then darkness slapped the light away. Her flashlight
revealed nothing. Until her eyes adjusted, she could
not see.
The wind might have been the voice of her own cries.
When the lightning came again, it had receded from
the stone as if to make room for Roger's madness. It
struck now with horrific frequency, pounded into the
hollow at quick, erratic intervals, first on one side,
then on the other, behind her, off to her left. Each blast
clung to the ground for two or three seconds, sealing
off the bottom of the hollow from the rest of the
woods; interdicting help. The trapped space between
the bolts swarmed with static. Linden's hair seemed to
crackle about her head. Roger, Jeremiah, and Joan
were wrapped in a penumbra of potential fire.
If a bolt hit the trees, these woods might burn like
Covenant's home
"You said," Linden shouted at Roger, "you know
things I don't." Each word wore an aura of electricity.
"You said I haven't earned the knowledge. But you
don't know anything about me.
"How did you earn it?"
She did not care how he answered. She wanted only to
make him talk. Distract him. Encourage him to drop
his guard.
He may have believed that her right hand shook with
fear; but it did not. Rather it trembled at the severity
of her restraint. Every nerve in her arm burned to
swing the flashlight into his face, hit him and hit him
until she had destroyed his false image of his father.
But his gun still threatened Sandy. Linden could not
risk attacking him until he gave her an opening.
Had she seen eyes in that one long discharge? When he
had split open Sandy's scalp, spilled her blood?
"By being her son," he replied without a glance at
Joan. "And Thomas Covenant's. My parents were a
leper and a victim. Really, Doctor. You could at least
try to imagine who I am."
Linden did not need to imagine it. She saw him clearly,
revealed by the harsh silver stutter of lightning.
"So what?" she shouted back. "My father killed
himself in front of me. My mother
begged me to put her out of her misery. I know what
having damaged parents is like.
As far as I can tell, the only thing you've earned is the
right to not do this!"
Roger shook his head. Joan's thin fingers plucked
weakly at his shoulders, beseech
ing him. Her touch left faint streaks of blood on his
shirt.
"It's too late," he told Linden. "You're already lost.
You should be able to see that. "Your hand is bleeding,
Doctor." His tone betrayed a hint of eagerness. "Why
do
you suppose that is?"
She gaped at him, momentarily silenced. How had he-?
But he gripped her son by the wrist; pointed his gun at
Sandy's head. For their sake, Linden retorted,
"Because I cut myself."
"No." Again he shook his head. "It's because you're
already doomed. You can't get out of it now."
Her blood also was necessary to him.
Another prolonged shaft of lightning hit and held the
ground. For a moment, its brilliance dazzled Linden,
cast Roger's face into shadow. This time from within
the heart of the blaze Linden felt rather than saw the
hungry yellow reach of fangs. They seemed to strain
toward her while the bolt endured.
Calmly Roger added, "But I like you, Doctor. I like
what your parents did to you. I'll give you a choice.
"I see you brought your bag." He nodded at the weight
which anchored her against the compulsion of the
wind. "I'm sure you have a scalpel in there
somewhere.
"Get it out. Cut off your right hand."
He smiled avidly. "Do that, and I'll let this woman
live." His gun indicated Sandy's crumpled form.
Joan lifted a tremulous hand to her wounded forehead.
Another long shaft of lightning: another impression of
fangs like eyes, carious and malevolent.
In that instant, Linden was transformed. The fierce
strobe of the lightning no longer staggered her. Shock
and horror had no power over her.
"What about Jeremiah?" she cried into the storm.
Roger's inhuman gaze held her. "First your hand." No
light reflected from his eyes. They remained as dark as
catacombs. "Then we'll discuss it."
She let the wind and her bag's bulk buffet her forward
a step as if she were stumbling. Just one step, to the
edge of the stone. Sparks in shards of silver mica
swirled before her feet.
Jeremiah's mouth hung open, slack. His gaze was
closed to her. He was her chosen child, the son whom
she had loved and tended in spite of his shuttered
blankness. But nothing in him hinted at
comprehension except the red metal racing car
clutched in his left hand.
Deliberately she aimed her voice and her fury and her
trembling flashlight at Roger.
"You've got it all wrong, asshole! I'll give you a choice.
You give me Jeremiah. And Joan. And Sandy. Alive!
And I give you your father's ring."
He blinked as if she had surprised him. Joan made
small mewling noises at his back, apparently begging
him to hasten.
Lightning struck near the plane of rock again; so near
that its force sent a stinging wave across Linden's skin.
This time she was sure that she could see eyes and
hunger in the depths of the blast.
"Now why would I do that?" Roger asked her. "That
ring is already mine. When I'rn ready, I'll just shoot
you and take it."
"No, you won't." Another step. Now she stood among
the sparks. "That craziness in your head. Lord Foul.
He won't let you. He can't get what he wants that way.
If he could, you would have killed me already."
"Roger," Joan gasped audibly. "Roger!"
Prone at Roger's side, Sandy shifted inconsolably,
trying to twist away from the pain in her head.
Roger ignored his mother to concentrate on Linden.
Briefly he seemed to consider her proposal. Then he
announced, "It's an interesting suggestion. There's just
one problem. Why would I ever trust you? If I let them
go, you'll just run away.
"No, let's keep it simple. I have the gun. I have your
son. If you don't feel like cutting yourself, I'll shoot this
nice lady." Sandy. "Then I'll start on-what did you call
him?-Jeremiah.
"He's just meat. Don't you know that? An empty
carcass. There's nothing you could do to save him.
There hasn't been anyone in there for ten years."
The lightning had become almost constant, firing the
sky and the earth in violent blasts only a small handful
of heartbeats apart. And in the core of each bolt hung
Lord Foul's eyes, rapacious and unmistakable,
flickering in and out of this world as each flash clung
and faded.
Instead of answering, Linden took another step. Blood
from her cut palm crusted her hand to her flashlight.
With every flash of lightning, pain pulsed in her grasp
as though her heart kept time to the music of the
storm.
"You're wrong!" she shouted over the wind. "You
don't understand. You haven't earned anything.
You're no better than your mother. The only thing
you've ever done with your whole life is let a crazy
woman"-and Lord Foul-"tell you what to do!"
Still smiling, always smiling, Roger lifted his right arm
in a slow arc to point his gun at Linden's head. Its
muzzle seemed to gape at her like a mouth, open and
hungry.
"Hold it right there!" Sheriff Lytton yelled through
the tumult. "Put the gun down! Let's talk about this!"
"Roger!" Joan moaned distinctly, "I can't stand it. I
can't stand it anymore." Roger's weapon did not
waver as he slowly turned his head in the direction of
Lytton's voice.
Deliberately Linden turned as well, letting her knotted
arm lower the flashlight to her side, tightening her grip
on her bag.
Sandy groaned painfully. Her hands made small
scratching movements on the stone.
Lit by the strobing frenzy of the lightning, and
watched by fangs, Barton Lytton picked his way down
the slope into the hollow. He walked with a rigid, stiff-
kneed gait
as if he fought panic at every step. Silver snatched
reflections of fear from his staring eyes. Nevertheless
he advanced until he neared the boundary of the
storm-blasted ground around the plane of rock. There
he halted, swaying on his feet as if he were about to
fall.
His holster was empty. He had come down into the
hollow unarmed.
"Sheriff Lytton," Roger remarked. "You're a brave
man." The ease with which he made himself heard
through the wind's outcry mocked Lytton. "I didn't
think you had it in you."
Lightning flared and yowled, accelerating toward a
crisis. Fangs hung poised for violence in every flash.
Static mounted in the air. The wind gusted like a wail
torn from the throat of the night.
"You're in trouble here, boy." Lytton's voice shook.
Somehow he forced himself to stand his ground. "You
need to understand that. I've got half a dozen men up
there." He jerked his head at the rim of the bowl.
"They're all around you. And some of them shoot
pretty good. If we can't talk our way out of this, you
and me, they are going to cut you down."
Linden glanced toward him, then shifted her gaze back
to Roger. Her concentration left no room for surprise
at Lytton's presence-or his actions.
Roger gave Jeremiah's wrist a warning wrench that
nearly snapped her restraint. "You've been listening to
the things Dr. Avery says about me," he commented to
Lytton. "That's a mistake. A law enforcement officer
like yourself can't afford mistakes."
Facing the steady muzzle of his gun, Linden eased
forward cautiously.
Lytton swayed on his locked knees. "You can't either,
boy. Do you understand that you've already killed two
people? Bill Coty is dead. Avis Cardaman is probably
going to die. And God knows what you've done with
Sara Clint." In the lightning, he looked pallid and
frail, as if he were about to faint. "That's life in prison.
Life, boy. But if you stop now, that's all it is. You fire
that gun one more time, in cold blood, and my men
will execute your ass.
"Even if you live through being shot a couple dozen
times, you're still dead. You'll get the death sentence
for this. They'll stick one of those big needles in your
arm, and you'll sleep until you rot."
Apparently he thought that he might be able to
frighten Roger into submission. Plainly, however, he
did not comprehend Thomas Covenant's son at all.
Yet he did not give up.
"But you drop that gun now," he went on, "and maybe
they'll just declare you incompetent. If that happens,
you'll end up in a psychiatric hospital with women like
Dr. Avery taking care of you.
"What's it going to be, boy? You want a soft bed in a
hospital? Or are you so pitiful You would rather be
dead?"
Sandy moved one arm, braced her hand on the stone,
and tried to push herself upright.
In that instant, Joan slumped backward as if she were
about to fall. For one heartbeat, she seemed to sag
down into herself, breaking inward like a woman with
crumbling bones. Then she raised her face to the dark
heavens and cried out with her last strength, "Make it
stop!"
As if in response, a long harsh shaft of lighting rife
with eyes caught her where she stood, impaling her to
the stone. It burned her life away; must have seared
the marrow of her bones. While it endured, she hung
in the bolt as though her death upheld her. When the
blast ended, however, she dropped like shed spilth.
Linden tottered. The rock on which she stood had
become a plunge into darkness. Jeremiah gazed
vacantly past her. On the hillside, Lytton staggered
backward; barely caught himself.
Placidly Roger made his reply as loud as the wind, as
large as the hollow. "You're wasting your time,
Sheriff," he said as if loan's death could not touch him.
"What makes you think I would believe a word you
say?"
Without warning, he swept his gun from Linden to
Lytton and fired.
The gun made a hard, flat, coughing sound,
immediately torn away by the wind. The heavy slug
caught Lytton high on his right shoulder, kicked him
off his feet with the force of a thunderclap. He landed
on his back without a sound. His arms and legs
recoiled, bouncing. Then he lay still.
No time had passed. Linden's heart had not yet beat
again. But already Roger had shifted his aim. His right
arm dropped as he pointed his gun at Sandy's
struggling form.
His left hand gripped Jeremiah's wrist as though he
meant to hold her son forever. In that sudden absence
of time, Linden made her choice. Releasing her pent
arm, she flung her flashlight at Roger's head.
Her cut hand betrayed her. Drying blood stuck the
flashlight to her skin just long enough to reduce its
momentum. It appeared to tumble across the short gap
toward Roger in slow motion. When it struck the side
of his neck, it had no impact.
He ignored her failure.
She did the same. With all the strength of her legs,
heaving upward from the soles of her feet, she swung
her physician's bag into motion and let it fly.
It collided with Roger's ribs just as he fired at Sandy.
This time the shot seemed to make no noise. Instead
Linden heard only the slug as it spanged off the stone
beside Sandy's head and whined away into the
ravenous lightning.
At last Linden's heart beat again. She drew breath;
gathered herself to spring for Jeremiah
-and the rim of the hollow on all sides exploded in a
barrage of gunfire.
The sheriff's men.
Helpless to stop them, she watched muzzle flashes and
streaking death, fire as destructive as any
conflagration of wood and flesh. She would have cried
out for the men to stop, spare her son, but she had no
air and no voice. She could only strain with all her
heart toward Jeremiah.
As she moved, Roger's chest erupted in a spray of
blood.
Still he did not release his grip on her son.
Then his life splashed into her eyes, and she could no
longer see. Instead she felt the heavy punch of lead
slap her down as if she, too, had been struck by
lightning.
In that brief falling interval, she tried to find her voice
and cry out Jeremiah's name; but she made no sound
that he could hear.
An instant later, gunfire and Lord Foul's blasts
burned all light away, and she fell into the bottomless
night.
Part One
"chosen for this desecration"
1.
"I am content"
Gunfire seemed to track her down into blackness like a
cannonade: each harsh
blast drove her deeper. Concussions shocked breath
and pulse and pain out of her until only silent cries
remained. She had abandoned her son to bloodshed.
She tried and tried to shout his name, strove to twist
her body so that she might shield him from the rush of
death; but she only plunged farther into the dark.
She had sworn that she would protect Joan with her
life. And she had promised that she would allow no
harm to touch Jeremiah. This was how she kept her
vows.
She was dying; was already close to death. Lytton's
deputies had granted Roger the outcome he most
desired.
Nevertheless she felt no pain. She knew only the force
which had struck her to the stone, and which struck
her still, ceaselessly, impelling her always deeper into
the abyss of the Despiser's despair.
And Jeremiah
Blinded by blood, she had not seen him fall. He may
not have been hit: the fusillade might conceivably have
spared him, when he could not have warded himself.
But Lord Foul did not require his death in order to
snare him. Linden herself had once been taken alive in
Thomas Covenant's wake. If Roger had not relaxed his
grasp on Jeremiah's wrist
God, let it be true that Lord Foul did not require his
death!
Yet the outcome would be the same, whatever the
Despiser demanded. She had failed to protect her son,
failed utterly. She had not so much as witnessed his
fate.
Barton Lytton had probably survived. And Sandy
Eastwall might live still. Prostrate, they had sprawled
below the wild gunfire. They had no part in this.
Nevertheless everything which Linden had ached to
cherish and preserve had been lost. She had failed her
son, the frail boy with one red racing car clutched in
his good
hand. No one else needs you the way he does. Dead or
alive, he must believe that she had forsaken him.
Falling, she could only pray that they would not be
separated; that by some miracle he would be swept
after her as she had once followed Thomas Covenant,
rather than being borne away by Roger's madness. If
the Despiser took Jeremiah, claimed him; possessed
him
The thought went through her like flame through the
abandoned tinder of Covenant's home; and her own
fire answered it, as extravagant as lightning. Without
transition she became a blaze of passion and argence.
She had fallen so far from herself that Covenant's ring
responded. Its heat seemed to demand life from her
when her heart had already burst; labored its last. Hot
silver knitted desperation into her tissues, her bones,
and made them whole. It burned the stigma of Roger's
blood from her face.
Jeremiah.
If there had been any justice-any justice in all the
world-her anguish would have undone the darkness.
Such power should have been stronger than loss and
time; should have allowed her to fling herself back to
the desolate hollow in the woods, and to the gunfire, so
that she might shield her son with her own flesh.
Did not the Land believe that white gold was the
keystone of the Arch of Time? How else had Thomas
Covenant defeated the Despiser, if not by sealing Time
against him?
But Covenant was dead. Alone, she contained nothing
which would enable her to withstand the loss of her
son.
Still the sound and impact of shots receded, smothered
by her measureless fall. Their violence blurred and
deepened until it became a low tectonic rumble, the
ancient grinding of the world's bones. She could feel
realities shift as she plunged through them, translating
her away from the people and commitments to which
she had dedicated herself.
And as she fell, she felt a blow strike her right temple.
Its force snatched a phosphene flare across the
blackness in her eyes. The abyss into which she fell
became vivid with consumed comets, bursting suns,
scattered stars. She shook her head, trying to dispel
them, but they did not fade. Rather they took on
coherence, definition: like a cleaned lens, they resolved
suddenly into vision.
She saw him sitting on the edge of the bed in which she
lay: Thomas Covenant as she had known him on
Haven Farm, gaunt with pain and empathy, his
stricken gaze fixed on her. She saw fingers that must
have been hers rise to rake their nails along the back
of his right hand. Appalled, she watched herself smear
her fingers in his blood and lift them to her mouth.
Her fall had carried her into the abysm of Joan's
memories. With her white gold ring, Joan now wielded
her power to rip open the barrier between worlds;
summoning
Another blow reached Linden. Again she rocked with
the impact, and found herself stretched out in a bed in
Berenford Memorial, her arms tied to the rails. At the
same time, she sat beside herself, wearing a doctor's
white coat and a plain skirt. In scorn, her external self
snorted, Of course you can bear it. That's what you do.
Compulsory as hallucinations, times and places and
identities reeled through her.
She had a son, a ten-year-old boy. He gazed at her
earnestly, absorbing every word, while she held his
face between her hands. He goes somewhere, she told
him. I know he does. She loved and loathed Roger's
features as though they were his father's. It's a
powerful place. He matters there. He makes a
difference. Everyone makes a difference. Now the face
she held was Thomas Covenant's, the man she had
known and loved and betrayed. I have to go there. I
have to find that place.
He met her tormented stare as if he understood her; as
if he acquiesced.
If I fail, she adjured him, you'll have to take my place.
His acceptance was another blow.
Time blurred and ran; and Linden folded to her knees.
Even in death, Joan's pain consumed her. Kneeling,
she heard fanatics preach over her like Roger or
Thomas Covenant hurling imprecations. You failed
him. You broke your vows. You abandoned him when
he needed you most.
The preachers might have been Jeremiah.
Her knees hurt as if she had dropped to the hard floor
from a great height. The figure before her had become
Roger again, impossibly tall and cruel. Behind him
rose a gleaming brass cross. Within each of its arms
hung a bitter eye like a fang suspended in fire. Gothic
letters on a banner beyond the cross announced like a
shout:

The COMMUNITY of RETRIBUTION
You are worthless. Broken. Empty of faith. Without
value to God or man or Satan.

Unworthy even of damnation.
Joan! she cried into the grinding silence. Dear God. Is
that what they told you? You must expiate, her son
retorted. Sacrifice. But you are worthless. You have
noth
ing to sacrifice that God or man or Satan would want.
The sacrifice must have some
value. Otherwise it counts for nothing.
Is that what they told you?
Only the man you betrayed can expiate for you.
Righteous and enraged, Thomas Covenant turned his
back on her.
She was Joan, trapped in Joan's torment. As Roger
and Lord Foul must have intended, she reached out
with power and pain to draw others after her. But she
was also herself, Linden Avery, and she had felt the
touch of Covenant's ring. Reborn resources strove for
definition within her: the health-sense, the spiritual
discernment, which she
had known in the Land. Tentative and fragile, her
former ability to see opened itself to the abyss and
denunciation, to the excoriation of soul which tortured
Joan-and felt a Raver.
She knew it instantly, recognized its evil. Its craving
for destruction was familiar to her. It called itself
turiya: it was known as Herem.
The bare memory of its hunger hurt.
It had no face, no hands, no flesh, it was a black soul,
the ancient foe and ravager of the great forest that had
once thrived in the Land. Its presence was suppuration
and horror, the old screaming of trees.
In Revelstone, one of turiya's brothers, samadhi Sheol,
had touched her. You have been especially chosen for
this desecration, it had told her, glad of her terror.
You are being forged as iron is forged to achieve the
ruin of the Earth. Through eyes and ears and touch,
you are made to be what the Despiser requires.
Then samadhi Raver had withdrawn. But that had
been enough. Appalled, she had fallen so far into the
knowledge of evil that she knew only despair; desired
only death. To herself she had appeared as ruined as
the wasteland which the Ravers coveted; lost in her
own crimes.
Now a Raver had taken hold of Joan. Perhaps it had
lived in her for years. Certainly it filled her now,
feeding on her madness, consuming her with its
voracious malevolence.
And it possessed Joan's ring. Turiya Herem could
wield wild magic in the service of the Despiser.
Coerced by the Raver, Joan had summoned others
after her. Roger. Linden herself.
And Jeremiah-?
The woman she had once been would have quailed and
fled.
But that Linden Avery was gone, unmade by
Covenant's love and the Land's need. So many of the
people who had opened their hearts to her had
surpassed her: Sunder and Hollian, Pitchwife and the
First, Honninscrave and Seadreamer. Covenant
himself had gone to glory in the Land's name; had
defeated Lord Foul and passed beyond her.
Nevertheless they had all helped her to become who
she was now: not the frangible woman who had fled
within herself from her own darkness, but rather the
healer who had raised wild magic and the Staff of Law
against the Sunbane.
In the abyss between worlds, Thomas Covenant or his
son had just told her, Only the man you betrayed can
expiate for you. Now he turned from her in contempt.
She stared after him with conflagration in her eyes.
She would not accept his denunciation. Joan had
betrayed only her own heart. Fear had undermined
her until she became too frail to stand: fear for herself,
and for her infant son. A stronger woman might have
made a different choice. But no one couId condemn
her for what she had done. No one had the right.
Joan herself did not have the right.
Inspired by passion and flame, Linden refused to
endure it.
With fire she dismissed Joan's self-loathing. With
white power she swept her own pain aside. The ring
burned between her breasts as she shocked the dark
with argence. As if wild magic were words, she shouted
a blaze of defiance into the void of Lord Foul's malice.
Thomas Covenant-the real Covenant, not the
tormentor in Joan's mind-had taught Linden that no
contempt or cruelty or hurt could defeat her if she did
not choose to be defeated. The Despiser might assail
and savage her as a predator attacked prey, but he
could not deprive her of herself. Only her own
weaknesses could wreak so much harm.
That she believed utterly.
Jolted by her sudden strength, reality veered again: a
nauseating reel like the plunge of heavy seas. She
seemed to tumble as if she had been snared by
breakers until she came down hard on a flash of vision
like a shingled beach.
For the second time in her life, she stood with
Covenant and the rest of their companions in the
depths of the isle where the One Tree spread its limbs.
There Seadreamer suffered and perished; and Vain
met salvific harm; and her other companions came
near to death. But this time
Oh, this time it was not Covenant who raved with
white fire, disturbing the Worm of the World's End in
its slumbers, threatening to rouse the destruction of
the Earth. Now it was Linden herself. In her hands she
held more power than she could comprehend or
control; and with it she lashed out in a frenzy of
desperation, seeking to reclaim her son, and achieving
only cataclysm.
Unchecked, her needs goaded the Worm to
wakefulness. It lifted its vast head, seeking havoc. For
a moment as terrible as eternity, it looked into her eyes
with recognition.
No! she cried in protest. No! This was more of Joan's
madness; more of Lord Foul's malice. But it was not: it
was prophecy. She had regained her health-sense and
knew the truth.
If she did not quail and flee, this augury could come to
pass. With Covenant's ring, she might indeed be
capable of rousing the Worm.
Nevertheless she did not falter. Her fury held. She had
lost her son, and would dare any devastation to win
him back. In her scales, he outweighed the life of
worlds. If Lord Foul believed that she could be
daunted
Abruptly reality veered again, flinging her from vision
to vision. For a moment, she ambled through a chaos
of outcomes: moments of outrage and stark evil;
instances of slaughter and betrayal, the cruel scything
of death. Then she staggered to a halt.
Now she stood on a bluff overlooking a plain of rich
life and ineffable loveliness. The ground below her
undulated among hills and woodlands; luxuriant
greenswards; streams delicate as crystal, cleansing as
sunlight. Here and there, majestic Gilden trees
A
lifted their boughs to the flawless sky, and vast oaks
shed beneficent shade. Birds like reified song soared
overhead while small animals and deer gamboled
alertly among the woods. With her enhanced
discernment, Linden beheld the vibrant health of the
plain, its apt fecundity and kindliness. She might have
been gazing down at Andelain, the essential treasure of
the Land, born of its most necessary beauty; the
incarnation of everything which she had striven to
attain when she had fashioned the new Staff of Law.
This, too, felt like a form of prophecy.
As she drank in the gentle grandeur below her,
however, a spot of wrongness like a chancre appeared
amid the grasses. It was not large-not at first-but its
intensity multiplied moment by moment as she studied
it in dismay. Soon it seemed as bright as a glimpse into
a furnace, incandescent, malefic, and brutally hot. And
from it writhed forth a fiery beast like a serpent of
magma; an avatar of lava with the insidious,
squirming length of a snake and the massive jaws of a
kraken. While she watched, appalled, the monster
began to devour its surroundings as if earth and grass
and trees were the flesh on which it fed.
And around it other chancres appeared. They, too,
gathered intensity until they gave birth to more
monsters which also feasted on the plain, consuming
its loveliness in horrifying chunks. A handful of the
creatures would destroy the entire vista in a matter of
hours. But more of them clawed ravening from the
earth, and still more, as calamitous as the Sunbane.
Soon every blade and leaf of life would be gone. If the
beasts were not stopped, they might eat through the
world.
Then her vision fell to darkness like the closing of an
eye. And she fell with it, blind and dismayed; full of
woe. If this were death, then she could only believe that
she was being translated, not to the Land, but to Hell.
But instead of the shrieks of the damned she heard a
voice she knew.
It was fathomless and resonant, as vast as the abyss:
her fall itself might have been speaking. And it
brought with it a sweet and cloying reek, a stench like
attar, as vile as putrefaction.
"It is enough," Lord Foul said softly. "I am content."
His tone wrapped around her caressingly, like the oil
of cerements and death. "She will work my will, and I
will be
freed at last."
He may have been speaking to Joan. Or to turiya
Herem.
Then the shock of her power rebounded against her,
and she was flung away as if in rejection; as if the
abyss itself sought to vomit her out.
For a moment longer, she could hear the Despiser. As
his voice receded, he said, "Tell her that I have her
son."
She would have wailed then: the pain would have
sundered her. Now, however, she tumbled headlong
through the tectonic groan of shifting realities; and she
could draw no breath with which to cry out.
Percipience came to her in scraps and tatters, grant
ing her glimpses of emptiness: the unspeakable beauty
of the spaces between the stars. The passion of
Covenant's ring faded from her, quenched by the
sheer scale of what might suffer and die.
Only the loss of her son remained.
Jeremiah
It might be better for him if he had been slain.
ater she no longer tumbled, although she was unaware
that anything had
changed. She did not notice the smooth cool stone
under her face and chest, or the high, thin touch of
open air. Tell her that I have her son. At their fringes,
her senses tasted the immense expanse of the sky; but
the Despiser had taken Jeremiah, and nothing else
conveyed any meaning.
No one else needs you the way he does.
Yet the old stone insisted against her face. Her hands
at her sides felt its ancient, flawed strength. The
danger of another fatal plunge tugged at her nerves.
Along her back the breeze whispered of distant
horizons and striding crests of upraised, illimitable
rock.
Where was Thomas Covenant, now that her need for
him had grown so vast? She was no match for the
Despiser. Without Covenant, she would never win
back her son.
She remembered Sheol's touch. At its behest, she had
fled from consciousness and responsibility. But she was
no longer that woman: she could not flee now.
Jeremiah needed her. He required her absolutely.
Covenant was gone. She lacked the strength to stand in
his place.
Nevertheless.
Finally she noticed that Roger's blood was gone from
her face. It had clogged her
nostrils, blinded her eyes: she could still taste its
coppery sickness in her mouth. Yet it
no longer stained her skin.
Despite the bullet wound in her chest-the death she
could not feel-she lifted her
head and drew up her hands to confirm that she had
been burned clean.
When she opened her eyes, she found herself on stone
in deep sunlight. Finished
granite formed a circle around her, enclosed by a low
parapet. She was alone.
Tell her that I have her son.
Once more she cried Jeremiah's name. For a moment,
the sound echoed back to her, vacant and forlorn
under the wide sky. Then it vanished into the sunlight
and left
no trace.
2.
Caerure
At first Linden could not move. Her cry had taken the
last of her strength. Haunted by echoes, she folded her
arms on the stone and lowered her head to rest.
She knew where she was. Oh, she knew. Her brief look
around had confirmed it. She had been here once
before, ten years and a lifetime ago. This stone circle
with its parapet was Kevin's Watch, a platform carved
into the pinnacle of a leaning stone spire high above
the line of hills which divided the South Plains from
the Plains of Ra.
How much time had passed since her first appearance
here? She knew from experience that months in the
Land were mere hours in her natural world: centuries
were months. And Thomas Covenant had told her that
between his imposed translations the Land had
undergone three and a half millennia of
transformation.
If a comparable interval had passed again, the healing
which she had begun should have worked its way into
every stretch of rock and blade of grass, every vein of
leaf and truck of tree, from the Westron Mountains to
Landsdrop and beyond.
But thirty centuries and more were also time enough
for Lord Foul to restore himself, and to devise a new
corruption of this precious, vulnerable place.
She would have to search for her son in a country that
had almost certainly changed beyond recognition.
According to Covenant, the Land had once been a
region of health and beauty, rich in vitality. In those
days, the natural puissance of the world had flowed
close to the surface here; and the Land's inward
loveliness had been tangible to everyone who gazed
upon it. But the Sunbane had tainted that elemental
grace; had twisted it to desert and rain, pestilence and
fertility. As a result, Linden had only grasped the true
worth of the
Land when she had at last visited Andelain.
There, in the final bastion of Law against the Sunbane,
she had seen and felt and tasted the real wealth of
Earthpower, the anodyne and solace of the Land's
essential largesse. Her preternatural discernment had
made its health and abundance palpable to her senses.
Inspired by Andelain and Covenant, she had striven
with all her love and compas
sion to remake the Land as it had been before Lord
Foul had launched his attack on its nature.
Three and a half millennia? Time enough, and more
than enough, for everything which she and Covenant
had accomplished to change, or be forgotten.
And the prophetic figure who should have warned her
of her peril had given her nothing. He had denied her
any chance to protect her son.
Dear God, how bad was it this time? What had Lord
Foul done?
What was he doing to Jeremiah right now?
That thought stung her; galvanized her.
In her own world, she was dead, or dying. Her life
there was gone, stamped out by a leaden slug. She had
failed all of her promises.
Here, however, she remained somehow among the
living, just as Covenant had remained after his murder
in the woods behind Haven Farm. And while she
retained any vestige of herself, only Jeremiah mattered
to her.
Tell her that I have her son.
He, too, had survived: here at least, if not in his former
existence.
As long as she could still breathe and think and strive,
she would not, would not, allow the Despiser to keep
him.
Yet she did not leap to her feet. Already she knew that
any attempt to rescue Jeremiah might well require
months. She could not simply descend from Kevin's
Watch and step to his side. The place where Lord Foul
had secreted her son could be hundreds of leagues
distant. Hell, she might need days simply to gain an
understanding of her own circumstances-and the
Land's.
She had seen herself rouse the Worm of the World's
End. She had witnessed monstrous creatures
devouring the ground as though they fed on life and
Earthpower.
And this time she was alone. Entirely alone. She did
not even know whether the village of Mithil
Stonedown, where she and Covenant had found
Sunder to aid them, still existed. She had no supplies
or maps; no means of travel except her untrained legs.
All she had was power: Covenant's white gold ring,
wild magic that destroys peace. Enough power to
crumble Time and set the Despiser free, if she could
learn how to use it.
Lord Foul had prepared her well to understand
despair.
Nevertheless her alarm for Jeremiah had restored her
to herself; and she recognized that she had one other
resource as well. During her fall from her own life, she
had tasted her former health-sense. Now she felt it
fully: it sang in her nerves, as discerning and keen as
augury. It told her of the cleanliness of the sunshine; of
its untrammeled, life-giving warmth. It described to
her senses the high purity of the air and the breeze,
the sky, the heavens. It made her aware of the bold
reach of the mountains behind her, ancient and
enduring, although she had not glanced toward them.
And it warned her
Involuntarily she flinched; jerked herself onto the
support of her hands and knees. Had she
misunderstood the sensation? No, it was there, in the
stone: a suggestion of weakness, of frailty; a visceral
tremor among the old bones of the spire. The platform
did not literally move or quiver. Still the message was
unmistakable.
Something threatened Kevin's Watch. It had been
strained to the breaking point. Any new stress might
cause it to collapse
-dropping her a thousand feet and more to the hard
hills.
Panic flared briefly through her, and she nearly
sprang erect. But then her percipience gained clarity,
and she saw that the danger was not imminent. She
could not imagine what manner of force had done the
Watch so much harm, when it had withstood every
assault of weather, earthquake, and magic since at
least the time of High Lord Kevin Landwaster, a
thousand years before Covenant's first appearance
here. However, no such power impinged upon it now.
Kevin's Watch would stand awhile longer.
Breathing deeply, Linden Avery closed her eyes and at
last turned her discernment on herself.
She had been shot. She had felt the shock in her chest,
the irreversible rupture that had severed her link to
the life that she had chosen for herself.
Yet she was not in pain now. Probing gingerly inward,
her reborn senses descried no damage. Her heart beat
too rapidly, spurred by Jeremiah's plight and her own
fear; but it remained whole. Her lungs sucked in the
clean air without difficulty, and her ribs flexed with
each breath, as if they had not been touched by frantic
lead.
Anxiously she opened her eyes and looked down at her
shirt.
A neat round hole had been punched through the red
flannel directly below her sternum. Yet the fabric at
the rim of the hole showed no blood. Even that sign
that she had been slain had been burned away.
When she unbuttoned her shirt, however, to study the
skin between her breasts, she found a round white scar
in the V where her ribs came together. Covenant's ring
hung on its thin chain only an inch or two above the
newly healed flesh.
Undoubtedly there was another scar in the center of
her back, a larger and more ragged wound, impossibly
repaired. And her palm had been made whole as well.
Moments or hours ago, in the darkness of Joan's mind,
she had felt power flare through her; the argence of
white gold. Had she healed herself? Covenant had once
done something similar. He had borne the scar of a
knife throughout his remaining time in the Land.
Such healing violated every precept of her medical
training. Nevertheless it was
natural here. Wild magic and Earthpower worked
such wonders. She had experienced them at
Covenant's side too often to doubt them.
Still her former life was gone; irretrievable. She would
never see Berenford Memorial again, or her patients,
or her friends. She would never know whether Sandy
and Sheriff Lytton had survived
But she could not afford such griefs. Lord Foul had
taken Jeremiah. She had lost something more precious
to her than her own life.
Her healed scars gave her courage. When she had
rebuttoned her shirt, she climbed slowly upright.
She knew what she would see; and at first the scene
which greeted her was just as she remembered it. The
circle of stone and its parapet had been smoothed from
the native granite of the mountains; and its spire
leaned northward, toward Andelain. The sun, nearly
overhead and slightly to her left in the southern
expanse of the sky, suggested that she had arrived in
late morning, despite the violent darkness which she
had left behind. Confirming her other senses, the light
showed her immediately that there was no flaw upon
the sun; that no vestige or reminder of the Sunbane
remained.
In this one way, if in no other, she resembled Thomas
Covenant. She had not failed the Land.
Turning slowly with the sun's health on her face, she
saw the familiar mountains rearing up over the spire
to the south. Here, she recalled, the Southron Range
jutted some distance northward, forming a wedge of
peaks that ended at Kevin's Watch and the north-lying
hills. From among those peaks to the west arose the
Mithil River, which then flowed along a widening
valley out into the South Plains. But on the other side,
the mountains were more strongly fortified. They
stretched east and then northeast like a curtain-wall
from Kevin's Watch to Landsdrop, separating the
Plains of Ra from the distant south.
Linden had never seen or heard what lay beyond the
Southron Range. East of Landsdrop, however, past
Lord Foul's former demesne in Ridjeck Thome, was
the Sunbirth Sea. And as the littoral ran northward,
the Spoiled Plains lapsed into Lifeswallower, the Great
Swamp, which in turn eventually rose from its fens to
form the verdant land of Seareach, where the
Unhomed Giants had once lived.
Her head swirling with memories, she sat down in the
center of the Watch so that she would not fall again.
She had already plunged too far: farther than she
could measure; perhaps farther than she could endure.
While her eyes scanned the crests and valleys of the
mountains, and her memories gyred across the Land,
she steadied herself on the stone's stubborn endurance.
She faced there because she did not want to remember
Revelstone, Lord's Keep, three hundred leagues to the
west and north: the huge granite habitation which
Jeremiah had re-created in Legos in her living room;
in the life she had lost.
But beyond the Keep, high in the cold-clad fastness of
the Westron Mountains-so she had been told-lived the
Haruchai. She thought of them more willingly,
recalling their distrust of her and their fidelity to
Thomas Covenant; their extravagant strength; their
costly rejection of compromise.
Had they survived the uncounted centuries of her
absence? Were they still a presence in the Land?
If so, she could hope for help.
And if the tale of what she and Covenant had
accomplished for the Land had withstood so much
time, she might find other allies as well. Covenant's
first victory against Lord Foul had survived the telling
and retelling of it over a comparable stretch of
centuries. In Mithil Stonedown, Sunder had cast in his
lot with Covenant and Linden because his father had
taught him to preserve the memory of the Unbeliever.
She needed aid of some kind. She had to trust that she
would find it somehow. Otherwise she might not have
the courage to creep down the long, precarious stair
which descended from Kevin's Watch. She would
certainly not be brave enough to search the entire
Land for her son.
Joan was out there somewhere, the summoner with
her madness and her white ring. And Roger was there
as well, serving his bitter master. He had to be. How
else could Lord Foul have claimed Jeremiah?
At that moment, she felt Thomas Covenant's loss so
acutely that it wrung her heart. She could have borne
anything, faced any peril, endured any hardship, if
only he were alive to stand beside her.
Yet when she had rested awhile, she climbed to her
feet again. Yearning for her dead lover was a weakness
she could not afford. The Despiser had captured her
son. While she lived, she would do everything in her
power to win him back.
Wrapping her fingers around Covenant's ring for
comfort, she shifted toward the western side of the
Watch. She wanted to look down at the valley of the
Mithil River.
She had hardly taken a step, however, when she froze
in surprise and dismay. Her first glance past the
parapet showed her that the entire vista from horizon
to horizon was shrouded in a thick layer of yellow
cloud.
No, not cloud, she corrected herself almost
immediately: smog. It looked like smog. The air
thickened to obscurity no more than a hundred feet
below her; as dense as thunderheads. But it had the
hue of pollution, the stifling and damaged shade of
industrial exhaust. From the mountains behind her, it
stretched as far as she could see in every direction,
hiding even the base of the spire. Beneath it, where her
senses could not penetrate, the Land might have
become a wasteland.
And it was wrong. Her eyes and nose, the nerves of her
face, even her tongue, were certain of that: the
shrilling of her health-sense permitted no doubt. It was
as vile as the Sunbane, and as pervasive, lying like
cerements over slain flesh as though the vital
beauty, the very Law, which she had once given her
utmost to preserve had been arrayed for burial.
I am content. God in Heaven! What had the Despiser
done?
Her percipience told her only that this acrid yellow
shroud was an act of violence against the fundamental
Law of the Land's nature. It could not reveal the
smog's cause, effects, or purpose.
Instinctively she retreated into the center of the
Watch; hugged her arms around her stomach to
contain her distress. Now she feared the descent from
Kevin's Watch in a new way. The stair was exposed,
dangerous. And it would take her into that yellow
shroud. Remembering the Sunbane, she believed that
the eerie smog would savage her open nerves. It might
hurt her so severely that she would lose her balance
While she squirmed in alarm, however, she heard a
new sound through the gentle breeze. Its susurration
was punctuated by the noise of scrambling, the frantic
movement of skin on stone.
Where-? She looked around quickly; saw only the
clean sky and the bluff mountains and the acrid
shroud.
The sound appeared to come from the stair-from
someone climbing toward her.
Because she was frightened, she dropped to the stone.
Then she eased forward on her belly to peer furtively
through the gap in the parapet at the top of the stair.
There she heard scrambling more clearly. Hands and
feet against rock: hoarse, ragged breathing.
A few heartbeats later, a head emerged from the
yellow cloud.
A tangle of rank grey hair straggled to the shoulders of
a torn and filthy tunic which may once have been
brown. A man: she knew that at once. An old man. His
hands clutching at the treads looked gnarled and bent,
almost crippled. She sensed their arthritic straining as
if they ached aloud. His labored breathing threatened
to choke him.
He was mortally afraid. His ascent was an attempt at
escape.
Linden's percipience was too sharp: she felt his
difficulties too acutely. She had forgotten how to
manage the sensations which inundated her. Carefully
she retreated to the far edge of the Watch and sat with
her back against the parapet, bracing herself for the
moment when he would emerge from the gap.
What could he flee by coming here? There was no
escape for either of them now.
Lifting Covenant's ring out of her shirt, she folded it in
both hands as if she were Praying.
With a gasp of desperation, he heaved himself over the
rim of the last stair and collapsed, panting. His legs
still dangled off the Watch.
The nature of his prostration told her at once that he
had lost his mental balance a long time ago; had
toppled into a kind of madness. And he had not eaten
for days.
Hunger and sorrow had taken his mind.
He reminded her of Nassic
When she and Covenant had arrived together in the
Land, they had been greeted by Sunder's father,
Nassic, who had inherited a vague knowledge of the
Unbeliever from a long line of half-mad hermits called
Unfettered Ones. In spite of his confused grasp on
events, he had done everything in his power to aid
them.
A Raver had killed him for his trouble.
This old man might be in similar danger.
At once she set her own fears aside. Kneeling forward,
she gripped him by his arms
and pulled him fully onto the Watch. Then she crept to
the gap and looked downward
again, searching the shroud for anything that
resembled turiya Herem's malice.
Still the cloud baffled her percipience; concealed its
secrets.
Come on! she urged the long fall. Try me. I am in no
mood for this!
Until now, she had been helpless to save any of Roger's
victims. But Covenant's ring
had power here. She was done with helplessness.
Nothing appeared out of the shroud.
Slowly she withdrew from the gap; returned her
attention to the collapsed old man. For a moment, she
studied him with her health-sense, trying to determine
how
close he had come to death. Now that she could
observe him more precisely, however,
she saw that he had not exhausted his life. In fact, he
possessed an astonishing re
silience, in spite of his inanition. He was sustained
byNew surprise rocked her back onto her heels.
-by Earthpower.
Automatically she rubbed at her eyes, trying to
sharpen her senses.
The old man was a being of some puissance. Human,
undoubtedly: old, arthritic, and frail. Nevertheless an
active pulse of Earthpower throbbed in his worn veins.
It made her think of Hollian, who had been brought
back from death by Caer-Caveral's sacrifice and the
krill of Loric. Linden remembered her vividly as she
had stood at Sunder's side, lambent with Earthpower
made tangible and lovely-and mortal. Sunder himself
had shared her numinous glow. Even the child in her
womb had shared it.
But neither Sunder nor Hollian had been mad.
And there was something else in the old man, another
ill in addition to his arthritis and his instability. When
Linden first became aware of it, she could not define it.
But then he groaned, stirred, and raised his head; and
she saw that he was blind.
He had a face like a broken rock, all ragged edges and
rough planes, softened by an old tangle of neglected
beard and a patina of ingrained grime. His mouth
resembled a crack in dried mud.
And above it, his eyes were the milky color of
moonstone, devoid of iris or pupil. She thought at first
that he suffered from cataracts; but when she looked
more closely,
she realized that his sightlessness ran deeper. His mind
itself appeared to have rejected vision. In some way-
perhaps by Earthpower-he had blinded himself.
With the Staff of Law she might have been able to heal
him. She could certainly have eased his arthritis. But
with Covenant's ring? She had used its power on
herself successfully. Yet she hardly knew how she had
done so. And she had been guided by her instinctive
awareness of her condition. For this tattered old man
She had little experience with wild magic; was not even
sure that she could call it up at will. And it was called
wild magic for a reason: it tended always toward
increase; rampant flame; chaos. After his
confrontation with the Banefire, Covenant had turned
his back on the use of such power. He had feared that
it would tower beyond the reach of his restraint: that it
would rage and grow until it shattered Time, and the
Despiser was set free.
Linden's control would not be delicate enough to help
the abused figure in front of her.
If he had rejected sight, he might not want to be
helped.
Nevertheless she was a physician: she wished to succor
him in some way, despite the desperation of her
circumstances-and, apparently, of his. Putting aside
the surprise of his presence, she cleared her throat,
then said cautiously, "Don't try to move. You're too
weak-and this place isn't exactly safe. I'm here. I'll try
to help you "
In response, he faced her with his blind eyes and
broken mien. "Protect Anele." His voice was a cracked
whisper, hoarse with exhaustion, uncertain with
disuse. "Protect-"
"I will," she answered without hesitation. "I want to.
I'll do what I can. But-"
Who or what was Anele?
As if she had not spoken, he moaned, "They search for
him. It pursues him. Always he is pursued. If they take
him, he will not be able to escape it. His last hope. Poor
Anele, who has lost his birthright and harms no one.
His sacred trust-" He reached one trembling hand
toward her. "Protect."
A sound like a dusty sob escaped from his chest.


"I will" she said againtl "Y
,, more srongy.ou aren't alone." She had too many
ques


tions-and he was plainly in no state to answer them.
"We're in danger here. I don't trust this stone. And the
only way down is the same way you came up. But I'm
sure there's something I can do."
Covenant's ring would serve her somehow.
"Power," the old man croaked, "yes. Anele feels it. He
climbed to find it."
On his knees, he shuffled toward her, groping with his
gnarled hand until he touched her arm. Then,
however, his hand flinched away as if he feared to
presumeor feared the sensation of contact.
"They search for him," he offered abjectly, "but Anele
tricks them. They can be tricked, a little." Again he
touched her arm, appealing to her-and flinched back.
"But it is not tricked. It knows where Anele is. It
pursues him. If it takes him
"Ah!" he cried out weakly, "lost! All lost." Another
sob broke his voice. "Anele climbed high. His last
trick. If it comes close, he will jump and die."
His distress twisted Linden's heart. "Anele," she
responded, sure now of his name, "listen to me. I'm
here. I'll do everything I can. Don't jump."
She had already felt too much falling.
His hand fumbled toward her and away as though he
feared to believe her. "Lost," he said again. "All lost."
"I understand," she told him, although she did not;
could not. "I'm here. Whatever happens, you aren't
alone."
He gaped at her blindly as if she were the one
deranged, not he.
"But I need-" she began. Then, however, she hesitated.
She hardly knew where to
start. Even if he had been sane, she would not have
known which question to ask first.
She had to guess at the things he might be able to
answer.
But she had spent years dealing with damaged minds.
She had learned how to
probe them gently. "You're Anele?" she inquired
quietly. "That's your name?" Begin with something
concrete. Unthreatening.
He nodded as if in confirmation.
"And you have enemies?" A frail old man in his
condition? "What do they want?" What was it?
His white eyes stared at her. "They seek to catch
Anele. Imprison him. They are ter
rible, terrible everywhere. It will take him. They can
be tricked. It is not tricked." His reply explained
nothing. She tried a different approach. "Why does it
pursue you? Why do they?"
"Ah!" Anele broke into a low wail. "His birthright.
Sacred trust. Lost, failed. Anele failed. Everything, all
lost."
Apparently he was too badly hurt to answer in terms
that she could comprehend. Perhaps her questions
were too abstract; too far removed from his immediate
plight.
"I understand," she repeated, striving to calm him.
"I'm here. I have power." He had said as much
himself. "Whoever they are-whatever it is-they have
no idea what I can do."
Then she remarked as though she felt no threat
herself, "It pursues you. Is it close?" "Yes!" he
returned instantly. "Yes!" His head nodded
vehemently. "Protect him. He must be protected!"
"Anele!" Linden spoke more sternly. "I'm here."
Perhaps severity would pierce his confusion. "I know
you need protection. I want to help you. But I need to
know. How close is it? Where is it?"
Without warning, Anele sprang to his feet. His blind
eyes remained fixed on her, but his left arm gestured
wildly behind him, indicating some portion of the
shrouded cliff-face.
"There!"
"Now?" she asked in disbelief. Her senses had detected
nothing. "It's there now?"
,,Yes!" Lifting his head, he shouted into the clear sky,
"It pursues him!" Frantically he brandished his arms
at the clean sunlight. Under their dirt, they looked as
brittle as dry twigs. "Poor Anele. His last trick. He will
jump. He must! "
Then he began to weep as if he had come to the end of
himself, and even the vibrant Earthpower in his veins
could no longer sustain him.
At once, Linden stood as well. "Anele!" she called
softly, taking hold of his shoulders so that he would not
fling himself from the Watch. "Anele! Listen to me.
I'm here. I'll protect you."
A heartbeat later, however, a swirl of distortion
against the mountains snagged in her peripheral
vision: caught and tugged so hard that she almost
staggered.
Still gripping one of Anele's shoulders, she turned her
head.
God in Heaven! What's that?
By standing, she had lifted her high enough to see the
thing Anele dreaded.
The sight of it seemed to crawl over her skin like a
rush of formication. The eerie kinesthesia of her
health-sense was so intense that she could hardly
restrain her impulse to slap at the squirming sensation.
Hundreds of feet tall, it stood against the western edge
of the blunt cliff-face: a spinning chiaroscuro of
multicolored dots like the phosphene aura of a
migraine. Towering in the shape of a whirlwind, it
seethed and danced hotly, each spot of color
incandescent with force, each indistinguishable from
the others. Its initial impact struck Linden so hard that
she could not focus on it clearly: it appeared to be
superimposed on the impenetrable shroud below her,
as if it swirled in a different dimension. But then her
senses sharpened, and she realized that she was seeing
the manifestation through the cloud. It was definitely
below her, beneath the obscuring blanket.
In all the region under Kevin's Watch, that aura was
the only thing powerful enough to pierce the shroud.
And like the shroud, it was wrong. It violated her
percipience in similar ways, but more acutely, as if it
were the distilled essence of violation. In that swirl,
fundamental Laws which enabled this world's
existence were suspended or distorted: reality seemed
to flow and melt into itself like the confusion in Joan's
mind. Any living thing swallowed by it might be torn
apart.
And it was moving; advancing along the cliff-face
toward the Watch. Soon it would be near enough to
touch the spire.
Moaning in distress, Anele wrenched at Linden's
grasp. Now she understood his reaction. She might
leap from Kevin's Watch herself, if that aura came
near her.
"Release Anele!" he panted urgently. "It pursues him!
He must escape!"
His alarm helped her to step back from her own.
Pursues him? she thought fiercely. Not damn likely.
His madness misled him. That fatal aura had no
interest in him. It had no interests at all; no
consciousness and no volition. Her senses were certain.
It resembled a force of nature hideously perverted:
blind, insentient, and entirely destructive.
Yet it continued to advance on the Watch, drawing
closer with every beat of her heart.
"Anele, no!" she called with as much authority as she
could summon. "Don't!" Deliberately she turned her
back on the aura so that she could hold him more
tightly. "I said I'll protect you. I can't do that if you
jump."
His white, staring eyes glistened as if they were
sweating in terror.
Why did he think that the mad distortion wanted him?
But she could not phrase her questions in words that
he would be able to answer. With the whirlwind
approaching at her back, she could hardly think. And
it moved nearer at every moment. Clutching Anele, she
abandoned her confusion and reached instead for the
memory of her fall to this place. The memory of wild
magic.
Under her boots, the stone seemed to shiver in
anticipation or dread.
Linden had healed her wounds somehow. Yet wild
magic was not inherently apt for healing. Its impulse
toward rampage limited its ordinary, mortal uses. She
did not know whether she could oppose the aura with
white gold. She was not even sure that she could
muster its fire consciously.
But she did not doubt that both she and Anele would
die if the seething swirl touched them.
Moment by moment, the aura advanced. At the same
time, the shivering of the stone mounted; became
insistent. Earlier she had felt a flaw in the spire, a
suggestion of frangibility. Her health-sense had told
her that the Watch had been damaged
Its instability undermined her balance. Only her grim
grip on Anele kept her from stumbling.
-but she had not been able to guess what form of
power had done the spire such harm.
Now she knew.
The aura was not the only manifestation of its kind. Or
it had existed for a long time-a very long time-roving
the Land as its energies dictated. In some form, it had
been here before.
Then it had left Kevin's Watch barely standing. Even
through her boots, the tremors in the stone assured her
that the next touch would be the last.
The swirl would reach the base of the spire in
moments.
"Anele!" she yelled frantically, "get behind me! Hold
on! Don't let go, whatever hap
pens. We're going down!"
With all her strength, she wrenched him aside so that
she stood between him and
the danger.
Obedient to her desperate command, he flung his arms
around her neck, caught
her in a hug of panic. When he shoved the side of his
head against hers, his gasping
sounded like a death rattle in her ear.
Seething viciously, the aura approached the base of the
spire. Enveloped it.
For an instant nothing happened. The stone quivered
and quailed-and held. Then a rending shriek shivered
the Watch, and the ancient granite twisted to splin
ters like torn kindling.
3.
In the Rubble
Through a din like the destruction of the heavens, the
massive spire of Kevin's
Watch shuddered and snapped. Between one heartbeat
and the next, it became rubble hopelessly poised a
thousand feet above the hills.
Dust and flung detritus obscured the sun. Ponderously
at first, and as poignant as augury, it sagged away
from the cliff. Stone screams stunned the air as the
platform on which Linden and Anele stood tilted
outward.
She had time for one last cry; barely heard Anele's
lorn wail. Then the weight of so much granite took
hold, and the ruined Watch collapsed like a cataract.
With Anele clutching her neck, Linden fell down the
sky, accompanied by shattered menhirs-hundreds,
thousands of them-heavy enough to crush villages. As
she and her burden dropped, they seemed to rebound
from one tremendous shard to the next, striking One
to be deflected toward another. At any instant, they
might have been smashed to pulp between stones; slain
long before their flesh was flung against the hard hills.
Anele's grasp threatened to crush her larynx: she
could not breathe. Already she might have broken
bones. Her last outcry was the rending of Kevin's
Watch, an eternity of terror and protest compressed
into one small splinter of time.
And again she was struck, as she had been struck
before: her temple collided with a boulder the size of a
dwelling, and the whole inside of her head-her mind
and her scream and her frantic heart-turned white
with pain.
White and silver.
In the plunge of her translation here, she had given no
thought to wild magic; had made no attempt to call it
forth. Instead, beneath or beyond consciousness, she
had reached out instinctively for her own strength. But
this time she had already begun groping toward
Covenant's ring when the stark wrong of the aura had
overwhelmed the spire's ancient intransigence.
While the cruel bulk of stones swept her downward,
and helpless collisions battered her bones, Linden
Avery became a detonation of argent fire.
In the imponderable gap between instants, she felt that
she had dropped into the core of a sun. Its glare
appeared to catch and seethe in the earth's yellow
shroud, lighting the obscurity to its horizons like a
lightning strike.
Then rampant flame bore her away, and she vanished
into a whiteness like the pure grief of stars.
tars, she had heard, were the bright children of the
world's birth, the glad offspring of the Creator,
trapped inadvertently in the heavens by the same
binding that had imprisoned the Despiser. They could
only be set free, restored to their infinite home, by the
severing of Time. Hence their crystalline keening: they
mourned for the lost grandeur of eternity.
And wild magic was the keystone of Time, the pivot,
the crux. Bound by Law, and yet illimitable, it both
sustained and threatened the processes which made
existence possible, for without causality and sequence
there could be no life; no creation; no beauty.
No evil.
Joan held a white gold ring.
Lord Foul had taken Jeremiah.
Although she had failed at everything else, Linden
took hold of Covenant's power and with it transcended
the necessary strictures of gravity and mass, of falling
and mortal frailty. Bearing Anele clasped at her neck,
she became the center of a fire which emblazoned the
sky. Not knowing what she did, guided only by instinct
and passion, she briefly set aside the bonds of life.
For a time which she could not have measured or
understood, she passed among the sorrows of the stars,
and wept with them, and felt no other hurt.
ventually, however, the stars drew nearer until they
became the pressure of the sun against her eyelids.
Warmth soothed her battered face while constellations
danced into dazzles across her vision. A vast silence
seemed to cover her-a silence given depth and
definition by the delicate soughing of the breeze, and
by the distant call of birds. Under her, cool edges of
rock punctuated the encompassing warmth.
A deep lassitude held her, as if she had expended all
her strength and could have slept where she lay.
Every breath hurt her chest. She felt beaten from head
to foot: a woman caught in a profound wreck, and
surrounded by devastation. Yet she could breathe. As
far as she knew, she had been merely bruised, not
broken. The air tasted of dust and torn earth, and soon
it would make her cough; but for now she responded
only to its sweetness.
The stone beneath her seemed recently damaged.
Faintly she tasted its granite pain, the raw hurt of new
wounds. If she could have slowed her perceptions to
the pace of its ineffable pulse, she might have been able
to hear it groaning.
Somehow she had landed atop the fragments of the
Watch rather than under them. And she had survived
the impact. Falling so far, she had come down gently
enough to live.
Wild magic again.
But where was Anele? She had lost him while she fell.
His arms were no longer around her neck.
At the thought, she inhaled sharply, and immediately
began coughing. Tears welled in her eyes to wash away
grit and dirt. When the pressure in her chest eased, she
found that she could blink her sight clear and look
around for the old man.
Damn it, she had to be able to save somebody.
She lay amid a chaos of shattered stone. Apparently
the collapse of Kevin's Watch had struck a hillside and
spread itself down into a low valley, burying grass,
shrubs, and trees under mounds and monoliths of
granite. Hillcrests softened by verdure constricted her
horizons on all sides. In the direction of her feet, the
vale wandered away toward more hills.
Above her, a new scar marked the cliff-face where
Kevin's Watch had clung for all its millennia. The sun
hung almost directly over the mountains, suggesting
that she had not been unconscious long. Yet the dire
swirling which had caused the fall of the spire was
gone. It had dissipated or moved on.
Still, enough time had passed for the heavy debris of
the Watch to settle, and for most of the dust to drift
away. And the birds had apparently forgotten the
event. Already they had resumed their piping soars
and flits among the hills.
After a moment, she realized that the tumbling stone
must have been seen or heard by everyone who lived in
the vicinity. Simple curiosity might bring them out to
look at the wreckage. The help she needed might be on
its way to her.
Or Anele's enemies might come
In spite of the intervening shock, she remembered his
fears. He had been right to
fear that aura of wrongness. He might be right to fear
them as well.
Were there truly people in the Land now who meant
harm to crazy old men? She needed to find him.
If she could move
Groaning and wincing, she shifted her arms in an
attempt to prop herself up. But her limbs were as weak
as an infant's: she could hardly move them. And when
after a while she succeeded, the effort left her gasping.
Although her bones were apparently intact, she felt as
broken as the stone.
Sitting, she rested. Unaware at first of what she did,
she gazed dully at her hands as though she wondered
what had become of them. They seemed strange to her;
pallid with powdered stone. Dumbly she stared at
them, trying to determine how they had
changed.
How had they grown so frail?
They were caked in dust, but the blood which had
marred her right palm was gone. Like her other
wounds, the cut she had inflicted on herself had been
healed. Even the blood had been scoured away. Still
the sight of her hands disturbed her. Something
was wrong with them.
She was too tired to think.
She had lost Anele.
Surely he was around here somewhere? She had saved
herself. Surely she had done the same for him?
Vaguely she lifted her eyes to the cerulean expanse of
the sky. Northward only the crests of the hills defined
the horizon, their slopes blurred by trees and brush.
Behind her, however, mountains lambent with sunlight
piled into the heavens. The more distant peaks held
snow.
When she glanced back down at her cut palm, she
realized that she could not dis cern whether it had
healed cleanly. She could not tell whether the nerves
were whole, or the tendons. If blood flowed in the
veins, it lay beneath the reach of her perceptions.
From the Watch, she had not been able to see the
ground. The whole region had been covered by a smog
of wrongness. Now nothing obscured her view in any
direc
tion. Yet the sun shining down on her had lost its
impression of beatitude. It might
have been any sun in any world.
Suddenly frightened, she dropped her hands to the
stone edges under her, probed
their rough planes with her fingers-and felt only cool
stone, superficial and crude;
mute; lifeless.
The Land's yellow cerements had vanished
-taking her health-sense with them. She had lost her
sensitivity to the Land's rich vitality and substance. A
remnant of her percipience had endured after she had
regained consciousness: now it was gone.
Goaded by new fears, she forced herself to her feet,
standing awkwardly on the broken stones so that she
could search for Anele.
The rubble covered the hillside where it had fallen.
Above her, massive fragments of granite balanced
precariously on other stones of all sizes. She had not
felt Anele slip away. For all she knew, wild magic had
burned out his life. Or he might have been crushed
under the jagged menhirs around her.
He was all she had.
But then, ten or fifteen paces above her on the slope,
she spotted a hand clutching at the stone as if it groped
for help.
Without her health-sense, she could only see its
surface; could discern nothing about the body to which
it belonged. Yet it moved. The fingers searched feebly
at the rocks.
In a rush, Linden scrambled toward it.
She was weak, and haste made her careless. She
slipped repeatedly on the treacherous rubble, fell;
caught herself and climbed again, panting with
urgency. Without her boots and jeans, she would have
scraped her legs raw; but she took no notice.
When she reached the stone where the hand clutched,
she found Anele among the wreckage behind it.
He lay on his back, blind eyes staring whitely upward.
With both hands he clawed vaguely at the granite as if
he sought to dig his way out of a grave. His breath
labored painfully through his filthy beard.
"Anele," she gasped thinly. Bending over him, she
tried to force her senses into him; tried to see beyond
the surface of his seamed, unwashed skin. But of the
madness and Earthpower which had defined him
earlier she caught no glimpse. He was closed to
her now.
Oh, God. She did not understand.
A moment of sharp grief overtook her, and her vision
blurred as she mourned the loss of her health-sense.
For her, the beauty had gone out of the world. And she
had
tasted it so briefly-
During her previous time in the Land, percipience had
exposed her to evils against which she had no armor
and no weapons. The Sunbane and samadhi Raver had
nearly shattered her spirit. Nevertheless she had
learned to treasure such discernment. It had shed light
into beauty as well as evil. It had enabled her to
understand why Covenant loved the Land. It had
taught her to view healing in a new way, less as a
repudiation of death and more as an affirmation of
life. And it had given her purpose, a reason to continue
striving when her burdens, and Covenant's, and the
Land's, seemed more than she could bear.
A Raver had told her, You are being forged as iron is
forged to achieve the ruin of the Earth. You have been
chosen, Linden Avery, because you can see. But Lord
Foul had misjudged her. Because she could see, she
had learned to loathe and oppose him. In the end, her
health-sense had made her effective against the
Sunbane.
She had lived without it for ten years now, but she
treasured it still. For a while, the loss of it rent her
heart.
However, she had no time for grief. The hole in her
shirt and the scar on her chest changed nothing. She
needed answers; understanding. And she hungered for
companionship. Therefore she needed Anele.
She repeated his name more strongly. "Can you hear
me? Are you all right?"
He jerked as though she had slapped him. "You!" For
a moment he rubbed at his eyes as if he wanted to
force his blindness aside. Then he rolled over and
lurched upright. "You are here." Coughing at the dust
in his throat, he leaned against the boulder behind
which he had lain, braced his feet on a canted shelf of
stone. "I did not delude myself. You have saved me."
Before she could respond, he fumbled toward her.
Instinctively she reached out to help him. One of his
hands found her arm, gripped it hard. With the other,
he reached up to explore her face as if he thought that
he might recognize her by touch.
In spite of herself, Linden flinched. But the old man
held her.
"The Law of Death was broken," he murmured,
apparently speaking to himself while his fingertips
traced her expression, "long ago." He held his head
cocked to one side, considering her eyelessly. "The
Law of Life was sundered in Andelain. Such things are
possible."
She stared at him, baffled at first by the change in his
manner. The angle of his head suggested a
derangement of some kind. Yet his madness had
apparently passed with the smog. He sounded sane
now, in possession of himself.
Capable of answers.
"I'm Linden," she told him at once. "Linden Avery. I
just got here. I don't know if you've ever heard of me. I
don't know what's going on. But I-"
Abruptly he dropped his hand. With one trembling
finger, he pointed at Covenant's ring hanging outside
her shirt.
"And you have power. That is well. You will have need
of it."
His words disturbed her as if they had been
pronounced by an oracle. He had become strangely
knowledgeable since the collapse of the Watch. She did
not know how to approach him.
"I was worried," she responded awkwardly as she
slipped the ring back under her shirt. "You
disappeared while we were falling. I was afraid you
were dead."
He cocked his head farther. "I feared you. You might
have been-" He shuddered; and with his free hand he
rubbed the top of his head roughly. "The folk of this
region are kindly toward me. Kevin's Dirt blinds them,
and they cannot see me. Upon occasion they grant me
food and shelter. But they are not blinded. If any
Master came upon me, I would be taken and doomed.
Therefore I did not seek you out."
Cautious with him, Linden did not ask him to explain
who they were. That question could wait. First she
needed to know more about his mental state; his
apparent recovery. Gently she inquired, "'Kevin's
Dirt'? What's that?"
In spite of her care, he winced. Suddenly impatient, he
demanded, "You have beheld it, have you not? From
the Watch? An evil which concealed all the Land?
That is Kevin's Dirt."
"Yes, of course," she replied, confused. "A dirty
yellow cloud, like smog. But it's gone now."
Anele snorted. "It is not. You are merely blind."
Floundering, she said, "I don't understand."
With a jerk, he cocked his head over to the other side.
"Do you behold me now? Do you discern what I am?"
"Of course-" she began, then stopped herself. "Not the
way I did," she admitted. There the distortion of his
mind, and the Earthpower in his veins, had been plain
to her. Now she could not detect them.
"You are blind," he repeated scornfully. "Kevin's Dirt
blinds you. On the Watch you stood above it. It could
not affect you. Now-" He smacked his lips as if in
disdain or regret. "You are unaware of it because it
blinds you. You do not see me. Only the
Masters-"

Abruptly he tightened his grip on her forearm.
Without transition, his manner became fearful. "Do
they come?" he whispered. "I have no sight, and their
stealth exceeds my hearing."
Although he could not watch her, Linden made a show
of looking around the
hillsides, studying the slope of rubble. "I don't see
anyone. We're alone, at least for now."

Anele clutched at her with both hands. "They will
come." His voice shook. "You must protect me."

That was the opening she needed. Taking him by the
shoulders, she held him
firmly. "I will. I've already promised that. And I've
kept you alive so far. No one will hurt you, or trap you,
while I can do anything about it."
Slowly his features relaxed. "From the breaking of the
Watch," he responded softly, "yes. With power. Such
things are possible." He released a low sigh. "I have
failed my power. It was given into my hands, but I
have betrayed that trust."
His Earthpower? Linden wondered obliquely. Had
"Kevin's Dirt" deprived him of his nature, as it had
blinded her health-sense? Or did he refer to something
else?
But she did not pursue such questions. Instead she
broached her own needs. "That's right," she began. "I
saved you. Now you can help me.
"Anele, I'm a stranger. I was here once before, but
that was a very long time ago. Now everything has
changed." She appealed to him as she had so often
appealed to her patients, asking them for hints to guide
their treatment. "You have to understand that I don't
know what's going on. I don't know anything about
Kevin's Dirt, or Masters, or that sick aura-"
"The caesure," he offered helpfully. If his eyes had
been whole, they might have been as bright as a bird's.
Linden nodded. "All right, that caesure. I don't know
what it is. I don't know what it does," except cause
harm and dread. "I can't even imagine what Lord
Foul is trying to accomplish-"
At the Despiser's name, Anele winced again.
Shrugging her hands away, he crouched against the
stone. His head turned fearfully from side to side: he
might have been trying to locate a threat.
"The Grey Slayer," he breathed. "Maker of
Desecration. He seeks to destroy me. He sends his
caesures to achieve ruin. Kevin's Dirt blinds the Land.
The Masters name him their foe, yet they serve him
and know it not."
"Anele." Linden stooped to his side, sure now that he
was still mad. "I said I would protect you," She did not
believe for a moment that the Despiser's caesures were
aimed at him. "You know how powerful I am."
Carefully she touched him again, stroked his shoulder,
hoping to convince his nerves, if not his faulty mind,
that he was safe with her.
"But Lord Foul has taken my son. My son, Anele."
This old man had once been someone's son, cherished
as she cherished Jeremiah. If he could remember- "I
have to get him back."
For Jeremiah's sake, she risked saying, "That means I
have to find the Despiser." Anele did not respond. She
could not be sure that he had understood her.
Nevertheless some of the tension in his shoulder eased.
"I don't know how to do that." She took a deep breath
and held it for a moment to steady herself. "I have a
white gold ring. I have power. But I can't help my son
if I don't know where Lord Foul is. I can't even
imagine where to look.
"Anele, I need answers. I need you to answer my
questions."
Still the old man did not speak. However, he appeared
to be considering her words. She fell silent herself,
trusting her hand on his shoulder to communicate
what she could not.
After a while, he shifted so that he could sit with his
back to the stone. His scrawny legs sprawled pitifully
in front of him. His feet were twisted and scarred,
gnarled with old injuries and calluses. He must have
lived without the benefit of sandals for many long
years.
At last he said, "You have a son." His voice was a
forlorn sigh, filled with decades of bereavement and
suffering. "His birthright has been torn from him.
Mine I have lost. I am not worthy of protection. I live
only because I am the Land's last hope.
"Ask your questions. I will attempt to answer."
Oh, Anele. His reply caught at Linden's heart. The last
hope? Was that possible?
What had happened to him? How had he been so
badly damaged?
Still striving for caution, she asked in a musing tone,
"'Kevin's Dirt.' Why is it called that?"
He leaned his head to the other side and looked
around, apparently searching for an explanation.
"These stones do not know," he replied gruffly.
"Kevin Landwaster they know, the last of the Old
Lords. The Ritual of Desecration is written within
them. But Kevin's Dirt is a human name. It is too
recent to be discerned here."
Linden did not understand. She was too tired; and the
mounting ache of her many bruises confused her. She,
too, had known the High Lord. Kevin's shade had
accosted her in Andelain, trying to persuade her to
turn against Thomas Covenant. The dead Lord had
believed that Covenant's intentions would damn the
Land.
His tormented spirit had been difficult to refuse. He
was familiar with despair; as familiar as Linden
herself. Yet in the end she had set her doubts aside to
join Covenant against the Despiser.
Kevin's Dirt. It was not a good omen that Lord Foul's
blinding shroud had been named for the man who had
helped perform the Ritual of Desecration.
While Linden tried to comprehend Anele's response,
the old man continued to study the shattered rocks
blindly. After a while, he asked, "Are you content? I
must not remain here. They will discover me."
She made an attempt to go on. "How long-" But her
throat closed, choked by auguries and dust. She had to
swallow several times before she could ask, "How long
has the Dirt been up there?"
Her companion shrugged. "Twenty-five score years?
Fifty score? The bones of the Earth do not regard such
details."
"And these caesures? " she pursued. "Have they been
around that long?"
He shook his head. "I read nothing certainly. It
appears that they have hunted the Land for perhaps
five score years. No more than that, I judge."
-i
"And you?" Linden asked. "How old are you?"
Anele sagged as though her question diminished him.
"The stones do not know." An undercurrent of
bitterness ran beneath the surface of his tone. "I also
am too recent. And I cannot answer you. My recall is
disturbed. Have my parents perished? Did I receive
my birthright from their failing hands?" He sighed
again. "I am uncertain."
The more he spoke, the more confused he seemed.
"But you said the caesures hunt for you," she objected.
"If they've been around for a hundred years, they
must have appeared before you were born. You aren't
that old."
"Did I? It may be that I did" By degrees, his bitterness
lapsed into mourning. "My mind wanders betimes.
"Certainly they did not threaten the Land when I was
born." His head fell further to the side as if he lacked
the strength to hold it up. "Yet I cannot be so aged. I
have been harried beyond endurance, lost and alone,
footsore and battered and hungry to the marrow of my
bones. It is not possible that I have lived so long. My
flesh could not have borne it."
Softly he finished, "The caesures do not desire me. I
am scant threat to the Grey Slayer. Yet I fear them
utterly. If they take me, I am doomed and damned."
As Anele spoke, Linden's frustration grew. He had
been born before the caesures began, yet they were
older? Impossible. Clearly she could not trust his
apparent sanity. His mind existed in fragments
dissociated from each other, and he had lost the ability
to combine them into a coherent whole.
Pausing to gather her resolve, she gazed around at the
rocks and hillsides. If or when someone came to
investigate the collapse of Kevin's Watch, she did not
want to be taken by surprise. Then she returned her
attention to Anele.
"What do they do," she asked, "these caesures? "
"They sever," he answered. "Dislocate. I cannot name
it. Five score years is too short a time. These stones do
not speak of it plainly."
Sever? Dislocate? Vexation tugged at her restraint.
With an effort, she fought it down. "The stones speak
to you? You can read them?"
In spite of Kevin's Dirt? Did his inherent Earthpower
give him that discernment?
He turned to face her squarely. His white eyes
regarded her like closed shutters, concealing the
strange rooms of his mind. "Look about you," he said
with a touch of his former impatience. "The truth is
visible here."
Ah, visible, she groaned to herself. To him, perhaps:
not to her. In crucial ways, she was as blind as her
companion. And she felt so weak- She had eaten
nothing for several hours; drunk nothing. And since
then she had been stretched to her limits.
She only continued questioning Anele because she
could not imagine where she might find food or water.
"All right," she murmured. "You already know I can't
see whatever is in the rocks.
She had never been a woman who could read stone.
"Never mind that. Earlier you said the Law of Death
was broken. And the Law of Life. What did you
mean?"
"Only what all folk know." His air of impatience grew
as he answered: he may have felt as frustrated as she
did. As if he were reciting part of a liturgy, he intoned,
"High Lord Elena wrested Kevin Landwaster from
beyond death. She drank the Blood of the Earth and
coerced him with the Power of Command. Thus was
the boundary which distinguishes the end of life made
fragile. In her folly, she violated the Law of Death."
Linden had heard such things from Thomas Covenant.
But then Anele faltered. "The Law of Life-" For a
moment, he fell silent, angrily slapping the top of his
head with both hands. Next he rubbed his face
roughly. "Do I read or remember? Nothing is certain,
nothing sure. Have I heard a tale? Do the stones
remember?" His impatience vanished, engulfed in
sorrow. "The fault is mine. All this"-he gestured wildly
around him-"Kevin's Dirt and caesures, the Masters
and the dread fire of the skurj. All the Land's pain.
The fault is mine."
Shaken by his distress, Linden reached out to comfort
him; but he struck her hand aside.
God help me, she thought. Protect me from people who
punish themselves. She had spent far too much of her
own life doing the same.
Sadly she said again, "All right. Never mind. I can live
without knowing that. Just tell me what the Law of
Life is."
She already knew the answer. She only wanted to keep
him talking while she groped for courage.
"It is hope and cruelty," he replied like a tocsin,
"redemption and ruin. It is the boundary which
distinguishes the end of death."
She had been in Andelain when Sunder and the last
Forestal had brought Hollian back to life-and with
Hollian her unborn child.
Surely thousands of years had passed since that
fraught night? It had nothing to do with Anele. It
could not. Nor could Linden imagine that it pertained
to her dilemma now.
By its very nature, the new Staff of Law that she had
fashioned should have stabilized the disturbed
boundaries between life and death. And its wielders-
Sunder, Hollian, and their descendants-would have
wished to restore the Land's essential health. Surely
their use of the Staff would have healed the strictures
which separated the living from the dead long ago?
Such evils as Kevin's Dirt and caesures should not
have been able to exist in the presence of the Staff of
Law. Had her efforts for the Land accomplished
nothing?
Everything Anele said carried her farther and farther
from sanity.
Roughly she demanded, "And you had something to
do with it? It's your `fault'?"
In response, he clutched for the sides of her face. His
hands shook feverishly. "Gaze
about you!" he cried. "Consider the stones!" His eyes
burned as if he had gone blind with terror and
abhorrence. "Do not torment me so."
Trying to ease him, Linden softened her tone. "Does
the Law of Life have anything to do with your
birthright? You keep saying that you failed somehow.
You lost your birthright. Do you want to recover it? Is
that what you mean when you talk about hope?"
None of this made any sense.
Anele answered with an abject wail.
Then he whirled away from her to scramble over the
shattered rocks, heedless of his old flesh and brittle
bones. She shouted after him urgently, but he did not
stop. Groping for holds and footing, he fled as swiftly
as his frail strength could take him.
Again she looked around. Had he sensed some peril?
But she saw nothing to alarm her. The sky and the sun
hung over the quiet hills as if they could not be
touched.
The old man did not flee from her. He fled because of
the question she had asked.
"Anele!" she called again, "wait!" Then, groaning to
herself, she started after him.
Her bruises had begun to throb, draining her
endurance. Unable to move quickly, she concentrated
instead on placing her feet and bracing her hands so
that she did not slip or tumble. If Anele desired her
protection, he would wait for her when his distress
receded. And if he did not
He was her only link to the Land's present.
When she had traversed half the rock fall, she glanced
up and saw Anele standing on the rough grass of the
hillside a few steps beyond the rubble. He had turned
to watch her progress.
He appeared to be grinning.
Beyond doubt, he was a lunatic.
He had stopped just below a bulge in the hillside.
There the ground swelled into an outcropping, as if
under the soil a massive fist of gutrock had been
trapped in the act of straining for release. His position
provided him with cover from the east while allowing
him a clear view over the rock fall to the western hills,
toward Mithil Stonedown.
Had he thought of such things? Did his sanity-or his
cunning-stretch so far?
Linden sorely wished that she knew.
At last, she left the broken stones behind, crossed a
band of gouged dirt, and reached hardy grass. Pausing
for a moment's rest, she looked up at Anele.
The blind old man held his head oddly askew, grinning
at her openmouthed. His smile exposed the gaps
between his remaining teeth.
Despite his expression, the white glare of his eyes
resembled anguish.
Linden felt a pang of concern. Without hesitation, she
ascended the slope until she stood no more than a pace
below him.
He was not tall: his head was nearly on a level with
hers as she tried to gauge his condition; discern what
lay behind his mad grin and tormented stare.
"Anele," she asked softly, "what's wrong? Help me
understand"
His grin suggested that he wanted to laugh at her.
When he replied, his voice had changed gained depth
and resonance so that it seemed to reach past her
toward the far
hillsides, warning them to beware.
Distinctly he pronounced, "I see that you are the
Chosen, called Linden Avery. At one time, you were
named 'Sun-Sage' for your power against the Sunbane.
I have your son."
Then he began to laugh as if his heart would break.
4.
Old Friends

Linden staggered backward, downhill: she nearly fell.
I have your son, her son, - at Lord Foul's mercy. The
eerie change in Anele's tone echoed the Despiser s
resonant malice.
It was as thoughOh, God!
-as though Lord Foul spoke through the blind old man.
She wanted to shout back at him, repudiate him
somehow; but stark silence smothered her voice. Even
the birds had ceased calling, and the breeze had fallen
quiet, shocked still by the hurtful sound of Anele's
voice. In an instant, the air seemed to lose its warmth:
a chill crept through her clothes. The sun mocked her
from its unattainable height.
Anele continued laughing in mad agony.
"That dismays you, does it not? You have cause. He
lies beyond you. At my whim, I at 1 able to command
or destroy him."
Stop! she tried to cry out, stop! but her voice choked in
her throat.
Which shall I perform?" he him mused cruelly.
"Would it harm you more to observe my service, or to
witness his death in torment?" He laughed harder.
"Wretched woman! I do not reveal my aims to such as
you."
For a moment, Linden could not breathe. Then she
gasped, "Anele, stop this.
Stop it."
Anele did not comply. Insanity or Despite held him like
a geas: tears streamed from his white eyes. Barking
harsh laughter, he took a step toward her.
"Yet this I vow. In time you will behold the fruit of my
endeavors. If your son serves me, he will do so in your
presence. If I slaughter him, I will do so before you.
Think on that when you seek to retrieve him from me.
If you discover him, you will only hasten his doom.
While you are apart from him, you cannot know his
sufferings. You may be certain only that he lives."
His voice knelled in her ears. It was no wonder that the
old man had lost his mind.
The woman she had once been might have covered her
ears and cowered; but she was different now. In
response, an abrupt torrent of rage flashed through
her, and she did not doubt herself. Inspired by
memories of argent, she surged back up the hillside
like a rush of fire. As she caught her fists in the front
of his tattered raiment, she seemed on the verge of wild
magic, almost capable of erupting in flame at will.
"Foul, you sick bastard," she hissed into Anele's
weeping face, "hear me. If you can talk through this
miserable old man, I'm sure you can hear me. You're
finished. You just don't know it yet. Whatever you do
to my son, I'm going to tear your heart out.
"Your only hope"-her fury rose into a shout "is to let
him go unharmed!"
Anele struggled weakly against her grasp, but Lord
Foul did not release him. His lips trembled as he jeered
at her, "Fool! I have no heart. I have only darkness.
For that reason, I strive to free myself." His blindness
sneered at her. "For that reason, I do not relent,
though my torments are endless. For that reason, you
may no longer oppose me.
"No mortal may stand in my path. I have gained white
gold, and my triumph is certain."
"Just watch me," Linden muttered. Deliberately she
stepped back, letting Anele go as her anger took
another form. She was too furious to bandy threats
with the De spiser. "Talk all you want." And she did
not mean to take her ire out on the old man. He was
not responsible for the words in his mouth. "I'll have
more to say when I find you." Turning her back, she
sat down on the grass and closed her eyes. Briefly her
ex haustion became a blessing: she could sink into its
depths and shut her ears to any
thing Anele might say.
I have your son. Oh, Jeremiah. Hang on. Please. I'll get
you back somehow. I swear on my soul.
I have gained white gold
He had access to Joan's ring. That poor aggrieved
woman had been brought here. And she must have
drawn Roger after her, as she had drawn Linden.
Linden could not imagine that he had been left behind
to die of his wounds.
-and my triumph is certain.
How many enemies did she have? she thought, aching.
How many people would she have to fight in order to
reach her son?
But she had more immediate concerns. She was near
exhaustion and needed to
concentrate on water and food. Shelter. Rest. If she
turned her mind to them, such necessities would
defend her against feeling overwhelmed.
The Staff of Law should have made Kevin's Dirt
impossible.
Opening her eyes, she scanned the hills. There might
be a stream somewhere among them. If there were not,
she should be able to reach the Mithil River. As for
food
Surely treasure-berries still throve in the Land, in
spite of caesures and Kevin's Dirt? Long ago the
Sunbane had been unable to quench them: they had
endured its depredations even without the beneficent
influence of the original Staff. At times she and
Covenant, Sunder and Hollian, had lived on aliantha
alone, and had grown stronger. If the gnarled shrubs
had not been destroyed somehow, they should be easy
to locate now.
Groaning at her bruises, Linden forced herself to her
feet.
Anele remained rooted to the grass with his head on
one side and moist distress in his moonstone eyes. He
still wept, although he no longer spoke. Tears spread
streaks through the grime on his cheeks into his
ragged beard. His mouth worked in silence, forming
imprecations or appeals which made no sound.
"Come on," she breathed to him wearily. "If you're
done threatening me, let's go find water. And food."
Touched by his mute distress, she added, "I'll start
crying myself if I don't at least get something to drink
soon."
Perhaps he would comprehend that she did not intend
to abandon him, and would take heart.
In a cracked whisper, he replied, "You have delayed
too long. The Masters are here."
The Masters-?
Quickly she glanced around at the wide tumble of
rock, and the hills beyond; the rolling slopes on either
side of her. But she saw no one, no movement of any
kind
Facing Anele again, she asked, "Where? I don't see
anyone."
"Then you are blind," Lord Foul retorted while
Anele's features twisted in fear, "as you should be."
The old man's chest heaved for air as if he were
choking.
Linden raised a hand toward him, made her tone as
soothing as she could. "Try to stay calm. I said I would
protect you. Just tell me where they are, if you can. Or
point them out."
Anele chuckled between painful breaths, but did not
respond.
She started to turn away, then froze as a figure
dropped out of the sky and landed on the grass half a
dozen paces from her.
He must have leaped from the edge of the bulge behind
Anele, nearly a stone's throw above her. Nevertheless
the newcomer landed with feline grace and an easy flex
of his legs, and stood facing her like a man who had
spent long moments waiting patiently to be noticed.
After her first fright, Linden felt a jolt of recognition.
He was one of the Haruchai. Panting, Anele plunged to
his knees as if his tendons had been cut. Relief nearly
undid her as well.
The Haruchai-Thank God!
She had not known them when they were the
Bloodguard, the guardians of the Lords: faithful
beyond sorrow or sleep. She had first met them as the
victims of the Clave, sacrificed to feed the Banefire
with their potent blood. After that, however, they had
served Thomas Covenant-and Linden herself-with a
severe and absolute fidelity.
For a long time, they had not trusted her. Committed
to their own certainty, they had not endured her
internal conflicts graciously. Nevertheless she had
learned to consider them friends. They were men who
kept their promises. And they had the strength to give
their promises substance.
They demanded of themselves commitments more
strict than anything that they required from others.
Friends, she told herself again. Answers. Anele feared
the Haruchai, that was plain;
but she did not doubt that they would aid her against
Lord Foul.
Their name for the Despiser was Corruption. He was
their antithesis, their sover
eign foe.
The man before her had the characteristic features of
his kind: a stocky and muscular frame; a flat,
undecipherable countenance that seemed impervious
to time; brown skin; dark curly hair cropped short.
Above his bare feet and legs, he wore a short tunic
made of a material that resembled vellum dyed ochre.
A sash of the same hue cinched the tunic to his waist.
A ragged scar, long healed, marred the skin under his
left eye.
If the Haruchai had not changed since she had known
them, this man was a fearsome warrior, full of great
force, prodigious skill, and uncompromising judgment.
Even to her truncated senses, he seemed impenetrably
solid, weighty enough to have gouged holes in the
hillside when he landed.
"Protect!" Anele gasped in his own voice. "Oh,
protect. You swore. You swore! "
The Haruchai glanced toward Anele. "She cannot
protect you," he stated with an awkward inflection.
"We have sought you long and arduously. Now you are
done. You will no longer threaten the Land."
For her companion's sake, Linden moved to stand
between him and the Haruchai• "Wait a minute," she
said unsteadily. "Wait. Let's not rush into anything. I
don't understand any of this.
"I know you. I mean I knew you. A long time ago.
Back then, the Haruchai were an
other name for faithfulness. Don't you know me? I was
hoping that your people would
remember-"
She sagged into silence, momentarily defeated by the
man's lack of expression.
"How can we know you?" countered the Haruchai.
"You have not spoken your name."
Of course, Linden thought. She should have realized-
Too much time had passed.
As clearly as she could, she announced, "I'm Linden
Avery the Chosen. I was with Thomas Covenant when
he fought the Clave and the Sunbane. I don't know
how long ago that was. Time"-she rubbed a blur of
memory from her eyes-"moves differently here." Then
she added, "Some of your people helped us search for
the One Tree. Don't you remember?"
The Haruchai stared at her inflexibly.
She stood her ground. "This poor old man is terrified
of people he calls `Masters: I promised I would protect
him. I won't let you hurt him."
The newcomer continued to stare at her. After a
moment, however, he replied, "We remember, though
many centuries have passed. We remember the Lords
before the Ritual of Desecration. We remember the
destruction of the Staff of Law, and the slaughter of
the Unhomed. We do not forget the malevolence of the
Clave. The name you have given is known to us."
The edge of discomfort in his tone reminded Linden
that among themselves the Haruchai communicated
mind to mind. They did not naturally express
themselves aloud.
"It is spoken with respect," he went on. "And your
raiment is strange. The same is said of the white gold
wielder, ur-Lord Thomas Covenant, and of his
companion, Linden Avery the Chosen. It may be that
you speak the truth. Later we will grant you
opportunity to persuade us that we must honor you."
Then the Haruchai glanced at Anele. "But the old man
is ours. He has eluded us for many years. We are
indeed the Masters of the Land, and we do not permit
freedom to such as he."
She regarded the Haruchai in dismay. The Masters-?
Damn you, Foul, what have you done?
The people whom she had known here had never
sought to rule any aspect of the Land. Only the
Despiser and his servants nurtured such ambitions.
Certainly the Haruchai had displayed no interest in
sovereignty. They had defined themselves by their
devotion to people whom they deemed greater than
themselves; to causes which they considered worthy of
service. Linden remembered vividly those who had
accompanied the Search for the One Tree, Brinn and
Cail among them. In her experience, no one had ever
matched their fierce rectitude.
She would have been proud to call them friends.
Now they were the Masters of the Land-?
But the Haruchai before her had not finished
speaking. "Do not fear for him. He will come to no
harm. We do not desire his distress. We will only
deliver him to Revelstone so that he may work no ill."
The Master apparently thought that this would
reassure her.
It did not. She had been through too much, and could
not bear to fail another commitment. "You aren't
listening," she told the Haruchai. "I said I promised to
protect him. He's old and confused, he's no threat. And
he's terrified of being trapped. He won't be able to
avoid those caesures.
"We name them `Falls,"' said the Haruchai.
Linden ignored that. "I don't know why he's so afraid
of them. But I think they're what broke his mind in the
first place. Being helpless is the worst thing that could
happen to him. He's so scared- Any kind of restraint
might destroy him. Even if you're gentle about it, you
could ruin what's left of him.
"I made him a promise," she finished. "You of all
people should understand what that means."
The Haruchai showed no reaction. He did not so much
as blink.
A moment later, however, she heard an impact on the
grass behind her: the sound of a body landing lightly.
In alarm she wheeled toward Anele and saw another
Haruchai already standing behind him.
This one bore no scars. He may have been younger
than his companion.
"Where is your power now?" Anele cackled at her in
Lord Foul's voice, "the wild magic that destroys
peace?"
"He belongs to us," the new arrival said flatly. "We
will permit him no more freedom." Bitter with anger
and fatigue, Linden turned back to the first Haruchai.
He had moved one or two steps closer to her.
"I told you-!" she began.
He interrupted her. "I have said," he repeated without
expression, "that we will grant you opportunity to
persuade us that we must honor you. Until that time
you
must accompany us. We will treat the old man gently."
"No!" Linden shook her head, infuriated by his
impenetrability. "You will not touch
him!"
The Haruchai shrugged as if in dismissal.
Anele went on chortling. "They are Haruchai. Did you
believe that they would heed you?"
Roger Covenant also had refused to hear her.
Before she could defend herself, the Haruchai swept
forward. Swiftly his fist lashed
out; struck her in the center of her forehead. Her head
snapped back. The hills reeled drunkenly around her.
As she lapsed into darkness, she heard Anele's cry of
woe.
Liiaunted by lamentation, Linden Avery rode a dark
tide of pain and futility, as helpless as a dried leaf on a
wave. She chose nothing, determined nothing: she
merely reacted to events. The Despiser had laid a snare
for the people of the Land, and they walked toward it
blindly. She could not even warn them. They refused
to listen.
Why should they heed her? She had no name for their
peril. She had no idea what the Falls and Kevin's Dirt
were for.
Jeremiah's plight was only more immediate, not worse.
Lord Foul threatened the life of the Land, and of all
the Earth, and she had no means to save any of them,
except by wild magic. Yet any use of white gold
endangered the Arch of Time. For that very reason,
Thomas Covenant had forsworn his power.
Now the man she loved lay forever beyond her reach.
No matter how acutely she had yearned for him over
the years, she would never see him again, or feel his
touch, or hold him in her arms.
She had learned to yearn instead for her son.
Whatever happened, she intended to save Jeremiah.
Borne along by the current of her unconsciousness, she
endeavored to slough away all other considerations; to
concentrate her whole heart on her vulnerable son.
But the dark scend did not float her to Jeremiah.
Instead it brought Covenant's voice to her ears.
He sounded as he had sounded in life: harsh and
compassionate; driven to extremes, deeply wounded,
and dear; full of comprehension and rue.
Linden, he said distinctly, you aren't listening.
Oh, Covenant! she cried out within herself. Where are
you? Why can't I see you? Are you all right?
I'm trying to tell you. He seemed as strict as the
Haruchai. You need the Staff of Law.
For a moment, he surprised her questions to silence. I
don't know where it is. She
might have wept. It doesn't seem to work anymore.
Violations of Law like Kevin's Dirt and caesures could
not have flourished in the presence of the Staff.
You aren't listening, he repeated more gently. I said, I
understand how you feel. It's too much to ask of
anyone. Don't worry about that. Do something they
don't expect.
Like what? she countered in tears. All I have is your
ring. It isn't mine. It isn't me. It doesn't belong to me
the way it did to you. I don't understand any of this.
Foul has my son!
Don't worry about that, he said again. Already his
voice had begun to recede from her. Trust yourself.
She could barely hear him. Do something they don't
expect.
Then he was gone. She sobbed his name, but only
breakers and seething answered.
Eventually a swell lifted her up to deposit her upon a
plane of stone above the tide. When she returned to
herself there, her cheeks were wet with weeping.
I1or a time, she lay still, resting her bruised body on
the cool smooth stone. Her
former life had not prepared her for physical ordeals.
All of her muscles throbbed with overexertion. In
addition, her tongue felt thick with thirst, and her
stomach ached for food.
Nevertheless those pangs hurt her less than the
knowledge that she had failed to keep her promise to
Anele. Covenant had told her to trust herself. He
might as well have advised her to fly to the moon. Too
many people had already died.
Groaning softly, she opened her eyes on darkness like
the inside of her mind.
She lay facedown on stone worn or polished smooth.
The air felt cool and clean in her sore lungs. When she
tried to shift her limbs, they moved as easily as her
injuries allowed. To that extent, at least, she was
intact. She simply could not see.
But when she raised her head, pain lanced into her
neck: whiplash from the blow she had received. At
once, a sharp throbbing began in her forehead, and the
stone under her seemed to tilt. Cursing to herself, she
lowered her head again.
Damn them anyway. The Haruchai she had known-
Brinn, Cail, and the othershad not made a practice of
striking down strangers.
And where had she been taken? Underground? No.
The air was too fresh, and the
stone not cold enough, for a cave or cavern.
Night must have fallen while she was unconscious. Or
the Haruchai had left her in
a windowless cell somewhere. Mithil Stonedown? To
the best of her knowledge, that was the nearest village.
The Haruchai did not need cells to control their
prisoners.
For a while, she postponed the challenge of rising to
her feet. Instead she reached
under her chest to confirm that Covenant's ring still
hung on its chain around her neck; to reassure herself
on its hard circle. Then she turned her attention to the
scents
of this space.
At first, she detected only grime and old sweat, the
sour odor of an untended body
.,hah1v hers. Stone dust still caked her hair, clogging
her senses. When she reached
past those smells, however, she caught a faint whiff of
water and the unmistakable aroma of cooked food.
Suddenly eager, she braced her arms on the stone,
wedged her legs under her. Then, carefully, she pushed
herself up onto her hands and knees.
The pain in her neck brought tears to her eyes; and for
a moment the stone seemed to cant under her. Briefly
she rested where she was. Then she began to grope
forward, hoping for water.
Her right hand found an emaciated ankle.
It jerked away from her touch as she snatched back
her hand. Hoarsely an old voice croaked, "Leave Anele
alone. Cruel Masters. Let him perish."
Anele. Her throat was too dry for sound: she could not
say his name. Nevertheless she felt a rush of relief. At
least the Haruchai had not separated them.
Presumably they were prisoners together.
She might yet be given a chance to keep her promise.
Shifting her knees to the left, she continued searching.
After a moment, the edge of her left hand encountered
a hard shape. Quickly she reached for it.
It was round and curved: a large bowl. Its surface felt
like polished stone, cooler
than the floor. When she dipped her fingers into it, she
found water.
At once, she lowered her pounding head and drank.
Every swallow was bliss on her swollen tongue and
parched throat. She could easily
have emptied the bowl. As the level of the water
dropped, however, she pulled back
her head.
"Anele," she panted softly into the dark, "it's me.
Linden. I found water." The Haruchai had told her
that they treated their prisoners gently.
A prompt scuffling answered her. "Where?" her
companion asked. "Anele is thirsty.
So thirsty. They are cruel. They give him nothing."
One of his hands grasped at her side.
"Here." She reached for his wrist and guided him to
the bowl. As he clutched its
sides, she added, "Take all you want. I'm sure they'll
bring us more."
Anele's only response was to lift the bowl so that he
could drink more deeply. While the old man satisfied
himself, Linden resumed her search. She was confident
that she had scented food.
Their captors would have left it near the water.
Less than an arm's length away, she discovered a
second bowl. It had been fashioned
of stone like the first, but its sides were warm. When
she poised her face over it, she felt
a waft of steam stroke her cheeks.
Stew, definitely: meat and broth; vegetables of some
kind. And- Was it possible?
Had she caught a hint of aliantha?
F
Dear God.
Saliva filled her mouth. Sweeping the floor with one
hand, she found a pair of wooden spoons. Without
hesitation, she dipped a spoon into the bowl and tested
its contents.
They retained some warmth, but were no longer hot.
Mutton and gravy thick with flour. Small round
shapes that tasted like spring peas. And yes, beyond
question: aliantha. As her first mouthful comforted
her tongue, it left behind a distinctive savor of peach
tinged with salt and lime.
For the first time since she had arrived on Kevin's
Watch, Linden remembered hope. The Haruchai had
told her the truth. If they stirred healing treasure-
berries into their viands, they did not intend their
prisoners to suffer.
To that extent, at least, Anele had misapprehended the
Masters. They had not fallen entirely under Lord
Foul's sway.
Linden ate several spoonfuls of the stew while her
companion drained the bowl of
water. Then she whispered to him, "Over here, Anele.
It's food."
"It is fatal," he answered anxiously. "They seek to
poison Anele:"
"No, they don't," she replied as calmly as she could.
"I've already tasted it. It's good."
Unsure how to persuade him, she added, "They put
treasure-berries in it." Immediately he shuffled to her
side. "Aliantha sustains Anele," he muttered as she
pressed a spoon into his hands. "Often naught else
preserves his life." Together they crouched over the
bowl.
She stopped before she was satisfied, leaving the rest
for her companion. But Anele continued ladling stew
into his mouth until he had scraped the bowl empty.
Half to herself, she murmured, "Poor man, how long
have you been lost?"
He did not answer. No doubt in his present condition
he could not. His manner of speaking told her that his
madness had reasserted its hold over him.
"In a minute or two," she breathed absently, "I'm
going to look for a way out of this place-whatever it is.
But first I'm going to rest a bit."
Her torn muscles and bruises demanded that.
Turning away from Anele, she crawled until the tips of
her fingers brushed a wall. Like the floor, it was
formed of smooth, cool stone. She sat with her back
against it and leaned her head on it to reduce the
strain on her neck.
Water and food. Aliantha. And captors who were
prepared to treat her kindly. The Haruchai had only
struck her because she had opposed his desire to take
Anele. Perhaps she did indeed have reason to hope.
If she could convince the Masters that she was the
Linden Avery who had accompanied Covenant to the
Land so many centuries ago, she might win back their
amity Then she would get answers. Guidance. Aid.
If.
You need the Staff of Law.
Otherwise she would have to find a way to escape. She
would have to tackle the
whole Land with only Anele's insanity to direct her.
Do something they don't expect.
What in hell was that supposed to mean?
She ought to move; start exploring. But she was
entirely out of her depth. She
hardly knew how to tread water in this situation: she
could not imagine how she might
extricate herself. And she was so tired- Her last night
in her own bed, her last experi
ence of comparative innocence, seemed to have
occurred weeks or months ago.
Somewhere in the darkness, her companion sighed.
"Anele is weak," he muttered to
himself. "Too old. Too hungry. He should refuse food,
water. Better to perish. They
only prolong Anele's life to hurt him. Hold him for it."
He meant a caesure.
Quietly Linden asked, "What will it do to you, Anele?"
In spite of her fatigue, she could still be moved.
"What're you so afraid of?"
His voice shuddered as he replied, "It severs."
She swore to herself. "So you said. What does it
sever?"
"Life." Anele moaned as though she had dismayed
him. "Anele's life. It is the maw of the Seven Hells.
Betrayed trust. Failure. Sorrow."
Linden did not press him. His distress restrained her.
And she remembered the Seven Hells.
During their generations of dominion over the Land,
the Clave had preached that the Earth had been
created as a prison for a being called a-Jeroth of the
Seven Hells, whose domain was pestilence, desert,
fertility, war, savagery, rain, and darkness. Thus
Sunder had explained the Sunbane to Covenant and
Linden. It was the manifestation of a-Jeroth's evil; and
it was also retribution against those who had failed to
oppose the lord of the Seven Hells.
After so many centuries, Linden was appalled to think
that any vestige of those teachings still persisted.
Surely she and Covenant and their friends had
discredited the Clave utterly when they had driven it
out of existence?
The Masters name him their foe, yet they serve him
and know it not.
Ah, God. She was out of her depth in all truth:
floundering in quicksand. Caesures were the gullet of
the Seven Hells, swallowing people away from life?
The Haruchai served Lord Foul?
Catching her lower lip between her teeth, Linden
braced her hands on the floor and pushed herself to
her feet. Forget whiplash and bruises. Never mind
exhaustion or murder. More than sleep or healing, she
needed answers. She had to find out what was going
on.
The pain in her neck undermined her balance; but she
leaned against the wall and
followed it with her hands. If nothing else, she might
be able to determine the dimensions of her prison.
She had hardly taken two steps, however, when a
flicker of light caught at the corner of her vision.
She flinched, clinging to the wall as if for protection.
She saw nothing. Blackness seemed to swim about her
head, tugging her toward a fall.
Staring into the dark, she held on.
There. A small flame reappeared in front of her. She
saw it through a thin vertical slit like a cut in the wall
of her gaol. An instant later, it shifted out of reach. But
she had seen it.
The slit had appeared tall enough to be the edge of a
door. Or the gap between a doorframe and a hanging
curtain
Before she could move forward to investigate the
opening, she saw the flame again. This time it did not
disappear. Instead it came toward her.
A heartbeat later, a figure swept aside a heavy leather
curtain and stepped through the doorway.
He held what appeared to be a cruse cupped in one
hand; and from within it a burning wick flamed
upward: an oil lamp. The thin yellow light nevertheless
seemed bright to her darkened sight. She could see his
garments and features clearly, his short vellum tunic,
the jagged scar under his left eye.
He was the Haruchai who had struck her down.
"Protect!" gasped her companion. "Protect Anele!"
Hissing through his teeth, he scrambled backward to
crouch against the far wall of the chamber.
The Haruchai gazed at Anele for a moment, then
shifted his attention to Linden. "You understand that
we will not harm him. We seek only to ward him, and
the Land." He faced her like a man who could not be
impugned. However, he may have been able to sense
her distrust. Stooping, he set his lamp down at his feet.
Then he asked awkwardly, "Are you well?"
Making him wait while she tried to calm herself,
Linden glanced around the space.
The lamp showed her a square room that she could
have crossed in five or six strides. The wall at her
back-she stood to the right of the doorway-held a wide
window sealed with rocks. Another curtain hung
opposite her, filling a second doorframe; and a third
marked the wall near Anele. Presumably they both
opened on to other rooms.
This place had not been built as a gaol. It may once
have been a small dwelling, abandoned now to the
Masters' use.
Perhaps they did not routinely take prisoners.
Holding that scant comfort, Linden faced the Haruchai
again.
"How could I be well?" she countered sourly. "You
damn near broke my neck."
The man returned an impenetrable stare. The
unsteady flame of his lamp cast
shadows like streaks of repudiation across his
countenance. "You will heal."
Instead of answering, she held his gaze as she had held
Sheriff Lytton's, daring him
to believe that she could be intimidated.
He was Haruchai: his manner did not waver. "Do you
desire more water? More
food? We will provide for your comfort."
"Thank you." His offer softened Linden's attitude. His
people had already demon
strated that they meant to treat their prisoners kindly.
"We do need more food and wa
ter. As for our comfort-" She paused, wondering how
much he would be willing to
tell her.
If he had not struck her, she might already have
blurted out Jeremiah's name.
Her captor waited stolidly. After a moment, she
suggested, "You might start by
telling me your name."
"I am Stave," he replied without hesitation. "With
Jass and Bornin, I ward this
Stonedown."
Ward it from what? she wanted to ask. But that could
wait until she had convinced
him of her identity. And until she had discovered
whether or not she could trust him. If Anele were right
about the Masters, they would strive to prevent her
from reach
ing her son.
Rather than dive into those murkier waters, she
inquired, "This is Mithil Stonedown?" He nodded.
"Yes."
"Good." That small confirmation of her assumptions
made her feel stronger. "I'm
glad to find something that hasn't changed.
"Now, about our comfort-"
Stave faced her with no discernible impatience.
Linden took a deep breath. "What Anele needs is to be
set free, but I already know
you won't take my word for that. At least not yet. So
let's start with me.
"I'm Linden Avery. People called me `the Chosen. 'I
came here a long time ago with
Thomas Covenant' Ur-Lord and Unbeliever. "For a
while, I was a prisoner of the Clave.
So were a lot of the Haruchai. Brinn, Cail, and several
others joined us on a quest for the
One Tree. We wanted to make a new Staff of Law.
Eventually we succeeded."
Several of the Haruchai had given their lives to make
that possible.
"You said," she continued, "you would let me prove
I'm telling the truth. When are
you going to do that?"
Stave continued to study her. "How will you persuade
us?"
Linden stifled an impulse to reach for Covenant's ring.
Instead she offered, "You said you remember. Ask me
questions."
Behind her as she faced her captor, Anele made
frightened noises deep in his throat. "Very well:"
Stave's manner stiffened slightly. He might have been
listening to other
voices than hers. "Name the Haruchai who failed to
refuse the Dancers of the Sea" His people set
inhumane standards for themselves. They had no
mercy for those
who demonstrated mortal desires and flaws.
"Brinn and Cail" She had forgotten nothing of her
time with Covenant. "Ceer and Hergrom were already
dead. Hergrom was killed by a Sandgorgon. Ceer died
saving my life." Grimly she refused to relive the events
she described. Her memories would only weaken her
here: she needed to keep her concentration fixed on
Stave. "Brinn and Cail were the only ones left to hear
the merewives."
On his hands and knees, Anele crept forward a little
way, leaving the protection of the wall as if he wanted
to be near Linden.
The Master studied her with apparent disinterest.
"What became of Brinn and Cail?"
She sighed. Such things should have been common
knowledge; the stuff of legends. Sunder and Hollian
had heard the story. The Giants of the Search had
participated in the events. Surely they had told the
tale?
What had happened during the millennia of her
absence? What had gone wrong?
Stung by loss, she replied stiffly, "Brinn decided to
challenge ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol. Otherwise we
wouldn't have been able to approach the One Tree."
She and her companions had been lost in mist until
Brinn had released them. "The Guardian was
invisible. Brinn didn't stand a chance." Gaps in the
gravid mist had allowed glimpses of his struggle. "But
he found a way. When the Guardian drove him off a
precipice, he dragged Kenaustin Ardenol with him. He
bought us access to the One Tree by surrendering his
life.
"We thought he was dead." No living flesh could have
survived the punishment Brinn had taken, or the fall
from that height. "But his surrender defeated the
Guardian. Instead of dying, he took Kenaustin
Ardenol's place. He became the ak-Haru."
The Guardian of the One Tree.
"As for Cail-"
Linden paused to swallow memories and grief. Stave
waited for her like a man who could not be swayed.
Again Anele advanced slightly. Apparently her tales
meant something to him.
"Your people judged him pretty harshly," she told the
Haruchai when she was ready to continue. "He was
faithful to Covenant and the Search," and finally to
Linden herself, "for months, and they practically beat
him to death. They considered him a failure."
And Cail had accepted their denunciation.
"But in spite of that," she went on, "he helped us
against the Clave and the Banefire." Against Gibbon
Raver and the na-Mhoram's Grim. "He didn't leave us
until Covenant put out the Banefire, and we were all
safe."
All but Grimmand Honninscrave, who had given his
life to rend samadhi Sheol.
There she stopped. Stave gave no sign that he had
understood her answer; that the heritage of his people
meant anything to him. Yet he was not done. In the
same awkward, ungiving tone, he asked, "When Cail
departed from you, where did he go?"
Again Linden restrained an impulse to reach for
Covenant's ring. "Your people called him a failure,"
she repeated. "Where else could he go? He went to
look for the merewives."
Their song had planted a glamour in his soul which he
had not wished to refuse. Bereft of home and kinship
and purpose, he had embarked on a quest for the
depths of the sea.
If Stave challenged her further, she feared that she
would rage at him. Like all of those who had been lost
in the Land's service, Brinn and Cail deserved more
respect than he appeared to give them.
However, he did not demand more answers. Instead he
studied her flatly. His mien conveyed an impression of
absence, as if he were no longer entirely present in the
room. Then without transition he seemed to return.
Holding both fists together at the level of his heart with
his arms extended, he gave her a formal bow.
"You are Linden Avery the Chosen," he said
uncomfortably, "as you have declared. We do not
doubt you.
"Be free among us." Reaching behind him, he held the
curtain aside for her. "Tell us how we may honor your
fidelity to ur-Lord Thomas Covenant and your
triumph over Corruption'
Sudden relief nearly dropped Linden to her knees.
Thank God! She had hardly dared to acknowledge
how badly she needed his aid: his, and that of all the
Haruchai.
She let her head drop mutely, a bow of her own to
repay his acceptance. You need the Staff of Law.
Perhaps now she would be able to begin her search.
Scrambling forward, Anele startled her by throwing
his arms around her calves. "Free Anele!" he panted.
"Oh, free him. They will slay him and name it
kindness."
Linden looked down at his face. Shadows shed by the
shifting flame of the lamp seemed to chase a stream of
expressions across his visage: terror and hope, disgust,
profound bafflement. Light in flickers turned his
moonstone eyes to milk.
He must have meant that as a prisoner he would be
exposed to a caesure. The Haruchai had never been
killers. They fought with transcendent skill: they slew
when the exigencies which they served required it. But
to harm a forlorn creature like Anele was surely
beneath them.
Yet she had promised the old man her care. She could
not set aside her word merely because she was weak
and in need.
Groaning to herself, she dragged up her head to meet
Stave's gaze.
"You heard him." The words sighed between her lips.
"Honor me by letting him go.
He's just a crazy old man." A madman rife with
secrets and inbred Earthpower. "I'll make sure he
doesn't hurt anyone."
Stave regarded her implacably. "Linden Avery," he
replied at last, "we regret that you have asked this of
us. We wish to honor you, but in this we will not
comply. We have taken upon ourselves the
guardianship of the Land. We are its Masters because
we cannot preserve the Land from Corruption in any
other way. We do not permit such beings as this Anele
to work their will. They serve Corruption, whatever
they may believe of themselves."
Anele clung harder to Linden's legs, breathing in
sharp gasps like mouthfuls of dread. If he leaned on
her, he would topple her to the floor. Her sense of
balance already had too many flaws.
"Anele." She stooped to him, urged him to ease his
grasp. "I won't leave you. You can trust me." The
thought of freedom blew to dust in her chest. "If the
Masters won't let you go, I won't go either. I'll stay
with you until they come to their senses."
She knew the Haruchai too well to believe that they
would change their minds.
Anele groaned as if she had betrayed him. Dropping
his head, he pressed his face against her shins.
However, he loosened his hold slightly; enough to let
her keep her feet.
Like a shrug, Stave released the curtain. The leather
fell back into place, swaying heavily.
"All right," Linden told him faintly. "I'm staying here.
But I need answers. I've been away for a long time. I
need to know what's going on." The Haruchai
acquiesced with a slight nod.
She still did not know whether she could trust him.
She ached to learn who held the Staff of Law-and why
it had apparently lost its effectiveness. But she
withheld those questions. First she needed to test Stave
as he had tested her; needed to hear him prove
himself.
She wobbled for a moment, barely caught herself.
"Forgive me," she breathed as though he might
disdain her weakness. "I'm very tired. It's hard to
think.
"What is it about Anele that worries you? Why is it so
important to keep him prisoner?"
What harm could the poor old man possibly do?
Stolidly Stave responded, "He is a man of
Earthpower."
"You can see that?" Anele had told her that the
Masters were not hampered by Kevin's Dirt, but she
had been suspicious of his sanity.
"You have stood upon Kevin's Watch, have you not?"
the Haruchai replied like a shrug. "We felt the force of
wild magic there. From that height, you surely beheld
a yellow cloud like a shroud upon the Land. Did it not
appear to cloak the Land in evil?" When she nodded,
he said, "It is named Kevin's Dirt. It has blinded the
folk of the
Land. It deprives them of their"-he seemed to search
for a word-"penetration. The life of the Land has been
closed to them.
"But we are Haruchai. We retain our discernment.
Thus we are able to guard the Land."
In spite of his mental confusion, Anele had told her the
truth-about a number of things.
But Stave's explanation raised another question.
Guard the Land from what? He and his people were
strong and fearless; but they had no power to oppose
evils like Kevin's Dirt and the Falls. She was not sure
that they could be opposed.
What else threatened the Land?
She kept that fear to herself, however. She did not
mean to be distracted from Anele's plight.
"All right," she repeated. "He's full of Earthpower. So
what? How does that make him dangerous?"
"We do not know," Stave admitted. "Yet the
Earthpower is his. It cannot be taken from him.
Therefore we will not release him."
"Because you think he might use it someday? What's
wrong with that?"
It was Earthpower, the vital substance of the Land,
and infinitely precious.
"You do not comprehend," the Haruchai informed her
dispassionately. "Any use of Earthpower serves
Corruption."
Now Linden stared at him in dismay. "What,
Earthpower? You think Earthpower is wrong?"
How could any sentient being consider the spirit and
essence of the Land evil?
Straining at her knees, Anele gasped, "Do not permit
them! They are fierce and terrible. Can you not see?
They will destroy Anele." Then he cried out, "He is the
hope of the Land!"
Convulsively he began to cough as if he were
suffocating on sorrow.
Stave ignored the old man. "You are indeed weary,
Linden Avery," he stated. "You have not heard me.
Earthpower is not `wrong: That is impossible. My
words were that any use of Earthpower serves
Corruption."
Linden reeled inwardly, staggered by too many
assaults on her perceptions. He is the hope of the
Land- Who, Anele? How? And how could using
Earthpower serve Lord Foul? The two were
fundamentally antithetical. Any use-? How in sanity's
name had Stave's people reached such a grotesque
conclusion?
She could not
Suddenly urgent, she stooped again, clasping her
hands to the sides of Anele's face to demand his
attention. "Anele, listen to me. I heard you. I won't
forget. But I can't deal with this many questions at the
same time. I need you to let go of me. I need you to be
patient. Before I do anything else, I have to
concentrate on what Stave is saying.
"I'll stay with you. I'll get to the bottom of all this.
Somehow. "But first you have to let go."
Anele's eyes stared into hers blindly. Bits and streaks
of lamplight cast desperation across his features.
Between bursts of coughing, he groaned deep in his
chest.
By slow increments, he released her.
When his arms had finally dropped free, he crawled
back to the rear wall and curled
himself against it as though he found more comfort in
blank stone than in her avowals. Cursing to herself,
Linden faced the Haruchai again.
"You'd better explain yourself," she said darkly.
"Earthpower is good, but using it
isn't?" All life in the Land throve on Earthpower.
"How is that even possible?"
And who in hell gave you the right to judge the natural
essence of any living thing? Stave may have shrugged:
shadows made her uncertain. The scar on his cheek
gleamed like a small grin in the wavering light. "We
do not account for it;" he replied. "That is not our
place. We lack the lore for such explanations. We only
remember, and learn.
"But the Staff of Law which you formed was soon lost.
Doubtless if it had remained
in wise hands, the peril of Earthpower would be
diminished. "You are Linden-"
"Just a minute." Without knowing what she did, she
covered her ears to close out his words; as if she might
cause them to be unsaid. "Give me a minute." The
Staff was lost? That explained
It explained too much.
But it should have been impossible. Soon lost- People
like Sunder and Hollian would not have been careless
with something so precious. And after his defeat Lord
Foul would have needed centuries, millennia, to
recover his strength.
The touch of hope which she had felt earlier fell to
ashes as she lowered her hands. Without the Staff of
Law, the Land was effectively defenseless. Cryptic
evils like the
caesures and Kevin's Dirt might prove as ruinous as
the Sunbane had ever been.
"This is terrible;" she began weakly. "I had no idea."
She could barely force herself to meet Stave's flat gaze.
"I don't know what to say."
Unconscious, she had heard Covenant tell her, You
need the Staff of Law. But if the Staff were lost- Lord
Foul may have sent Covenant's voice to taunt her, as
he had
caused her to be tormented during her translation to
the Land. "Who lost it? How could this happen?"
Anele squirmed against the wall, apparently trying to
find a comfortable position.
"We do not know what transpired," the Haruchai
replied. "We were not present. We know only that the
new Staff of Law was delivered into the hands of the
Graveler Sunder and the eh-Brand Hollian when the
Sunbane had been quenched. Among their kind, they
were long-lived, and for perhaps five score years they
served the Land with
great care, healing what they could, and easing what
they could not. Without them, many villages would not
have survived the abrupt cessation of the Sunbane, for
the folk of the Land knew no other way to live.
"Yet at last Sunder and Hollian grew weary and
wished to set aside their labors. To their son they gave
the Staff so that he might continue their service. Of a
sudden, however, he disappeared, and the Staff with
him." A liquid rattle disturbed Anele's respiration.
"We have discovered no account of his doom. The
Staff has not been found, though the Haruchai and the
folk of the Land sought for it long and arduously."
Stricken, Linden sighed, "All right. Go on. I just"-
weakly she retreated to the nearest wall and slid down
it to the floor-"just need to sit down."
She lacked the courage to hear the rest of Stave's
explanation on her feet.
Apparently considerate, he allowed her a moment to
compose herself. Then he began again.
"You are Linden Avery the Chosen. The Haruchai are
known to you. You must grasp that to speak as you do
is"-again he hunted for the right word-"graceless for
us. Our thoughts are not easily contained in uttered
speech. I can only assure you that we remember, and
learn.
"And we remember much.
"The Haruchai recall High Lord Kevin son of Loric in
his grandeur, with Revelstone his glorious habitation,
and all the Council at his side in strength and peace."
As he continued, Stave's voice took on a slight singsong
cadence. Occasionally he touched on details which had
been mentioned to Linden by Covenant and others,
but most of what he said was new to her.
"Many times many centuries ago," he related, "the
Haruchai marched from their icy fastness in the
Westron Mountains seeking opposition against which
they might measure themselves. They had no wish to
diminish or command those who dwelt elsewhere.
Rather they sought to discover their own true strength
in contest. Therefore they entered the Land. And
therefore, when they had seen the might of High Lord
Kevin and felt the astonishment of his works, our
distant ancestors challenged him.
"However, he declined contention. He desired only
peace and beauty, he treasured the richness of the
Earth's life, and he welcomed the Haruchai in
friendship and honor.
"Your words will not convey his effect upon our
people. Above all else, they desired to show themselves
equal to those admirable Lords. Because they could
not test themselves in combat, they elected rather to
demonstrate their worth in service.
"Together they swore an undying Vow, enabled and
preserved by Earthpower. They became the
Bloodguard, five hundred Haruchai who set aside the
fierce love of their Women and the stark beauty of
their homes, and who neither slept nor rested nor
wavered in the Lords' defense. If one were slain in that
service, the Vow brought another
to take his place.
"For centuries the Bloodguard kept faith. They knew
the marvels of Andelain and the eldritch Forests,
extravagant with Earthpower. They knew the love and
fealty of the Unhomed, the Giants of Seareach. They
knew the broad backs and strong thews and boundless
fidelity of the Ranyhyn, the great horses of Ra, in
whom the Earthpower shone abundantly. In their
Vow, the Bloodguard themselves became men of
wonder."
An undercurrent in Stave's tone suggested that he
would have gladly lived in that ancient time; shared
that Vow.
"Yet High Lord Kevin's greatness was misled by
Corruption. In his love of peace and health, he
countenanced Corruption's place among the Council
of Lords, not recognizing the truth of the Despiser.
And from that honorable blindness arose the enduring
ills which have befallen the Land. For when
Corruption unveiled his face, he had grown too
puissant to be defeated in any contest of arms and
powers, though the attempt was made at great cost.
"The Bloodguard burned to challenge the Despiser
themselves, to exceed his might with their own valor.
They believed that they were indomitable. Corruption
had not
yet taught them otherwise.
"But the High Lord forbade them. He could not bear
to chance that they might fail and fall. Concealing the
darkness in his heart, he ordered the Bloodguard from
the Land. And because they honored him-because they
trusted him-they obeyed his will, dispersing themselves
among the mountains."
A note of sadness entered the faint music of Stave's
tone. "They did not grasp that darkness had mastered
the High Lord's heart. In despair he had conceived a
stratagem of desperation. By his command, both the
Bloodguard and the Unhomed were barred from the
Upper Land. Likewise he sent the folk of the Land
from their homes, and instructed the Ramen to guide
the Ranyhyn away. Then he met with Corruption in
Kiril Threndor, and there challenged the Despiser to
the Ritual of Desecration."
Bits of lamplight reflected from Stave's gaze as if his
eyes were full of embers and kindling, primed for fire.
"It is said that Corruption acceded gleefully.
Desecration is his demesne, and he knew as High Lord
Kevin did not that from such an expression of pain no
life or being or power could emerge unscathed."
Linden lowered her head to her knees to rest her
throbbing neck. She remembered Kevin's tormented
shade as keenly as the cut of a blade.
Anele lay hugging himself with his knees against his
chest. He had turned to face the wall, away from
Linden and Stave. He may have fallen asleep.
"Together," Stave continued, "Corruption and the
Landwaster wrought devastation. In that Ritual, the
old Lords and many of their most precious works were
swept from the Land. Much of beauty was crippled,
and much destroyed utterly. When those
who had been dispersed returned to the Land, they
found a wilderland where they had
left vitality and health. A thousand years passed before
the many healings of the new
Lords bore fruit, and the beauty which belonged to the
Land could grow anew."
There the Haruchai paused briefly.
Linden did not raise her head. She did not want to see
sparks gather into conflagration in his eyes.
When Stave resumed, however, his voice had regained
its familiar dispassion.
"From Kevin Landwaster, the Bloodguard learned the
peril of trust. Linden Avery, you have felt the doubt of
the Haruchai. You know that these words are truth."
She did indeed. The persistent suspicions of Brinn,
Cail, and their companions had caused her more pain
than she could recall without trembling. But she said
nothing that might deflect Stave's narrative.
"The Bloodguard served the new Council as they had
served the old. Once again, they honored the Giants
and the Ranyhyn. Where they could, they gave battle
to Corruption's minions. But they had learned to
doubt, and now they did not relax their vigilance, or
grant unquestioning compliance to any act or choice of
the Lords."
Once more the cadences of distant singing claimed
Stave's tone. "Yet their strength was proven weakness.
In the battles of the new Lords against Corruption's
armies, the Unhomed, whom the Bloodguard loved,
were utterly destroyed. Confronting a Raver in the
flesh of a Giant-a Raver that held a fragment of the
Illearth Stone and was thereby made extravagant in
power and malice-the Giants could not rouse
themselves to oppose their own doom. Therefore they
were slaughtered.
"There the Bloodguard glimpsed the onset of a new
Desecration. For that reason, they determined to take
the Despiser's defeat into their own hands. When the
Illearth Stone had been wrested from the Raver's
hand, three of the Bloodguard, Korik, Sill, and Doar,
claimed that fragment of great evil. Seeking to prevent
a greater ruin, they fulfilled the desire of all the
Bloodguard to challenge Corruption."
Now Stave's tone hinted at bitterness. "They were
mastered easily and entirely. Their skill and fidelity
had no force against Despite. They were enslaved.
They were maimed to resemble the Unbeliever. And
they were dispatched to Revelstone to declare
the Lords' last defeat.
"There the Vow was broken " Vistas of sorrow filled
the background of his voice. "The Bloodguard were
Haruchai. They could not suffer it that they had been
so turned against themselves. The beauty and
grandeur which had inspired the Vow required
flawless service, and they had shown themselves
flawed. Earthpower had enabled their service, but it
had not preserved them from dishonor.
"In the name of the purity which they had failed to
equal, the Haruchai returned to their cold homes,
turning their backs in shame on the Council and the
Ranyhyn, on
Andelain and all the Land. Aided by the last of the
Unhomed, ur-Lord Thomas Covenant defeated
Corruption, and so the Land was spared another
Desecration, but the Haruchai had no hand in that
triumph."
Still Stave's inbred dispassion sustained him. "From
their shame, they learned that they could not endure it.
And from their Vow, they learned that they had been
misled by Earthpower. Such puissance both
transcended and falsified their mortality. Without
Earthpower, they would have remained what they
were, Haruchai, inviolate. They would have known
themselves unequal to such banes as the Illearth Stone
and Ravers."
That Linden understood. She, too, was certain of her
own inadequacy. And she had learned from Thomas
Covenant that such knowledge could be a source of
strength.
"Yet evil continued to flow from the use of
Earthpower," Stave explained. "For thirty centuries
and more, the Haruchai remained among their
mountains and their women, and at last their
memories gave birth to a wish to see what had become
of the Land. Again some among them sojourned
eastward. Thus they discovered the Clave and the
Sunbane.
"So much of their tale you know. The Haruchai were
imprisoned by the Clave. Their fierce blood was shed
to feed the Banefire. When they, and you, were freed
by the Unbeliever, they again set themselves against
Corruption in anger and repudiation.
"But they did not renew the shame of their past
arrogance. Instead they contented themselves in
Thomas Covenant's troubled service, and in yours,
and in defense of the folk of the Land. Therefore they
were not again turned against themselves.
"And again the ur-Lord triumphed over his foe. That
tale the Haruchai heard from the Giants of the Search.
And they heard as well that Linden Avery the Chosen
gave form to a new Staff of Law. Thus you triumphed
over the Sunbane, so that the Land might once again
be allowed to heal."
She found herself nodding, although the movement
hurt her neck. Hardly aware of what she did, she had
raised her head to gaze into Stave's indecipherable
face.
"Desiring a service in which they might also triumph,"
he said, "the Haruchai remained when you had
returned to your world. The new Staff was given to the
folk of the Land, but it was soon lost, and there were
no Lords who might have defended Earthpower from
darkness. The Land required our care."
Anele whimpered as if in nightmare; but he did not
turn from the wall.
"Do you understand me, Linden Avery? We had
learned that the Ritual of Desecration and the Sunbane
were expressions of Earthpower. We had learned that
Earthpower could not preserve any service from
shame, neither ours nor the Lords. We had learned
that mortal hearts are weak, and that Corruption is
cunning to exploit that weakness. And we had learned
to love the Land, as the Lords did before us.
"In the end, we learned that the Land and all its life
would not have suffered such renewed and again
renewed cruelty if Earthpower were not"-again he
paused to
search for a word-"accessible for use. Certainly it is
not Corruption. But in the absence of the Staff of Law,
only Corruption is served when mortal hearts exercise
Earthpower. Even in the presence of the Staff, great
evil may be wrought. Therefore we have taken upon
ourselves the guardianship of the Land.
"We do not rule here. We command nothing. We
demand nothing. All life is free to live as it wills. But
we do not permit any exertion of Earthpower."
Linden stared at him, but she could no longer see him.
Tears blurred her vision. Only Corruption is served-
How was it possible to have learned so much, and to
understand so little?
Earthpower was life: no mere decision or belief on the
part of the Haruchai could gainsay it. Everything that
had form and substance here was in some sense an
"exertion of Earthpower." The true peril lay not in its
use, but in the hearts of those who did not understand
their own vulnerability to despair.
Against that danger, Linden Avery, like Thomas
Covenant before her, was defended by the knowledge
of her inadequacy. She could not be misled by despair
because she did not expect herself to be greater than
she was.
Kevin's Dirt held sway, and caesures stalked the Land,
because the Staff of Law had been lost-and because the
Haruchai did not "permit" any other use of
Earthpower to oppose those evils.
But Stave was not done. "Nor are we content," he
stated more stiffly. "We do more. Though we
remember much, we do not share our memories. We
seek to end all recollection of Earthpower, so that no
new use may arise to thwart us.
"We command nothing," he insisted. "We rule
nothing. But we discourage tales of the past. We relate
none ourselves. We confirm none that others relate.
Human memories are brief, and we nurture that
brevity.
"For many centuries now, the folk of the Land have
known little which might harm them. You are
forgotten, Linden Avery. The ur-Lord himself, whom
we greatly honor, is no longer remembered. If it is
your wish to oppose us, you will find no aid in all the
Land:'
Now Linden dashed the blur from her sight to gape
aghast at the Haruchai, silently begging him to stop.
But he did not.
"In this the Giants have been our gravest hazard. The
folk of the Land are as short of life as of memory, but
the span of the Giants is measured in centuries. They
remember. They return to the Land at intervals, when
their wide sojourning tends hither. And they speak of
what they remember.
"They love long tales, which they recount at all
opportunities. Therefore we are Wary of them. As it
lies within our power, we dissuade their travels to the
Upper Land. And we do what we may to prevent the
folk of the Land from hearing their tales."
Linden flinched as if Stave had struck her-and still he
was not done. "The Giants
have not forgotten you, Linden Avery," he assured
her, "yet you will find no aid among them. Their last
sojourn to the Land ended scant decades ago. They
will not return in your lifetime, or the next."
Good God, she groaned in protest. And you think
you've given up arrogance? Stave's people had gone
beyond folly. Anele was right about them. They might
call Lord Foul their enemy, but they served him and
did not know it.
She should have risen to her feet; faced him with her
anger and dismay. But she did not. He had shaken her
profoundly. The flame of the lamp guttered in her
face, and all of her courage had fallen to ash.
However, her face must have betrayed her reaction.
After a moment, Stave observed, "Still you do not
understand." He addressed her from an unattainable
height. "This manner of speech misrepresents us. It
misrepresents truth. And I have deflected myself from
the pith of that which I must convey."
He appeared to reconsider his approach. "All other
matters are secondary," he said then. "Only the
question of Earthpower signifies. Grasping that, you
will grasp all else."
He began again as though he could read the
floundering incomprehension written in the play of
lamplight on her features, and knew now how to
answer it.
"Consider, Linden Avery. The Elohim are beings of
Earthpower, and they serve only their own freedom
rather than the needs of the Earth. And the Worm of
the World's End is Earthpower incarnate.
"The peril is manifest. It cannot be denied.
"When he had concealed the old Staff of Law so that it
would not constrain him, Kevin Landwaster enacted
the Ritual of Desecration. That was Earthpower.
"Though she held the old Staff in her hands, and
Thomas Covenant urged restraint, High Lord Elena
exercised the essential ichor of the Earth to lift dead
Kevin from his grave. Disdaining his agony, she
compelled his shade against Corruption. Thus was the
Law of Death broken, and the Staff lost, to no avail.
"That was Earthpower."
And still Stave was not done.
"The ancient Forestals were beings of wonder. Long
they labored to preserve the remnants of the One
Forest. Yet when they had dwindled to the last, and
Caer-Caveral stood alone in Andelain, he surrendered
all use and purpose to break the Law of Life so that
Hollian eh-Brand might live again. Now no guardian
remains to the trees, and their long sentience has faded
away.
"That was Earthpower.
"The Vow which misled the honor of the Bloodguard
was made possible by Earthpower. Like the Sunbane
before it, Kevin's Dirt is an expression of Earthpower.
Beasts of Earthpower rage upon Mount Thunder, and
the lurker of the Sarangrave grows restive. Of the evils
which now threaten the Land, only the Falls appear to
spring from
another fount. In all other forms, it is by Earthpower
that the Land is imperiled, as it has been from the
beginning."
There the Master finished. "Give answer, Linden
Avery. As you have said, Brinn of the Haruchai has
become the Guardian of the One Tree. In this he
surpasses our knowledge of ourselves. He both exalts
and humbles us. We must show that we are worthy of
him, in guardianship and devotion.
"We have determined that we will serve the Land.
How then may we countenance any exercise of
Earthpower?"
Still Linden could not muster the strength to stand.
She needed help from someone. She had no idea how
to free her son. She did not even know where to look
for him. Nor could she imagine where the lost Staff
might be found. For that search also she would need
help. And she was certain now that the Haruchai
would not "countenance" such a quest. How could
they? The Staff was an instrument of Earthpower.
She did not answer Stave as he might have desired.
Instead she countered his query with one of her own.
Bowing her head, she asked past the swaying veil of
her hair, "If you're so determined to suppress the past,
why are you willing to let me go?" She was a portion of
the Land's history incarnate. "Aren't you afraid of
what I might do?"
Another man might have sighed. Stave only lifted his
shoulders slightly. "You are Linden Avery the Chosen.
You have stood at the Unbeliever's side, and have kept
faith. To our knowledge, no harm has arisen from you,
or from the wild magic which you now wield. With
white gold, ur-Lord Thomas Covenant has twice
defeated Corruption. And when we have doubted you,
your choices and actions have shown their worth.
"We will"-once more he searched for the right word-
"accept the hazard that you may seek to oppose us."
Oh, I'll oppose you, she wanted to say. I haven't
forgotten a thing. I'll tell it all, and to hell with you.
Don't you understand that Earthpower is life?
Nevertheless she kept her anger to herself. Her plight
was too grave; and she was too
Weak: she feared to declare herself. And Stave would
not be swayed by Jeremiah's peril. Instead of
responding to the Master's assertion, she said
obliquely, "That smog
that yellow shroud. Why is it called Kevin's Dirt?"
His answer had the finality of a knell. "We name it so
because we deem it to be a
foretaste of Desecration. Its pall covers the Land in
preparation."
Have mercy, Linden groaned to herself. A foretaste-
Was Lord Foul that sure of
himself?
Hiding behind her hair, she told the Haruchai softly,
"If that's true, I need time to
think. I want to be alone for a while."
She had come to the end of what she could bear to
hear.
Until she heard the soft rustle of the curtain and knew
that Stave was gone, she did not raise her head.
Incongruously considerate, he had left his lamp
behind.
His people did not allow any use of Earthpower.
Deliberately they had caused its very existence-the
Land's true heritage-to be forgotten.
If Covenant could have heard her-if he had been
anything more than a figment of her dreams-she might
have groaned aloud, I need you. I don't think I can do
this.
Abruptly her companion rolled away from the wall.
His arms trembled as he braced himself into a sitting
position. Tears glistened in the grime on his cheeks,
formed lamp-lit beads in his tattered beard. His lower
lip quivered.
Miserably he breathed, "Anele is doomed."
She could not contradict him. She did not know how.
5.
Distraction
After a time, Anele wore out his inchoate sorrow and
lapsed from weeping. A low breeze seemed to blow
through Linden, scattering the ashes in her heart until
nothing remained to indicate that she had ever known
fire. But she could not remain where she was. The
stone of the floor and walls offered her no
accommodation. Instead its hard surfaces pressed on
her bruises when she already felt too much distress.
Eventually she rose to her feet, picked up the lamp,
and limped across the room to
investigate the other chambers of their gaol.
The curtained doorway near Anele admitted her to
Mithil Stonedown's version of
a lavatory. A stone basin and a large ewer full of water
sat on a low wooden table. Beside them was a pot of
fine sand, presumably for scrubbing away dirt. A clay
pipe an
gled down into the floor answered other needs.
She wanted to wash. A lifetime of ablution might not
suffice to make her clean
again. However, her hurts were too deep and tender to
be rubbed. And she was nearly
prostrate on her feet, hardly able to hold up her head.
Unsteadily she left the lavatory.
In the next chamber, she found what she sought: beds;
two of them standing
against the side walls. They had trestle frames well-
padded with bracken and grass covered by blankets
woven of rough wool. A window interrupted the far
wall above the level of her eyes: it, too, had been
wedged full of rocks.
Turning her head, she informed Anele wanly, "Two
beds." When he did not respond, she added, "You
probably haven't slept in a bed for years."
Still he showed no reaction. He had slumped until his
body appeared to mold itself against the stone.
Sighing, she entered the bedchamber and let the
curtain drop behind her.
For no particular reason, she chose the bed on the left.
Stumbling to it, she sat on its edge and unlaced her
boots, pulled off her socks. Then she stretched out
between two of the blankets and fell instantly asleep.
Pain disturbed her at intervals, but it could not rouse
her. Exhaustion held her
hurts at bay. Jeremiah appeared to her in spikes like
coronary crises. She saw the supplication in his muddy
gaze. Tousled by neglect and rough treatment, his hair
hung in poignant clumps. Horses reared, unregarded,
across the blue flannel of his pajamas.
She wept for him without waking.
Covenant spoke to her distantly, too far away to be
heard. Honninscrave screamed as he contained
samadhi Sheol so that Nom the Sandgorgon could rend
Lord Foul's servant. Covenant insisted, but his desire
to console or guide her could not cross the boundaries
between them. Warped ur-viles fell in butchered
clusters, crushed by the unexpected vehemence of
Vain's midnight hands.
In life, Covenant had drawn her into the light when
her darkness had threatened to overwhelm her. He
had done so repeatedly. He had taught her that her
fears and failures, her inadequacies, were what made
her human and precious; worthy of love. But he could
not reach her now.
Because the ur-viles had turned against the Despiser,
he had destroyed them all.
To free Covenant from the fatal stasis imposed by the
Elohim, Linden had possessed him with her health-
sense. There she had found herself in a field of flowers
under a healing sun, full of light and capable of joy.
Covenant had appeared as a youth, as dear to her as
Jeremiah. He had opened his hands to her open heart,
and had been
made whole.
P
Linden, he called to her faintly, find me.
If her son could have spoken, he might have begged
her for the same thing. In dreams she cried out his
name, and still slept.
ollowed by an echo of her lost loves, she drifted finally
out of slumber. Tears cooled her cheeks when she
opened her eyes.
A weight of lassitude clung to her limbs, holding her
down. Yet she was awake. Dimly lit by small motes and
streaks of sunshine from the blocked window, the
stone walls of her gaol rose around her.
When she glanced at the other bed, she saw that it lay
vacant, untouched. Anele had slept in the outer room.
Or the Haruchai had taken him during the night;
delivered him to RevelstoneHe is the hope of the Land.
Her only companion.
Stupefied with rest and dreams, Linden rolled her stiff
body out of bed.
Her joints protested sharply as she forced herself to
her feet. Standing motionless, she rested for a moment
or two; tried to summon her resources. Then she
shambled forward like a poorly articulated manikin.
Beyond the curtain, gloom filled the outer chamber.
The lamp had burned out. The only illumination
angled in strips past the edges of the leather that hung
in the gaol's entrance.
She could hear no sound from the village around this
small dwelling: no calls or conversation, no passing
feet, no children at play. Mithil Stonedown seemed
entirely still; lifeless as a graveyard. Only Anele's
hoarse breathing humanized the silence.
He lay where Linden had left him, curled tightly
against the wall as if for comfort. In sleep and gloom,
he looked inexpressibly forlorn. Nevertheless she felt a
muffled re
lief to find that he had not been taken from her.
While she slept, fresh bowls of food and water had
been placed on the floor. But they were half empty:
Anele must have eaten again during the night.
For herself, she was not conscious of hunger or thirst.
Somnolence and dreams filled her head, crowding out
other sensations. But she knew that she needed food;
and so she crossed the floor to sit beside the bowls. In
Jeremiah's name, she spooned cold stew into her
mouth and drank cool water until she had emptied
both bowls.
Covenant had told her to find him. Trust yourself Do
something they don't expect
Her dreams were going to drive her crazy.
In an effort to undo their effects, she struggled to her
feet and went into the lavatory. There she splashed
herself with cold water and rubbed her skin with sand
until
her bare feet began to cramp against the unwarmed
floor. Then she returned to the bedchamber to don her
socks and boots.
Simple things: trivial actions. Meaningless in
themselves. Nevertheless they helped her shrug aside
her sense of helplessness.
She had made promises to Anele. She did not regret
that. Because of them, however, she was trapped here
as much as he. But she was a physician, trained to
patience and imprecise solutions; the circadian
rhythms of devotion. If she were a woman who gave
way to frustration-or to despair-she would have lost
courage and will long ago.
Thomas Covenant had taught her that even the most
damaged and frail spirits could not be defeated if they
did not elect to abandon themselves.
When she had secured her resolve, she left the
bedchamber again, intending to open the outer
curtain, locate the nearest Haruchai, and insist on
talking to Stave once more. She wanted to hear
everything that he might be able to tell her about how
the Staff of Law had been lost.
She needed to understand what had become of the
Land.
In the larger room, however, she found Anele awake,
sitting with his back to the wall.
Clearly sleep and food had done him good. His skin
tone and color had improved, and some of the
wreckage was gone from his features. He did not rise
to greet her; but his small movements as he turned his
head and shifted his shoulders seemed more elastic
now, less fragile.
"Anele," she inquired quietly, "how are you? Why
didn't you use the bed? You would have slept better."
He dropped his chin to his chest, avoiding her gaze.
His fingertips moved aimlessly over the stone on either
side of him. "Anele does not sleep in beds. Dreams are
snares. He will be lost in them. They cannot find him
here."
Without her health-sense, Linden felt profoundly
truncated, almost crippled. But she needed to
understand him. As gently as she could, she pursued
him.
"Here?" she prompted, her voice soft. "On the floor?"
"On stone," he acknowledged. "You do not protect
Anele. He has no friend but
stone."
In another phase of his madness, he had claimed that
the rocks around him spoke. "Anele-" Muttering to
herself at the pain in her muscles, Linden squatted to
sit be
side him. Deliberately she set her shoulder against his,
hoping to reassure him. "I said
I Would protect you. I meant it. I just haven't figured
out how yet."
Then she asked, "What does stone do for you? Why do
you need it?" How could walls and floors guard him
from dreaming?
The old man struggled for an answer. "Anele tries- He
strives- So hard. It pains
him. Yet he tries and tries." She waited.
F
After a long moment, he finished, "Always. Trapped
and lost. Anele tries. He must remember."
Remember what? she wanted to ask. What kind of
knowledge did his fractured mind conceal from him?
Why had he chosen madness?
But if he could have answered that question, he would
not have been in such straits. Seeking a way to slip past
his barricades, she asked instead, "Do you remember
me?"
He flashed her a blind glance, then turned his head
away. "Anele found you. High up. The Watch. It
pursued him. He fled. You were there." So much he
retained, if no more.
"Do you remember what happened to us?" Linden
kept her tone calm, almost incurious. She wanted him
to believe that he was safe with her. "Do you
remember what happened to the Watch?"
In spite of her caution, however, she had disturbed
him. He seemed to shrink into
himself. "It came. Anele fell. Fire and darkness. White.
Terrible."
Perhaps she had not phrased her question simply
enough. Gently, softly, she tried
again.
"Anele, are you still alive?"
If he could have caused the wall to swallow him, he
might have done so. "It came," he repeated. "They
came. Worse than death."
Linden sighed to herself. Her brief percipience on
Kevin's Watch had given her the impression that he
was fundamentally responsible for his own condition.
He had chosen insanity as a form of self-defense.
Having chosen it, however, he could not simply set it
aside. He would have to find his own way through it,
for good or ill.
The same necessity ruled her, as it ruled Jeremiah.
Hoping to comfort him, she reached out to squeeze the
old man's shoulder. "Don't worry about it." Covenant
had said the same to her. "It's easier to remember
when you don't try too hard.
"Once I figure out what to do, we'll get out of here. In
the meantime, I'm sure the Masters will bring us more
food and water. And I need someone to talk to"-a new
idea occurred to her in mid-sentence-"preferably
someone who isn't one of them.
She wanted to talk to a Stonedownor. If the Haruchai
would allow her.
Deliberately she climbed to her feet. Limping to the
outer doorway, she pushed the leather curtain aside
and leaned her head into the sunlight.
The door opened on a narrow passage of packed dirt
between flat-roofed stone dwellings. A mid-morning
sky arched overhead, deep blue and apparently
untrammeled in spite of Kevin's Dirt. A few birds
called to each other in the distance, but she heard
nothing else; saw no one. The whole village might have
been deserted.
She wanted to bask in the sun's warmth for a moment,
let its touch sink into her
hurts; but almost immediately one of the Haruchai
appeared around the corner of her gaol.
She recognized the unscarred Master who had helped
Stave capture Anele and her.
"Linden Avery." He bowed as Stave had done, with
both fists extended from the level of his heart. "I am
Bornin. You are welcome among us. What is your
desire?"
She nodded a bow. His characteristic stolidity brought
back her sense of betrayal and outrage. However, she
kept her reaction to herself. "Thank you, Bornin," she
replied evenly. "There are a couple of things you could
do for me, if you don't mind."
Expressionlessly he waited for her to continue.
"We could use more water and something to eat," she
explained. "And I want to talk to one of the
Stonedownors. Is there anyone around who can spare
me a little time?"
If she could not seek out comprehension, she would
make it come to her.
Bornin appeared momentarily uncertain. "What will a
Stonedownor reveal to you that we cannot?"
"I'm not sure," she answered noncommittally. "I
might ask what it's like to live without Earthpower. Or
I might just want some company. Anele isn't much of a
conversationalist."
The Haruchai seemed to consult the open air. Then he
nodded. "Very well, Linden Avery. Do you wish to
accompany me, or will you await my return?"
Thinking of Anele, she swallowed her desire for
freedom and sunshine, and let the curtain drop
between herself and Bornin.
The old man lifted his head briefly, then returned to
his fractured thoughts.
"Anele," she said on an impulse, "you've scrambled to
survive for a long time.
Decades. Does anyone ever help you? Do you have any
friends?"
How was it possible for a demented old man to keep
himself alive? Hunger and in
juries, if not sheer loneliness, should have killed him
long ago.
Again he raised his white eyes. For a moment, he
appeared to consider her question
seriously. "Anele is lost," he said almost calmly.
`Always alone. And always harried. They
seek him.
"But-" Concentration and gloom filled his sightless
gaze. "Folk are kind. When
they are far away. Even here- Anele is fed. Given
raiment. When they are far away. "And-"
His voice trailed off as if he had lost the thread of a
memory. "And?" Linden prompted.
Come on, Anele. Give me something. I can't do it all
alone.
"And-" he began again. He seemed to cower against a
wall deep inside himself.
Creatures. Dark. Fearsome. Lost things, long dead.
Anele fears them. He fears"They feed him. Force
blackness into him. Make him strong. Heal him,
whispering
madness.
"Madness."
Without warning, he shouted in protest, "Creatures
make Anele remember!" Then he collapsed to his side,
clutching his knees to his chest, hiding his face.
"Anele!" At once, Linden dropped to the floor beside
him, tugged him into the cradle of her arms. "Oh,
Anele, I'm so sorry. I know you suffer. I didn't mean to
remind you. I just-"
She had no way of knowing what might cause him
pain. Helpless to do otherwise, she held him and
rocked him until his tension eased and he grew still.
At the same time, she tried to comfort herself. She had
been in worse straits than this. The Clave had
imprisoned her for days: a Raver had demeaned her
utterly. In Kiril Threndor, moksha Jehannum had
tortured her while Covenant confronted the Despiser.
Oh, she had been in worse straits. Much worse.
But Jeremiah had not. Even when he had held his
right hand in the bonfire: even then. That agony had
been relatively brief; and he had found a way to escape
from it. It could not be compared to the torments Lord
Foul might devise for him. His dissociation would not
defend him from the malice of a being who could
possess him
While you are apart from him, you cannot know his
sufferings.
And he could hope for nothing from her. She did not
know where to look for him-and might not have been
able to reach him if she had known.
Anele's state frustrated and pained her; but it also
protected her. If she had not felt compelled to care for
him, she might not have been able to contain her own
anguish.
ater the old man left her to use the lavatory. When he
returned, he sat beside her again, his shoulder
touching hers like a recognition of companionship. For
that she was grateful.
Eventually a hesitant scratching came to the outer
curtain; and the stocky frame of a Stonedownor
ducked inward with a large stone bowl cupped in each
hand. "Anele?" he asked uncertainly. "Linden Avery?
You wished to speak with me? I was told-"
His voice faded into doubt. Unsure of himself, he
stooped to set his bowls on the floor.
Without hesitation, Anele rose to cross the room and
drink from one of the bowls.
Linden struggled to rouse herself. She had asked to
speak to a Stonedownor, but she no longer
remembered why. Nothing that he might say would
enable her to help her son.
The man waited for a long moment, indecisive. Then
he made an attempt to pull up his dignity.
"I see now that I was mistaken. Pardon my intrusion."
With the constrained light behind him, his face lay in
shadows. Yet his eyes found a way to appeal to her.
Somehow he conveyed the impression that he had
come, not because a Master had requested it, but
because he wanted to.
"Wait," Linden murmured hoarsely. "I'm sorry.
Wait."
Somewhere she found the strength to gain her feet.
"I don't mean to be rude." Her own voice seemed to
reach her from a great distance. "I'm just"-her throat
closed convulsively-"just scared."
She took a step or two forward. While the
Stonedownor waited for her, she rubbed her hands
across her face; pulled her hair back over her
shoulders.
"There's something I didn't tell the Masters." She
sounded too far away from herself to speak coherently.
"The Haruchai.
"It's my son-"
Unable to go on, she stopped, hoping that her visitor
would reach out to her in some way.
He seemed to swallow conflicting responses. After a
last hesitation, he said, "I am Liand son of Fostil. The
Master did not say that you wished to speak to me. He
said only that you wished to speak to a Stonedownor. I
presumed to offer myself."
As if he understood that she needed an explanation-a
chance to gather herselfhe continued.
"My duties are among the horses rather than in the
fields, and horses are easily tended. They are few in
any event, and not needed today. Having no other
demands upon me, I often accompany the Masters, or
do their bidding.
"I was-" Sudden embarrassment made him falter. "I
had concealed myself nearby when they took you and
your companion. I helped them to bear you here.
"Since that moment, I have wished to speak with you.
You are strange in the South Plains, and to me, and I
am hungry to learn of new things."
While he spoke, Linden rallied her resources. She felt
the delicacy of his manner, the instinctive
consideration: his unprompted account of his presence
gave her time to prepare. He may have felt awkward,
but he did not appear so to her. Instead he seemed
spontaneously kind.
That contrast with Stave and the Haruchai encouraged
her to gather her courage.
"Thank you, Liand," she said when she could breathe
more easily. "I'm glad you're willing to talk to me."
Anele turned his back, dismissing the Stonedownor,
and moved to sit once again against the far wall.
"Oh, I am willing in all truth." Liand's voice was an
intent baritone, full of concentration and interest.
"Your speech is foreign to my ears, and your raiment
is unlike any I have beheld." Frankly he admitted, "I
am eager to offer whatever I may."
"Thank you," she said again. Inadvertently she had
provided herself with an opening,
an approach to her immediate concerns. As she
considered how she might proceed, she tried to see his
face more clearly. However, the gloom shrouded his
features, blurring their definitions. Tentatively she
asked, "Can you let in more light? The Masters won't
release Anele, and I promised not to leave him. But I
want to be able to look at you."
"Surely." Liand reached at once to the side of the
doorframe, located a hook which must have been
formed or attached for the purpose, and hung the
curtain there. "Will this suffice?"
The sunlight did not stretch far into the chamber; but
enough reflected illumination washed inward to
brighten the room considerably.
"It will"-Linden smiled wanly-"as soon as we sit
down." Easing herself to the floor, she indicated a spot
for him inside the doorway. "Anele and I had a rough
time yesterday," she explained as neutrally as she
could. "I haven't got my strength back yet."
When Liand complied, the light revealed him plainly.
He was a young man, perhaps half her age, with broad
shoulders and sturdy, workman's hands, wearing a
jerkin and leggings of rough wool dyed the hue of
sand. Thick leather sandals protected his feet. His
features reminded her distantly of Sunder, the only
Stonedownor whom she had known well: he had
Sunder's blunt openness without the bereavements and
guilt which had complicated her friend's native
simplicity. And he was characteristically brown-
skinned, brown-eyed. Above his square jaw, imprecise
nose, and eager gaze, his loose hair and eyebrows were
a startling black, as dark as crow's wings.
His mouth seemed made for smiles; but he was not
smiling now.
"I witnessed your capture," he told Linden gravely.
"The Masters were not gentle with you. And I cannot
conceive what you must have endured in the fall of the
Watch. Indeed, I cannot conceive how it is that you yet
live."
Dropping his eyes, he observed noncommittally, "The
Masters may comprehend that wonder, but they
answer inquiries rarely-and never when what has
transpired surpasses our experience. To justify your
captivity, they say only that Anele requires their care,
and that you opposed them."
He did not need to add that he was eager to hear a
better explanation. His excitement was plain in the
feigned relaxation of his posture, the quick clench and
release of his hands. However, she was not ready to put
him in peril. Anything that she revealed might turn the
Haruchai against him. Hell, they might decide to treat
him like they did Anele. She could not take that kind of
chance with him: not yet.
And she did not know if he were truly as guileless as he
appeared. The health-sense which she had regained
and lost again would have discerned his essential
nature. Without it, she had to be more careful.
"Maybe we can talk about that later," she answered.
"There's a lot at stake, and right now I don't know
who I can trust and who I can't." To forestall an
interruption, she
went on more quickly, "I was here once before, but
that was a very long time ago. I
gather my name doesn't mean anything to you?"
The Stonedownor shook his head.
"Thomas Covenant?" she continued. "Sunder son of
Nassic, the Graveler of Mithil
Stonedown? Hollian eh-Brand?"
The First of the Search? Pitchwife?
Liand shook his head again. "This is Mithil
Stonedown. These other names I have never heard."
He hesitated, then asked, "What is a `Graveler'?"
Linden swallowed indignation. Those damn Masters
had suppressed everything. If the people of the South
Plains had forgotten the lore on which their lives had
once depended
Controlling herself with difficulty, she told Liand,
"You see my problem. Too much time has passed. If
you don't even know what a Graveler is-" She sighed.
"I can't tell you who I am, or what I'm doing here.
You wouldn't understand unless I explained the whole
history of the Land first."
Liand leaned forward, undaunted by her response.
"But you are able to explain that history. The Masters
do not speak of such things. If they are asked, they do
not answer.
"Linden Avery, I would do anything that might serve
you, if in return you would share with me the Land's
past. I know naught beyond the small tale of my family
and Mithil Stonedown for a few generations only, a
few score years. Yet I have-"
Abruptly he stopped; pulled himself back from his
enthusiasm. "My heart speaks to me of greater
matters," he said more warily. "Simple fragments of
the Land's lost tale would content me. There is little
that I would not do for you in exchange."
His words nearly broke down her defenses. An offer
like that- She could have taken advantage of him
shamelessly.
Betray the Masters for me. Help us escape. Guide us.
I'll tell you stories that will turn your head inside out.
She might be able to find her son.
Surely the Haruchai deserved no restraint from her?
God, no. In the name of their
own self-esteem, they had deprived the Land of its
history and power; its access to
glory. They deserved anything that she could do to
subvert them.
But she knew better. Stave's convictions may have
offended hers; but that did not
detract from his essential worth: his rigorous honesty
and candor; his readiness to
judge himself more stringently than he judged anyone
else.
And
Unhappily she told herself the truth.
And Liand was no match for them. They were the
Haruchai, preternaturally potent,
and defiantly uncompromising. If she set him against
them, they might kill him. They
would certainly damage his spirit. She would have his
pain on her conscience, and would gain nothing.
In spite of Jeremiah's plight, she could not turn her
back on her own scruples.
Restraining herself, Linden gazed into the
Stonedownor's face. "Convince me," she countered
quietly. "Tell me what you were about to say. `Yet I
have-"'
Liand hesitated. Apparently she had asked him to take
a significant risk. Her nerves stretched as he debated
within himself. In a moment, however, his excitement-
or his trusting nature-won out.
He glanced around quickly; leaned forward. Lowering
his voice to a whisper, he said, "I have ascended the
Watch, though the Masters forbid it. I have seen a vast
pall of harm upon the Land, a dire cloud which I
cannot now discern. And I have beheld the peaks of
the south rise mighty and glorious above that pall,
fraught with majesty. I have ached to sojourn among
them, to taste their rare substance with my own flesh,
though such savors may destroy me.
"Surely at one time the Land itself was home to similar
marvels."
He brought tears to Linden's eyes: she could not
quench the burning he inspired. He had stolen a brief
glimpse of something that should have been readily
apparent to everyone in the Land at all times. Ignorant
of what his people had lost, he did not grieve over it as
she did. Nevertheless the loss was real, and
abominable.
She wanted to match his honesty with her own, in spite
of the danger to him.
"Liand-" Roughly she rubbed back her tears. "I can't
explain things to you right now. Not here," where any
Haruchai might overhear her. "But I'm in trouble, and
I need help.
"I knew the Masters a long time ago. They remember
me. They were my friends then, but I don't think I can
trust them now. They've changed. I want to hear
anything you can tell me about them."
Anele snorted as if in disgust, but did not speak.
Liand's stare showed his concern. "I do not
understand," he admitted. "Your knowledge of them
is surely deeper than mine. They seldom answer our
inquiries. Indeed, they seldom speak. I know only what
all in Mithil Stonedown know, and that is little. There
is a place which they name Revelstone, though what it
may be, or where, they do not say. Upon occasion, they
sojourn there, and return." After a pause, he finished,
"I have observed no alteration in them."
She sighed. "All right. I'll ask it a different way. What
do you know about Lord Foul the Despiser?" She
searched his face. "The Grey Slayer? The Masters call
him Corruption."
At the back wall, Anele flinched, then covered his head
with his arms.
The Stonedownor gave her a perplexed frown. "I fear
that I know nothing. I have never heard these names."
"There," Linden responded bitterly. "That's my
problem.
"The Land has an ancient enemy. If he isn't immortal,
he might as well be. Over the centuries," the millennia,
"he's done more harm than I could possibly describe.
And you've never heard of him.
"The Masters know more about him than I do, and I
know him too damn well." The Despiser had found an
echo of himself in her, and had nearly destroyed her
with it. "He's here. He's still here. But they don't talk
about him.
"Liand," she told the young man as openly as she
could, "that terrifies me."
Stave had explained his position only too well, yet still
she could not comprehend it.
"This Lord Foul," Liand asked uncertainly, "this
Despiser? He remains among us? What has he done?"
Unable to contain her fear and anger, Linden rasped,
"He has taken my son."
Her words seemed to shock the Stonedownor. He
straightened his back; clasped his arms over his
stomach. Alarm darkened his frank gaze.
Anele whimpered softly to himself as though he feared
to be overheard.
"That's my problem," she repeated. "Lord Foul has
my son, and you've never heard of him. The Masters
want you ignorant. They think they can defend the
Land by themselves, even though they're no match for
him.
"I've got to find my son. To do that, I need help. But I
didn't tell Stave about him. I don't want to turn the
Masters against me. If they knew the truth-what I have
to do-" She was already sure that she would not be
able to search for Jeremiah without Earthpower and
the Staff of Law. "I'm afraid they'll try to stop me."
More quietly, she concluded, "I need to make some
decisions. I can't just sit here." And Anele required
freedom. "Anything you can tell me might help me
make up my mind."
Plainly out of his depth, Liand unfolded his arms and
spread his hands. "Linden Avery, I know not how to
reply." Uncertainty confused his gaze. "To me as to all
my people, the Masters have ever been what they are.
Upon occasion, as I have said, they are absent from
Mithil Stonedown. More commonly they are not. They
do not aid us in tilling the soil, or in harvesting crops,
or in gathering fruits. They neither tend the weak nor
succor the infirm. Yet they countenance all that we do.
In no way do they intervene in our pursuits, or alter
our lives."
Linden studied him sharply. "But you said they
forbade you to climb Kevin's Watch "
"Yes," he admitted. "That they have done." His
expression suggested that until this fioment he had not
considered the prohibition unusual. It was merely one
more item on a long list of things which the Masters
did not explain. "I did not dare to defy their command
until a sojourn of some days took them from among
us."
As Liand spoke, a cloud seemed to pass over the sun.
The light reflecting through the doorway grew dim,
bleeding illumination from the room. Shadows
obscured his face as he added, "And they discourage
wandering. They say that our lives are better lived in
proximity to Mithil Stonedown."
Then his tone quickened. "Yet we have horses because
the Masters provide them." Apparently he considered
it important to describe the Haruchai fairly. "Our
herd is too scant to be replenished by breeding, and
they say that we must have means to bear tidings
swiftly at need."
After a brief pause, he said, "Also they aid us against
the kresh. And-"
"Kresh?" interrupted Linden. That name was new to
her.
"The yellow wolves," Liand explained, "more terrible
in size than the grey wolves we know, and savage
beyond description. Our old songs and tales speak of a
time when no such beasts harried the Plains. For three
generations, however, or perhaps four, kresh have
fallen upon us at intervals, hunting blood in fearsome
packs. Lacking the aid of the Masters, we could not
withstand them.
"In this our mounts are precious. At any warning-
often it is the Masters themselves who warn us-we ride
abroad to gather our people so that we may make
defense
in Mithil Stonedown."
Linden had expected the light to improve as the cloud
drifted past; but it did not. Instead twilight gathered in
the room, and a faint chill breathed past the open
curtain. The weather was changing. When she glanced
away from Liand to check on Anele, she saw that the
old man had begun to shiver.
For a moment, she yearned for percipience so keenly
that she could not continue. In the Land as she had
once known it, the simple touch of the air on her cheek
would
have told her what the deepening gloom presaged.
But aching for her lost health-sense weakened her as
much as the loss itself. With an effort, she set the pang
aside.
"You said sometimes the Masters go away. For days?"
"Upon occasion," the Stonedownor affirmed. "Other
absences are less prolonged. Revelstone was three
hundred leagues away. Even on horseback, the
journey would
take more than a few days.
"Do you know where they go?" she asked. "I mean,
when they aren't going to Revelstone. Why do they
need to go anywhere?"
Liand shrugged. "They are the Masters. They reveal
little, and explain less.
"However," he added more slowly, "at times they
accept my company, when MY duties permit it. Thus I
have learned that in certain absences they searched for
your companion."
Linden caught her breath. In this also, Anele had told
the truth.
"I know not," Liand went on, "why they have
attended so to the capture of one frail old man. Nor am
I able to describe how he has eluded them. I could not
have done so in his place. Yet it is certain that their
desire against him is no recent wish."
She nodded in the gloom. The sun's light had faded
further, and as it did so the air grew noticeably cooler.
Soon she might start to shiver. Liand's account was
consistent with what both Stave and Anele had told
her.
How had the old man been able to evade capture? She
could not imagine. Like Liand, she would have been
helpless to foil the Haruchai.
If she wanted to escape, she needed to learn Anele's
secret.
He had mentioned dark, fearsome creatures. Lost
things, long dead. Creatures that forced him to
remember
That question would have to wait. Something that
Liand had been about to reveal nagged at her. Instead
of pursuing his sporadic travels with the Masters, she
said, "A minute ago, you started to say something else.
You mentioned kresh and-?"
He frowned, momentarily confused. "Kresh and-?"
But then his expression lifted. "Ah, yes. I meant to add
that the Masters aid us also against the Falls."
As if to himself, Anele muttered, "Caesures."
"Go on," Linden urged the young man.
Liand sighed. "By some means which we do not
comprehend, and which the Masters do not explain,
they discern the Falls at great distance. We are
scarcely able to behold the Falls when they are nigh,
yet the Masters perceive their presence and their
movements from afar. Destructive as they are, and
unpredictable to us, they might well have torn us from
life if the Masters did not forewarn and guide us."
The Stonedownors could not detect the caesures
because they had been blinded; yet the Haruchai had
not so much as mentioned Kevin's Dirt to Liand's
people.
Cursing to herself, Linden asked, "Could you see the
Fall that broke Kevin's
Watch?"
Liand shook his head. "We could not. The distance
was too great for our eyes. We
only guessed at its presence when the spire fell."
She understood none of this. What did Lord Foul gain
by it? Nevertheless the yellow smog baffled her less
than did the caesures. If she could not imagine its
ultimate purpose, she could grasp the nature of its evil.
But the migraine aura which had shattered Kevin's
Watch was another matter. She had seen that it was
potent and harmful; but what was it for?
Groping, she probed further.
"You said you've had trouble with kresh for three or
four generations. How long have you had to worry
about Falls?"
"Four score years, perhaps, or five. Falls are more"-he
grimaced-"remarkable
As Liand spoke, a cloud seemed to pass over the sun.
The light reflecting through the doorway grew dim,
bleeding illumination from the room. Shadows
obscured his face as he added, "And they discourage
wandering. They say that our lives are better lived in
proximity to Mithil Stonedown."
Then his tone quickened. "Yet we have horses because
the Masters provide them;' Apparently he considered
it important to describe the Haruchai fairly. "Our
herd is too scant to be replenished by breeding, and
they say that we must have means to bear tidings
swiftly at need."
After a brief pause, he said, "Also they aid us against
the kresh. And-"
"Kresh?" interrupted Linden. That name was new to
her.
"The yellow wolves," Liand explained, "more terrible
in size than the grey wolves we know, and savage
beyond description. Our old songs and tales speak of a
time when no such beasts harried the Plains. For three
generations, however, or perhaps four, kresh have
fallen upon us at intervals, hunting blood in fearsome
packs. Lacking the aid of the Masters, we could not
withstand them.
"In this our mounts are precious. At any warning-
often it is the Masters themselves who warn us-we ride
abroad to gather our people so that we may make
defense in Mithil Stonedown."
Linden had expected the light to improve as the cloud
drifted past; but it did not. Instead twilight gathered in
the room, and a faint chill breathed past the open
curtain. The weather was changing. When she glanced
away from Liand to check on Anele, she saw that the
old man had begun to shiver.
For a moment, she yearned for percipience so keenly
that she could not continue. In the Land as she had
once known it, the simple touch of the air on her cheek
would have told her what the deepening gloom
presaged.
But aching for her lost health-sense weakened her as
much as the loss itself. With an
effort, she set the pang aside.
"You said sometimes the Masters go away. For days?"
     ed:' "Upon occasion," the Stonedownor affirmed.
"Other absences are less prolong Revelstone was three
hundred leagues away. Even on horseback, the
journey would
take more than a few days.
"Do you know where they go?" she asked. "I mean,
when they aren't going to Rev elstone. Why do they
need to go anywhere?"
Liand shrugged. "They are the Masters. The reveal
little, and explain less. "However," he added more
slowly, "at times they accept my company, when "Our
duties permit it. Thus I have learned that in certain
absences they searched for companion."
Linden caught her breath. In this also, Anele had told
the truth.
"I know not," Liand went on, "why they have
attended so to the capture of one frail old man. Nor am
I able to describe how he has eluded them. I could not
have done so in his place. Yet it is certain that their
desire against him is no recent wish."
She nodded in the gloom. The sun's light had faded
further, and as it did so the air grew noticeably cooler.
Soon she might start to shiver. Liand's account was
consistent with what both Stave and Anele had told
her.
How had the old man been able to evade capture? She
could not imagine. Like Liand, she would have been
helpless to foil the Haruchai.
If she wanted to escape, she needed to learn Anele's
secret.
He had mentioned dark, fearsome creatures. Lost
things, long dead. Creatures that forced him to
remember
That question would have to wait. Something that
Liand had been about to reveal nagged at her. Instead
of pursuing his sporadic travels with the Masters, she
said, "A minute ago, you started to say something else.
You mentioned kresh and-?"
He frowned, momentarily confused. "Kresh and-?"
But then his expression lifted. "Ah, yes. I meant to add
that the Masters aid us also against the Falls."
As if to himself, Anele muttered, "Caesures."
"Go on," Linden urged the young man.
Liand sighed. "By some means which we do not
comprehend, and which the Masters do not explain,
they discern the Falls at great distance. We are
scarcely able to behold the Falls when they are nigh,
yet the Masters perceive their presence and their
movements from afar. Destructive as they are, and
unpredictable to us, they might well have torn us from
life if the Masters did not forewarn and guide us."
The Stonedownors could not detect the caesures
because they had been blinded; yet the Haruchai had
not so much as mentioned Kevin's Dirt to Liand's
people.
Cursing to herself, Linden asked, "Could you see the
Fall that broke Kevin's Watch?"
Liand shook his head. "We could not. The distance
was too great for our eyes. We only guessed at its
presence when the spire fell"
She understood none of this. What did Lord Foul gain
by it? Nevertheless the yellow smog baffled her less
than did the caesures. If she could not imagine its
ultimate purpose, she could grasp the nature of its evil.
But the migraine aura which had shattered Kevin's
Watch was another matter. She had seen that it was
potent and harmful;
but what was it for?
Groping she probed further.
ha`eYousaid you've had trouble with kresh for three
or four generations. How long
to worry about Falls?"
"Four score years, perhaps, or five. Falls are more"-he
grimaced-"remarkable
than kresh, fearsome though the wolves may be. They
disturb our lives more pro. foundly." Liand thought
for a moment, then offered, "If I question my people, I
may be able to determine the time of their first
appearance among us."
Eighty or a hundred years. Three or four generations.
Caesures and kresh had begun to afflict the South
Plains at about the same time.
"What do the Falls do?" Linden asked intently.
The young man's mouth twisted again. "They are
destructive, as I have said." He did not enjoy the taste
of his memories. "Trees and shrubs are often blasted,
and crops are ruined as though plows by the score had
torn through them. At times we have been brought
near to starvation by the loss of our fields, and winter
has been cruel to us because we could find little wood
to feed our fires." He sighed. "Beyond question the aid
of the Masters has enabled us to endure."
His voice held a note of fatality as he concluded,
"Stone may withstand a Fall, though it does not do so
repeatedly. But any beast or bird or human that nears
a Fall is swallowed away and does not return."
Linden stared at him. Swallowed away? Actually
devoured? God! No wonder Anele was terrified
Fearing Liand's answer, she asked, "How often do you
see Falls?"
He shrugged uncomfortably. "We cannot foretell
them. They are not constant. However, the interval
between them is commonly measured in years. Some
pass, harmless, across the Plains. Others disappear
among the mountains, or emerge from them. It is rare
that a Fall enters this valley."
As he spoke, Linden winced at an abrupt flash of
intuition. Caesures had begun to afflict the Land, say,
ninety years ago. Covenant had told her that roughly a
year passed in the Land for every day in her ordinary
world. And three months had passed since she had
restored a white gold ring
Was it possible? Behind Liand's shrouded form, and
the blank stone walls, and the gloom, Linden seemed to
see Roger's mother in her hospital bed raising her fist
against herself. Had Lord Foul taken hold of Joan's
mind so completely that she had been able to reach
across the barrier between realities with wild magic?
Had Joan caused the Falls by beating out her pain on
the bones of her temple? di
if so, the danger was about to get a lot worse. She was
here now; able to strike rectly at the Land.
And Linden was inadvertently responsible. Nothing in
her experience had prepare her for the possibility that
Joan's madness might have power across such
distances.
Even the Staff of Law-if Linden could somehow
contrive to find it-might Prove useless against such
wrong.
Her voice shook as she asked, "Do the krc° h ever
attack while you're threatened bY'
a Fall?"
How far did Joan's insanity-and Lord Foul's
machinations-extend? Kevin's Dirt effectively masked
the caesures. Did the Falls similarly disguise the peril
of the wolves?
"I have beheld one such attack," Liand admitted, "no
more. Yet when they neared the Fall, the kresh
attempted flight. Those that failed were consumed."
His answer gave her a small relief. It suggested that
Joan-or the Despiser-was somehow constrained;
limited. Or that separate intentions were at work;
hungers driven by differing impulses.
Nevertheless she did not understand it. It did not
sound like Lord Foul. Surely his appetite for ruin
would be better fed by a coordinated assault? The
Masters alone could not repeatedly withstand such an
attack.
Stave's people had spent centuries ensuring that the
Land had no other defenders.
Linden needed more information. She lacked some
crucial fact or insight which would have allowed her to
grasp the Despiser's purpose.
"So kresh and Falls are new," she mused.
"Comparatively. Have there been any other changes?
Maybe not in your lifetime, but in the past few
generations? Do your people talk about anything
unusual? Has anything strange happened?"
"Do you mean apart from the fall of the Watch, and
your own presence?" Liand's tone suggested a grin,
but the accumulating gloom concealed his features.
"Do you inquire of stillbirths, or twins, or unwonted
blights?" Then he shook his shadowed head. "Surely
you do not.
"One event," he said more seriously, "which we would
deem `strange' without hesitation has transpired.
Indeed, I was present at its occurrence. Though I was
little more than a child, I recall it well-as do we all."
"Tell me," Linden urged.
He rubbed his arms roughly for a moment, as if the
thought of what he would say left him vulnerable to
the growing cold. Outside the day had turned
crepuscular somehow ominous: she could hardly make
out the wall of the home beyond her
gaol.    erratic breeze began to scrub up dust from the
pkd dit bth acereween te
b'
stonedown,
om ine their hearts for the aid and comfort of all."
For rea
s of
his own, Anele left th
e rear wall and crept forward on his hands and
Liand
continued.
The occasion cd ih
ommencen te ordinary fashion, occupied with matters
which
and
dwellings.
"The occasion itself" he said quietly, remembering
dismay, "was in no way remarkable. Our folk had
gathered at day's end in the center of the Stonedown to
speak of that which had been accomplished, and to
prepare for the morrow's labors. Also such gath


erings provide opportunity for songs and tld Th d
aes an ease.uso the folk of Mithil
windlk
puced at the curtai A
n.n accumulating tension in the air hinted at thunder.
son
fees He
. m ay h
ave wished to hear better.
held little interest for a child of my few years. Labors
were discussed, plans made. I at, tended to them
scantly, awaiting tales.
"Yet of a sudden it became apparent that a stranger
stood among us. His visage was merely unfamiliar, for
we had never seen him before. And his raiment
resembled ours. We found it surpassingly strange,
however, that none of us had observed his approach.
Indeed, the Masters themselves had given no sign that
they were aware of him ere he appeared.
"He did not ask for our notice. He merely awaited it.
Yet soon every eye and ear was concentrated toward
him. Then he began to speak."
An abrupt gust pulled the curtain from its hook. The
leather slapped down, sealing out the last of the light.
Startled, Linden clutched at Covenant's ring. Now she
could see nothing of Liand except his outlines. Anele
was an undefined blur in the center of the chamber,
breathing feverishly through his teeth.
Almost whispering, the Stonedownor said, "The
stranger spoke of matters which conveyed no meaning
to us. Sandgorgons. Croyel. A shadow upon the heart
of his kind. Merewives and other bafflements. To none
of them could we make response. We did not
comprehend them.
"Then, however"-Liand faltered as though the
memory still discomfited him"he informed us that a
bane of great puissance and ferocity in the far north
had slipped its bonds, and had found release in Mount
Thunder.
"`Mount Thunder'?" we inquired of him courteously.
"`We know nothing of that place. Is it near? Does it
concern us? We are imperiled betimes by Falls. But
packs of kresh are the only harm which has visited us
from the north."'
Linden groaned like the mounting wind. In the gaps
between gusts, she heard a faint sizzling noise like rain
on hot stone. Liand's people had never even heard of
Mount Thunder- The thoroughness with which the
Haruchai had expunged the Land's past shocked her.
But Liand could not see her reaction; knew nothing of
her concerns. He had not stopped.
"At first the stranger answered us with anger. Were
we blind? Had we grown foolish across the centuries?
Did we disdain the harsh evils of the world? "There,
however, Stave of the Masters intervened. I have not
forgotten his words•
"`Elohim,' he said, `you are not welcome here."' Oh,
hell. Linden gaped at the dark. An Elohim? What were
those arrogant, Earth'
powerful beings doing in the Land? e
In the distance, thunder opened a cannonade.
Crushing volleys echoed from the mountains which
sheltered Mithil Stonedown. Anele quaild at the sound
as though each barrage were aimed at him.
"`These folk are ignorant, Haruchai,' replied the
stranger. `You have maimed them of knowledge. Their
doom is upon your heads.' But he did not tell us what
he meant.
"Instead he gave warning. `Beware the halfhand,' he
pronounced in a voice which shook our hearts. Then
he appeared to dissolve into the air as salt does in
water, and was gone, leaving only the taste of
disturbance on our tongues "
If she could have cleared her throat, Linden might
have protested, Beware the halfhand? Distress
crowded her chest. That title had been given to
Thomas Covenant during his first visit to the Land.
But Jeremiah was also a halfhand, in his own way.
She hardly heard Liand ask, "Do you deem that
strange, Linden Avery? Do you know of this
`halfhand'?"
The Elohim had never trusted Covenant. They had
feared his white ring; feared its power to compel even
them, despite their fluid transcendence. But he was
dead
What did they know of her son?
They were Elohim. They knew everything that
transpired throughout the Earth. It was their nature to
know. Of course they were aware of Jeremiah's plight.
Surely they understood Lord Foul's intentions
precisely?
"It troubles us still," Liand admitted when she did not
respond, "though the stranger has not returned. For
that reason, my heart speaks to me of matters greater
than the Masters permit us to know."
Beware the halfhand.
Find me, Covenant had pleaded in her dreams.
She had assumed that her son had been taken as a
hostage against her, so that she might be coerced into
surrendering Covenant's ring. But the warning of the
Elohim seemed to imply a larger danger.
Larger than the destruction of the Arch of Time and
the extinction of the Earth-?
Seconded by thunder, Liand finished, "And therefore I
ascended the Watch, defying the prohibition of the
Masters, though to do so may have been foolish and
perilous. I wish to know the name of our doom."
Linden stared at him, seeing nothing. Worse than Lord
Foul's complete victory-?
"Protect Anele," the old man whimpered through the
thrashing of the wind. "Power comes. It will shred his
heart."
"Linden Avery." Liand's voice held a note of
supplication. "Speak to me. You grasp much which is
denied to us. Do you comprehend this doom? Who is
this Elohim? What is the `halfhand,' that we must be
wary of him?"
Magnified by the wind, thunder thudded against the
ground so heavily that
the floor under her shook. The air flurrying past the
curtain had turned as cold as frost.
She had encountered the croyel. They were parasites
which gave power in exchange for mastery. She had
seen them unify the primitive savagery of the
arghuleh; exalt Kasreyn of the Gyre's dangerous
theurgies.
What might such a creature do to Jeremiah?
The croyel posed no threat to the Elohim. The danger
must be to the Land, and to the Earth. Or to her son
"What's happening?"
She did not hear herself speak aloud. She only knew
that the thunder had grown as violent as the rending of
Kevin's Watch.
"Protect," Anele repeated. His voice quavered in
fright.
Abruptly a ragged wail carried along the wind. "We
are assailed!" At once, Liand sprang to his feet.
"Kresh?" he gasped. "Now?"
In a rush, he flung himself past the curtain;
disappeared between the dwellings. Instinctively
Linden surged upright, echoing Liand's question.
Wolves? In a storm
like this?
No. Not unless the Despiser had compelled them to
attack.
Mithil Stonedown would need all of its defenders. Even
the Haruchai might find themselves overwhelmed.
"Come on," she told Anele urgently. With her right
hand, she gripped Covenant's ring. "They need help,
and I can't leave you. You're coming with me."
Her companion did not react. He could not have heard
her. Wind and thunder like detonations smothered her
voice.
"Come on!" she yelled, beckoning furiously at the
thick gloom. Then she slapped the curtain aside and
hurried into the storm.
There, however, she staggered to a halt.
She stood in the narrow passage between her gaol and
the nearest home. It was deserted: every passage in
sight was deserted. The Masters had abandoned their
watch on Anele. The force of the wind had swept them
away.
Clouds frothed like spume overhead, black and grey
tangled together, and racing for the horizons. The
dwellings around her appeared in shades of darkness,
as comfortless as sepulchers. Dust stung at her eyes
and flared away.
She expected rain, but there was none.
Out of the gloom, Anele stumbled against her back. He
caught himself, staggered t° her side. His lips worked
feverishly, but she could not hear him.
If Liand's people and the Haruchai fought kresh, they
did so without a sound no snarling; no cries of effort or
pain.
Not wolves, then; or any other form of attack that
Linden knew. A running battle could not be waged in
silence between shocks of thunder.
The whole Stonedown had lost its voice. She and Anele
might have been the only ones left alive
The next slam of thunder brought no lightning. She
had seen none since the storm began. Instead the
shrouded air ahead of her seemed to congeal into a
knot of perfect and impenetrable blackness: distilled
ebony or obsidian. Even her blunted senses felt its
concentration and power like a shout of wreckage.
As she stared at it in dismay, it shattered downward.
Dirt and broken stone spouted from the ground where
the power struck; too much stone. Stunned moments
passed before she understood that a home had been
blasted to scree and flinders.
No natural force drove this storm. It was the
Despiser's handiwork. Nothing in Mithil Stonedown
could hope to stand against it.
Except wild magic
She started forward again.
A heartbeat later, she stopped once more.
If Lord Foul had caused this storm, what did he hope
to gain? Gratuitous destruction? Homelessness and
pain? He delighted in such things. But she
remembered him vividly. Always he hid one purpose
within another. He would not be content with tearing
Mithil Stonedown apart. He wanted more
What would happen if she allowed herself to be lured
into a contest of powers, white fire against black
havoc? She did not know how to use Covenant's ring.
If she found the way, she might break the storm, save
some of Liand's people. Or the seething clouds might
prove too potent for her. She might be impelled to flee
for her life. Or worse, might lose control completely
Or she might find that she could not raise wild magic
by any act of will. Unable to defend herself, she might
be struck down by the storm. Jeremiah's last faint
hope would be gone.
In either case, the Masters would imprison Anele again
when the danger passed. Her chance to escape-perhaps
the only chance she would get-would be gone. That
would serve the Despiser beyond question.
No, she panted to herself. No. She would not. Not while
she could still breathe and think_
Do something they don't expect.
-and run.
M If this storm was aimed at her, it might follow.
Some of the Stonedownors, at least,
would be spared. And Stave's people might not be able
to pursue her.
Wheeling, she reached out for Anele, grabbed him by
the shoulder of his tattered tunic. Instead of trying to
shout through the wind, she shoved him ahead of her,
away from the boiling center of darkness.
He complied as though she had set a goad to his ribs;
as though he were not hindered by blindness.
Together they ran with all their strength between the
dwellings and out of the Stonedown: away from
thunder and Masters and the Land she knew.
6.
The Despiser's Guidance
South: Linden prayed that she and Anele ran south;
deeper into the valley. Surely that black storm arose
from the north?-from the peril which had
Chi
found its release in Mount Thunder? If so, she needed
to flee southward, toward the place where the
mountains rose like barricades.
Away from Masters and dark thunder and Jeremiah.
Something they don't expect.
Away from any hope that she would find people to
help her. Dreams are snares.
Running, hardly able to see, she and the old man made
their way between the homes and out of Mithil
Stonedown. Anele stayed near her without urging or
     of
In every phase of his madness, apparently, he
understood flight and did by need vision. Indeed, when
they gained open ground he began to pull ahead. G
some instinct which she could hardly imagine, his feet
seemed to find and follow a path of their own accord,
despite the dense cloud and trailing thunder. were too
She did not want that. The Haruchai would come in
pursuit. 1 e the village doughty, and too familiar with
power, to die in the darkness that And they had access
to horses. Any path would guide the Masters swiftly
apt h her.
den
Hoping that she had chosen the right direction and
knew where she was, Linden panted at Anele's back,
"Not that way! Head for the river!" Anele were
going Liand's village lay on the eastern bank of the
Mithil. If she and Ane
south they could reach the watercourse by veering to
their right. Perhaps they would be able to confuse the
Haruchai by crossing the river-or by traveling along it.
or by floating down it, as she and Covenant had done
with Sunder under a sun of rain.
Would Stave make that assumption? He might.
Certainly he would have to consider it seriously. If she
could slip past Mithil Stonedown on the river, aiming
toward the open expanse of the South Plains, she
would be difficult to track.
And if she rode the current of the Mithil long enough,
it would carry her to the southern edge of Andelain.
There she might discover the counsel and guidance of
the Dead
It was possible that those shades no longer occupied
the Hills. The Masters would know. But they would
also know that she did not. Surely they might believe
that she would head in that direction?
Fearing that she might lose him in the heavy gloom,
Linden ran hard after Anele as he angled away from
the path. He must have understood her, in spite of his
derangement. And must have believed, as she did, that
they fled for the south.
She could hardly see her feet, but her boots found easy
footing on the tough cushion of the grass. And in
moments the turf seemed to lean gently downward,
perhaps declining toward the watercourse. For a few
strides, she ran more easily.
Nevertheless she soon knew that her attempt to escape
would fail.
She did not have the strength to run far. Already she
could scarcely breathe. The heavy cloud filled her sight
like dusk, swirled like phosphenes before her:
darkness seeped into her eyes as if her life and blood
were oozing away. Again and again, she missed her
balance and nearly fell; or the harsh wind knocked her
off her stride.
She had been battered too severely; had found too
little rest. Her flesh demanded days of healing, not
hours. And she had not prepared herself- For ten
years, she had done little to sustain the physical
toughness that she had developed on her travels with
Thomas Covenant.
If the Despiser had appeared before her here and now-
and if she could have drawn one full breath-she would
have flung everything she had against him without
hesitation. But she could not, simply could not, evade
the Haruchai by running.
Yet Anele sped ahead of her over the dim grass as
though all fatigue, every vestige of his mortality, had
been left behind in the gaol of the Masters. Galvanized
by EarthPower or dread, and hardened by years of
privation, he outdistanced her easily. Already he had
begun to fade from sight, evanescent as a specter in the
fog. In another moment she would lose him altogether.
She thought she heard him cackle as he ran,
overflowing with mad glee. She would have begged
him to slow down if she could have made any sound
except gasping.
Then without transition she saw him clearly for an
instant, and a glimpse of sunlight flared ahead of her.
The outer edge of the storm-? Goading herself
forward, she struggled after him.
Another flash of sunlight: a sweep of hillside, sloping
mildly downward. Abruptly the cerements of the
strange storm unwound from her limbs, and she broke
free into dazzling light and clean day.
Momentarily exhausted, she dropped to her hands and
knees, panting while the grass seemed to sway under
her and the low breeze tugged her sideways.
For a while, she heard nothing except her hoarse
breathing and the unsteady labor of her heart. The
hills around her seemed silent as a grave, deprived of
birds and life by the passage of the storm. She meant
to lift her head, look for Anele, but the muscles in her
neck and shoulders refused to obey her. For all she
knew, he had continued running; would continue until
he had left her behind forever.
After a few moments, however, the sound of movement
upon the grass reached her, and a pair of old feet,
abused and bare, appeared at the edge of her vision.
Anele had returned for her.
He chortled in tight bursts like a man who could not
catch his breath for mirth.
Linden tried to say his name, but she had no breath.
How far had she stretched her frail attempt at escape?
A hundred yards? Two hundred? The Masters would
recapture her swiftly when the attack on Mithil
Stonedown ended.
"Pathetic," Anele cackled in Lord Foul's voice.
"Entirely abject. You disappoint me, Linden Avery. I
would delight to see you grovel thus, but I have not yet
earned your prostration.
"If you had not released this failing cripple, my
servants the Haruchai would have aided you. They
would have fostered your false hopes. Now they will
hunt you down and imprison you.
"This displeases me."
She had no stamina; but she could still feel outrage. At
once, she surged to her feet, clutching for Covenant's
ring with fury in her gaze.
Anele flinched involuntarily. His blind eyes wept dread
and misery as his mouth articulated the Despiser's
bitter laughter.
"Damn it, Foul!" she panted through her teeth.
"Leave him alone. If you need a victim, try me. Take
your chances."
"And if I do not?" Lord Foul retorted. "If I elect
rather to mock you with this cripple's torment? What
then? Insipid woman! Will you scour the life from
these displaced bones for my amusement?"
Linden yearned for strength; for the validation of
white fire. Wild magic would have given force to her
repudiation. If Covenant's ring had not lain inert in
her grasp she might have been able to daunt even the
Despiser. But she was not Covenant. His power did not
belong to her.
 Nevertheless her anger was enough for her. With ire
and determination, if not with fire, she confronted
Anele's anguish.
"Are you having fun, asshole?" she lashed out. "Enjoy
it while you can. Sooner or later, I'm going to recover
my health-sense." Somehow. "And when I do, you will
leave
Anele alone. That I guarantee.
"If you don't, I'll be able to get at you." More than
once, percipience had enabled her to take possession of
Covenant. "I'll tear you out of him with my bare
hands."
For what he did to Jeremiah as much as for his cruelty
to Anele.
The old man recoiled in fright. The spirit within him
chortled harshly.
"Do you believe so?" he retorted. "That would please
me. I would find satisfaction in such a contest. And this
mad vessel, that clings so stubbornly to continuance
when he should have perished ages ago"-Lord Foul
laughed outright "ah, he would be quite destroyed."
Not necessarily, Linden assured him in silence. You
have no idea what I can do.
As matters stood, however, she posed no true threat.
She knew that. Though Anele's plight wrung her heart,
she gained nothing by exhausting herself with anger.
Sagging, she released the ring. "Then what is all this
for?" she countered bitterly. "Does mocking us please
you so much that you just can't resist? Hell, you can't
escape unless you destroy the whole Earth. Don't you
have anything better to do?"
Come on, Foul. Reveal something I can use. Tell me
what you've done.
"At this moment?" the Despiser asked merrily.
"Indeed I do. You must be restored, lest you prove
unable to serve me. I mean to assist you."
Abruptly her companion turned away, beckoning her
to follow. "Come, woman. Accept our guidance. We
will show you hurtloam."
For the first time since she had regained her feet,
Linden looked past him and saw the Mithil River at
the bottom of the slope, bright with sunshine hardly a
stone's throw away. Beyond it, mountains reared
upward, jagged as teeth, forbidding the sky. Off to her
right, they declined toward the plains; but in the south
they gathered into a rugged wall at the head of the
valley.
Behind her, partially hidden by the shape of the
terrain, the storm still boiled and frothed over Mithil
Stonedown. Apart from the occasional thunderclap of
violence, the only sounds she could hear were the
damp rush of the river between its banks, murmuring
of high cold and distant seas, and her own labored
respiration.
Somewhere she had heard of "hurtloam," but she
could not remember what it was, or who had
mentioned it.
In spite of the storm, the air held a crisp tang that
hinted at snow and ice among the distant peaks. The
breeze on her flushed cheeks felt like spring; and the
Mithil's current was turbulent, heavy with melted
winter.
The Haruchai would come in pursuit as soon as the
attack on Mithil Stonedown
ended.
Seeing that she had not moved, Anele beckoned more
urgently. "You require healing,"
Lord Foul assured her. "Without it, these self-maimed
Masters will ensnare you blithely and this time you
will not win free. They will hold you helpless until I am
forced to foil them on your behalf.
"Without hurtloam, also," he added as though he were
explaining himself to a dotard, and weary of it, "you
will not regain the discernment which renders You
able to serve me.
"Come, I say. I find little sport in your wretchedness.
Be assured that this abject old man does not wish
harm upon you."
The sweat had begun to dry on Linden's forehead.
Hurtloam? She could not run farther: escape was no
longer possible. But she could think, and probe, and
stand her ground.

I mean to assist you.
She did not believe him for an instant; could hardly
credit that Lord Foul had spoken such words.
Nevertheless his bizarre offer gave her an opportunity
which she did not intend to miss.
Feigning boldness, she retorted, "And you think I'll do
what you tell me why? Because I've lost my mind? I'm
suddenly stupid? Shit, Foul, you've had things your
own way too long. You're getting complacent."
"Blind fool!" the Despiser jeered. Anele's moonstone
eyes rolled in desperation. "Do you doubt that the
Haruchai will give chase? Do you conceive that they
will now offer you friendship and aid?"
Linden replied with a laugh full of warning. "Of
course not. But I know you, Foul. I know better than to
believe anything you say."

"Paugh!" he spat. "You have never known wisdom or
discernment sufficient to comprehend my designs.
Your defiance serves no purpose. It merely feeds my
Contempt. You disdain me at your peril."

"So convince me," she countered promptly. "Give me
a reason to listen to you.

Anele squirmed as though she had threatened him
with fire. Tears formed a sheen on his seamed cheeks.
His head flinched from side to side as if he feared to
speak. But the Despiser ruled him, and he could not
remain silent.
"I have said;" Lord Foul answered, "that the
Haruchai serve me, albeit unwitting, That is sooth.
Also it is sooth that they will imprison you.
"Whether you partake in them or no, my designs will
be fulfilled. Forces have been set in motion which will
shatter the Arch of Time, putting an end to the Earth,
and to
all that I abhor. If you are imprisoned, however,
certain aspects of what will ensue re, ill not main
clouded to my sight. On that path, 1 cannot determine
that my Enemy will not

again find means to snare me.

"But if you remain free, apt and able to satisfy me,
nn% release is assured• your at
tempts to oppose me will secure it. The Arch will be
torn asunder, and I will reclaim
my rightful place among the eternal Heavens. My
Enemy will be unable to thwart me."
Cunningly the rank voice added, "There is more, but
of my deeper purpose I will not speak."
Then the Despiser stated brusquely, "It must therefore
be plain that I do not desire your capture. And it must
surely be plain as well that you will fail to evade the
Haruchai if you are not restored to your fullest
strength. You require hurtloam. The Haruchai have
ensured that no lore remains which might aid you.
Only Earthpower will suffice"
Linden stared at him, momentarily horrified and
transfixed. Forces have been set in motion- But then
she fought down her dismay. Gritting her teeth, she
demanded, "Stop it. Don't be so damn cryptic. It's
petty. And you're wasting time.
"Just tell me what you've done."
Anele's mouth twisted, although his trapped soul made
no sound. "Done?" the Despiser chortled. "I?" His
delight wrung Anele's scrawny frame. "Naught. Apart
from the claiming of your vacant son, I have merely
whispered a word of counsel here and there, and
awaited events.
"The caesures are none of mine. Also I had no hand in
your blindness, for I did not utter the fine riposte of
Kevin's Dirt. If you fear what has been done, think on
the Elohim and feel despair. They serve me as do the
Haruchai, unwittingly, and in arrogance."
Linden muttered a curse. "And you expect me to
believe you? You didn't send that storm?"
Anele's hands jerked to his head, pulled at his scraps
of hair. "Shame upon you, woman. Shame and
excruciation! You undervalue my enmity. That
pitiable assault serves me well enough, but it is too
crude, far too crude. I would not deign to raise my
hand for such an unsubtle ploy."
Not? Shaken by uncertainty, Linden fell silent. In this,
at least, she did believe her foe* Lord Foul was not one
to refuse credit for his actions. He enjoyed his own
malice too much.
Yet if he did not send the storm
She was weak; too weak. She could not summon
strength which she did not possess.
-who did?
How many enemies did Mithil Stonedown have?
For a moment longer, Anele squirmed as though his
guts were being torn. Then he
whirled away, sprinting for the Mithil.
As he ran, Lord Foul called back at her, "Refuse me
and be damned! That you will
be captured is certain! Then you will be helpless while
your son remains in my hands!"
She had been holding her fears at bay: now they broke
past her restraint. She had so little power, and had lost
so much time. The river might be her only chance to
avoid the Masters.
Stiffly she let the slope carry her downward after
Anele.
Ahead of her, the old man sprawled on his belly at the
edge of the watercourse. Idis head stretched past the
rim of the grass: he might have been searching for his
lost mind among the ripples and eddies of the river.
From her angle, the current appeared to twist past
within reach of his face.
One step at a time, she closed the gap; jerked to a stop
at his side. "What now, Foul?"
she panted heavily. "Do you tell fortunes by staring
into riverbeds?"
"More than you know, fool," retorted the Despiser.
"Men commonly find their fates
graven within the rock, but yours is written in water."
Then his arm flapped, pointing downward. "There,"
he announced, "as I promised."
An undercurrent of distress or loathing marred his
glee. "Hurtloam."
Ah, shit. The last of Linden's resistance leaked away,
and she folded to her knees.
Hurtloam, is it? She felt herself falling into a defeated
weariness. Now what was she
supposed to do? Trust the Despiser?
Yet Anele's distress was terrible to behold. He needed
to be healed of his vulnerability, freed from madness,
more than he needed anything else in life; perhaps
more than he needed to live.
That would never happen while the Haruchai kept
him, and she remained blind.
She had promised to protect him. And he was her only
link to her son. The old man was possessed by Lord
Foul, who also held Jeremiah. Whenever the Despiser
taunted her through Anele, he connected her, however
tenuously, to her son. If she could see, she might be
able to reach Jeremiah
In fact, Anele might be the only link she would ever
have.
Below her, the Mithil complicated the air with
whispers of escape. Her panting silence seemed to
make her companion frantic. Grimaces and revulsion
clenched his features as he pointed downward again.
"There!" His eyes glistened with white terror. "Are
you mad as well? It is hurtloam, I tell you."
You require healing.
Half hypnotized by his intensity, Linden looked over
the riverbank; but she saw nothing to account for his
insistence. Absorbed by its own concerns, the river
moiled past little more than an arm's length below the
grassy rim of its bank. Where Anele pointed, in a
notch between slick stones at the lapping edge of the
water, lay a rough" triangular patch of fine sand. She
could not distinguish it from other patches of sand
nearby, among similar stones.
The murmuring of the water filled her head. t
"There!" Lord Foul repeated; but it might have been
Anele who pleaded with be
"This doddering cripple is rife with Earthpower,
which I loathe. In this he cannot be
mistaken."
He had told her that hurtloam would renew her
health-sense. Without it, she might
never learn how to use Covenants ring. Only
percipience offered her any hope
The Despiser sought harm and freedom. If hurtloam
could truly restore her, then
her foe had something to gain by offering it to her:
something virulent and dangerous. But she also might
gain something. She might be able to turn his designs
against him.
Do something they don't expect.
Holding her breath to contain the clamor of her heart,
Linden stretched her arm over the rim of the bank as
if she had at last become sure of herself.
With her palm, she touched the damp triangle of sand-
and felt nothing.
Anele had squeezed his eyes shut. His head bobbed
furiously, signaling lunatic assent.
Carefully she pushed her fingers into the sand;
scooped up a handful.
For a moment, she felt only cool moisture against her
skin.
Her companion rolled over onto his back; covered his
face with his gnarled hands. He made whimpering
sounds that she could not hear.
Then Linden saw a faint gleam like a spark in the
sand. She nearly winced in surprise as spangles of light
began to tingle over her palm. Glints of gold seemed to
catch the sunlight, swirling like cast embers or the tiny
reflections of Wraiths.
As they swirled, they spread a sparkling sensation into
her hand. Bits and motes of vitality soaked her fingers
and palm, then swept along her forearm to her elbow
and shoulder. Involuntarily, hardly aware of what she
did, she raised the sand closer to her face so that she
could peer into it; and gleaming like a taste of renewal
expanded into her chest, wiping away weariness and
exertion as though they had never touched her.
Soon the exuberant tang of Earthpower, numinous and
ineffable, thronged throughout her senses, lifting her
into a realm of perception as keen as crystal, as
vibrant as the language of the sun.
From her hand to her arm, from her shoulder to her
ribs and thighs, one by one her bruises evaporated as
though they had been blessed away. Her abrasions
faded. Palpably caressed, her torn muscles and
strained ligaments regained their elasticity and vigor;
their eagerness. The harsh effort of flight slipped from
her as though she had forgotten it. In a wave of
transformation, she felt herself exalted to health.
That was hurtloam, there in her palm. That tincture of
pure health had been stirred and Wealth by the
washing of the river into the plainer substance of the
sand: a subtle
d transcendent instance of the Land's essential
mystery. It was not common, oh, no, not common at
all: most of the sand and soil on either side of the
Mithil gave no hint
of it, But now she could discern it without difficulty
here and there, in small whorls
an
611
d traces between the stones, as though it called out
gladly to her nerves.
The River itself called out to her as it curled and
chuckled in its course. Its waters sang to her of
nourished growth and protracted journeys; of life
renewed after sleep. In its bright running, she heard
the music of winter storms among the peaks, the
yearning chords of the current's long hunger for the
sea.
Wherever it found her, the grass on which she lay
pressed its green and burgeoning richness to her skin.
It spoke of health won by fine, cunning roots from the
thin fertility of the sand and loam which cloaked the
underlying stone: soil too recently worn from granite,
obsidian, and schist to provide the abundant
sustenance that enriched the Center Plains and the
Andelainian Hills.
And beneath the grass and the soil and the first rocks,
she felt the living skeleton of the slopes and crests:
obdurate stone that hugged to its heart secrets at once
enduring and elusive, tangible enough to be tasted, yet
too vast and slow to hear.
Gradually the hurtloam in her hand lost its gleaming
as it expended its potency. Nevertheless it had lifted
her to her feet: it had lifted up her heart. Tears of
gladness blurred her sight as she faced the crisp
morning, the burnished sunshine. All around her, the
savor of the new season filled the air with possibilities.
From its place near the height of noon, the sun
warmed away the last of her bruises and fatigue.
In that way, one small handful of sand and hurtloam
and Earthpower restored to her the glory of the Land.
She felt positively reborn. For reasons which she could
not begin to comprehend, Lord Foul had guided her
here so that she might set aside her blindness and
futility.
At last, she turned her renewed percipience toward
her companion.
He still lay on his back with his hands covering his
face. Now, however, she did not need to see his features
or hear his voice in order to discern his insanity. His
posture and his skin, his breathing and the angle of his
bones, proclaimed it to her. She knew beyond question
that his mind had been broken by more loss than it
could endure.
And she knew as well, though the knowledge surprised
her, that the Despiser had played no part in Anele's
derangement. The incoherence of Anele's mind
allowed Lord Foul entrance; permitted the Despiser to
speak. Yet the Land's foe had not caused that
madness.
Anele's straits brought an ache to her heart. He
required healing; absolutely re
quired it. He had already suffered far too long.
Now, suddenly, she had the means to help him.
"Anele," she asked softly, "can you hear me?"
     him;
He did not respond. His hands covered his eyes
urgently. Lord Foul still held
she could see that. However, the Despiser had
withdrawn from the surface, from ",as tery, leaving
the old man at the mercy of his fears. steps
Linden did not hesitate. Her health-sense seemed to set
her free. Two quick along the riverbank carried her
toward another swirl of fine gleams in the std
Crouching, she reached down to wash the expended
hurtloam from her hand and
scoop up more.

Glad fire sang in her fingers as she moved to Anele's
side, knelt near his head. "Anele," she said again, "if
you can hear me," if Lord Foul permitted him hearing,
"I have more hurtloam. I'm going to put it on your
forehead. It should heal you. She was not sure that
even this power could knit his mind together. But she
had no
doubt that it would do him good. If nothing else, it
would reduce the damage which years of flight and
dread had done to his old flesh.
Immediately Anele jerked down his hands. Terror
shone in his sightless eyes. His mouth fumbled to form
a cry which might have been, No!
Still Linden did not hesitate. She expected the prospect
of healing to dismay him. He had created his madness
for reasons which had seemed compulsory to him.
Until he recovered his mind, how could he know
whether his need for insanity had passed?
Ignoring his distress, she overturned her hand and
wiped hurtloam across his forehead.
Instantly the Despiser's presence vanished from him,
fled as if from the touch of dissolution-and Anele went
into convulsions.
Before Linden could react, his whole frame snapped
rigid. Blood spurted from his bitten tongue. His eyes
rolled up into his head, protruding as if they were
about to burst. From his skin sprang an acrid sweat
that smelled like gall.
Anele! Too late, she saw what she had done. The
hurtloam was too potent for him. He was already rife
with Earthpower: his body could not contain more. It
would scorch the marrow of his bones.
Desperately she slapped at his forehead, trying to
remove the sand; but his preterite anguish had already
carried him beyond her reach. One fatal scream
ripped his throat: he seemed to explode to his feet. In a
flurry of thrashing limbs, he flung himself from


the riverbank out into the depths of the Mithil.
And the current bore him away.
He made no attempt to swim. Instead he pounded
water at his forehead while he sank.
Christ!
Linden surged upright; dashed after him along the
bank. Ahead of her, he broke to the surface, still
floundering; foundering. Three more strides, four.
Then she would gather herself to dive after him.
But she had no chance to save him. As she prepared to
spring, a length of rope uncoiled through the air from
somewhere above her on the slope.
It splashed the water within Anele's grasp.
Instinctively he threw his arms over it;
closed his hands on it; clung to it fervidly as it dragged
him across the current toward .
Linden staggered to a halt.
Now she saw Liand. Her concentration on Anele had
left her blind and deaf to his approach. Unnoticed, he
had ridden down the hillside toward her on a hardy
mustang, responding to Anele's peril more swiftly than
she could.
For a moment, he anchored his rope from horseback
while Anele struggled toward the riverbank. Then,
when the old man began to gain footing, Liand
dismounted. Keeping the line taut, he hurried down
the slope to help Anele scramble out of the Mithil.
Soon Anele stood on the grass, streaming and
unhealed. Blood spilled from his mouth: the hurtloam
was gone from his forehead. While Linden stared at
him, Lord Foul let out a snarling laugh.
Then the old man crumpled to the ground, coughing as
if he had filled his lungs with water.
/.
Companions in Flight
     7 Linden stood on the riverbank, so shocked for
the o ent that she had Cites ceased to move. Anele
groveled in the grass in front of her. She saw him as
distinctly as if he had been etched in sunfire. Water
poured like tears off the broken landscape of his face:
he coughed as though he had swallowed too much
blood.
Hurtloam had given back to her the beauty of the
Land.
Beyond question he was full of Earthpower: she could
not be mistaken now. Its vitality shimmered in every
line of his emaciated limbs, every twist of his abused
features. And hurtloam was Earthpower as well, an
indisputable instance of healing and glory. It should
have lifted him into light like an annunciation. The
hurt he had taken from it contradicted its essential
nature.
Now she saw that the loam had not been too potent for
him. It had exerted its natural effect. But his inherent
energies had become part of his madness, and had
opposed his restoration.
Fortunately she had done him no lasting harm.
Retrieving his rope swiftly, Liand demanded, "Linden
Avery, hear me."
But she did not. She saw only Anele.
He stank of the Despiser.
However, Lord Foul remained beneath the surface,
leaving the old man free to gasp and cough. Linden
found that she could still distinguish between the
Despiser's presence and Anele's madness. But now she
discerned other things as well. She saw clearly that the
Despiser did not control the phases of Anele's
condition; could not grasp possession of Anele at will.
Instead he merely took advantage of a flaw in the
defenses which the old man had erected to protect his
deepest pain. And that flaw shifted and changed with
the unexplained modulations of Anele's mental state.
She had no idea how this could be so. Her health-sense
did not reach so deeply: not like this, separate from
him. If she truly wished to understand his sufferings,
she would have to immerse herself in him utterly;
intrude upon his fundamental relationship with
himself.
She had done such things before, long ago, and knew
what they cost.
"Linden Avery," Liand insisted, "do you not hear me?
Is this madness?"
She might have been deaf to him. His voice could not
pierce her awareness of Anele's plight. Yet when she
turned toward the Stonedownor, she saw him
distinctly as well.
He was a sturdy young man, full of toughness and
health: the more ordinary and friable health of the
Land, nourished and sustained by Earthpower, but not
transformed by it. He would not survive to an
improbable age, or endure decades of bitter privation,
as Anele had.
And he contained no hint of Despite. Instead he
emitted sincerity and yearning. The lines of his form
expressed an excitement which was turning rapidly
into alarm. He was just who he had appeared to be
when she had spoken to him earlier: an honest young
man, capable of courage and devotion, and largely
untried.
Nothing in his aura or his manner suggested that he
could sense Lord Foul's
presence.
"Do you intend flight?" he asked urgently. "Then why
do you tarry here?"
His mount shared his natural, Land-born vigor, his
capacity for toughness-and his apparent blindness to
the proximity of evil. It was not entirely whole,
however. At one time, it had fallen awkwardly,
scraping faint scars into the coat of its chest, and
fraying the deep muscles around its lungs. That old
injury had damaged its stamina. The pinto might be as
willing as Liand, but it lacked his endurance.
And over them all the sky arched like a vault of
crystal: it seemed to chime to the Pitch of its essential
cleanliness. At first, Linden descried no hint of Kevin's
Dirt. But When she had refined her senses to the
memory of that stifling yellow shroud, she
tasted it faintly above her, distant and imprecise, like a
thin smear of wrong across the crisp purity of the air.
It was still there.
Eventually it would blind her again.
"Linden Avery!" Liand cried at her. "What ails you?
Soon the Masters will hasten in pursuit. If they have
not yet discovered your flight, they will do so at any
moment. If you desire to avoid them, we must go. We
must go now!"
We?
At last she heard him.
Of course she had to go. She had lost too much time;
far too much. Indeed, she could hardly imagine why
the Haruchai had not retaken her already. How had
Liand found her, when they had not?
But such questions could wait. Escape might still be
possible. And Anele might not be able to bear it if he
were captured again.
They had to go.
We?
Damn it, she could not afford the time to argue.
"I'm sorry, Liand." With an effort, she wrenched
herself out of her distraction. "You're right." Do
something they don't expect. "Anele can ride with you.
I'll try to keep up."
The young man stared, frankly unsure of her. He did
not-could not-understand
what had happened to her. Or what she had done to
Anele.
At every moment, Linden expected to see Haruchai
rush past the rim of the hills; de
scend on her like raptors. Cursing, she hurried to
Anele's side, tugged on one of his arms. Even that
small approach to the Despiser filled her nerves with
revulsion. But she
did not let go.
"Now, Liand!"
If Liand could pull Anele after him onto the pinto's
back, she intended to run and run as long as her new
strength lasted, as far and as fast as she was able.
The old man tensed against her grasp; propped his
free arm under him. Unsteadily he climbed to his feet.
Behind the blood on his lips, his skin had a pallor of
weakness, as if his stubborn fortitude were failing.
Liand was tangibly unsure of Linden, but he did not
hesitate. Springing to his mount's back, he secured his
coil of rope to the rudimentary saddle, then extended
his
hand to Anele.
We?       heaved Linden gave Anele's arm to Liand, and
with her help the Stonedownor d for
Anele up behind him. Inarticulate frights clenched
Anele's face as he clung to Liand support.
Yet every hint of Lord Foul's presence was suddenly
gone from him. Between one heartbeat and the next,
he had become himself again.
At once, Liand wheeled his mount. With Linden
running beside him, he cantered south along the
riverbank, toward the head of the valley; away from
Mithil Stonedown
and the Masters.
In arveling at herself, Linden matched Liand's pace
while the terrain allowed the pinto to canter. If she had
been less familiar with the wonders of Earthpower, she
might have believed that she was dreaming. She was
not the same woman who had fallen to her knees only
a short time ago. One small handful of hurtloam had
apparently erased her mortality. While she ran,
exaltation filled her heart. Buoyed by springy grass
and soft soil, by the mountain tang of the air and the
luxuriant quest of the river, and by hurtloam, she felt
that she could run, and go on running, until she
arrived at hope.
The riverbank changed as the valley rose, however,
forcing Liand to slow his mount. The hillsides grew
steeper, constricting the Mithil in their climb toward
the mountains, and rocks and hazards littered the
ground along the watercourse. The mustang could
have broken an ankle there, or stumbled into the
Mithil.
Above Linden and her companions, the mountains had
become sheer and forbidding without apparent
transition: a high, jagged wall glowering against
intrusion. As she slackened her pace, she felt her lungs
strain for breath as if the air had turned abruptly thin,
inhospitable.
Panting, she asked Liand to halt. "Just for a minute. I
need to think."
Liand reined in the pinto, but did not dismount. The
lines of his arms and shoulders told her as plainly as
words that he wanted to press on. And Anele needed
his support. Worn out by the effects of Lord Foul's
presence, the old man had fallen asleep against Liand's
back.
The Despiser had not returned. For some reason, he
could not.
That was a relief, for Linden as well as for her
battered companion. Now she could talk to Liand
without being overheard.
She needed to understand him. Why was he here?
Why was he helping her? And hold far was he willing
to go-?
As her pulse slowed, she found that she could feel
Kevin's Dirt more clearly. It seemed to clog her lungs,
depriving her not of oxygen but of some more subtle
sustenance. Already it had begun to erode her health-
sense, fraying her nerves toward
blindness. This time the process was slow: the
lingering power of hurtloam hindered 't She 'night not
lose true percipience before nightfall. Yet it would
eventually fail her.
By degrees, her exhilaration leaked away, leaving her
to the realities of her situation
There appeared to be no hurtloam anywhere around
her. The hillsides were bare of its eldritch glitter. And
the banks of the Mithil had grown steeper as the
ground rose to the foothills, putting the river itself
effectively out of reach. She would not be able to
refresh her health-sense a second time.
Nor could she share the wonder of such vision with
Liand. While her discernment lasted, she would have
to see for both of them.
Muttering curses to herself, she scanned her
surroundings.
The hills that shouldered the watercourse blocked her
view of Mithil Stonedown, Past their crests, however,
she could still make out the highest seething fringes of
the storm which had enabled her escape. They boiled
with violence and darkness; but their wrongness was
of a different kind than Kevin's Dirt and caesures. The
stormtops violated Law and nature in less harmful
ways. Nor did they gust in pursuit of her-or of
Covenant's ring. Instead they remained to harass the
village.
I would not deign to raise my hand
Lord Foul had told her the truth about more than
hurtloam.
And as long as the Masters remained to ward the
Stonedown, they could not search for her. Hell, they
might not yet know that she was gone. It was possible
"So far, so good," she said to Liand's impatience.
"Now what? If we want to escape"-she indicated the
mountains-"we need to get up there somehow."
To the east lay her easiest road. There the valley
diverged more and more from the course of the Mithil;
and as it curved into the southeast it rose steadily until
it became a vale between mountain heads. From this
distance, its slopes appeared to remain grassy and
gradual two thousand feet and more above Mithil
Stonedown. If she and her companions angled in that
direction, they would be able to travel as fast as her
stamina could carry her.
And they would be in plain sight of the valley bottom
for at least a league, until they rounded the curve up
into the vale. The Haruchai would spot them as soon as
the storm over Mithil Stonedown dissipated. Linden's
red shirt assured that.
She needed another route.
Even if Liand knew of one, however, she would not be
able to stay ahead of the Masters for long. They would
travel faster than she could. Ultimately her only
realistic hope was that Stave and his people would
believe she had fled north, into the open Land.
Responding to her question, Liand pointed toward the
rising cliffs south and slightly west of him. When
Linden looked there, she saw a rift between crags
ending in a fan of scree above the foothills. The shape
of the rift and scree suggested that the
slope of loose stone piled higher as it reached out of
sight. If it piled high enough' it
might provide a route into the Range above the rift.
But it stood on the far side of the Mithil. And as the
watercourse neared the head of
the valley, it gathered into a crooked ravine tending
somewhat east of south: too ragged and sheer to climb;
too wide to cross. Then, at the base of the nearest cliff,
it sprang up into a waterfall which thundered from a
damp cut high and unattainable in the rock face.
The rift might as well have been on the dark side of the
moon.
"Great," Linden muttered in disappointment. "How
can we get there? The last I checked, none of us can
actually fly."
"It will not be difficult." Lifting his head, Liand
indicated the waterfall. "That fall we name the
Mithil's Plunge. For a portion of its way, it pours
beyond the cliff, and there we may pass behind it. We
must take care that Somo does not slip, but we will be
able to do so.
"Certainly the Masters know of this, as I do. But
mayhap they will not readily notice my absence from
Mithil Stonedown. I am only a young man whom they
tolerate, not a valued companion. And if they do not
guess that I accompany you, they may not pursue you
there, believing that you have no knowledge of it."
Linden nodded. "Good." So it was possible: she still
had a chance.
But the young man's answer brought her back to
another question. What in hell was he doing here? He
was risking more than the disapproval of the Masters;
far more than he knew. She could not accept his help
simply because he chose to offer it.
Frowning, she waited until he turned to face her. Then,
more harshly than she intended, she said, "But before
we go any farther, you have some explaining to do."
His eyes widened in surprise.
"Where do you get this `we' stuff, Liand?" Because
she was afraid and unsure, and could not afford to be,
she sounded angry. "What are you doing here? Why
aren't you defending Mithil Stonedown, where you
belong?"
The young man swallowed uncomfortably, but did not
drop her gaze. "Would you have been able to save
your companion without my aid?"
"That's not the point. Of course I would have saved
him. I can swim, for God's sake."
"And will you save him now?" countered Liand. "You
are able to gain the mountains, but how will you feed
him among the rocks? How will you feed yourself?
Can You bear the cold of the peaks?"
Linden scowled at him. "Oh, hell. You know I can't. I
didn't exactly plan any of this. 1 just-- She knotted her
fists to contain her frustration. "I just can't do
anything for my son while I'm a prisoner."
Liand indicated bundles tied to his saddle. "Then it is
well that I have given the matter forethought which
you could not. Here I have food and waterskins. Robes
and
blankets. Rope.
"Somo alone enhances your flight." Apparently Some,
was the mustang "I have one much to provide for your
escape. All that I can."
His eyes begged her to accept him.
"But-" With an effort, Linden restrained her impulse
to swear at him. His manifest sincerity did not deserve
it. "But," she said more quietly, "that's still beside the
point. Obviously I need any help I can get. But your
people need you, too. They were fighting for their lives
when I ran. How could you leave them?"
Her demand increased his discomfort. For a moment,
he looked away toward the mountains as if he were
measuring himself against them. When he met her
gaze again, the sunlight on his face exposed the
difficulties within him.
Nevertheless he faced her squarely.
"At first I did not," he admitted. He had set his
impatience aside. "You know this. I ran to the defense
of the Stonedown, thinking that we were assailed by
kresh in the storm. But the Masters halted us, saying
that there were no kresh, that only the storm itself
threatened us.
"Against that power we could do nothing. And it
struck no one. For reasons which I do not grasp, the
storm's violence harmed only our homes. Indeed, it fell
only upon those homes which had been left empty.
Their families were at work in the fields, or attending
other concerns. And the Masters assured us that no
lives had been lost--that none would be lost if we did
not approach the storm.
"How they had gained their knowledge, I do not know.
But I believed them. And I thought of you, Linden
Avery."
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 de
prived 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 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 admiration. 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 "Tong now.
w Blinking her eyes clear, she looked up at him again.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean it that
aq.1 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.
°1 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 1'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. "l 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
M 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. all
Before long, however, as she and her companions
rounded a hilltop on their
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. e 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 c
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
conceal
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 am- 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.
Ahead of her, Liand let the mustang pick its way over
the rocks at its own pace. Somehow the sodden blanket
and Liand's grasp on the reins kept Somo's alarm
within bounds.
With her hand on Anele's arm, Linden felt his fear.
Preoccupied with her footing, she initially tasted only a
featureless apprehension in him; nothing more. By
degrees, however, the character of his distress seeped
into her like the waterfall's power.
One timorous step at a time, he had passed into a
realm of threats altogether his own; a crisis beyond
her grasp. When she noticed the change in him at last,
it shocked her out of her own frights.
He may have been becoming sane. If her senses
discerned him accurately in this tumult
On an uncluttered and comparatively level section of
the ledge, he halted suddenly, drawing her to a stop
beside him. His teeth gnashed the laden air as if he
sought to tear use bitten chunks of meaning. He may
have been crying her name, calling out for

p or attention in a voice too mortal to be heard.

Linden flung her arms about him, holding him still;
restraining herself from the

howl of the water. She could hardly identify his
features. Pressing her forehead against L_
the side of his skull, trying to reach him bone to bone,
she shouted, "Anele! Are you all right? I can't hear
you!"
His voice reached her like a distant vibration in her
brain. "Skurj!" he shrieked. "Skurj and Elohim. He
has broken the Durance. Skurj mar the very air. Oh,
the Earth!
"Its bones-" Freeing one arm from Linden's embrace,
he pressed his palm to the cliff-side as if he meant to
thrust himself away from it; out into the water and
death. "Its bones cry out! Even here, they wail!"
"Anele!" she yelled again. She had nothing to offer
him except his name. "Anele!" He had gone beyond
her comprehension. Every clench and tremor of his
emaciated frame told her that he was sane at last.
For him, sanity held more horror than any madness.
"My fault!" he cried as if he were being shattered.
"Mine! The Elohim did naught to preserve the
Durance. They are tainted. Arrogant. I lost the Staff!
The treasure and bulwark of Law. My birthright. I
lost it!"
Sane? Linden gripped him with all her strength. Chills
shook her. This was sanity? According to Stave, the
Staff of Law had been lost more than three thousand
years ago. "Anele! What's wrong? What's happening
to you?"
Liand could not have heard them. He continued to lead
Somo cautiously toward daylight and the westward
foothills, abandoning Linden and Anele to the exigency
between them.
Abruptly Anele released the stone of the cliff and
wrenched himself around in her grasp. When they
were face-to-face, he pressed his forehead against hers.
Earthpower latent in his veins throbbed for
conflagration. Furiously he drove his anguish into her
mouth; down her throat.
"Are you blind?" he howled; and the greater howl of
the Plunge swept his words instantly away. "Do you
see nothing? I held it in my hands! It was given into
my care. Trusted to me! For years, I studied the Earth,
striving for courage. And I lost it!"
She could not understand him; could hardly think:
spray and thunder smothered her mind. Shivers ran
through her bones. Lost? The Staff of Law? Millennia
ago? Sweet Christ! What manner of sanity had
overtaken him? His deprived flesh had suffered the
erosion of too much time, but nothing on that order of
magnitude. Even her dimim ished perceptions could
not have misread him to such an extent. his
Water streamed down their faces, ran from their
chins. His revulsion toward own failings had become a
whirlwind of rage and grief. With the Staff!
"I could have preserved the Durance!" he cried.
"Stopped the skurj.
If I had been worthy. But I did not! Instead I betrayed
my trust! IN, word. My birthright. He might have been
weeping. "All the Earth."     anele.
"Anele!" Desperation surged in Linden. She had to get
him out of this place.
come on!" She could not think. If the storm within him
mounted any higher, he might
hurl himself from the ledge, and her with him.
But his passion demanded release. Forcing his
forehead against hers, he begged her
fervently, "Oh, break me! Slay me! Tear away this
pain and let me die! Did you sojourn
under the Sunbane with Sunder and Hollian, and learn
nothing of ruin?"
Did you sojourn-?
Had he recognized her at last?
In a tumult of confusion and thunder, she jerked her
head away. "Damn it, Anele!
Of course I understand ruin. It doesn't give you the
right to do this to yourself! For
God's sake, don't make me drag you out of here!"
Perhaps in sunlight under an open sky he would
become comprehensible to her. For an instant, a flare
of Earthpower burned in his white eyes, set light to the
water
beading in his beard. When it passed, it appeared to
leave him chastened; covered in
gloom. He nodded as if she had doomed him.
Suddenly frantic to escape the Plunge, Linden took his
arm once more and urged
him forward, after Liand and the pinto.
A moment later, Liand's form restricted the passage.
He had come back for them.
"Why do you tarry?" he called anxiously. "What is
amiss?"
She did not try to answer him. Instead she waved her
arm to send him back the way he
had come. As he complied, she continued to scramble
grimly over the treacherous stones. With all the will
that she could muster, she concentrated on her footing.
Anele's
sanity confounded her. She yearned for the safety of
the sun and understanding.
Tear away this pain and let me die!
Elohim she knew; but what in hell were skurj?
Her boot skidded off a patch of wet moss. She caught
herself on Anele's arm. She
was supposed to protect him. She knew him better
when he was mad.
Liand receded ahead of her, drawing her on. He did
not appear to fear falling. Per
haps on some atavistic level his people retained their
ancient relationship with stone. Oh, the Earth! Its
bones cry out!
When at last she and Anele emerged into the bright
solace of day, everything be
tween them had changed.
"Linden Avery" Liand demanded her attention. "Why
did you tarry? Are you harmed?" The day's spring
warmth shone through the spray. She kept her grip on
Anele.
Blinking against the sun's dazzle, she peered at him
with all of her senses.
He had been sane: her nerves were certain of it. Now,
however, a roil of confusion distorted his emanations.
His mind had relapsed to madness.
And his Plight was changing. The character of his
derangement shifted-and shifted
again. Before her eyes, he modulated between the
various phases of his insanity; and

the landscape of his face appeared to shimmer and
blur, smeared out of clarity by the heat of his rapid
alternations. She could read nothing in him surely
except that he was no longer the man who had cried
out to her behind the Mithil's Plunge.
He said nothing. For the moment, at least, even
language was lost to him.
Finally Linden allowed herself to turn toward the
Stonedownor. "I'm sorry, Liand." She wiped tears of
brightness from her eyes. "Something happened to
Anele in there." She had to shout to make herself
heard. "He changed. All of a sudden, he seemed sane,"
although everything he had said sounded crazy. "But
it's gone now. I don't know what came over him."
"But you are not harmed?" Liand persisted.
She shook her head. "Just scared. Everything here"-
she gestured at the sky, the mountains, the foothills-
"looks so normal." Undisturbed. "The way the Land is
supposed to look. But the things Anele said-"
She shuddered. "He was terrified. He sees dangers I've
never even heard of." They were gone now, locked
behind his madness.
In response, Liand's expression darkened. "The
Masters." His disgust was barely au
dible through the waterfall's roar. "The most dire
perils stalk the Land, and they tell us
nothing."
Then he straightened his shoulders. "It would please
me greatly to elude them. We must continue our
ascent. Exposed on these hillsides, we may yet be
discovered." Frowning, he added, "The hue of your
raiment will be easily seen."
Linden needed no urging to move away from the
mind-numbing thunder of the Plunge.
He had left his mount a short distance away, its reins
loosely secured under a hunk of rock. While he wrung
out the blanket he had used to cover Somo's eyes, she
said suddenly, "Don't put that away. I can use it to
cover my shirt."
The blanket was damp, but it might warm her.
With a nod of approval, Liand handed it to her. As
soon as she had draped the
rough brown wool over her shoulders, she returned to
Anele.
The old man did not react to her presence, or her
voice. However, he allowed her to
reclaim his arm. Pulling him with her, she started up
the hillside.
With Liand and Somo a pace or two below her, she
headed in the general direction
of the rift.
heir path angled to the west as it challenged the
tumbled foothills. Farther in that direction, along the
northward reach of the mountains, the foothills were
like fingers knotted in the valley floor, pulling the
valley wider; and between the fingers
lay steep vales and clefts. Here, however, in the head of
the valley, the slopes were more even, draped down
from the cliffs like a mussed skirt. Linden and her
companions were spared the abrupt rises and drops of
the northwestward hills.
Nevertheless their ascent was arduous. The stubborn
grasses and wind-twisted brush which marked the
hillside could not always hold the soil in place under
the pressure of their feet, and they often had to
scramble in order to gain ground. At the same time,
the slope grew steadily steeper, with less vegetation to
anchor the dirt. The distance from the passage behind
the Mithil's Plunge to the fan of scree below the rift
may have been no more than a stone's throw for a
Giant; but after an hour's labor Linden and her
companions still had not reached their immediate aim.
They must have been visible from the vicinity of Mithil
Stonedown. Until they reached the shelter of the rift,
they had to hope that they were too small to be noticed
from so far away.
Clinging to the blanket, she paused for a moment's
rest. Her respiration had become a deep heaving, and
her legs trembled with each step. Sunlight and exertion
had dried the blanket as well as her clothes; but that
had proved to be a curse as much as a blessing. For a
while, she had been grateful for anything which eased
her various chills. Gradually, however, her dampness
had become sweat and hard breathing, and even the
crisp breeze of this elevation could not cool her. As the
strength she had gained from hurtloam and treasure-
berries faded, she began to believe that she would
prove too weak for her task.
More and more, she relied on Anele's support. In spite
of his emaciation, he remained hardy: he seemed to
forge upward as if he had never done anything else.
His eldritch toughness helped her continue the climb.
His skin against hers described the irregular
fluctuations of his mental estate. At odd intervals, he
veered close to sanity: less frequently, she felt the
Despiser's dark scorn moil in his depths. Masques of
rage and grief and appalled endurance drifted through
him like shadows. But he did not speak; and she had
no energy to spare for his complex lunacy. As she
forced her trembling steps upward, her awareness of
him withdrew. She only clung to him and labored
onward.
Ahead of her, Liand and his horse ascended more
easily; had to wait for her more often. Although
Somo's hooves dragged the untrustworthy hillside
downward, the mustang had stamina to spare in spite
of its old wound. And Liand possessed the
characteristic toughness of Stonedownors. He and his
mount would be able to keep going long after Linden
dropped.
They were here on her account; and yet their chances
of escape would have been
much higher without her.
Then Liand called softly, "Soon, Linden Avery!" and
she looked up from her benumbed concentration to see
him standing at the edge of the scree.
Lowering her head, she forced her quivering muscles
to bear her to his side s
T
b
He had already taken a waterskin from one of his
packs. Now he handed it to her. She held it shaking to
her lips and drank until she had soothed her dry
mouth and raw throat. Then she passed the waterskin
to Anele.
While the old man sucked at the skin, Liand unpacked
a little bread and sun-dried fruit. "We should not
tarry here," he remarked, "exposed to the sight of the
Masters, l fear, however, that you near the end of your
endurance. And Somo cannot bear you on this terrain.
Our flight will fail if our haste exceeds your strength."
He handed food to her first, then to Anele.
Linden thanked him with a nod. She was breathing too
hard to speak.
Slowly she chewed bread and fruit, and tried to
imagine sustenance flooding through her veins, filling
the courses of her heart. Jeremiah needed her. She did
not mean to fail him. While she ate, she surveyed the
climb ahead and endeavored to believe that she could
master it.
That she could master herself.
For a while, Liand gave her silence; a chance to gather
her resolve. But his tension increased as he waited, and
eventually he asked, "Are you able to continue, Linden
Avery? Until we gain shelter, every delay is perilous."
"I'll do it," she muttered. "Able or not." Then she
gave him a wry frown. "But you have got to stop
calling me `Linden Avery. 'I feel like I'm in church."
She had spent too many hours there as a child,
wearing her one nice dress and fidgeting while a
preacher levied strictures against her; a preacher who
knew nothing about her pain-or her mother's.
But she could not expect Liand to understand such
things. "I'm `Linden,"' she added. "That's enough. I
don't need so much formality."
He studied her as if she had asked him to commit an
act of irreverence. "Very well," he said cautiously.
"You will be `Linden' to me."
Then he turned away and began to repack Somo's
burdens.
Anele also seemed eager for movement. He had grown
restive, shuffling his feet on the scree. He started
upward without any urging.
Setting her teeth, Linden stumbled into motion and
followed her companions.
There the ascent became harder for her. The slope of
shale and loose stones increased the likelihood that she
might fall; perhaps break an ankle. At the same time
however, she found that she could use her hands to
help her climb. If she simply let the blanket hang
across her shoulders, her arms could ease some of the
strain on her legs' In that way, in spite of her
weakness, she was able to keep pace with Anele, Liand,
an' Somo for a time.
She scraped her palms; bruised her newly healed
elbows and shins. The thinning air stung her lungs
until phosphenes plucked erratically at her vision,
dissolving d and wedged stones to bright swirls and
then resolving them to granite again schist an
obsidian, feldspar and quartz. But she fixed
Jeremiah's face before her and went on climbing.
Halfway to the rough edges of the rift, however, she
began to fall behind her companions. The blanket
slipped from her shoulders, but she was unaware that
she had lost it. The tremors in her legs expanded to her
arms and chest. Eventually she found herself
approaching each step as a discrete event, isolated in
time from the one before it and the one which would
come next. During that instant, nothing existed for her
except the effort of heaving herself upward.

Then finally she discovered that her legs no longer
shook and her cheek lay along a sheared plane of
stone. Flakes of mica sent small gleams of sunlight into
her eyes, but she could hardly distinguish them from
the dissociated dance of anoxia. Had the air become so
thin already? And why had the sun not warmed the
chill from these rocks? She seemed to enjoy their cool
touch, but could not understand it.
There was something missing, she knew that, but it
eluded her until Liand grasped her arms and urged
her upright. "Linden, come," he panted softly, "the
rift is nigh, you will be able to rest soon," and she
realized that she had stopped moving. Her legs must
have failed without her knowledge or consent.
Stunned by exertion, she let Liand help her to her feet.
Anele had apparently disappeared, perhaps translated
upward and out of reach by a rush of Earthpower; but
Somo stood nearby. The pinto had flecks of froth on its
nostrils: its chest heaved for breath. Still it had more
strength than she did.
She had lost her son. She would have wept, but she had
no tears.
Feigning a confidence which he palpably did not feel,
Liand told her, "Here," and placed her hand on one of
the bindings which secured his mount's packs. "Hold
here. Somo will support you. The way is not far. In the
shade of the cliffs, we will rest."
Obediently she closed her fingers on the leather. She
may have nodded: she could not be sure. Like her legs,
her neck seemed to twitch for reasons of its own; but
she had gone numb, and its motions lay beyond her
awareness.
After that, the instances of effort which had defined
her became a blur, and she climbed without
recognizing what she did, drawn upward by Somo's
strength and
Liand's courage; and by the knowledge-the only thing
she knew-that she needed to grow stronger.

11,21, she returned to herself, she lay among boulders
in the shadow of high
cliffs, one near her head, the other a stone's cast from
her feet. Far above her, he sky still held
the sun, and would for some time yet. But where she
lay, a deep gloaming covered her, and all her courage
had fallen away.
Liand stood nearby, watching her; making no attempt
to hide his anxiety When,,, met his gaze at last, he
knelt beside her. Gently he put her hand on the throat
of a waterskin. Then he reached under her arms to
help her sit up.
"First water," he said as if he knew what she needed.
"Then bread. Later I Will give you meat and fruit."
Sitting, she felt cold air tug through the bullet hole in
her shirt, noticed its dry touch on her forehead. Her
skin was no longer damp. She did not particularly
need water. Or she had stopped sweating some time
ago
Perhaps that explained her weakness.
With Liand's help, she guided the waterskin to her
mouth, drank a few swallows. Almost instantly, sweat
seemed to spring from all her pores at once.
Dehydration, she told herself weakly. Stupid, stupid.
She was a doctor, for God's sake; familiar with the
effects of exertion. She ought to know better.
"My fault," she murmured when Liand had helped
her drink again. "I forgot about water." Until she
dropped it, the blanket must have heated her;
increased her fluid loss. "I'll be all right."
The Stonedownor looked skeptical. "I am unsure. Our
sojourn has only begun. If we are not taken by the
Masters, we will face many days more harsh than this
one. I fear that you will be unable to endure."
She wanted to say, You and me both, but refrained for
his sake. Instead she indicated the waterskin and
asked, "Can we refill this?"
He frowned. "Linden Av- Linden. I have never
ascended so far above Mithil Stonedown. I know
nothing of what lies before us." Then, as if he were
taking pity on her, he said, "Yet I believe that we will
discover streams and springs among the mountains.
And snow remains upon the heights. Drink all that you
require. Doubtless we will need to ration aliment, but
it will be false caution to stint on water."
"In that case," she replied, "don't worry about me. I'll
get tougher." She would have to. "And I'll take better
care of myself."
Liand nodded, clearly unconvinced, and turned away
to unpack the food he had
promised her.
While he did so, Linden looked around for Anele.
To her right, in the direction of the Mithil valley and
the South Plains, she found her view blocked by a hill
of rocks like a fold in the detritus spilling down the ho
Somehow Liand had urged her high enough up the
scree to reach the shelter 0 hollow in the scree. Past the
rise, she could see only mountains and sky: she and he,
c panions were hidden from the valley. If they had not
been spotted before they reach
the rift, the Masters would catch no sight of them now.
Of course, she also could not see if they were pursued
To her left, the broken slope climbed southward into
the narrowing cleft; and there
she located the old man. He sat on shards of granite
and obsidian several paces above her, his head cocked
to one side, blindly studying the cliff opposite her and
mumbling to himself.
Linden drank more water and tried to focus her fading
health-sense on him.
physically he looked no worse than when she had first
met him: tired, certainly, and ill-fed; but sustained by
old stubbornness and Earthpower. He conveyed the
conflicting impressions that he had already suffered
more privation than ordinary flesh could bear, and
that he had reached none of his limits. As for his
mental state, she could discern little through the
shaded dusk. However, the phases of his madness had
apparently stabilized, leaving him in a condition which
resembled his partial sanity when she had talked to
him among the rubble of Kevin's Watch.
There he had spoken of reading the wreckage of the
Watch. In his fractured way, he had tried to tell her
what he saw.
He has no friend but stone.
She had no one else who could so much as hint at what
had happened to the Land.
Unsteadily she rose to her feet. When she had reached
a fragile poise, unsure of her center as she was of her
muscles, she picked up the waterskin and carried it to
Anele's side, wallowing like a derelict in the troughs of
the rocks as she moved.
He did not turn his head at her approach: he might
have been unaware of her. As soon as she placed the
waterskin in his lap, however, he raised it to his mouth
and drank, automatically, without shifting his sightless
scrutiny of the cliff.
Stifling a groan, she eased herself to the rocks beside
him. A low wind tumbled down the slope, cooling the
sweat from her skin. Its faint susurrus covered his
voice: she only knew that he spoke because his lips
moved. For a moment, she rested, gathering herself.
Then she asked softly, "Anele, what do you see?"
At first, he did not respond. She thought that perhaps
he could not. His concentration resembled a trance: he
might have been bespelled, caught by granite
incantations audible only to him. His head hung to one
side as if that might improve his hearing. But then he
seemed to shudder, and a sad anger reached out to her
senses.
"These stones are old." A flick of his hand indicated
the detritus in the rift as well as the cliffs themselves.
"Old even by the ancient measure of mountains. They
know nothing of caesures. Or Masters." Gradually his
voice took on a cadence she had not heard from him
before, a rhythm hinting at music and gall. "Rather
they speak of great forests filling all the Land. In their
hearts they lament the rapine of trees."
He is the hope of the Land.
Linden leaned close to him; breathed, "Tell me."
"Their sorrow is no fault of mine," he replied as if he
were answering an accusation so old that its meaning
had perished long ago. "That at least I am spared. It is
aged beyond antiquity, and they neither forget nor
cease to keen.
"Here is written the glory and slaughter of the One
Forest."
The One-? She had heard the name before; but she
could not imagine why the stones of the world would
remember the transient lives of wood. Nevertheless she
yearned for anything he could reveal which might
place the Land's plight into some kind of context.
"Tell me," she repeated softly.
Liand approached over the rocks to offer his
companions a little bread, but Anele ignored him.
When Linden had accepted it, however, the old man
answered her, impelled to words by a threnody in
granite.
"It is a tale of humankind and destruction, of
defenseless beauty unheeded, ripped from life. A tale
of Ravers and Elohim and Forestals and sleep, the
fatal sleep of long time and unmitigated loss."
Facing the cliff, Anele let his anger flow. His head
leaned, first to one side, then to the other, as though he
followed a tune that passed from stone to stone around
him.
"Then was not the age of men and women in the Land,
and neither wood nor stone had any knowledge of
them. Rather it was an era of trees, sentient and grand,
beloved by mountains, and the One Forest filled all the
Land.
"Its vast life spread from the ancient thighs of
Melenkurion Skyweir in the west to the restless song of
the Sunbirth Sea in the east, from the ice-gnawed
wilderness of the Northron Climbs to the high defiance
of the Southron Range. Only at the marges of
Lifeswallower did the One Forest stand aside, for even
in that lovely age evils and darkness seeped from the
depths of Gravin Threndor, leaking harm and
malevolence into the Great Swamp.
"And in that age, the spanning woodland was
cherished in every peak and fundament of the Land,
held precious and treasured by slow granite beneath
and around it, for the One Forest knew itself. It had no
knowledge of malevolence, or of humankind, but of
itself its awareness was immense beyond all estimation.
It knew itself in every trunk and limb, every root and
leaf, and it sang its ramified song to all the Earth. The
music of its knowledge arose from a myriad myriad
throats, and was heard by a myriad myriad myriad
ears."
Linden listened as if she were ensnared. She moved
only to eat the viands min handed to her. In the
rhythm of Anele's voice as much as in his words, she
recognized the Land she loved. to
She knew little of the Land's deepest past: even this
much of its history was new her. But she had
sojourned in Andelain, her every nerve alight with
percipience and Earthpower, and she felt the fitness of
Anele's story. It was condign: it belonged' She could
believe that the Earth's gutrock would remember such
things.
At her side, Liand crouched down to listen, caught by
wonder; but she hardly n°
had no bearing on her immediate plight, but she drank
it in as if it were hurt loam and aliantha; another form
of nourishment.
"Yet in those distant years,' Anele related, "neither
men nor women had true ears." harpened as he
continued, as if he had absorbed the passion of the
stones. Linden heard his heart in every word. "When
they came to the Land, they came heedless, providing
only for themselves. And the malevolence within
Lifeswallower had burgeoned, as all darkness must, or
be quenched. It had grown great and avid, and its
hunger surpassed satiation.
"No tongue can tell of the shock and rue among the
trees when human fires and human blades cleared
ground for habitation. The mountains know it, and in
their hearts they yet protest and grieve, but mortal
voice and utterance cannot contain it. A myriad
myriad trunks, and a myriad myriad myriad leaves,
which had known only themselves in natural growth
and decay, and which had therefore never considered
wanton pain, then cried out in illimitable dismay-a cry
so poignant and prolonged that the deepest core of the
peaks might have answered it, were stone itself not also
defenseless and unwarded."
Anele clasped his arms around his knees to contain his
distress. "Yet men and women had no ears to hear
such woe. And even if they had heard it, their single
minds, enclosed and alone, could not have
encompassed the Forest's betrayal, the wood's
lamentation. Only the malice within Lifeswallower
heeded it-and gave answer.
"For a time, those who had come to the Land felled
trees and charred trunks only because they knew not
how else they might achieve space for homes and
fields. Thus was their cruelty at first restrained. But
their restraint was brutal and brief by the measure of
the One Forest's slow sentience. And after those
generations, humankind discovered malevolence, or
was discovered by it. Then the murder of the trees was
transformed from disregard to savagery.
"Hence came Ravers to the Land," the old' man
rasped bitterly, "for they were the admixture of men
and malevolence, an enduring hunger for evil
coalesced and concentrated in transient flesh
generation after swift generation until they became
beings unto themselves-spirits capable of flesh, yet
spared the necessities of death and birth. Thus they
gained names and definition, three dark souls who
knew themselves as they knew the One Forest, and
who aspired above all things to trample underfoot its
vast and vulnerable sentience.
"And humankind had no ears to hear what had
occurred. Men and women were only ignorant, not
malefic, for their lives were too brief to sustain such
darkness, and when they perished their descendants
were again only ignorant.
"Yet even that renewed and ever renewed ignorance
could not spare the One Forest.
tired him. For a time she forgot pursuit and black
storms. The tale of the One Forest
His anger s
I
Humankind was as deaf to malevolence as to
lamentation, and so it was easily led, eas. ily mastered,
easily given purpose, by the three who had learned to
name themselves moksha, turiya, and samadhi.
Therefore the butchery of the trees swelled and
quickened from generation to generation."

There Anele paused; released his knees in order to
scrub unbidden tears from the grime on his cheeks.
His blind eyes stared at the broken rocks as if he could
see the ancient moment of their shattering. Around
him, the breeze flowed slowly, and the chill of high ice
seeped into the rift, as the westward peaks began to
bar the sun.
Linden waited for him in a kind of suspense, as though
she needed the old man's tale.
When he had gripped his knees again, he said, "Still
the One Forest could only wail and weep, unable to act
in self-defense." Voiceless tears spread anger and
sorrow into his torn beard. "Despite its vastness, it,
too, lived in ignorance. It knew only itself and pain,
and so could not comprehend its own possible
strength. Born of Earthpower, sustained by
Earthpower, knowing Earthpower, the One Forest
could not grasp that Earthpower might have other
uses.

"Thus the destruction of the trees grew as the
ambitions of humankind and Ravers mounted. And
with that bereavement came another loss, inseparable
from the first, but more bitter and deadly. In the
slaughter of each tree, one small gleam of the Forest's
Land-spanning sentience failed, never to be renewed
or replaced. Thus the wishes of the Ravers were
fulfilled. As the butchery of the trees increased, so the
One Forest's knowledge of itself diminished, lapsing
toward slumber and extinction.

"That grief was too great to be borne." Anele himself
seemed hardly able to contain it. His voice rose to a
low cry. "Even mountains could not endure it. Peaks
shattered themselves in sorrow and protest. This very
cliff split as a heart is torn asunder by rage and loss,
and by helplessness."
For a moment, he gaped at the riven walls. Their
yearning had come upon him like a geas. They needed
his mortal tongue to articulate their interminable rue.
Cold exhaled down the rift like a sigh of protest and
loss.
But then his head jerked to the other side, and he
seemed to find a new vein of song• His voice dropped
to a murmur which Linden would not have been able
to hear if he had not chipped each word off his stone
lament like a flake of obsidian, jagged and distinct*

"The Earth itself heard that cry. Every knowing ear
throughout the Earth heard it. And at last, when much
of the Lower Land had been slain of trees, and the
devastation

of the Upper had truly begun, the cry was answered."
     „ `with one
Abruptly Anele leaned forward, shifted the angle of his
head. "There. It Is wit trembling, gnarled finger, he
pointed into the center of the sloping rubble.

ten there-the coming of the Elohim." avers

Gloaming filled his moonstone eyes. "Many centuries
after the rising of the Ravers mbers' a be at a time
when much of the One Forest's sentience had dwindled
to e
such as the trees had never known came among them,
singing of life and knowledge, of eldritch power
beyond the puissance of any Raver. And singing as
well of retribution.
"Why the Elohim came then and not earlier, before so
much had been lost, these stones cannot grasp. Yet
come she did-or he, for the Elohim are strange, and
such distinctions describe them poorly. And with her
song, the remaining leagues of the One Forest awoke to
power."
This part of the story Linden had heard before. Findail
the Appointed had told it to the assembled Search for
the One Tree aboard Starfare's Gem. Still she listened
with all her attention. Anele conveyed an impression of
urgency, of necessity, which she could neither name
nor ignore.
"The trees," he told the gathering shadows, "could
neither strike nor flee. Their limbs were not formed to
wield fire and iron." Findail had said, A tree may
know love and feel pain and cry out, but has few
means of defense. "Yet even that remnant of
wakefulness which remained was vast by mortal
measure, and its power was likewise vast. Capable
then as well as aware, the One Forest turned its
loathing and ire, not against the deaf ignorance of
humankind, but rather against the Ravers.
"Nor did the trees count the cost of their new might.
The Elohim had sung to them of retribution, and she
was more puissant than any Raver. Her nature
granted them the power to deny. Therefore they took
her and bound her, and with Earthpower set her in
bonds of stone at the edge of Landsdrop as a
barricade, a forbidding, against the Ravers. And such
was the strength of their ramified will that while she
lived, while she retained any vestige of herself,
moksha, turiya, and samadhi were entirely barred
from the Upper Land. No Raver in any form could
pass that interdiction to threaten the remnants of the
One Forest."
There Anele stopped, although his tale was not done.
He had lost the thread of memory in the granite, or his
ability to discern it had faltered. Nevertheless its
compulsion held Linden. When he did not continue,
she finished his tale for him as if she, too, had been
bound in place by the exigency of the trees.
"But that's not all," she added. "People didn't stop
cutting down forests just because the Ravers couldn't
goad them to it." Covenant had told her this. "The
trees had spared there, but they were still too ignorant
to know it. Ordinary people kept on hacking and
burning whenever they thought they needed more
open ground. They didn't know," could not know,
"that they were murdering the mind of the One Forest.
"So the trees went further. After they formed that
forbidding," the Colossus of the Fall, "they used what
they had learned from the Elohim to create the
Forestals. Guardians to protect the last forests."
Morinmoss between Mount Thunder and the Plains of
Ra Dark Grimmerdhore east of Revelstone. Fatal
Garroting Deep around the
flanks of Melenkurion Skyweir
of the time we humans don't seem t` d because most
to care what were doing to the world.,
Then she had to stop as well. She needed time to pray
that the ending of the Sun bane and the creation of a
new Staff of Law had undone some of humankind's
harm. that the Land had regained enough vitality to
enable the growth of new forests.
"It may be so," Anele sighed into the gathering chill.
"That knowledge is not written here."
After a long moment, Liand stirred. He rose to his feet;
gathered up the food and waterskins. "No one
remembers it." His bitterness echoed Anele's tale.
"The Masters do not speak of it. This treasure of the
Land's past, these memories of glory, they keep to
themselves."
Linden groaned inwardly. He was right. The Haruchai
had left the people of the Land as ignorant and blind-
and as potentially destructive-as their first ancestors
had been.
In their own way, the Masters might prove as fatal as
Ravers.
"Thank God," she murmured obliquely, hardly aware
that she spoke aloud, "there are only two of them left."
No ordinary death could claim a Raver. But samadhi
Sheol had been rent, torn to shreds, by the sacrifice of
Grimmand Honninscrave and the power of the
Sandgcrgon Nom.
"Two?" Liand asked in confusion.
And, "Masters?" croaked Anele, rousing himself.
"Masters?"
Linden brushed them aside with a flick of her hand.
Anele's tale filled her head. "I'm just thinking-"
She felt now that she had never before grasped the full
atrocity of the Sunbane. Oh, she had experienced its
horror in every nerve. Her knowledge was both
personal and intimate. But she had not guessed what
such devastation meant to the fading sentience of the
trees. Or to Caer-Caveral, the last Forestal, who had
lost more than he could bear.
It was no wonder, she thought, that he had given up
his defense of Andelain for the sake of Hollian and her
unborn child. He had known too much death, and
needed to affirm life.
Suddenly Anele flung himself to his feet. Wailing,
"Masters!" he began to scramble
frantically up the raw sharp rocks.
Masters-? Stave
Remembering forests and slaughter, Linden struggled
upright in time to see top the rise which blocked her
view of the South Plains.
He approached swiftly. Deepening shadows obscured
his face. Even with her health-sense, she had never
been able to read the emotions of the Haruchai.
Nevearth less her thin percipience was enough to let
her feel the urgency of his stride.
Behind her, Anele rushed upward like a shout of fear.
"Linden Avery," Stave barked as he drew near, "this
is folly." The timbre of his voice
suggested anger, although its inflection did not. "Do
you seek to flee? Then why are
you not far from this place? While you linger, they
have caught your scent." Instinctively, uselessly, Liand
moved to interpose himself between Stave and Lin
den. "It is you we flee, Master." Once again his
innocence and resolve conveyed a dig
nity that she could not match. "If we have erred, it is
because we were granted
opportunity to hear a tale which you have denied us."
Stave ignored him; seemed to slip past him without
effort. "Abandon your supplies,
Stonedownor," he ordered as he advanced on Linden.
"You must flee at once. The Cho
sen will require your aid."
Then he stood before her.
"They have caught your scent," he repeated. "Already
they have severed any retreat.
You must make haste."
Liand started after Stave as if he meant to leap on the
Master's back. But then he
seemed to hear something in Stave's tone that halted
his attack. "`They'?" he panted.
"'They'?"
An instant later, he wheeled; rushed toward his packs
and Somo.
Linden stared at Stave in blank shock. The mourning
of the cliffs still gripped her:
slain trees thronged in her mind. She could not grasp
Your scent-?
"Have you forgotten your peril?" he demanded.
"Alone, I cannot withstand them.
Yet I will slay as many as I may. They will be hindered
somewhat. Perhaps they will be
daunted. Or perhaps you may gain some covert before
they assail you"
"Linden!" Liand cried out to her. "Run! Do not delay
for me!" Feverishly he threw
bundles onto the pinto's back. "I will follow!"
"Stave?" she breathed dumbly. "What-?" "Linden
Avery, you are hunted by kresh."
In his flat tone, the words sounded as deadly as
Ravers.
Scion of Stone
 Had she heard of kresh in huge packs possessed by
Ravers? Did she imagine tvM) the memory? Aboard
Starfare's Gem she had seen a black swarm of rats
driven by a Raver's malice. In a terrible storm,
burning eels had come near to crippling the Search for
the One Tree. But kresh-?
Had she ever heard of those great yellow wolves before
Liand had mentioned them? The Stonedownor yelled,
"Linden!"
Stave insisted inflexibly, "Linden Avery."
Her son needed her, and she had come to this.
The twilight of deep shade filled the cleft. Overhead
the sun had passed into midafternoon, but the ragged
cliffs rose too high to admit direct sunshine. Beyond
them, the sky held an illimitable blue tinged to the
verge of gloaming with purple and majesty. Its
lambency was all that lit the rift.
Liand fumbled to secure Somo's burdens. "Stave!" he
shouted. "How far?"
"Half a league," Stave answered as if Linden had
asked the question, "no more." His hands touched her
shoulders. "If you do not flee, you will perish here.
They will tear you asunder."
"Flee?" she countered. "What for?" Disoriented by
images of ruin, she could hardly concentrate on the
Master. "I mean, seriously. I can't outrun them. I can
hardly w A It's been too long-"
'
She lifted Covenant's ring out of her shirt and closed it
in her fist. "You cant protect us. You said so. Maybe I
can." She had no idea how. "If I can't-" She shrugged'
"We weren't going to survive anyway." urged her.
His
But Stave immediately wrapped one hand over her
fist. "Do not," he hard eyes and the scar high on his
left cheek seemed to call out to her
r through the
gloom. "Linden Avery, I forbid you. Old evils inhabit
these mountains. You will rout them, or draw them
down upon us. Better the threat of fangs and claws
than some
darker peril." into motion.
Finally Liand finished with Somo's packs. At once, he
hauled the pinto half-dragging the beast up the slope.
Linden stared back at Stave, floundering within
herself. Old evils-? She could not imagine what he
meant; but he was Haruchai and commanded belief.
And she did not know how to summon wild magic. It
arose according to laws or logic she had not yet
learned to understand. Without percipience to guide
her
"Linden, come!" Liand cried as he labored upward.
"You do not know the ferocity of these kresh! They
will devour us flesh and bone. We must find some
shelter which we are able to defend."
"Then it's up to you." She faced Stave as squarely as
she could. "I'm too weak."
For a brief moment, no more than a heartbeat, Stave
appeared to hesitate. He may have realized that there
was more at stake between them than simple frailty
and flight. His people remembered her as the Chosen,
the Sun-Sage; worthy of service. But he could not
simultaneously aid her and recapture Anele. Every
step upward would carry him farther away from the
driving convictions of his people.
An instant later, however, he surged at Linden, swept
her into his arms, and began to spring easily up the
rocks.
His feet were bare, yet he crossed the sharp edges and
splinters of the rubble as though mere stone had no
power to hurt him. In a dozen strides, he caught up
with Liand and Somo; passed them. When Linden
glanced up the rift, she saw that he was gaining on
Anele, in spite of the old man's frenetic haste.
An inestimable distance above Anele, the glow of the
sky lit the place where the fallen rock met the rims of
the cliffs. Those slopes might or might not provide a
route onto the higher mountainsides: Linden was too
far away to see them clearly.
Too far away to reach them at all.
Below her the wolves had not yet appeared. If they had
gained the scree, or even the rift, they were still hidden
by the rise behind which she had rested. How far was
half a league? A stone's throw? For a Giant? More?
She should have known: she had traveled leagues by
the hundreds during her earlier time in the Land. But
she could not remember.
Anele's pace appeared too headlong and frantic to be
sustained; but she did not fear for him. He has no
friend but stone. He had endured for decades in and
around these mountains. Even now he might well
outlast her.
When she glanced down at Stave's feet, their swift
certainty frightened her. If he tripped he would fall to
the jagged stones atop her. To ease the strain of his
task, she honked her arm over his neck. Then she
watched behind her for the first glimpse of
the kresh.
In his arms, she
With ever mounted the slope as if she were moving
backward through time. Haruchai carried her up f
over broken pieces of song, fragments of lamentation.
o The
n.
No wonder Anele was mad. Such music might have
fractured anyone's mind.
Covenant's ring bounced on its chain outside her shirt.
It seemed to reproach her with its mystery and power.
Its true owner would have known how to use it; save
his comrades. She had seen him in the apotheosis of
the Banefire, mastering the source and fuel of the
Sunbane even though his veins were full of Lord Foul's
venom. In spite of his self-doubt, he had found within
himself the passion and control to quench long
generations of bloodshed.
But afterward he had foresworn power. He had
refused to defend himself against Lord Foul.
In her dreams, he had told Linden to trust herself-and
yet she did not believe that she could raise enough
flame to hold back a pack of wolves. When minutes
had passed, and the kresh did not appear, she caught
Covenant's ring in her free hand and put it back under
her shirt. He had left it to her, but she could not claim
it as her own.
Liand tried to match Stave's pace, but could not. Somo
slowed him. The beast was a mustang, bred to
mountains; but the scree demanded great care.
Jostled in the cradle of the Haruchai's arms, Linden
panted, "Wait for Liand. We have to stick together."
With kresh on her scent, she would not have left even a
Master behind.
She did not expect Stave to heed her. So far he had
shown little regard for her wishes. Yet he slowed his
strides for Liand's sake. Apparently he and his people
took their guardianship of the Land seriously.
When Liand and Somo had drawn level with him,
Stave suited his pace to theirs. Ahead of them, Anele
was able to maintain his lead. In that formation, they
climbed as if they were ascending into recollections of
the One Forest. To Linden, it seemed that the old
man's tale drew them upward.
She peered back at the horizon of the rubble below
her. Stave had carried her perhaps a quarter of the
way up the rift; possibly less. Still she saw no sign of
any wolves. However, she did not doubt that the kresh
would soon surge past the rise.
Liand may have felt otherwise. Breathing easily in
spite of his exertions, he guided Somo closer to Stave
and Linden. "I am disturbed, Master," he said tensely.
"You name the yourselves the guardians of the Land.
And you have recognized Linden Avery from had
forgotten past." His distrust reached through the dim
light to Linden's nerves. H left his diffidence toward
the Haruchai behind. "Yet you have come alone to her
aid.
"You conceal many truths. Will you reveal one here, in
the Chosen's presencehave you come alone to ward
her?"
Stave made a sound like a snort. Linden felt his
strength flow; and for a moment he surged ahead of
Liand. Irredeemable crimes passed beneath his feet.
But then he seemed to reconsider. "Do not presume to
challenge us, Stonedownor," he retorted flatly. "You
do not suffice. Inquire of the Chosen whether the word
and the honor of
the Haruchai have worth."
Together humankind and Ravers had decimated a vast
and marvelous intelligence. With the Sunbane Lord
Foul had completed their cruel work.
Stave paused, apparently waiting for Linden to speak.
When she did not, however, he added, "Yet I will
acknowledge that we were unprepared for her flight."
His tone conveyed a two-edged disdain: for Liand's
disapproval as for Linden's escape. "The Linden
Avery who is remembered among us would not have
done so. Rather she would have borne the white ring to
the Stonedown's defense. Therefore we were taken
unaware."
His words stung her. In his dry tone, she heard a
criticism with which she was intimately familiar. Often
in the past, the Haruchai had made no attempt to
conceal their scorn for her doubts and hesitations.
He may have been right. Perhaps she should have
remained to fight for the Stonedown. But Covenant
had told her to Do something they don't expect. And
Stave knew nothing of Jeremiah.
If she had stayed behind, she would not have heard
Anele's tale.
The Master continued to answer Liand. "Nor could we
estimate the direction of her flight. The Chosen has
repudiated our knowledge of her. For that reason, we
separated when the storm had passed, so that we might
search more widely.
"We could conceive of no purpose which would impel
her here, but we feared that she might attempt these
mountains in ignorance, thinking them a sanctuary.
Thus it fell to me to ride southward, while Jass and
Bornin hastened to consider more likely paths.
"I found no sign to guide me. Almost I turned aside.
But then I saw kresh gather among the hills beyond
the Mithil. I saw the direction of their hunt, and was
concerned that the Chosen had become their prey.
Therefore I made haste to place myself ahead of the
pack. At the Methyl's Plunge, I left my mount so that it
might not fall to the kresh, and continued on foot."
Stave looked into Linden's face as if she rather than
Liand had questioned him. "Linden Avery, are you
answered?"
He might have asked, Will you trust me now?
Because he distrusted her, she replied, "I thought Lord
Foul sent that storm. I
Wanted to draw it off."
In his arms, she was entirely vulnerable to him. No
doubt he could have broken her neck with one hand.
Nevertheless she had enough faith in him to add, "And
no, I don't trust you What you Masters are doing
appalls me. The Haruchai I knew weren't that
arrogant:' g She could not bring herself to tell him
about Jeremiah.
B} rough increments, the rift narrowed, its walls
leaning toward each other as °ugh they yearned to seal
away the ancient pain of the stones. As the gloom grew
deeper' it brought with it a cold that seemed to congeal
against Linden's skin. Above
her on the slope, Anele had begun to falter. Apparently
he had exhausted his desperation. In spite of Somo's
difficulties with the ascent, Stave and even Liand
diminished the old man's lead.

"The Haruchai whom you knew," Stave told Linden
stiffly, "had not yet experienced the meaning of
Brinn's victory over ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol. We
had seen the Staff of Law lost and regained. We had
seen it un-made and then made anew. When it was lost
yet again, we could not continue as we were.
"Brinn has proven himself equal to the guardianship
of the One Tree. Will you tell us that we may not prove
equal to other guardianships as well?"
"Of course not," Linden murmured through the soft
whisper of Stave's breathing and the harder rhythm of
Liand's. "But I've seen your people die. It's your
definition of guardianship that frightens me. You're
asking too much of yourselves."
He responded with a slight shrug. "What would you
have us do?"
Still grieving for the trees, she turned her gaze
downward, and her heart lurched as she saw a moiling
line seethe past the rim of the rise. A darkness heavier
than shade poured up the scree like a viscid spill
flowing in reverse, running backward in time into the
storehouse of the mountains' memories. If she had not
lost most of her healthsense, she might have felt
ferocity and fangs pelting over the rocks after her
scent.
In moments, the upward-cresting tide of kresh had
filled the cleft from wall to wall. And still it crashed
higher, and gathered to crest again: God, hundreds of
them, more wolves than she could have imagined in
one pack.

"Hurry," she panted to Stave as if that were her only
reply. Alarm clogged her throat. "They're coming."
One Master and an untried Stonedownor would never
hold back that tide.

Liand flung a look over his shoulder, cursed under his
breath, and began to haul on
Somo's reins, trying to hasten the pinto with his own
strength.
"
But Stave did not quicken his pace, or glance behind
him. "They will outrun us, he
said stolidly. "That cannot be altered. Over these rocks
the mount travels poorly" He had told Liand to
abandon the supplies-and Somo. "Haste will only
exhaust your companions to no purpose."

Then how-? she wanted to ask; demand. How do you
expect us to survive? An instant later, however, she
realized that Stave had no such expectation. Her flight
into the rift had created this plight. He had merely
pursued her so that he could fight on her

behalf. percipience
While she could, she rested in his arms and tried to
focus her remaining limitless inward, searching for the
link or passage which might connect her to the

power of Covenant's ring.     to sharpen the

The howling of the pack echoed up the rift; and the
sound seemed As they chill on Linden's skin. In it
she heard more than ordinary animal ferocity A
not merely for food and blood, but for destruction.
Redoubled by the cliffs, their howls suggested Lord
Foul's eager malice.
The Despiser had guided her to hurtloam. He had
taunted her with Jeremiah's suffering, the Land's
pain. And now he sent wolves to feast on her flesh?
No. She did not believe it. Lord Foul did not desire her
death. Not yet.
He had sent the wolves to prevent her.
Prevent her from what? She could not imagine.
Nevertheless she was abruptly certain that the true
threat of the kresh surpassed mere fangs and rending.
When Lord Foul had aided her earlier, he may have
expected her to flee in the opposite direction, toward
the Land she knew. And he had not touched Anele
again, however briefly, until after she and her
companions had passed the Mithil's Plunge.
If she gained the mountains, she might thereby foil
some aspect of the Despiser's machinations.
Even here, her foe had something to fear from her.
Ahead of her, Anele had stopped climbing. He had
mounted no more than halfway up the cleft. A harsh
ascent remained between him and the possibilities of
the mountains. Yet he knelt among the rocks as if he
had come to the end of his stamina-or his heart.
Peering through the shadows in alarm, Linden saw
that he had halted at the lower edge of a rising plane of
unbroken stone. There the fall of rubble had exposed a
stretch of native granite which reached from cliff to
cliff and perhaps a dozen strides upward.
The rough surface offered a few moments of easier
flight. Yet the old man had fal
tered below it
"Anele!" she called up to him. "Keep going! We have
to keep going!"
With a twist of his shoulders, he looked back at her in
Stave's embrace; at Liand and
Somo, and the rising wave of wolves. A faint cry
reached her among the howls and
echoes as he floundered to his feet and staggered onto
the exposed gutrock. He managed three steps, or four.
Then he fell on his face and lay still. "Hurry!" Linden
panted to Stave. "God, Anele."
This time the Haruchai heeded her. Springing into a
run, he sped forward.
Behind them, Liand labored over the rocks as swiftly
as his mount could climb. Scant heartbeats later, Stave
reached the plane of stone; strode to Anele's prone
form There he set her on her feet.
At Once, , she dropped to her knees and found the old
man gasping as if in terror. What's wrong?"
Her health-sense had declined too far: she could not
discern the source of his dis. She only knew that he had
not exhausted his strange strength. But when she
ached his arm, she realized that he was indeed
terrified; that he was wracked, nearly
undone by remorse and sanity.
raced upward, the kresh gave tongue to a more
personal and fervid hunger; a desire,
Behind the Plunge, he had radiated similar
emanations. Yet the character of his
aura here had substantial differences. There he had
writhed in self-recrimination,
scourged by the consequences of his supposed crimes. I
lost the Staff! He had blamed himself for impossible
faults; mistakes which he could not have made. Here
his dismay was more intimate. His fears seemed to
come from the foundation of his being, the bedrock
upon which his commitments and beliefs had once
stood.
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 Pail" 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 feel it. For "Anele!" she
breathed like a cry, "make sense! You're sane now. I
can

Go He must have heard her. Abruptly his attention
turned to her. Although he cold 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 hint 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 h longer
Facing him, Linden tried to estimate the speed of the
wolves. How much gin for could she delay before she
reached for fire? She had already sacrificed any her
companions failure. If Covenant's ring did not answer
immediately to her hand, she and h panions 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
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 aston
"
ish 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
eyes. 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
of its blackness, it shed illumination like flame, silent
and blazing, and as ruddy 4 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 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
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. d he regarded
"Alas for the Land!" groaned Anele softly. His past
gripped him, an
nothing else. "Loving me as they did, my parents did
not understand that I had learned
to be astonished"
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.
Ten of them, or more: as many as twenty? Men and
women, short, slim, with swift
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 much 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.
"Ur-viles!" 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 resurrectionand Anele's.
Yet these creatures were not monstrous. Dire though
they seemed, they remained
themselves: nothing had twisted their given nature.
    all? "I thought they were dead," she panted.
Surely Lord Foul had destroyed them
They had betrayed him by creating Vain. they "As we
did," Stave replied. "We cannot account for them. We
know only that
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.
"I can't!" she countered urgently. "I don't know
how."
Who else could have produced the black concussion
which had cast the kresh into confusion?
Before Stave could protest, a woman came swiftly
toward them over the rock. Like the human fighters-
the Ramen?-she seemed to emerge from within the
stones. She, too, was slim and lithe, ready for
quickness, with long black hair and dark skin, and
clad in leggings of leather and a snug leather jerkin.
But she wore her hair tied back with a length of rope:
her garrote. About her neck hung a small band of
yellow flowers.
"The Ringthane's power is not needed, sleepless one."
Her voice sounded like nickering. "The ur-viles will
not harm you."
Stave stared at her for an instant, then bowed as if she
had appeared out of legends to greet him.
"Manethrall." He sounded stiff, like a man
deliberately withholding wonder. "This cannot be. Ur-
viles are evil, and the Ramen do not serve
Corruption."
The woman did not return his bow. "Nevertheless,"
she retorted. "They will harm none of you."
"Stave!" Liand shouted frantically. "They come!"
Below the Stonedownor, the Ramen fought fiercely,
fluidly. And they seemed improbably successful. Some
of them must have fallen by now, bitten and torn. Yet
they continued to disrupt the pack's course, ten or
more of them: rearing up from the struggle, leaping
past teeth and claws; wielding their ropes to dislocate
limbs, break necks, crush windpipes.
But they could only hamper the kresh, not halt them.
Already wolves had broken from the melee to pelt
upward.
Toward Liand and Somo.
The first of them sprang for Liand's chest. At the last
instant, he stepped aside. As the wolf passed him, he
ripped both of his knives underhand through its belly.
It crashed to the stone, screaming at its wounds.
Before he could recover, another beast charged. Two
more went for the mustang's throat.
Liand fell, overborne by the wolf's impact. Together
they rolled and thrashed on the stone.
Bounding downward, the woman whom Stave had
called Manethrall flipped the rope from her hair and
in the same motion looped it around the neck of
Liand's attacker. Her momentum carried her over the
kresh; wrenched the beast aside.
At the same time, another Raman sped to Somo's aid.
Jumping onto one wolf's back, the man bunched
himself and leaped to plunge down onto the spine of
another. Bones broke with a sickening crunch. The
man rolled free while the kresh collapsed, groveling
helplessly.
Wheeling, Somo lashed out with its hooves to crush the
other wolf's skull.
A
Still the wedge of ur-viles poured downward, barking
in cadence like an incantation. Power flared and spat
from their glowing blades. In another heartbeat, they
would reach the plane of native stone which had
snared Anele in his memories.
Linden stared at them. They will harm none of you.
She believed the Manethrall. Yet the force which she
felt from the ur-viles was harm incarnate: it had been
devised for death.
Covenant had told her of such creatures-and of
butchery in Andelain
Grimly she held herself back, though her knuckles
were white with fear, and the raw din of fighting kresh
filled her head. She could see now that the wedge was
not aimed at her.
The woman who had spoken to her trusted ur-viles.
And Stave must have trusted the Ramen. Instead of
urging Linden to power, he followed the Manethrall
into battle; met the brunt of the attack with his
imponderable strength and skill.
Anele's hands plucked at Linden's shoulders. When
she turned to him, he gripped her weakly, needing her
support. "Linden Avery," he pleaded. "Chosen." He
had ceased weeping: his pain had grown too great for
tears. "You must heed me." His head flinched from
side to side, straining his thin neck. "I cannot bear it
else."
The ur-viles went past her at a run. Shouting in their
harsh, incomprehensible tongue, they swept across the
open rock and drove their wedge deep into the heart of
the pack.
Crimson blades flashed. The staff of the loremaster
lashed black acid to both sides. Ramen vaulted out of
the path of the wedge; began to withdraw from the
struggle.
Wherever the fluid force of the ur-viles touched fur,
black flames burst. Acid knives parted flesh and bone
as easily as rotten fabric. The frantic snarling of the
kresh became torn yelps and shrieks.
Trembling, Linden met Anele's supplication. The
muscles of her legs quivered so that she could scarcely
stand. Nevertheless she gazed into his ravaged face.
"I'm here." Speaking required so much effort that her
words came out in gasps. listening. Go on." There was
nothing that she could do to aid her defenders. And the
old man needed her. "Tell me what you remember."
He replied with a fragile nod. For a moment, he
mumbled to himself, apparently searching to find his
place in the tale. Then he resumed the granitic dirge of
his life.
"After many and many years of service," he said, half-
singing his grief and remorse, "Sunder and Hollian my
parents elected at last to rest, and so they placed the
Staff of Law in my hand."
Below them, the fight intensified as the kresh raved for
some point of weakness which would allow them to
break open the wedge; but Linden no longer attended
to the battle. Events had exceeded her frayed capacity
to understand them. Instead she concentrated on
Anele. His tale had become the only thing that made
sense to her.
"Yet I could not continue their work." His distress
ached to her senses. "Daunted by astonishment, and
inadequate to their example, I needed to discover my
own use for my birthright. All other courses led to
despair.
"So it transpired that when my parents had lapsed
gently into death, and I had shared in the inexpressible
mourning of Mithil Stonedown, and of all the Land, I
did not take up the task left to me. Instead I took the
Staff of Law and departed from my home so that I
might seek out some more personal form of service."
At the edges of the wedge, a few ur-viles fell to claws
and fangs. Instantly, however, ur-viles within the
wedge shifted to replace the fallen. And the
loremaster's distilled puissance dealt out fury as
though it could not be quenched. Already more than a
score of kresh writhed in flames; and still more caught
fire with each acrid splash of power. Stave guarded the
bare gutrock, delivering death whenever a wolf dared
challenge him. Liand and Somo remained safely
behind him, watching the fight. And at the walls of the
rift, using the cliffs to guard their backs, the surviving
Ramen crippled or slew every beast that came within
reach.
Anele ignored them all. He might have forgotten their
existence.
"High among these crests and vales," he explained,
nodding to the mountains, "I made a place for myself-
not so distant from Mithil Stonedown that I could not
hasten to the Land's aid at need, but far enough to
attain the silence and loneliness, the freedom from
astonishment, which my spirit craved.
"There I became Unfettered. The Haruchai had
spoken of such men and women. From them I had
learned the words, though I did not know the song."
In a frail voice, he recited:

"Free Unfettered Shriven Free
Dream that what is dreamed will be: Hold eyes clasped
shut until they see, And sing the silent prophecyAnd be
Unfettered Shriven Free."
Then he continued his story.
"Sunder and Hollian my parents had set themselves to
heal the life of the Land. For myself I chose another
task."
Abruptly the character of the battle changed. Too
many of the kresh had been slain: too many howled at
the fire in their fur, or at the torment of their crippled
and dangling limbs. First one at a time, then by twos
and threes, then all together, the pack turned to flee.
"I wished to comprehend the Land's spirit. I did not
purpose healing. In my astonishment, I did not
conceive that I might attempt so great a task. But I
dreamed that if I could teach myself to harken to the
essential language of the Land, I might hear of truths
or needs which would enable those who came after me
to provide deeper balms, more fundamental
restorations.
"And betimes," the old man admitted, "I imagined
that if I could but tune my ears and Earthpower to an
adequate acuity, I might learn from the gutrock itself
how the Land might be rid of its most ancient and
implacable evil."
The ur-viles followed, killing every beast within reach
of their power. The cries of the kresh filled the rift, a
forlorn ululation. But the Ramen did not give chase.
Instead they began to move among the fallen,
searching for any of their comrades who were dead or
injured, and ending the pain of the maimed wolves.
"For many years-a generation and more among the
folk of the Land-I came here, to this place, this rock."
More and more, Anele leaned on Linden's support. He
had no strength left for anything but words. "Here
with the Staff of Law and Earthpower, I studied stone
in every flake of mica and complication of granite,
every cunning mineral vein, every trace of recollected
heat. Each ripple of texture and flake of loss I
memorized until it became the substance of my heart.
And when at last I had brought my mortal flesh into
consonance with the Earth's bones, I found that I
could hear the speech of mountains."
Bearing three dead comrades, and five sorely
wounded, the Ramen ascended the
rubble, led by the Manethrall.
He has no friend but stone.
"Have I spoken of years and generations? Sunder and
Hollian my parents far surpassed the span of ordinary
men and women. By the measure of other folk, I was
an old man when I inherited the Staff of Law-and
more than old before I discovered true hearing-for I
had inherited also the longevity of Earthpower and
Law."
When the Ramen reached the gutrock, Stave joined
them. And Liand did the same drawing Somo behind
him. Blood streaked his left arm, but Linden could not
gauge the extent of his injury.
"Much I learned here," Anele breathed hoarsely,
"more than I am able to contain. I heard hints of the
Durance, and of the skurj. In such matters the Elohim
played a part
entwined with Earthpower and the Worm of the
World's End. Yet always I remained
myself, incapable of the burden of astonishment. With
the Staff and my own nature, I
had opened a storeroom crowded immeasurably with
memories and lore. Yet I was
who I was, and could not attain the stature of such
knowledge."
On the open stone, the Ramen set down their hurt and
fallen comrades. The dead they placed respectfully
aside, then turned to tend the wounded. Some of the
hurts looked grievous, but none of the Ramen cried out
or made any sound.
"A better man might have felt the geas of the Earth's
need and found an answer. I did not. I could not
imagine that the peril pertained to me, for the Staff
exceeded me always. Therefore I only listened, and
heard, and did naught."
The Manethrall did not stay with her people, but
instead approached Linden and Anele, with Stave
beside her. The other Ramen gestured for Liand to
join them, but he ignored them to accompany the
Manethrall and Stave.
"Thus my doom came upon me at last, and I fell from
the Land's service through no cause but my own
littleness and folly."
As soon as the Master reached her, he said
impassively, "Linden Avery, we must not tarry here. If
these ur-viles will permit us, we must return to Mithil
Stonedown while daylight holds. You have seen that I
do not suffice to ward you. We require the greater
safety of habitation and other Haruchai."
But the Manethrall woman forestalled him with a
severe movement of her hand. "Depart if you will,
Bloodguard," she told him sternly. "We will permit
the old man to speak. Long have we wished to hear his
tale."
Obliquely Linden heard in the woman's voice that she
did not trust Stave. For some reason, she considered
ur-viles less threatening than Masters.
Anele had not paused. He seemed to hear no voice
except the lament of the stone's memories.
"In one clean dawn, pristine and cherishable, while I
rested from hearing in the kindly cave which had
become my home, I felt the thing of wrong-the thing
which destroyed me-and was fearful of it, for I had
never known its like."
At last, the ur-viles ceased harrying the kresh. Still in
formation, they turned to climb back up the jumbled
slope.
"In some fashion it resembled the Sunbane's touch
upon the Land. And in some fashion it echoed the
seeping vileness which mars the waters flowing from
Mount Thunder's depths into the embrace of the Great
Swamp. Yet it was neither of those. Rather it was
fresh-new-born to harm, and virulent beyond my
comprehension. This stone could not have described
such abomination to me. It would have rent itself
asunder in the telling."
The wedge ascended steadily; but the Manethrall gave
it no heed, although Stave re
garded it askance.
"For a time," Anele moaned, "my fear held me, and I
faltered. Yet gradually I remembered courage, and
determined that I would go forth to gaze upon this
thing of evil.
"A simple choice, I assured myself, to go forth and
gaze only. I would decide upon a better response when
I had perceived its nature. Or perhaps when I had
learned to understand it-"
Abruptly Stave insisted on the Raman woman's
attention. "Do not miscomprehend, Manethrall." He
may have wished to interrupt Anele's tale. "Your
presence among these mountains is a great boon to the
Land, unexpected among the perils of these times. If
you will consent to accompany us, or to return to your
ancient homes upon the Plains of Ra, all the Haruchai
will rejoice in your presence."
He did not sound joyful, however. Instead his tone
conveyed an adamantine resolve as he added, "I intend
no disrespect when I say that we must depart now.
"I do not speak for the Chosen. As you have discerned,
she is the Ringwielder, and will do as she must. But the
old man is in our care, and we do not permit his
freedom. He must return at once to Mithil
Stonedown."
Gasping, Anele stumbled to a halt as if in dread; as if
the Master had laid cruel hands on him. His thin form
sagged against Linden's support.
The thought that he might not be able to continue-or
that Stave might prevent him from saying more-sent a
flush of anger through her. Before she could react,
however, the Manethrall interposed herself between
Stave and Anele; and Liand stepped closer to offer his
aid.
Quietly, harshly, the woman said to Stave, "Then it is
you he fears. You who have become Masters."
Stave nodded, untouched by her accusation.
"Have a care, sleepless one." The Manethrall lifted her
garrote, stiff with the drying blood of wolves. "The
Ramen do not forget. We remember that you have
ridden Ranyhyn to their deaths." Bitterness gave her
voice a flaying edge. "In those years, we withheld our
enmity only because the Bloodguard had sworn fealty
to the Lords. But we remember also that you turned
from fealty to the service of Fangthane the Render."
The Manethrall's assertion startled Linden. She had
heard the tale from Stave: the defeat and maiming of
Korik, Sill, and Doar had led the Bloodguard to turn
their backs on their Vow. But that had been, what,
seven thousand years ago? And the Ramen
remembered it?
"We suffer your presence," the Raman woman
continued, "because we loathe the kresh, which you
oppose, and because you do not bear the scent of evil.
Also we seek to comprehend that which impels these
ur-viles. But this old man has found a place in our
hearts, and we will not withdraw our aid."
"Your hearts mislead you." Stave neither raised his
voice nor spoke sharply; but
his judgment was absolute. "This Anele has claimed
kinship with a man and a woman who perished three
millennia and more ago. He is mad, and speaks only
madness."
"Be quiet, both of you, please," Linden pleaded. "I
need to hear Anele."
Stave did not relent. "Chosen, you profess concern for
the Land." He studied Linden past the Manethrall's
shoulder. "If you truly wish to serve it, you must not
harken to him."
"Then tell me something," she retorted. "You people
remember everything. Your ancestors must have
known Sunder and Hollian's son. What was his
name?"
Stave's eyes widened slightly, but he did not hesitate.
"The inheritor of the Staff of Law was named Anele."
At once, he added, "It signifies nothing that this old
man claims that name for himself."
"Nothing?" countered Linden. "What else do you call
`nothing'? Do you think it's an accident that he can
read stone?"
Before Stave could reply, the Manethrall put in, "If
you truly wish to serve the Land, sleepless one, you will
have patience. The Ramen do not desire to thwart you.
We will do so only if we must.
"Grant us this tale. Grant us two days in which to take
counsel, and to seek comprehension. Then if you have
persuaded us to trust you, we will accompany you to
Mithil Stonedown, to ensure your safe passage. And if
you have not persuaded us, we will attempt to
persuade you."
"Finally," Linden muttered between her teeth. "A
suggestion we can use."
She had no idea what two days among the Ramen
might entail-and did not care.
Stave gazed inflexibly at the Manethrall. After a
moment, still stiffly, he repeated his earlier bow.
"Your distant ancestors held our respect. At the last,
their devotion exceeded ours. In their name, and in
that of the great Ranyhyn, which we adored, I will
abide by your word."
Thank God-!
Below Linden, the ur-viles had regained bare gutrock.
They were so near that even her faint percipience felt
the leashed savagery of their lore and their blades. But
they could not frighten her now. Everything that
remained to her, she focused on Anele.
He had not stirred in her grasp. Gently she shook him,
tried to bring up his head. "Anele, Please. I'm ready
now. Can you go on?"
No one would ever be able to help him if he could not
speak of his distress; complete his tale.
Guided by instinctive empathy, she gently kissed the
top of his head.
With an effort, one bone and joint at a time, he roused
himself. By small increments, he dragged his eyes up to
the level of Covenant's ring hanging inside her shirt.
There he fixed his gaze, staring blindly. When he
finally found his voice, he spoke as if he were
addressing that small metal band
-appealing to it as though it represented the life of the
Land, and might forgive hint. His own recollections
had broken him once before. Now they threatened to
tread the shards of his mind underfoot.
"A simple choice I made. Ah, simple. Such simplicity
gives birth to woe, and its outcome is lamentation. In
my place, a wiser man might have deemed so much
harm sufficient. Yet I was not content, for with one
choice I made another, again a simple one. I left the
Staff of Law in the covert of my cave.
"I wished to preserve it from harm until I had gazed
upon this thing of wrong, and determined my best
course. So I assured myself. Was I not in my own flesh
a being of Earthpower, capable of much? Surely I
would be safe enough until I had learned to name the
evil.
"Yet the truth-"
There remorse seemed to close his throat, and he could
not continue. Linden murmured soothingly to his
bowed head; tried to project her support into him so
that he would be able to go on. And gradually he felt
her encouragement; or his need to finish his story grew
stronger. When he had mastered himself, his
quavering voice resumed.
"Ah, the truth was that I left behind the Staff because
with power comes duty. I feared that if I bore with me
the implement of Law, I would be compelled to
measure my littleness against the thing of wrong. And
I knew that I would fail.
"Thus I went out to my doom, leaving behind the
Staff."
Liand and the Manethrall moved closer to hear him:
the plaintive ache of his tale had become almost
inaudible. Even the ur-viles drew near. Only Stave
listened with his arms folded as though his heart were
a fortress.
"Alas, the evil which I there beheld was one you also
have witnessed." Briefly the old man found a bit of
strength, and his voice rose. "Among the Masters they
are known as Falls. Others name them caesures. They
are a spinning of vile power, an illimitable bane, and
when I had beheld it I was appalled." Then his energy
faded, and he lapsed to whispering. "No, more than
appalled. I was stricken immobile. My littleness
unmade me."
Weak and sorrowing, he gave his pain into Linden's
embrace; let her hold him so that he could reach an
end.
"There the caesure took me. Its evil swept over me,
and when it had passed my life and all that I had
known had been swept away. Only the shape of the
Land remained to me. These mountains. The valley of
the Mithil. The reach of the South Plains. All else had
ceased to exist.
"Oh, Mithil Stonedown endured, but it was no longer
my home. Its folk knew
nothing of the Land that I had known. All of my loves
and lore had been effaced. The very stone on which I
stood was not as I remembered it.
"And the Staff of Law
"Ah, the Staff also had ceased to exist. It had vanished,
lost by my folly. This Land knew nothing of it, and
Law itself had given way to Falls and Kevin's Dirt."
Oh, Anele. Hugging him, Linden found that she could
still weep, although he did not. Her tears dropped to
his old head and dripped away, unregarded.
"That is the harm from which I flee, though I bear it
with me always. I have lost the Staff of Law. It was my
given birthright, entrusted to my care, and I failed it. I
was too fearful for my task. The blame for the Land's
plight is mine.
"I am marked for damnation, and yet I cannot so
much as die. If Sunder my father had known what the
outcome of his love would be, he would have buried
Hollian my mother beside the Soulsease, and the Land
would have been spared the ill which I have wrought."
When he was done, Linden simply stood and held him
for a long time. She did not know how to comfort him.
She could only bear witness to his bereavement.
Yet she had heard him: she knew that he needed more.
For that reason, she told him softly, "I understand. I
believe you, Anele." The stone on which he stood
would not have permitted falsehood. "Now I know the
truth. You said it yourself. You're the Land's last
hope."
There was no one else who could even attempt to locate
the Staff again.
10.
Aided by Ur-Viles
When Linden said it, she knew it to be true, although
she could not have explained plained how she knew-or
how it could be true. She was in no condition to
question herself. Anele's need for forgiveness had
nearly exhausted her.
He knew where the Staff had been lost.
She could not continue to support him. Fortunately
something in her voice roused
him a little. He lifted his head from her chest, made an
attempt to straighten his legs. "Did I? It maybe so.
Why otherwise am I precluded from death?"
He was the son of Sunder and Hollian-which made him
three and a half thousand
years old.
Unless
Intuitive perceptions hunted for clarity within her, but
she was too tired to concentrate on them.
"Old man," Stave put in without warning, "hear me.
Linden Avery has granted you credence. The Haruchai
do not."
In response, all of the ur-viles began to bark at once,
apparently reacting to what they had heard. Their
voices meant nothing to Linden, however: their speech
resembled no language she knew. She turned a
questioning look toward the Manethrall; but the
woman shook her head.
"They comprehend us, but cannot form words in our
tongue, and we know not how to grasp theirs."
Stave ignored the exchange. "Have you made search?"
he asked Anele. "Have you returned to your cave?"
Linden wanted to sigh, Oh, leave him alone. Don't you
think he's been through enough? But the old man
rallied before she could reply.
"What else have I ever done," he answered like a
spatter of gall, "since the accursed day of my failure?"
He had grown sane enough to feel affronted. "The cave
remains. I have searched it over upon occasions
without number. I wander from it in despair, and in
despair I return. Every span of its stone and dirt I
have probed with my eyes and touched with my hands,
even tasted with my tongue. The Staff is not there. No
hint or memory of it is there. It passed out of
knowledge when the Land I knew was erased by the
evil of the Fall."
Then he turned to face up the rift. "You will betray
me," he muttered. "I must not abide your presence."
A moment later, he shuddered. "And these creatures"-
he indicated the ur-viles-"are harsh to my distress."
In Mithil Stonedown, he had spoken of Lost things,
long dead, creatures that had forced him to remember
Gathering strength by the moment, as though he had
left his frailty in Linden's hands and was no longer
hampered by it, he strode up the bare rock and began
once again to climb the rubble.
Stave started upward as well, clearly intending to
reclaim the old man. But the Manethrall stopped him
with a frown. "Two days you have granted us,
Bloodguard. We will ensure that your prey is not lost
to you."
At her word, the Haruchai nodded and let Anele go.
Linden's health-sense was gone: she could no longer
read her companions. Even the power of the ur-viles
had faded from her nerves. Their blades had become
mere lambent iron, eldritch and undefined. The
Ramen might have been honest or treacherous, and
she would not have known the difference.
Gazing after the old man, she asked the Manethrall,
"You've met him before. How much do you know
about him?"
"Little or naught," replied the woman. Her tone
remained stern, but her severity seemed to be directed
at Stave rather than Linden. "We only pity him.
Therefore when by chance our paths have crossed, we
have given him what succor we may. However, he
accepts little, and trusts less. He flees when he has been
fed or healed. For that reason, we have not comforted
him as we wish."
"Will he be all right," Linden continued, "climbing by
himself? I don't want to lose him. He's too important-"
She had only begun to grasp how important.
"Do not fear for him," the Manethrall responded. "He
is accustomed to this place. And we will watch over
him. Since you wish it, and because I have given my
word to the sleepless one, he will be returned to you at
need."
Her kindness brought another moment of tears and
blurring to Linden's eyes. If these Ramen had treated
Anele so, she would trust them for a while. Apparently
their convictions and purposes were more humane
than Stave's.
"I'm sorry," she told the Manethrall. "You and your
people saved our lives, and I haven't even thanked you.
I'm Linden Avery. Stave calls me `the Chosen' because
that's what I was called the last time I came to the
Land."
The woman used her rope to tie back her hair, then
bowed as she had not bowed to Stave, with her hands
before her head and her palms turned outward, empty
of danger. "Linden Avery," she said in the nickering
voice she had used earlier, "Ringthane, be welcome
among us. I am Manethrall Hami of the Ramen, and
they"-she indicated her companions where they tended
their injured-"are my Cords.
"Your words suggest a tale which we will hear eagerly.
However, we will not burden You with the telling of it
until we have gathered at the Verge of Wandering,
according to the word that I have given the
Bloodguard. For the present, you are weary and in
need. Before we ascend, we would offer you what aid
or comfort we may."
Linden hardly knew how to ask for what she needed.
Help me find Jeremiah. Lead Me to the Staff. Tell me
why you distrust Stave. None of that would enable her
to do More climbing. Instead she answered indirectly,
"You know Anele and Stave." Well enough, anyway.
"This is Liand son of Fostil, from Mithil Stonedown."
She nodded toward the young man. "Anele was a
prisoner there. He helped us escape."
As if for the first time, she noticed the streaks of blood
on his left arm. They leaked from under his slashed
sleeve: she could not see how badly he was hurt. But
the tearing of his sleeve suggested claws.
Infection, she thought dully. Sepsis. If his wounds were
not treated- Without percipience, she could not guess
how grave the harm might be.
The Manethrall granted Liand a gracious bow, which
he returned, emulating her movements awkwardly. He
had already shared dangers and seen wonders far
outside his experience, and his eyes sparkled with
excitement.
"You honor me, Manethrall Hami. The Ramen are
unknown in Mithil Stonedown, but you are doughty
and generous, and would be made welcome"-he
glanced pointedly at Stave-"if the Masters permitted
it."
She frowned at this reference to Masters. "Thank you,
Liand of Mithil Stonedown. We will trust your
welcome, if not that of the Bloodguard."
Fearing that Stave might take offense, Linden put in,
"With your permission, Manethrall, I want to look at
your injured. Where I come from, I'm a physician. I
don't have any drugs or supplies with me, but I might
be able to do something for them." Uncertainly she
added, "You lost lives for us. I want to help, if I can."
Hami shrugged. "As you will, Ringthane. But your aid
is not necessary. The Ramen are hardy, and I have
taught my Cords the care of such wounds. Also"-a
fierce grin twisted her lips-"our grievance against all
kresh is ancient and enduring, ill-measured in mere
centuries. Had you not been threatened, we would
have assailed them still."
Linden wanted to ask, And the ur-viles? Would they
have joined you? But she was too weary for such
questions. Murmuring, "Thanks," she gestured for
Liand to join her as she crossed the gutrock to join the
Cords who were treating their hurt comrades.
They nodded to her courteously when she squatted
among them, but did not pause in what they were
doing.
They were nine, and none unmarked by the battle.
However, they had suffered only scrapes and
scratches, bruises. The wounds of the other five were
more serious. Torn flesh hung in strips from the arms
and legs of two of them, a man and a woman. Fangs
had ripped grisly chunks out of one man's shoulder
and another's thigh. As severe as those hurts appeared,
however, they were small compared to the injuries of
the fifth Raman.
The woman had been nearly eviscerated.
Three Cords labored to keep her alive. The rest tended
the other four.
"Damn it," Linden muttered to herself. Peritonitis for
sure. Even if the woman's intestines were not too badly
rent, and could be sewn intact back into her abdomen,
she would develop a killing infection almost at once.
Indeed, all of the wounds would turn septic: the claws
and teeth of the kresh assured that.
Fire, she thought. We need a fire.
And then: hurtloam.
With an effort, she swallowed the fatigue clogging her
throat. "Do you know hurtloam?" she asked the
Cords.
"We do," one of the men answered, abrupt with
concentration. He appeared younger than Liand: too
young for such work. Strain and pride stretched a
pallor across his cheeks. All of the Cords were little
more than adolescents. "It is not found here." Not
among these broken stones. "Nor do we often bear it
with us. Its virtue slowly fades when it is lifted from
the earth, and we lack the lore to sustain it. But we are
Ramen. That which we have must suffice."
From a pouch at his waist, he sifted into his palm a few
sprigs of what appeared to be dried ferns or grass.
Petals lay among them: the same flowers that
Manethrall Hami wore around her neck. The Cord
separated one sprig from the others, returned the rest
to his pouch. Then he spat onto the herb in his palm;
and at once a sharp tang pricked Linden's nose.
"This is amanibhavam," he told her, "the flower of
health and madness. Fresh, it is too potent for human
flesh, bringing ecstasy and death. Dried, however, it
may be borne."
Rubbing the damp herb between his hands, he wiped it
into the gutted woman's wound.
She gasped in pain; and Linden nearly gasped as well,
shocked by the crudeness of such care. Damn it. She
needed her health-sense; needed to know what
amanibhavam was and did.
The suffering of the Ramen hung about her head;
agony stifled by pride and fortitude. The other Cords
had similar pouches. They dabbed bits of saliva and
fern under strips of ripped tissue and bound the skin
back into place with cloth bandages; rubbed the same
mixture as though it were a sovereign poultice into
bitten shoulders and thighs. She had witnessed
miracles of healing in the Land. With percipience and
power, she had wrought a few herself. But this
The last blood of the dead oozed from their wounds to
stain the gutrock. Its lost scent tightened the back of
her throat. They had died brutally, mangled almost
beyond recognition. One had had her face ripped
away. Another's spine had been crushed in the massive
jaws of a wolf.
These dead and injured young people had saved
Linden's life. She remembered evil; but on a purely
visceral level, she had forgotten the real cost of Lord
Foul's malice.
Staggering, she heaved herself upright. "Manethrall,"
she breathed urgently. "Hami. They're going to die."
The Manethrall came smoothly down the stone to
consider the plight of her Cords. Then she met
Linden's troubled stare. "It may be so," she admitted
sadly. "Kresh are in
1
all ways dire and filthy beasts. Yet amanibhavam has
rare virtue. It may yet redeem these wounds. We can
do naught else in this place. We must depart."
"No." Linden shook her head unsteadily. "It's too
dangerous. We can't move them." Especially the gut-
torn woman. In a rush, she added, "Liand and I know
where to find aliantha."
Hurtloam was out of the question. Without
percipience, she would not be able to identify it. And
Liand had never seen it.
Manethrall Hami raised her eyebrows. "That would be
a benison. Is it near?" Linden gestured down toward
the Mithil valley. "Send one of your Cords with me,"
she urged. "Or with Liand, if I'm too weak. They can
bring some back." "Will they return before nightfall?"
Linden swallowed roughly. "No."
"Then I will send no one. You have knowledge of the
Land, but mayhap you do not know these mountains.
With the setting of the sun, a wind as harsh as ice will
blow here. Lacking shelter, they"-she meant her
injured Cords-"will perish. Also you may succumb, for
you are not hardy.
"We must ascend. Beyond the rims of this cleft, we will
be capable of shelter and fire."
Fire to boil water, cauterize wounds, burn away as
much infection as possible. There was no wood for fuel
in the rift.
Linden felt a pang of despair, and she faltered.
"Or we could go down," she offered hesitantly. "Get
out of the wind. Find aliantha." Do what Stave wanted.
"Mithil Stonedown will help us."
Severity sharpened the Manethrall's face. "Ringthane,
we love the Land. It is the long dream of the Ramen
that we will one day return there-to the Plains of Ra
and Manhome, where we belong." Her voice implied a
suppressed outrage. "But we will not enter any place
where these Masters hold sway."
Turning away, she added, "My Cords will endure, if
they are able. They are Ramen.
Stave regarded her impassively, as though he did not
deign to take umbrage.
Linden could not imagine what grudge the Ramen held
against the Haruchai. However, she herself feared to
return to Mithil Stonedown. Stave had surprised her
by promising the Manethrall two days. In her
experience, his people neither compromised nor
negotiated.
When she had absorbed the hard fact that she could do
nothing for the Cordsthat all her years of training
were useless here-she sat down to save her strength.
The shadows in the rift approached true twilight, and
the tops of the walls seemed too far away to reach. She
did not believe that she would be able to climb so high.
Dumbly she watched one of the Cords treat Liand's
arm. She had become certain that the Ramen meant
him no harm.
The Cord applied a touch of amanibhavam and saliva
to the gash, then bound it with a bandage of clean
cloth. As he felt the effects of the poultice, Liand
frowned at first, then gradually relaxed into a smile. "I
know not what other benefits this grass may have," he
told Linden when he had thanked the Cord, "but it
assuredly softens pain. For that I am grateful."
Linden nodded vacantly. Her uselessness galled her.
For the time being, at least, she had come to the end of
herself.
Scant moments later, however, Manethrall Hami
called her Cords into motion. Around Linden, the
comparatively whole young men and women prepared
themselves to carry their dead and fallen comrades,
some in slings across their backs, others cradled in
their arms. Liand readied Somo for an ascent they
could scarcely see. And Linden realized that she was
staring at a darkness deeper than shadows: the ur-
viles.
Without thinking about it, she had expected them to
depart. Surely they had already done what they came
to do? Yet they remained, obviously waiting for
something. Did they mean to accompany the Ramen?
Did they anticipate another attack? Or were they wary
of the moment when their interests might diverge from
those of the Ramen?
Then Stave came to her side. "Chosen," he announced,
"I must bear you again." Gloom obscured his features.
If he had bared his teeth at her, she would not have
known it. "If I do not, your weariness will hold you
here, and you will be exposed to cold beyond your
endurance."
Too worn out to do otherwise, she surrendered herself
and the immediate future to his ambiguous care.
As the Cords settled their burdens, the ur-viles also
prepared to move. Apparently the disturbing creatures
intended to accompany them.
Then the Ramen began to climb. Linden had assumed
that they would move slowly and rest often, laden as
they were. But she soon saw that she had
underestimated their toughness. They managed the
jagged slope more swiftly than she could have
imagined.
And the ur-viles ascended with ease. The proportions
of their limbs aided them here: although they looked
awkward upright, they could use their hands for
climbing as readily as their feet. Somehow they had
put their weapons away, so that their hands were
empty; unencumbered.
Soon it became obvious that only Liand and Somo
could not match the pace of the Ramen. Alone, Liand
might have kept up well enough; but in the deepening
twilight the mustang had to pick its footing carefully.
Otherwise it might snap a foreleg among the stones.
At a word from Manethrall Hami, the lone
unburdened Cord dropped back to Liand. "Join your
companions," the young woman told him brusquely.
"I will guide your mount."

"No." Liand may have shaken his head. "I brought
Somo to this. The responsibility is mine."
The Cord might have argued; but Stave put in, "You
have wrought sufficient folly
for one day, Stonedownor. Do not be foolish in this.
The horselore of the Ramen sur
passes you. Your mount will fare better in her care
than in yours."
"Linden?" Liand asked out of the darkness. He may
have meant, What should I do? He may have meant,
Tell this damn Master to leave me alone.
Sighing to herself, Linden answered, "I think the
Ramen know what they're doing.
Somo should be safe with her."
"Very well," Liand muttered to the Cord. "I have
tended the mounts of Mithil Stonedown since I grew
tall enough to curry them. If you do not return Somo
to me, you will answer for it."
The young woman snorted under her breath, but made
no other retort.
Liand scrambled up the rocks to Stave's side. "I know
nothing of these Ramen, Mas
ter," he said softly. "You have concealed them from
us. If I am foolish, how could it be
otherwise? You have kept secret all that might have
made us wise." Stave ignored the justice of Liand's
accusation.
Overhead the sky had turned purple with evening.
Slowly it dimmed toward black. For some time now,
the breeze had gathered force as cold poured like a
stream into the narrows of the rift. Linden felt chills
seep into her skin in spite of Stave's intransigent
warmth. Soon she would start to shiver under the
mounting weight of the wind.
A day and a half in the Land, hardly more than that,
and she had already become as helpless as an infant.
Jeremiah needed her. More than that: he needed her
to be a figure of power, the stuff of legends; rapt with
wild magic and efficacy. Yet here she lay, cradled
weakly in the arms of a man who had turned his back
on such things.
Ahead of her, the Ramen and ur-viles moved in their
distinct groups, as obscure as clouds against the vague
background of the rocks. Yearning to find some use
for herself, she asked abruptly, "Stave, will you talk to
me?"
He replied without turning his head. "What do you
wish me to say?"
"Tell me what you know about ur-viles." She desired a
concession from him; some
thing more personal than the forbearance he had
shown the Ramen. "You called them
a great evil, but they don't act like it."
Out of the gloaming, Stave said, "They are as strange
to us as to you. We cannot account for them. We have
never understood them."
Linden persisted. "You still know more about them
than I do. Their history. Where they come from. All
I've ever heard is that they were made, not born.
Created by the Demondim-whoever they were. I need
more.
"Isn't there anything else you can tell me?"
For a long moment, Stave appeared to consider the
deeper ramifications of her
question. Deliberately over the centuries, the Haruchai
had suppressed the history of the Land. Now she asked
him to speak of it-and in Liand's presence.
Finally he countered, "Chosen, do you comprehend
what you request? This foolish young man has elected
to dare his fate with you. If I give you answer, and he
seeks later to relate what he has heard, we must
prevent him.
"You appear to value kindness. Will you treat him so
roughly?"
Before Linden could object, Liand put in stiffly, "Your
words sow confusion, Master. You threaten me rather
than the Chosen. Therefore the choice is mine to make.
To pretend otherwise is not honest. It ill becomes you."
A subliminal tension seemed to run through Stave's
chest. "Have a care, Stonedownor," he replied. "You
are not equal to such determinations."
"Because," Linden protested, "you don't allow him to
be." Stave's inflexibility exasperated her. "He's right.
If you think he's too ignorant to understand the risks,
that's your doing. No one else's."
The Haruchai had made themselves responsible for all
the Land. Under the circumstances, the unexpected aid
of the ur-viles must have undermined Stave's
convictions. And he may have felt disturbed by the
way in which the presence of the Demondim-spawn
lent credibility to Anele's impossible tale. Perhaps his
need to understand the creatures was as acute as
Linden's.
"Very well," he said at last. His voice held no hint of
concession. "I will answer. This Stonedownor must be
wary of us as he sees fit."
The indistinct group of the Ramen appeared nearer
than it had earlier. Stave was gaining on them-or they
had slowed their pace to listen.
"You have been told, Linden Avery, that the Haruchai
first came to the Land in the time of High Lord Kevin
Landwaster." Having accepted this task, Stave spoke
steadily, in spite of his taciturn nature. Nevertheless
his tone conveyed an impression of awkwardness, as
though he were translating a richer and more
numinous tongue into blunt human language. "I say
this again to explain that they did not know the High
Lord's father, Loric son of Damelon, who earned the
name of Vilesilencer. They heard only tales of those
years, and of the black Viles which had haunted the
Land. We cannot now declare which of those tales
were true."
Linden settled herself in the Master's arms. His
decision to speak gave her an obscure comfort. It
suggested that he could still compromise, in spite of his
native severity.
"It was said by some," he told her as well as Liand and
the listening Ramen, "that the Vile, were creatures of
miasma, evanescent and dire, arising from ancient
banes buried within Mount Thunder as mist arises
from tainted waters. Others claimed that they were
specters and ghouls, the tormented spirits of those who
had fallen victim to Corruption's evil. And yet others
proclaimed that they were fragments of the One
Forest's lost soul, remnants of spirit rent by the
slaughter of the trees, and ravenous for harm.
"No." Liand may have shaken his head. "I brought
Somo to this. The responsibility is mine."
The Cord might have argued; but Stave put in, "You
have wrought sufficient folly for one day,
Stonedownor. Do not be foolish in this. The horselore
of the Ramen surpasses you. Your mount will fare
better in her care than in yours."
"Linden?" Liand asked out of the darkness. He may
have meant, What should I do?
He may have meant, Tell this damn Master to leave me
alone.
Sighing to herself, Linden answered, "I think the
Ramen know what they're doing. Somo should be safe
with her."
"Very well," Liand muttered to the Cord. "I have
tended the mounts of Mithil Stonedown since I grew
tall enough to curry them. If you do not return Somo
to me, you will answer for it."
The young woman snorted under her breath, but made
no other retort.
Liand scrambled up the rocks to Stave's side. "I know
nothing of these Ramen, Master," he said softly. "You
have concealed them from us. If I am foolish, how
could it be otherwise? You have kept secret all that
might have made us wise."
Stave ignored the justice of Liand's accusation.
Overhead the sky had turned purple with evening.
Slowly it dimmed toward black. For some time now,
the breeze had gathered force as cold poured like a
stream into the narrows of the rift. Linden felt chills
seep into her skin in spite of Stave's intransigent
warmth. Soon she would start to shiver under the
mounting weight of the wind.
A day and a half in the Land, hardly more than that,
and she had already become as helpless as an infant.
Jeremiah needed her. More than that: he needed her
to be a figure of power, the stuff of legends; rapt with
wild magic and efficacy. Yet here she lay, cradled
weakly in the arms of a man who had turned his back
on such things.
Ahead of her, the Ramen and ur-viles moved in their
distinct groups, as obscure as clouds against the vague
background of the rocks. Yearning to find some use
for her
self, she asked abruptly, "Stave, will you talk to me?"
He replied without turning his head. "What do you
wish me to say?"
"Tell me what you know about ur-viles." She desired a
concession from him; something more personal than
the forbearance he had shown the Ramen. "You called
them a great evil, but they don't act like it." of ac
Out of the gloaming, Stave said, "They are as strange
to us as to you. We cannot
count for them. We have never understood them."
     `,,,.here
Linden persisted. "You still know more about them
than I do. Their history- by the
they come from. All I've ever heard is that they were
made, not born.
Demondim-whoever they were. I need more.
"Isn't there anything else you can tell me?"
For a long moment, Stave appeared to consider the
deeper ramifications
question. Deliberately over the centuries, the Haruchai
had suppressed the history of
the Land. Now she asked him to speak of it-and in
Liand's presence.
Finally he countered, "Chosen, do you comprehend
what you request? This foolish
young man has elected to dare his fate with you. If I
give you answer, and he seeks later
to relate what he has heard, we must prevent him.
"You appear to value kindness. Will you treat him so
roughly?"
Before Linden could object, Liand put in stiffly, "Your
words sow confusion, Mas
ter. You threaten me rather than the Chosen.
Therefore the choice is mine to make. To
pretend otherwise is not honest. It ill becomes you."
A subliminal tension seemed to run through Stave's
chest. "Have
downor," he replied. "You are not equal to such
determinations."
"Because," Linden protested, "you don't allow him to
be." Stave's inflexibility exasperated her. "He's right.
If you think he's too ignorant to understand the risks,
that's your doing. No one else's."
The Haruchai had made themselves responsible for all
the Land. Under the circumstances, the unexpected aid
of the ur-viles must have undermined Stave's
convictions. And he may have felt disturbed by the
way in which the presence of the Demondim-spawn
lent credibility to Anele's impossible tale. Perhaps his
need to understand the creatures was as acute as
Linden's.
"Very well," he said at last. His voice held no hint of
concession. "I will answer. This Stonedownor must be
wary of us as he sees fit."
The indistinct group of the Ramen appeared nearer
than it had earlier. Stave was gaining on them-or they
had slowed their pace to listen.
"You have been told, Linden Avery, that the Haruchai
first came to the Land in the time of High Lord Kevin
Landwaster." Having accepted this task, Stave spoke
steadily, in spite of his taciturn nature. Nevertheless
his tone conveyed an impression of awkwardness, as
though he were translating a richer and more
numinous tongue into blunt human language. "I say
this again to explain that they did not know the High
Lord's father, Loric son of Damelon, who earned the
name of Vilesilencer. They heard Only tales of those
years, and of the black Viles which had haunted the
Land. We cannot now declare which of those tales
were true."
Linden settled herself in the Master's arms. His
decision to speak gave her an obscure comfort. It
suggested that he could still compromise, in spite of his
native severity.
"It was said by some," he told her as well as Liand and
the listening Ramen, "that the viler were creatures of
miasma, evanescent and dire, arising from ancient
banes buried within Mount Thunder as mist arises
from tainted waters. Others claimed that they


were specters and ghouls the tormented spirits of those
who had fallen ,
victim to Cor
evil.
And yet others proclaimed that they were fragments of
the One Forest's
of her lost soul, remnants of spirit rent by the
slaughter of the trees, and ravenous for harm.
a care, Stone-
"On three things, however, the tales agreed. First, the
Viles appeared where they willed, elusive as swamp
lights, wreaking mortification and horror. Next, their
lore, which they had gained from the buried banes of
the Earth, was black and ruinous, delving into matters
which the old Lords could not penetrate. And last, the
evil of the Viles was inspired by their loathing of
themselves.
"Doubt-ridden, perhaps, by the cleaner spirits from
which they had arisen, or by the havoc which
Corruption required of them, they desired above all
things to become other than they were. And toward
that desire they bent all their terrible lore.
"Therefore they created the Demondim, laboring long
in the Lost Deep. And for a time it appeared that they
had succeeded in their self-loathing, for the Demondim
were unlike their makers. Among the Lords, they were
described as `powerful and austere: It was said of
them that they were `once friendly' to the trees.
"Still the Viles were a bane upon the Land. For that
reason, High Lord Loric took up the challenge of
silencing their evil. And in this he prevailed, though at
great cost. Because their lore was a mystery to him,
beyond his conception, he enlisted the aid of
the Demondim against their makers. There he learned
dismay, and could never again
be truly whole, for he did not know that Corruption
had been at work among the De
mondim, sending his Ravers to teach them self-
Despite, the same abhorrence of them
selves which had long tormented the Viles.
"Because they had been swayed, the Demondim
became the foes of the forests. For the same reason,
they returned to the breeding dens of the Viles in order
to begin the making of the ur-viles. And for that same
reason, the aid which the Demondim granted to Loric
Vilesilencer was Despite in another form, for it arose
from their selfloathing. They turned against their
makers because Corruption is cunning, and because
they saw no value in their own creation.
"Thus was High Lord Loric's victory over evil made
possible by Corruption. So were planted the seeds of
doubt and chagrin which later blossomed in Kevin
Landwaster and the Ritual of Desecration." from the
Shades of evening still held the sky, but night now
filled the rift, welling UP files• And memories of the
rubble; flowing downward from the dark past of the
ur
with it came the ice-sharp wind which Manethrall
Hami had promised. Cold soughed
and hissed in the background of Stave's words.
Yet he was not chilled. His people made their home
among the ice and snows of the
Westron Mountains. The passion in his veins gave him
all the warmth he required.
Bearing Linden upward appeared to cost him no effort
at all. o f the De
"The Bloodguard," he stated flatly, "heard only tales
of the Viles,i Lord Resin mondim their experience was
certain. Among other causes, High d" ,n, driven to
Desecration by his failure to answer the darkness of
the Vile-sp
"The Viles were in some form wraiths, as enduring
and insidious as mist. The ur
viles werell-he hesitated momentarily, corrected
himself-"are as you see them, tan
gible flesh which may be slain, despite their deep lore.
But the Demondim possessed a
middle nature, at once both and neither, partaking of
miasma and flesh together. As did the Viles, they
persisted outside or beyond life and death. As do the
ur-viles, they had forms which could be touched and
harmed."
"I do not understand," Liand put in. "How is it
possible?"
"The Demondim were animate dead," Stave answered,
"creatures such as those that came near to causing the
fall of Revelstone in the time of High Lord Mhoram.
Those creatures, however, were mere lifeless forms
serving the power of the Illearth Stone. The
Demondim were the lore and bitterness of the Viles
made manifest in slain flesh, corpses with the
puissance of Lords. The vitriol which the ur-viles wield
for destruction pulsed in their hearts. Clad in
cerements and rot, the Demondim arose from the
graves of the fallen, and their touch was fire.
"They might be halted by blade or flame, but they
could not be extinguished. From them, High Lord
Kevin learned lessons of despair which doomed his
spirit. Given time, an army of such creatures might
overrun the Earth "
Out of the night, Manethrall Hami said, "The Ramen
remember. We named them Fangs, the Teeth of the
Render, and all their deeds were dire."
"Indeed," Stave responded. "The Ramen fought
valiantly and often along the Roamsedge to bar the
Demondim from the Plains of Ra, and were not
defeated.
"Yet the Demondim did not comprise an army. Their
numbers were too few. Neither scruple nor opposition
restricted them, but they had turned against their
makers, and therefore the Viles were gone. Nor did the
Demondim turn their lore to the spawning of yet more
Demondim. They had learned to abhor themselves,
and had no desire to seek their own increase. Rather
they studied and labored to re-fashion themselves in
living flesh."
Covenant had told Linden similar things. She had met
both ur-viles and Waynhim. However, she had no wish
to interrupt what Stave was saying.
"While Corruption wrought covertly to mar the
Council of Lords," he told the dark climb, "the
Demondim also labored in secret, wielding their lore
over breeding vats and fens in the Lost Deep, the
lightless pits and caverns beneath the Wightwarrens of
'Mount Thunder- There among forgotten banes and
ancient cruelties, they strove with


e and Power to make of themselves new creatures.
4~d from their labors emerged living flesh at last.
Some were ur-viles, while others came forth as
inc Waynhim, smaller than ur-viles, more grey than
black, and less ~n°"qed to bloodshed. Why this should
be so, the Haruchai do not know. Perhaps g the
Demondim lingered the memory that they had once
stood apart from the
9
lust and loathing of the Viles. Perhaps some aspect or
faction of the Demondirn had not been entirely
seduced by Despite. Whatever the cause, the truth
remains that both ur-viles and Waynhim were created
in the same fashion. Yet the Waynhim sought to heal
their abhorrence in service rather than to quench it in
slaughter, as the urviles did.
"So the downfall of the Demondim came upon them.
They were undone by the Ritual of Desecration.
Corruption had not forewarned his servants, or they
had declined to heed their peril. It may be that they
desired their own destruction. Thus the Landwaster's
despair achieved this one victory. Though ur-viles and
Waynhim endured, the Demondim were swept aside."
"That also," announced Manethrall Hami softly, "the
Ramen do not forget. We have known both Waynhim
and ur-viles. In that time, an extravagant cruelty ruled
the urviles, and all the Land feared them. They had
indeed become mortal, however, and could be slain."
Her voice held relish. "Many were the creatures which
perished at the hands of the Ramen."
Stave nodded. "Yet they had become less than they
were, for in the Ritual of Desecration even such beings
as ur-viles and Waynhim were diminished. Much of
the black lore of the Viles and the Demondim endured
to them-and much did not.
"This the new Lords knew because in numbers both
Waynhim and ur-viles continued to dwindle. Indeed,
both had become the last of their kind. They created
no descendants, and when they were slain nothing
returned of them."
Linden squirmed, suddenly uncomfortable in the
Haruchai's arms. He seemed to imply that the success
of the Ramen against the ur-viles would not have been
possible if the lore of the Demondim-spawn had
retained its original force.
The Manethrall responded sharply, "And do you
therefore discount us, Bloodguard? Do you deem that
our battles were less fiercely fought, or our blood less
freely spilled, because our foes had become less than
they were?
"Much has been altered since the Bloodguard were
turned to Fangthane's service
"Much are Masters now, and a threat to harmless old
men. Yet I see that the arrogance of your kind
persists."
Linden groaned to herself. She could not imagine what
had caused the almost subLinden
cutaneous animosity between Stave and the Ramen.
They had just met; could no1
t
know each other. Any grievance between them was
several thousand years old. wtal t
However, Stave's reply sounded courteous enough, if
not conciliatory. "You m
me, Manethrall. I speak only of ur-viles and Waynhim,
not of Ramen. The courage of the Ramen was beyond
question, and their devotion to the Ranvhyn proved
greater than the fidelity of the Bloodguard."
~~ hat has But then his tone grew harder. "Yet we
'persist' in the Lands service. come of the Ramen and
their devotion?
"In the time of the Sunbane, they withdrew the
Ranyhyn from the Land. That was wisely done, for the
Ranyhyn required preservation. Yet many centuries
have now passed, and where are the great horses?
"The Ramen remain. That we see. They live secretly
among these mountains, for purposes which are
likewise secret. But what of the Ranyhyn? Do they also
remain, wlanethral12 Have they expired in some
inhospitable region? Were they led from ruin to ruin
by their Ramen? Or have you returned without them,
thinking to deny them the birthright of their true
home?"
Linden expected an angry rejoinder from the
Manethrall; but instead she heard the rush of bare
feet, the whisper of skin running over stone. The dark
felt suddenly ominous around her, fretted with cold.

In the last glow of the sky, she saw ur-viles crowding
between her and the Ramen. They barked to each
other harshly, or to her, but she could not understand
them.
Oh, shit.
Trying to forestall a conflict, she snapped, "Stave,
stop. Put me down. We don't need this. The Ramen are
helping us. What more do you want?"
For a moment, the Haruchai strode up the rocks in
silence. Then he stopped against an abrupt wall of ur-
viles. The creatures had barred his way completely.
Facing them, he dropped Linden's legs to set her on
her feet. Liand scrambled to her side as she groped for
balance on the uneven surface. She feared that she
would see red blades gleaming among the black
creatures, but no weapons marked the night.
The ur-viles smelled of decaying leaves and carrion:
things which had become rotten.

What in hell was going on?

And what were "Ranyhyn"? Both Hami and Stave had
mentioned them earlier, but she did not know what the
name implied.

She wished urgently that she could understand the ur-
viles.
"Manethrall," she called out softly, "I'm sorry. He
doesn't speak for me. I don't even knoW what he's
talking about. But you don't have to be enemies. The
Haruchai I've i°wn have always been faithful No
matter what hd thd b."
.appene,ey stooy us "Chosen," Stave put in
impassively. "The Ramen do not hear you." What-?
"Indeed," Liand confirmed acidl h
y. Theyave gone ahead. The Master's words have
,
driven th
ere away
Linden gaped into the black mass of ur-viles, trying to
see past them. "Why?" She Was blind in the shrouded
rift. "
She What are they doing?"
could not believe thth R
a teamen had forsaken her.
tk
now t
not khey do not guide us," Liand muttered, "we
cannot escape this place. We do
the wa>
y.
0 °°"
.1,4
n°ti'
, Stave answered "Thei:' .r purposes are hidden
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 theta. 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 e to
ill
undo us. And our cloaks and blankets are with Somo,
behind us. We e must continue climb, and attempt to
discover the way." ten
Damn it. He was right. The Ramen had left her and
her companions in an un able position.
For his sake, however, she said, "We'll he all right.
They haven't abandoned us -
For help us when we need it."      and feet. Sbe
Grimly she determined to try the broken slope with
her own hands 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 con
fronted 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 en
courage 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.ow
But the loremaster only barked at its weapon, and
gradually a crimson flame fl ered 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
loremaster meant to light the way.
The ur-viles were still trying to help her. Spilling red
illumination on all side the
and her
h
loremaster and its followers began to retreat up the
rubble as if to draw' her and
companions forward.         11enni3
According to Stave, they were a great evil. And they
should all have died 11" e ago. Lord Foul had
certainly tried to destroy them. Yet, impossibly, they
were here. L~
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.
0ven 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 c
. everal Kamen accompanied her now, although the ur-
viles had `'anished somewhere, leaving her to darkness
and starlight. Eventually she rounded a
e shelter of an escarpment lambent with fires.
against a • mPfires of brush and wood, three of them,
shed warmth and flames jut of stone which protected a
hollow at the base of the scarp; and around
PI,
hill into th
Ordinary ca
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- ere?
Sighing to herself, she asked the nearest Cord, "Is
there any hurtloam around h Can you find it? Or do
you have some other way to treat her? She'll die if we
don't do
something soon."       ding to
At once, the Cord jumped to his feet and hastened
away, apparently intending r consult with Manethrall
Hami. The other Ramen stared at Linden, mutely
asking fo
her help.
Grimly she set aside her exhaustion. "All right," she
murmured. "I need son clot
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 blan
kets 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',
k-now. Probably not."
Q?h,"ibhIf she did, she would spend her last hours in
agony. "Unless avam is some kind of wonder drug."
I
Sahah.
But there was nothing more she could do: not without
power. "That's enough," she told the Cords helping
her. "Now your salve." The Ramen had said that it
was too po_ tent 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 Harm; 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." that she
Linden's legs folded under her, but she hardly noticed
it; hardly recognized t that she would have fallen if
Liand had not upheld her. Relief had taken the last of
her She might vet recover from the effects of Kevin's
Dirt.
Somewhere she found the strength to say, "Thank
you," for more gifts than she
could name.
Then she let herself sleep.
10 This time she did not dream. Perhaps she had
moved beyond the reach of dreams. Lingers woke her,
several of them, the need for food among others. Her
arms ached as though she had spent the night longing
to embrace her son. She
craved the necessary sustenance of comprehension.
And an inchoate anticipation ran in her veins. She
opened her eyes with the suddenness of surprise, like a
woman who had been told that the world around her
had been made new.
She found herself lying on bracken under the shelter of
a lean-to in the first grey promise of dawn. The air was
cold enough to sting her skin; but blankets and
warmth enclosed her. Someone-Liand, probably-had
put her to bed.
When she raised her head to look around, everything
that she saw and felt had been transformed.
The dimness of dawn shrouded details; and yet she
knew beyond question that the season was spring. The
air itself told her: it whispered of thawing snows and
new growth; of readiness inspired to germination. The
bracken assured her that it had dried and fallen long
ago, and would sprout again; and dew wet the hardy
grass in profusion, already restoring the soil's life.
The Ramen were up before her, moving about the
camp in preparation for food and departure. The wide
sky did not yet shed enough light to let her study their
faces; but she needed no illumination to discern their
essential fortitude, or to feel the clarity of their
devotion. She could see beyond question that they were
a people who kept faith: as unwavering in their service
as Haruchai, and as unwilling to compromise.
Yet they were more human than Stave's kind. They
lacked the surpassing strength of Haruchai; did not
live as long. And their fidelity took another form. They
were not men and women who aspired to measure
themselves against the perils of the wide Earth. They
nurtured no ambitions which might seduce them.
Instead they strove only to remain who they were,
generation after generation, without doubt or
hesitation.
Gazing at them from her warm bed, Linden felt both
humbled and exultant. Do Something they don't
expect. Somehow she had found her way to people who
would
°e her every conceivable aid-as long as what she asked
did not interfere with their
Per commitments. What those commitments might be,
she could not guess, and did not try. At this moment,
she was content to know that she could trust the
Ramen.
'A`hile she slept, she had regained her health-sense.
Now life and Earthnower
throbbed palpably beneath the surface of all she
beheld. Even in the crepuscular air, her surroundings
and her companions were lambent with implications.
The sensa. tions of percipience sang in her nerves like
joy.
Pushing back her blankets, she arose into the chill to
see how Sahah fared; and as she did so the mountains
seemed to spring up around her as if they had been
called into being by the dawn.
Beyond the escarpment that sheltered the camp, peaks
reached into the heavens on all sides. These were the
lower and more modest crests which buttressed the
Land, rather than the higher bastions, hoary with age
and rime, deeper in the Southron Range. Few of them
still held ice and snow, and those only in patches which
seldom felt the sun. Nonetheless they reared around
the camp like guardians, massive and vertiginous: the
true titans of the Earth. The air drifting down their
rugged sides tasted like an elixir, sharp and pristine.
With their bluff granite and their enduring hearts,
they formed a place of safety in their midst.
Splashing her boots with dew, she strode toward the
campfire where she had left Sahah; and even the heavy
aching of her muscles could not blunt her anticipation.
Torn fibers and strained ligaments merely hurt. They
did not dim the restoration of her senses.
At once, Liand called her name, waved, and hastened
to join her. Seeing him, she knew instantly that he had
been awake for some time, too eager and young to
sleep long in the company of Ramen. And she
recognized that he, too, had felt the renewed touch of
health-sense. He reveled in discernment as if he were
exalted; drunk on the new depth and significance of
everything around him. Excitement seemed to crow
and preen in every line of his form.
"Linden," he called joyously, "is it not wondrous?"
Clearly he felt too many wonders to name them all.
Smiling at his pleasure, she continued toward the
campfire.
She was still ten paces away when she began to feel
Sahah's wracked distress.
Manethrall Hami and two of her Cords squatted
beside the woman; and Linden saw at a glance that
they had been there all night: their vigil haunted their
eyes. Hami's matter-of-fact manner the previous day
had conveyed the impression that d she did d al greatly
value the lives of her Cords; that other considerations
outweighed individual
life and death. Now, however, Linden discerned the
truth. The Ramen lived p ecar not co uld lives,
threatened at all times by privation, predators, and
self-sacrifice: they sustained afford to bewail the cost
of their convictions. Nevertheless the bonds which
them were strong and enduring. stretched as thin
One look told her that Sahah's grasp on life had
become tenuous, - her cheeks' Inas a whisper. Fever
glazed her eyes, and pain had cut lines like galls into h
from her ternal bleeding left her skin the color of
spilth, as if her flesh might slump
bones at any moment.
The state of her abdomen cried out to Linden's senses.
It could have been worse; far worse. Care and
amanibhavam had accomplished this: Sabah still lived.
Antibiotics and transfusions might yet save her.
But the left side of her belly was swollen and seeping,
crimson with sepsis. The internal ooze of bile had
undone the effects of hot water and amanibhavam.
Infection ate like acid at her fading endurance.
The Cords whom Hami had sent for hurtloam might
return by midday; but Sahah would not last so long.
"Ringthane" The Manethrall's voice was a rasp of
weariness. "We have considered opening her wound to
apply more amanibhavam." She showed Linden a
small bowl of the Ramen's sovereign poultice. In water
the pulped leaves emitted such potency that the scent
stung Linden's nostrils. "But I determined to await
your counsel. Hampered in discernment, you have
shown that you are capable of much. If you are now
able to see, perhaps you are also able to tell us what we
must do."
Pride made what she wanted to say difficult for her.
The previous day she had discounted Linden's offer of
help.
"Three Cords have fallen at my word. They are
honored among us, for they were valiant against the
kresh. Yet they were Ramen, flesh and bone, and we
are too few for the promises we have made. If you
possess any lore or power which may retrieve Sahah
from death-" For a moment, her eyes misted as though
she might weep.
Linden turned away to spare Hami the sight of her
own uncertainty. The Ramen knew that she had
power. They had felt the presence of Covenant's ring
under her shirt.
She could read Sahah's condition in frightening detail.
Every rent tissue, every oozing duct, every mangled
vessel was plain to her percipience; as vivid as a
dissection. .And everywhere within the Cord's
abdomen thronged the killing secretions of bile and
pus. Sahah's belly might have been the Great Swamp
in miniature, its waters and growths and life made
toxic by the leakage of Mount Thunder's terrible
banes.
Stud Studying Sahah's plight, Linden groaned to
herself. She was a doctor, for God's sake.
She was supposed to know how to heal people. She had
done so in the past
ing Long ago aboard Starfare's Gem, she had once
saved the life of a crushed Giant us 0'1Y her health-
sense. She had reached into him with her percipience,
had pos sessed him, and caused his own nerves and
muscles to pull closed some of his wounds, finch some
of his bleeding. In that way, she had kept him alive
long enough for other
aid t0 reach him.
rushed ho had been a Giant, inconceivably strong by
human standards. And she had his side immediately,
before his condition could worsen. And his life had
been sustained by the healing vitality of
diamondraught. And there had been no danger of
infection: no polluted fangs and claws; no spilled bile;
no punishing climb up the rift.
Her health-sense alone would not suffice. Sahah could
not be saved without power: without hurtloam or the
Staff of Law.
Or wild magic.
Linden had already demonstrated to herself that she
did not understand how to access white gold.
But even if she had been a master of argence, she
might still have failed. Covenant's ring was too
puissant: its forces could more readily gouge out
mountainsides than cleanse infections or seal internal
wounds. And he had taught her that wild magic grew
more rampant with use, not more delicate or subtle.
Yet the Manethrall and the Cords watched her as
Liand did, as if she had led them to expect miracles.
Finally, because she did not know what else to do,
Linden looked around the camp for Stave.
He stood apart from the Ramen as though he had been
there all night, alone, and had no need for rest or
friendship. He may have been waiting for her,
however: as soon as she met his gaze, he came to join
her.
The Haruchai had never been known as healers. They
lived by their skills, or they died, and did not count the
cost.
"Stave," she said when he had acknowledged her with
a nod. "Manethrall." She could not have explained
what she had in mind. For all she knew, she would be
unable to make it work. For Sahah's sake, however,
she did not hesitate. "I want to try something."
Mutely Hami proffered her bowl.
Linden shook her head. "Not that. She's too weak. It'll
kill her. First we need to make her stronger.
"Do either of you know where the ur-viles went?"
The Manethrall shook her head; and Stave said, "They
were ever secret creatures, more accustomed to
caverns and warrens than to open sky. I cannot guess
where they have hidden themselves, but I deem that
you"-his tone implied, even you-"would be
loathe to follow."     them?" she
Linden dismissed his point with a jerk of her head.
"Can you summon
asked Hami.
Again the woman shook her head.
"Then how were they brought to our aid?" Liand
asked impulsively. of
The Manethrall shrugged. "They come and go as they
wish. I know not ho%v "Oplight came to their notice.
We do not speak their tongue."
Linden stared at Ham". For a moment, she heard a
vibration that sounded like dishonesty in the
Manethrall's tone. Something in her response was
meant to mislead
Yet Linden saw immediately that Hami had told the
literal truth: she did not know how to call the ur-viles.
The Manethrall wished to conceal or avoid something;
but it had no relevance to Sahah's straits. Hami might
well have sacrificed all her Cords in battle, but she
would risk none of them for the sake of an untruth.
"Then I'll have to do it." Abruptly Linden started to
walk away from her companions. "Keep everyone
back. I've never done this before. I don't know what's
going to happen." Before anyone could question her,
she headed out of the camp away from the escarpment.
She had no particular direction in mind: she only
wanted a little distance. At her back, she heard Liand
object to being left behind. The Manethrall's command
restrained him from following, however, if Stave's did
not.
Anxious and uncertain, Linden paced the wiry grass
until she felt in the sensitive skin between her shoulder
blades that she had reached a safe remove. There she
stopped, facing away from the camp. Because she had
no lore to guide her, and no experience, she sank to her
knees. Perhaps that suppliant stance would convey
what words could not.
"I don't know how to do this," she told the dawn and
the mountain breeze. "I don't know if you can hear
me. Or if you care. But you've already helped us once.
"And once you saved the world."
As she spoke, she slowly closed her eyes; turned her
concentration inward. Without watching what she did,
she pulled Covenant's ring from under her shirt and
folded it in her cupped palms as if she were praying.
Somewhere hidden within her lay a door which could
be opened on silver and conflagration. She knew that:
otherwise she would already be dead. But it seemed to
occupy a place in her heart and mind which she could
only approach as if by misdirection. She had not yet
learned how to find that door at will.
"You know who I am " She spoke softly. If the ur-viles
could or would not hear her, no shout would reach
them. "With this white gold ring and my own hand, I
used Vain to make a new Staff of Law, as you
intended." Vain had been given to Covenant, but he
had acknowledged and served her. "With your help, I
went as far as I could go against the DesPiser."
Far enough to heal the ravages of the Sunbane. But
only Covenant's self-sacrifice had sufficed to contain
Lord Foul's malice.
"Now I'm back. This time I intend to do more."
Me She thought of Jeremiah, alone and tormented. Of
Anele's terrors and bereave
nts' Of Lord Foul's words in the old man's mouth. Of a
yellow shroud tainting
the Land
I
She had heard Covenant say while she dreamed, Trust
yourself
And within her a door which she could not find shifted
on its hinges.
"I want your help again," she continued, "if you'll give
it. Not against the Despiser
this time," although she sought that as well. "One of
the Ramen is dying. She needs vit
rim. You can save her.
"In Vain's name I ask it, and my own. Hear me,
please. Otherwise a young woman," hardly more than
a girl, "who fought with you against the kresh is going
to die"
Reaching out as if blindly with the fingers of her
volition, the hand of choice, she grasped for the handle
and unfurled white flame into the new day.
It could have been a high sheet of fire or a small
tendril: she neither knew nor cared. Only a moment of
wild magic; scarcely more than a heartbeat. Then she
opened her hands and let Covenant's ring fall; left it
dangling against her chest. Still with her eyes closed,
she bowed her forehead to the grass.
If the ur-viles helped her now, they might do so again.
They might help her save Jeremiah.
She heard nothing except the mild curiosity of the
breeze; felt nothing except the gravid silence of the
mountains. Yet when she raised her head and opened
her eyes, she saw an ur-vile standing before her on the
grass with an iron cup in its hands.
In the burgeoning dawn, the aroma of vitrim-dusky,
thick as silt-could not be mistaken.
11.
flints
The Ramen broke camp when Linden and Liand had
eaten a brief meal Then ~'r Or
they set off along the escarpment, traveling generally
eastward toward a n row gorge between two of the
surrounding mountains.
Somo had arrived during the night, guided by Ramen.
The mustang appeared hale t
and ready, undamaged by the difficulties of the rift.
That visibly erased Liand's
doubts about the Ramen. Now he shared their
company, and Linden's, with a young
man's eagerness.
Sahah they left behind with a few of her companions to
care for her. Under the sustaining influence of vitrim,
the injured Cord had rallied. She could not be moved:
her life still hung precariously from the strings of her
native toughness. Nevertheless the infection in her
belly and the fever in her eyes had receded. She sipped
water as well as vitrim willingly. At intervals, her mind
cleared enough to let her speak. Linden believed-and
Manethrall Hami agreed-that Sahah would live until
the Cords who had been sent for hurtloam returned.
As the company moved, one of the Cords retrieved
Anele from the mountainside above the scarp. Linden
had noticed the old man's absence only after her
concern for Sahah had eased. She had felt little alarm,
however, although she needed Anele in ways which she
could hardly name: the Manethrall had promised that
the Ramen would not lose him. When Linden asked
after him, Hami answered that he had roused early
and wandered away, she could not say why: to avoid
the Master's presence, perhaps, or to commune with
his demons alone. In any case, he rejoined Linden and
the Ramen without any obvious reluctance. As he
accompanied them toward the gorge, he mumbled to
himself incomprehensibly, as if he were engaged in a
debate that no one else could hear or understand.
He had been reclaimed by madness, and his blindness
had the distracted cast of a man who wandered among
ghosts and saw only death.
With her renewed senses, Linden might have tried to
pierce his confusion. But she feared the prices they
both might pay for such an intrusion. Any possession
was a form of psychic violence which might damage
the last shards of his sanity. And she herself would be
in danger from his madness. When she had entered
Covenant years ago to free him from the imposed
stasis of the Elohim, his blankness had overcome her,
and for a time she had been as lost as Jeremiah. Ceer
had died protecting her because she had been so
completely absent from herself.
For the present, at least, she was unwilling to take the
risk. Her own emotional state was too frangible.
Her success with Covenant's ring had given her a
grim, febrile exhilaration. She had found the door to
power within herself, and would be able to do so again.
In addition, the restoration of her senses seemed to fill
her with possibilities. To that extent, at least, 'he had
regained her ability to make effective choices. To
influence her own fate-and miah's. She was no longer
entirely dependent on the willingness of others to guide
and aid
her.
Iran nfortunately her more profound dilemmas
remained unchanged. Beneath her sent joy lurked
frustration and despair like a buried lake of magma, a
potential
volcano. Every step that she took in the company of
the Ramen, like every tale that she heard-like wild
magic itself-was necessary to her. Yet none of them
brought her nearer to Jeremiah.
If her muscles had not stiffened to an acute soreness
during the night, so that merely walking demanded
most of her concentration, she might have been
defenseless against the larger difficulties of her
situation.
Off to one side of the vale where the Ramen had
camped, snowmelt gathered to form a stream which
ran along the floor of the gorge. There the company
paused briefly to refill their waterskins. Then they
entered the gorge itself.
The narrow defile squirmed between its crude walls,
following an ancient seam in the substance of the
peaks. At intervals, fallen boulders littered the way,
constricting the stream to pools and small rapids.
Stave, Anele, and the Ramen seemed oblivious to such
obstacles, too sure-footed to be hindered. But Linden,
Liand, and Somo had to pick their footing carefully.
By the time they reached the far end of the gorge, the
sun had risen past the shoulders of the lowest
mountains. In the new light, she saw crests piling
southward until they grew dark with distance. In
shadow their cloaks of ice looked grimy and tattered,
eroded by time. Direct sunlight, however, gave the ice
a purity that seemed almost blue. As if exalted by the
sun, the peaks lifted their grandeur proudly into the
sky.
There the route of the Ramen traversed an open
mountainslope southeastward. This easier surface
allowed Linden's muscles to grow accustomed to
movement. In addition, the sun warmed some of the
tension from her joints. Gradually the aching in her
thighs and calves faded, and her knees began to feel
less brittle.
Liand walked at her side, leading Somo after him; and
his buoyant company also helped her along. He was
new to percipience, delighted by it, and every
unfamiliar vista among the peaks, every type of grass
or shrub or tree which he had never seen before, every
soaring bird, enhanced his excitement. For him, the
world was being made fresh as he moved through it.
     that he
Linden still believed that he should have remained in
Mithil Stonedown;
should return home as soon as he could. Nevertheless
she found that she relied upon him more with every
passing hour. He helped her believe that a world which
g to such people could never be entirely ruined by
Despite. utted
Then the Ramen began to descend to the south,
avoiding a gnarled bluff that. from the mountainside,
and Linden was forced to concentrate on her steps
againWalking downward strained her knees and
thighs until they threatened to fold r under


t-
Whenever She had to grit her teeth as well as her
determination in order to stay on her fee its
Whenever she glanced at Anele, she saw that his
madness was modulating bet" eell
to grants
various phases, responding to necessities or catalysts
which she could not begin
ulders great
Ahead of her, the slope dropped toward a place of torn
and jagged bo
d monoliths, where two of the lower mountains
appeared to have collided with each other. Studying
the granite chaos, she feared that the Ramen would
ask her to clamber there. However, they reassured her
by turning so that their path angled more toward the
east. As they rounded the mountainside beyond the
tumbled monoliths, she saw that they were headed
toward an arete between massive cliffs, a ridge like a
saddle. It had been formed by tremendous rockfalls
which had echoed each other off the higher cliffs and
crashed together in the intervening valley, filling all of
the space between the mountainsides with rubble.
Linden groaned to herself. More rubble- She could not
conceal her chagrin as she asked Manethrall Hami, "Is
that where we're going?"
The woman nodded. "The Verge of Wandering lies
beyond. There we will attempt to answer the
Bloodguard's doubts-and our own."
Temporizing, Linden inquired, "Can Somo make it?"
She was not sure that she could. "It looks rough from
here."
Hami concealed a smile. "We have learned a path
among the stones. The mustang will not find it
difficult." Then she looked at Linden and said more
gravely, "Your weariness is plain, Ringthane. Your
mount will be able to bear you, if you wish it."
Linden stiffened. "No, thanks," she muttered. Her
weakness the previous day had injured her self-
confidence. "If Somo can manage it, I probably can
too."
The Ramen leader nodded. "I do not question it."
"But tell me something," Linden went on, "before I
start breathing too hard to talk." She had not
forgotten the apparent disingenuousness of Hami's
earlier claim that her people had no communication
with or comprehension of the ur-viles.
"If it will ease your way," the Manethrall replied, "I
will answer as I can "
Her tone conveyed sincerity, although Linden also
heard hints of hesitation. The Ramen had their own
secrets, which they did not mean to reveal.
Troubled by her sense of unspoken intentions, Linden
asked, "How did you know about the kresh?"
Hami gave her a perplexed frown. "Ringthane?"
"It all seems too tidy to me," Linden explained
awkwardly. "I don't see how you could have known
that I was in danger. But you came to my rescue
anyway, right when I needed you.
"How did you do that?"
Ah" Ilanli nodded. "Now I comprehend. Our presence
was indeed timely. It need not surprise you, however.
"It i
s our c
what trans'
pres there. Yesterday with my Cords I had elected to
keep watch on the ~t~thil vall
ey f
plains only there are these mountains readily
entered-there, and from the of Ra , El or
.sewhere the cliffs forbid passage.
blocks an
ustom betimes to scout the borders of the Land,
seeking some glimpse of
"From the heights above the valley, we saw the kresh
gather to hunt. We did not know what they hunted.
We sought only to assail them when they dared the
mountains. That you were their prey we did not
discover until we had prepared our ambush."
Her explanation sounded plausible. Linden would not
have questioned it if she had not heard hints of
avoidance in the Manethrall's tone.
She stopped walking so that she would be able to stand
her ground. When Hami halted as well, Linden said,
"Yet somehow you picked yesterday to be right where
I needed you. And so did the ur-viles.
"Don't misunderstand me," she added quickly. "I'm
grateful. I trust you already. But I'm"-she shrugged
uncomfortably-"suspicious of coincidences." Lord
Foul had taught her that.
She could believe that the ur-viles had known of her
presence in the Land, and of her need. Millennia ago,
they had recognized that Covenant would return. But
nothing about the Ramen suggested that they had such
lore.
Cords gathered around her as she waited, but she
ignored them; concentrated on Hami.
"You keep saying," she went on when the Manethrall
did not answer, "you don't speak the ur-viles'
language. But that's not the whole story, is it? You
communicate with them somehow. You have some way
of working together."
"And the Demondim-spawn," Stave put in harshly,
"have ever served Corruption." He had placed himself
at Linden's shoulder. "They opposed their ancient
master in the time of the Sunbane. Yet plainly he did
not destroy them, as he appeared to do. Perhaps he
preserved them covertly across the centuries, in
preparation, it may be, for the return of white gold to
the Land."
Now Linden took notice of the Cords, drawn by the
tension emanating from them. When she studied them,
she realized that they shared Hami's secrets; that all of
the Ramen knew the things which the Manethrall
would not say.
Hami bristled at Stave's words. Her fingers twitched to
take hold of her garrote. Stave faced her impassively,
however, unswayed by her indignation. our re
"Does it offend you, Manethrall, that the Haruchai are
not gladdened by your turn to the borders of the
Land? That we question your actions and your troth?
The" reply to the Chosen's query. Permit us to judge
the nature of your purposes."
No doubt he could discern the presence of secrets as
clearly as Linden did.    e
Hami gauged him darkly: she seemed eager for
combat. But then, distinctlY~ sh
closed the door on her ready pride.
"You speak of that which lies beyond you, sleepless
one;"
she answered like a
"Two days I asked in which to take counsel and seek
comprehension. This YOU en. cepted. Therefore there
can be no contest between us. You are safe among the
Ram We will permit no harm to you, or to your
companions.
"Nor will we take offense. To provoke us is unseemly.
Such impatience ill be
comes You."
Stave regarded Hami for a moment, apparently
appraising her. Then he surprised Linden by bowing
as he had in the rift.
"I hear you, Manethrall. I will be patient, as I have
agreed. I have named the causes of my doubt. But
know also that I am grieved to encounter the Ramen
after so many generations, and to be denied knowledge
of the Ranyhyn.
"You misjudge the Bloodguard. They did not ride
Ranyhyn to their deaths, as you avow. Rather they
accepted service which the Ranyhyn offered freely. No
life or power in all the Land was honored or loved
more highly than that of the great horses."
Again Hami did not return his bow. Instead she
retorted, "The Bloodguard might have refused that
service. The Ringthane did so. Yet he prevailed."
Then she returned her attention to Linden's question.
"As for the timeliness of our aid," she answered like a
shrug, "it is no great wonder. We were drawn to the
region of the Mithil valley by the fall of Kevin's Watch.
I have said that we scout the borders of the Land. Such
destruction could not escape our notice."
Without another word, she turned away, leading her
Cords on toward the base of the arete.
Linden wanted to stay where she was. The animosity
between Stave and the Ramen disturbed her. Their
every exchange was fraught with history; with
memories and passions which she had not shared and
could not evaluate. She did not know what to expect
from them.
But the Ramen were moving, and so she followed
them. She could not afford the severity which seemed
to rule Stave and Hami.
At once, Liand came to her side, radiating confusion
like heat. However, he waited until she acknowledged
him with a glance before he murmured privately, "I do
not understand. What troubles the Master? Can he not
descry the worth of the Ramen?"
"Sure, he can," Linden replied softly. "It isn't their
honesty he's worried about. It's their secrets."
The Stonedownor looked surprised; but he did not
contradict her. Perhaps he, too, had felt the
undercurrents in Hami and her Cords. Instead he
mused as if to himself, "l had not known that the
Masters are capable of grief."
Linden sighed, "Of course they are." If they had not
felt love or known loss, they WOUld not have sworn
the Vow which had bound them to the service of the
Lords. They re just too strict to admit it most of the
time."
Lid frowned. "Does that account for their denial of the
Land's history and won
der? DO they fear to grieve?"
Linden looked at him sharply. "Maybe." She had not
thought of Stave's people in
those terms. "I don't know anything about Ranyhyn,
but it's obvious they were precious to the Haruchai.
Stave is afraid something terrible has happened to
them."
The young man kept her company in silence for a
while. Then he said slowly, "I do not believe so. I know
nothing of these Ramen. Nor am I accustomed to the
new life which fills my senses. Perhaps it misleads me.
Yet-" He paused again, then said more strongly, "Yet I
do not believe that any great harm has befallen the
Ranyhyn. The Ramen would not countenance it. They
would have died, all of them, to prevent it."
Linden nodded. The Ramen had given her the same
impression.
But surely Stave could see the Manethrall and her
Cords as clearly as Liand did? As clearly as Linden
herself? If so
If so, his suspicions sprang from a deeper source.
Like him, she wanted to know why the Ramen would
not speak of the great horses.
n silence, the company finished their descent to the
foot of the rubble piled between the cliffs, the base of
the arete.
By the time they reached it, the sun had risen near
noon, and Linden could feel its force beginning to
scorch her face and neck. She could not gauge how
much elevation she had gained since leaving Mithil
Stonedown; but the air was noticeably thinner,
sharper, and the sun's fire, masked by the cool
atmosphere, had a deceptive intensity. Before long,
every exposed inch of her skin would be burned.
She felt vaguely faint as she joined the Ramen below
the arete, light-headed with too much exertion and
sun. Fortunately Manethrall Hami called a halt so that
the travelers could rest and refresh themselves before
tackling the knurled litter of the ridge. No doubt she
had done so primarily for Linden's benefit.
Nonetheless Linden was grateful,
Seen from its base, the arete looked unattainably high:
an enormous wrack of boulders piled precariously
toward the sky. Its sides appeared to lean outward,
impending ominously over anyone foolish enough to
attempt them. And some trick of pehase,
tive foreshortened the brusque cliffs on either side so
that they seemed to emp
and stumbled as rather than dwarf the ridge. Staring
upward, Linden lost her balance
though she had felt a tremor in the rubble, a hint of
shattering like the unsteadine" that had presaged the
fall of Kevin's Watch.     ranite speak, as
The rock remembered its own breaking. If she could
have heard g      Wn Anele did, it might have shared
with her the convulsion which had ripped it do from
the cliffs.
She looked around for the old man. He would heed
stone wherever he found it,,
she
he mlgh~
was sure of that. If he were in one of the more lucid
phases of his madness, tell her what he gleaned.
However, she found him seated on a swath of grass
sprinkled with wildflowers,
gna,,tiing on a strip of jerky which one of the Cords
had given him, and muttering im
precations at anyone who went near. His aura reeked
of Despite.

Even here, beyond the familiar borders of the Land,
Lord Foul could still reach him.
Could still know where he was-and Linden with him.

She had become convinced that the Despiser had sent
kresh after her because he had learned of her
movements through Anele and sought to stop her.
Therefore she assumed-prayed?-that her present
course thwarted Lord Foul in some way. Yet as long as
he retained his ability to inhabit Anele, however
erratically, he could ambush her anywhere.
She told herself that she should approach the old man
now; but the fears which had stopped her earlier
restrained her still. She lacked the courage to take his
madness into herself.
For a time, at least, she also might become accessible to
the Despiser. And if Lord Foul could reach her, he
would reach Covenant's ring as well.
Trust yourself, Covenant had urged her in dreams.
Linden, find me. But he was dead: she had seen him
slain ten years and several millennia ago. She was no
nearer to him now than she had been two days ago.

When the Manethrall called the company forward
again, Linden complied with a groan.
Hami had told her the truth, however: the Ramen
knew a way among the boulders that did not surpass
her strength. Although the path wove and twisted
upward, contorting itself back and forth across the
slope, it offered stable footing and a gentle ascent. And
it was wider than she had expected, in spite of the
towering bulk and knuckled shapes of the stones.
Somo navigated the path with little urging: she was
able to climb it almost easily.
Still the ascent took some time. Linden had to stop
more and more frequently to rest her quivering
muscles. Under other circumstances, she might have
accepted a ride on Somo's back. But she was no
horsewoman; and the pinto already looked heavily
burdened by Liand's supplies. And being carried
would not make her stronger.
Lord Foul had Jeremiah. The Land needed her. And
the fact that she was entirely unequal to such demands
changed nothing. If she did not free her son, no one
would.
The time had come for her to exceed herself.

This ridge was as good a place as any to start.
Somehow she made it. By the time she reached the
saddle between the mountains, the sun had moved into
the mid-afternoon sky, and her legs had gone numb
with strain Sweat dripped from her cheeks, stained her
shirt under her arms and down her back, At intervals,
the pangs of cramps or blisters jabbed her feet. Yet she
made it. And

when she stood cooling in the breeze, at the crest of the
piled stones, she could see what lay ahead of her.
I
Beyond the arete, a cluster of mountains leaned away
from each other to unfurl a wide valley in their midst:
a rich grassland, verdant as a meadow in springtime,
fed by a network of delicate streams and small pools.
In the afternoon light, the whole floor of the valley had
a lush hue, an aspect of luxuriance, far deeper than the
green sprouting of buds and grass around Mithil
Stonedown; and the streams and pools seemed to catch
the sun like liquid diamonds. It might have been a
place out of time, sheltered from winter by the
surrounding peaks: an instance of late spring or
summer made possible by an abundance of water and
sunshine amid the lingering cold of the mountains.
The eagerness of the Ramen assured Linden that there
lay the Verge of Wandering. From this distance,
however, she saw no signs of habitation. If the Ramen
lived here, they concealed the evidence well. They may
not have been a people who valued structures or
permanence. Perhaps they preferred to roam, touching
the Earth lightly wherever they paused.
They were waiting for a chance to return home. To the
Plains of Ra, where they belonged.
Reflexively Linden looked around for Anele. At first,
she was unable to locate him: he was not among the
Ramen. Then she spotted him a short way off the path.
He had clambered away from his companions in order
to sprawl on a sheet of stone and wedge his face into
the gap between two weathered chunks of granite.
Anele? Frowning in concern, she limped toward him.
He had not collapsed there; was not unconscious.
Rather her health-sense detected a sharpened
awareness, as if his nerves had been tuned to a higher
pitch. His aura had taken on a hue of concentration,
lucid and helpless. Automatically she assumed that he
was listening to the stone; that he had jammed his face
against it in order to hear its whispering.
When she reached his side, however, she saw that she
was wrong. He was not listening: he was cowering.
Fear boiled off him like steam. He had forced his head
between those two stones as though they might stop his
ears.
Earthpower throbbed in him like the labor of a
stricken heart.
"Anele, what's wrong?" She had asked him that too
often. He needed more than her concerned
incomprehension. "What do you hear?"
The stones he had chosen were comparatively smooth.
Wind and water and time hil had worn away their
roughness until they resembled the floor of his gaol in
N Stonedown; the surface of Kevin's Watch.
"Be gone." Rock muffled his voice. "Anele does not
speak. He is Comm anded• Ne obeys. Anele obeys."
     threadbare
Commanded? By the stones? Linden resisted an
impulse to grab at the
fabric of his tunic; tug him out of his protective covert.
Confusion and sunburn pas in her temples.
"Anele," she repeated as calmly as she could, "what's
wrong? Talk to me."
"Be gone," he croaked again. "Anele demands. He
begs. He is commanded. He must
not speak:'
"Christ on a crutch," Linden muttered at him.
"You're making me crazy." She could
not restrain herself: the ascent of the ridge had
stretched more than her physical limi
tations. "I'm the best friend you've ever had. The
Ramen want to help you. Liand wants
to help you. Even Stave," God damn it, "doesn't want
to see you in pain.
"Come out of there and talk to me."
While she lacked the courage to challenge his plight,
she had no one to blame but
herself for her frustration.
"Do you not feel it?" protested the old man. "Are you
not commanded? Anele must
not speak."
Liand, Stave, and the Ramen gathered behind Linden,
drawn by Anele's strangeness
and her intensity. She paid them no heed.
"No," she countered, "I don't feel it. The only power
here is yours." In her spent state,
she might have surrendered to any coercive force.
"Make sense. Why in God's name
would the stones command you not to speak?"
So suddenly that she fell back in surprise, Anele jerked
his head up, flung himself
around to face her. The rush of returning blood
stained his cheeks crimson, stark as
stigmata. His white eyes glistened with fury.
"The stones do not command it, fool! This is the true
rock of the Earth, too honest
to be impugned. It only remembers, and holds fast."
Then he sagged. He may have felt Linden's shock,
although he could not see it. With
every word, his anger seemed to fray and drop away,
leaving him defenseless.
"Do you not understand?" His voice shook. "It holds."
"Then who?" she returned quickly, trying to catch
him while he could still answer.
"Who commands you?"
What secrets had the stones told him?
Urgently she searched him for hints of the Despiser's
presence-and found none.
"He does not wish it." Now each word cost Anele more
effort, greater distress. Compulsion seemed to
accumulate against him. "He commands. If Anele did
not obey, he would whisper what this rock"-he flapped
his arms, apparently indicating the cliffs as well as the
ridge-"cries out. He would tell of the Appointed
Durance, the skurj, the
Elohirn.
"He would name Kastenessen-"
There Anele's resistance crumbled. Whimpering, he
leaped to his feet and fled over
the rocks as though he were being whipped away from
utterance.
Linden hung her head. Oh, Anele. Was there no end to
his sufferings? He could not
tell her the things she needed to know without being
tormented in some way. Only his
inherited Earthpower kept him alive: a cruel gift
which enabled or coerced him to survive more anguish
than any mortal heart should have been able to bear.
He commands
Not Lord Foul: not this time. Some other being or
power
She was being stalked. A potent enemy hunted her
steps; someone who wanted her to fail- Someone other
than the Despiser.
After a moment, Manethrall Hami told one of her
Cords, "Go. See that no harm comes to him." At once,
the Cord hastened away.
Liand cleared his throat. "Linden? Do you
comprehend him? What are skurj? who is
Kastenessen?"
Cursing mutely, Linden forced herself to stand. Anele
had spoken a name that she recognized.
Stave must have recognized it as well
Instead of answering Liand's questions, she sighed,
"Give me time. I need to think."
Anele had referred to skurj several times now, and to a
Durance. Under the Mithil's Plunge, he had wailed
those names against the water's thunder. They meant
nothing to her.
Kastenessen, on the other hand
"There is darkness nigh," Stave announced abruptly,
"potent and fatal. We have been warned of such perils.
Perhaps it lives among the Ramen, concealing itself
from their discernment."
Dumb with bafflement, Linden stared at the Master.
Liand's eyebrows rose. Quick
indignation flashed from Manethrall Hami to her
Cords.
Stave ignored the Ramen. "We cannot oppose a being
who remains hidden from
our senses," he told Linden, "and who is yet able to
command the old man's madness."
Holding her gaze, he added, "Who but the Elohim
wield such power?"
Still she stared at him. She understood him too well.
The Elohim were certainly ca
pable of masking their presence from any form of
percipience.
And beyond question the Masters had been
forewarned. Years ago, according to
Liand, an Elohim had visited Mithil Stonedown. That
strange, Earthpowerful being
had spoken of terrible banes, which he had not
explained.
Beware the halfhand.       d for corn


But Hami was not swayed. She held herself on the balls
of her feet, poise
credit
bat. "You conceive that we harbor darkness," she said
through her teeth. "You that of us."
Despite her stiff pride, an undercurrent in her tone
hinted to Linden that Stagy' might be right. "
      sighed to With an effort, Linden shook off her
confusion. "We have to know, she P°"er
il1}'
the Master. "You can see Anele as well as I can."
Better. "Lord Foul isn't the O
that uses him. There's so much he could tell us. We
need to know who commanded him not to talk."
~ti'hoever it had been, that being lacked the Despiser's
ability to take full possession of the old man. An
Elohim could certainly have done so. But this he had
not entirely succeeded at coercing Anele. In some
sense, he was a weaker foe.
Damn it, Anele was using too many indefinite
pronouns. Behind the Plunge, he had cried, He has
broken the Durance. Was that the same he who had
just tried to silence the old man? Apparently not.
How many, enemies did she have?
She needed to know what the stone had told Anele.
Somehow she had to confront his insanity. She had to
find the courage somewhere
Stave paid no heed to the Manethrall's anger. Briefly
he appeared to consider Linden's statement. Then he
nodded in agreement.
"The answer lies with the Ramen. We must discover it
among them." He paused again before saying, "There
is no other way for us. The Masters must know of this
new threat."
The scar on his cheek underlined his hard gaze as he
turned away, leaving Linden to Liand and the Ramen.
At the same time, Hami also turned away, concealing
her secrets.
Leaning on Liand for support, Linden followed them
to begin the long descent from the ridge. Her
frustration had become a swollen blackness within her,
a thunderhead fraught with lightning. She did not
know how to contain the storm.
If she did not discover some clear answer to her
questions soon, the cistern of her
soul would crack open.
t the foot of the arete, with her boots on the marge of
the sheltered vale's
rich grass, she released Liand in order to raise her eyes
from th lthd
eong pa an "k around.
The mountains seemed to have grown while she
stumbled downward. From the perspective of the
ridge, they had not appeared so tall; and the grassland
cupped among them might have stretched for leagues.
Now, however, they reared ponderously into the
heavens, stern visages of granite gazing down with the
august hauteur of titans. And the lower terrain of the
valley looked smaller, reduced in scale by its place
among the high massifs. The far mountainsides seemed
almost attainable.
In contrast, the grass was even more lush and prodigal
than it had appeared from the ridge' Over the
millennia, time and weather had filled the vale with
fertility. Grass the color of distilled emeralds grew to
the height of Linden's thighs, so thick that she
wondered whether she would be able to forge through
it.
Reassured by the sight of so much untrammeled
vitality, Linden cast her health. sense wider; and when
she did so, she spotted aliantha only a few dozen paces
away,
With treasure-berries to sustain her, she might be able
to walk as far as the Ramen wished, and need no help.
Hami had already sent several of her Cords ahead of
the company to announce their coming; and the young
Ramen seemed to flow away through the tall grass
with out disturbing it or forcing passage. They were
attuned to it beyond hindrance. The rest of the group
had gathered around Linden, apparently waiting for
her to recover her strength.
But Stave remained apart, isolated by the strict
intentions of the Masters. And Anele had moved out
into the grass, presumably to put a little distance
between himself and the Haruchai. One of the Cords
had led Somo down the arete in Liand's place so that
the Stonedownor could concentrate on Linden.
Weakly she headed through the grass toward the
aliantha.
She could not pass as the Ramen did, like a breeze
among the blades and tassels. Grass caught at her
boots and shins, tearing when she pushed her legs
through it. Streaks of green sap stained her pants
below the knees. She might have felt mired in the
grass, hampered, opposed, if its simple abundance had
not soothed her senses.
Like the grass, the aliantha flourished in the valley's
soil. The shrubs spread their twisted branches widely,
and they were heavy with fruit. Plucking clusters of
viridian berries hungrily, she fed as if she were
feasting until their juice had washed the ache of defeat
from her throat, and her exhausted muscles began to
relax in relief.
When she was done, she felt lightened, fundamentally
restored, as though she had partaken of a Eucharist.
The gifts of the Land touched her to the marrow of her
bones.
Liand and the Ramen had followed Linden to the
aliantha. They each ate two or three berries, casting
the seeds aside by ancient custom; but their need was
not as great as hers, and they did not consume more.
     have
Thoughtfully, as if to herself, the Manethrall observed,
"No servant of Fan gt craves or will consume aliantha.
The virtue of the berries is too potent."
As though he had been challenged, Stave stepped
forward, claimed one of the berries, and chewed it
stolidly.
Around her, Linden felt a subtle shift in the
emanations of the Ramen. Perhaps she and her
companions had passed a test of some sort.
She wanted to pass another. Atop the ridge, she had
asked Liand and the Rthem an be patient while she
considered Anele's outburst. Now she felt that she
owed owed explanation.
It would be easier to talk while she rested.
PPF,He was one of the Appointed." Findail had
described them, seeking to explain fore.
himself to the Search for the One Tree. "An Elohim."

The memory filled her with foreboding. And her
tension was reflected in Liand's eyes. He moved closer
as though he feared to miss a word.

"I don't know what to tell you about the Elohim. They
aren't mortal. I guess you could call them incarnate
Earthpower. They give the impression that they can do
anything, and they do what they do for reasons of their
own, no matter what anyone else thinks or wants"
Findail himself had often behaved like an enemy,
encouraging Linden and Covenant to fail. "They live
far away, on the other side of the Sunbirth Sea. Most
of the time, it seems, they ignore the Land.
"But sometimes they see a danger and decide to do
something about it, I don't know why."
Liand had heard Anele speak of the One Forest and
the Elohim.
"When they do, they pick one of their people, they
Appoint him or her, to answer the danger. To be the
answer."
Findail had said that the Appointed passed out of
name and choice and time for the sake of the frangible
Earth. He had sung:
Let those who sail the Sea bow down:

Let those who walk bow low:
For there is neither peace nor dream

Where the Appointed go.
i
Manethrall Hami and her Cords regarded Linden
gravely, waiting for her to go on. The quality of their
attention seemed to hint that they were not ignorant of
the Elohim. Liand listened avidly, hungry for
understanding. But Stave gazed away as if he
disapproved of the Elohim and all their deeds.
For the time being, at least, Anele had disappeared
into the grass, perhaps seeking to avoid reminders of
coercion.
"Kastenessen was Appointed a long time ago," Linden
explained as the implications of her memories crowded
around her. "Dozens of millennia, for all I know," if
the years had any meaning to the Elohim. "Apparently
something deadly happened in the north" the farthest
north of the world, where winter has its roots of ice
and cold. "Some Wnd of catastrophe. A fire that might
have split open the Earth. ho n stenessen was
Appointed to stop it." Set as a keystone for the
threatened founda
f the north.
"Kastenessen," she said when she felt able to speak at
last. "That name I've hear x the fire capped, and the
Earth preserved, and Kastenessen lost.
0
"But he didn't go willingly. He'd broken one of the
commandments of the Elohin, violated their Wurd or
Weird, "by falling in love with a mortal woman. His
people chose him, Appointed him, to punish the wrong
he did her."
He had brought harm to a woman who could not have
harmed him, and he had called it love.
"He refused to go. He didn't want to give her up. For
her sake, he rejected his people and their Wurd."
Their destiny-or the Earth's. "When the Elohim
demanded submission, he fought back. Finally they
had to force him into place. So that the world wouldn't
end in fire."
Was that what "Durance" meant? Did it refer to the
power that had contained Kastenessen? And had he
found some way to free himself? If so, a fire would be
set loose fatal enough to rive the shell of the world.
During her translation to the Land, Linden had seen
fiery beasts suppurate from the ground in order to
devour all that lived.
She sighed, then spread her hands. "That's as much as
I know about Kastenessen."
The Ramen plainly wanted to question her further;
but it was Liand who admitted, "I still do not
understand. Did this Kastenessen not pass away?"
Certainly that was the fate of the Elohim who had
become the Colossus of the Fall. "How then does he
command Anele not to speak of him?"
Linden shrugged, trying to do so without bitterness. "I
don't think that was Kastenessen. The Elohim
wouldn't command him to be quiet. They would just
shut him up."
Behind the Mithil's Plunge, no force had demanded
silence from the old man. Yet here, so close to the
Verge of Wandering
"I can't explain it," she added after a moment's
hesitation. "All I know is that we have enemies we
haven't even met yet."
"Yet your knowledge surpasses ours," the Manethrall
announced quietly. "The Ramen remember much, but
we have no tales of these matters." Once again, her
tone In" plied that she could have said more. "It
becomes ever more imperative that we take counsel
together. We must banish misapprehension between
us.
"Ringthane"-she faced Linden squarely-"our
encampment is but two leagues Are you able now to
walk so far? Does your heart hold other troubles to
delay you?"
Two leagues, Linden thought. Six miles? On even
ground, with aliantha in her veins- She attempted a
smile; failed. "I think I can make it. I need all the
counsel I can get." of time but
She had enough other troubles in her heart to delay
her until the end she did not mean to let them hold her
back.
ortunately several of the Cords traveled ahead of her,
and she found that if she followed in their steps the
grass did not hinder her. Somo could have borne her
easily now-Liand offered her that-but she preferred to
keep her burdens to herself.

She needed time to think; to prepare for what lay
ahead.
At first, the distance passed easily. Aliantha sustained
her, and the vernal grassland itself seemed to lift her
from stride to stride. Every instance of health and
Earthpower nourished her in some way. For a time,
she watched the mood of the mountains modulate as
the westering sun shifted shadows across them. When
she encountered the occasional bursts of
amanibhavam, she studied their dancing yellow
flowers and their sharp scent, trying to understand
their potency.

By degrees, however, she lapsed to numbness again.
Step after step, her walking became a kind of
ambulant doze. Guided by the Ramen, she made her
slow way toward the center of the Verge of
Wandering, and did not notice how far she had come.
Yet around her more and more Ramen appeared out
of the grass, answering the summons of Hami's Cords.
From the crest of the arete, Linden might have
believed the vale empty, but it was not. When she
finally shook herself out of her somnolence, she found
that perhaps three score Ramen had joined her
companions. Most of them were Cords, garrotes at
their waists, hair flying loose; but three or four wore
their hair as Hami did, tied back by their garrotes, and
around their necks were garlands of amanibhavam.
And still more of them merged with the company as
Linden took note of them. Soon they became a throng
among the grass. Yet somehow they sifted through it
rather than trampling it down. In spite of their
numbers, she could hardly tell where they had been.
She had not expected to find so many of them thriving
here: five or six score now, with more continuing to
arrive. Before long, however, she noticed that they had
no children among them-and no old men or women.
Two or three of the Manethralls had grey in their hair,
and their scars had acquired the pallor of years. A
certain number of the Cords appeared older than
those who followed Hami. But no children? No
grandmothers or grandfathers?
Either the Ramen were dying as a people, or they had
left all those who could not fight elsewhere.

Or both.
What had happened to them during their centuries of
exile from the Land?
Plain Linden might have questioned Hami then,
although the Manethrall had made it
n that she did not wish to speak prematurely. But as
Linden's concern grew, she `a°ght her first glimpse of
their destination.
It appeared to be a dwelling of some kind, a tall, open-
sided construct planted in the grass. Bare poles at the
corners, and at intervals along the sides, supported a
lat, ticed ceiling of smaller wooden shafts like latias;
and sod had been placed over the lattice to form a roof
of deep grass. Within this shelter lay mounds of grass
and bracken, and a scattering of bundles like bedrolls;
and at its center a space had been cleared for a ring of
hearthstones and a cooking fire.
Two Cords tended the fire, apparently preparing a
meal, while others came forward with their Manethrall
to join the Ramen around Linden.
And beyond this dwelling stood others, she could not
see how many, all with open sides and sod roofs. Now
she knew why she had not been able to spot any
structures from the vantage of the ridge: their design
camouflaged them.
Yet the vale was treeless. The Ramen must have
dragged their poles and latias from somewhere beyond
the surrounding mountains. Presumably, then, the
camp was not a temporary one, but rather a habitation
either permanently or regularly occupied.
Still Linden saw no children; no aged Ramen.
Moving between the shelters, Hami and the Ramen
escorted Linden, Liand, Stave, and Anele into a broad
open circle where the grass had been worn to stubble
and dirt by the passage of many feet. This clearing
might have been visible from the ridge: it was certainly
wide enough to stand out from the surrounding grass.
The height of the shelters around it must have
concealed it.
At the edge of the circle, Cords led Somo aside,
promising to tend the pinto well; and Linden and her
companions were invited into the center of the
clearing.
"This, Ringthane," Hami announced quietly, "is the
Ramen place of gathering. Here we will share food so
that you may rest and regain your strength. In this
way, we hope to encourage ease between us. Then we
will take counsel after the fashion of the Ramen. We
will speak of ourselves, and you will tell us your tales,
that there may be friendship between us."
Linden began to acquiesce automatically; but the
Manethrall forestalled her. The crowd around her had
shifted. All of the Cords had withdrawn to the rim of
the clearing taking Anele with them. Only Manethralls
surrounded Linden and her companions
"But above all there must be understanding," Hami
said more sternly, as if she spoke for all her people.
"You will also be challenged. Thus we will distinguish
honor from treachery."
Oh, God. An involuntary wince twisted Linden's
mouth.
Liand turned to her in alarm: obviously he had not
expected this of the Ran 't"'
re.
Stave opened his mouth to protest; but Hami stopped
him with a harsh gut U Still addressing Linden, she
said, "We desire friendship with you, Ringthane. Y'o
     `e been hunted by kresh, and have eaten aliantha.
Of your own spirit and lore, you ha
brought Cord Sahah back from death when we could
not. Also you bear that which commands respect, a
ring of white fire such as Thomas Covenant wielded
against the Render. If friendship is ours to give, we will
offer it gladly."
Linden did not react. Challenged? Treachery? Had she
been stalked to this? Exposed to it by Anele's
compelled silence?
Who here had tried to prevent Anele from speaking?
"To Liand of Mithil Stonedown as well," the
Manethrall continued, "we mean no harm. We see that
he is honest, though he has little skill. It would please
us to welcome him without mistrust."
Liand watched Hami anxiously, his eyes full of
conflicted reactions.
The Manethralls glanced at him as Hami said his
name, then returned their attention to Linden. They
studied her in silence, somberly, as if they were
prepared to pass judgment.
Finally Hami indicated the Haruchai with a nod.
"In your name, Ringthane, we would welcome Stave of
the Bloodguard also. Our grievance against his kind is
ancient and enduring. Yet the Bloodguard were long
Fangthane's foes, until they were twisted from fealty.
For that reason, we do not wish to spurn him, though
the sleepless ones have become Masters now,
diminishing the people of the Land."
Stave faced the Manethralls without expression.
Linden could not read his emotions, but his aura felt as
blunt and uncompromising as knuckles.
Still she did not speak. For no clear reason, she found
herself wondering if any urviles occupied the valley.
Had those dark creatures played some role in the
attitude of the Ramen? What was the connection
between them?-the connection that Hami sought to
conceal.
The woman met Linden's apprehension steadily.
"Yet I must say plainly that if you do not answer our
challenges, all of the Ramen will stand against you."
Her voice carried the sound of implied nickering. "If
you attempt no harm, you will be offered none. We will
care for you as kindly as we may. But you will not be
permitted to depart from us. Whether you wish it or
no, we will retain you with us, that there may be no
hazard of betrayal to the Land."
There the Manethrall paused, apparently awaiting a
response.
Stave allowed himself a disdainful snort. "You are
false with us, Manethrall. When You persuaded us to
this place, you said nothing of challenges."
"Master," retorted Hami, "the past of the Bloodguard
flows in your veins. How did You imagine that we
would take counsel together, except by challenge?"
Unexpectedly the Haruchai nodded. He seemed to
accept her answer. He may have "derstood it.
t
"Linden?" Liand asked, nearly whispering. "Do you
know of this? They cannot mean to measure us in
combat? I may strike a blow as well as any
Stonedownor, but I have no skill to match theirs. In
this they have described me truly."
Linden shook her head, trying to face too many
questions at once. But Manethrall Hami did not give
her a chance to reply.
"Ringthane," she pronounced formally, "Linden
Avery the Chosen, do you consent to all that I have
said?"
Linden felt that she had no choice; that she had done
nothing to determine her own course, or to help
Jeremiah, since she had appeared on Kevin's Watch.
But the concern of all the Manethralls, and their
essential goodwill, were clear to her; plain and
palpable. She had no idea why they chose to behave as
they did. Nevertheless she had nothing to fear from
them, no matter how much they might seem to
threaten her.
"Manethrall," she answered with a formality of her
own, "I do. I don't know what you're worried about. I
hope you'll explain it. But I respect your caution. I'll
consent to whatever you want."
Then she added, "You've already accepted Anele. And
I think Liand will agree with me." She did not wait for
his nod: she trusted him to follow her example. "As for
Stave-" She shrugged. "I get the impression that he
knows more about what's going on here than I do.
He'll probably welcome a challenge."
In fact, however, the Haruchai appeared to have lost
interest in the situation. He stood with his arms
relaxed at his sides and his gaze fixed on the mountains
as if he had decided to await the arrival of someone or
something more worthy of his attention.
Then Hami bowed in the Ramen fashion. When
Linden did the same, the gathered Manethralls relaxed
somewhat.
At a word from Hami, the Manethralls turned toward
the crowded ring of Cords; and at once the ring broke
apart as the Cords hurried purposefully away. In
moments, some of them returned carrying wooden
blocks, apparently intended as seats, which they
arranged in smaller circles within the clearing. Linden
soon realized that they were preparing for a communal
meal.
In the frugal lives of the Ramen, the occasion may
have been considered a feast.
She did not need a feast: she needed rest. Liand
wanted to talk to her, she could see that. No doubt he
hoped that she might relieve some of his confusion.
And Sta`.e might have been willing to explain his
unexpected air of indifference. But she bad had
enough of them for the moment.
Ignoring her companions as well as the activity of the
Cords, she sat down on one
in her to
of the wooden blocks, propped her elbows on her
knees, and dropped her face hands. She needed to
think. God, she needed
Lord Foul had guided her to hurtloam-and then had
sent kresh to hunt her down. He disavowed
responsibility for both Kevin's Dirt and the Falls.
An Elohim had passed through Mithil Stonedown,
warning Liand's people against the halfhand even
though Thomas Covenant was long dead, and
Jeremiah threatened
no one.
Anele spoke repeatedly of skurj and the Durance.
Some being who might or might not have been
Kastenessen had commanded him not to reveal what
he had learned from the stones of the arrte.
Kastenessen himself should have passed out of name
and choice and time tens of thousands of years ago.
The Ramen planned challenges for Linden and her
companions. They had apparently lost or abandoned
the Ranyhyn somewhere, although they had once been
the inseparable servants of the great horses.
Occasionally Hami had hinted at other secrets.
Somehow the ur-viles had avoided Lord Foul's
attempts to destroy them. Linden believed that they
had enabled her escape from Mithil Stonedown.
The Despiser held Jeremiah. The Staff of Law had
been lost.
Anele claimed to be the son of Sunder and Hollian,
who had died three and a half millennia ago.
And somewhere Roger Covenant and his mind-
crippled mother walked the Land, seeking ruin as
avidly as Lord Foul himself.
It was too much; too much. Linden could not absorb it
all, or find her way through it. Because she understood
nothing, she could do nothing. Covenant was dead: her
dreams, illusions. Anele spoke only when his madness
permitted it; and then his revelations gave her no
guidance. And Stave, she suspected, knew little more
than she did. Denying the Land's past, the Masters
also denied themselves.
Liand may have been right about them. Perhaps they
feared to grieve.
She did not need a feast, or more stories. She had no
use for unspecified challenges. Hell, she hardly needed
life. She already had a bullet hole in her shirt.
She needed help.
ti'hen at last she lifted her head from her hands, she
saw Anele standing on the grass beyond the edge of the
clearing. A kind of fever shone from his blind face, and
his whole body seemed to concentrate toward her.
He was beckoning as though he had heard her prayers
and wished to answer them.
Briefly Linden considered ignoring him. Surely he
would only confuse her further? Even from this
distance, however, she could see that his madness had
entered a new Phase, one unfamiliar to her. He was in
the grip of an intention so acute that it made
hint
frantic.
Dusk had entered the vale while she counted her
dilemmas. Behind the mountains, the sun declined
from the Land, and their shadows filled the air with
omens. Cold
drifted furtively down from the heights. Soon the
Ramen would be ready to share their meal, and the
challenges would begin.
Sighing, Linden forced her stiff body upright and
walked across the open ground to meet Anele among
the grass.
As soon as she drew near, he reached for her with both
hands; took hold of her shoulders and pulled her
closer as if he meant to fling his arms around her.
"Linden," he breathed in a voice suffused with
weeping. "Oh, Linden. I'm so glad to see you:'

A voice she knew.
Tears streamed from his moonstone eyes, shocking her
as sharply as the sound of that voice in his mouth. She
had seen him weep often; but this was different. Until
this moment, she had never seen him shed tears of
sympathy.
Sympathy and pleasure.
"I didn't think I would ever see you again." He spoke
quickly, almost babbling, as if he had too much to say,
and too little time. "I wouldn't have believed it. But it
fits. It's right. You're the only one who can do this."
Thomas Covenant's voice.
She knew it as well as she knew her own, and loved it
more. Through his madness, Anele spoke Covenant's
words to her in Covenant's voice.
Her lungs heaved for air and found none. Covenant,
she panted, nearly fainting. Oh, my love. The sound of
him struck the whole vale to stillness. In an instant, the
Ramen and all their doings had ceased to exist; lapsed
to dreaming. Stave and Liand occupied the clearing in
some other world, a dimension of reality which no
longer impinged on hers. Her beloved did not speak to
them.

Anele embraced her, a hard clasp with all the strength
of Covenant's heart. Then he held her at arm's length
so that he could gaze at her blindly. His eyes were
awash in yearning.
"Linden," he said, "listen to me," still hurrying. "I
don't have time. There's so little I can tell you."
Covenant was dead, here and in the world they had
once shared. She had spent ten years grieving for him.
But this was the Land, and the Laws governing Life
and Death had been broken.
She faced him mutely through her own tears, helpless
to find words for her sorrow and rue. If she had
opened her mouth, she would have sobbed like a child.
his only
"The Law binds me in so many ways." Anele was
Covenant's surrogate, voice. "If it didn't, it wouldn't
be worth fighting for.

It he opposes me. Here, like this, he's stronger than I
am. Poor Anele cant hold me. I'm already fading."
As he said so, she saw that it was true. The old man
remained palpable before her. ht have hurt His fingers
gripped her shoulders urgently: in some other life,
they mig
her But within him another form of lunacy struggled
against Covenant's presence. In spite of Covenant's
desire, and Anele's rapt submission, a rabid force
gathered loathing to expel her love.
He opposes me. The same he who had commanded
Anele not to speak earlier? Or some other foe?
Anele's madness now did not resemble his near-sanity
on the ridge.
"You're in trouble here." Already her beloved's voice
sounded like tatters, scraps of presence. "Serious
trouble." She was losing him again. "You need the
ring. But be careful with it." His death had nearly
undone her. "It feeds the caesures."

Covenant!
She could not bear to lose him a second time.

"Linden," he urged at the limit of himself, "find me. I
can't help you unless you find me"
The next instant, Anele shoved her aside with such
vehemence that she nearly fell. Before she could grasp
at him, cry Covenant's name, try to pierce Anele's
turmoil with her health-sense, the old man rushed past
her onto the bare dirt and stubble of the clearing.
She pursued him at a run. She was too late: she saw
that clearly, although his face was turned away. The
transformation of his aura could not be mistaken.
Nevertheless she raced to catch up with him; hold him.

He opposes me. The being who now possessed Anele
had made a mistake. He had manifested himself within
her reach.
She had forgotten fear, caution, peril. She intended to
know her enemy, this one if no other. If she could, she
meant to wrest his presence from Anele's tortured
soul.
Anele halted a few strides into the clearing. She caught
up with him almost at once. Without hesitation, she
grabbed at his shoulder so that he would turn to face
her; so that she could see his possessor in his blinded
eyes.
Even through his filthy raiment, that touch scorched
her fingers.
Cries of surprise and warning went up from the Cords.
Manethralls snatched for their garrotes. Instinctively
Linden flinched back. Anele's old flesh had become
fire; reified flame Without transition, he roared with
heat like scoria. His skin should have been charred
from his bones by the burning ferocity of the being
within him.
co E

uld aarthpower wrapped the old man like a cocoon,
however, and his fiery possessor
not harm him.

Wildly Linden clutched at Covenant's ring as Anele's
head swung in her direction.
But then she froze shocked helpless by his appearance.
Anele took a single, predatory step toward her. His
jaws stretched open, impossibly

'vide: his few teethtidh
srane at te air: his throat glowed like a glimpse into a
furnace.
From the pit of his power, he exhaled straight into
Linden's face.
is
His breath struck her like a blast off a lake of magma;
like the fume of a volcano Ir, stantly her eyebrows and
lashes were burned away. The hair around her face
crisped and stank, and her sunburn became agony.
Around the clearing, the air itself ignited in flames and
dazzles.
She had already begun to fall when Stave leaped to the
old man's side and struck him down.
Anele's heat vanished so suddenly that she feared
Stave had broken his neck.
12.
f'e'V erge f )~anaering
MalFor a while, Linden went a little insane herself,
demented by an excess of confusion and pain. There
were no words in all the world to contain her dismay.
At a command from Manethrall Hami, several Cords
shouldered Stave away from Anele's outstretched
form. The Manethrall examined Anele swiftly,
confirmed that he was no longer filled with fire, then
assured Linden that he was merely unconscious, not_
slain. Cords lifted him from the dirt and bore him
away. But Linden regarded none of it. She hardly
understood it.
From beyond death, Covenant had tried to reach her.
His spirit still endured somewhere within the spanning
possibilities of the Arch of Time. Under other
circumstances, her heart might have been lifted by the
knowledge that he sought to communicate with her;
that he strove to answer her prayers
But he had been so viciously thrust aside. Some
flagrant power had dismissed him as though he had no
significance. He seemed to be at the mercy of some
malignant be - as Like her son in Lord Foul's hands
Her gaze streamed with grief. She could not shut it out.
Even when she close help eyes, her heart blurred and
ran. She could not bear it that her lost love had tried to
her, and had been silenced.
Find me.       ~~
Liand knelt at her side: he spoke to her softly, trying to
ease her in some Way' Sta
Stood nearby, unrepentant. No doubt he believed that
he had saved her and the Ramen from a futile grave.
Perhaps he had. Linden neither knew nor cared.
It fits. its right. You're the only one who can do this.
Covenant's assurance could not comfort her now: not
after what had happened to Anele.
But then one of the Cords handed Liand a small clay
bowl. When he began to stroke the poultice of the
Ramen lightly onto her scorched features, the whetted
aroma of amanibhavam stung her nostrils. In
Covenant's name, she allowed herself one harsh sob as
if she were gasping for air; for life. Then she struggled
to sit up.
Her beloved had told her in dreams, You need the
Staff of Law. That she understood.
She was sick to death of helplessness.
Liand supported her; propped her so that she could
lean against him while she gathered herself. "Do not be
in haste," he advised, whispering. "You are burned
and utterly weary. I see no deep hurt in you, but I am
no healer and may be mistaken."
Softly he murmured, "Surely now the Ramen will
forego their challenges. They must grasp that you can
bear no more."
The Stonedownor had first met Linden less than two
days ago. Clearly he did not yet know her very well.
She swallowed to clear her throat; pushed away the
poultice in his hand. Once again, she was struck by the
blackness of his eyebrows. Frowning, they shrouded
his eyes with foreboding; omens of loss.
Through her teeth, she breathed, "Help me up. I can't
do this without you."
You're in trouble here.
The young man braced her to her feet easily: he felt as
sturdy and reliable as stone. When she tried to stand
on her own, she wavered for a moment, undermined
by the heat like guilt on her burned face. But Liand
upheld her; and she did not hesitate. As soon as she
found her balance, she said, "Take me to Anele."
Manethrall Hami had come toward her as she rose:
the woman tried to intervene. But Linden insisted,
"Now, Liand. Before it's too late."
Before all trace of the being who had possessed Anele
vanished.
Before she remembered to be afraid.
At once, Hami stepped back. She gave instructions to
one of the nearby Cords, a YOung woman with
flowing hair the same hue as Liand's eyebrows. The
Cord moved like her hair as she led him and Linden
out of the clearing.
Linden clung to him. She was not done with him; not
at all.
The Cord walked quickly past two or three shelters,
then entered one near the edge Of the encampment.
Following her, Linden and Liand found Anele
sprawled on a bed
Of piled grass and bracken.
Linden saw at once that Hami had described the old
man accurately: he was un-
conscious, stunned, not broken. Yet his breathing had
an obstructed sound, fraught with pain. His eyes were
closed; mercifully, so that their blindness did not
accuse her of failing him. His neck and the side of his
head ached in response to Stave's blow. But the
Haruchai had measured out his strength precisely. He
had cracked no bones, done no lasting harm. Anele
would heal cleanly.
Because of the Earthpower in him, his hurts would
probably heal more swiftly than Linden's sore muscles
and burned skin.
But she was not concerned with his bodily recovery.
Other exigencies drove her. And still she did not
hesitate. If she paused for thought or doubt, she would
remember that what she meant to do was perilous. It
might destroy her.
"Here." Hurrying now, she released Liand and lifted
the chain from around her neck; thrust the chain and
Covenant's ring into Liand's hands. "Take this. Hold it
for me." Without its weight, her neck felt instantly
naked, exposed to attack. "Guard it."
He stared at her in shock. His hands cupped the chain
and the ring as though he feared to close his fingers.
"If anything happens to me," she ordered, "anything
at all-anything that scares you-get the hell out of here.
Do not try to help me. Take that," the ring, "and run.
Don't come back until one of the Ramen tells you I'm
all right."
Otherwise
He could not have known the reason for her command.
Nevertheless he nodded dumbly, unable to speak.
Trusting the Stonedownor, she spared no
consideration for what might happen if any of the
powers that wracked Anele succeeded at entering her.
Instead she dropped immediately to her knees beside
the old man's bed, pressed her palms to the sides of his
head, and plunged her percipience into him as if she
were falling.
At that moment, her attempt to possess him seemed a
lesser evil than abandoning
him to more torment.
ater she climbed unsteadily to her feet and reclaimed
Covenant's ring nom
Liand's anxious hands. have exShe understood her
failure well enough. And God knew that she should ha'
pected it. She simply did not know how many more
defeats she could bear.
he
"Linden?" Liand murmured, still fearful that she had
been harmed,
must have been able to see that she had not. "Linden-"
His voice trailed I C n t reach him." How else had he
survived his vulnerability for so long? "There's a wall
of
power in his mind" It was wrapped like cerements
around the core of his identity. "I can see how badly
he's been hurt. But I can't get in to where the damage
is."
The flaw in his defenses which permitted him to be
possessed was sealed away; beyond her reach. She
knew now that she would never be able to help him
without power. She needed some force potent enough
to cut through the barriers which he had erected.
Covenant's ring would do it. Anele's inborn
Earthpower preserved him, but it could not withstand
wild magic. Even at its most delicate, however, that
fire was too blunt and fierce to be used on anyone's
mind. She might blast every particle of his psyche long
before she discovered how to make him whole.
Her beloved was right. Even if she had imagined him
in dreams. She needed the Staff of Law. Without it,
there was nothing she could do for Anele.
"I grieve for him," Liand offered helplessly. "He has
been made a plaything for powers which surpass him.
It is wrong, Linden." Then the young man's tone
sharpened. "It is evil. More so than kresh. As evil as
Falls and Kevin's Dirt."
Linden nodded. If she spoke, she would not be able to
contain her bitterness.
She had forgotten the presence of the woman who had
guided her to Anele until the Cord touched Liand's
arm, asking for his attention. When he glanced at her,
the young woman-like Sahah, she was hardly more
than a girl-said bashfully, "If the Ringthane is willing,
and Anele requires no other care, the gathering of the
Ramen awaits her. Her need for sustenance is plain."
Liand snorted. Taking a step forward as if to defend
Linden, he demanded, "And do the Ramen intend still
to affront the Ringthane with challenges which they do
not name?"
In response, the Cord lifted her chin, and her Ramen
pride flared in her eyes. "You are discourteous,
Stonedownor. I do not doubt that the Ringthane is
equal to any challenge."
Tiredly Linden interposed herself between them.
"Please tell Manethrall Hami that we'll be there in a
few minutes."
To her own ears, her voice sounded too thin to be
heeded; too badly beaten. However, the Cord quickly
ducked her head, gave a deep Ramen bow, and
hastened away, as graceful as water.
Sighing, Linden turned to meet Liand's protests.
,Linden-" he began. "I fear you are unwise. You
cannot behold yourself as I do.
The weariness in you-"
She lifted her hands. Instead of contradicting him, she
said as clearly as she could,
-"hank you
He shook his head. "I have done naught deserving of
thanks. And I would be an ill companion if I did not-"
Again she interrupted him. "For being here. For being
my iriend. I'd almost forgot. ten what that feels like.
"Don't worry about me. The Ramen won't hurt me.
Even if they decide they don, t trust me, they won't
hurt any of us. They aren't like that."
Frowning, he studied her for a moment. Then he
acceded. "Your sight is more dis
cerning than mine. And the Cord spoke truly. Your
need for aliment is great."
She smiled wanly. "Then let me hold on to you. I don't
want to fall on my face in front of all those
Manethralls."
Liand replied with a sympathetic grimace; offered her
his arm. Together they walked back to the clearing in
the center of the encampment.
"Ringthane," she said sternly, "it shames me that you
were harmed in our care. Such fire is an aspect of the
old man's plight which we have not witnessed before.
Believing you to be safe among so many Ramen, we
relaxed our vigilance. Plainly we should not have done
so."
Linden shook her head. "It's not your fault. You
couldn't have known. And I'm not badly hurt." No
doubt Hami could see as much. "But I'm very tired.
Can we get this over with?" She meant the challenges.
"I want us to start trusting each other."
Hami bowed an acknowledgment. "As do we.
"Come " Respectfully the Manethrall touched
Linden's arm. "The Cords have completed their
preparations. Let us eat together, that we may be
sustained for the telling of tales."
When Linden nodded, Hami guided her to a circle of
seats in the center of the clearing. There the
Manethrall gathered eight or ten of her older Cords,
and they all sat down with Linden. At the same time,
Liand was taken to another circle nearby, and Stave to
a third. As with Linden, one Manethrall and several
Cords joined them. Soon each ring was occupied by a
Manethrall and his or her Cords.
Within each circle, a fire had been set to illumine the
meal. The younger Ramen
stood around the rim of the clearing, holding small
trenchers of food and bulging terskins, waiting for
some signal to serve the food.
Once everyone in the circles had seated themselves, the
Manethralls stood together riear In unison, they
turned to the northeast, holding their heads high.
From a circle rm5 Linden, an older man with grey-
streaked hair and a fretwork of scars on his arm raised
a voice like an old whinny. frog,
"We are the Ramen," he called softly to the deepening
twilight, "long" iled
our ancient home in the Land. For a hundred
generations and more have we sojourped without place
or welcome, carrying our dispossession upon our backs
as nomads, wanderers, and telling to no one but
ourselves the long tale of who we are.
"Yet have we kept faith with the past. Still we tell the
tale of ourselves, and tell it again, precisely as it was
told to us generation after generation, so that we will
forget nothing, fail nothing, and our great purpose will
never waver."
The Cords bowed their heads as the older man spoke.
But his fellow Manethralls stood tall in the clearing,
and reflections of firelight glistened in their eyes.
"We are the Ramen, bereft and redeemed by service,
and we will see our home again. This time we have not
been promised an end to exile, as we were when High
Lord Kevin Landwaster warned us from the Land. Yet
we keep faith. Though the Earth may crack, and the
Heavens fall, and all the peoples of the world be
betrayed, we will hold fast to the tale of who we are. In
the end, when our exile has run its course, we will
return to the Plains of Ra.
"So our tale was told to our sires and dams, and to
theirs, and to theirs again, for a hundred generations
and more to the Ramen who first began our
wandering. So it will be told to our children, and to
theirs, and to theirs again, until the Ramen have been
restored to the Land which is theirs."
Then the gathered Manethralls sang together, raising
their voices as one against the dark.
"We roam the world, lost, and learn
We have no place but home.
While time wears out its ceaseless grind We wander
still, the rind And pulp and juice of our return Forever
unconsumed.

"For hope we have not rock but loam Eroded by our
sons And daughters. Generations pass And leave us as
the grass, Or as the froth on waves, the foam, The rede
of years unlearned.

"To eastward we have sought the sun's Acceptance.
But the seas We find too restive to give rest. To
Southward lie the best
A
s soon as they stepped from the grass onto the beaten
dirt, Manethrall Hami approached them with concern
in her eyes.
Of lands and hills. Yet endless runs Still leave us
unfulfilled.

"And in the west lie bitter leas
And forage that will burn
The throat of each last roaming heart. Their folk
despise our part In wandering. Nor can we seize A
dwelling undenied.

"Thus we return, and still return While years and ages
end.
We cannot let our yearning sleep, And so we roam,
and keep
Our hearts alive, for we must earn Our dream of home
fulfilled."

In response, the Cords raised their palms before their
faces, still holding their heads bowed.
When they looked up again, the Manethralls had
seated themselves once more. Then some of the
younger Cords hurried forward with their trenchers,
carrying food and drink to the circles, while others
brought waterskins so that the sitting Ramen and their
guests could wash their hands.
Linden rubbed the grime of hard traveling from her
hands gratefully, and splashed a bit of water on her
face to cool her burned skin; but she did not drop her
guard. You're in trouble- Here food and even stories
were a prelude to threats.
If you do not answer our challenges, all of the Ramen
will stand against you.
She did not doubt that she was in serious trouble, in
spite of the sincerity of her hosts.
A boy younger than Jeremiah knelt beside her to place
a trencher on the ground in front of her. "I am
Sahah's brother," he murmured softly so that only she
would hear. "My name is Char." Then he was gone
before Linden could look at his face
Frowning Frowning uncertainly, disturbed without
knowing why, she considered her patter.
It held stew, steaming and savory, cupped in a bowl of
glutinous white mush had a might have been cereal or
potatoes, but which smelled like neither. instead form
of loamy scent that suggested it had been made by
boiling and pounding        'Push, tuber. Glancing at the
nearby Cords, she saw that they ate by taking a bit of
the shaping it with their fingers, and then using it to
scoop stew into their mouths
She may have been hungrier than she realized.
Surprised, Linden glared at her involunt ily.
ar
Hurrying in apparent embarrassment, Pahni
breathed, "The stew is hare and wild eland and
shallots spiced with rosemary and the leaves of
aliantha dried and ground fine. The rhee"-she
indicated the mush-"is boiled from the roots of the
grass of this valley. It has little virtue alone, but eaten
with meat and shallots it is a sustaining food."
As soon as she finished speaking, she withdrew.
First Sahah's brother: then her cousin. What was
going on?
Linden turned her head and found three Cords
standing directly behind her: Pahni, Char, and a man
who looked old enough to be a Manethrall. When
Linden met his gaze, he also knelt to introduce himself.
"Like Char," he said, smiling awkwardly, "I am
Sahah's brother. We are children of the same dam,
though we do not share sires. My name is Bhapa."
Linden stared at them dumbly. She could not think of
any polite way to ask, What the hell is going on? What
are the three of you doing?
Did they consider themselves responsible for her
because she had tried to help Sahah? Or was it the
other way around? Had she somehow become
responsible for them?
However, they seemed to expect nothing from her.
When he had given her his name, Bhapa rose to his
feet. With Char and Pahni, he simply stood behind
Linden as though the three of them had been asked to
guard her back, and had no other interest in her.
Troubled for reasons which she could not name,
Linden turned back to her food.
As an experiment, she tasted a bit of the rhee by itself.
In spite of its smell, it had virtually no flavor. But
when she combined it with the stew, she found that it
added a taste like spelt bread to the spiced meat and
shallots.
She was definitely hungrier than she had realized.
At intervals while she ate, Char or Bhapa or Pahni
offered her a drink from a waterskin She thanked
them impersonally, trying not to think about the
possible impliCations of their service. Whatever else
may have been true about them, the Ramen dearly
valued kinship.
Finally the meal was over. When the younger Cords
had passed around more water forth' washing of
hands, they cleared away the trenchers and
waterskins. The other
n remained seated, however, now obviously waiting,
and rni gave Linden a long, probing look. Then the
Manethrall rose lightly to her feet
Moved into the center of the circle so that she stood
near the small fire.
when she leaned toward one of her neighbors, thinking
to ask him what the mush was called, what the stew
was made of, she found another Ramen kneeling
beside her: the young woman who had guided her to
Anele.
The woman's black hair hung past the edges of her
face, hiding her features. Apparently she still felt shy
in Linden's presence. As Linden looked at her, she
whispered, "My sire is brother to Sahah's dam. My
name is Pahni."
As she did so, the Ramen in the clearing turned their
seats so that the whole gathering faced her together.
To Linden, Hami announced, "It is not the way of the
Ramen to give trust where trust has not first been
offered. At another time, we would not speak of
ourselves until you had described to us your past and
purposes."
Then she raised her voice and her eyes so that she
addressed her assembled people. "But she is Linden
Avery, called the Chosen by the sleepless ones. And she
is the Ringthane. The presence of her white ring is
plain to all who behold her. And with my Cords, I have
witnessed her argent flame.
"The name of the Ringthane we remember with
reverence. Seeing that the Ranyhyn both honored and
feared him, Covenant Ringthane refused their service.
He rode no Ranyhyn into peril and death. Instead he
hazarded only himself against the Render. Therefore
he is honored among us. Though our lives are as brief
as grass upon the Earth, our memories are long, for we
have told the tale until it cannot be forgotten."
Manethrall Hami held her head up to the valley and
the dark mountains. "And there is more. With her
companions, Linden Avery Ringthane came among us
hunted by kresh. She has befriended the mad old man
whose plight has long touched our hearts. She
consumes aliantha with respect and gladness. And she
retrieved Sahah of my Cords from death when Sahah's
wounds had surpassed our skills.
"For these reasons, I will speak first, in gratitude and
acknowledgment."
Around the clearing, Manethralls and Cords nodded
their acquiescence. And Linden nodded as well,
although she had not been asked for her assent. She
was simply glad that she would not be required to
account for herself before she knew what was at stake.
"I will speak briefly, however," Hami promised, "as
our lives are brief, for the matters which must be
resolved here are urgent and compelling.
"This place we name the Verge of Wandering." Her
words may have been meant for Linden, but she gave
them to the whole assembly. "It is here that the Ramen
first gathered when the Sunbane had driven us from
the Plains of Ra. Here we considered how we might
fulfill the meaning of our lives in exile." se
Hami paused to drop a faggot or two onto the campfire
so that its flames - higher. As she continued, her voice
became bleak, almost desolate, devoid of the
ering inflections which occasionally enlivened it. n
"Twice before, we had fled the Land, but now there
were no Lords to promise us a ending. As we withdrew
to this place, we prayed that one day the Sunban t
µ'ould he quenched-that the Ringthane or another like
him would arise to again cast da n the
to the S°°bane
bane
Render-but our hopes did not console us. We could see
no Outcome except extinction." Now her desolation
was unmistakable. Recalled loss ached in her words.
,,Our memories were long then, as they are now. Here
we told the tale of ourselves, and found that the toll of
bloodshed had become greater than we could
countenance. The Render had exacted too much death.
His slaying of the Ranyhyn must cease.
"Therefore we determined that we would never again
subject the meaning of our lives to Fangthane's
ravage."
The Manethrall sighed. "Yet we had no power against
him, no means by which we might end his malice. We
could not impose the relief we craved." The muscles at
the corners of her jaw bunched with remembered
resolve. "For that reason, we swore then, as each
generation has sworn anew, that we would not return
to the Plains of Ra until the Land's foe had met his last
doom, and would nevermore arise to shed the blood of
Ranyhyn."
Linden listened with growing discomfort. The Ramen
were as draconian as the Haruchai, as absolute in their
judgments. Both people rejected the reality of Lord
Foul's malevolence and the Land's vulnerability.
Where the Masters sought to alter that reality,
however, the Ramen had simply turned their backs on
it.
Compared to the stance which the Haruchai had
chosen, that of the Ramen was more human; certainly
less ambitious. Nevertheless it disturbed Linden
profoundly. The Land would never be saved by people
who believed and judged as the Ramen did.
She feared suddenly that her need for help had misled
her; that the Ramen were not the allies she required.
Even the intransigence of the Masters might be of
more use to her.
Still Hami continued her tale. However, her tone had
eased. The memories she described now did not hold as
much hurt.
"Thus this place became the Verge of Wandering, the
northernmost limit of our exile. From this valley, we
found our way southward among the mountains,
sojourning by decades and centuries among strange
and distant lands, living as nomads among peoples
who knew nothing of the Land and Fangthane.
Perhaps at another time we will speak of such things.
For the present, I will say merely that we found no
home there. But neither have we returned to the Land.
"Once in each generation, however, we visit the Verge
of Wandering. Here we remain for a season, or a year,
or for several years, scouting the Land until we have
discovered that Fangthane yet lives-that the Land has
not yet been healed of evil. Then we depart to wander
again.
For a hundred generations and more, no Ramen has
set foot beyond these mountains, except to obser th
liffh
veee o te Land, and to carry word."
° You like wh

at? Lidih hkd
`0me b you seenen mgtave ase. Has the life of the
Land be
ersince you abandoned it? Have you made it btt?
Bthidhi eeru se sa notng.
ut of her depth, and knew it.
And d
She was o
The things that Hami had not said were as loud in the
darkened gathering as those she had. Where were the
children of the Ramen? The old people? Where were
the Ranyhyn?
Then the Manethrall's voice took on a new edge, a
sound of keen wrath. For the first time, her tale
implied challenges.
"Once in each generation, therefore, we have
witnessed the rise of the Masters in the Land, the men
who were formerly the sleepless ones, the Bloodguard.
We have discerned no sign of Lords, or of other
powers, that might bring about Fangthane's end.
Instead we have watched with growing anger,
generation after generation, as those who once served
the Lords now name themselves Masters and do
nothing.
"The Land is in their care, and in their care it has
been made helpless. Now the Render flourishes once
again, and there are only Masters to oppose him.
"We have known the Bloodguard. We have seen them
turned to Fangthane's service. We know that they do
not suffice."
Threats seemed to mount around the clearing as Hami
spoke. The ancient animosity of the Ramen toward the
Bloodguard had been vindicated by the attitude of the
Masters.
"At last, however, a new Ringthane stands among us.
Because she is here, we might feel hope. But because
the Masters are also here, we fear that she will be
thwarted."
In that, at least, Linden understood Hami perfectly.
"The Ramen have kept faith," the Manethrall
concluded severely. "What have the Masters done?
How will Linden Avery bear the burden of wild magic
against the Render, when the Masters have quelled
any strength which might have aided her?
"These questions, and more, we will have answered."
For a moment, silence greeted her demand. Ramen
nodded to themselves, and to her, grimly. They seemed
to feel their exile as if they had experienced the loss
themselves, although they had known no other life but
wandering. Their tales had the force of
commandments, compulsory beyond the limits of flesh
and time.
Concentrating on Hami, Linden sensed rather than
saw Stave surge erect in the circle where he had been
sitting.
"Do you claim the right to challenge us?" he replied
flatly. He may have been full of ire and repudiation,
but he did not show it. His hard form revealed only
that he could not be swayed. "I also claim that right.
My questions also require answers." touch t
His tone was calm. Nonetheless it drew tension from
the Ramen like the
a flail. little of
"Manethrall," he continued, "you speak harshly of the
Masters, but you say of our the Ranyhyn. Did you not
guide them into exile? And are they not the meaning
lives? Why then are they absent from this place?
«4ti hat has become of them? How are you able to
avow that you have kept faith with the past, if you
have not been true to the great horses of Ra?"
,.4o. Linden reached her feet without realizing that she
had moved. She was fed up with people who never
forgave, the Ramen as much as the Haruchai. They
shared a combustible pride, as sensitive as tinder,
primed for conflagration. If she did not intervene, they
might strike blows which they would never be able to
take back.
And she was suddenly furious. Lord Foul held
Jeremiah. Like the Land, he would never be saved by
people who gave ancient grievances precedence over
their immedi
ate peril and responsibility.
"Sleepless one," Hami countered, "I am done
speaking." She held her garrote taut between her fists:
it seemed to have appeared there without transition.
"It is you who will answer here."
"No. Wait a minute." Fighting to quiet her heart,
Linden confronted Stave across the circles. "Don't say
a word. Please. Whether your people are right or
wrong-it doesn't matter. It makes no difference. Not
here. The Ramen don't know why you became
Masters. They can't evaluate your reasons. And you're
only here because of me." Because she had fled from
Mithil Stonedown. "If they have questions, I'll answer
them."
Facing her without expression, Stave opened and
closed his fingers deliberately, cocked one eyebrow-
and said nothing. Instead he shrugged as though he
recognized that she had told him the simple truth.
Gratitude for his restraint helped Linden manage her
anger as she turned to Manethrall Hami. "If you want
to challenge someone," she told Hami, "challenge me.
'siy companions are under my protection. All of
them."
Leaving her place in the circle, she approached the
campfire until she stood near enough to see every
spark and shadow in the Manethrall's face; near
enough to let Hami gauge her honesty as accurately as
the woman's senses allowed.
"When Covenant came back to the Land to fight the
Sunbane, I was with him. We would have failed if the
Haruchai hadn't helped us. I owe them a debt I'll
never be able
to repay.
I know you have grievances. Old ones. I understand
that. And I understand your
distrust. I'll answer your questions, anything you want
to ask me. But tell me one thing first. Please."
Hami frowned sternly across the flames. She seemed
reluctant to set aside her belhgerenCe toward Stave.
Yet her desire to trust Linden was plain: Linden could
see it in her. "her a moment, she conceded stiffly, "If I
may."
If Linden's question did not exceed the limits of what
the Ramen were willing to
reveal.
Still wrestling with her own outrage, and trembling
with effort, Linden said
harshly, "Lord Foul has come back, that's obvious.
You've seen Kevin's Dirt. You've seen caesures. It's
your return I don't understand.
"You say you scout the Land `once in each generation.
But how did you happen to pick this year? This
season?" Had the Ramen been told that she would
appear? Had the ur-viles forewarned them? "A
generation is a long time. You could have come last
year-or next year." If they had, she and her
companions would probably have died. "But you
didn't. Instead you're here now.
"How did that happen?"
Linden closed her eyes briefly, praying for an
explanation that she would be able to accept. She
needed to gain as much comprehension as she could
before the Ramen put her to the test. Then she looked
at Hami again.
There is darkness nigh. Perhaps it lives among the
Ramen, concealing itself from their discernment.
Hami appeared to consider the question. Linden half
expected her to consult with her fellow Manethralls,
but she did not. Apparently she could be sure that her
people would support her, whatever decision she
made.
Finally she nodded. "In sooth, Ringthane," she replied,
"we have not come by happenstance. We are a decade
and more ahead of our appointed time. However, two
events persuaded us from our wonted round. The first
I may relate."
The Manethrall paused as if to compose herself, then
began.
"Perhaps half a generation ago, in an unpeopled
woodland many leagues to the south and west, a
strange being came among us. His power must have
been great, for we descried nothing of his approach or
presence until he stood before us." This point seemed
important to Hami: her pride insisted on it. "Skills and
senses which would have acknowledged an unfamiliar
butterfly within a league of our camp caught no sign of
the stranger until he deigned to make himself known
to us.
"He offered us no harm, and therefore we acted
similarly, though we misliked him at once, for his mien
was haughty, and he appeared to hold us in scant
regard"Ham, 's voice was tight with disapproval. "His
raiment was of sandaline, without shade or tint, and
his eyes held the coldness of gemstones. When we had
granted him welcome, he said that he intended to
forewarn us."
A chill ran down Linden's spine. She knew what was
coming.
"He named himself one of the Elohim, dispatched by
his people in their distant
land to speak of perils which stalked the Land from
the ends of the Earth." Behind her in the clearing,
Linden heard Liand catch his breath; whisper her
nameSilence held the rest of the gathering, however,
and Hami did not heed the Stone
downor. which "He said nothing of Fangthane, nor did
he speak any of the other names by 5i," ; and other the
Render is known. Rather he cited croyel, merewives,
Sandgorgons,P
creatures or beings of which we have no knowledge.
When we pressed him to account for them, he refused
disdainfully. His purpose, he averred, was to prepare
the way, not to amend our shortcomings. Instead he
instructed us to `Beware the halfhand.' With the
coming of the halfhand, the Earth would suffer its
most dire peril, and if we cared aught for our home we
would return to the Land's defense."

The Manethrall snarled at her memories.
"Remembering the legends of Berek Halfhand as well
as the great victory of Covenant Ringthane, we took
offense that the stranger had spoken so. Because he
offered no harm, we did not drive him from us.
Nevertheless we invited him to depart, for he declined
to honor those whose valor and worth exceeded his.
"Mocking us, he went away as he had come, leaving no
sign to mark his passage."
Then Hami sighed. "When he had gone, we turned our
way hither. Affronted by his manner, we did not wish
to credit his words. Therefore we did not hasten. Yet
we altered the sequence of our wandering, for he had
sown disquiet among us, and we wished to determine
whether he had spoken sooth or no."
Over the flames, she asked Linden, "Are you
answered, Ringthane? Will you now speak of yourself,
as I have spoken of the Ramen?"
For a moment, Linden could not meet the Manethrall's
gaze. The fact that an Elohim had approached the
Ramen as well as Liand's people forced her to confront
fears which she had tried to stifle.
Thomas Covenant was dead. But Jeremiah also lacked
half of one hand. And as far as she knew, the Elohim
felt only the most oblique and ambiguous concern for
Lord Foul's machinations. They were Earthpower
incarnate, free of Law and perhaps impervious to wild
magic. In addition, they considered themselves the
Wurd of the Earth, the essence or purpose or fate of
life; self-sufficient; beyond threat. No peril could touch
them: few impinged on their notice. And fewer still
stirred them from their hermetic self-contemplation.
The idea that those detached and apparently heartless
beings had dispatched one of their own to forewarn the
peoples of the Land made Linden want to rage and
weep. Dear God, how bad was it going to get? What
was Foul doing?
While she had known the Elohim Findail, he had
dreaded only two things: his own Appointed doom;
and the rousing of the Worm of the World's End. And
during her translation to the Land, she had caught a
glimpse of the Worm- Lord Foul had mocked her with
a nightmare in which she awakened the Worm with
wild magic,
causing the destruction of the Earth.

he Yet the undefined challenges of the Ramen
remained. When the Manethrall said
name again, Linden looked up from her trepidation.

Awkwardly she countered, "What was the second?"
Hami raised h
er eyebrows. "Ringthane?"
"You said two events brought you here now. You told
me about the first one. What was the second?"
eased toward you?"
No, Linden insisted in silence-not to Hami, but to
herself. No, stop this. Her fears were running away
with her: concern and frustration were making her
crazy. She had no power to bring about the ruin of the
Earth. Everything that the Despiser said or did was
designed to mislead her in some way.
"I'm sorry," she murmured, so faintly that she hardly
heard her own voice. "Of course I'll tell you my story.
You've shown us nothing but kindness. I want your
friendship."
And she was certain that the Land needed the Ramen.
Hami responded with a formal bow. "Then speak,
Ringthane." Her tone hinted at whinnying. "The
Ramen hear you."
Standing or sitting, all of the Cords and Manethralls
seemed to lean toward Linden. The mountains
themselves brought their darkness nearer, and a chill
breeze fell from their sides to fill the vale. In the
moonless heavens, the stars glittered coldly, like the
eyes of the Elohim; instances of disdain.
Linden made no effort to raise her voice. Hami was
enough for her. The rest of the Ramen would hear her
as well as they could, and decide among themselves
whether she spoke the truth.
"I'm like Thomas Covenant," she said over the low
crackle and hiss of the flames. "We come from a
different place. Outside this world." Her few
possessions confirmed this: her clothes, her boots. And
white gold did not exist in the Land, or anywhere in
the wide Earth. "When he was summoned against the
Sunbane, I came with him.
"You were brief. I'll be the same."
Firelight filled Hami's eyes with shadows. The
Manethrall seemed to watch Linden through a shroud
of remembered wars and butchery, measuring
Linden's words against her own knowledge of evil.
Carefully Linden described her arrival with Covenant
on Kevin's Watch. She named urd
Sunder and Hollian, whom Anele had claimed as his
parents. Knowing that th viles were important in some
way, she told how Covenant's Dead in Andelain ba
given him Vain. The beginning of the Search for the
One Tree; her meeting with Giants in Seareach; their
encounter with the Elohim, and with Findail the
Appointed: these
things she explained as concisely as possible. But she
did not scant Brinn's self-sacrifice en
and triumph at the isle of the One Tree. She would not
make it easy for the Ra Vic_
to think ill of Stave's people. After that, however, she
leaped ahead to Cos'zn` rit s
Lord Foul, the making of the new Staff of Law, and
her own efforts to heal
tort' o`er the Land.
The night around the clearing had grown
impenetrable. Only the black bulk of the mountains
showed against the stars. And only the campfires
softened the stern faces of the Ramen.
"For en. " Linden said to the hushed gathering, "that
was only ten years ago." A quarter of her life. "Time is
different where I come from.

"Three days ago, I was summoned again." Shot
through the heart. "I'm not sure, but I think two other
people came to the Land at the same time." Again she
made no mention of Jeremiah. She did not want to
expose him to the dire pronouncements of the Elohim.
"If I'm right, they both serve Lord Foul. And one of
them has a white gold ring.
"I don't understand Kevin's Dirt or the caesures. I
don't know anything about skurj or the Durance. I've
encountered merewives, Sandgorgons, and croyel, but
I can't imagine what they have to do with the Land. As
far as I'm concerned, none of that matters as much as
the other ring.
"If Lord Foul can use wild magic, the Land is already
in tremendous danger, and I'm going to need all the
help I can get."

There Linden bowed her head. Praying that she had
satisfied the Manethrall, she waited for Hami's
response.
After a moment, Hami murmured, "The Ramen hear
you, Ringthane." Her voice held a tone that may have
been awe. "Yet you have not spoken of your
companions."
Watching the ambivalent dance of the flames between
her feet and Hami's, Linden said, "Anele found me on
Kevin's Watch. He was trying to get away from a
caesure. When the Watch fell, wild magic saved us.
Then the Masters took us prisoner. Once they knew
who I was, they would have let me go, but I stayed with
Anele. Liand helped us escape," Liand and a
concussive storm which the ur-viles must have sent.
"Stave found us a little while before you did."
That was enough. If the Ramen could not recognize
her honesty, no insistence of hers would convince
them.
Flickering shadows concealed the Manethrall's
reaction. None of the Ramen spoke
or moved. They might have been willing to listen all
night. In their long history, no doubt, they had   g
met wonders aplenty, as well as bloodshed and
betrayal. Yet they seeMed transfixed by Linden's brief
tale. Their distant ancestors had known the
reach Giants during the ages of Damelon, Loric, and
Kevin, and during the centurie$ of the new Lords,
until the slaughter of the Unhomed. Since then,
however, the RaMen May not have met anyone who
had seen so many of the Earth's marvels. a P L h den
Avery," the Manethrall began. "Ringthane." Her tone
was a knot of awe and
°n "We have heard you. There remains much that we
might inquire of you.
A new tension spread through the gathering. The
Manethrall's features closed: her expression became a
wall. "That event entails the first challenge. Do you
choose to
meet it now? Will you not rather tell us the tale of
yourself, that our hearts rnatiy b e
Yet I do not hesitate to say that we will offer our
friendship gladly-yes, both friendship and honor-if
they are ours to grant.
"But you have spoken of matters which are too high
for us. We are Ramen, and proud-but we are only
Ramen, powerless against Fangthane as against
Elohim. or any other fell being. Our purpose is all that
we are, and its ambit is too small to contain such
wonders and powers. Hearing your tale, we know that
we cannot measure your claim upon us, for good or
ill."
Then Hami waved her hand; and one of the Cords at
the edge of the clearing hurried away into the night.
Watching the young Raman go, Linden felt a new twist
of apprehension.
"Linden Avery," Hami repeated more loudly,
"Ringthane and Chosen, the time has come. You have
given your consent to be challenged. This is well, for
such testing is necessary to us.
"The time has come to speak of Esmer."
At once, all of the Ramen rose to their feet. In one
sense or another, they had been waiting for this
moment. Hami's Cords hedged Linden within their
circle. The younger Ramen seemed to form a wall
around the clearing.
Esmer? Linden thought mutely. Who-?
"I have said that two events brought us timely to the
Verge of Wandering, and to your aid," the Manethrall
explained with a cadence of nickering in her voice.
"This is the second. Three seasons past, we were yet
far to the south, and though our way tended
northward we did not hasten, for the Elohim had not
persuaded us to urgency. But then a new stranger
came among us.
"He named himself Esmer, and he approached us
courteously from afar, asking that he might be
welcomed among us. To our eyes, he appeared to be a
man both like and unlike any other, ruled by love and
loss, as others are, and yet as puissant as a Lord in his
own fashion-a figure of both power and pain. His pain
we did not comprehend, however, and his power
disturbed us. Therefore we were unsure of him.
"Yet he met our challenge without demur or difficulty,
but rather with a seemly reverence. And when it was
made plain to us that we must cede our friendship, he
became a worthy member of our journey, forewarning
us of pitfalls and snares, and relieving our wants, so
that our sojourn has been one of safety and ease." e
were
Linden waited with a mounting pressure in her ears
and chest, as though sh holding her breath. A figure of
both power and pain
-who did not greet new arrivals among the Ramen, or
join them while they a`e.
Hidden by shadows, Hami's eyes might have held
eagerness or fear, empath,
ll contraued 1
"Billw be challenged in your turn" the Manethra
ecause you w no, will tell you that it was Esmer who
persuaded us to hasten toward the Verge
d g, It was he who informed us of the Ringthane's
return in peril. And it was he who summoned the ur-
viles so that they might answer your need as we did,
for he alone among us speaks their tongue.
"Indeed," she added, "because of his presence, or his
summoning, we have encountered them frequently
since we neared the Land."
Then she concluded, "It is our hope that his lore may
enable us to determine our place in matters which
surpass us."
Suddenly Stave thrust himself between Hami's Cords
into the circle around Linden. Resolve poured from his
hard form as if he were ready for battle.
As the Haruchai moved, Liand called out sharply: a
tight cry, unexpectedly alarmed. In the same moment,
Linden felt an acrid presence touch the back of her
neck. Instinctively she wheeled toward the
Stonedownor.
At the edge of the clearing near him, a wedge of
Demondim-spawn appeared among the Cords as if
Hami had invoked them.
The black creatures barked to each other softly as they
advanced. They did not sound threatening, however,
and the Ramen showed only tension, not fear. None of
the ur-viles held weapons.
Were they here because Hami had summoned Esmer?
Or because Linden herself was in danger?
Frightened and confused, Liand pushed his way
through the Ramen to join Stave beside her. Both of
them seemed to think that the ur-viles posed some
threat.
Linden turned back to the Manethrall. "Hami-?"
Hami held up her hands to forestall questions. "I know
not why they have come. We did not expect them. But
they have given us no cause for enmity. Since we
learned of their presence among these mountains, they
have offered us no harm. Rather they have aided us
upon occasion, at Esmer's behest."
Linden frowned to conceal her thoughts. If Esmer
could talk to the ur-viles, he might be able to answer
many of her questions.
"P,ingthane," the Manethrall hurried on, "our
challenges need not alarm you. They require naught of
you, except that you abide them.
Thus!"
Spreading her arms, she stepped back from the
campfire; withdrew to the edge of the circle.
0{{ to her right, the crowd of Cords parted again, and
a man came tensely through the firelight into the
center of the clearing.
The first sight of him
tai made Linden's stomach churn with nausea She
was it
n thath ns antly . se
was looking at the being who had driven Covenant's
spirit from Anele's
Power wh hd
oa commanded Anele to keep silent at the crest of the
arete. lie resembled the Haruchai.
suspicion.
mind; the
of \''.j1
tl
He could have been young or old: his features seemed
to refuse the definition, the constriction, of time. Like
Stave's people, he was flat-faced and brown-sinned,
strongly built. Like them, he was not especially tall; no
taller than Linden herself. And his cropped hair curled
on his head. Seen from a distance, he could have been
taken for Stave's brother, unscarred and untried.
However, he wore a gilded cymar formed of a strange
fabric which looked like it had been woven from the
froth of waves: a garment entirely unlike the raiment
of the Masters-or any raiment that Linden had seen in
the Land. And his eyes were the deep and running
green of dangerous seas.
Now she knew why his nearness nauseated her. Her
health-sense saw him as a queasy squirm of power; a
knot of conflicts and capabilities like a clenched nest of
worms. Poisonous. Breeding.
And yet
If he had not been so tense, he would have seemed
oddly vulnerable, even frightened. The occasion
threatened him in some way. Or he was a danger to
himself. In spite of her own discomfort, she felt drawn
to him, as if he had appealed to her for pity; inspired
her to empathy.
And yet
Her nerves were sure of him: she perceived clearly
that he was the figure of power who had twice
intervened to frustrate Anele's insights, Anele's
madness. He had reft her of Covenant's voice
But he was distinctly not the being of fire that had
possessed the old man. She could be confident of that
as well. Rather he had merely blocked Covenant's
spirit, impelling Anele out onto open ground. There an
altogether different being had taken hold of the old
man; a power that blazed with malice and hunger, as
Esmer did not.
In some sense, Esmer served that other, more vicious
foe-and appeared to despise himself for doing so.
"Linden," Liand panted in astonishment or dismay,
"he is not human. Not mortal."
Linden swallowed a rasp of sand. She wanted to ask
Stave what he saw. His senses surpassed hers. And he
might have knowledge which she lacked. But her
throat was too dry for speech.
Stave confronted the newcomer mutely, without
moving. Every line of his form had become an
imminent blow.
"Esmer," Hami announced, apparently intending to
introduce him to Linden an
t it
her companions. But he stopped her with a gesture so
fraught with force that it left a streak of incandescence
across Linden's sight. Then he turned to Liand. o0
"Liand of Mithil Stonedown." His words seemed to
writhe in Linden's ears• have no part in this. You will
withdraw."
Like Stave, Liand stood motionless. "No." His voice
shook. "I will not
Esmer shrugged as if with that lift of his shoulders he
dismissed Liand's existence.
"Linden Avery," he said next, "Chosen and Sun-Sage.
You have become the H dwielder, as the Elohim knew
that you must. Because you spurned their guidance
long ago, much will now be lost which might have been
preserved. You also have no

part in this, and will withdraw."
But she, too, did not comply. She could not. Instead she
stood still, rooted in place by surprise and anger. He
had silenced Covenant's voice; had caused Anele
terrible distress. And
And many centuries ago, the Elohim had expressed
surprise that she did not already wield Covenant's
ring. Because she did not, they had reduced
Covenant's mind to blankness, striving-among other
things-to persuade or compel her to claim his wedding
band for herself.

How had Esmer known-?

Observing her refusal, his manner softened
momentarily. "If the Ramen heed my word, they will
trust their hearts concerning you. And if they do not-"
Again he shrugged; but this time the motion suggested
diffidence, even timidity. "They will be persuaded
otherwise."
Then, however, all hint of softness vanished from him.
Like Liand, she might have ceased to exist. Between
one instant and the next, he began to seethe with fury
as he shifted his dark emerald gaze to the Master.
"You," he said; and his voice gathered potency as if he
could bring down the night and the stars to hear him.
"I know you, to my enduring cost. You are Stave,
Bloodguard and Master, Haruchai." With each word,
his voice grew, acquired resonance, until it became the
shout of great sackbuts, steerhorns, so loud that it
seemed to echo off the mountainsides. "Because of you,
I am made to be what I am!
"Defend yourself, heartless one, lest I destroy you!"
At once, he launched himself at Stave like a scend, the
surge of a tumbling wave.
"Esmer!" Hami cried instantly. "No! They must not
be harmed! I promised them safety!"

Together, she and several other Manethralls rushed to
intervene.
Instinctively Linden reached for Covenant's ring. But
she had no power. She was blocked by nausea; trapped
within herself by the confusion of her senses.
The ur-viles barked savagely in unison. At the tip of
their wedge, an iron rod or Scepter appeared in the
loremaster's hands. The creature raised the rod high,
prepar
ing conflagration.


Esmer s response shook the encampment. Around the
clearing, the ground erupted ~c water in spouts,
geysers, hurling dirt and stubble into the air. Linden
was flung k%'ard: the Manethralls were picked up,
tossed aside. Bursts of force and soil drove
the Ramen back.
But the ur-viles were not affected. Linden realized as
she sprawled to the ground that Esmer spared them;
or they were able to withstand him. While he made the
dirt hurl and dance, they remained upright in their
wedge, poised for black might which they had not
unleashed.
Liand fell on his back near her. The spouts continued
erratically, leaping upward as if they had been
squeezed from the guts of the Earth, first to one side,
then another, back and forth at vehement intervals.
But now they touched no one. Instead they kept the
Ramen away; enforced a vacant place like a killing
field in the middle of the clearing.
And in the midst of the geysers, Stave and Esmer
fought.
Linden could not so much as whisper Stave's name.
Esmer's power closed her throat.
The Master met Esmer's first attack easily: blocked a
punch, then used the impact of a kick to lift him away
so that he gained a little distance. "You are a treacher,
or misguided," he informed his assailant calmly. "The
Haruchai also have no part in this. We do not know
you.
"If you have truly been made to be who you are, and
do not choose your own way"-his tone carried a sting
of scorn-"lay blame elsewhere. I know not how you
have tricked or betrayed the Ramen to friendship, but
I deny you. If you do not desist, I will teach you better
wisdom."
Esmer answered with a flurry of blows like a sudden
squall: fists and feet so swift that Linden could not
follow them. For a moment, Stave seemed to block and
counter amid the storm and the bursting geysers as if
he were Esmer's equal. Strikes and gasps punctuated
the air in staccato, at once sodden and sharp, flesh and
bone. Then, abruptly, the Haruchai staggered
backward; nearly fell to his knees.
His face bled from cuts and pulped skin on his cheeks
and forehead. From where she lay, Linden could feel
pain grinding in his chest like splinters of bone
twisting against each other.
Esmer's green eyes seethed with ferocity. "You are
mistaken, Haruchai!" His voice thundered across the
valley. A tidal wave might have broken over the
clearing: Linden seemed to hear Stave's accuser
through a wall of water and chaos. "Your folk sired
me.
and given birth by the
I am your descendant, conceived by Cail among
merewives, Dancers of the Sea!
"Because of the Haruchai, there will be endless
havoc!"
Tears caught the light and glowed like embers on his
cheeks. In spite of his rage. might have been sobbing.
Swift as lightning, he attacked again.
Lean
Several of the Manethralls and Cords tried to force
their way into the battle.
joiped them, ignoring his distrust of the Masters. But
spouting dirt and stones repulsed then'.
The Haruchai could be killed: Linden knew that. She
had seen them slain by spears and Sandgorgons.
Panting, No, no! she struggled to her feet against the
overflow of Esmer's power, the shock and virulence of
his geysers.
Call's son?
As though he had not been bloodied, and felt no hurt,
Stave sprang to meet the assault. He struck and struck,
a whirlwind of blows and blocks: spinning; leaping;
allowing Esmer to hit him so that he could hit back.
Once he rocked Esmer's head: several times, he drove
his fists and feet into Esmer's body.
Yet the punishment he received in return was worse.
Linden saw his blood splash the ground; felt more of
his ribs give way. A lashing elbow snapped one of his
clavicles. Within herself, she scrambled frantically to
find the hidden door of the ring's fire, but it eluded
her. Stave's pain and Esmer's churning power and her
own fear paralyzed her.
And still the ur-viles did not enter the conflict. They
appeared to have no interest in Stave's plight. They
had come for some other purpose and ignored
everything else.
Then the fight seemed to freeze for an instant, catching
Stave in an attempt to fling a kick at Esmer's head. He
was off-balance and slow, however, already battered
almost senseless. While his kick rose, Esmer dove at
him with a blow to the pelvis that wrenched his leg
from its socket.
Stave fell on his face, fingers clawing at the dirt,
unable to rise.
Esmer stood over the Haruchai. With one hand, he
knotted a grip in Stave's hair, pulled Stave's head
back. With the other, he punched Stave's head
downward.
Stave's head bounced once; settled to the ground like a
sigh. He did not move again.
An instant later, the spouting ceased.
Fierce pressure evaporated from the air as if a squall
had frayed and drifted apart. Linden stumbled at the
abrupt release: her arms flailed. The ground under
her boots held a residual tremor like the aftermath of a
distant earthquake. Around her, the Ramen blinked
dazedly, shocked by relief and the sudden end of
violence. Liand stood among them with wildness in his
eyes. Nothing in his life had prepared him for this.
Because of the Haruchai, there will be endless havoc.
Oh, Stave.
Linden felt rather than saw thihd ih
e ur-viles wtrawnto te night; but she no l onger
ey come to protect her? To protect Esmer from her? It
made no difference nowhey did. Had th
.
If they had wished Stave dead, they could easily have
slain him themselves.
Shaking his head, Esmer stepped away from the
beaten Master. He looked vaguely
he
cared wh
at t
crestfallen, almost ashamed, as if he had been caught
in an vengeance-or forbearance.
"Esmer," Hami breathed, "what have you done?" He
did not answer.
Stave was still alive.
Freed from her paralysis, Linden ran to his side.
Ignoring Cail's son, she dropped to her knees to
examine the Haruchai.
On the Sandwall of Bhrathairain, Ceer had taken a
spear meant for her. With one leg shattered, he had
not been able to defend her effectively, and so he had
simply let himself be impaled.
Without Brinn's self-sacrifice, she and Covenant
would never have been able to approach the One Tree.
Trembling with her own fury, Linden reached into
Stave with her health-sense. Somehow he still lived. If
he could be saved, she did not mean to let him die.
As she studied his wounds, a hush fell over the
gathering. The clenched attention of the Ramen turned
away from her and the Master. But she did not raise
her head. In moments, she was sure that Stave needed
saving.
His body was a mass of bruises and bleeding, but that
damage was superficial: his native vitality would heal
it. In addition to his shattered clavicle, however, and
his dislocated hip, she found a collapsed sinus in one
cheek, stress fractures in both femurs, a variety of
badly battered internal organs, and at least eight
broken ribs.
One of them had splintered completely, puncturing a
lung in several places. She could hear moisture rattle
in his troubled breathing. The ground under him
seemed to tremble with the difficulty of his respiration.
She looked up to find only Esmer gazing at her. Liand
and the Ramen stared past her toward the far side of
the clearing. Wonder and deference filled their faces.
Linden did not so much as glance at what they saw.
The thunder in the dirt left her untouched.
"You bastard," she spat at Esmer. "Why didn't you
just kill him? You've done everything else."
"I have seen what you do not," he answered
ambiguously. The look in his eY~ might have been
gladness or remorse. "Behold."
With one hand, he pointed beyond her to the sound of
hooves.
When she turned her head, she saw two proud horses
trot into the clearing though they had been incarnated
from darkness and firelight.
She had encountered horses aplenty during her life;
but she had never seen hot like these.
They were craggy and extreme, full of the essential
substance of the Land, i+'ith deep chests and mighty
shoulders, and a hot smolder of intelligence in their
eyes. Their
coats gleamed as if they had been brushed and curried
ceaselessly for generations, one a roan stallion, the
other a dappled grey mare; and their long manes and
tails flew like
pennons.
In the center of their foreheads, white stars blazed like
heraldry, emblems of lineage and Earthpower.
As one, the Ramen bowed low to them: an action as
natural and necessary as breathing to the horse-
tenders of Ra. Liand gaped openly, transfixed, unable
to look away.
"This is the true challenge of the Ramen," Esmer
explained gruffly. "The Ranyhyn have accepted me."
He sounded both forlorn and proud. "Now they have
come to accept you, the Haruchai as well as yourself.
And they are precious to me. Their approach stayed
my hand. I will not gainsay them."
The horses advanced across the clearing until they
were mere strides from Linden and Stave. There they
halted. She held her breath as they shook their heads
and flourished their manes, gazing at her and the
Haruchai gravely. The blowing sounds they made may
have been greetings.
Then together they bent their forelegs and bowed their
noses to the dirt as if in homage.
unjustified act of
0 OFTRI
When the Ranyhyn had departed, the Cords bore
Stave into one of their opensided shelters and laid him
gently down on a bed of thick grass and bracken near
the small cookfire. At Linden's command, they
brought more wood and built up the fire to a sturdy
blaze. Shamed that the Ramen had not kept
Manethrall Hami's promises, they would have done
more; but Linden sent them away when she was
satisfied that Stave had been made as comfortable as
possible.
She needed to be alone with his plight; and with her
own.
Without some extreme intervention, he would die soon.
He had begun to hemorrhage around his broken ribs
and punctured lung. Even his extraordinary vitality
could not ward him from death much longer.
And the Ramen had no hurtloam. Again they sent out
Cords for the healing mud; but to their knowledge the
nearest source lay far from the Verge of Wandering.
Because she was afraid, Linden considered simply
borrowing a knife and cutting him open. But she knew
better. Even with the sterile resources of a modern
operating theater at her disposal, she could not have
saved him surgically without transfusions; and she had
none to give him. If she used a knife, she would only
hasten his death from
blood loss.
And she was in no condition to work on him. She was
already exhausted. The burned skin of her face
throbbed in spite of the soothing effects of
amanibhavam. And she had received too many shocks
Yet his life was in her hands. If she did not rise above
herself-and do it now-he Would die.
She Would have found her fears easier to bear if Stave
had not regained conscious
while the Cords settled him in his bed. His eyes were
glazed with agony, and he
could breathe only in harsh gasps; but he recognized
her beside him. Dully he watched her every movement.
Without his gaze upon her, she might have felt less
ashamed of her limitations. "Chosen," he said at last,
thinly; a blood-spattered trickle of sound between his
lips. "Do not."

There was no room for fear in what she had to do.
Because she could not be calm, she held her alarm at
bay with anger.

"Shut up," she told him. "Save your strength. This
isn't up to you." She also feared what he might say to
sway her.
But he persisted. "Chosen, heed me. There are tales of
your healing. Do not heal
me. I have failed. I am Haruchai. Do not shame me
with my own life."
If any tears had remained to her, Linden might have
wept for him.
A few Cords lingered outside the shelter, Bhapa, Char,
and Pahni among them, no
doubt hoping to be of assistance. She caught herself on
the verge of yelling at them, or
dering them furiously away, so that no one else would
hear Stave beg.
Instead she instructed them to turn their backs. "And
don't let anyone else in here.
I need to be alone with this."

She did not know how else to bear her own weakness
and Stave's supplication. When the Cords had obeyed
her, she confronted him as though she meant to strike
him where he lay.
"Don't talk like that," she said like an act of violence.
"Don't tell me not to heal you." Not to at least make
the attempt. "You failed long before we came here, but
you haven't used that as an excuse to give up."

The Master swallowed blood. "How have I failed?"

"Well, what would you call it? Anele is just a crazy old
man," whatever else he might be. "Until I came along,
the Ramen were the only friends he had, and he didn't
see them very often." God, she needed to be angry.
`But he's been haunting the mountains above Mithil
Stonedown for decades.
"You're the Haruchai. As you keep saying. But you
couldn't catch him. Wasn't that a failure?"
Stave's mien gave her no hint of his reaction. He might
have felt perplexed or scornful behind his anguish.
"He was aided."
"By ur-viles, you mean?" she countered. "The ur-viles
you didn't even know existed? That's another failure.
You've made yourselves the Masters of the Land. The
caretakers- But I've only been here for three days, and
I've already encountered half a dozen things you didn't
know."

She had nothing to give her light except the unsteady
radiance of the cooknre;
A
nothing to guide her except a numinous discernment
which she had lacke for ten long years. And Stave
would not last much longer.
"Listen to me," she told him grimly. "You didn't fail
to capture Anele because he was aided. You failed
because there aren't enough of you for the job. You're
spread too thin.
"And you've isolated yourselves. Nobody can help you
because you won't even let them know what the
dangers are. I understand why you thought that was a
good idea. At least I think I do. But you can't have it
both ways. Every choice has consequences. Either
you're the Masters of the Land," alone and inviolate,
beyond compromise, "in which case there simply
aren't enough of you. Or you're just the Land's
friends, people like the Ramen, in which case you
shouldn't even try to prevent Earthpower from being
misused occasionally."
Did he grasp what she meant? She could not tell. His
dispassionate suffering seemed to defy comprehension.
But that made no difference to her now. She was
preaching to herself as much as to him.
"So you failed," she assured him more gently. "So
what? It isn't your fault that Esmer beat you. You
didn't lose because there's something wrong with you.
You lost because he's stronger than you are." She, too,
might fail because she was not strong enough. "It's the
same problem the Bloodguard had with the Illearth
Stone.
"Don't tell me not to heal you," she repeated. "You're
wasting your breath. And you still have work to do.
Somebody has to tell your people what's been going on,
and I'm sure as hell not going to do it."
Riding the thrust of that affirmation, she sent her
senses into him like an appeal for understanding.
Something in her words must have reached him.
Instead of clenching his will against her, Stave asked in
a growing froth of blood, "What then is your
intention? If you will not forewarn the Land-?"
Her percipience slipped into him with the subtlety of a
low breeze, hardly more than a sigh: a soft extension of
her essence into his.
"When I figure that out, I'll let you know." At last, the
exertion of her health-sense enabled her to regain her
physician's detachment. She was almost calm as she
added, "In the meantime, you can help me." Help her
to think; to concentrate unselfconsciously. "I don't
understand this grievance the Ramen have against
your people. What did the Haruchai do that's
supposed to be so terrible?
"And don't tell me they failed. I already know that."
"As you wish." Stave's voice was a shudder of pain.
Although she had spent ten years without this
discernment, its uses returned to her readily. Because
she could see, the pain and damage which she
perceived poured into her as though they afflicted her
own flesh, her own spirit. But she had learned how to
accept such hurts in order to determine their sources
and take action against them.
The Master's agony did not daunt her.
He was silent for so long that she thought he had
forgotten her question-or had lost heart. But at last he
lifted his voice faintly to her.
"The Ramen resent that we ride the Ranyhyn, but that
is not their grievance. The Ranyhyn choose to be
ridden."
His words and even his difficulty speaking freed
Linden to focus on her task.
As her senses filtered past his superficial bruises and
internal abrasions to his deepest hurts, however, she
realized that she could still honor his wishes. Instead of
attempting to heal him, she could simply spare him
pain while he died. With her health-sense, she could
intervene between his consciousness and his wounds-
possess him, after a fashion-so that he felt no
discomfort as he slipped away.
If she lacked the courage to do more-and if she were
willing to violate his right to bear his own distress
For her own sake as much as for his, she rejected the
idea. More than ever, she needed to be able to exceed
herself.
Through his pain, Stave breathed words like secrets
for her ears alone. "Rather the Ramen do not forgive
that the Bloodguard were accepted by the Ranyhyn,
and were proved faithless. This you know. When
Korik, Sill, and Doar were defeated by the Illearth
Stone and Ravers, they vindicated the ire of the
Ramen."
Linden heard him. On one level, she heard him
acutely: his words were as sharp as etch-work. On
others, howeverrshe heeded nothing that he said. Her
attention flowed in other directions, other dimensions.
There. When she had reached beyond the symptoms of
his dying to their cause, she saw plainly the punctures
and lacerations in his lung, the throbbing ooze of his
blood. They might have been mapped in her own body.
Two badly splintered ribs. Five separate perforations.
Three seeping tears.
In an operating theater, she would have needed half a
dozen assistants to help her cope with so much
bleeding.
"Through the defeat of the Bloodguard, however,"
Stave sighed, "the fidelity of the Ramen itself is
tarnished. They have never ridden the great horses,
and yet their pure service has been given to beasts that
in turn served willingly men who could not uphold
their sworn Vow."
With her own nerves, Linden measured the seriousness
of his injuries. But it was not enough to see.
Percipience alone would only break her heart. She
required power; the ability to make a difference.
While she watched Stave hemorrhage, she groped as if
blindly for wild magic, like a woman fumbling behind
her to grasp the handle of a door which lay hidden or
lost.
Sweat glinted in firelit beads on his forehead; dripped
from his cheeks like the unsteady labor of his pulse.
His scar underlined the pain in his eyes.
"That their service has been diminished the Ramen do
not forgive, who have never broken faith."
Somewhere among the ramified chambers of herself
lay a room full of potential fire, crowded with the
implications of Covenant's ring. Yet it eluded her.
When she had time to think, when she went looking for
that room consciously, she could not be sure of its
location. Her doubting mind had too many qualms.
Covenant's ring did not belong to her: she did not
deserve its white flame. If she tried to become the
Wildwielder, as the Elohim had said that she must, she
might lose every aspect of herself.
Stave's voice had fallen until it was barely audible.
"Are you answered?"
"No," she replied as softly. "The Ramen must know
why Korik and the others did what they did."
Certainly Hami's people respected their own
limitations. Otherwise they would not have been
content to merely serve the Ranyhyn. "How can they
not forgive?"
Everyone else would forgive her if she failed to save
Stave; but she was not sure that she would be able to
forgive herself.
"Because," he whispered, "they were not present."
In the end, her choice was a simple one. She was a
physician. Any one of the Haruchai would have given
his life for her. And Lord Foul had Jeremiah.
How else could she earn her own redemption?
When she had become sure, her hand closed on the
handle of the door she sought.
"How can it be said?" the broken man continued in
wisps; faint puffs of life fading between his lips. "You
ask too much. Such speech does not suffice. Even in the
unspoken tongue of the Haruchai, it transcends-"
There the difficulties of her task began in earnest.
"The Ramen cannot comprehend what transpired
because only Bloodguard accompanied Lord Hyrim to
the slaughter of the Giants."
During the collapse of Kevin's Watch, she had
somehow distorted the ineluctable sequences of gravity
and time. But if she did such things now, she would
burn Stave's life to ash.
Still he strove to answer her. "Only Bloodguard
witnessed the final murder of the Unhomed while it
was yet fresh in cruelty. Only Bloodguard saw the
outcome of their terrible despair."
Even the small handful of wild magic which she had
raised for Sahah's sake would be too forceful here. The
Master needed delicacy from her, precision; an
accuracy at once as keen as whetted steel and as gentle
as trained fingers. The smallest leak of flame from its
secret chamber would be enough. The merest fraction
more would be too much.
If her self-command wavered for a heartbeat
Stave was nearing the end of himself. "Only
Bloodguard," he panted weakly, "stood beside Lord
Hyrim while Kinslaughterer endeavored to efface
every vestige of the Giants from The Grieve."
Seeking to tune percipience and wild magic to the
same feather-soft pitch, she clung to the arduous sound
of Stave's voice as to a saving anchor; a point of clarity
against the tug of her self-doubt.
Pierced by the touch of flame, he gasped. But he did
not stop.
"The Ramen cannot know how the Bloodguard loved
the Giants. They cannot grasp how the hearts of the
Bloodguard were rent by what had transpired.
Therefore they presume to scorn our fall from faith."
The stolid demeanor of his people masked how
profoundly they had been horrified. It hid the depth of
their rage.
The Bloodguard had striven absolutely to succeed, and
they had failed. What other conclusion could such men
draw from their defeat, except that they were not
worthy?
No wonder the Haruchai had made themselves the
Masters of the Land. They sought to ensure that they
would never again be found unworthy by an atrocity
like the destruction of the Unhomed.
They had turned their backs on grief
In comprehension and empathy, Linden nudged the
punctures in Stave's lungs shut
one by one. Then she reached into him with argence in
order to bind their edges together. "Chosen," he
murmured; his last words to her, "hear me.
"The judgment of the Haruchai is not so lightly set
aside. There will come a reck
oning between us."
Another man might have meant between the Masters
and the Ramen; but she knew that he did not.
Wild magic was too rough for the task. Inadvertently
she hurt him until he nearly screamed behind his
locked teeth. Nevertheless she sealed the tissues of his
lungs around each wound. Then she closed the pleural
rents.
Extravagantly careful, and still unable to spare him
agony, she stitched white fire along the worst of his
internal lacerations until they were made whole.
Finally she bowed her head over her work. Stave had
lost consciousness: he lay as still as death. But he
breathed more easily now, and no new blood came to
his lips.
When she believed that he would live, she let
percipience and power and all the world go.
What then is your intention?
If he had asked her that question now, she might have
wept.
beside Stave's grassy bed. Her arms still rested near
him. Dried bits of bracken clung to her cheek, and her
folded legs had gone numb under her.
Someone-Bhapa?-was saying stubbornly, "We care
not. It is her word that she must not be disturbed."
"You are not blind," countered a man who may have
been Esmer. "It is plain that she has spared the
Haruchai from death. Did you not feel the wild magic
that destroys peace?
"I must speak with her while I am able."
"As you spoke with the sleepless one?" a girl
responded: a younger voice, possibly Pahni's.
"Already you have betrayed our promise of safety.
Even now the Manethralls debate whether you will be
permitted to remain among us."
The man who sounded like Esmer snorted
ambiguously. Contempt? Distress? Linden could not
tell. "While I am accepted by the Ranyhyn," he
retorted in scorn or alarm, "the Ramen may not deny
me, lest they break faith with the meaning of their
lives.
"Stand aside, Cords. I must speak with the
Wildwielder."
Groaning, Linden brushed the bracken from her
cheek; rubbed her face to restore at least a semblance
of consciousness. Esmer wanted to talk to her? Fine.
She had a few things to say herself.
Stave could never have stood against him: Esmer had
too much power. For a moment, she relived the lurch
and spout of force which had kept the Ramen from
Stave's side; the numbing nausea which had eroded
her defenses. Esmer's unprovoked violence would
delight the Despiser, if Lord Foul knew of it.
If Foul had not caused it in some way
Just tell me what you've done.
Done? I? Naught. I have merely whispered a word of
counsel here and there, and awaited events.
Angry herself now, Linden tried to rise; but her legs
would not move. How long had
she slept? Long enough, obviously, to deaden her
nerves. With her arms, she tried to
shift her weight-and gasped softly at the quick fire of
returning sensation.
You need the Staff of Law.
She had not forgotten; but the advice of her dreams
had taken on the weight of
despair.
Abruptly, hands came to her aid. With their support,
she stood at last. When she
could see past the pain in her legs, she found herself
gazing into Char's earnest
young face.
Sahah's brother, repaying a debt. As Pahni and Bhapa
did by withstanding Esmer.
They had watched over while she labored for Stave's
life; and while she slept. They were still trying to obey
her.
S
ome time later, the sound of voices outside the shelter
roused her: soft voices, thick with controlled anger and
threats.
Raising her head, Linden discovered that she must
have fallen asleep on her knees
The cookfire had died down to small flames, ruddy
embers. Its dim light made Char's face look flushed.
Limned in the glow of other fires around the
encampment, the forms of Esmer, Bhapa, and Pahni
had an infernal cast, ominous and undefined.
"You do not comprehend the difficulty," Esmer
insisted to Sahah's cousin and halfbrother. "You see
what I am in part, but you do not know the cost of my
nature." His tone suggested elaborate patience,
uncomfortable restraint. "The way is open for me now.
But the time when I may speak to the Wildwielder for
her benefit is not long. It will soon end.
"You know that I esteem the Ramen for their service
to the Ranyhyn. Do not misjudge me now. It is
misguided devotion"-his tone said folly-"to refuse me
in this."
Bhapa and Pahni did not stand aside. They did not so
much as turn their heads to glance at Linden.
In spite of his frustration, Esmer made no attempt to
force his way past them. The man who had nearly
killed Stave could have knocked both Cords aside
easily. Apparently, however, he had no intention of
doing so.
"Let him in." Sleep and fatigue clogged Linden's
throat: she could barely make herself heard. "I'll talk
to him."
She was not sure that anything Esmer might say would
do her good. But he understood the speech of ur-viles.
He possessed invaluable knowledge, if he chose to
reveal it.
"The Ringthane has awakened," Char added as if to
confirm her authority. "It is her wish to admit
Esmer."
Reluctantly, Bhapa and Pahni stepped out of Esmer's
way.
He had called himself the son of Cail and the Dancers
of the Sea. He had demonstrated an astonishing power
for which Linden had no answer. Nevertheless he
entered the shelter cautiously, almost hesitantly, as if
he were abashed in her presence. The low radiance of
the cookfire turned his emerald eyes the color of
shame.
Again his nearness afflicted her with a sensation of
nausea, a disturbing queasiness. In some way, he
seemed to undermine her perceptions, her health-
sense, even her grasp on reality.
The Cords followed him, plainly concerned that
Linden might need their protection.
Esmer did not meet her gaze. When he reached the
head of Stave's bed, he stopped to study the Haruchai.
With an uncomfortable frown, he murmured, "You
surpass me. Small wonder that you are named
`Chosen' and 'Wildwielder.' To work such healing
with wild magic-"
He risked a quick glance at her face, then turned his
head aside. Under his breath, he quoted:
"This power is a paradox,
because Power does not exist without Law, and wild
magic has no Law."

In an abstracted tone, he told the Cords, "Leave us. I
will speak to the Wildwielder alone."
"You will not," retorted Bhapa stiffly.
Char and Pahni looked to Linden for her assent.
"It's all right," she assured them. She had her own
reasons for speaking to Esmer privately. "You can go.
He won't hurt me."
Not now. Ranyhyn had bowed their heads to her: she
had been accepted by the great horses of Ra. And
Esmer had made it clear that he honored their choices.
If the Ranyhyn had arrived sooner, Stave would not
have been hurt
Scowling their mistrust at Esmer, Pahni and Bhapa
acquiesced. When Linden had seated herself beside
Stave's supine form, Char also left the shelter. She did
not watch where the Cords went; but she assumed that
they would continue to protect her privacy.
While she slept, intentions which she could not name
had begun to take shape within her. Her present straits
were untenable, that was certain. They had to be
altered. She could not imagine what Esmer might say
to her; but she knew what she would ask him.
However, her questions were mere unformed guesses,
inchoate intuitive leaps; too disturbing to be shared.
For the time being, at least, she did not wish to be
overheard by anyone who might misunderstand her-or
disapprove.
Still Esmer did not look at her directly. His arms
moved awkwardly at his sides, uncertain of their
purposes; restless with chagrin. Behind her, Stave bore
unconscious witness to Esmer's constrained deadliness.
She did not hesitate. She was too angry. Too tired of
being afraid. "You said you wanted to talk," she
rasped. "So talk. Tell me why I should listen to a man
who nearly killed someone who couldn't possibly hurt
him. Where I come from, only cowards do that."
Esmer shrugged in discomfort. "I am the son of Cail
and merewives." His tone was meek: his manner
proffered no challenge. "I descend from the blood and
power and betrayal of Elohim, as from other theurgies.
And from true service as well, the honor of Haruchai.
The fault of my nature does not diminish your
importance to me."
Linden's guts churned suddenly. Aboard Starfare's
Gem, Findail had not spoken only of Kastenessen. He
had also described the doomed Elohim's damaged
lover. Apparently that woman had learned many
forms of power from Kastenessen, but no anodyne for
her bereavement. Bitter with pain, she had eventually
become the mother of the merewives, the Dancers of
the Sea, who had seduced Brinn and Cail.
For his weakness, Cail's kinsmen had judged him a
failure. After the quenching of the Banefire, he had left
the Land, hoping to find the merewives again. He had
preferred the passion and imprisonment of their
unending, unrelieved desire to the harshness of his
people.
"That's no answer," Linden retorted. Everything
about Esmer hinted at fatal hazards: she needed to
guard herself. And his present meekness only
aggravated her ire. "In any case, attacking Stave was a
waste of time. What did you think you would
accomplish? Even if you killed him, he's only one
Haruchai. Someday the rest of his people will become
aware of you. Then you'll have more enemies than you
can count. So what was the damn point? What did you
have to gain?"
Why did he wish to approach her now?
Esmer appeared to sigh, although he made no sound.
"I am made to be what I am, divided against myself,
and eternally at war."
Abruptly, he seated himself on the bed near Stave's
head. Embers reflected greenly in his eyes as he
watched the darkened movements of the Ramen within
and around the neighboring shelters.
"Do you not recall the merewives? Their song inspires
those who hear it-those whose hearts are fierce, and
can be touched-with a fathomless passion, love so
needy and aspirant that the depths of the oceans
cannot drown it away. Yet that song is sung in
abhorrence, inspired by sorrow and the desire for
death. The Dancers of the Sea loathe the love which
they call forth, for they were themselves born of such
vast yearning. Their nature grants them no mercy, and
permits them none.
"In Cail, they found a mate to match them. I am their
sum, at once more than both and less than either."
His shoulders twitched: another shrug. "With blows I
have expended my loathing, for a little time. Until its
strength is renewed, I am able to set it aside."
Linden glared at him. "And you had to tear into him
right then? You couldn't wait until you knew whether
the Ranyhyn would accept him?"
Esmer's eyes flared: the muscles at the corner of his
jaw knotted. "Did you not hear me?" he said through
his teeth. "I am made to be what I am. Every moment
of my existence is conflict and pain."
Linden shook her head. Still he had not answered her.
She did not grasp how the loathing of the merewives
required his violence against Stave. She could see,
however, that she would not get a more satisfying
response. He may have told her as much as he knew of
his own compulsions.
Or-the thought stung her-he may have told her the
exact truth. Perhaps his heritage rode and ruled him
with such cruelty that he had no choice but to act on
his mothers' hatred for his father.
The idea shocked her to silence. She was intimately
familiar with such legacies. Her
father had locked her in an attic with him so that she
would be forced to watch him kill himself. And her
mother
No one, she wanted to insist, makes you what you are.
You have to choose. She believed that. Nevertheless his
mere proximity nauseated her.
In his case, she might be wrong.
Floundering to recover her intentions, her sense of
purpose, she changed directions.
"You told the Cords you wanted to talk to me for my
`benefit: What earthly good do you think you can do
me?"
This time, he sighed aloud. "Wildwielder, I am Elohim
and Haruchai, theurgy and skill, betrayal and service.
Loathing and love. I have wandered the Earth for
millennia in pain, awaiting you. I have been given the
knowledge of many things, and have learned more. If
you ask, I will answer-while I can."
Until his abhorrence renewed its strength.
Linden's mind reeled. Possibilities stooped through her
like striking raptors. She could not hold herself
upright. Involuntarily, she sagged forward and braced
her elbows on her knees, clutched her thoughts
between her hands.
If she asked, Esmer might explain Anele's madness. He
might tell her about Kastenessen, or the skurj, or
Kevin's Dirt. He might describe how ur-viles came to
be here, when Lord Foul had striven to destroy them
all.
Many things
Hell, he might even know whether she had truly heard
Covenant's voice in her dreams; or in Anele's mouth.
If you ask
Hardly aware that she spoke aloud, she whispered,
"Can you tell me where to find my son?"
Brusquely Esmer replied, "No. The Despiser is hidden
from me."
Esmer knew that she had a son. He knew that
Jeremiah had been taken from her by Lord Foul.
Nevertheless his tone gave her the impression that she
had wasted a question.
God in Heaven. With an effort, she fought down an
impulse to ask-no, to demand-whether she and
Jeremiah would ever be able to return to their own
world. She knew better. The bullet hole in her shirt
confirmed that she had already lost her former life
permanently. Stabbed to the heart, Covenant had not
eventually awakened in the woods behind Haven
Farm. Nor would she.
Instead she replied harshly, "That's convenient. I
wonder how many other crucial details just happen to
be `hidden' from you."
Then she held up her hands to forestall a response.
"All right, I'll try again. Why have you been
tormenting Anele? That was you on the ridge, refusing
to let him talk.
And you stopped Covenant from-" A sudden clutch of
grief closed her throat. She had to swallow several
times before she could continue. "He's been through so
much-" She meant Anele. "I need to know anything he
can tell me, but you forced him to shut up.
"If you're going to answer questions, answer that
one."
Esmer's gaze seemed to wander the night impatiently,
as if he no longer knew why he had insisted on
speaking to her. His voice held a new asperity as he
said, "I have already done so. I must sate the division
of my nature. The desires of the merewives are
compulsory, as are the passions of Cail my father.
That which lies hidden within the old man displeases
the Dancers of the Sea."
"Oh, hell," muttered Linden. "Why do they even
care? They aren't exactly here, you know. And they've
never had anything to do with the Land."
As far as she knew
Still he kept his face turned away. "Yet the woman
who made them gleaned both lore and power from
Kastenessen. His fate taught her the abhorrence which
defines the seductions of the merewives."
Again Linden received the impression that she had
wasted a question; that she should have been able to
deduce his answer from the things he had said earlier.
That
her time was running out
At last, she found the resolve to straighten her back
and raise her head so that she could look squarely at
Esmer. Soon, she guessed, he would leave her to her
confusion and ignorance; her useless ire. If she hoped
to gain any "benefit" from his conflicted willingness,
she had to do so now.
Fearfully, she asked the question on which she had half
consciously decided to stake
her survival-and her son's.
"All right," she repeated roughly. "I'll try this.
"Tell me about caesures, Falls. What are they? What
do they do?"
Without shifting his gaze, Esmer nodded. "They are
flaws in time, caused and fed by wild magic."
He sounded oddly gratified, as though this question, at
least-or his ability to answer it-vindicated him in some
way.
"Within them," he explained, "the Law of Time,
which requires that events transpire in sequence, and
that one action must lead to another, is severed.
Within them, every moment which has ever passed in
their ambit as they move exists at once."
He seemed oblivious to the way in which his words
intensified the air between them. Covenant had told
her that white gold fed the Falls.
"Wait a minute," she protested. "Wait. I need to be
sure I understand this. You can't
mean that I'm doing it?"
"No," Esmer stated as if the truth should have been
obvious. "There is other white gold in the Land, a ring
in the possession of a madwoman."
Linden groaned to herself. As she had feared from the
beginning, Joan must have preceded her to the Land;
summoned her. Joan was responsible for the caesures.
"She knows little of what she does," Esmer continued,
"and intends less. Yet there is savagery in her, a
hunger for ruin as great as that of the Raver which
torments her. As her nightmares devour her, so
caesures devour the Land, displacing objects and
beings and powers, corroding the Law of Time. That
the harm is not greater-that the Law of Time has not
already been shattered-is due only to the form of her
madness.
"There is no willingness in her. She is merely haunted
and broken and used. She cannot choose freely to
abdicate her soul. Thus is her power restrained from
utter havoc."
Oh, Joan. For a moment, Linden could not go on. Now
she knew surely that she had caused the Land's peril
when she had restored Joan's ring. Her fears then had
been accurate; prescient. But she had set them aside
because she had not understood that wild magic might
reach across the boundary between realities.
Somehow Joan's wedding band, the emblem of her
weaknesses and failures, had exposed her to the
Despiser. The Falls were born of her despair, her self-
inflicted pain.
No wonder she had grown calmer when the ring
touched her skin. Inadvertently Linden had given her
an outlet for her anguish.
"I did that," Linden murmured. "I was supposed to
take care of her, but I didn't. Instead I made it
possible-"
Esmer gave her one quick glance, a look full of
emeralds and suffering. Sweat beaded among the
shadows on his face, and his lips were pale with strain.
Then he turned away once more.
Shaken, she did not immediately recognize that her
nausea in his presence was growing worse; that his
emanations were becoming more intense. In spite of
her dismay, however, her nerves felt him clearly. He
lived in endless conflict with himself; and his mothers'
harsh loathing had begun to regain its force.
Trembling as if she were chilled, she forced herself to
set aside her chagrin. "Are you all right?" she asked
hesitantly.
"Your time is short," retorted Esmer. "You waste me.
If I do not depart soon, I will smother this Haruchai
where he lies. Then the Ranyhyn will be lost to me
forever."
She swore to herself. It was too much. She had too
many questions, and could not think quickly enough.
Trying to hurry, she said, "I'm sorry. Make it easy on
yourself. Just correct me if I'm wrong.
"Anele is here," brought forward through the
millennia, "because he stumbled into
a caesure."
The old man had said as much. But she had not known
then that the Falls were composed of severed instants.
Now she guessed that within a caesure it might be
possible to cross time; that anyone who entered a
caesure would almost inevitably emerge somewhen
else.
Esmer nodded: an angry jerk of his head.
Still guessing, Linden offered, "So did the ur-viles."
That would explain how they had survived Lord Foul's
efforts to exterminate them.
Cail's son snorted as if she had missed the point.
"They did not `stumble.' They knew what they did.
They entered the Fall to flee the Despiser. Also they
sought a time when they would be needed against
him."
Linden bit her lip. "And they found it here? Now?"
"Wildwielder," he answered, "they have found you."
Complex ire strained his voice. "It is their intent to
serve you."
Through her nausea, she saw implications of violence
gather in him; possible lies. Cail's son would answer
her honestly. Would the scion of merewives do the
same?
"When you were imprisoned by the Haruchai," he
continued mordantly, "the urviles sent a storm to
enable your escape. When you were endangered by
kresh, they hastened to your aid. And when I first
entered your presence, they came to ensure that
you would not be harmed.
"They keep watch against me. They know who I am."
Half sneering, he muttered, "They are puissant after
their fashion. Perhaps they
might withstand me. But my lore exceeds theirs.
Therefore they fear me." Linden feared him herself.
Scrambling for some form of confirmation,
reassurance, she returned to her earlier question. "But
Anele? He really is the son of Sunder and Hollian? He
lost the Staff of Law because he left it in his cave?"
Esmer replied with another harsh nod.
Wrapping her arms around herself, Linden finally
risked naming her unspoken in tent. Hugging her
heart, she asked, "Could he find it again? If he went
back to the past?" Abruptly, Esmer jumped to his feet.
Linden winced, afraid that he would stride out of the
shelter; leave her still too ignorant to proceed. But he
did not. Instead he began to articulate his tension by
pacing back and forth in front of her. His head jerked
as if he were arguing with himself, debating honesty
and blows. A sheen of sweat lay on his
cheeks.
Still he did not look at her.
"If his madness permits," he answered between his
teeth. "If he is able to remember. Or if he becomes
sane."
Anele had remembered often enough in the past.
Esmer would depart in moments: she felt that clearly.
The bifurcation of his nature
was too strong for him. He would never find peace
until he had used up his mothers' loathing-or burned
away his father's passion.
There was so much that she wanted to know; but she
could live without it. For the time being, at least- To
one question, however, she positively required an
answer. Otherwise she would be helpless.
"Esmer," she urged softly, "hang on. Just one more.
"How do I do it?"
"Wildwielder?"
"How do I go back there? To the past? How do I find
the Staff?"
She could do what Anele had done; enter one of the
caesures. But Esmer had said that within them every
moment existed simultaneously. How could she sort
her way through so much time? How could she
navigate every possibility of three and a half thousand
years?
"For you all things are possible." He spread his hands
in a gesture too rough to be a shrug. "You are the
Wildwielder."
Then he protested, "But do you comprehend that we
speak of Law? Of sequence and causality which must
not be broken? If the past is altered, the Arch of Time
itself is threatened. Once rent, it can never be made
whole."
"So I'll have to be careful." She would not let him
sway her. "If the Staff is lost, then it hasn't been used.
It hasn't affected anything." And its mere existence
would support the integrity of Time. "If we can
retrieve it," she and Anele, "after it was lost-if we can
bring it back to the present without using it-the past
won't be altered. Nothing that has already happened
will change."
As she spoke, Esmer stopped moving. Apparently she
had surprised him. Just for a moment, his
accumulating conflicts seemed to pause; and in that
pause, Linden again received the impression that she
had gratified him somehow, nourished some deep
need.
Slowly he turned to face her. His eyes reflected green
fury and supplication from the embers of the cookfire.
"Do you regard yourself so highly?" His tone sneered
at her; implored her. "Do you deem that you are wise
enough to dare the destruction of the Arch of Time?
"The Dancers of the Sea desire the end of all things.
Their grief can never be assuaged."
Then the moment passed. A feral grin twisted his lips:
cunning and sorrow glinted in his gaze.
"I will say only this. Look to the Ranyhyn."
Without another glance at her, he walked away. Five
long strides took him out of the shelter. Moving among
shadows and dooms, he hastened into the night.
Linden was left alone with Stave's unconsciousness
and her own yearning.
2.
Dangerous Cwices
[~~. 7 Early the next morning, a group of Cords
brought Sahah to the Verge of Wan
dering.
The injured woman was wan and weak, barely strong
enough to stand; only able to walk for short distances.
Her companions had conveyed her most of the way in
a makeshift travois. Yet it was clear that the crisis of
her wounds lay behind her.
That she had survived the rough journey on a blanket
tied between wooden poles, and had arrived able to
smile faintly at her friends and relatives, her people,
testified eloquently to the potency of hurtloam. Her
torn bowels and ripped organs were mending well,
with no infection and little fever, while her other hurts
improved with preternatural ease.
The wounded Cord and her companions entered the
encampment accompanied by the Ramen who had
gone out seeking hurtloam on Stave's behalf. The two
groups had encountered each other as they returned
toward the Verge of Wandering. Together they
brought with them more than enough of the vital mud
for Stave's needs.
Linden had been told that hurtloam would lose its
virtue when it was removed from the earth; from the
specific moisture and soil which had fostered it. But
when she looked into the stone pot which the Cords
presented to her, she saw flecks of gold aglow in the
damp, sandy soil; and Earthpower called to her nerves
like a tantara. Gratefully, she carried the pot to Stave's
bedside and stroked healing into the distended flesh of
his wounds.
The eldritch celerity of the hurtloam's effects still filled
her with astonishment, and she watched in wonder as
Stave's injuries were transformed from mute agony to
bearable pain, and then to dull, deep aching. No doubt
the fact that he was Haruchai sped his recovery.
Nonetheless the hurtloam itself seemed miraculous to
her-a gift precious beyond description or desert.
No world where such healing was possible merited the
Despiser's malice.
While Stave rested, she dabbed a bit of the hurtloam
onto her cheeks to ease the throbbing of her scorched
features. However, its influence reached further,
soothing her sore muscles and transforming her
sunburned skin to a protective bronze hue; granting
her the gift of the Land's vitality.
Then she might have closed her eyes for a time,
released from care by simple relief. She had slept
brokenly during the night, rousing herself at intervals
to check on Stave's condition. As a result, she was still
deeply tired. But he was conscious now, clear-eyed and
determined. And the mending of his more dangerous
injuries exposed the pain of a wound which hurtloam
could not cure: his dislocated hip.
She had made no attempt to set it earlier. She lacked
the physical strength for the task. And it had not
seemed important then.
When he pronounced her name, she sighed to herself;
but aloud she answered, "Yes?"
She would not turn aside from the course she had
chosen.
"Linden Avery," he repeated, "you have surpassed
me." Vestiges of strain still marred his tone, although
he had already grown markedly stronger. "The matter
now lies beyond me. We must abide the outcome."
She wished that she had not known what he was
talking about.
She had set aside his death; spared him the natural
consequences of his defeat at Esmer's hands. By the
extreme logic of the Haruchai, she had violated his
personal rectitude. What specific form the "outcome"
might take, she could not guess. But she knew that it
would involve harsh judgment and repudiation.
When Brinn and Cail had been rescued from the
Dancers of the Sea, they had withdrawn from
Covenant's service, in the same way that the
Bloodguard had turned from the Lords, and for the
same reason: they had considered themselves
unworthy. Their descendants would not deal less
strictly with Stave. And the fact that he could not have
prevented Linden's intervention would not spare him.
She responded with a shrug. "Don't we always?"
Certainly she had never been excused from the
outcome of her own actions, for good or ill. "Maybe
this time-"
This time she intended to determine the outcome
herself.
"Meanwhile;' she added after a moment, "I should
probably set your hip. The longer it stays out of joint,
the more trouble you'll have with it later."
Stave shook his head. "Do not." He sounded sure: as
inflexible as ever. "I will tend to it, when I have
regained a little strength."
His tone said plainly, Do not afflict me with more
shame.
Inwardly, Linden muttered a curse. "All right." She
did not doubt that he would
tend to it," no matter how much pain he caused
himself. "Orthopedics isn't exactly my specialty
anyway. Just don't expect me to watch.
"I need to talk to Manethrall Hami:" And to Liand
and Anele as well. Not to mention Esmer. "I'll come
back later to see how you're doing."
Other exigencies awaited her, which she had
postponed while she cared for him. The time had come
to face them.
Without waiting for a reply, she left the shelter;
walked out into the growing warmth of the morning.
Around her, the encampment bustled with quiet
activity. She smelled food among the scents of
cookfires and bracken; saw Cords packing bundles,
tending to their shelters, cleaning or repairing their
raiment. The Verge of Wandering still lay in shadow,
but daylight glowed against the dark outlines of the
eastward mountains and glistened on the snow-clad
crests to the west. Behind the tang of wood smoke, the
air held a crisp sweetness like the taste of aliantha.
Again and again, Linden was forced to remember that
she loved the Land.
She did not belong here: she was too dirty. After the
crises and urgency of the past three days, she needed a
bath. Her hair felt like mud on her scalp. And her
clothes were stiff with sweat and grime. In addition,
her trudge across the vale had left a latticework of
grass stains on the legs of her jeans.
The Ramen were able to move without disturbing the
lush, tall grass. The stains which she had acquired in
their company might have been the map of her
limitations, or an augury of her fate.
But she could not spare the time for baths or comfort.
Certainly she could not spend an hour washing her
clothes. Esmer had answered a few of her questions,
and her purpose was clear.
As she looked around in the piquant dawn, she found
Cord Char standing nearby, gazing at her solemnly.
Apparently Sahah's return had only increased her
young brother's determination to attend Linden.
He met her eyes, steady as a promise. "Are you
hungry, Ringthane?" he asked respectfully. "Will you
break your fast?"
Oh, she was hungry beyond question. But other
concerns compelled her. "A little later, thanks," she
replied with wan courtesy. "Right now, I need to talk
to Manethrall Hami."
Char turned immediately, as if she had given him an
errand.
"But first," she added quickly, "tell me about Anele.
How is he doing?"
The old man had been violated by a being of fire and
abhorrence. Stave had struck
him hard enough to damage his brain. Now she feared
what he might suffer in the af
termath of such affronts.
Because of the way in which he had been possessed, the
Ramen might no longer consider themselves his
friends.
Yet she needed him badly; now more than ever. He
was the son of Sunder and Hollian. And Esmer had
conceded that it might be possible to find the Staff of
Law
However, Char answered without hesitation, "It
appears that he is well. He is hardy and enduring. He
slept for a time. When he awakened, he accepted
viands. Then he wandered away, seemingly without
destination or purpose. We keep watch on him, but
he"-the young Cord gave a slight shrug-"simply
wanders.
"We will retrieve him, if that is your desire."
Uncomfortable with so much attendance, Linden
shook her head. "Not yet, thanks. The poor man
doesn't seem to get much peace when I'm around."
Then she repeated, "But I do need to talk to
Manethrall Hami. Would you mind letting her know?"
She intended to take action before her courage failed.
Char acceded with a small bow. He did not seem to
hurry; but he quickly disappeared among the shelters,
leaving Linden to contemplate her own form of
insanity.
Esmer had said, Look to the Ranyhyn. That may have
been useful advice; but she did not know how else to
follow it, except by asking Hami for help.
Restless with tension, she found it difficult to wait.
Fortunately, Hami soon approached between the
shelters, trailing a small entourage which included two
other Manethralls and Cord Bhapa.
They all bowed formally to Linden as if during the
night she had somehow confirmed her status as a
visiting potentate. She responded as well as she could.
She lacked their fluid grace, however, and her
awkwardness made her feel unsure of herself. She had
done much in her life-suffered much, accomplished
much-but at the moment she did not believe that she
had ever done so gracefully.
Like Covenant's, all of her actions seemed stilted and
effortful; expensive.
"Thanks for coming," she replied to the query in
Hami's eyes. "I'm sure you're busy. But there are
some things you might be able to help me with." She
had to put her decisions into effect. "Can I ask you a
few questions?"
The Manethrall bowed again, but less formally.
"Ringthane," she said with a smile, "your courtesy
honors us. Yet you need feel no reluctance to speak.
You have been accepted by the Ranyhyn. You are
welcome among us without stint or hindrance "
Then she gestured toward the center of the
encampment. "Come. Let us gather together under the
open sky, so that these mountains may witness our
amity. You will break your fast, and we will answer
your questions as we can."
Linden nodded. Because the Ramen could not see her
thoughts, their respect discomfited her. Nevertheless
she hoped to make use of it. With Hami and the others,
she moved toward the circle of trodden ground where
Anele had burned her, and Esmer had nearly killed
Stave.
Where the Ranyhyn had accepted her.
That, also, she hoped to use.
Yet she would have preferred to talk more privately;
in some enclosed space. The clearing seemed rife with
memories and implications. And the rising dawn was
too vast to be redeemed or spared by any hazard of
hers.
Hami had invoked the peaks as witnesses, as if she
expected the Earth itself to acknowledge and validate
what happened here.
d
With the confidence of long, unquestioned service, the
Manethrall led Linden out into the center of the
clearing. When the Cords had set a few of their
wooden blocks in a small circle, Hami sat down and
gestured for her companions to join her.
Four Ramen and Linden comprised the group; but the
Cords had provided seven seats. As she lowered her
weariness to one of the blocks, she wondered who
would occupy the two remaining places. Esmer and-?
Bhapa was the only Cord included with the three
Manethralls. One of Hami's companions was the older
man who had spoken the invocation for the feast. The
streaks of grey in his hair resembled the scars on his
arms: paler lines like galls, or the scoring of claws. The
other Manethrall was a man with a narrow, avid face
and a raptor's eyes. His aura gave Linden the
impression that his life was not arduous enough to suit
him; that he hungered for struggle and bloodshed,
yearned to give battle more often than his
circumstances allowed.
"Ringthane," Hami began, "here are Manethrall
Dohn," the older man, "and Manethrall Mahrtiir," the
frustrated fighter. "Cord Bhapa you know. He joins us
by right of kinship with Sahah, whom you brought
back from death. However," she added with a touch of
asperity, "he has not yet gained his Maneing, and will
not speak unless you wish it. Rather he will address the
Cords on your behalf when our counsels are
concluded."
Bhapa met Linden's gaze gravely and inclined his
head. She saw now that he had lost sight in one eye: a
detail which she had somehow failed to notice the
previous evening. Perhaps that explained why he had
not yet become a Manethrall. At first, she suspected an
injury; but when she looked more closely, she realized
that he had a cataract. A simple procedure for an
ophthalmologist. She might have been willing to
attempt it herself, if she could have found a tool, a
metaphorical scalpel, more precise than wild magic-
and if she could have spared the time.
"These," Hami was saying, nodding toward the empty
seats, "are for your companions. When they have
joined us, we will begin. Until then, permit us to offer
you food."
Two-? Linden thought. Liand and-? The Ramen must
have known that Stave was in no condition to sit
upright on a block of wood. And Anele had left the
encampment.
Cautiously she asked, "What about Esmer?"
Manethrall Dohn looked away, and Mahrtiir bared his
teeth. Hami's gaze darkened as she shrugged. "He
departed into the mountains after he had spoken with
you, and has not returned. Perhaps that is well. His
incondign attack upon the sleepless one troubles us. He
has gone beyond us. It may be that he should not
remain as our companion."
Her tone suggested that the Ramen would already
have spurned Esmer if the son of the merewives had
not been accepted, validated, by the Ranyhyn.
Mahrtiir leaned forward sharply. "He is distressed."
The Manethrall had a voice like a rusty hinge. "He
wields a storm among the mountains, power and
lightning visible across all this vale. We have witnessed
his struggle, though we do not seek him out." For a
moment, Mahrtiir's gaze seemed to burn with reflected
theurgy. "It is in my heart that he strives to defy his
doom."
Linden closed her eyes, bowed her head. Instinctively
she believed Mahrtiir. With blows I have expended my
loathing- The conflicts within Cail's son were extreme
enough for storms.
She needed him as well. She had more questions for
him. He understood Anele's cryptic references to
Kastenessen, to skurj, to a broken Durance. She was
sure that he could identify the fierce spirit which had
possessed Anele. And he spoke the brackish tongue of
the ur-viles
His absence was not a problem she could solve,
however. When she had set aside images of his "storm
among the mountains," she raised her head and
opened her eyes.
Across the clearing, she saw Liand moving toward her,
accompanied by Char and another Cord, Pahni. The
young woman had a waterskin tied at her waist, and
her hands held a bowl of food.
Unhindered by Kevin's Dirt, Linden saw at once that
the Stonedownor had rested little, although he wore
his fatigue lightly. The past few days had simply been
too exciting to encourage sleep. And perhaps he, too,
had witnessed Esmer's distress during the night. His
eyes shone with an almost feverish alertness, and his
strides as he approached were full of youth.
When he met Linden's gaze, however, his expression
changed to one of concern, and he quickened his steps.
As soon as he reached the circle of seats, he announced
unself-consciously, "Linden, you have not rested. And
you are troubled. There is darkness in you.
"What is amiss? Has Esmer harmed you?"
Sighing, Linden reminded herself that he was new to
health-sense and had not yet learned to interpret what
he discerned.
"I'm fine, Liand." With an effort, she smiled. "Better
than I look, at any rate. Esmer was actually"-she
grimaced involuntarily-"helpful. But I wanted to keep
an eye on Stave, so I didn't get quite enough sleep.
"Please. Sit down." She indicated one of the seats. "We
all need to talk."
Now Liand seemed to realize that he stood among the
leaders of the Ramen. Looking abashed, he bowed
stiffly to the Manethralls, then dropped himself onto
one of the wooden blocks.
At the same time, Pahni came to Linden's side and
knelt to present the waterskin and bowl. In the bowl,
Linden found aliantha scattered among dried fruits
which she did not recognize and cut pale cubes which
smelled like goat cheese.
W
Gratefully, she accepted Pahni's offering. As the Cord
withdrew, Linden placed a treasure-berry in her
mouth and spent a moment savoring its sharp, tonic
taste and its gift of energy. Then she raised her eyes to
the Manethralls.
"I don't think Stave can join us. If you don't mind
talking while I eat, you could answer some questions
for me."
Manethrall Dohn assented with a nod; and Hami
replied, "Assuredly, Ringthane. Your plight is
difficult, and we desire to aid you as we can."
"Then tell me"-Linden spread her hands to suggest the
degree of her incomprehension-"what happened last
night. I mean, with the Ranyhyn." She had never seen
such horses. "You said they accepted me. And Stave, I
assume? What does that mean?"
Feeling clumsy again, she admitted, "I don't know
anything about them."
"Ah, the Ranyhyn." A look of quiet joy came into
Hami's face as she spoke: a look which her fellow
Manethralls shared, Dohn gravely, Mahrtiir with a
hint of ferocity. "We are the Ramen, Ringthane. It is
not our place to speak of them. We are their servants,
and in no way their tenders, as some have named us.
They are the meaning and purpose of our lives, and
while one Ranyhyn remains to gallop among the
glories of the world, no Raman will withdraw from
their service.
"Indeed, our service itself empowers and sustains our
service. We are who we are, and have remained so
across the millennia, because the worth of what we
serve preserves the worth of our service."
Linden found her hands trembling slightly as she
listened; and the earthenware bowl felt fragile between
her fingers, as if its possibilities might break into clay
and dust at any moment. The timbre of Hami's voice
affected her more than the Manethrall's words. In the
contentment and purity of Hami's joy, she seemed to
hear the untrammeled devotion of the Ramen: a
service so ancient and enduring that it humbled her.
Fearing that she might drop the bowl, she placed it in
her lap. Then she folded her hands around it to
conceal their unsteadiness.
"Yet you have witnessed with your own eyes," Harm
continued, "that the Ranyhyn are Earthpowerful.
They both contain and express the Land's abundance.
Having beheld them, can you wonder at our service?
And do you not now know all that is needful
concerning the Ramen?"
Linden might have shaken her head; but the
Manethrall had not paused.
"That the Ranyhyn have accepted you is beyond
question. Summoned solely by your presence, they
approached-" Abruptly, Hami's manner intensified.
Leaning forward, she said, "Ringthane, hear me,"
urging Linden to share her sense of wonder. "They
approached and bowed their heads. Such homage no
Raman has ever beheld, not once in all the long years
of our service."
Her gaze burned at Linden; but both Mahrtiir and
Dohn watched Hami with a kind of rapture on their
faces.
"To the ur-Lord Thomas Covenant, who was once the
Ringthane, the Ranyhyn reared, an assembly of the
great horses all rampant in his name. Neither before
nor since have the Ramen witnessed such obeisance.
Yet that honor contained an admixture of fear and
compulsion, as the ur-Lord himself acknowledged. To
you, we deem, the Ranyhyn have shown a greater
homage, for they bowed their heads as though in
surrender, and felt no fear."
Then Hami sat back. For a moment, she rested her
hands on the shoulders of her fellow Manethralls.
Mahrtiir stared at his clenched fists between his knees;
but Dohn raised a hand to squeeze Hami's fingers in
consolation or support.
Liand listened as if he were transfixed: the light in his
eyes was as bright as love. The Ranyhyn must have
enchanted him.
When Hami spoke again, the intensity had faded from
her tone.
"What does this acceptance signify? That, no Raman
can answer. It lies between you and Hyn, who bowed
her head to you, as it lies also between the sleepless one
and Hynyn." Her manner conveyed her doubt that
Hynyn had chosen wisely. "This, however, I am able to
say with certainty. Hyn and Hynyn have given their
consent to be ridden.
"Such a boon is seldom granted. Once granted,
however, it will not be withdrawn. While you live, the
Ranyhyn will bear you wherever you wish to go. And if
by some ill chance Hyn should perish while you remain
alive and in need, another Ranyhyn will take her place,
that their acceptance may be preserved."
Wherever you wish to go, Linden thought in hope and
alarm. Look to the Ranyhyn. Almost convulsively, she
picked some of the dried fruit from the bowl and
tossed it into her mouth, chewing to cover her
apprehension. Consent to be ridden. The idea seemed
fraught with vast responsibilities and perils.
Briefly she concentrated on eating while she tried to
control her trembling.
When Linden did not respond, Hami inquired, "Are
you answered, Ringthane?"
With an effort, Linden faced the Manethrall. "I need
to think about it." But her hands still shook, and she
did not feel ready to pursue what Hami had said. "I'm
sure I'll want to know more. But tell me something else
first, if you don't mind."
She needed time to gather her courage.
The woman waited, expectant and willing.
Linden swallowed another treasure-berry, dropping
the seed into the bowl to be scattered later. "The
Ramen here-" She gestured around the encampment.
"I hope there are more of you. Surely you have
children? Old people?" Men and women unsuited to
the work of Cords and Manethralls? "You aren't all
here?"
Dohn did not appear to hear her question. Instead he
gazed away into the moun-
A
tains as though he were watching for some sign of
Esmer. But Mahrtiir grinned with fierce amusement;
and Hami smiled.
"Indeed we are not. If we were, we would merit the
concern which I hear in your words. However, the
Ramen are well. After our own fashion, we flourish.
But our trek among these peaks would be
unnecessarily arduous for our children, as for our
aged. And there are those Ramen-Winhomes,
Curriers, Keepers-who are not apt for the rigors of
Cording or Maneing. All these we have left encamped
many leagues to the south, upon the foothills of the
Southron Range."
Linden did not try to hide her relief. "I'm glad to hear
it;" she said with a smile of her own. "I've been
worried." Then her smile fell away. "The Land is
already in enough trouble. I was afraid that the Ramen
were dying."
Hami nodded her understanding. "That loss, if no
other, we have been spared."
For a moment, she lowered her eyes. When she faced
Linden again, her expression had turned somber.
"Linden Avery, are you ready now to speak of this
trouble which fills your heart?
"That the Render has returned to torment the Land is
certain. If we acted of our own will, we would rather
turn our backs on our ancient home than submit any
Ranyhyn to Fangthane's cruelty." Then she shrugged
slightly. "However, we are ruled by the Ranyhyn."
Her tone conveyed no taint of bitterness, although she
plainly loathed any threat to the great horses. "And it
is likewise certain that you have been accepted. Nor
can your wish to oppose the Render be mistaken." In
spite of its firmness, her voice held an almost
subliminal tremor; a hint of dread. "Thus we are made
to understand that the Ranyhyn also will give battle, in
your service."
The three Manethralls confronted Linden squarely
across their small circle as Hami asked, "Ringthane,
what is your intent?"
She may have meant, How many of the Ranyhyn are
you prepared to sacrifice?
Are you ready now-? Linden would never be ready,
she knew that. But Jeremiah was already in torment,
and the Land's sufferings had only begun. Whether or
not she would ever be ready made no difference to
what was required of her.
Deliberately, she finished the aliantha she had been
given; returned the seeds to the bowl; ate another
mouthful of cheese and dried fruit. While the Ramen
and Liand waited, she drank from the waterskin to
clear her throat. To clear her mind.
Then she said, "Esmer knows. He understands what's
happening to the Land. Most of it, anyway." He might
have given her more if she had known how to question
him. "He didn't tell me everything I need, but he gave
me some hints-"
She meant to go on at once, riding words like a current
so that she would not falter. But Stave stopped her.
"Hold, Chosen," he said from the edge of the clearing.
"For the sake of the Land, I must hear what is
decided."
He spoke softly. Nonetheless strain throbbed in his
voice.
Linden turned to look at him-and winced at the sight
of his pain. The lacerations inside his chest had not yet
healed enough to bear the effort of standing upright.
Yet that hurt faded to a shadow beside the bright
distress of his dislocated hip. He must have hopped to
the clearing from his bed, jolting his hip abominably
with every movement.
She wanted to swear at him. The damn fool should
have stayed in bed.
The Manethralls also regarded Stave. Dohn softly
instructed Bhapa to aid the sleepless one; but before
the Cord could rise, Liand surged to his feet and
hastened toward Stave. His settled distrust of the
Masters had no effect on his concern.
Stave did not allow Liand to touch him. Balancing on
his good leg, however, he braced one hand on the
Stonedownor's shoulder for support.
So suddenly that he snatched a gasp from Linden, he
clenched his free hand into a fist and punched at his
dislocation.
With a sound like a muffled break, his hip snapped
back into place.
Sweat stood instantly on his forehead, and he sagged
against Liand. Yet he neither flinched nor cried out.
Instead he lowered his foot to the ground as if he
believed that now his leg would be able to bear his
weight.
It did. Somehow it did. Still holding Liand's shoulder,
Stave hobbled toward the ring of seats as if he were
dragging Liand's consternation with him.
Involuntarily furious, Linden breathed, "You idiot!"
as Stave lowered himself onto one of the blocks. "Next
time, I'll have the Ramen tie you down. I didn't go
through all that," wild magic threatening to scale out
of control, "just so you could cripple yourself."
But she perceived at once that he had not done so. He
was Haruchai; impossibly hardy. And hurtloam had
already wrought miracles of healing within him. His
hip would hurt for weeks; perhaps for months. But his
blow had caused no permanent harm.
"Chosen," he replied through his pain, "did you not
say that I must warn my people? Then I must hear you
now."
Linden shrugged against her anger. "You won't like
it."
She would show him, however, that she did not mean
to be swayed.
Liand seated himself beside Stave. His concern for the
Master had become a look of alarm. Bhapa frowned at
Linden with his good eye. Dohn had resumed his vague
study of the surrounding mountainsides; but Mahrtiir
watched her like a man who had glimpsed the struggle
for which his spirit hungered.
Complex uncertainties filled Hami's eyes as she
murmured, "It-may be that your words will please no
one among us. Yet we also must hear them. The
Ranyhyn require it of us."
Linden faced them all as well as she could. Speaking
harshly to contain her fear, she said, "Hell, even I
don't like it, and it's my idea."
Then she dropped her gaze to the ground. She could
not bear to watch her companions' reactions.
"Esmer and I talked about caesures, Falls," she began,
clumsy again, incapable of grace. "According to him,
they're flaws in time. Rips. They tear open the
barrier," the necessary boundary, "between the past
and the present. Lord Foul wants to destroy the Arch
of Time. Caesures are just one of the ways he's trying
to accomplish that."
One small rent at a time, over and over again, until the
entire fabric tattered and fell.
"If Esmer is right, Anele really is the son of Sunder
and Hollian. Three thousand and some years ago, he
left the Staff of Law behind when he went to
investigate a wrongness that turned out to be a Fall.
He had no defense when the Fall snatched him out of
his life.
"The ur-viles came here the same way," Linden
continued. "Lord Foul tried to exterminate them, back
in the time of the Sunbane, but a few of them escaped
into a Fall." Here she had probably encountered every
remaining descendant of the Demondim. "Esmer
seems to think they came looking for a future when
they would be needed.
"Apparently caesures first started to haunt the Land
maybe a hundred years ago. They're comparatively
recent. That may be why any of us are still alive. But
Esmer says there are limits to what Foul can
accomplish with them. The Despiser has access to a
white gold ring. In theory, he already has all the power
he needs. But he can't simply tear down the Arch-or
even attack it directly. The ring belongs to a woman
who is completely broken. Too broken to be anything
more than a tool."
And Covenant had given his life to secure the Arch. In
some sense, his spirit still stood against Lord Foul.
After a pause, she avowed grimly, "I believe him. But
we don't have to take his word for it. We already know
that Time is essentially intact. We're still here. The
Land is still here. Cause and effect still apply. And I
doubt that even ur-viles have the power to elude Lord
Foul.
"The Falls are a terrible threat, but they aren't
enough. Foul needs more."
So far Linden felt only concentration from her
listeners, not denial. They all had
reason to take Esmer's words seriously. And no one
had suggested a better explanation
for Anele's baffled predicament-or for the presence of
the ur-viles. She had harder things yet to say.
Studying the bare dirt, she said, "The way I see it, the
caesures are relatively small. They may span
thousands of years, but they don't cover much ground.
And they move slowly. That limits how much harm
they can do.
"But I think there's another limitation," a restriction
in addition to Joan's insanity. "Esmer didn't say this,"
he had merely asserted that any alteration of the
established past would damage the Law of Time, "but
I think the Falls only run forward. From the
past to the present. Otherwise Foul could send
someone into the past," God, he could even send Joan,
"or he could go himself. He could change what's
already happened. That would do more to threaten the
Law of Time than the caesures themselves."
Trying to reassure herself, she concluded awkwardly,
"In other words, things could be worse."
The more she said, however, the more her intentions
appalled her. Soon her companions would respond
with indignation and dismay. They would certainly
oppose her.
She was not Thomas Covenant: she lacked the
personal extremity for such risks.
"Ringthane," Hami responded in a neutral tone, "this
is important knowledge. It explains much. But it does
not reveal how such peril may be countered. Again I
must ask.
"What is your intent?"
In fear, Linden might have countered, Why do I have
to make these decisions? What would you do if I
weren't here? She might have demanded, Ask Esmer,
not me. He knows what's going on. I don't.
But she knew better. She was Linden Avery the
Chosen, named Ringthane and Wildwielder. Jeremiah
was her son. There was no one else to whom she could
offer her burdens.
In spite of her trepidation, she raised her eyes to gaze
at each of her companions: at the Manethralls, who
feared for the Ranyhyn more than for the Land; at
Bhapa, who appeared to feel indebted to her,
commanded by blood to repay Sahah's life; at Liand,
who had already shown that he would support her
whatever she did; at Stave, who might believe that she
served Corruption.
Then she pronounced distinctly, "We need the Staff of
Law. I intend to go get it."
Liand stared at her, his face wide with confusion.
Stave raised his eyebrows as if she had contrived to
pierce his impassivity. Frowning, Bhapa looked away.
He may have been reluctant to hear what she would
say next.
Dohn had covered his eyes with his hands. His posture
radiated chagrin. Protests gathered on Hami's visage.
But Mahrtiir looked at Linden as if he had heard the
call to battle.
She held up her hands to forestall objections which her
companions had not uttered. "I know, I know. Anele
lost the Staff three and a half thousand years ago. And
if I'm right, I can't get there from here. Caesures only
run forward."
Then she knotted one fist on Covenant's ring under
her shirt. "But Lord Foul isn't the only one who has
access to wild magic." And he could not truly control
Joan: her madness made her unwieldy. "If I can find a
Fall, maybe I can make it take me where I
want to go.,,
Linden seemed to feel the high mountainheads leaning
toward her. A moment of shock held the ring. Then
several of her companions protested at once.
"You will break the Law of Time! You have said so."
"Caesures threaten Time. Wild magic itself threatens
it." "It is impossible. You will fail, and be lost."
"Anele is mad! He cannot guide you to the Staff!"
But Mahrtiir's voice rode over the others, ringing with
eagerness. "Are you adept at Time? Are such journeys
common in your world? How will you find the time
you seek?"
Linden closed her eyes; waited for her silence to create
a space in which she could reply. She feared that Stave
or Liand would cross the circle to shake her; defy her
with their bare hands. But their objections, their
dismay, seemed to blow past her on the dawn breeze
and lose strength.
Then she heard a soft melody as Dohn began to sing:
"Grass-grown hooves, and forehead stars; hocks and
withers earth-wood bloom: regal Ranyhyn, gallop,
runwe serve the Tail of the Sky, Mane of the World."
He may have been granting her permission. Or hope.
As if she had regained her heart, Linden opened her
eyes. Because her companions were too many to face
or answer all at once, she focused on the Manethralls;
on Hami, who seemed to be her friend.
"Anele can guide me to the cave where he left the
Staff," she said with as much conviction as she could
summon. "If he gets the chance. He's already been
back there any number of times. All I have to do is
take him to the right year." Any year after the loss
that had broken him. "He'll find his way.
"And I don't think I'll hurt the Law of Time. For one
thing, it's not all that fragile. If it were, a hundred
years of caesures would have shattered it already," in
spite of Covenant's poignant surrender. "And for
another
"The Staff hasn't been used since Anele lost it. It
hasn't changed anything. It hasn't done anything.
That's what being lost means." Surely the Haruchai, if
no one else, would have become aware of it otherwise?
"Taking it out of the past and bringing it here won't
disrupt what's already happened."
And she had one reason to believe that her extravagant
proposal might ceed. The Staff was no longer where
Anele had left it. Obsessed by grief and recrimination,
he had confirmed that fact over and over again.
Which apparently implied
-that she had been able, or would be able, to retrieve it.
Leaving the Law of Time intact in the process.
No one contradicted her. She could not read Stave's
heart through his impassivity;
but the others around her were too shaken to protest
further. They must have believed
her; believed that she would do what she had said.
Their silence frightened her more than almost any
opposition. She needed to confront and overcome their
fears in order to manage her own.
Grimly she forced herself to continue.
"Of course, I'll need to locate a caesure." She did not
trust herself to create one: not without experiencing
one first, reading it with her health-sense; learning to
understand it. "But that's not the real problem."
Holding Hami's troubled gaze, Linden said, "The real
problem is that I'm not `adept at Time.' I can't find my
way through the confusion in a caesure. I need to
reach the Staff at some point after Anele lost it," or
else she would indeed alter the past, "and I don't know
how to do that."
She was certain that the Manethrall understood her.
"I asked Esmer. He said, `Look to the Ranyhyn. "
Clenching her courage in both hands, one on
Covenant's ring, the other wrapped around itself, she
finished, "I assume that means they can help me."
Hami turned her face away as if she were flinching.
For a moment, none of the Manethralls met the
demand in Linden's eyes. Instead they looked to each
other. Linden had never felt in them the kind of
mental communion which distinguished the Haruchai.
Nevertheless they appeared to acknowledge each
other's apprehensions mutely; to ask each other
Linden's implicit question.
Then Dohn said softly, "The Ranyhyn will choose.
They must. It is not our place. This matter is beyond
us "
Mahrtiir nodded reluctantly, as if he were being asked
to set aside a secret desire.
Hami's reluctance was of another kind as she faced
Linden again. So hesitantly that Linden could barely
hear her, the Manethrall replied, "It may be that the
Ranyhyn are able to aid you-and will elect to do so. We
know nothing of caesures or Falls. We are bound by
Time. Yet the great horses are capable of much. That
is certain.
"And it is certain also"-she faltered, then went on
more strongly-"that they will answer when they are
summoned. Once they have consented to be ridden,
they will answer when they are summoned, though
hundreds of leagues may intervene."
Linden stared at her. "What do you mean?"
Hami tightened her grip on herself. "Ringthane, hear
me. At this moment, there are no Ranyhyn within this
vale. We are Ramen and cannot be mistaken in this.
Neither Hyn nor Hynyn roams the Verge of
Wandering. Yet if you were to summon her, Hyn
would approach within moments." She held up her
hand to prevent questions that Linden did not know
how to ask. "If you stood in Mithil Stonedown and
summoned
her, she would appear at once. If you stood above
ancient Revelstone itself and could not be approached
except through the Westron Mountains, yet would she
shortly answer your summons.
"Understand, Ringthane, that I do not speak of
distance. The Ranyhyn do not transcend the
difficulties of their journeys. Rather their power to
answer is a power over days and seasons."
Linden's eyes widened in wonder and apprehension.
Alarm or hope swelled in her throat.
"The Ranyhyn do not spurn distance," Hami breathed
as though the knowledge dismayed her. "They spurn
time. They do not merely respond when they are
summoned. Rather they hear that they will be
summoned, and they respond. If the distance is great,
and the obstacles also, the Ranyhyn will depart moons
or seasons before they are summoned, that they may
arrive when they are needed."
On some level beyond language or explication, they
had mastered time.
"Oh, God," Linden murmured, hardly aware that she
spoke aloud. "It's possible. If they help me. I might be
able to do it."
Abruptly, Stave said, "Chosen." The pain of his hip
was palpable as he forced himself to his feet. Stiff with
hurt, he moved to stand over Linden. For this one
moment, at least, his characteristic dispassion had
deserted him. Instead his flat features were knotted
with pleading and repudiation.
"Chosen," he said again.
She stared up at him as though she could not imagine
what he would say, although she already knew every
word by heart.
"You will not do this." Complex passions yearned in
his voice. "It is abominable. Its hazards surpass
endurance. The smallest error will damn the Land
utterly." With a visible effort, he swallowed some of
his intensity. "Must I remind you that the Staff
supports and sustains Law by its very existence? It
need not be wielded in order to affect all that is, all
that transpires. If its influence upon the Land's past is
removed, will not Corruption respond with delight?"
Linden bowed her head. She could not face the heat of
his denial. "Stave," she breathed, speaking as much to
her clenched hands as to him, "I have to."
"No," he countered with unwonted vehemence, "you
do not. It is madness. Have you considered that
Corruption has required three millennia to regain his
strength? Have you considered that he has remained
so long reduced because the Staff has been potent
against him? Are these matters not plain to you?
Unused, the Staff has also not been misused. Therefore
it hinders Corruption still. Likewise such atrocities as
the Falls have been restrained and limited by the
Staff's hidden suasion.
"If you will not think of such things, then consider the
Masters. We are sworn to the preservation of the
Land. Toward that end, we have labored across the
centuries to pre
vent the misuse of power which enables Corruption.
You have earned my forbearance. I do not wish to
oppose you. But my enmity-the enmity of the
Haruchai-is certain if you persist. You are mighty, as
we know. Yet I must prevent you. And if I cannot, even
your puissance will not avail you against the combined
force of the Masters."
Every word he said was true: Linden knew that. But
he had said too much, and she could no longer hear
him. Crying, "You don't understand!" she surged to
her feet.
Obliquely, she saw that Liand had come to Stave's
side, ready to defend her if the Master attacked.
However, the Manethralls remained seated, watching
her with consternation in their eyes. Bhapa crouched
as if he had started to rise with Liand, and had been
stopped by a word from the Manethralls.
But they were all irrelevant to her now. It was Stave
who confronted her, Stave who challenged her; and he
could snap her neck with one sharp blow, in spite of
his hurts. Even if she were capable of defending
herself, she could not bear to think that he would
become her enemy. Another foe among so many
Ignoring the pain in his hip, the Master faced her. His
mien resumed its familiar flat detachment. "Then
inform me, Chosen," he replied inflexibly. The pallor
of his scar seemed to reject whatever she might say.
"What is it that I do not understand?"
Desperation rose in her like fury. But it was not anger
that filled her voice: it was supplication.
"Don't you remember last night? Do you even listen to
yourself when you talk? I asked you why the Ramen
haven't forgiven you for trying to use the Illearth
Stone, and you said it's because they weren't present.
They can't know what the Bloodguard suffered in
Seareach because they weren't there.
"But you don't know me any better than the Ramen
know you." Transformed by pleading, she met his
stare as if her own fear could no longer touch her.
"Oh, your people remember everything. But you're
like the Ramen. You weren't there. You were so
worried about repeating your mistake with the Illearth
Stone that you stayed behind when Covenant and I
went to face Lord Foul.
"You weren't there when Covenant sacrificed himself.
You weren't there when I took his ring and turned
Vain and Findail into the Staff of Law, or when I
erased the Sunbane, or when-" For an instant, she
choked on the memory of Covenant's farewell. Then
she shouted, "And you sure as hell weren't there when
Covenant and I were summoned in the first place!"
When Jeremiah had burned away half of his right
hand in the Despiser's bonfire. "You think you have
the right to pass judgment, but you don't know what's
at stake for me."
Stave appeared to consider her assertion briefly. Then
he shook his head. "You have not answered. Your
words explain nothing. You make plain that you
disdain the necessary choices of the Haruchai. You see
it as a fault in us that we will never again hazard being
made to serve Corruption. You also pass judgment, yet
you reveal nothing.
A&
"We do not propose to bear white gold into the heart
of a Fall. It is not our intent to dare the utter
destruction of the Earth."
"Then listen," Linden begged. He had missed the point
completely. Like the Ramen, he did not know how to
forgive. "I have to do this.
"Lord Foul has my son."
3.


I';e *ilrvf th'e a y~m
N ~r "Your son?"
C A If Stave felt any surprise or concern, his body did
not show it. Linden could not read his emotions.
Nevertheless she found that she was done with
pleading. "His name," she sighed, "is Jeremiah." Her
efforts to persuade the Master cost her too much of her
courage. "Foul took him while we were being
translated to the Land. A few days ago. I don't suppose
you can imagine what he's going through, but I can."
She had been possessed by a Raver. "You can say
whatever you want. I'm not going to let anything stop
me."
The Master's stolid demeanor revealed nothing as he
averred, "You must. Your purpose is madness. The
Earth will perish, and your son with it."
Oh, hell. Mentally she threw up her hands. "Then
don't come with me. You should be able to ride in a
few days." His hip would heal sufficiently in that time.
"Take your Ranyhyn and go tell the rest of the
Masters what I'm doing. They'll need time to organize
your famous `enmity."'
Do anything you want. Just don't try to stop me
yourself.
Stave lifted an eyebrow. Perhaps she had surprised
him in spite of his restraint. However, she heard no
change in his tone as he replied, "In one thing, Chosen,
you have spoken truly. I do not comprehend. Among
us children are precious beyond expression. Yet no
Haruchai would permit a greater harm in order to
secure the life of any son or daughter."
Then he stepped back. "It will be as you say. In ages
past, the Haruchai have doubted
you-and have learned that they were mistaken. And we
have not been present to share your burdens. Their
cost is hidden from us. Therefore I will not strive to
prevent you now. Rather I will bear word of your
actions to the Masters. Together we will determine
how we must respond."
Limping, he turned away; left her to the Ramen and
Liand.
Linden had gained that much, if nothing more. He had
not struck her down.
Yet now her enemies numbered in the hundreds.
Liand's desire to understand her as well as the Master
was tangible between them. But she felt too bereft and
vulnerable to answer his unspoken questions.
Deliberately she stepped past him in order to stand in
front of the Manethralls.
"What about you?" she asked sadly. How could they
not turn their backs on her? "A little while ago, you
assured me that I'm welcome here." Without stint or
hindrance. "Do you agree with Stave? Have you
changed your minds?
"I swear to you that I wouldn't do this if I could think
of any other way to save my son."
She absolutely required the Staff of Law. To that
extent, at least, her dreams of Thomas Covenant had
proven themselves.
And he had told her to find him. She could not imagine
where else she might look, except in the past.
Hami, Dohn, and Mahrtiir shared a look. Then,
together, they rose to their feet.
"Ah, Ringthane," Hami sighed, smiling ruefully. "Be
at peace among us. You have naught to fear from the
Ramen. The Ranyhyn have accepted you. Therefore
we may not oppose you, though the peril which you
intend for them surpasses our imagining."
"Yet if you will accept my counsel," Mahrtiir put in,
"you will permit me to accompany you. It will aid you
to have a companion who is able to care for the
Ranyhyn when you cannot. I scout as well as any
Raman-and fight as well also. And I am hardy and
Earth-wise. I can provide food and shelter where none
appear.
"If you do not discover aliantha, what will you eat?"
Haste quickened his words. "If you have no shelter,
where will you sleep? If you encounter no friends, who
will defend you? If-"
Hami placed her hand on Mahrtiir's shoulder; and
abruptly he stopped. Facing Linden with eagerness in
his eyes, he repeated, "Permit me to accompany you,"
and said no more.
He troubled her. She already knew that she would miss
Stave's knowledge and prowess. Mahrtiir offered her
much that she could not supply for herself-and could
not reasonably expect from either Liand or Anele. Yet
she was reluctant to take more people into danger.
And she was not entirely sure that she could trust the
Manethrall. He seemed too eager to prove something
But how could she reject any form of help? She would
need more assistance than
Mahrtiir could give her: that was obvious. Apart from
the Ramen, however, there was no one who could aid
her except Esmer and the ur-viles; and she had no idea
how to ask them.
Slowly she nodded to Mahrtiir. "If you're willing to
face the risk. If your people don't need you here."
Surely there were Cords in his care? What would
happen to them? She could not lead people as young as
Pahni and Char, girls and boys, children, into a
caesure.
But Mahrtiir's gaze lit up as if she had set a match to
tinder; and Hami and Dohn said nothing to dissuade
him.
Instead the older Manethrall asked a question for the
first time. "How will you return?"
Unprepared to reveal what she had in mind, Linden
blinked at him dumbly.
Dohn did not meet her stare. He had resumed
watching the mountains, apparently looking for
unmotivated storms and violence; for signs of Esmer.
"You will enter a Fall," he explained quietly, "a flaw
in Time, and turn it to the past. There you will seek the
Staff of Law. Very well. When you have found it"-his
tone held an implicit if-"what then?
"At the best, your search will require hours. It may
well consume days. The Fall will move on. Perhaps it
will cease to exist altogether. You will remain in the
past, as unable then to regain your son as you are now.
"How will you return?"
Unwittingly he asked Linden to put her worst fear into
words. Ever since she had realized the truth, during
her vigil over Stave the previous night, she had
avoided thinking about it; admitting it to herself. Yet
the Ramen deserved an answer. Certainly Liand did.
Her pulse labored in her temples as she said, "If I can't
use the first one, I'll have to make a new caesure."
During her translation to the Land, she had seen
herself rouse the Worm of the World's End with white
fire. Perhaps Lord Foul had already accomplished his
aim. By kidnapping Jeremiah, he may have ensured
the Land's destruction. If she misjudged her power, or
herself, or the stability of the Arch, she might bring
Time to an end.
ore because she needed some mundane activity to calm
her than because she was still hungry, she resumed her
seat in order to drink more water and fin ish the
contents of her bowl. If she meant to risk the ruin of
the Earth, she would at
least do so on a full stomach.
Thinking sour thoughts, she ate fruit and cheese
without tasting them; drank water
without washing down the extremity which clogged
her throat. Throughout her experience of the Land,
she had only followed others: Covenant, Sunder and
Hollian; the Giants. Liand had led her away from
Mithil Stonedown: the Ramen had brought her to the
Verge of Wandering. Until now, she had seldom tried
to impose her will on events. For Jeremiah's sake, she
needed to be able to trust her own judgment, but she
found that increasingly difficult to do.
Soon the Manethralls left the clearing. Perhaps they
had responsibilities which they could not ignore. Or
perhaps they simply recognized that she wanted to be
alone. For reasons of his own, Bhapa trailed after
Mahrtiir.
Liand had seated himself beside Linden, but he did not
disturb her with questions. Instead he maintained a
companionable silence, offering her the simple balm of
his presence.
Nevertheless she could not relax with him. His naive
acceptance of hazards which he could not possibly
understand seemed to undermine her decisions.
She could justify taking Anele anywhere: he had
nowhere else to go; and his broken mind might find
mending with her. Moreover she needed him-and not
only because he knew the location of the Staff. Lord
Foul had spoken through him. If he became sane, he
might be able to tell her where the Despiser had
hidden her son.
As for the Ranyhyn, their choices were irrefragable;
beyond her comprehension. And Mahrtiir clearly
needed some outlet for his native intensity.
In her eyes, however, Liand belonged among his
people in Mithil Stonedown. If for no other reason
than because the Masters had deprived the Land of its
history and lore, he seemed painfully ill-equipped to
confront the dangers ahead of him.
And she was not sure that she could bear to see him
killed in her cause.
When she had finished her self-imposed meal, and had
spent a little while studying the high peaks for insights
which their bluffs and ice disdained, she turned to the
Stonedownor at last.
"What about you, Liand?" Incapable of grace, she
tried to cover her stiffness by speaking softly. "Why
are you still here?
"I know we've had this conversation before. You said
you want to help defend the Land. Believe me, I
understand that. And you've already done a lot " More
than she could have expected from him. "But Stave
isn't wrong. What I'm planning terrifies me. So many
things could go wrong
"This might be your last chance to see your home
again."
Liand faced her soberly; but his voice held a note of
affection or amusement as he replied, "Linden, you
baffle me. You are wise and valorous, yet you appear
as uncomprehending as the Masters. However, your
concern is well meant, and I will not take it amiss."
He thought for a moment, then said, "I might respond
once more that the folk of Mithil Stonedown have
given you no cause to doubt that they are steadfast. Or
I might
remark that I have beheld great wonders in your
company, and would not willingly forego more. Or I
might avow that the loveliness of the Land has only
grown more precious to me as my senses have been
opened. I have tasted with my eyes and hands and
tongue the true glory of the world. To turn homeward
now would be to pass from treasure-berries to dust."
Linden wanted to protest, That's beside the point. We
aren't talking about aliantha or dust. We're talking
about slaughter or survival. But she restrained herself.
She was tired of vehemence. And she had already lost
Stave.
Instead she urged, "Then stay here. With the Ramen.
You don't have to waste your life in a Fall."
The young man shook his head. "You cannot ask it of
me. For answer I will remind you of your own words.
"You said that at one time you encountered a man in
need. Perhaps he sought to dissuade you from aiding
him, as you now seek to dissuade me. If so, you
refused. Yet you acknowledged that you could not
have imagined what would follow. If you had indeed
grasped the nature of your peril, you doubt that you
would have been able to endure it. Because of your
refusal to abandon him, however, you have become the
Linden Avery who now wishes to spare me a similar
peril."
Gently he placed his hand on her shoulder; permitted
himself to offer her that much of an embrace. "Do you
not know that you are admirable in my sight? Can you
not conceive that I have no desire to turn aside from
your example? Your intent is not to destroy the Earth,
but to redeem it, as you seek also to redeem your son. I
will abide the outcome with you."
Linden wept too easily. She always had. Touched by
Liand's willingness, she blinked against the burn of
tears in the corners of her eyes. Precisely because she
hungered for hugs, however, she shrugged his hand
away: his touch was not the one she craved. With her
palms, she rubbed the moist salt from her cheeks.
Then she did her best to match his trust.
"If that's the way you feel, I hope you'll watch my
back. I'll have my hands full." Mastering the flow of a
caesure would demand all of her resources. "And I'm
sure you've already noticed that I'm not particularly
good at taking care of myself."
The warmth of his answering smile allowed her to
hope that she had found a mo
ment of grace after all.
Above her, daylight swelled into the dawn sky, and
birds began to sprinkle the gloaming with calls and
soaring. The scent of dew seemed to quicken the grass.
Sunshine glided swiftly down the westward
mountainsides, pouring illumina
tion into the Verge of Wandering. Nevertheless direct
sunlight was slow to reach the depths of the vale. The
eastern peaks, jagged as teeth, bit high enough into the
heavens to cover her with shadows still.
Linden thought that she would wait until the light
touched her before she put her feet to the path she had
selected for herself. She wanted to feel the sun's
consolation on her skin, let its benison warm the fear
from her bones. However, her sense of urgency made
her restless. Finally she could no longer sit still. She
needed movement to help her manage her complex
apprehensions. Rising to her feet, she asked Pahni how
the Ramen took baths.
Smiling shyly, the Cord led her to one of the shelters,
set out a basin of warm water for her, and showed her
how to wrap herself in a blanket so that she could
remove her clothes and rub away grime and sweat
with a soft cloth.
Linden wanted to wash her clothes as well, and her
hair, but the chill in the air dissuaded her. She had no
way to dry her shirt and jeans quickly, and nothing
else to wear. Nevertheless she felt somewhat cleansed,
slightly better prepared, when she returned to the
clearing.
As Liand rose to greet her, she announced, "Let's go. I
can't keep putting this off. You should get ready."
Presumably he would want to repack his pinto's
supplies. "I'm going to ask one of the Ramen how to
call Hyn."
She felt a quick surge of tension from the
Stonedownor, which he made no attempt to conceal.
Yet he promised at once, "I will be swift. I need only
request viands from the Ramen and tend to Somo's
burdens."
Smiling anxiously, he hastened away.
Linden tightened her grip on herself as she looked
around for someone who might answer her question.
She expected to find Bhapa, Pahni, or Char hovering
somewhere nearby, but the first person she saw was
Stave. He stood just outside the clearing, watching her
as if he had expected her to notice him earlier.
He would know how to summon the Ranyhyn.
She did not want to talk to him, but she forced herself
to cross the bare dirt toward him. When he had
acknowledged her with a nod, she said severely, "You
should be in bed. You need rest. Your hip needs rest. If
you don't stay off your feet for at least the next three
days, you'll be in pain for weeks."
Even his Haruchai strength could not shrug off what
had happened to him.
But he ignored her admonition. "I have not yet
departed," he replied, "because I hoped that you
would turn from your intent. However, it has become
plain that you will not. I will delay no longer."
Nodding once again, he limped out into the clearing.
His damaged hip seemed to leave a groan in the air as
he passed.
ai
Involuntarily, Linden followed him. "Stave, stop. You
can't ride like this. Even you can't. Be reasonable, for
God's sake.
"Your people are too far away. They can't respond in
time. It won't make any difference if they don't hear
from you for a few more days."
Stave said nothing; but he cast her a look of such
disdain that she winced and fell silent. Then he put his
fingers to his mouth and whistled shrilly.
For an instant, the distant birds ceased their cries, and
the air itself seemed to go still, hushed with
expectation.
Again Stave whistled. Suddenly Ramen crowded the
rims of the clearing as if he had summoned them
instead of the Ranyhyn.
A third time, his whistle pierced the sky. Now Linden
felt an answering tremor under her boots; a shiver of
excitement in the ground. Whinnying like the clarion
call of trumpets rose above the grass-muffled rumble
of hooves.
From the south and the mountains, two Ranyhyn came
galloping, proud as flame in the warming day.
Linden would not have recognized them. With Stave
beaten and dying in her arms the previous night, she
had hardly regarded the great horses; had noticed only
the stars on their foreheads and the visceral impact of
their power. She assumed, however, that these were
Hynyn and Hyn, come in response to Stave's call.
Both of them answered, although only Hynyn had
accepted him.
In spite of their size, the beasts seemed to flow as
fluidly as oil between the shelters of the Ramen. When
they neared the circle of open ground, however, the
smaller of the two, a mare with grave eyes and dappled
grey flanks, slowed her pace, trotting to a halt among
the gathered Ramen. Her companion, a roan stallion
with a regal tail and an air of hauteur, cantered into
the clearing to stand before Stave.
The Master greeted Hynyn with a deep bow. When he
had raised his head again, he pronounced softly, "Hail,
Ranyhyn! Land-rider and proud-bearer." His voice
had a timbre of invocation and ritual; formal respect
which his people had not uttered for thousands of
years. "Sun-flesh and sky-mane, I am glad that you
have heard my call. An urgent journey lies before me.
Will you bear me?"
In response, the stallion shook his mane as if in denial,
although he stood ready to be mounted.
Stave appeared to hesitate. He glanced around at the
assembled Ramen; but their
frank adoration revealed nothing except that the
Ranyhyn were revered.
Linden frowned. Had Hynyn and Hyn answered
Stave's call only to refuse him?
Both of them-?
Stave twitched one shoulder, a slight shrug. Favoring
his damaged hip, he gathered himself and vaulted up
onto Hynyn's back. In spite of his pain, he seemed
entirely at home astride the Ranyhyn; mounted where
he belonged.
Hynyn tossed his head as if to welcome his rider. The
Ramen watched, transfixed and disturbed by the sight.
Stave had said that the defeat of the Bloodguard had
tarnished the fidelity of the Ramen. He may have been
right.
Leaning forward, he murmured softly to Hynyn.
Again the stallion shook his head and did not move.
Stave nudged at Hynyn's sides with his heels: Hynyn
flattened his ears and set his legs. To Linden's
inexperienced eyes, the stallion seemed ready to buck.
Uncharacteristic uncertainty creased the Master's
brows. As if to all of the Ramen, he announced,
"Hynyn will not bear me."
From the edge of the clearing, Manethrall Dohn
replied, "You are mistaken, sleepless one. Hynyn has
accepted you. However, he does not consent to your
intent. He will not bear you where you wish to go."
Stave's mien darkened. As far as Linden knew, no
Haruchai had ever been both accepted and refused.
The Master may have been shocked. And without
Hynyn to bear him, he would have to return to Mithil
Stonedown on foot.
How far would his stubbornness carry him with a
wounded hip?
"What now, Bloodguard?" Mahrtiir asked with
sardonic satisfaction. "Will you cleave to the purposes
of the Masters? Or will you honor the will of the
Ranyhyn? Consult your arrogance. Surely it will not
mislead you."
Stave turned a threatening scowl toward the
Manethrall. "You are a fool," he pronounced
distinctly. "There is no contradiction. No Ranyhyn has
ever refused to serve its rider. For the sake of all the
Land, the Masters must learn what this refusal
portends."
A sarcastic rejoinder flashed in Mahrtiir's eyes, but he
bit it back.
Manethrall Dohn ignored both men. For a moment, he
studied the daylight as it filled the vale. Then he
announced, "Ringthane, Hyn is here as well, though
you did not summon her. She also will not bear you
where you wish to go. Nonetheless she desires to bear
you.
"Will you not mount?"
Quickly Linden looked around for Liand and Anele.
She would be lost without the
old man; and she had already told Liand that he could
accompany her.
Will not bear you
Anele was nowhere to be seen. After a brief search,
however, she spotted Liand
among the Ramen, holding Somo by the pinto's halter.
-where you wish to go.
Anxious for reasons which she could not have put into
words, she turned to
face Hyn.
As soon as Linden met her gaze, the mare trotted
forward.
Studying the beast, Linden groaned to herself, Oh,
God. I can't ride that. Hyn was too big: Linden's head
barely reached her shoulder. And Linden was no
horsewoman. If she fell from that height-and in
motion-
Under the Sunbane, she had ridden the Coursers of the
Clave, and they were larger than any Ranyhyn. But
Cail had supported her then. With his arms around
her, she could not have fallen, even by choice.
Hyn approached with a mincing step. Somehow the
mare conveyed the unexpected impression that she felt
shy in Linden's presence. When she drew near,
however, she nudged Linden's chest, tangibly urging
Linden to ride her.
Her warm breath smelled of sweet grass and freedom;
of galloping wildly across illimitable vistas.
Linden looked around for help; and immediately
Bhapa came toward her with wonder in his eyes. To
both Linden and Hyn, he bowed deeply. Emotion
thickened his voice as he said, "Ringthane, you are
reluctant to ride. For that we honor you. It is fitting to
be humbled by the Ranyhyn. But in this their will must
not be thwarted. The fate of the Land rides with you,
and you require their aid. You will not regret that you
granted their desire here."
The Ranyhyn wanted something from her. And from
Stave.
Bhapa watched her face. "Do you fear that you may
fall? There is no need. The Ranyhyn permit no harm
to their riders."
Linden shook her head. She needed the Ranyhyn: she
was certain of that. Whether she felt ready or not, able
or not, she would have to ride Hyn eventually.
She also will not bear you where you wish to go.
Nonetheless she desires to bear you.
What could the great horses possibly want from her?
Linden seemed to have no choice. "All right," she
muttered. "I don't understand any of this. Never mind
that. Help me up.''
Hyn nickered approval as Bhapa interlaced his fingers
to form a stirrup. Hurrying
so that she would not hesitate, Linden stepped into his
hands and reached upward. Even then she might not
have been able to mount. The distance was too great:
for
an instant, it seemed to symbolize or contain all of her
limitations. But Bhapa lifted
her higher; and she found herself unceremoniously
seated on the mare's back. Clutching the silk of Hyn's
mane in both fists, she tried to regain some sense of
balance.
With elaborate consideration, Hyn turned until she
faced southward, away from the Land. At the same
time, Hynyn wheeled more imperiously, bringing Stave
to Linden's side. Both Ranyhyn plainly intended to
return in the direction from which they had come.
"Linden!" Liand called anxiously. In haste, he tugged
Somo out into the clearing, then scrambled onto the
mustang's back.
Hynyn responded with a stern whinny. Hyn flicked up
her hooves one at a time, showing Somo her heels.
When the Ranyhyn started into motion, Somo refused
to follow.
Liand barked a command; dug his heels into the
pinto's sides; hauled on the reins. His mount dropped
its head and did not move. "Linden!" he shouted
again, at once angry and frightened. "Do not-! I must
accompany you."
"Stop," Linden muttered to Hyn, "wait, don't go yet. I
said he could come with us."
The Ranyhyn ignored her. Together, stately as
frigates, Hyn and Hynyn walked out of the clearing
among the Ramen.
Linden nearly lost her seat turning to watch Liand's
struggle with Somo.
Then two of the Cords intervened, obviously urging
Liand to accept Somo's refusal; and Manethrall Dohn
explained to Linden, "It is the will of the Ranyhyn.
They do not condone the Stonedownor's presence.
Fear not, Ringthane. You will return to find him safe
among us. He will yet ride with you."
Liand protested, an inarticulate gasp of dismay.
Flinging himself from the pinto's back, he ran after
Linden. The heat in his eyes and the dogged set of his
shoulders proclaimed that he meant to follow her on
foot as long and as far as necessary.
Almost at once, however, the Cords stopped him. He
wrestled with them furiously until Manethrall Hami
snapped his name.
"The will of the Ranyhyn is plain," she told him
severely. "We will not permit you to act against it."
When at last Liand subsided, she added more kindly,
"Hyn will ward the Ringthane with her life."
Liand may have continued to protest. Perhaps Hami
reassured him further. But Linden could no longer
hear them. Hyn had borne her beyond earshot.
For the moment, the ground seemed to yaw
vertiginously on either side of her. She was perched too
high on a mount over which she had no control; and
her legs were stretched too wide. Only her grip on
Hyn's mane secured her. A precarious hold: the fine
hair would slip through her fingers if she relied on it.
She had made plans and promises, but she appeared to
have no say at all in whether or not she ever kept her
word.
She wanted to demand explanations from Stave,
although she knew that he had none to give her. But
his pain was vivid in the morning light, and its
sharpness closed her throat. In spite of her visceral
alarm, she suspected that the behavior of the Ranyhyn
disturbed him more profoundly. She was merely
frightened-and frustrated by her inability to act on any
of her choices. He was experiencing a violation of the
ancient relationship between his people and the great
horses.
More for her own sake than for his-as far as she knew,
the Haruchai had no sense of humor-she tried to
lighten the silence; distract herself from her fears.
"Well," she said, "here's another fine mess you've
gotten us into."
He did not so much as glance at her.
Linden shrugged to herself. More seriously, she asked,
"Do you have any idea where
,T 1
they might be taking us? Can you think of anything
that might explain what they're doing?"
She hardly expected him to respond. The scale of their
disagreements and conflicts might make simple
conversation impossible.
Having stated his position and made his decisions,
however, Stave now seemed content to comport
himself as though nothing had changed. "I have no
clear answer," he replied calmly. "Yet there is a tale
which was told by Bannor of the Bloodguard during
the time of the Unbeliever. It suggests an answer."
"Please," Linden put in promptly. "Tell me."
"This tale," he said, "concerns the quest of High Lord
Elena and ur-Lord Covenant for the Seventh Ward of
Kevin's Lore. Though they knew it not, they sought the
Blood of the Earth and the Power of Command.
"You have heard that when ur-Lord Covenant first
summoned the Ranyhyn, a great many of them
answered, each rearing in obeisance and fear, each
offering to be ridden. Yet he refused them, for which
the Ramen honor him above all Lords and
Bloodguard. Rather than ride any Ranyhyn, he asked
of them a boon.
"In Mithil Stonedown he had done cruel harm to a
woman of the Land-to Lena daughter of Atiaran, she
who later gave birth to High Lord Elena. Hoping,
perhaps, to ease that wrong, he asked of the Ranyhyn
that one of them would visit Lena each year, for she
adored them.
"This service the Ranyhyn fulfilled without fail, until
the Unbeliever himself released them from it."
Gradually Linden's anxiety receded as she began to
feel more secure on Hyn's back. When they had left
behind the shelters of the Ramen, the Ranyhyn
increased their gait to an easy, rolling canter which
carried them swiftly through the deep grass. At that
speed, she might have felt more alarm rather than less.
But the mare was able to compensate for her uncertain
balance. In spite of her initial trepidation, she found
herself relaxing to the sound of Stave's voice.
She knew what he meant by "cruel harm." Covenant
had told her of his crime against Lena. However, the
rest of Stave's tale was unfamiliar to her.
"In later years," he was saying, "during High Lord
Elena's girlhood, Lena occasionally allowed her
daughter to ride in her place. The High Lord spoke of
that time in Bannor's presence while she and ur-Lord
Covenant floated upon the flame-burnished waters of
Earthroot.
"She told of a ride which expressed the will of her
mount, the Ranyhyn Myrha, rather than any wish of
hers."
Ahead of Hyn and Hynyn, the mountainsides crowded
close together, leaving only a narrow gap between
sharp cliffs. As the great horses stretched their canter
to a run, the cut ravine seemed to sweep palpably
nearer. Grass, a few shrubs, and the occasional
aliantha blurred past Linden on both sides. To her
surprise, she began to enjoy Hyn's
swiftness. The adoration and service of the Ramen
were not difficult to understand. Like so much of the
Land outside Lord Foul's influence, the Ranyhyn were
tangibly precious.
But she could not be sure that she would prove equal
to what they wished of her.
"What happened?" she asked her companion.
"In the High Lord's tale," Stave answered, "Myrha
bore her to an eldritch tarn enclosed within the
Southron Range, where Ranyhyn had gathered by the
hundreds. Around the vale of the tarn, the Ranyhyn
galloped as though in ecstasy, only pausing at intervals
to drink of the tarn's dark waters.
"When the High Lord also drank, she found herself
united in spirit with the great horses, sharing their
thoughts and purposes. Thus she learned that she had
been brought to partake of the horserite of
Kelenbhrabanal, Father of Horses, Stallion of the First
Herd. This rite the Ranyhyn held in secret, generation
after generation, so that Kelenbhrabanal's doom
would never be forgotten.
"I know not what Hynyn and Hyn desire of us," he
added. "It may be that they wish us also to partake of
the horserite. Or they may have some purpose which
lies outside the ken of the Haruchai."
His tone conveyed a shrug through the muted thunder
of hooves. Whatever the intentions of the Ranyhyn
might be, he apparently did not mean to let them
interfere with his own commitments.
Or perhaps he was not so single-minded. His people
loved the great horses. And Hyn and Hynyn had
imposed their will on him as well as on Linden.
And he seemed reluctant to tell her the rest
"What was it?" she asked. "Kelenbhrabanal's doom?"
What had the Ranyhyn wanted from Covenant's
daughter?
"In a time before Berek Halfhand became the first
High Lord," continued the Master, "the Ranyhyn
warred against the wolves of Fangthane the Render,
and were slaughtered. Grieving for the decimation of
the First Herd, Kelenbhrabanal sought to end the
conflict by proposing a bargain. The Father of Horses
would surrender his own throat to Fangthane. In
exchange, the Render would cease his war upon the
Ranyhyn.
"To this Fangthane agreed eagerly. But he did not
honor his given word. When he had slain
Kelenbhrabanal, he unleashed his wolves again upon
the Plains of Ra. The slaughter of the Ranyhyn
resumed. They would have perished from the Land if
they had not gained the service of the Ramen to aid
them in their long strife."
"This knowledge the Ranyhyn shared with High Lord
Elena to warn her," Stave concluded flatly, "but she
did not heed them."
He seemed to believe that he had answered Linden's
question. But she was not satisfied. "What was the
warning?" she insisted. "I don't see what
Kelenbhrabanal has to do with Elena. She wasn't
looking for a way to sacrifice herself."
Not according to the little that Linden had heard of
those events.
The Master appeared to sigh. "You know the tale.
High Lord Elena sought the Seventh Ward, the Power
of Command, so that she might compel Kevin
Landwaster from his grave against Corruption. She
believed that despair would anneal Kevin's heart,
rendering him from pain to iron, making of him an
indomitable tool.
"In this she was wrong, to the great cost of all the
Land.
"Bannor deemed then, as do the Haruchai now, that
the Ranyhyn had perceived a flaw in the High Lord's
comprehension. By means of their horserite, they
sought to alter the course of her thoughts. They wished
her to grasp that despair is no more potent or salvific
beyond death than it is in life."
If Bannor and his descendants were right, the
Ranyhyn had read Elena's future in her young eyes.
They had seen the time ahead of her: who she would
become; what she would do.
And Elena had not heeded them.
Yet they had continued to serve her. To the last, they
had hoped that she would learn from their rites. Or
they had forgiven in advance her human follyNow, like
them, Stave was trying to warn Linden.
It was too bad, she thought to herself, that the Masters
also were not listening.
eyond the ravine which led them from the Verge of
Wandering, Hyn and Hynyn bore their riders running
across mountainsides washed with sunshine, redolent
with wildflowers and springtime. Always in sunlight,
they rounded one towering granite buttress after
another, plunging down into the gullies and sholas
which creased the boundaries between peaks, then
clattering with undiminished speed up the far slopes.
At times the ground they trod looked rocky enough to
imperil mountain goats; yet they galloped on without
hesitation. For a while, Linden was sure that they
would exhaust themselves. Gradually, however, she
became aware that both mounts were in fact holding
themselves back: that they had tremendous strength in
reserve, and had not yet called forth their true power.
Their restraint may have been meant as consideration
for her.
Fortunately the indefeasible security of Hyn's long
strides inspired an almost autonomic confidence. The
mare seemed as reliable as the bones of the Earth.
Lulled by trust, Linden eventually found herself
drifting. The sun's warmth seeped into her bones, and
the whetted atmosphere of the mountains seemed to
clean the fear from her lungs. By degrees, her
apprehensions faded, and she fell into a doze.
Later she was startled awake by a cessation of motion.
The Ranyhyn had halted in a low gully nourished by a
sparkling rill. As it danced past a small clump of
aliantha, the
water chuckled to itself as if high among the
mountains it had heard an amusing tale. Hyn and
Hynyn had paused to let their riders eat and drink.
Stave had already dismounted. Still half asleep, Linden
slipped down from Hyn's back without remembering
to worry about her height from the ground.
Unsteadily, she moved to the rill to quench her thirst,
then joined her companion beside one of the treasure-
berry bushes.
She saw at once that riding had exacerbated his
wounds, his internal injuries as much as his damaged
hip. His lips were pallid, his skin had taken on an
ashen hue, and his pains were as sharp as compound
fractures.
Nonetheless he remained undaunted. He had not yet
come to the end of himself. And the sapid fruit
restored him as it did her. With her health-sense, she
could watch the progress of renewed vitality through
his body. Soon she believed that he would be able to
endure more riding.
Now she noticed that the sun had reached the
afternoon sky. The passing of time caused her a pang.
She must have dozed longer than she realized. "Did
Bannor happen to say," she asked Stave, "how far
away this tarn is?"
The Haruchai regarded her steadily. "It is not certain
that the tarn of the horserite is our destination."
Linden nodded. "I understand. It's just a guess. But I
need something to hope for."
"As you say." He gazed up at the highest peaks. "High
Lord Elena spoke of riding at a gallop for a day and a
night from Mithil Stonedown. Doubtless a portion of
the distance was behind us in the Verge of Wandering.
More than that-"
With a shrug, he turned to limp toward Hynyn.
Both Ranyhyn had cropped a little grass and drunk
from the rill. Now the stallion moved unbidden to
stand beside a boulder jutting from the side of the
gully. Apparently Hynyn understood that his rider
might no longer be able to mount without aid. Once
Stave had pulled himself onto the boulder, he could
reach Hynyn's back easily.
Touched by the discernment of the Ranyhyn, Linden
followed his example. When she had resumed her seat,
Hyn and Hynyn trotted out of the gully to continue
their
journey.
hereafter the terrain became more demanding, the
ground more broken and rocky, the mountainsides
steeper. Bare stone loomed against the sky, grey with
age and cold, mottled with lichen. Weather-stunted
trees clung arduously to splits in the cliffs, and
stubborn stretches of grass gave way to slopes of
gravel like the detri tus of glaciers. At the same time,
the temperature declined as though the Ranyhyn ran
toward realms of ice. Hyn and Hynyn had borne their
riders far from any soil which
B
could have sustained the rampant grass of the Verge of
Wandering. Whenever the twisted thrusting of the
granite blocked the sun, Linden found herself
regretting that she had not thought to bring one of
Liand's warm cloaks; that Liand himself was not with
her.
Of necessity the Ranyhyn slowed their pace, although
they still traveled swiftly.
No clouds were visible within the constricted horizons,
but Linden could smell a storm on the raw breeze.
Somewhere beyond the dominion of these rough peaks,
rain and wind and trouble were brewing. Instinctively,
she feared that some bitter force gathered to repel the
Ranyhyn from their purpose.
Stave betrayed no concern; but that did not comfort
her.
Through Anele, Lord Foul had assured her that he had
done no harm to the Land. I have merely whispered a
word of counsel here and there, and awaited events.
She suspected that he held her in too much contempt
to lie. Yet he seemed to have vast powers in his service.
And she did not believe for a moment that Hyn had
borne her beyond his reach
If you fear what has been "done," think on the Elohim
and be dismayed. Esmer could testify to the cruelty of
such legacies.
Slowly Linden's discomfort became a remorseless ache
which seemed to span her consciousness from rim to
rim. She no longer noticed the evolving vistas, or
watched the sun's progress down the narrow sky. At
intervals, an unwonted jolt roused her enough to see
that her surroundings had grown as sheer as spires, as
sharp as knives. Raw granite edges softened only by ice
and distance cut away the daylight in swaths, making
way for darkness. Then the aching in her legs and
back swelled again, and her ability to regard how her
world shrank slipped away.
Soon it became too small to contain her son; or Liand
and Anele and the Ramen; or her memories of the man
she had loved.
Time passed; and the air turned distinctly colder as
the Ranyhyn dropped down the far side of a raw pass
into an enclosed depth like a pit of gloom, a clenched
instance of winter. Descending from remnants of
sunlight into shadow, they seemed to leave behind
every vestige of spring and warmth and familiarity.
Under their hooves, the ground became bitter and
broken, old stone warped to shards and twisted out of
cognizance by eons of unrelieved ice.
Protected only by Hyn's generous heat, Linden
returned shivering to herself.
Somewhere above the enveloping gloom, daylight still
held the peaks, but its touch was lost in shadow,
leaving only a premature dusk. In the heavens, early
stars glittered coldly against the velvet dark, while
ahead of the Ranyhyn midnight crouched like a
waiting beast.
Until now, Hyn and Hynyn had shown themselves able
and willing to care for the most basic needs of their
riders; but Linden could not imagine how they might
pre
serve her against such cold. Conditioned by
Covenant's distrust of his ability to control that wild
magic, she had never considered calling on his ring for
something as simple and necessary as warmth. If the
Ranyhyn did not surprise her with some new
providence, she would have no choice but to risk
dangers which had dismayed him.
But then the horses sank below some unseen boundary
layer like a thermocline, and the cold began to
dissipate. After its first change, the air remained
unpleasantly chill, reminiscent of freezing and
loneliness. At least temporarily, however, it had lost its
harsh edge. Soon tufts of hardy grey grass emerged
among the rough stones. In the deepening shadow, the
slope relaxed as grasses spread out over the ground.
Before long, Linden found herself in what appeared to
be a cliff-walled glen. With only the distant disinterest
of stars for illumination, she could not see its far side
except as a deeper ebony amid the gloaming; but the
glen seemed to be more than broad enough to hold the
horserite that Stave had described. And its grassy floor
was relatively flat and smooth: it might have been
beaten down by uncounted generations of hooves.
Ahead of her at the center of the glen lay an area of
complete blackness like a disk of obsidian, a rough
circle impenetrable to light. It held no sheen of
starlight, no reflection of any kind: she would have
assumed that it was stone if Stave had not spoken of a
"tarn"-and if eldritch waters had not called out to her
senses, warning her of power which had welled up
from the depths of the Earth.
Hyn and Hynyn had reached their secret destination.
They trotted toward thee tarn eagerly, ears pricked
forward, breath snorting in their nostrils. Linden
expected them to approach the waters immediately
and drink; but after a few paces, Hyn abruptly
shrugged her to the ground. Unprepared, she landed
awkwardly and nearly fell.
Stave joined her a heartbeat later, catching himself on
one leg to protect his hip.
While her knees trembled, Linden watched as the
mare and the stallion together hastened to the tarn and
plunged their muzzles into the unrelieved dark.
She had time to think, Hundreds of Ranyhyn? Where
were the others? Elena had been a child, probably
overwhelmed; but she could not have been so
dramatically wrong about her own experience. Surely
two Ranyhyn did not comprise a horserite? They were
not enough
Then Hynyn and Hyn exploded away from the waters
and began to thunder around the dell as if they had
plunged into frenzy.
Linden had never witnessed such galloping. She could
only make out vague shapes in the caliginous air:
running, the Ranyhyn appeared as little more than
smears along the shrouded base of the cliffs. Yet they
were loud and vivid to the enhanced dimension of her
senses, fraught with Earthpower, and bright as
bonfires. Drinking from the tarn seemed to have
ignited their inherent vitality. They radiated an intense
heat. She
felt their sweat as though it were the spume of
hysteria. If Stave had not described Elena's visit here,
Linden would have guessed that Hyn and Hynyn had
gone mad. But they were only two
Why were they alone? Where were the rest of the
Ranyhyn?
Still shaken by cold, she breathed, "Stave." She
needed some explanation from him. But she could find
no language for what she lacked except his name. The
furious race of the Ranyhyn tugged at her awareness,
her ability to think, sucking her mind away with
centrifugal insistence.
As if in response to her unformed question, the Master
turned his back on the tarn and began to hobble
toward the nearest cliff-wall.
"Wait," she panted. She had been too long on
horseback, come too far from any reality that made
sense to her: she had forgotten how to claim his
attention. Nevertheless she ached for his
companionship. She did not know how to face even this
small fragment of a horserite by herself.
"Please, Stave!" she called because he had not
stopped; did not appear to have heard
her past the laboring hooves of the Ranyhyn. "I need
to understand."
He paused, balancing on one foot. "Then drink of the
tarn." His tone had the cer
tainty of a knell. "Thus will you comprehend what the
Ranyhyn wish you to grasp." 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.
!eedrerr in ain
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 warmth 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
arm-
loads 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 treasureberries,
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.
® he needed time to recognize where she was. Leagues
and mountains and bru
I, tal 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 con
taining 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 power.
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."
That shocked the Ramen. They blurred like tears.
Voices protested, "No," and, "No." Someone hissed
through the rain, "It is false. She lies."
Stave blinked at the glaze in his eyes. Sternly he
retorted, "It is sooth." He nodded at Linden past the
fire. "Behold her. Do you discern falsehood?"
"Do not shame yourselves," Hami told the indignation
of her people. "Do you lack sight? She has no
falsehood in her."
Fever had burned away any lies that Linden might
have wished to believe.
"We are Ramen," the Manethrall informed the Cords
severely. "We will hear the truth."
They heeded her, but Linden did not. Her heart
seemed to bleed memories for which she had no words
and no courage. Running hard enough to vanquish
time, she had shared the visions of the Ranyhyn:
images not of Kelenbhrabanal and Fangthane, but of
the child Elena, daughter of Lena and rape.
Another warning
At that time, Elena was a young girl, lovely as only a
child could be, and innocent in spite of her mother's
instability. Lena had been deranged by violation and
yearning, rendered unfit to raise a child. And both of
Lena's parents, Trell and Atiaran, had been broken to
some extent by the crime against their daughter. Thus
Elena was effectively abandoned by her own family;
left to the care of a young, unregarded man who
adored Lena. For the Land's sake, he had effectively
adopted Elena. His embittered tenderness, and the
boon of the Ranyhyn, were all that had sustained her.
To Linden, the girl's loneliness and need were as vivid
as Jeremiah's, as acute as her son's compelled
maiming. The great horses had seen Elena clearly.
Once each year, every year, a Ranyhyn, an old stallion,
had approached Mithil Stonedown in order to relieve
Lena's bereavement; and so he had witnessed again
and again how the child's life was transformed for that
brief time. When the mare Myrha had taken the
stallion's place, she had seen her potency in Elena's
heart more vividly than any man or woman who might
have loved the child.
"Because of Elena," Linden explained as clearly as she
could, although she had no words. "That's why the
Ranyhyn are ashamed. The horserite doomed her."
If Jeremiah had been granted Ranyhyn rather than
hospitals and surgery after his ordeal in Lord Foul's
bonfire, an excitement like Elena's might have drawn
him out of himself.
Surely the Ramen remembered Elena's participation
in that rite millennia ago? They had not been present.
Perhaps no Raman had ever witnessed or shared a
horserite. But they must have heard the tale
"They blame themselves," she told the eager flames,
"for what she became."
Precisely because the Ranyhyn had recognized the
nature of their power within Elena, Myrha had borne
her to that long-ago conclave. They saw far ahead in
time; sensed the danger which would confront Elena
years later. And they had hoped to dissuade her from
accepting her heritage of harm.
Now they knew that they had failed terribly.
They had shown Elena the arrogance of
Kelenbhrabanal's despair, thinking to teach her that
failure was preferable to violation. Lena should have
resisted Covenant with all her strength. Better to
combat Fangthane directly and die than to believe that
some grand sacrifice might alter Fangthane's nature-
or the Land's fate.
But Elena had missed the lesson. She was deafened to
it by the thunder of hundreds of hooves; blinded by the
communion of the Ranyhyn. Covenant's gift had left
her insensible. She already adored the great horses.
From their rite, she had learned something akin to
worship for Kelenbhrabanal. His sacrifice had seemed
splendid to her: an act of valor so transcendental that
it could not be tainted or surpassed.
The horserite had not dissuaded her from ruin. Rather
it had set her more firmly on the path to destruction.
Speaking hurt Linden's mouth and throat: words bit
like blades of glass, slivers of the past. Nevertheless she
forced herself to say, "They think she got the idea of
commanding Kevin from Kelenbhrabanal."
Perhaps she would have raised the Father of Horses
himself if he had possessed the mighty lore of the Old
Lords.
Now the Ranyhyn saw that they had fallen prey to an
arrogance of their own. Discerning Elena's
vulnerability, they had believed themselves wise
enough to guide her future.
If Hyn and Hynyn had stopped there, however, Linden
could have endured their self-blame; perhaps even
refuted it. Her soul would not have sickened within
her. The shame of the great horses, she might have
said, was itself arrogant. The Ranyhyn had claimed
responsibility for Elena's actions when that burden
belonged properly and solely to Elena herself.
But the two horses did not stop. When they had shared
their racial memories of Elena, they began their tale
again from the beginning-with one appalling
alteration. In their visions, they replaced Elena's
visage with Linden's.
Still trying to warn her.
"Now they're afraid of me," she moaned, "for the
same reason. They believe-"
She could not say it. It hurt too much.
Their minds united with her, Hyn and Hynyn retold
the same story as if it had happened to Linden rather
than Elena; as if Linden's mother and father had been
Atiaran and Trell as well as Lena and Covenant. And
she experienced it with them: it transpired anew. It
held the same abandonment and grief, the same failed
cherishing, the same loneliness-and the same exalting
in-rush of love for the Ranyhyn. Mercilessly, Hyn and
Hynyn described Elena's introduction to the murder
and betrayal of Kelenbhrabanal as if that crisis were
indistinguishable from Linden's experience of the
Land with Covenant under the Sunbane.
And still the images of the horserite did not end. The
Ranyhyn had erred with Elena, perhaps, by not
revealing the true extent of her peril. She had been a
child, too young to apprehend the truth of their
prophecies. They had feared to overwhelm her.
On behalf of all their kind, Hyn and Hynyn did not
make that mistake with Linden.
Instead they found within her a still graver hurt.
Galloping in frenzy, they touched
the ravaged memories of moksha Raver's possession,
the killing horror of Jehannum's malice. And with that
knowledge, they caused her to experience what was
being done to her son.
To damaged Jeremiah, who had no defense except
blankness.
Linden could focus only on Stave. Surely he had seen
the same visions, felt the same dismay? The Ranyhyn
had not brought him to their horserite against his will
in order to spare him. Yet he sat beyond the flames as
though he were untouched, unmoved; implacable as
blame.
Liand had not stopped murmuring her name. But now
he crooned as if he meant to comfort her, "Linden, no.
No.
"The Ranyhyn do not fear you. They cannot."
His support could not interrupt her trembling. She
was too ill for any solace.
Belaboring the floor of the dell with her pain, she saw
Jeremiah's plight as Hyn and Hynyn wished her to see
it: as if he were simultaneously herself occupied by a
Raver and Thomas Covenant lost in the stasis imposed
by the Elohim. She needed them back desperately,
Covenant and her son. All of their lives depended on
it: the Land depended on it. And so she reached-or
would reach-into him with her health-sense, seeking
the place where his mind still lived.
The Ranyhyn elicited it from her, shared it with her: a
field of flowers under an immaculate sun, pristine with
warmth and promises. Covenant and now Jeremiah
met her there, or would meet her, both children again,
and unharmed; capable of a child's love, happiness,
joy. Yet the visions of the horserite were unutterably
cruel; for when she reached out to Covenant and
Jeremiah, trying to restore them with herself, the
Worm of the World's End squirmed from Covenant's
mouth, and her son's dear face seemed to break open
and become vile, bitter as Despite.
Hyn and Hynyn would have been kinder to simply
trample Linden under their hooves.
"The Ranyhyn believe," she said with her last
strength, "I'll do the same thing Elena did."
Surely Stave would have admitted as much, had he
chosen to speak? Yet he said nothing. His eyes held an
uncharacteristic softness as he regarded her. Somehow
he conveyed the impression that he, too, would have
comforted her, if he had known how.
Hyn and Hynyn had given her a warning. Unlike
Elena, she recognized that. And she understood that
such efforts were necessary to the great horses. They
needed to appease their shame. How could they see
what they had seen, dread what they dreaded, and not
try to guide the hope of the Land?
But she did not know where or when they wished her
to step aside from her intentions. And she did not
mean to recant any of her decisions. Thomas Covenant
had told her to trust herself.
® he did not know that she had fallen asleep; or that
her friends had stretched
her out on one of the beds and covered her with
blankets; or that Liand and Bhapa, Char and Pahni,
had kept watch over her throughout the night. She did
not know whether she dreamed, or what those insights
may have cost her. When she awakened, however,
aliantha and Earthpower had worked a
transformation within her, and she was sure of herself.
Sleep and warmth and nourishment had done much to
heal her; but she still could not stop shivering. Now,
however, she understood what was happening to her.
She shook as if she were feverish because she was sick
with fear.
Her plan to enter a caesure and reverse its flow might
damage or destroy the Arch of Time. And she had no
one to guide her through history's ramified layers
except a blind old man with a broken mind.
Hyn and Hynyn would aid her as they had aided
Elena: she did not doubt that. They had declared their
allegiance in the horserite, articulated it against the
hard floor of the dell. They would bear her wherever
she willed. And she had become convinced that their
warnings did not pertain to her immediate choices.
The dangers they foresaw lay somewhere in the
distance ahead of her.
But others around her might not be so trusting; or so
desperate. She had told everyone who could hear her
that the Ranyhyn feared what she might do
The visions of the horserite may have inspired Stave to
renew his opposition. That was possible. On the other
hand, she trusted Liand to stand by her. And Anele
would certainly accompany her. Even at his most
demented, he would accept any risk which might
restore him to the Staff of Law.
But she did not know what to expect from the Ramen.
They supported the Ranyhyn utterly, bowed to the will
of the great horses in all things. However, they knew
now that the Ranyhyn feared her. After millennia of
service, they might decide that their responsibilities
ran deeper than simple compliance.
Then there were the ur-viles. And Esmer. Both had the
power to prevent her, if they elected to do so. Esmer
had told her that the ur-viles wished to serve her. But
he wielded forces which she could not begin to
measure or counteract.
Two days ago-was it only two days?-he had spent the
night among the mountains, exerting himself in ways
which the Ramen had called storms.
She tried to open her eyes then, impelled by tremors;
but they were caked shut. Sleep and the aftereffects of
prostration blinded her. She had to lift the rough
weight of her blankets in order to raise her hands to
her face, rub the crust from her lids.
When she had done so, she blinked her sight clear and
looked up into Liand's waiting concern.
Bhapa and Pahni stood behind him, watching her
efforts to rouse herself. Nearby Char tended the fire;
kept the flames hot for her sake. But the Stonedownor
sat on the bed beside her, bending over her, stroking
her hair. His strained visage dominated her view.
"Linden," he said softly as she focused her eyes on
him. "It is good to see you wake. I feared that this ague
would hold you until it frayed the thews of your
spirit."
Liand, she tried to say. Oh, Liand. But she could not
force her throat to release words.
Tears moistened his gaze for a moment. "If you are
able, you must speak. I would urge you to rest silent,
but there is an illness within you which we know not
how to tend. You must name what is needed to restore
you.
"Is it hurtloam? Already the Manethralls have
dispatched Cords for it, but the way is long, and they
will not return soon. Will treasure-berries succor you?
The Ramen have gathered them in plenty. And
amanibhavam, if that is your need. Only speak-"
She shook her head, striving to interrupt him. She
wanted to tell him that she was not as sick as she
appeared; or that she was sick in another way. But the
residue of the horserite filled her throat with ashes,
and her mouth and tongue had forgotten the
shapes of language.
As Liand pleaded with her, Char left the fire and
hastened from the shelter. In the
distance, she heard him announce, "The Ringthane
wakes."
Oh, God. Linden closed her eyes, covered her face with
her hands. Give me courage. Then Liand thrust an
arm under her neck, lifted her into a half-sitting
position.
Carefully, almost reverently, Pahni offered a bowl of
water to her lips. From the bowl
came a delicate scent of aliantha.
Lowering her arms, Linden sipped at water mixed
with the juice of treasure-berries. Succored by that
gentle touch of Earthpower, she found words.
"Liand." Her voice was a thin croak, barely audible.
"Just hold me. You're already giving me"-she sipped
more water-"what I need. Just hold me until I'm ready
to stand."
At once, he shifted himself behind her; braced her
against his chest with his arms around her. Tentatively
he protested, "Yet this fever, Linden-"
She shook her head. "I'll be all right." His attention to
her weakness threatened her resolve. She could not
afford to acknowledge that she might fail. She was too
fragile"You're my friend. That's enough."
Reaching for Pahni's bowl again, she gulped down as
much as she could swallow. Then she began climbing
to her feet.
"No," Liand objected. "Linden, it is too soon. You
suffered sorely in the storm-and the horserite. You
must rest. Perhaps on the morrow you will be ready
for these exertions."
Still she strove to stand. He was wrong about her: she
was not physically ill. And she had slept long and
warmly. She had been given treasure-berries. Her
bodily weakness would pass when she began to move
around.
He could have held her down, but he did not. Instead
he relented; helped lift her to her feet. For a moment,
she had difficulty finding her balance. Then, however,
her unsteadiness receded, and she was able to stand.
But she could not stop shivering.
While she tried to reassure Liand with a smile, a small
group of Ramen entered the shelter: Hami, Mahrtiir,
and two or three Cords.
Stave accompanied them. As ever, she could not
discern his emotional state. She saw only that he had
regained his strength; and that the pain in his hip had
declined.
The moisture in their hair and on their faces made her
aware for the first time that the rain had not stopped.
But it fell more gently now, no longer lashed by the
blasts of the storm. And it had become warmer, more
springlike.
The malice which had harried her after the horserite
had spent its force and faded from the clouds.
Apparently Esmer had accomplished his purpose
Or he had seen that the Ranyhyn were too enduring to
be daunted, and had decided to change his tactics.
Yet the rain continued steadily, soaking the Verge of
Wandering until every step outside the shelters
splashed water through the thick grass. From her
place between her bed and the fire, Linden could not
see the sky; but the hue of the air and the texture of
the rainfall conveyed the impression that it might
continue for days.
Facing her, the Ramen bowed deeply, as though she
had earned their admiration. Stave did not join them,
however. He remained behind his companions as if he
had nothing to say to her.
Hami's concern matched Liand's; but Mahrtiir's gaze
caught gleams of eagerness from the firelight.
"Linden Avery," Hami began gravely, "Ringthane and
Chosen, we are pleased to see you so much recovered.
You returned from the horserite in such straits that we
feared for your life." She scrutinized Linden narrowly,
then added with a touch of asperity, "Yet you remain
fevered. You must rest. Surely Liand has told you so.
It is not well to expend yourself when you require sleep
and healing."
Linden felt Liand squirm. "She is the Chosen," he said
a bit defensively. "I have no Power over her."
Again Linden shook her head, trying to stop Hami as
she had interrupted Liand a few moments ago. "Don't
worry about me." Her voice still croaked despite the
soothing effects of aliantha, and her throat hurt as if
she had howled for hours against the scourge of the
storm. "I'm not as weak as I look."
Before Hami could respond, she asked, "Where's
Esmer?"
The Manethrall frowned. "Ringthane, your need is
plain, but it lies beyond our lore. We know not how
you may be restored. That is our first concern. What is
Esmer's part in this?"
She and her companions wanted explanations which
Linden did not know how to provide. Nevertheless she
had to try.
"Would you get me some more aliantha?" she asked
Liand: a husky whisper. "And a little amanibhavam?
That's really all I need."
The Ramen had never shared a horserite. She did not
know how to tell them that the potent waters of the
tarn had preserved her from malevolence which might
otherwise have slain her.
Liand hesitated for a moment: he may have looked to
Hami for advice. But the Manethrall did not react, and
after a moment, he referred Linden's request to Pahni
and Bhapa. Clearly he meant to stay at her side; to
catch her if her endurance failed.
She wanted to thank him, and the Cords as well, but
that could wait. Instead she faced Hami.
"That storm," she said as firmly as she could. "It
wasn't natural. It had malice in it." Still frowning,
Hami nodded. "Yet the desire for harm has passed.
Only the rain remains."
Beside the point. Linden persisted. "Has Esmer come
back?"
Hami made a sound of vexation. Apparently she
distrusted Linden's insistence on
Esmer. Yet she replied, "He returned while you slept. I
will summon him, if you wish it." Linden shook her
head. "When he came back," she said through waves
of fever, "the
malice stopped. The desire for harm."
Mahrtiir had told her, He wields a storm among the
mountains.
Hami's eyes widened. "And you conceive that the
malice is his? That he raised ill against you in the
storm?"
The idea visibly disturbed the Cords. Mahrtiir
muttered a denial through his teeth. Too fearful to say
more, Linden clutched her frangible balance and
waited for Hami's response.
"Ringthane," the Manethrall sighed, "you judge him
harshly. That you have cause to do so is beyond
question. In this, however, your mistrust misleads you.
"Throughout his absence from us, we kept watch over
him. Ramen witnessed closely the nature of his
distress-and of his power. It was not directed against
you. Of this we are certain."
Hami's gaze urged Linden to give Esmer the benefit of
the doubt. His acceptance by the Ranyhyn compelled
the loyalty of the Ramen.
Abruptly Stave spoke. "Yet that which he invoked is
evil." His tone left no room for contradiction. "I have
felt it. Even now it stalks the Verge of Wandering.
"The Ramen also have felt it," he told Hami. "Why
otherwise do you prepare to depart?"
Depart-? For the first time, Linden met the Master's
gaze. The Ramen were leaving?
She and Stave had returned from the horserite
through a scourge of malevolence. Who had inspired
the ferocity of those winds, if not Esmer?
"Chosen," Stave informed her, "Esmer has summoned
a darkness more dire than any storm. The Ramen
must flee before it."
With a snarl of anger, Hami rounded on him. "Have
you no heart, Bloodguard? You know the severity of
that which lies before her. Why then do you seek to
hasten her away from rest?"
Involuntarily Linden sagged against Liand.
Summoned---? Esmer, what have you done?
At once, Hami turned back to her. "It is for your
sake." The woman's tone pleaded on Esmer's behalf.
"He seeks to aid you."
"He has done well," Mahrtiir put in harshly. "She has
named her purpose. He serves her as the Ramen
cannot. Nor could the sleepless ones perform what he
has accomplished."
Stave's voice cut through the responses of the
Manethralls. "Assuredly rest would speed the
Chosen's healing " He sounded unexpectedly
vehement. "Where may she do so? Here? In the path
of ruin? She cannot. To think otherwise is folly. If she
will not flee, as the Ramen must, then she can only
confront her peril. There is no rest for her."
Hami replied with a growl of exasperation. "Have
care, Bloodguard. You demean us, and we will not
suffer it.
"We intend that the Ringthane should rest until we
have determined the course of this evil. Then we will
bear her to safety. Already we have readied a litter so
that she may continue to rest among us as we
withdraw."
Linden did not look at Hami or Stave. The hostility
between them pained her. It seemed to imply that she
could not trust either of them. And the Land needed
all of its friends. Jeremiah needed them.
Turning away from them, she studied the
Stonedownor's troubled mien. "Liand," she
murmured, "what did Esmer do?"
He gave her a stricken glance, then ducked his head. "I
know not. I have not left your side. No one has spoken
to me. I did not know that the Ramen mean to
depart."
For a moment, everyone around her remained silent,
reluctant to answer her aloud; to put her peril into
words. On either side of her, Bhapa and Pahni stood
motionless, stopped in the act of offering her
amanibhavam and treasure-berries.
Then Mahrtiir said like a hawk, "Chosen, it is your
intent to enter a Fall. Esmer has enabled you to do so.
He has called Fangthane's malign creation to the
Verge of Wandering."
When Linden understood what he was saying, her
heart lifted as if she had heard trumpets.
smer had summoned a caesure.
The news did nothing to ease her complex dread,
relieve her emotional fever. If anything, it made her
fears more immediate, brought her chosen crisis
nearer. Chills and urgency shook her until she felt
almost dismembered. Nevertheless Mahrtiir's
announcement seemed to tap a wellspring of purpose
deep within her. Days of cruel frustration fell away as
if she had cut the bindings of a millstone. At last she
would be able to take action; to stop following other
people's decisions from emergency to emergency.
And she would not have to spend days or weeks on
horseback, wandering the Land in search of a caesure,
while Lord Foul multiplied obstacles against her. She
could dare her doom now.
She should have been terrified. She was terrified. But
she was also sure. The fever which threatened to
paralyze her could only be annealed in fire.
At this moment, just one question remained to
undermine her certainty. Her cheeks were flushed like
a promise of flames as she confronted Stave past the
staring Manethralls and Cords.
"Yes, it's dire," she admitted. "I know that." Still she
could not speak above a hoarse whisper. Nevertheless
her voice was full of implied conflagration. "But I'm
going to do it. I think it's worth the risk.
"Will you come with me?"
She expected that he would refuse. He had already
proclaimed his determination to ride away so that he
could warn the Masters. And the horserite may have
convinced him to oppose her directly. Why else had he
postponed his departure? Yet last night he had gazed
at her with an unwonted softness, as though he had
been touched in spite of his intransigence
He faced her flatly: she could not read him. She had
never been able to see into the hearts of his people. If
he decided to attack her on the spot, she would receive
no warning of any kind.
Nevertheless she studied him with fever in her eyes,
and waited for him to declare himself.
For a few heartbeats, Stave appeared to consider his
options. Then he replied, "The wishes of the Ranyhyn
have been made plain to me. If I do not accompany
you, Hynyn will withdraw his acceptance."
Stiffly the Haruchai shrugged. "And the horserite has
given me cause to remain at your side for a time."
Stung by relief, Linden's eyes misted and ran. She
could not clear her sight until her hands found Pahni's
bowl of aliantha; until the taste of treasure-berries
filled her mouth and throat with healing.
Already she owed the Ranyhyn a debt too great to be
repaid.
hile Linden ate aliantha lightly-very lightly-sprinkled
with crushed amanibhavam, most of the Ramen left
the shelter to continue their preparations for
departure. They did not expect Esmer's caesure to
leave any part of their encampment undamaged.
Before he went, Mahrtiir explained tersely that he had
selected Bhapa and Pahni to accompany him, rather
than any of his own Cords, because of their kinship
with Sahah. Then he led them away to gather supplies
for an extended journey into the unknown hazards of
time.
Char was nowhere to be seen. Apparently he had been
dispatched on an errand of some kind. Of her people,
only Hami stayed with Linden. At once solicitous and
alarmed, the Manethrall fretted over Linden's
condition as Linden stoked her courage with treasure-
berries enhanced by the dangerous roborant of
amanibhavam.
Her shivering eased somewhat as she absorbed the
sustenance of the Land, but she remained perilously
labile; close to terror.
When the Ramen had dispersed, Stave approached
her. In spite of his native stoicism, he walked with a
pronounced limp. Hours on horseback had inflamed
his injury. Yet he proposed to ride again soon, as long
and as far as she required.
At least "for a time." Whatever that meant.
As if Liand were not present, the Master announced,
"The Stonedownor must remain here. His mount
cannot accompany the Ranyhyn. If he attempts the
Fall, he will be lost."
Liand might have retorted hotly; but Linden stopped
him by touching his chest with her palm. "Anele has
the same problem," she answered, trembling. "But I
need him. And I need Liand. We'll have to figure
something out."
The young man gave her a look of gratitude; but she
kept her attention on Stave. "The Ramen don't ride.
How will they stay with us?"
Stave did not look away. "Their bond with the
Ranyhyn cannot be severed. Where the Ranyhyn lead,
they will be able to follow. The Stonedownor has no
such bond."
Linden sighed. "Then he can ride with you. I'll take
Anele with me."
The Haruchai raised an eyebrow. But he did not
object.
E
When she glanced at Liand, she saw him grinning as
though she had given him a gift.
Before he could speak, she muttered, "Don't you dare
thank me. I'm not doing you any favors." Her voice
shook with fear for him. "If this doesn't kill us, we
could end up in places worse than your worst
nightmares. If I didn't need your help so badly, I
wouldn't risk any of you."
Except Anele, who could hardly suffer more than he
already did.
Liand went on grinning; but he took her seriously
enough to remain silent. Sighing again, she told him,
"We're going to need your supplies. You'd better get
them. Bring as much as you can carry."
The Ramen might provide everything necessary; but
she wanted an excuse to send the Stonedownor away.
If she could, she meant to spare him the confrontation
that awaited her.
"Yes, certainly," Liand said without hesitation. At
once, he hurried away as if he were eager to risk not
only his life but his sanity in her name.
Within herself, Linden sagged. Devoutly she prayed
that the young man would not have cause to regret his
loyalty. However, a more immediate concern
demanded her attention. She did not know how near
the caesure had come. She might not have much time
left.
To Stave, she said abruptly, "Before we do this, I've
got to talk to Esmer. Will you go with me?" The senses
of the Haruchai were more discerning than hers: no
doubt Stave knew exactly where to find Cail's son. "I
understand if you prefer to keep your distance. But I
could use your company."
This time, Stave raised both eyebrows. "If you wish
it." He may have felt surprise, but his tone held no hint
of alarm. "He stands at the edge of the encampment.
The way is not far."
Gratefully she took his arm. Clinging to the tacit
validation of his support, she stepped out into the
ceaseless rain.
The mild, steady drizzle drenched her hair; washed
the heat of fire and fever from her cheeks. It was
indeed much warmer than it had been the previous
day. Nevertheless it was cool enough to leach away the
residual warmth of the shelter. Her chills seemed to
worsen with every step as Stave took her among the
busy Ramen past the open center of the encampment.
Her fear had soaked into the marrow of her bones. She
had not forgotten Covenant's words in Anele's mouth.
You need the ring. But be careful with it. It feeds the
caesures. But he had died long ago; and now she did
not intend to regard his warning.
He had also said, I can't help you unless you find me.
She did not know how to do so, except by daring the
Land's past.
Esmer had prepared the way, apparently seeking to
aid her. Before she went farther, accepted his help, she
needed to know how much she could trust him.
Limping, Stave escorted her northward. In that
direction, veiled by the rain and the teeming clouds,
the Verge of Wandering narrowed gradually toward
the Land. There Cail's son stood alone with his back to
the last shelters, ignoring the swift preparations of the
Ramen.
If he sensed Linden's approach, or Stave's, he gave no
sign. Instead he concentrated through the grey drizzle
as if he sought to draw the caesure toward him by
force of will.
At her first blurred glimpse of him, Linden's guts
knotted, disturbed by the nausea which had troubled
her during their previous encounters. He stood like a
cynosure against the shrouded background of the rain,
bright with the queasy squirming of power. As soon as
she saw him, she wondered how she had failed to
discern him earlier. His vast capabilities, like his
inbred conflicts, seemed as unmistakable as wailing.
In his presence, something within her turned numb.
She was no longer sure how to question him.
Yet Stave did not hesitate, although he had more cause
for apprehension. And when they were within three or
four steps, Esmer turned to regard them with eyes the
color of storm-wracked seas.
Danger seethed in him. For reasons of his own, he
attempted a diffident, unconvincing smile. "You are
well come, Wildwielder." His tone was full of obscure
fears. They gnawed at each other like old bones. "The
Fall is a few hundred paces distant, no more. Soon it
will become manifest to your senses."
He conveyed the impression that he thought she might
take offense at his efforts on her behalf.
Deliberately Linden released Stave's arm so that he
could move freely if Esmer attacked. Then she
advanced to stand between Cail's son and the Master.
The Ramen were certain that Esmer had not sent
malice against her after the horserite.
Fighting chills, she demanded without preamble,
"What's going on here, Esmer?" The caesure was too
near for politeness. "First you practically kill Stave.
Then you offer to answer my questions, but you don't
say much. You make it clear that you want to be my
friend and my enemy at the same time. And now
you're helping me?
"Do you expect me to believe that this time you aren't
going to hurt anybody?"
Through the wet fabric of her shirt, she clutched
Covenant's ring for courage; but the cold metal gave
her no comfort. It felt inert, numb; unreachable.
"For all I know," she finished, "this is some crazy
attempt to help Lord Foul destroy the Land."
Esmer frowned. Abruptly his manner became acerbic,
self-punishing. "Yet you must trust tne. I have served
you well. And I have brought ruin upon this
encampment. When the Ramen return to the Verge of
Wandering, they will find wreckage rather than
sanctuary. Thus is my nature satisfied. I have harmed
those who have
1
given me naught but friendship. If you do not trust me,
you will render their losses valueless."
Linden stared at him. His rapid changes disconcerted
her. And she did not know what to make of his
assertion. Had he consciously hurt the Ramen to aid
her?
At last, she referred her doubt to the Haruchai.
"Stave?"
"The Fall approaches," he stated. "I will not trust this
Esmer. I do not lightly accept his aid. Yet he has
summoned a Fall like any other. It will meet your
purpose, if you are able to master its evil. In this he
speaks sooth."
Harshly Linden asked Esmer, "Is that true? Did you
summon a Fall? Or did you create it?"
Did his power resemble wild magic?
"I have no lore to cause such rifts." His eyes were full
of advancing squalls. "When we spoke, I discerned
your purpose. Therefore I withdrew among the
mountains, that my labors would occasion no other
harm. In your name, Wildwielder, I have unleashed
fierce theurgies, seeking first to discover the location
and course of an apt caesure, and then to compel it
hither. Thus I hope to counter the loss which the
Ramen will suffer."
Through her nausea and chills, Linden heard violence
and remorse, but no falsehood. Gail's son might
commit atrocities without number, but he would not
lie.
For an instant or two, his struggles filled her with
empathy. "You're tearing yourself apart," she told
him more gently. "Do you know that? You should pick
a side."
"I do so constantly." Now his voice sounded as damp
as the rain, drenched in sorrow. "That is my doom."
His desire to serve her was so poignant that she could
feel its ache in him. Apparently Gail's legacy
outweighed the fatal hunger of the merewives, at least
for the moment. And he had already called a caesure
for her. Perhaps in his present phase he would do
more
"All right." Linden made a conscious attempt to catch
him before his mood shifted again. "Since you seem to
be on my side at the moment, tell me about your
connection to Kastenessen."
Why had he sought to prevent Anele from speaking of
the Appointed?
At once, Esmer resumed his diffidence. "He is my
grandsire. I serve him utterly. As I also serve you."
In bafflement, she protested, "Damn it, Esmer. You
aren't making sense. Do you mean that Kastenessen
and I are on the same side?"
It was possible. Kastenessen had defied the Elohim and
his own nature for the love of a mortal woman. He and
Linden might have more in common than she had
imagined. If he had indeed broken free of his prison,
he might be willing to take risks as extravagant as hers
for the sake of his lover.
But he was Elohim; and the Elohim whom she had
known had not seemed capable of any emotion that she
would have recognized as love.
Esmer sighed. Quietly, humbly, he said like the water
on his face, "The Elohim speak of Weird as the ur-
viles do of Weird. There is also the Worm of the
World's End. It is my doom. I have no other answer."
The damp soaked into Linden's bones, aggravating her
fever. Chills tugged at her concentration. "All right,"
she said again. "All right. I don't understand, but right
now that doesn't matter.
"Come with me." Guide me. "Do some good with all
that power. If you really want to help me, help me
now."
The sheer intensity of his uneasy puissance made her
stomach clench whenever she studied him directly.
In response, Esmer turned his head away. "I must not.
In my presence, you will surely fail "
She should have known what he meant. Perhaps if she
had been less ill, she would have been able to think
more clearly. But her fever continued to pull her away
from herself. She could no longer look at Esmer.
Instead she searched the grey vista of the rain in the
direction of the Land as if her fate were written there,
spelled out in falling droplets and cold.
"Chosen," Stave said at her back, "this gains nothing.
He conceals his enmity in confusion, yet it remains
enmity nonetheless. It is folly to heed him."
"Then call the Ranyhyn," she told the Master faintly.
"Let's do this."
He complied at once, raising a shrill whistle that
sounded strangely forlorn in the drizzle; devoid of
resonance or echoes. Unregarded by either Linden or
Esmer, he whistled again, and yet again.
When the rain had washed his call from the air, she
sensed movement behind her. Ramen approached
from the encampment, a throng of them. They had
come to say good-bye
Moments later, a heavy woolen cloak dropped onto her
shoulders. Its hood covered her head. The sudden
weight surprised her until she felt Liand beside her.
"Linden," he said severely, "this is madness. You are
ill, yet you stand unprotected in the rain. Already your
ailment worsens. Are you a child, that you must be
warded at every step?"
Before she could reply, Stave commanded, "Attend,
Chosen."
With an effort, Linden withdrew her gaze from the
shrouded north, turned her head-and found herself
confronted by ur-viles. Somehow they had concealed
themselves from her senses; or she was shivering too
hard to notice them.
Esmer's manner had shifted again. Scornfully he
pronounced, "They watch against
me, as I have said. You did not discern them. Their
lore enables them to veil their presence."
They must have been nearby for some time. Esmer had
been aware of them-and had not considered them
worthy of comment.
Trembling more violently, Linden leaned on Liand.
Now beyond the ur-viles she could see the approaching
Ramen, Hami and Mahrtiir first among them. As the
Manethralls and Cords came near, the ur-viles moved
to form a wedge; concentrate their power.
Its tip pointed, not at Gail's son, but at Linden.
The leading Ramen quickened their strides. Soon
Hami and Mahrtiir stood in front of Linden, with
Pahni and Bhapa at their shoulders. Deliberately they
interposed themselves between Linden and the
Demondim-spawn.
Behind them, Char guided Anele forward. The young
Cord looked vaguely crestfallen, as if his pride had
suffered a blow. He may have considered himself old
enough, experienced enough, to accompany Linden
and Mahrtiir in Sahah's name. If so, he had been
refused.
Anele shuffled toward Linden as though he had no say
in his own movements. He appeared bedraggled and
bewildered, his tattered raiment drenched, as if he had
spent days wandering aimlessly about the vale. In spite
of his blindness, however, he conveyed the impression
that he was aware of her.
The thought that he might have been possessed in her
absence disturbed her. With the last of her lucidity,
she turned to Char. "Is he all right?" she asked. "Did
anything happen to him while I was away?"
The Cord bowed uncomfortably, as if he feared that he
had committed some affront. "He has been as he is,
Ringthane. Since your departure, he has betrayed little
cognizance of us, though he permitted us to tend his
needs. He appeared to await your
return."
Again Char bowed. When Linden said nothing, he
backed away from her until she lost sight of him
among the gathered Ramen.
At the focus of the wedge, the largest of the ur-viles,
the loremaster, abruptly began to bark: an insistent
guttural gush of sound fretted with peril. Anele cocked
his head in a listening attitude, but did not react in any
other way. Esmer gazed up into the rain as if he did
not deign to hear the loremaster. Yet when the flow of
barking stopped, he responded in kind, still letting
raindrops splash into his eyes.
The loremaster answered, and Esmer replied: they
seemed to argue with each other. The sound of their
voices scraped along Linden's nerves, accentuating her
chills until her skin itched and her ears ached.
Mahrtiir held his garrote in both hands, ready for use.
Anticipation glinted in his
eyes. But he did not speak. Like the rest of the Ramen,
he deferred to Hami where Linden was concerned.
Hami ignored the ur-viles and Esmer. "Ringthane,"
she said, "we have come to bid you farewell. You must
depart soon, as must the Ramen. Ere then, however-"
The woman hesitated, then said intently, "Linden
Avery, I will not challenge your choices. The Land's
needs rest heavily upon you-and more so upon you
than any other, though all are affected. Both your
worth and your risk surpass my estimation.
"Yet it must be said-if the saying of it will not offend
you-that your purpose appears unwise. You are ill, and
worsening. If you hope to master a Fall, will you not
require health and strength?
"You have said that the Ranyhyn fear you. Is this not
the cause? That your resolve imperils the Land?"
Linden heard Hami's words, but she could not attend
to them. The clashing speech of the ur-viles confused
her. If she listened to their harsh language much
longer, she would start to howl.
Unaware of her own motions, she raised her hands to
cover her ears. "Tell them to stop," she urged the
Manethrall. "I can't stand this."
"You would do well to suffer it," Esmer retorted
immediately. "I serve you still, though you disdain my
efforts."
The loremaster fell silent, clamping shut the thin slit of
its mouth until the muscles of its jaw bulged with
urgency.
Linden sagged against Liand as if a bubble of distress
had burst, releasing her to fever.
"Explain," Stave demanded of Esmer in her stead.
Gail's son faced the Haruchai with green threats
seething in his eyes. "The ur-viles distrusted her
purpose as it appeared to them. They demanded
explanation. I have informed them that she will dare
the past, seeking the Staff of Law with only a
madman's memory to guide her. Now they have
determined to aid her.
"They will accompany her. With their lore, they will
pierce the madman's confusion, sharing that which
they descry with the Ranyhyn. Thus she may hope to
be guided accurately."
None of this made sense to Linden: she was too far
gone in tremors. Instead of listening, trying to
understand, she lifted her face to the rain, as Esmer
had done.
Through the spatter on her face, she found that she
could hear the distant mutter of hooves. While Stave
confronted Esmer, and the Ramen waited in suspense,
she wondered vaguely how Hyn and Hynyn alone
made so much noise on the sodden grass.
"And this you name service," Stave countered. "Do
you also call it sooth?" Esmer could have killed him
where he stood, but he did not falter. "Speak truly,
scion of Elo-
I
him. I have heard the contention in your words, and
theirs. What have you urged of them that they refuse
to countenance?"
Another swift change overtook Esmer. He seemed to
shrink before Stave, almost cringing. "The ur-viles
mean to accompany her, yet they insist that she will
fail. Her purpose will serve their former master, whom
they have betrayed. I have averred that she is the
Wildwielder and must endure the outcome of her
choices, but they do not relent."
More firmly, he added, "Also they do not trust me.
That is our dispute."
Then he turned to Linden; and the pressure of his
regard-the sense of troubled seas mounting toward
storms-pulled her attention away from the advancing
rumble. Involuntarily she looked into the depths of his
eyes as if she were capable of comprehending him.
The scale of his distress made her want to vomit.
Diffident again, he said like raindrops, "Wildwielder,
they will oppose you if you do not permit them to heal
you."
"`Heal'-?" Liand asked. "Are they able to do so? Does
their lore encompass her affliction?"
To Linden, Esmer's words were indistinguishable from
the sound of hooves. It seemed impossible that Hyn
and Hynyn could be so loud. But Jeremiah was the
Despiser's prisoner. As soon as the Ranyhyn arrived,
she meant to ride straight down the throat of the Fall,
and to hell with anyone or anything that stood in her
way.
Esmer did not reply. Instead he stepped aside, barking
dismissively to the ur-viles.
As if in answer, the wedge nudged its way forward,
gently urging the Ramen aside until the loremaster
stood directly in front of Linden.
The black creature was little more than an arm's
length from her. The wide nostrils in the center of its
eyeless face gaped for her scent wetly.
Liand quickly shifted to Linden's side; held her with
his left arm so that his right was free to defend her. At
the same time, Mahrtiir gave his fighting cord a snap
and stepped closer. Bhapa and Pahni poised
themselves to spring.
Stave now stood at Linden's shoulder opposite Liand,
although she had not seen him move.
Somewhere behind them, Esmer laughed like a crash
of surf.
"Ringthane," Manethrall Hami said urgently. "The
Ramen know no ill of these urviles. Their service to the
Render is many centuries past, and has not been
renewed. Yet in your name we will oppose them, if that
is your wish. Only speak so that we may know your
desire.
"If you are too ill to answer," she warned Linden,
"then I must believe that you require their healing."
Something was expected of her: Linden knew that. It
plucked at her wordlessly. Liand and Stave, the
Ramen, Esmer, the ur-viles: they all wanted
something. Anele asked her for nothing because he
could not. Nevertheless his madness made its own
demands. Only the Ranyhyn were simply content to
aid her. They had given her their warning in the
horserite. Now they would keep their promises.
Unaware of what she did, she watched the
encampment for Hyn and Hynyn. When they
appeared, her heart lifted as it had when Mahrtiir had
informed her of Esmer's caesure. The stars on their
foreheads shone in spite of the gloom and moisture. No
mere rainfall could dampen their glory.
And they were not alone. Other Ranyhyn, three, four,
five of them, followed Hyn and Hynyn galloping
between the shelters toward Linden and her
companions.
Seven Ranyhyn. Stave and herself. Anele and Liand.
Mahrtiir, Bhapa, and Pahni. Of their own accord, the
great horses offered all the help for which Linden
could have asked.
No Raman had ever ridden a Ranyhyn; but she did not
wish Mahrtiir and his Cords to refuse. The time had
come to redefine old commitments.
Fever and sudden joy surged through her. As her
heart rose, she raised her arms and her voice as well;
shouted in celebration as well as welcome, "Yes!"
She did not see the loremaster produce a knife with a
curved and burning blade as if the creature had
created the weapon within its black flesh. Nor did she
hear the urviles growling together as though in
invocation. Power swelled through the wedge as the
loremaster sliced open its palm, then cupped its fingers
to catch the viscid welling of its ebony blood; but she
took no notice of it.
She did not realize that the ur-viles had interpreted
her cry as permission until the loremaster snatched at
her arm, pulling her hand toward it.
In the brief shock before she remembered fear, Linden
saw the blade glow like molten metal over her palm:
ruddy and lambent; potent as ichor. Then, while she
tried to snatch back her hand, the loremaster drew a
line of red pain across the base of her thumb. At once,
the creature upended its palm over hers; clasped its
fingers around hers so their cuts and their blood met
and mingled.
Liand struck at the ur-vile's wrist, but could not break
its grip: the loremaster held the power of the whole
wedge. At the same time, Mahrtiir flung his garrote
around the loremaster's neck. Instantly a flash of
vitriol and flame incinerated the cord.
Alone among Linden's immediate companions, Stave
made no attempt to defend her. He may have believed
that the ur-viles could prevent her from entering the
caesure.
Her call of welcome to the Ranyhyn became a wail
-which died in her throat as strength like a charge of
coursers pounded from her hand up her arm into the
center of her heart. Between one throb of her pulse
and the
next, she was exalted; translated from pain and fever
and terror into a realm of illimitable possibilities;
suffused with cascading health and vitality and life as
though she had become Earthpower.
In that instant, she seemed suddenly equal to her fate.
The surge of transcendence vanished almost at once.
Yet its brevity was essential. If it had endured too long,
she might have torn herself apart in sheer ecstasy.
Instead the rush of power left her shaken,
simultaneously drained and galvanized, and shivering
as if she were still feverish. But she was not ill now.
Oh, she was not. Instead she felt reborn, made new,
positively redeemed: as fresh with potential as a
sunrise.
She could not speak. Waves of renewal rolled through
her, tumbling her into a confusion of tears and
gratitude and yearning. Somewhere beyond her, Liand
pleaded for her attention, although his health-sense
must have told him that she was well. In the
background, Stave and the Ramen welcomed the
Ranyhyn, while Esmer exchanged imprecations or
promises with the ur-viles. But she did not return to
herself until she felt a hand plucking at her cloak and
blinked her eyes clear to find Anele in front of her.
Thomas Covenant's love shone from him, as it had
once before. Standing ankledeep in the sodden grass,
he said to her in Covenant's familiar voice-but softly,
softly, so that only she would hear him-"Go now,
beloved. While you can. Just be wary of me.
Remember that I'm dead."
Beware the halfhand.
She stared at the old man, too surprised-and too
entirely transformed-to react. Some part of her tried
to cry out, but her heart had no words
Then the light of possession disappeared from Anele's
mien, snatched away by the sudden interruption of the
loremaster. Before Linden could protest, the ur-vile
reached out with its molten blade and flicked a small
gouge in the thin flesh of Anele's forearm. Snuffling
damply, the creature put its mouth to the wound and
sucked.
With their lore, they will pierce the madman's
confusion
Anele suffered the loremaster's actions without protest
or struggle: he seemed unaware of them. Covenant's
brief presence must have reassured him. Mere days
ago he had yelled in distress, Creatures make Anele
remember!
Had the ur-viles themselves searched for the Staff of
Law? For what purpose? Until the loremaster finished
with the old man and stepped back, Linden did not
notice that the Ranyhyn had grown restive.
They had arrived together as she had imagined them
entering the dell for Elena's horserite; but now they
separated, stamping their hooves and tossing their
manes among the Ramen. Hyn came purposefully
toward Linden: Hynyn approached Stave. The others
ranged themselves before Anele and Liand, Mahrtiir
and his Cords.
The three Ramen stared, stricken dumb, as star-
browed horses urged them to mount.
As one, the throng drew back. Voices rose through the
rain: whispers of astonishment; low cries of
expostulation. Hami's eyes went wide and white as if
her ready pride had become chagrin.
Responding to their people as well as to the Ranyhyn,
Mahrtiir, Pahni, and Bhapa immediately prostrated
themselves like supplicants in the sodden grass. They
may have feared that what happened now would
undermine the foundations of everything the Ramen
had ever done; that the meaning of their lives might
crack and fall.
No Raman had ever ridden a Ranyhyn-but nor had
any Raman refused the will of the great horses.
Through the confusion of voices, the Ranyhyn made
blowing noises that sounded like affectionate jeers as
they lowered their heads to nudge at the three prone
Ramen.
Linden watched Mahrtiir, Bhapa, and Pahni in
suspense, afraid that none of them would move; that
the caesure would overtake her before the Ramen
could redefine themselves. But then the Manethrall
shook himself as if he were gathering his courage and
climbed unsteadily to his feet. His voice shook like
Linden's as he announced, "The will of Ranyhyn is
plain. We cannot serve the Ringthane-or the Land-if
we do not ride."
The horses replied with a resounding whinny of
approval.
"No Raman has ever done so," objected Hami thinly.
"No Ranyhyn," Mahrtiir answered, gaining strength,
"has ever offered to bear a Raman "
Still Bhapa and Pahni remained prostrate. Like their
people, they were caught in a contradiction that they
could not resolve. Softly in the background, Esmer
exchanged a harsh commentary with the ur-viles.
"Then let it be so," said a new voice; and Linden saw
that Manethrall Dohn had moved to the forefront of
crowd. His years and his scars gave him an air of
authority. He did not speak loudly, but his words
seemed to carry through the rain into the future. "Too
long have the Ranyhyn and their Ramen been exiled
from the Plains of Ra. Once in this place we
determined that we would never again allow
Fangthane to ravage the Ranyhyn. We have held to
that promise. Yet now my heart misgives me. I fear
that we have entered the last days of the Land. If we
do not accept this opportunity to strike against the
Render, we will be forever homeless."
For a moment longer, no one moved. Then Mahrtiir
reached down abruptly, grabbed Pahni and Bhapa by
the backs of their jerkins, and tugged them erect. "Up,
Cords," he growled with hectic eagerness. "Are we
craven, that we fear to give our lives a new meaning?"
Under her breath, Linden muttered, "Thank God."
Go now, beloved. While you can. She did not know
how much longer she could contain the pressure
building
within her.
II
As if Mahrtiir had broken a trance, all of the Ramen
seemed to slough off their wonder and dismay. They
looked around them; studied the sky; peered anxiously
into the north. Singly and in groups, they turned back
toward the encampment. Soon only Hami remained
with Linden and her companions.
"Ringthane, we must depart," said the Manethrall.
Now that a decision had been reached, she seemed
resigned to its implications. "We cannot withstand this
Fall."
Linden turned toward the woman. "Then go, Hami.
Take care of yourselves. Protect the Ranyhyn. I'm
grateful for everything you've done.
"I'll come back if I can," she told the concern in
Hami's eyes. "If I can't, look for me in the Land.
You'll always be needed."
Hami's gaze clouded; and her throat worked as if she
wished to say more. Instead, however, she bowed
deeply, mutely, in the fashion of her people. After that,
she wheeled and trotted away after the other Ramen.
Before he left, Char spoke privately to Mahrtiir.
Linden winced, thinking that Mahrtiir might rebuff
the young Cord in some hurtful way. But then she saw
Char offer his garrote to the Manethrall-and noticed
as well that Mahrtiir's hands had been scorched in his
attempt to throttle the loremaster.
Mahrtiir accepted Char's cord with taut grace.
Although his fingers hurt, he rum
pled Char's hair: a quick gesture of affection. Then the
Cord ran after the rest of the
Ramen, and Mahrtiir turned to Bhapa and Pahni, and
to the champing Ranyhyn. Satisfied and urgent,
Linden faced Liand at last.
"Linden," he began like a man in shock, "I-"
She stopped him gently. "Liand, thank you. For
everything." She felt almost frantic to be on her way.
Nevertheless she took the time to add, "I'm lucky I met
you. If you decide you want to go with the Ramen, I'11
still consider myself lucky."
Her words seemed to pluck away his apprehensions.
"Are you mad?" he replied with a sudden grin. "Can
you believe that I will let pass an occasion to cross time
upon the back of a Ranyhyn? I have been too long a
mere Stonedownor. Here I will become more than I
was." He laughed. "I mean to teach Stave and the
Masters the error of their mastery."
Linden nodded. What else could she do? She had
already tried to dissuade him too often.
Hurrying now, she strode toward Hyn, calling over her
shoulder, "Mahrtiir, it's time! We need to go."
Her senses had caught their first taste of the caesure. If
it did not slacken its advance or drift aside, it would
soon be visible to ordinary sight.
Mahrtiir came promptly to help her mount while
Bhapa and Pahni guided Anele to the smallest of the
Ranyhyn, a muscular pinto with flaring eyes and
shaggy hocks whom they called Hrama. Linden
worried that Anele might be afraid to ride; but some
visceral interaction between Hrama's vitality and his
own Earthpower seemed to calm him, and he did not
protest as the Cords boosted him onto Hrama's back.
By the time Hyn had turned toward the north, Stave
and Mahrtiir were mounted as well. The Manethrall
looked exultant, elevated beyond himself, and crowded
with anticipation. Stolidly Stave brought Hynyn to
Hyn's side as Bhapa helped Liand vault onto a
palomino stallion named Rhohm. Mahrtiir joined
Linden opposite the Haruchai. Then Pahni and Bhapa
sprang onto their own Ranyhyn, following behind
Liand and Anele to ensure that no one fell back or was
lost.
At the same time, the ur-viles changed their formation.
Running on all fours, they scattered around the riders
to form a black ring with their loremaster in the lead.
As they did so, they chanted together like a chorus of
dogs.
Once in position, the loremaster exchanged its ruddy
blade for a pointed iron rod like a scepter or javelin;
and from the metal, dark force flowed around the
riders, enclosing them with vitriol.
Esmer had disappeared. Linden scanned the rain
quickly, but felt no hint of him. Apparently he had
simply folded his power around himself and winked
away.
She remained where she was, staring into the gloom.
After the brief respite of Esmer's absence, her stomach
felt a renewed nausea as the swirling wrongness of the
caesure approached. Peering through the raindrops,
she began to discern the visible outlines of the Fall.
The caesure she had seen from Kevin's Watch had
resembled the aura of a migraine: a sickening
phosphene dance which seemed to cast every
individual mote of reality into chaos. Without her
health-sense, she might have believed that the swirl
took place among the neurons of her brain rather than
within the fabric of existence. But this Fall looked
worse; stronger. Multiplied, perhaps, by the pressure
of Esmer's summons, it formed a howl of distortion
and madness against the grey backdrop of the rain.
The sight reminded her of damnation. Abandon hope
Although she was soaked, the caesure's ill covered her
skin with formication, as if fire ants crawled through
her clothes.
"Chosen?" Stave asked, questioning her hesitation-or
her resolve.
"Oh, hell." Frightened now on a scale that surpassed
prolonged frustration and metaphysical chills, Linden
reached into the front of her shirt; drew out
Covenant's ring. Closing the cold circle in her fist, she
muttered, "Let's do it."
If Joan were indeed the cause of the caesures, then
entering one might resemble being plunged into her
madness. But Linden had already survived Joan's
torment once
Joan was stronger now. In the Land, white gold
inherited its true power; and her despair fed on itself,
swelling ceaselessly. But Linden had grown as well.
She was strengthened by the support of her friends as
by the healing of the ur-viles. She also held a
white ring. And when gunfire had first stripped her of
her former life, she had not known that the Despiser
would claim her son.
The loremaster heard her and understood. It began to
pace forward through the water-heavy grass, holding
high its scepter. Grimly Linden touched Hyn's flanks
with her heels. The Ranyhyn quivered under her, but
did not falter.
Then all of the riders were in motion, trotting ahead
within the ur-viles' protective theurgy.
The chanting of the creatures rose. Gradually the
Ranyhyn quickened their pace to match the rhythm of
the invocation.
Rain splashed past Linden's hood into her eyes. Now
the caesure resembled a vast swarm of hornets. Its
power shocked her senses: it seemed to swallow the
north in its frenzy. She no longer wondered why
Kevin's Watch had fallen. The wonder was that any
aspect of the living world could endure the caesure's
evil.
Anele had done so. His inborn Earthpower had
preserved him then. It would again. But the rest of the
company would have to rely on the Demondim-spawn-
and on Linden's uncertain ability to use wild magic.
With Stave and Mahrtiir beside her, she gripped
Covenant's ring and followed the ur-viles at a canter
into the turmoil of the Fall. At the last instant, she may
have shouted Jeremiah's name. If so, she did not hear
herself. The firestorm assault of the caesure had
already stricken her deaf and dumb and blind.
5.


.Cgainst _Y'ime
In an instant, formication became the world. It filled
Linden's senses
 ME though biting ants had burrowed into her flesh,
chewing their way deeper and deeper toward the
essential fibers-the thews of will and purpose,
experience and memory-which bound her identity into
a coherent whole. She felt that she was being torn from
herself strand by strand; ripped to agony.
She would not have believed that she could endure
such pain and remain conscious of it. Surely the
human mind could call upon blankness or insanity to
defend it? How else had Jeremiah kept himself alive;
able to be loved? How else had Anele borne the cost of
his bereavements?
Nevertheless she had no means to protect herself. No
aspect of her being remained intact to ward her
against the meticulous excruciation of the caesure. She
had entered a demesne of flux, inchoate and chaotic;
altogether devoid of Time's necessary sequences. Life
could not exist outside the stricture of chronology. She
remained alive only because she occupied no
consecutive moments during which she could have
ceased to be.
Instead of dying, she was caught in an eternity of
incineration as though she had been struck by a bolt of
lightning which would never end.
And yet
Formication, devouring, was only one of the caesure's
avatars. It had others. Her entire being had become a
timeless shriek. Simultaneously, however, she stood
alone in a realm of utter white and cold.
It had no features and no dimensions in any direction.
It was simply gelid white multiplied to infinity, faceless
as snow, demeaning as ice: vast and desolate, entirely
uninhabitable: a heatless interstice between the
possible moments of existence. The cold was an infinite
fire. It would have peeled the skin from her bones if
this moment could have modulated forward in time.
But here there was no time, no movement, no possible
modulation.
Only her solitary presence in that place defined it.
There her loneliness was complete. It seemed less
bearable than pain. She could have wailed forever and
gone unheard.
Nevertheless some form of movement was permitted to
her. She could turn her head. Take steps as though she
stood on solid ground. Gasp as freezing bit into her
lungs. She could feel the cold stab like a krill through
the bullet hole in her shirt. Surely that implied a state
of being in which one thing led to another? A condition
in which her pain might be heeded?
But she saw only bitter white, and her steps took her
nowhere, and her gasping Puffed no vapor into the
isolation.
And yet
Formication tore her apart and white emptiness bereft
her simultaneously. And simultaneously again, in still
another avatar of the caesure's evil, she found herself
gazing out at a wasteland of shattered stone and
rubble. She heard the lorn hiss of the wind punctuated
by the rhythmic fall and retreat of surf; and although
she did not look, she knew that behind her the seas
crashed perpetually against a broken cliff.
as
The raw damaged rocks before her appeared to be
chunks of time, discrete instances of the substance
which should have made existence possible; woven the
world whole. They were badly battered, torn from
their natural union with each other by violence or
lunacy. Yet they were intact in themselves; and each of
them still implied its place in the former cliff.
Once they had formed a buttress against the sea, an
assertion of structure and endurance in the teeth of the
surging waves. Although they had been shattered, they
retained their essential identity, their obdurate granite
selves.
And among them moved sad gleaming creatures like
misshapen children.
As the creatures squirmed over and among the stones,
they emitted a sick emerald radiance; light the hue of
acid and gangrene. They might have been the fouled
progeny of the Illearth Stone, if that condensed bane
had not been destroyed by wild magic millennia before
her own time in the Land.
Nonetheless she recognized them. They were skest, and
their touch was death: they were formed of a rank
corrosive which devoured flesh. At one time, they had
served the lurker of the Sarangrave, herding prey to
the lurker's hungry tentacles. Without aid, she and
Covenant and their Quest for the One Tree would not
have survived their passage through Lifeswallower,
the Great Swamp.
Now the acid-children appeared to serve her,
occasionally placing tasteless food and brackish water
in her mouth, offering their bitter warmth to her wind-
chilled skin, and mewling for pity which she did not
deign to provide. At other times, they dissolved from
sight, perhaps melting between the rocks in order to
replenish her viands, or to restore their own lambent
green lives. When they reappeared, they resumed their
diligence.
Sharp formication: lost white and cold: a wasted vista
of torn stone and skest. All simultaneous, overlapping
around her and within her as though they occupied the
same space at the same time. If the caesure took other
forms as well, they lay beyond the reach of her senses.
Tearing ants and fiery cold slowed her perceptions.
Gradually, however, she became aware that in the
wasteland among the skest she was someone else: that
she inhabited a flesh not her own; gazed about her
through eyes which did not answer to her will; made
choices over which she had no control. Although she
wailed and grieved, she altered nothing, affected
nothing. None of her pain or her yearning escaped the
mind where she was imprisoned.
She should have died, consumed by fire ants and cold.
She should have been driven mad by the loss of her
friends and her purpose; of her son. She had brought
them all to ruin and deserved no less. Yet she could not
escape.
Instead she felt a hand which was not hers clench and
rise abruptly toward her head. Through the eyes of her
prison, she saw the body's right fist strike against its
temple. Nerves that did not belong to her felt blood
weep from an aggravated sore, dripping like tears
down an abused cheek. Dissociated whimpers leaked
from a mouth that had lost most of its teeth. When the
throat swallowed, she tasted the seepage of bleeding
gums.
At the same time, a flash of argent fire burst from the
ring hanging against a sternum on its chain. Silver
anguish blazed and coruscated among the stones, the
rent instances, until one of them had been torn to
confusion and dust.
Then, simultaneous with her other agonies, Linden
understood that she was trapped in Joan's mind; that
the woman who tortured this wasteland of rubble with
the sea at her back, the woman whom the skest served,
was Covenant's ex-wife. Charred by the Despiser's
lightning, Joan had indeed found her way to the Land,
as Linden had feared.
And here Joan herself had been found by turiya
Herem.
Linden knew the Raver's touch intimately: she could
not fail to recognize it. During her own translation to
the Land, she had met turiya in Joan's mind. She had
been afflicted with visions of pain and destruction
which she still did not know how to bear. But there
were no visions now. Even they required sequences
and causality which did not exist within the caesure.
Instead she felt only the Raver's insatiable abhorrence
of life.
Goaded by turiya Herem's malice, Joan continued to
strike herself, measuring out her despair against her
temple. And with each blow, her power lashed out to
create Falls, shattering coherent fragments of time
until every moment within that fragment was torn
apart.
Wild magic could have unmade the entire landscape in
one towering gout of power; broken the Arch of Time
instantly. Trapped in Joan's mind, however, Linden
understood that she was incapable of such an act.
Coercion and insanity fettered her pain: she could
utter no cry louder or more sustained than this
piecemeal devastation.
Gauged by the scale of Joan's blasts, the wasteland
around her was immense. The Earth might endure and
suffer for centuries before the damage became
irrecoverable.
To Linden, that seemed still worse than formication
and emptiness. Had she remained alive in any coherent
sense, able to make choices and act, she might have
striven to counteract Joan's suffering; to hold back the
harm of Joan's self-loathing. But that possibility also
Linden had lost.
Her plight surpassed endurance, yet she could not
escape it. When the skest had fed her, Joan savaged
another of the littered moments-and freezing white
loneliness filled Linden's senses, featureless and
forever unrelieved-and myriads upon myriads of
gnawing pincers bit her flesh to shreds-and she could
not escape it.
Then she might have attempted deliberately to
abandon consciousness and knowledge, hoping to find
relief. More than once in the past, however, she had
felt the same
desire; the same impulse to abdicate herself. Watching
her father's suicide. Tortured in every nerve by the
ravages of the Sunbane. Imprisoned in Revelstone.
Possessed by a Raver while Covenant surrendered to
Lord Foul. In some sense, she had sacrificed volition
when she had entered Covenant's mind in order to free
him from the imposed stasis of the Elohim.
Now she could not forget what her desire for absence
had cost her in the past. Or what it would cost
Jeremiah here.
Nor could she forget that her companions suffered as
well; that Anele and Liand, Stave, the Ramen and the
Ranyhyn, even the ur-viles, had entered this demesne
of horror at her behest.
And she remembered that no time had passed.
She was trapped in all moments and none
simultaneously. She might spend eternity searching for
an escape, and still nothing would have been lost.
Nothing would be lost until the bounds of her identity
frayed and failed; until she truly and entirely
abandoned hope.
Until then, she could still think.
Both Anele and the ur-viles had once survived this
same experience. She intended to do the same.
But they had merely entered a caesure, or been taken
by it. And when the chaos had flung them forth again,
by accident of Earthpower or design of lore, they had
emerged thousands of years later. She needed more:
not merely to survive and emerge, but to defy the
inherent attributes of the Fall. Within itself, it was all
moments and none, impossible confusion. Externally,
however, it was a specific rock on the littoral of Joan's
madness; a discrete force which moved from place to
place through time. Despite its internal insanity, it was
like a river: it ran in only one direction.
Linden needed to do more than simply endure until
the caesure cast her onto its banks. She needed to swim
against the current, drawing her companions with her.
She needed wild magic.
Thinking was a form of movement. And the avatar of
freezing whiteness was the only one which allowed her
the illusion of movement. Therefore she selected a
direction at random-all directions were the same in
that place-and began to walk. Then she began to run
-seeking the door within herself which opened on white
fire.
The cold attacked her lungs with relentless ferocity:
she should have collapsed in bloody coughing. Yet she
did not. No time had passed. She did not need air.
Therefore the rending in her chest never changed. She
could continue to run, no matter how vast her pain.
In that way, she clung to herself through formication
and loss and blazing madness.
But she had lost the door. It lay hidden somewhere
within her. Twice before, she had found her way there
consciously, and it had opened to her hand. Now,
however, the path which might have led toward it had
been transformed to chaos. She was in too much pain
to rediscover the route inward.
In this excruciating tumult, only Joan had power.
Nevertheless Linden kept running. She believed now
that if she stopped she would never become herself
again.
Nothing changed. Nothing could change in a realm
devoid of cause and sequence. Fire ants and utter
loneliness ruled here. Yet Joan continued to feed
occasionally, drink occasionally, and strike out; and
Linden still ran, fleeing her own despair.
Then the lash of argent from Joan's ring caused a
jagged chunk of granite to detonate in incandescence,
momentarily dimming the emerald glow of the skest-
and Linden stumbled to an unsteady halt in front of
Anele.
He gazed straight at her as if he were aware of her
presence, although he could not see her. They did not
exist for each other here, and he was blind. Yet his
eyes were a milky gleam of Earthpower and intention.
She had not seen him appear: he was simply there, as
he both had and had not been all along. Without his
inherited strength, he would have remained beyond
the reach of her perceptions. Yet here he was more
real than she was. Unlike hers, his breath plumed in
the frigid air.
In a gust of steam, he said as if he were invoking her,
"Please."
Then he was gone.
He had never been there. He was a figment of her
desperation, a reification of her loss.
Nevertheless he had saved her.
Please? Please what?
She knew the answer.
The richness of the Land was written in grass stains on
the fabric of her pants: a map like a metaphor for her
own heart, both revealing and disguising the location
of vitality and treasure. If she could not find the way to
wild magic, she could make other use of such guidance.
She was a physician, a giver of care. Her response to
pleading and need reached as deep as any pain. And
Joan's violence, against herself as against time, was a
form of supplication. In the only language which
remained to her, Joan cried out her long madness, her
self-loathing, and her hunger for release.
Linden's years in Berenford Memorial had taught her
that the form in which damaged people repulsed aid
expressed with terrible eloquence the nature of their
wounds. In her own crippled way, Joan needed
Linden's intervention as badly as Jeremiah did.
Linden could not contain her voiceless wailing; had no
control over her agony. The cold white emptiness
burned as fiercely as scoria, and she had no hands with
which she might have reached out to Joan. But she was
not helpless.
Despair and isolation and gnawing searched her to the
root of her soul. She could do the same. If she had no
power herself, she would use Joan's.
Riding the force of her own anguish and empathy,
Linden tuned her heart to the pitch of Joan's madness.
It was possible: she knew that now. As if accidentally-
as if accidents were possible for a soul in such pain-
Joan had raised Anele like an echo inside Linden, a
knell of death and life. With his appearance and his
pleading to guide her, Linden could choose to
participate in each new exertion of Joan's ring.
And she knew how to do so. Once before, briefly, she
had been trapped in Joan's mind. She had met Joan's
ghouls and specters; Joan's tormentor. She could find
her way because Lord Foul-perhaps unaware that he
was aiding her-had allowed her to hear the true name
of Joan's pain.
Knowing that name, Linden added Joan's agony to her
own, and became stronger.
She had no means to impose her will on Joan; could do
nothing to stop the remorseless blows which Joan
struck against herself. Joan still lived in the Land, still
inhabited time: Linden did not. But Linden had no
desire for that form of power. Instead of trying to stay
Joan's hand, she used her presence in Joan's mind, her
comprehension of Joan's despair, to tap into the force
of Joan's blasts.
With Joan's wedding ring, Linden summoned her
companions.
She could find them. If they had not been severed from
themselves by anguish, shredded by the cruelty of the
caesure's avatars, she could hope to touch them. They
were mounted upon Ranyhyn, as she was. And they
were warded in some fashion by ur-viles, whose lore
encompassed enormous transgressions of Law.
If she still endured, surely they did also?
Through Esmer, the ur-viles had promised to aid her.
The loremaster had mingled its strength with hers. It
had sucked memories from Anele's wounded forearm.
And Esmer had suggested that the creatures could
communicate with the Ranyhyn.
Thus she may hope to be guided
With wild magic which she siphoned from Joan's
violence, Linden turned against the current of the
caesure and called the ur-viles to join her. They had
made Anele remember
At first, her borrowed and oblique argence
accomplished nothing. In spite of its purity, it did not
repulse the fire ants, or soften the cold, or ease Joan's
desolation. Linden remained in her prison, tormented
by ruin.
But then Joan made a whimpering sound which
brought the skest scurrying to her side; and Linden
rode the bitter whiteness on Hyn's back. The mare
trotted through
the cold confidently, as though she had always been
there and knew exactly where she was going; as
though she had waited only for Linden to rouse herself
from some unexplained stupor.
The Ranyhyn's breath sent thick gusts of steam curling
past her shoulders to Linden's face, filling Linden's
nose with the scent of cropped grass; reinforcing the
bond between them. Thus tangibly Hyn seemed to
recreate the lovable world which should have existed
instead of the Fall's chaos.
Oh, yes.
Lord Foul preached despair. But Linden Avery the
Chosen was not helpless.
Again she called out to the Demondim-spawn.
Joan's whimpers became moaning, nascent sobs. The
skest fretted around her, sensing distress which their
compelled attentions could not relieve. But now her
silver blasts were shot through with blackness and
vitriol like streaks of poison in mortifying flesh.
Beside Linden, Anele sat Hrama's back with an air of
disdain, as though the caesure's afflictions were trivial.
Opposite him, Liand huddled over Rhohm's neck like
a man whose back had been broken. Linden feared to
meet his eyes. She could not bear to see how badly he
had been hurt.
Still dark acid insinuated itself throughout Joan's
violence. The frigid wasteland appeared to break apart
like floes of ice, calving smaller chunks of loneliness;
and through the cracks and breaches shone streams of
midnight.
The gnawing insects of the caesure's swirl became
hornets again; vibrating augers loud for the taste of
Linden's frailty. Stave held himself stolidly erect,
impassive as stone. Under him, Hynyn stamped his
massive hooves and tossed his head, imperiously
demanding release, while the hornets attacked the
encroaching obsidian and burst into flames.
Mahrtiir's gasping sounded like a splash of blood. Pain
crippled his Cords.
Now Joan sobbed aloud, beating at her forehead
repeatedly to invoke blasts and breakage. Turiya
Herem multiplied her torment. Her skest blundered
over the rocks, aimlessly dissolving and reforming
themselves. For one brief moment in the tangible
Land, her power had become darkness, and she could
not expend her pain.
Ur-viles surrounded all of the riders. Their barking
chant was palpable in Linden's ears, a solid thing rife
with power, at once frantic and resolute, tattered and
untorn. Fed by their lore, vitriol swelled in the caesure,
defying the white void and the hornets; enforcing the
distinction between chaos and identity.
Then Anele clenched his fist, shedding a thin drop of
blood from the gouged flesh of his forearm. As one, the
ur-viles seemed to redouble their vehemence.
Together the Ranyhyn lifted their heads. To the beat of
the harsh chant, they began
surging into the teeth of formication and cold;
plunging against the current of severed time.
For a while which might have been an instant or an
eon, Linden feared that the Demondim-spawn would
falter. That the Ranyhyn would lose their way. That
Joan's unanswerable madness would regain its
efficacy. That the hornets howling into and through
her flesh would devour the last of her sanity.
Then the migraine aura of the Fall parted on either
side of her, and she and her companions ran onto solid
earth under a bright sky as though they had been spit
out from the belly of Hell's own leviathan.
6.
2Te StajLa v
~r~ Convulsed with relief, Linden slumped from Hyn's
back, stumbled to her
C9
1hands and knees, then sprawled facedown on the stiff
grass as though she sought to embrace the Earth. At
that moment, the ordinary solidity of the ground
seemed infinitely precious; as healing as hurtloam.
She heard retching nearby. Without looking, she knew
that Liand and both Cords had also collapsed from
their mounts. She sensed them distinctly, in spite of the
aftershocks, the residual excruciation, of the caesure.
Sick with distress, Liand and one of the Cords-Bhapa-
spewed bile and anguish onto the hardy grass.
The grass was tough because it needed to be. The soil
in which it grew was thinly layered over old shale. It
received comparatively little rain, and that moisture
was soon leached away. Nevertheless its sharp-edged
blades grew thickly enough to soften the ground.
When Linden breathed, she did not inhale dust, but
rather the clenched dampness of roots and the
prolonged heat of late summer.
She had been so cold- Now the warmth of the day was
bliss, soothing her abraded senses.
Mahrtiir was in no better condition than the other
Ramen, but he did not vomit. Instead he lowered
himself carefully from the back of his mount and
walked away
from his companions, tottering as breakably as an old
man. His stiffness told Linden that he was ashamed of
his weakness and wanted to distance himself while he
recovered.
Stave also dismounted, although he displayed none of
the battered nausea which afflicted Liand and the
Ramen. Rather he seemed essentially whole; proof
against pain and distortion. Only his involuntary limp
showed that he could be hurt.
"Chosen," he said near Linden's head, "are you able
to move? We have survived the Fall. That feat deserves
acknowledgment." His tone admitted that he had not
expected so much from her. "I know not when we are,
but where is plain. Arise and gaze about you."
She did not lift her head: the sun's comfort held her.
Ignoring the Master, she continued to cast her
percipience around her, verifying in the most tangible
way possible that she was still alive-and intact.
Only Anele remained mounted, apparently studying
his surroundings blindly. She could not tell whether he
recognized what he saw.
As for the great horses, they gave no sign that they had
just endured an extraordinary ordeal. Hrama seemed
content to stand still, providing a safe seat for Anele.
The other Ranyhyn had scattered slightly, giving each
other room to crop the dry grass. Occasionally one or
another of them tasted the air as if searching for the
scent of water.
In the background of Linden's awareness, the ur-viles
barked quietly among themselves. They may have been
discussing the situation, or debating what should be
done now. Like Stave, they did not appear to have
suffered in the Fall, although their weariness was
obvious.
But the Fall was gone, leaving no evidence of its
passage.
Linden and her companions had been marooned.
"Chosen?" Stave asked more insistently. "It is not well
to delay. If we have indeed entered the past of the
Land, then we must be wary that we do not alter it in
some way, endangering the Arch of Time. We are
neither seers nor oracles. Our actions may have
consequences which we cannot foresee."
Still she did not rise to answer him. As she tested her
circumstances, she caught a hint-the merest whiff of
wrongness.
It did not arise from the air, which held only the rising
heat of a summer morning. The Ranyhyn certainly
had no wrong in them. Nor did her companions, in
spite of their lingering hurts. And the ur-viles, like
Stave, exceeded her evaluation.
The suggestion of wrongness, of imposed and
unnatural harm, seemed to arise from the earth under
her.
And it was familiar
Abruptly she surged up onto her hands and knees;
pressed her fingers through the grass to touch the dirt.
"Here," she told Stave softly, almost whispering. "Put
your hands here. Tell me what you feel."
I
A slight frown knotted the Master's brows as he knelt
in front of her and eased his fingers into the grass.
"Linden?" croaked Liand. Hunching over his stomach
as if it were full of broken glass, he crawled weakly
toward her. "What is amiss?"
But she was concentrating too hard to speak; and
Stave did not reply. Uncertainly Liand worked his
hands into the grass as well, trying to feel what they
felt.
Yes, Linden thought as she probed the ground.
Familiar. And wrong. Its touch evoked a kind of
visceral memory; a recall too deeply buried for
consciousness, and too disturbing to be forgotten.
It breathed along her nerves, suggesting echoes of rain
and pestilence; of fearsome deserts and terrible
fecundity.
Then Liand gasped sharply and snatched back his
hands. "Heaven and Earth!" he panted. "That is evil.
A great wrong has been done here." Wrapping his
arms around his stomach, he struggled to contain his
nausea.
Stave met Linden's gaze and nodded in confirmation.
At last, she lifted her hands from the grass. "Not just
here," she said harshly. "Everywhere in the Land."
Everywhere west of Landsdrop and Mount Thunder.
"That's the Sunbane."
Her senses had found traces of Lord Foul's assault
upon Law, persistent and vile. "Indeed," Stave agreed
without inflection. "The Haruchai have not forgotten
it. Yet already in this time it is long past."
She knew that he was right. Any more recent atrocity
would have left its effect closer to the surface.
Nevertheless her dire recollections of the Sunbane hit
her hard. At its height, it had transformed every living
and lovely aspect of the Land into a victim of torture;
an instance of unforgivable hurt.
"But it's fresh enough to feel," she muttered. Then she
swallowed her past. More quietly, she asked, "How
long ago do you think it was?"
Everything depended upon that. If the ur-viles had
misread Anele's memories-or if the Ranyhyn had
erred
Stave considered the question. "I cannot speak with
certainty. Ten score years, perhaps more. Not more
than fifteen." Then he shrugged. "So I estimate."
Between two and three hundred years? Surely that
was long enough-? Surely Linden and her companions
had not arrived before Anele lost the Staff?
She trusted Stave's perceptions; but still her nerves
needed reassurance. Even this distant reminder of the
Sunbane afflicted her with dread. Raising her head,
she flicked a quick glance toward the sun.
It arced across a blue sky already flattened, deprived
by depth, by heat and haze. Around it, high clouds
made noncommittal shapes against the azure. But it
showed no sign of the disturbing corona which had
defined the effects of the Banefire.
Nor did the sky betray any indication of Kevin's Dirt.
Here, at least, her healthsense would not be taken from
her.
Her stomach still squirmed on the brink of rebellion,
but at last she felt strong enough to ignore it.
Gathering her courage, she rose to her feet to look
around her.
Anele drew her gaze. He sat loosely on Hrama's back,
head bowed and arms dangling, as if he had fallen
asleep. In that posture, the angle of the light across his
shoulders caught at the raindrops which remained on
his cloak, transforming them into a net of pearls; a
web woven of reflections and prophecy.
And behind him mountains piled into the heavens,
holding up their granite heads in defiance or refusal.
The foothills of the range were no more than a league
distant.
Percipience and the position of the sun told her that
she was facing south. Therefore these mountains were
part of the Southron Range. Off to her left, a spur of
peaks jutted past her northward: to her right, the cliffs
and peaks retreated into the southwest. However, she
recognized none of the vistas.
She had entered a region of time and place where she
had never been before.
Stave would tell her what he knew, if she asked him;
but she did not. Instead she set the question aside
temporarily. Other concerns compelled her attention.
Clenching her teeth against the aftereffects of the Fall,
she turned to her companions.
Stave and Anele were essentially well, but the Ramen
and Liand were another matter. Of them all, only the
Manethrall had been able to stand; and he could no
longer do so. Now he sat with his back to his
companions a short distance away, hugging himself
and rocking back and forth like a battered child.
Pahni sprawled where she had first fallen, too shocked
to move. Bhapa had crawled a few paces from his
vomit: he lay curled into a ball around the memory of
his pain. And Liand was in little better condition. His
momentary contact with the Sunbane's residue had
cost him the last of his endurance. He had collapsed
supine with his hands over his face, panting softly.
The fact that Linden could remain upright testified to
the dark lore and blood of the ur-viles. Their power
had protected her from the worst of the caesure.
Remembering that the loremaster had cut her, she
glanced down at her hand and saw that the small
wound had already closed. No, more than that: it had
sealed completely, leaving behind nothing more than a
faint scar to mark what the ur-viles had done for her.
At one time, they had been the bitter enemies of the
Land. Now their desire to serve her was beyond
question.
Unfortunately her companions had not received the
same eldritch gift. Apart from Stave and Anele, they
were in no condition to go on. They needed rest,
perhaps hours of it. And aliantha, if she could find
any-and if they could force themselves to swal
low it.
i
Hurtloam would restore them, of course. Or the Staff
of Law. In this time and place, she might as well have
asked for Covenant's resurrection.
But the ur-viles might be able to provide vitrim. If they
had not exhausted themselves
Even after all that they had done for her, she felt
strangely reluctant to approach them; timid in the face
of their bestial forms and their black past.
Nevertheless she walked cautiously toward the
loremaster.
The creatures stopped their low barking as she
approached. They turned their faces toward her,
sniffing wetly. Their ears twitched. The thin slits of
their mouths looked as cruel as cuts.
A few paces from the loremaster, she halted. Staring at
the creature's forehead to avoid the sight of its wide
nostrils, she said uncomfortably, "I hate doing this. It
feels disrespectful. I can ask you for help, and you
can't even tell me how to thank you. You certainly
can't ask me for anything. And you've already done so
much-"
Then she admitted, "But Stave is right. Everything we
do here is dangerous. And the longer we stay, the more
dangerous it becomes. We should get started, but we
can't. Liand and the Ramen are too sick to ride."
In response, the loremaster made a gesture that she
could not interpret. Her healthsense told her nothing
except that the creature was alien to her; beyond
explication.
Then, however, the loremaster wove its hands as
though in invocation; muttered a few guttural sounds
which seemed to hang in the air, telic and oddly
resonant. Almost at once, an iron bowl as black as
obsidian took form in its palms, apparently
transubstantiated from within the creature's flesh.
The bowl held a fluid that gave off the musty aroma of
vitrim.
Because she was touched and did not know how else to
express her gratitude, Linden sank to her knees in
order to accept the bowl from the loremaster's hands.
The ur-viles spoke in unison, barking a response which
told her nothing. The raw sound could have been a
curse or a paean-or a warning.
Again they had given her what she needed. Their dark
liquid sang to her senses of concentrated restoration.
Struggling unsteadily to her feet, she carried the bowl
to the nearest of her companions, the Manethrall, and
offered it to his lips.
Mahrtiir did not hesitate. His need was great; and his
discernment was as keen as Linden's. Accepting the
vitrim, he sipped it carefully.
Its effect was swift. Between one heartbeat and the
next, new strength burgeoned in him. The pain was
swept from his muscles, and his nausea faded. He
seemed to rise up within himself, although he
remained seated, hardly able to credit his own
recovery.
In a voice still husky with strain, he urged Linden,
"Aid the Cords. And the Stonedownor."
He did not need to add, And yourself.
She ached for some of the roborant. The Fall's effects
clung to her still, aggravating old memories of the
Sunbane and loss. But her companions took
precedence.
From Mahrtiir, she went to kneel beside Pahni.
The young woman could not raise her head. The bile in
her guts threatened to overflow at any moment; and
her muscles hung slack along her bones, stretched past
exhaustion. But Stave joined Linden then, supporting
Pahni so that Sahah's cousin could take a mouthful of
vitrim.
When Pahni had tasted the dusky fluid, Linden and
Stave turned to assist Bhapa.
By then Liand had seen what was happening. Still
cradling his aggrieved stomach, he crept to the older
Cord's side. He had his own memories of vitrim.
Soon both he and Bhapa were on their feet, with Pahni
beside them. They did not stand easily, but Linden saw
that their recovery would not take long. Doubtless they
would be ready to ride before she was.
Finally she allowed herself to drink from the bowl.
As before, the heavy liquid had a neglected flavor, as if
it had been left too long in a lightless room, exposed to
dust and stagnation. Yet she swallowed it gladly; and
in moments, the caesure's brutality lost its hold on her,
dropping from her shoulders like a shed cloak. The
vitrim seemed to expand the boundaries of her
mortality. When she returned the bowl to the
loremaster, her steps no longer wavered, and her bow
of thanks was as deep as an obeisance.
Then at last she turned to Stave; to the only member of
her company who may have wished her to fail. She
could no longer postpone the larger concerns of her
situation.
She had too many fears. She might still be days away
from Anele's lost cave. The Staff of Law may have
been found and moved-and used-since Anele's
departure. She may not have arrived at the right time
to retrieve it. And any significant alternation of the
past might violate the integrity of Time.
She believed that the Law of Time was sturdy enough
to withstand an occasional shock. How else had it
endured the affront of Joan's attacks? And she
believed as well that the mere existence of the Staff
would have a sustaining influence on all Law. Surely
she could search for it without inflicting any
irreparable harm?
Still she wanted some form of reassurance.
Covenant had told her, You need the Staff of Law. But
he had also said, Just be wary of me. Remember that
I'm dead.
And somewhere millennia from now an Elohim
wandered the Earth, warning people to Beware the
halfhand.
"All right," she said to the Master. "I'm ready now.
You said you know where we are?"
He nodded. "Indeed. We stand among the South
Plains. The Southron Range rises before us. The
mountains to the east form the western bound of the
Mithil valley. Many leagues to the west lies Doom's
Retreat. And there"-he pointed across the
foothills toward the curving line of scarps and slopes
where the spur met the southwestward sweep of the
Range-"we will be able to ascend toward the region
where I judge that the old man once made his home."
Clearly caesures traversed distance as well as time:
Linden had seen them move. Indeed, she was fortunate
that the Fall had not carried her farther from her goal
during the intervening centuries.
Studying the mountains, she asked, "How far do you
think we have to go?"
Stave glanced at the sun. "We will be among the
heights before midday. There, however, the way may
become too difficult for riding. Beyond that-" He
shrugged.
Linden understood him: he did not know the location
of Anele's cave. But surely it would be somewhere
accessible? While Ramen and ur-viles battled kresh in
the rift, Anele had said that his dwelling was not so
distant from Mithil Stonedown that I could not hasten
to the Land's aid at need, but far enough to attain the
freedom from astonishment which my spirit craved.
"Good enough," she murmured half to herself. "We'll
ride as far as we can. Then we'll figure out what to do
next."
As she turned toward Hyn, she slipped off her cloak.
Warmed by the summer sun and vitrim, she no longer
needed the heavy wool. At once, Liand accepted it
from her. When he had removed his own as well, he
went to Hrama and tugged the cloak from Anele's
back. Then he packed the three garments away among
his supplies.
At the same time, Mahrtiir approached Linden with
Bhapa and Pahni. The usual fierceness of his mien was
complicated by chagrin, and when he spoke his voice
held a note of defensive belligerence.
"Ringthane," he rasped, "we are shamed by our
weakness. It ill becomes us." Sharply he promised,
"We will not again be overcome."
Both Bhapa and Pahni nodded, but without his
combative assurance. Already the
prospect of their next encounter with a caesure seemed
to cast shadows in their eyes. "We know our peril
now," the Manethrall continued, "and are forewarned.
When
next we dare a Fall, we will provide for our own
endurance."
He did not say how he proposed to protect himself and
his Cords.
"Don't be so hard on yourself," Linden sighed. "I'm
not worried about you." In fact,
the thought of entering another Fall made her entire
being flinch. And she had no
more patience for people who judged themselves by
inhumane standards. She did too
much of that herself. "We aren't Ranyhyn. We don't
have their gift for time.
Mahrtiir accepted her reply with a bow, but his
manner remained defiant.
Linden glanced around; found the ur-viles ready and
the Ranyhyn waiting. It was
time to go.
With Liand's help, she gained Hyn's back. Stave and
the Stonedownor placed themselves on either side of
her. After they had prostrated themselves before the
Ranyhyn
once more, the Ramen brought up the rear of the small
company, herding Anele ahead of them. This time,
however, the ur-viles did not girdle the riders. Instead
they formed a loose wedge off to one side, dropping to
all fours for speed.
As Linden touched Hyn's flanks with her heels, all of
the Ranyhyn sprang into a gallop southward,
pounding the thin grass as fast as the Demondim-
spawn could run.
tave had gauged the distance accurately. More swiftly
than Linden had anticipated, the riders left the plains
behind and surged up the first slopes of the foothills.
And here the terrain had been softened by long ages of
wind and rain, heat and cold. The Ranyhyn would be
able to sustain their pace for a while yet. If the urviles
did not falter, the company might be high among the
mountains by noon.
Nevertheless a sense of trepidation grew in Linden as
the company ascended the hillsides. If she ever hoped
to return to her proper present, she would have to
rend time with her own hands. She dreaded that
prospect.
After a while, however, Anele distracted her. As the
heat of the plains gave way to the sharper, thinner
exhalation of the peaks, she noticed a shift in his
emanations. His earlier passivity was gone. Instead he
radiated urgency, and he rode leaning forward with a
look of frenzy in his milky eyes.
But he had not suddenly become sane: that was
obvious. Rather his madness had resolved into focus.
Perhaps he recognized his surroundings. He was being
driven now by the same obsession which had impelled
him to return to his former home over and over across
the decades, searching uselessly for his lost
inheritance.
At the same time, another change demanded her
attention. Although the ur-viles continued to scramble
doggedly upward, they were growing restive.
Occasionally at first, then more and more often, one or
another of them paused to taste the air, falling behind
the other creatures, and barking insistently before they
resumed their haste. As a result, the whole wedge lost
ground.
Did they scent danger? Foes? Linden had no way of
knowing. But the possibilities, the potential hazards,
left her dry-mouthed and winded, as though the air
were becoming too thin to breathe.
Surely it was impossible that Lord Foul might oppose
her here? If her senses had not misled her, and Stave's
perceptions were accurate, the Despiser's defeat at
Covenant's hands had taken place less than three
hundred years ago. And Foul had been thoroughly
defeated. The beaten being that remained
unextinguished in this time could hardly threaten her.
Yet the ur-viles were troubled, for no apparent reason.
And Lord Foul was not Linden's only enemy. Elohim
wandered the Earth at will. For all she knew, they
could tra-
verse time as well, or manipulate caesures. And the
strange dictates of their Wurd were incomprehensible
to her.
If Kastenessen had indeed broken free of his
Appointed prison; if his bonds were the Durance of
which Anele had spoken
In addition, the Earth might hold other banes as
fearsome as the Illearth Stone. Somewhere kresh lived
and multiplied. More than once, Anele had referred to
skurj. And Linden feared that Roger Covenant had
accompanied his mother to the Land. Because he had
power over Joan, he might be able to manipulate her
use of wild magic.
Anele's headlong urgency might lead the company into
an ambush
Finally Linden called over the pounding din of hooves,
"Stave! The ur-viles. Something is wrong!"
The Master nodded without a glance at the straggling
wedge. "They have lore
which even the Old Lords could not equal." Then he
added, "I discern no peril." Linden looked over her
shoulder at Mahrtiir. Glowering, the Manethrall
shrugged:
he had no answer.
A moment later, the creatures began to slacken their
pace. They had apparently reached an agreement. As
the Ranyhyn crossed a low hollow between the hillsides
with cliffs soaring ahead of them, the Demondim-
spawn halted altogether. At once, they gathered
around their loremaster, bickering like a pack of wild
dogs.
Damn it. Linden tried to slow Hyn; and in an instant,
all of the Ranyhyn responded together, turning in a
curve as they reduced their strides.
When he understood what was happening, Anele
wailed, "No!" But Hrama ignored his protest,
stamping to a standstill with the other Ranyhyn.
In a fury, the old man flung himself from Hrama's
back. As soon as he gained his feet, he began to run.
Above him, a narrow ravine marked by a dry
streambed separated the cliffs. Shallow at first, it grew
deeper as it cut into the hills; and after a few hundred
paces, it disappeared around a bulge in its eastern
wall. With surprising speed, Anele headed for the
ravine, sure of his destination and determined to reach
it. Earthpower and intensity made him preternaturally
fleet.
Swearing again under her breath, Linden wheeled
toward Mahrtiir. "You'd better go after him," she
panted. "Don't try to stop him. Just don't lose him.
We'll catch up with you when we find out what's
bothering the ur-vilest'
The Manethrall nodded his acquiescence. Calling
Pahni and Bhapa with him, he sent his Ranyhyn
cantering after Anele.
Of his own accord, Hrama joined them. Like the
Ramen, the shaggy pinto appeared to respect Linden's
wishes.
Temporarily relieved for the old man, she turned her
attention to the Demondim
spawn. "What's going on?" she asked rhetorically.
"Are we in danger? What do they expect us to do?"
But Liand knew no more than she did, and Stave did
not respond. The air held no threats. It smelled only of
summer and wildflowers, warmed granite and shale,
and the slow, distant trickling of melted ice. The
breeze carried nothing that might have warned her.
Impelled by uncertainty, she asked the loremaster,
"What should we do? Do you need us here? Can I help
you? You understand me, but I don't know what you
want."
But the creatures ignored her while they continued
their harsh debate. Some of them had produced short
black daggers with blades like forged magma, seething
redly. Others made abrupt, intricate gestures as if they
were weaving expostulations. Even the loremaster paid
no heed to Linden's appeal.
For a moment, she glared at them with frustration
beating like anger in her temples and nameless fears
aching in her chest. Then she muttered a curse and
turned Hyn away.
"Come on," she told Liand and Stave. "If they want us
here, they can figure out some way to stop us.
Otherwise we're going with Anele."
At once, Hynyn and Rhohm joined Hyn; and in unison
the three Ranyhyn stretched their strides to pursue
their companions.
The others had already passed out of sight behind the
bulge in the ravine. When Linden, Stave, and Liand
reached that point, however, and followed the
ascending curve of the streambed beyond it, they
spotted Bhapa some distance ahead of them, waiting
near a break in the east wall. As they approached, the
Cord led them up into the break and darkness.
Its sheer sides, rugged and uncompromising, rose
above them. Even at noon, the sun's light did not reach
the floor of the break. But the surface had been
softened by millennia of weather and runoff. It posed
no threat to the footing of the Ranyhyn. They managed
the slope at a trot.
Silt and moss swallowed the sounds of their passage.
They followed the crooked path unheralded and
unforewarned.
Overhead, an arch of granite spanned the walls like a
flying buttress. Beyond it, the last twist of the break
revealed sunshine splashed across a slow hillside
covered with mountain grasses and wildflowers. When
Linden and her companions emerged, they found their
mounts wading through rich swaths of eglantine,
cornflowers, blue columbine, and paintbrush as stark
as blood.
There they joined Pahni. She greeted them with a bow,
but did not speak. Instead she pointed beyond her
toward a wide, low basin surrounded on the east,
south, and west by grey cliffs and grass-dappled
mountainsides.
When she followed Pahni's gesture, Linden spotted
Anele halfway across the bottom of the basin, with
Mahrtiir mounted beside him and Hrama trailing
nearby.
The old man no longer moved so swiftly. Even at this
distance, his weariness was plain. Yet he stumbled
onward, half falling from stride to stride, his urgency
undiminished.
He may have been unaware of Mahrtiir's presence,
and Hrama's.
Mahrtiir could have stopped him, perhaps even placed
him on Hrama's back. But the Manethrall seemed
content to let Anele labor along on foot, presumably so
that he would not run too far ahead of Linden and her
companions.
The old man was heading toward the southeastern
edge of the basin, where a high pile of boulders
sprawled against the base of the mountain. Long ago,
monolithic slabs and menhirs must have fallen from
the cliffs and broken there. Watching him, she guessed
that his former home lay hidden among those massive,
ragged stones.
He has no friend
If so, he had chosen a lovely spot for his escape from
astonishment. The bluff grandeur of the surrounding
peaks contrasted dramatically with the profuse
fertility of the basin. And it had plenty of water.
Several streams tumbled down from the heights,
catching the sunlight in a cascade of sparkles, and
gathered to form a lively creek which babbled and ran
toward the south and east. Anele could have grown
food here easily. And in the heavy winters, he could
have warmed himself with wood fires and Earthpower.
To Linden's eyes, the whole basin seemed to show the
benignant influence of the Staff of Law. Even unused,
the Staff's very existence sustained and promoted the
natural Law, the essential structures and vitality, of
the Land. She herself had formed it for that purpose.
In Andelain, she had finally learned to love the Land,
and with all her heart she had yearned to preserve and
defend its beauty.
The vista ahead of her had the look of a place which
had been adored.
Nevertheless an inarticulate foreboding troubled her.
The high clouds cast vague shadows across the
wildflowers, transforming them from vividness to
uncertainty and back again; shedding mute
premonitions across the basin. And in the distance,
Anele appeared to flounder, hindered by recollections
of failure and loss. Suddenly she felt reluctant to follow
him. Instead of sending Hyn down into the basin, she
remained where she was.
Beside her, Liand leaned forward as if he were eager
to discover the future. Both Pahni and Bhapa studied
her with puzzlement in their eyes, confused by her
hesitation. But she turned from them to Stave, half-
consciously seeking to postpone the moment when she
would learn whether she herself would fail or succeed;
whether she had endangered the Arch of Time for
nothing.
"So tell me," she began awkwardly. "Why did you
change your mind?"
She meant, What am I going to do if the Staff isn't
there? But she could not ask that question: it searched
her too deeply. She would not have trusted anyone
except Covenant to hear her without reproach or
dismay.
Stave met her gaze, raising an eyebrow in inquiry.
Linden wanted to look away, but she did not. "You
were planning to leave. You wanted to warn the
Masters. God knows you have plenty to tell them. But
then you changed your mind." After the horserite. "I
can't help wondering why."
Stave held her troubled stare. "Chosen," he replied, "I
have elected to accompany you. I will defend you with
my life. But I will not account for my choices. I await
the proper time and place.
"When it is meet to do so, I will speak of what is in my
heart."
He had promised her a reckoning
In this time, her need for the Staff was absolute. She
could not return to her proper present without
entering another Fall. In order to do so, she would first
have to create it with wild magic. But whenever she
attempted to wield Covenant's ring, its power might
scale out of control. In that eventuality, that likely
danger, only Law could preserve the Arch.
By entering Esmer's caesure, she had created a
situation in which any failure or misstep would bring
about Lord Foul's victory.
"One matter, however," Stave added after a moment,
"I will explain, for I deem that you are unaware of it.
"We partook of the horserite together, you and I, but
we did not share the same vision. That which the
Ranyhyn revealed to you, they did not impart to me.
Nor did they grant to you that which they wished me
to see and understand."
Linden stared at him. She had assumed that they had
participated in the same memories, the same
prophecies; that he had seen the same dangers. And
she had felt that he had finally become her friend, in
spite or because of those dangers.
But she was wrong. The Ranyhyn had given him other
insights, other knowledge. He had accompanied her
for reasons which he kept from her.
As if he knew what disturbed her, he continued, "They
made plain to me that I must not be parted from you.
Therefore I will remain your companion until I have
discovered or devised an opportunity to consult the
will of my people."
Because she was afraid, she wanted to say something
sarcastic; but she refrained. She recognized that he
had given her as much reassurance as he could. For
the present, at least, she could rely on him.
With that she had to be content.
While she gnawed on her doubts, Liand touched her
arm; asked for her attention.
"Linden," he said tentatively, "Anele and the
Manethrall proceed while we delay. Will they not gain
the location of this Staff before us? And if they do, is it
wise for Anele to hold the Staff? You have explained
that any use of such power in this time is perilous."
Linden sighed to herself. He was right. Hell, even Stave
was right. This was not the time or the place
Nodding to the Stonedownor, she touched Hyn's sides
with her heels; and immediately the mare started
down into the basin at a swift canter.
Stave and Liand joined her. Hynyn and Rhohm
stretched their legs with Hyn's, matching the mare's
strides; and the Cords followed a heartbeat behind
them. Gathering speed as they went, Linden and her
companions followed Anele and Mahrtiir.
Among the wildflowers, butterflies scattered before the
swift passage of the Ranyhyn, and occasional bees
hummed away in alarm; but she had no attention to
spare for them. Liand's words had crystallized her
fears into shapes as sharp as knives.
Ahead of her, Anele's stamina was flagging, and
Mahrtiir did nothing to hasten him. But they had
gained ground while Linden spoke with Stave. Already
they were nearing the rocks. Before she could overtake
the old man, he found his path among the
boulders and stumbled out of sight.
At the edge of the piled monoliths, Mahrtiir
dismounted, leaving the horses behind in order to
accompany Anele.
Moments seemed to stretch out ahead of Linden,
longer than the strides of the Ranyhyn. Despite the
breeze of their passage, the air between the mountains
felt viscid and still; cloying. Yet the great horses were
wonderfully swift. If she had not hesitated earlier, she
might have caught up with Anele before he reached his
goal.
Then finally the riders thudded to a halt beside Hrama
and Mahrtiir's mount. In a rush, Linden slipped from
Hyn's back; stumbled running toward the rocks.
There, however, she faltered: she could not find
Anele's path. Every gap and cranny between the
boulders looked the same to her, truncated and
depthless, leading nowhere. But Stave sprang ahead of
her. His sight was keener than hers, and he must have
identified the place where Anele had entered the pile.
Past a leaning slab of granite which appeared to rest
squarely against still larger stones, he found a gap like
a crevice just wide enough to admit him. Without
hesita
tion, he moved into it.
"Follow the Bloodguard, Ringthane," Bhapa offered
encouragingly. "The Manethrall has marked the
path."
Linden saw no indications among the boulders; but she
believed the Cord implicitly-and did not doubt Stave's
instincts. Hurrying, she began to make her way
between the stones.
His passage through the caesure had not restored
Anele's mind. If he found the Staff, he might be made
whole; or he might lose himself completely.
Deep behind the slab, another gap appeared, a crooked
aisle between monoliths propped against each other.
Only shafts and streaks of sunlight penetrated the pile,
leaving much of the way shrouded in gloom. Beyond
Stave's dark shoulders, however, Linden saw
flickering hints of light, dancing flames. And when she
reached the end of the aisle, she found herself in the
mouth of a cave like an entombed tunnel. The rockfall
had concealed the entrance without burying it.
Mahrtiir met her there, holding a torch that burned
hotly, dried almost to tinder by age. The rough wood
must have hurt his scorched palms, but he ignored the
pain.
Linden ran a few steps to catch at Stave's arm, hold
him back. Then she panted to Mahrtiir, "Anele-?"
"He goes ahead," answered the Manethrall. "This was
once a dwelling, though many years have passed since
it served that purpose. When I discovered torchwood, I
returned to assist you. He will be not be lost. The signs
of his passing"-Mahrtiir indicated the disturbed dirt of
the floor-"will guide us."
Still gripping Stave's arm, Linden pushed the Raman
ahead of her. As they strode down the throat of the
cave, she asked, "How big is this place?"
"I know not, Ringthane," Mahrtiir replied. "Mayhap
it extends for leagues. But the place of habitation is
near." He hesitated briefly, then added, "If the old
man once dwelt here, he abandoned it long ago.
However, others have also entered."
Linden's heart thudded. "Others-?"
"Time and dust have obscured the marks of their
feet," Mahrtiir told her. The light of his torch cast
grotesque shadows across his features. "I cannot
determine their kind or number. Nor am I able to
declare when they entered and departed. I am certain
only that they have preceded us by years or decades."
Oh, God. Suddenly the darkness ahead of her seemed
crowded with catastrophes. Memories of the ordeal of
the Fall mocked her as she started forward again.
Then the gullet of the cave opened into a larger space
like a chamber in the rock. By the unsteady torchlight,
Linden saw the signs of habitation: they seemed to
flicker in and out of existence as the flames gusted and
leaned.
A neat pile that might once have been bedding lay
against one wall. Even in the cave's dry atmosphere,
however, much of the fabric of the blankets and the
stuffing of the mattress had rotted away. The rest had
been gnawed apart by vermin.
Opposite it stood a trestle table and three-legged stool,
both precariously balanced on legs as brittle as twigs.
Another, smaller table held clay urns and amphorae
for storage, most of which were still intact, although
one amphora had slumped to mud, dissolved from
within by its contents, and an urn had cracked open,
spilling husks of grain like dust across the table.
Near the bed, Linden saw the remains of a large
wicker basket which may once have held clothing, but
which now contained only nests for mice. A scattering
of faggots
obviously intended as torches lay on the floor. From
them, Pahni and Bhapa took sticks and lit them at
Mahrtiir's torch, adding their light to his.
As they did so, threatening shadows writhed and
gibbered across the ceiling.
Lastly Linden noticed a tidy stone hearth designed as
much for warmth as for cooking. At one time, its fires
had spread soot up the wall behind it; but now most of
the black had flaked away, leaving behind bare packed
dirt and stone.
Nothing else remained to indicate that Anele, son of
Sunder and Hollian, and inheritor of the Staff of Law,
had ever lived here.
He was not in the chamber, but Linden knew where he
had gone. There was only one other egress, a small
opening like a portal in the wall near the hearth. And
from it came small sounds which she had heard too
often and knew too well: the bereft inarticulate
whimpering of the old man's desolation.
The opening gave access to another cave, an
unassuming space, hardly more than a niche or closet
in the heart of the mountain. There Anele sprawled on
the floor. Too broken even to weep, he slowly raised
and then dropped his head over and over again,
beating his forehead bloody against the stone. With
each lift of his head, he moaned softly. But when he let
it fall, the only sound was the sodden thump of his
damp flesh hitting the floor.
Linden felt no surprise at all to see that the Staff of
Law was gone. Yet she believed that it had once been
there; and for a moment she felt herself transported
out of tangible reality into a demesne of pure and
irreducible woe.
J anffetryaI
Linden did not know how to contain her dismay.
Somewhere hundreds of leagues and thousands of
years away from her, her son was being tortured.
Mere hours ago, she had subjected all of her
companions to the exquisite agonies of a caesure. And
the Staff of Law was gone.
She desired nothing except to save Jeremiah and
defend the Land; but she had gained only an empty
cave and despair.
On some level, she had believed, trusted, assumed, that
she would find the Staff here. Millennia from now,
when Anele searched his abandoned home, the Staff
would be gone. Hardly conscious of what she was
doing, she had chosen to think that the Staff would be
gone because she herself had taken it; that Anele's
searching would fail because her venture into the past
had succeeded.
She had blinded herself to other possibilities
In her imagination, she heard Lord Foul laughing like
the destruction of stones. When he had led her to
hurtloam, he had set her on the path to this place.
Without that healing, she would not have been able to
elude the Masters long enough to hear Anele's tale. She
would not have known who the old man was, or how
he had lost the Staff; would never have imagined
violating Time in this way.
With Covenant's ring, she was a danger to the
Despiser; but he had effectively neutralized her by
enabling her to do what she had done.
Anele still lay on the floor, stigmatizing the packed dirt
and rock with his spilled blood. Liand stared at him in
shock, as though the depth of the old man's loss
exceeded comprehension. Chagrin trapped the Ramen
within the light of their torches, so that their features
appeared to waver and blur as the flames gusted. And
Stave scowled at the absence of the Staff as if his anger
at Linden's folly had overcome his dispassion.
She did not know how to bear it. It was intolerable.
Therefore she refused to accept it.
Her companions deserved a better outcome.
"All right;" she said. "This is bad." Her voice shook
like the torchlight; like flames consuming wood which
had dried for decades. "But it could be worse. We
aren't beaten yet"
The Cords gaped at her. Even Mahrtiir, the eager
fighter, stared as though she had begun to froth at the
mouth. Liand could find no words or air adequate to
his shock.
Because she trusted the Stonedownor, Linden held up
her hand as if to refuse his unspoken appeal. "Don't
say it. Don't say anything at all." Then she swept her
arm to include all of her companions. "None of you"
They could have broken her heart. "Don't interrupt
me. I need to think."
But Anele continued pounding his head on the floor. In
desperation, Linden snapped, "Anele, God damn it-!"
Then she whipped a look toward Liand. "For pity's
sake, stop him. He shouldn't punish himself like this."
The young man heard her: he could still recognize
pain and feel compassion. Shaking off his
consternation, he hastened to Anele's side. With
Pahni's help, he turned the old man over. Then he
wrapped his strong arms around Anele's grief,
cradling it against his chest.
At once, Linden turned on Stave.
"You," she said like an accusation, although she
blamed no one but herself. "The Masters. The
Haruchai. You remember everything." She had reason
to wonder what he might have withheld. "So tell me
this.
"What's been going on here since Anele disappeared
with the Staff? I mean in this time. This region, this
part of the South Plains. Have there been any battles?
Any signs of power? Strange fertility, unnatural
wastes? Unexplained enemies? Dangerous occurrences
of any kind?"
Stave tried to respond, but she rushed on. "What
about the people who live here?
What are their lives like? How have they recovered
from the Sunbane? What-?" "Chosen," the Master
interrupted sternly. "Your question is plain. Permit
me to reply." With an effort, Linden restrained
herself. Chewing on her lower lip, she waited for
his answer.
"It is Booth," he said more quietly, "that we
remember much. Yet there are matters which you
must understand.
"First, the Haruchai did not lightly undertake to
become the Masters of the Land. Until the Staff of Law
was lost, the Land had no need of such care. Even
then, centuries passed before the decision was made,
for we are not hasty in these things. And as new
Masters we did not extend our bourne to encompass
all the Upper Land until centuries more had passed.
"Between the time of your own knowledge and the
time in which we now stand, few Haruchai sojourned
so far into the South Plains. To Mithil Stonedown my
people rode, that they might honor Sunder and
Hollian. And later, when the loss of the Staff had
become certain, they aided in searching for it. But they
conceived that if the Staff had been removed toward
Doom's Retreat, they would have caught some glimpse
of its presence or its use. Therefore they believed that
its fate lay among the heights of the
Southron Range, where no quest would discover it."
Stave seemed to consider how much he should reveal.
Then he said, "But there is a second reason why the
Haruchai made no thorough search in this region.
Since the time of the Old Lords, the South Plains to the
west of the Mithil River and the south of the Black
have been little inhabited. The soil is ill-nourished and
knows scant rain. The folk of the Land have found no
welcome there."
Mahrtiir nodded. Apparently the long tales of the
Ramen confirmed the Master's assertion.
"In the time of Berek Heartthew," Stave went on,
"before he became the first of the Old Lords, much of
his vast war against Corruption and the servants of
evil was waged in the South Plains. The violence of
that war blighted the earth, leaving too much harm to
encourage human life."
The Haruchai held Linden's urgent stare. "Because
there are no dwellings in this region, it has no need of
Masters. We know the South Plains because our duty
to the Land requires it. But we seldom journey here."
"So you don't know," Linden retorted. "Anything
could have happened here-anything at all-and you
wouldn't know about it. The Staff could have been
destroyed, or used for centuries, and you wouldn't
have any idea."
"No, Chosen." An undercurrent of reproach disturbed
Stave's flat tone. "Have you quested so long and
arduously in the company of Haruchai, and not
learned that we are sensitive to power? Such forces as
you imagine could not fail to draw our notice. Kevin's
Dirt does not blind us, and the reach of our senses is
great.
"Also I have said that we seldom journey here. I did
not say never. Across the centuries, our care has been
bounded only by the bounds of the Land. Small
theurgies, perhaps, we would not discern. But that is
not your fear.
"Your concern is groundless. Of that I am certain."
Linden should have been grateful for his reassurance;
but her emotions burned too hotly. Nevertheless she
believed him. Their straits could indeed be worse.
Biting her lip again, she shifted her attention to
Mahrtiir.
"You said others have been here. Human or not."
Friendly or not. "Can you tell me anything else about
them?"
In spite of his fierceness, the Manethrall looked
suddenly timid; or the torchlight cast shadows like
fears across his visage. He swallowed roughly. "I
cannot. As you have seen, this habitation is well
protected. Wind and rain do not enter. Yet dust settles
ceaselessly here. Too much has been obscured."
"But you can still track them?" Linden demanded.
"Can't you?"
Her tone drew a wince from Bhapa.
Mahrtiir squared his shoulders. "We cannot,
Ringthane. I am a Manethrall of the Ramen. The
Cords with me are skilled. In such things we are adept
beyond any other people we have known.
"But we have been preceded by years or decades, as I
have said. Many seasons have combined to efface any
outward path. And the lowland beyond this cave is
both open and fertile, rich with grass. I cannot follow
those that preceded us because it cannot be done:"
His answer rebuffed Linden's hopes; but now she did
not hesitate. She could not. If she faltered for an
instant, the enormity of what she had done would
overtake her. Then she might collapse like Anele,
beating out her despair against the stone.
"In that case," she muttered, hardly aware that she
spoke aloud, "we'll have to trust the ur-viles."
Creatures make Anele remember!
Outside the encampment of the Ramen, the ur-viles
had drawn the old man's blood in order to reach his
memories. But they had previously done something
similar to him. They may have done it several times.
Surely they had learned enough of his past to know
where and how-and when-he had lost the Staff? They
must have sought it themselves, for their own reasons.
Why else had they continued to probe his madness?
Why else had they aided Linden-?
They had not followed Anele to his cave now because
they had known that the Staff
was gone. Instead they meant to search for it in some
other way.
They had served Linden valiantly, but she did not
know why. Perhaps they desired
the Staff for themselves. She-and Covenant's ring-
might be nothing more than a
means to an end. They could not have reached this
time, their own past, without her. She might already be
too late.
Immediately she began to run, rushing ahead of the
torchlight into the dark.
An instant of surprise held her companions. Then
Liand called urgently after her, "Linden! Wait!"
She did not slacken her pace. She trusted him. He
would bring Anele as swiftly as he could. If he needed
help, the Ramen would not forsake him.
Harried by images of disaster, she crossed Anele's
abandoned home and raced into the throat of the cave.
Stave seemed to overtake her easily, in spite of his
damaged hip. Mahrtiir followed close behind them,
lighting their way with his unsteady torch.
The ur-viles were too far away
Ahead of her, precise streaks of sunshine fell among
the piled boulders. She no longer needed torchlight.
The Manethrall discarded his brand as he ran.
The aisle beyond the mouth of the cave was too narrow
to allow either Stave or Mahrtiir past her; but as soon
as the passage widened, the Master vaulted over the
rocks to block her path. She collided headlong with his
hard form.
"Chosen," he insisted severely, "this is madness. The
Staff is lost. Haste and wildness will not recover it."
Linden thrust against him, trying uselessly to force
him aside. "Damn it," she protested, "why do you
think the ur-viles stopped? You saw them. They
smelled something.
"We have to catch up with them before they find the
Staff."
She should have stayed with them. But how could she
have known that Anele's desperation would mislead
her?
Stave's visage showed no reaction; but he turned to
run ahead of her, leading her between the tall stones.
With Mahrtiir behind them, they burst free of the
rocks and dashed for their waiting Ranyhyn.
hen they reached the ravine above the hollow where
they had left the ur
viles, Linden began to believe that she was not too late.
She could feel power throbbing in the air: the walls of
the ravine channeled emanations of darkness and force
upward. Then she knew that the creatures were at
work nearby. They had not yet moved away.
To her senses, their theurgy felt like questing.
Still responding to her urgency, the Ranyhyn galloped
through the ravine and down the hillside. As they
neared the knotted wedge of the Demondim-spawn,
however, they slowed to a canter, then a walk. With
Hynyn and Mahrtiir's mount beside her, Hyn came to
a halt half a dozen strides from the spot where the ur-
viles labored. There Linden stared, transfixed, at what
the creatures were doing. She had never seen power
used in this fashion before.
Its obsidian force stung her health-sense so that her
vision blurred and her nose ran. A flush like remorse
spread across her skin, and her mouth was filled with
the taste of copper and yearning.
A low rise swelled in the bottom of the hollow. At the
crown of the rise, the urviles had gouged or dug a
narrow ditch like a gutter in a circle eight or ten paces
wide. Now the loremaster, with the other creatures
packed tightly behind it, held its iron jerrid or scepter
with the point planted in the ditch; and as the ur-viles
chanted together, black power as fluid as oil and as
rank as offal streamed from the iron into the gutter.
The liquid seemed to suck away the day's brightness.
Within the ditch, the circle
was crowded with shadows that writhed and wailed,
although they made no sound. Linden rubbed the
damp from her eyes, trying to see more clearly. The
loremaster's
iron bled force slowly, yet the ditch was already full.
The ur-viles must have begun their
invocation soon after she and her companions had
departed for Anele's cave.
Within the circle, the twisting shadows refused to take
definite forms. They re
mained indistinct: shapeless and tormented; allusive as
a masque. Yet their very vague
ness conveyed a sense of intention; of desire and
searching. "Stave?" she murmured softly. What the
hell are they doing? But the Master did not answer.
Still the shadows roiled and yearned. But now by
increments they appeared to direct their attention
away from the wedge and the mountains, across the
foothills into the west. Their squirming forms seemed
to beckon in that direction.
As they did so, the ditch began to overflow. Viscid
black fluid poured like a serpent
from the gutter, slithering through the soil and grass
as if in obedience to the cornmands of the trapped
shadows.
Slowly at first, then with more celerity, the snake of
power glided across the hollow and went questing
down the hillside. In moments, it was long enough to
have drawn all of the liquid from the ditch. However,
the ur-viles contrived to replenish the fluid as rapidly
as it flowed away. Their ditch remained full, holding
the shadows in place against the direct contradiction of
the sun.
The black serpent called to Linden's percipience,
urging her to follow where it led. After a time, a small
group of ur-viles-perhaps a third of the creatures-
broke
from the wedge and trotted away beside the serpent's
squirming length. They did not
run, but they moved quickly enough to outpace their
liquid power.
Each of them carried an iron dagger with a crimson
blade as bright as burning
blood.
With an effort, Linden wrenched herself out of her
transfixion. If the lore of the urviles could locate the
Staff of Law in this fashion, she did not mean to be left
behind. Murmuring, "Come on," to Mahrtiir and
Stave, she urged Hyn into motion. "We should see
where this is going." Obediently the mare began to
canter around the hollow after the creatures.
The line of darkness did not appear to flow swiftly.
And its progress had slowed. Perhaps its power was
attenuated by its distance from the circle and the
shadows. Or it may have been diminished by the fact
that fewer creatures now fed it. Yet it had already
dropped into a fold of ground between foothills and
begun to squirm up the far slope, searching the rocks
and tufts of grass as if it were unsure of its way.
There the trailing ur-viles caught up with it. At once,
they placed themselves near the serpent's head, four in
a row on each side, and dropped to their knees facing
each other. Raucous as crows, their harsh voices rose
as each of them plunged its dagger into the snake's
fluid body.
Fresh power thrummed in the air: the serpent writhed
as though it had been
goaded. Then it began to move ahead with more speed
and certainty.
The ur-viles remained where they were to sustain the
fluid.
Its course ran almost due west. In this region, however,
the mountains gradually
withdrew into the south, drawing their foothills with
them. As a result, the serpent's
path angled slowly toward the plains, leading Linden
and her companions deeper and
deeper into the piled heat of summer.
The moisture in her eyes became sweat as she rode.
Helpless to do anything else, she wiped them on the
sleeve of her shirt, and concentrated on the tortuous
progress of the search.
The serpentine blackness soon began to falter again as
its elongation weakened it. Shortly, however, eight
more ur-viles came trotting across the slopes,
dispatched by the
loremaster and the dwindling wedge to extend the
reach of their power. These creatures also knelt behind
the serpent's head in order to stab their glowing
daggers into its liquid flesh.
Once again, the dark fluid flowed ahead with renewed
strength.
Softly, fearing to disturb the ur-viles' concentration,
Linden asked Stave, "How much longer can they keep
this up?"
She did not expect an answer; but her constrained
urgency demanded an outlet. As far ahead as she could
see, the foothills continued to unfold in sequence, as
rumpled as a dropped blanket, and devoid of any
features-caves or copses, ravines, fallen stones-which
might have concealed the Staff.
The Master shrugged. "They are Demondim-spawn.
Who can measure the extent of their lore? The
Haruchai have seen them perform far greater feats, in
Corruption's service."
Linden could not think of any reason why the Staff
might not have been taken tens or even hundreds of
leagues from the place where Anele had lost it.
In the heat of her concentration, she had forgotten the
rest of her companions. Fortunately Stave had not.
Turning to the Manethrall, he asked Mahrtiir to ride
back toward the hollow in case Liand, Anele, and the
Cords needed help or guidance.
The Manethrall visibly disliked accepting a suggestion
from Stave. However, he apparently recognized that
the request was reasonable. Inclining his head more to
Linden than to the Haruchai, he turned his Ranyhyn
and cantered away.
She hardly saw him go. She had no attention to spare
for pragmatic concerns. She had risked too much by
coming here, and could think of nothing except the
search before her.
Again the flowing liquid began to lose its way. Before it
failed altogether, however, the last of the ur-viles
arrived to sustain it, leaving only the loremaster
behind to command the shadows.
Until then, Linden's attention had been fixed on the
serpent's progress: she had given no thought to the
price which the ur-viles paid for their exertions. They
were too alien to be understood in human terms. But
now she saw that the Demondim-spawn were
trembling with weariness. Their peculiar nature did
not protect them from strain and limitation: the
necessary, ineluctable, and crippling strictures of
Time.
Earlier, she had feared that they sought the Staff for
reasons which might conflict with hers. Now she began
to worry that they might exhaust themselves before
they found it.
Overhead, the sun slipped toward mid-afternoon.
Linden was dimly conscious of thirst and hunger, and
of her own deep fatigue. She had known no real rest
since the hour when she had first met Roger Covenant.
Nevertheless the efforts and lore of the ur-viles held
her. Her need for the Staff of Law outweighed every
other consideration.
i
Ahead of her, the lore-serpent slid past an outcropping
of rock in a narrow gully and seemed to become
confused, no longer able to taste its prey in the thin
soil. At the same time, Mahrtiir returned,
accompanied by the rest of Linden's companions as
well as by a group of ur-viles.
Tersely the Manethrall explained that when Liand,
Anele, and the Cords had emerged from the ravine,
the loremaster had led them westward, abandoning its
solitary efforts to replenish the ditch and compel the
shadows. Instead of simply advancing to the serpent's
head, however, the loremaster had stopped to replace
the rearmost ur-viles. Driving its power into the black
flow, the largest of the creatures had freed the others
to extend the reach of their lore.
They staggered with fatigue as they loped forward.
Nonetheless they plunged unsteadily to their knees
beside their fading search. Their blades seemed to
gutter in their hands, lapsing to iron and then
resuming a molten glow spasmodically. Yet they bent
as one to their task, chanting in raw voices.
If Bhapa and Pahni felt any weariness, they did not
show it. Instead they evinced the unassuming stoicism
of Cords in the presence of their Manethrall. But
Anele sprawled on Hrama's neck as though he had
given up hope. And Liand made no attempt to conceal
his worry and wonder. Nothing in his life had
prepared him to comprehend an exertion of power like
the lore-serpent.
When he had drawn Rhohm to Linden's side, the
Stonedownor said, "The Manethrall deems that the ur-
viles quest for the Staff." He spoke in a whisper,
plainly hoping that the creatures would not hear him.
"Yet your apprehension is clear. Do you not desire
their aid? Do you mistrust them, Linden?"
"I'm not sure." She hardly knew what she felt.
"Everything they've done for us so far has been good.
But I don't know why they're doing it.
"I've heard that they're driven by some kind of racial
purpose." Their Weird. "For thousands of years, they
served Lord Foul. Then they turned against him."
They had created Vain so that a new Staff of Law
could be made. "I don't know what changed.
Nor did she know the limits of their lore. Were they
capable of prescience; of reading Time? Was it
possible that they had enabled her to fashion the Staff
so that laternow-they would have an opportunity to
claim it for themselves?
If they shared the loathing of the Viles and the
Demondim for their own forms, they might believe
that they needed the Staff in order to transform
themselves.
Liand nodded. He had learned enough about the ur-
viles from Stave to understand her uncertainty. Softly
he said, "I confess that I have envied your knowledge
of the Land and power. But now I find that I do not
envy the burdens imposed by your knowledge
Smiling ruefully, he left her to study the progress of
the lore-serpent in silence.
Linden could see signs that it would soon fail
altogether. It was stretched too thin: its power
dwindled as if the black fluid were being denatured by
the summer heat. The
ur-viles knelt behind its head in relays, leaving its tail
so that their vitriol could continue its search. But each
time they did so, weariness sapped more of their
strength; and no new power fed the snake.
The sun seemed to cook Linden's heart as she watched,
bringing her closer and closer to Anele's despair.
Then the black fluid neared the bottom of a narrow
crease between hills, and there it stopped altogether.
She could see no obstacle in its path-and no feature to
distinguish this particular crease from others she had
passed. The sand and stone of its bottom suggested a
watercourse, fed during the spring by rain and melting
snow, but now entirely dry. However, a scattering of
low brush grew along the scant ravine's sides; more
shrubs and grass than Linden had noticed on the
surrounding hills. Perhaps a little water still seeped
through the sand, helping the deep roots of the brush
cling to life.
For no apparent reason, the liquid line of the ur-viles'
questing ended in a flat plane
as though it had encountered an invisible wall.
Behind Linden, the creatures slumped away from the
serpent, withdrawing their
blades from its body, allowing its power to wither and
fade. In moments, the dark fluid
began to evaporate. Its macerated strength curled into
the air in midnight plumes and
wisps like remnants of shadows.
As the serpent died, she urged Hyn forward. She
wanted to study the spot where it
had ended. Had the ur-viles simply failed? Or had
their searching met a barrier of
some kind, an expression of lore which ordinary sight
could not detect?
The Demondim-spawn barked at her hoarsely: they
may have been trying to warn
her. But their cries were too weak and weary to hold
her back.
Stave came after her at once. Liand and Mahrtiir did
the same. But their Ranyhyn
were a stride behind Hyn as Linden neared the line
where the dying liquid had been
cut off.
Abruptly the mare shied; stopped. Tossing her head,
she snorted in disapproval. "Have care, Chosen,"
advised the Master. "There is power here." Still
Linden could discern nothing. "What kind of power?"
Stave gazed across the hills. "It resembles a Word of
Warning such as the Lords
wrought to forbid the approach of their foes."
Harshly Mahrtiir put in, "It lacks such force." He
appeared to relish contradicting
the Haruchai.
Stave nodded. "Indeed. It conceals. It does not
threaten."
Linden gaped at the blank air as though she had gone
blind. Why could she not perceive-?
She glanced around for Liand to ask him what he
could see; and as she did so the edge of her vision
caught a faint shimmering in the bottom of the dry
streambed, an
elusive distortion like a hint of mirage. Instinctively
she looked directly at the sand and brush again; and
again her senses detected nothing. Yet when she
glanced aside, the watercourse seemed to waver
slightly.
Guided by uncertainty, as she had been ever since she
had first met Thomas Covenant, Linden gradually
refined her percipience until, like Stave and Mahrtiir,
she could feel the character of the shimmering.
They were right: there was power in the air. If Hyn
had carried her into the bottom of the crease, she
would have been stung by forces strong enough to stun
her. Yet any harm that she might have suffered would
have been a necessary side effect of the power, not its
intent. It had been placed here for another purpose.
To conceal something, as Stave had suggested? Or to
forewarn its wielders?
Or both?
In any case, its evanescent presence implied
"Linden-?" Liand began. But he was too bewildered to
complete his question. -that the lore of the ur-viles had
not failed. Some potent being or beings lurked nearby.
And it or they did not wish to be found. Or taken by
surprise. "All right," she murmured under her breath.
"All right." She could still hope.
Then she asked more loudly, "Now what?"
At her side, Stave shrugged. "I know little of such lore.
The Haruchai do not require it. If you will not turn
aside, we must continue to rely upon the guidance of
the ur-viles."
Unless Linden called up white fire and simply tore the
shimmering aside
She no longer trusted that she would be able to do so.
Her failure to find her own power in the caesure had
nearly doomed her and everyone with her.
Thinking that she should return to the ur-viles, see if
they were in any condition to take action, she touched
Hyn's neck; and the Ranyhyn turned to trot back
toward the creatures.
Already most of their fluid had wisped away into the
sunlight; and another group of ur-viles had joined
those nearby, sprawling exhausted beside their fellows.
More limped over the crest of the hill, their black skin
streaked with dust and expenditure. They, too, sagged
to the ground with the other ur-viles, too worn out to
go farther. Now only the loremaster remained absent.
When it reached her, Linden's company would be
complete.
Pitying their prostration, she slipped from Hyn's back,
walked a few steps to stand among the creatures, then
slowly lowered herself to her knees so that she would
not appear to be looking down on them.
Her companions also dismounted, leaving only Anele
astride his Ranyhyn. He ig
nored them as he had ignored everything since he had
been taken from his cave. His battered forehead he
veiled in Hrama's mane.
For a moment, Linden hesitated, unsure of herself. But
the pressure of her plight did not release her. Wiping
the sweat from her forehead, she addressed the
creatures softly, pleading with them yet again.
"I don't know what to do. I keep saying that. This is
beyond me. I know you're exhausted. You've already
done more than I have any right to ask. But I need
even more."
The thought of confronting the mirage with
Covenant's ring made her stomach clench.
"Is there anything we can do for you? Do you eat
aliantha?" She had seen none, but she did not doubt
that the Ramen-or the Ranyhyn-would be able to find
treasureberries. "Do you need water?" Liand and the
Ramen carried several waterskins. "Can you make
more vitrim?"
The ur-viles regarded her with their wide nostrils and
did not respond.
All right, she insisted, trying to reassure herself. She
could not tell whether the situation required action or
not. Nonetheless she did. A form of madness crouched
in the background of her mind, awaiting its
opportunity to spring. She had to do something
Somehow she needed to find her way back to wild
magic.
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
d
i
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 loreserpent. 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 blueand-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
shoulderto-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.
L
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 cane 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 powerechoes, 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
sneer. "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
I
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.
Instinctively Linden dismissed the refusal of the
Waynhim. It was too much: she could not afford to
believe that she would fail now. Her head still reeled
with the aftereffects of the Waynhim's defenses, and
Esmer's. She had no choice but to act as
though she could not be thwarted.
They were Waynhim, and they had the Staff: that was
all that mattered. She had nowhere else to turn. If they
did not trust her, she would simply have to persuade
them.
Quietly, almost calmly, she asked Esmer, "Why not?
They know I made it. Don't they think it belongs to
me?"
His ferocity faded at once. Now he appeared to squirm.
"They fear you," he admitted. "Your presence in this
time is a profound violation of the very Law which the
Staff supports. How can they believe that your purpose
is benign, when you have chosen to pursue that
purpose by such hazardous means?
"Also," he added in a smaller voice, "they fear me.
They perceive the peril of my nature. That I act on
your behalf tells against you."
Linden shook her head. The reasoning of the
Waynhim did not surprise her. They
were not her enemies.
Esmer, on the other hand
"They have a point," she said more sharply. "What in
hell are you doing here, Esmer?" Then she stopped
herself. "No, don't answer that yet. First tell me how
you got here.
Earlier, he had refused to enter the caesure with her.
In my presence, you will surely fail. What had he
meant, if not that his nature would not permit passage
through
a Fall?
"You are acquainted with Elohim," he answered, still
squirming. "You know that they stand apart from all
Law. I have not inherited their untrammeled
separateness, but I have been granted a measure of
their freedom." He shrugged uncomfortably. "Time
seldom hinders me."
"Then why didn't you just come get the Staff for me?
You keep saying you want to help. Why did we have to
go through all that pain?"
Esmer looked away. "The Elohim respect the Law of
Time. It preserves the Earth. They have no wish to
rouse the Worm of the World's End. To that extent, I
am bound by their Wiird."
Linden swore to herself. As usual, his response was too
conflicted and ambiguous to help her. Instead of
pursuing the subject, she changed directions.
"You said the Waynhim were blind to my ring. Why is
that?"
Esmer's mien reflected a rolling wave of emotions:
anxiety, defensiveness, shame. "It is an effect of my
nearness."
She heard hints in his words, suggestions of insight,
but their meaning eluded her. There were conclusions
which she should have been able to draw- Too many
truths had already slipped through her fingers, leaving
her less and less prepared for each succeeding crisis.
But she could not think beyond the exigencies of her
immediate situation.
Esmer had mentioned betrayal. As if treachery were
essential to his identity. And he had avowed that his
presence would ensure her failure.
"So if you hadn't showed up here and broken down
their defenses," she said grimly, "we wouldn't be in
this mess. The Waynhim would have sensed the ur-
viles, sure, but they would have felt my ring at the
same time.
"And the ur-viles wouldn't have attacked them." She
would not have permitted that. "As far as I can see,
the Waynhim are refusing me now because you came
all this way to threaten them."
Stave nodded again.
"So explain it to me, Esmer," she insisted. "What in
hell are you doing here?"
"Wildwielder," he retorted, "you understand
nothing." His words were scornful, but his tone and
his manner ached with regret, apology; self-
recrimination. "I feared what might transpire if the
ur-viles accosted the Waynhim.
"The breaking of their wards is nothing. If you chose,
you might have torn the barrier asunder. Or the ur-
viles, given time, could have accomplished as much in
your name. But such efforts would have been
prolonged, allowing the Waynhim to withdraw. Nor
would your actions have relieved their mistrust.
"My intervention has not harmed them. It was
necessary only to prevent them from flight, so that you
might be granted an opportunity to beseech them.
"Also the enmity among these Demondim-spawn is
deep and ancient. That the urviles have seen their
Wiird in a new way does not comfort the Waynhim. In
my ab
I
I
_MM. _
sence, how would you mediate between them? And
how would you counter their doubt of you? You do not
know their speech. You cannot answer their concerns
if you do not comprehend them.
"You must not spurn my aid." Yearning ached in his
gaze. "How otherwise may I be redeemed?"
But Linden had no tolerance left for his self-
justifications. "That's not my problem," she told him
trenchantly. "You like to talk about betrayals. I don't
think I can afford your help."
Turning her back on his puissance, she took a few
steps toward the Waynhim.
"You know me," she told the waiting creature. "I
don't care what Esmer says about me-or about you
either. He's making this all sound complicated when
it's actually simple.
"I'm the woman who made the Staff. Covenant
sacrificed himself to protect the Arch of Time, and I
used his ring to transform Vain and Findail so that I
could stop the Sunbane.
"I came here through a caesure. That's true. And
caesures are evil. That's true, too. But it doesn't
change who I am." She believed that. "I just didn't
have any other way to get here."
She could not read the creature's reactions. It might
have regarded her with empathy or terror, and she
would not have known the difference. Yet somehow
the Waynhim conveyed the impression that it was not
well; that some old sorrow or wound sapped its
vitality, leaving it more frail than it should have been.
Grief over the nearextermination of its kind? Some
other loss or burden? Linden could not tell. Like the
ur-viles, the Waynhim baffled her health-sense.
Nevertheless its condition moved her. When she went
on, she spoke more gently.
"If I'm going to fight Lord Foul, I need the Staff. I'm
no 'Wildwielder.' That was Covenant, and he's dead.
And white gold can't stop caesures. You know that
better than I do. Only Law can undo that kind of
rupture.
"But that's not all." She glanced back at Cail's son,
then told the Waynhim urgently, "Esmer may not
have mentioned that Lord Foul has my son, my
Jeremiah. Maybe I can rescue him with wild magic,
maybe I can't. But I can't do it without risking the
Arch, and that's too dangerous. I need the Staff.
Otherwise I might do enough harm to end the Earth."
Even Jeremiah would be destroyed.
"And the Staff belongs to me," she asserted. "Not just
because I made it, but because I'm a healer. That's
what I do." She chose her words with care. "I'm the
right person to use it."
You're the only one who can do this.
The creature responded with a spate of harsh barking,
bitter as a denial. When the Waynhim finished, Esmer
said as if he had lost interest, "They were unaware
that you have a son. They sorrow on his behalf. But all
else that you have said they knew, and they are not
swayed. Your presence is a violation of Law. Good
cannot be accomplished by evil means."
At any other time, that argument would have stopped
Linden. She recognized its validity. But she could not
heed it now. She had already taken risks which she
could not undo. She could only hope to justify them
with her actions.
"Wait here," she told the Waynhim abruptly. "I'll
show you why you should give me the Staff."
The creature inclined its head: a motion which could
have meant anything, but which she chose to interpret
as consent.
At once, she swung away to stride down the ravine
toward her companions.
Deliberately she ignored Esmer. Accompanied by
Stave and Mahrtiir, she hastened along the streambed,
rushing to find her way through her ramified
dilemmas before her instincts faltered or failed.
Although Esmer had withdrawn his barrier, the rest of
her company still stood in midafternoon sunlight at the
end of the ravine. The ur-viles remained
undecipherable to her; but Liand's charged confusion
and the alarm of the Cords reached her across the
intervening sand and stone.
They were as human as she was; their needs as great.
Any explanation might have eased their hearts. But
she could not pause for them. Holding up her hand to
silence their questions, she spoke first to the ur-viles.
"You can't go any farther," she said brusquely. "You
know that. The Waynhim won't have it. And I suspect
you don't want to." Unless they craved the Staff for
themselves. But if they did, they were too weak to act
on their desire. "You've already done your part. You'll
have to wait here."
Then she turned to Liand and the Cords. "Bhapa,
Pahni, I want you to take care of the Ranyhyn. Keep
them nearby. I don't know when we're going to need
them again, but it might be sudden.
"As for you-" She faced Liand's open concern
squarely. "Get Anele for me. Bring him into the
ravine. If he can't convince the Waynhim-"
She left the thought unfinished: if the old man could
not move the Waynhim, they had no hearts; and she
was powerless.
Liand's gaze still pleaded with her, but he did not
protest. When Pahni and Bhapa bowed in
acquiescence, he smiled crookedly and did the same.
Touched by his generosity, Linden might have taken a
moment to thank him, but her fears did not let her go.
As if she had released them, the ur-viles surrendered
to their weariness again. Aban_ doning their wedge,
they sank down to rest in the bottom of the
watercourse. At the same time, the Cords and Liand
started up the hillside toward the Ranyhyn and Anele.
With Mahrtiir and Stave beside her still, Linden
returned to Esmer and the lone Waynhim, walking
among the shadows as if she meant to challenge the
dark.
Esmer and the creature were talking quietly, but they
broke off their exchange as she approached. She could
not be sure, but she thought that she saw tears in
Esmer's indefinite gaze.
Too tense to remain silent, she asked, "Now what?"
Esmer lifted his shoulders: a shrug, perhaps, or a
clench of self-restraint. "The Waynhim are valiant,"
he answered in a low voice, "and too many of them will
perish if you do not contrive their salvation. They
know their plight,.yet they do not flinch from it. I
grieve for them, as I do for myself."
Oh, great, Linden thought to herself. Just what I need.
More riddles.
Aloud, she muttered, "So this is what your help is like.
You summoned a caesure for
me, and the Ramen were driven out of their homes.
Now you're here to `mediate' for
me, and something terrible is going to happen to the
Waynhim." He nodded stiffly.
A new concern occurred to her. "What about all the
help you gave the Ramen before they came to the
Verge of Wandering? How are you going to betray
them for that?"
Esmer withheld his damp gaze. "I have already done
so. I have brought them near to the Land when you
had need of them. No more terrible doom has been
required of me."
Linden wanted to snarl at him; but she kept her ire to
herself. While she remained in this time, she could do
nothing for the Ramen.
"Then," Stave remarked to Esmer, "the Chosen and
all the Land would he better served without your aid."
Remembering Esmer's earlier violence, Linden braced
herself to jump between him and the Haruchai. But
Cail's son did not answer Stave's accusation.
"Ringthane," Mahrtiir offered slowly, "I cannot
account for him." The Manethrall sounded troubled.
"He has been a friend to the Ramen as to the Ranyhyn,
giving us no cause for mistrust. Of one thing I am
certain, however. No urging of his has caused us to act
against the will of the Ranyhyn. For that reason, we
regret nothing that we have done, though we have
indeed returned to the Verge of Wandering in a time
of peril."
Before Linden could respond, she heard movement
behind her. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Liand
enter the streambed with Anele. The Stonedownor
supported Anele with his arm around the old man's
waist. Anele appeared to have lost all volition and
strength: he accompanied Liand only because the
young man half carried him along.
Nonetheless Linden was sure of him. He was an
argument that would persuade the Waynhim to aid
her. If they were deaf to him, they would hear no other
appeal.
"Thank you," she murmured as Liand and the old
man drew near. Then she said, "Let him go. Let's see
what he does."
Liand complied with a nod. When he had released
Anele, he stepped back.
Shadows made pools of darkness in the sockets of
Anele's blind eyes. He appeared entirely lost; too far
gone in dismay to be aware of his surroundings or
situation. In some preterite way, however, he may have
understood what was needed of him. Or perhaps his
inborn Earthpower reacted to the lore of the
Waynhim. As soon as Liand removed his support, the
old man took a few tottering steps toward the creature
and dropped to his knees.
Clasping his hands before his face as if he were
praying, he bowed his face to the sand. Then he spread
out his arms and prostrated himself like an act of
supplication.
The Waynhim considered him carefully. It came to
stand over him; sniffed all around him as though
tasting the tale of his life in his aggrieved scent. And as
it did so, the creature increasingly gave the impression
that it had been wounded; galled by sorrow or
suffering.
If Linden could have seen its cause, the creature's care
and pain would have explained the Waynhim to her.
One more hint, a final glimpse or insight, might enable
her to comprehend their dilemma.
Trying to elicit that hint, she told the Waynhim softly,
"This is Anele, son of Sunder and Hollian. They were
chosen to hold the Staff of Law when I passed from the
Land, and Covenant was lost. He inherited it from
them. You found it in the cave where he lived while he
studied the Land, trying to determine the form of
service that was right for him."
She did not add, He only made one mistake. Look at
what it cost him. The creature could discern the truth
for itself.
When the Waynhim had finished its examination, it
barked a few guttural syllables into the gloom and
retreated to stand once more near the mouth of the
cave. There it stayed, apparently forbidding Linden to
enter; refusing her
After a moment, Mahrtiir demanded tensely, "Esmer,
what was said? Has the Waynhim given its answer?"
Esmer hid his surging gaze in the crook of his arm and
did not reply.
Stave waited with his arms folded across his chest. His
flat features betrayed no reaction.
Linden kept her attention fixed on the creature and
the cave.
As the sun declined past midafternoon, the shadows
thickened, obscuring the face of the Waynhim, filling
the mouth of the cave with potential night. Within
herself, Linden fretted; but outwardly she remained
calm. The Waynhim could argue that the end
did not justify the means, but they could not deny that
Anele was the rightful wielder of the Staff or that he
was in no condition to bear that responsibility. Nor
could they believe that the Staff was not desperately
needed. Anele's plight demonstrated the Land's more
eloquently than any words.
And the delay was not prolonged. Soon the darkness
within the cave appeared to condense, concentrating
gradually into the form of a second Waynhim.
This creature moved with an arduous limp, as if every
movement tormented its sore and swollen joints. As it
emerged from the cave, Linden saw that its flesh was
afflicted with oozing galls and eruptions like the
stigmata of a plague. From half of its face the skin had
peeled away, leaving raw tissues which throbbed and
bled with each beat of its heart. Boils and blisters
distorted its mouth as if it had swallowed acid, and a
rank green fluid dripped like pus from both of its
nostrils..
Its pain cried out to her, as articulate as weeping,
although the Waynhim made no sound.
It came forward a few steps, then stopped, wavering
on its feet as if it had reached the end of its strength.
"Heaven and Earth!" Liand breathed. "What has
befallen it? Is this an ailment? Has some cruel force
wrought such harm?"
"Esmer?" demanded Mahrtiir harshly.
Linden understood now: the poor creature's suffering
gave her the hint she needed. How else might the
Waynhim have responded to Anele's plight, except by
revealing their own?
Nevertheless the truth appalled her. And she had no
power. Some force or confusion had sealed shut the
door to wild magic within her.
Like Anele, still prostrate in the sand beside her, she
sank to her knees before the damaged creature and
bowed her head.
Gruffly Esmer responded, "The Demondim-spawn are
not creatures of Law. They were not born as natural
creatures, nor do they wither and perish as the Law of
Life requires. Rather they were conceived by lore,
created to redeem the loathing of the Demondim for
their own forms."
Ah, God. Linden feared that this crisis would be too
much for her; that the dilemma of the Waynhim
exceeded her scant strength. But these creatures were
not her enemies. And they had shown her what they
required in order to trust her.
"Those offspring," Esmer continued, "which the
Demondim deemed worthy, they nurtured. Those
which failed their intent, they cast aside. Yet the ur-
viles and the Waynhim differ primarily in their
interpretations of the Weird or Wyrd or Word which
gives them purpose. In their physical substance, they
are alike, and the Law which gives form to mortal life
has no place in them."
On her knees with her eyes closed and her chest full of
yearning, Linden considered
her straits. She could not use Covenant's ring. But the
Waynhim held the Staff of Law; her Staff. How distant
was it? How deeply had the Waynhim sequestered it?
Could her health-sense extend so far?
The damaged creature had taken some time to reach
the ravine. But its pain was terrible, and all its steps
were slow. It could not have come a long way.
With her eyes closed, she listened to Esmer's voice. It
moved her like a lament.
"For that reason," he explained, "the Staff of Law is
inimical to them. Though the Waynhim serve the
Land, and have always done so, their service stands
outside the bounds of Law. Their lore is in itself a
violation of Law. The fact of their service does not
alter their nature.
"Therefore the mere proximity of the Staff harms
them. If its influences are not guided and controlled by
a condign hand, its power must destroy them.
Unprotected, no Waynhim or ur-vile can long endure
its presence and remain whole "
And therefore the Waynhim understood Linden's
dilemma; the dilemma of every white gold wielder.
The damaged creature in front of her demonstrated
that they could be persuaded.
Comforted by the knowledge, she sank into Esmer's
words and the Waynhim's pain; and as she did so, her
percipience expanded outward, following the hard
guidance of the ravine's stone walls into the cave.
She did not consciously search for the Staff. The wrong
kind of concentration would block her senses. Instead
she simply drifted. And she found herself thinking, not
of the Staff itself, or of how she had made it, or of its
cost, but rather of Andelain and beauty.
If she had not visited that bastion of loveliness with
Thomas Covenant, she would not have loved the Land
as he did. Until that time, she had known only the
Sunbane; and so the ineffable glory of Earthpower had
been hidden from her.
"Sensing that the Staff had been abandoned," Esmer
said as if from an impossible distance, "these
Waynhim sought it out, that they might preserve it
from the Despiser's Servants."
Linden could almost hear the Forestal of Andelain's
song. It had been retained in the depths of her
memories, melodic as trees, poignant as flowers: an
eldritch music which had spangled and enumerated
with glory every blade of grass, every petal, every leaf,
every woodland creature.
"Yet the nearness of the Staff harms all Demondim-
spawn." Esmer's voice had beCome a threnody in the
dim ravine. "Over the years, it would unmake these
Waynhim entirely. Therefore they selected from
among their number one to bear the burdenone to
transport the Staff from its former resting place, and
here to become its final guardian. Thus the Waynhim
hoped to satisfy their Weird without bringing ruin
upon this rhysh, for it is the last in all the Land.
"The outcome of their choosing stands before us."
Perpetually wounded in the name of service.
Like the Waynhim, the Forestal's song was full of
sorrow, carried on an undercurrent of woe. And like
the Waynhim, it did not flinch from its own resolve.

Oh, Andelain! Forgive! For I am doomed to fail this
war.
I cannot bear to see you die-and live,
Foredoomed to bitterness and all the grey Despiser's
lore.
But while I can I heed the call
Of green and tree; and for their worth I hold the glaive
of Law against the Earth.

Linden's memories of Andelain and music bore her
along until she found what she sought: the precise aura
and potency of the Staff of Law.
"And yet," Mahrtiir put in, "they would refuse the
Staff to the Ringthane, she who above all others has
the greatest need-"
He stopped, unable to express his bafflement and
chagrin.
"Manethrall," answered Esmer, "they must satisfy
their Weird. I have named their reasons. They do not
count the cost to themselves."
They did not; but Linden counted it for them. She had
spent her life responding to such needs.
Her nerves recognized the Staff with gladness. The
Land had gifted her with healthsense, and she could
not mistake the Staff's particular emanations. It was
the incarnation of rightness, the tangible bulwark of
the strictures, sequences, necessities-the
commandments-which made life and beauty possible.
While it remained intact, Lord Foul could never
entirely extinguish hope.
And she was its maker. Inspired by her love for
Covenant and the Land, for all of her friends, she had
expended herself in white fire to create an instrument
against the Sunbane. She did not need to be in contact
with it in order to wield its benison. She needed only to
feel its strength and know that it was hers.
Guided and controlled, Esmer had said. By a condign
hand.
Kneeling still, with her eyes closed and her head
bowed, Linden Avery the Chosen reached out to claim
the only power which had ever truly belonged to her.
Somewhere in the distance, Liand whispered, "Heaven
and Earth! Look to her. She is exalted-"
Together, as if they had momentarily set aside their
antagonism, Esmer and Stave replied, "She has
discovered the Staff."
"What will she do?" Liand asked in wonder.
Stave did not reply; but Esmer murmured softly,
"Behold."
Filling her hands with the vast possibilities of Law,
Linden turned her thoughts to the damaged Waynhim
standing unsteadily before her.
Her eyes remained closed. She did not need to gaze
upon the creature to know its suffering. Its wounds-the
inadvertent and unavoidable corrosion of its
substancewere plain to her in every detail. Her own
flesh felt them.
The Staff of Law had inflicted these hurts. With the
Staff, she could heal them.
Thus she answered the denial of the Waynhim. They
were the last remnant of their kind, and deserved no
less than to be made whole.
When her task was complete, the sun had fallen
farther down the sky, and the slow approach of
evening left the ravine deep in shadows. Nevertheless
her heart felt like daybreak, bright and full of promise.
8.


"Contrive tIeir salvation"
When Linden rose at last to her feet, nearly staggering
with weariness, the healed Waynhim and its
companion made raw-edged sounds which Esmer
translated as welcome. Courteously Stave and
Mahrtiir returned grave thanks. Leaving Bhapa and
Pahni with the Ranyhyn, and the ur-viles to fend for
themselves, Linden and her small company followed
the Waynhim into the cave.
She leaned heavily against Liand, needing his support.
And Mahrtiir held Anele upright: the old man seemed
too lost to fend for himself. Stave walked alone, while
Esmer trailed behind as if he had been dispossessed.
Formal as a procession, they proceeded along the dark
stone throat until they reached a turning, where the
passage opened into a wide chamber lit like a meeting
hall. There the rest of the rhysh waited to offer
welcome also, bowing after their fashion and chittering
among themselves like delighted birds.
Healing the creature that warded the Staff, Linden
had apparently healed them all. Even the Waynhim
which had first met her in the ravine had lost its
grieving air, and none of the others showed any signs
of harm.
She had in some sense validated the meaning of their
lives.
After the summer heat on the South Plains, the
atmosphere of the cave felt blessedly cool, soothing to
her raw nerves. The Waynhim guided their guests to
ledges like seats in the wall of the cave; and when she
sat down the worn stone seemed to embrace her in
spite of its unyielding surfaces. This sensation, she
knew, was an effect created by the Waynhim. They
wished her to understand that she had arrived in a
place of peace.
The light in the cave had a warm luminescence tinged
with emerald and flickers of rust. It arose from a
number of stone pots spaced like braziers around the
wide floor; and flames danced and twisted at their
rims. Yet Linden could see that the fires were fed, not
by oil or wood, but by lore. Instead of smoke, they cast
a scent of cloves and coriander into the air.
Liand sat near her, although now she did not need his
care. The Waynhim had brought her closer to the Staff
of Law: she could feel its nearness effortlessly. Its stern
beneficence filled her with an unfamiliar contentment.
Stave remained standing as if to do the Demondim-
spawn honor. And Esmer wandered aimlessly around
the chamber, looking vaguely rueful, troubled by
sorrows which he did not explain. But Mahrtiir also
sat on one of the ledges, studying the Waynhim as
though he meant to memorize every detail so that he
would be able to tell his people a tale worthy of his
fierce ambitions.
Seated as well, Anele rested against the stone,
mumbling into his thin beard. But some essential
change had taken place in him. When Linden looked at
him, she saw that his old rue and shame had lost some
of their vehemence. He had been ground down by too
many years and too much regret; and yet, in spite of
his mumbling, he appeared almost sane. His proximity
to the Staff seemed to soothe him, easing his long
bereavement.
The Waynhim offered an iron cup of vitrim to each of
their guests, although Esmer waved his aside with
apparent disdain. Then they gathered together in the
center of the chamber, forming themselves into a loose
wedge with the Staff's guardian at its tip. Again the
healed creature bowed to Linden, barking words she
could not understand. When she also had bowed, it
walked slowly out of the chamber into one of several
side-tunnels that interrupted the walls of the cave.
Hushed and expectant, everyone waited while the
creature disappeared on its errand.
Soon it returned, bearing the Staff of Law in its hands.
Linden's heart lifted again at the sight. The Staff's
unique nature spoke to her senses. It was taller than
the Waynhim-nearly as tall as she was herself-and
formed of a pale wood which gleamed in the lore-light;
wood so pale that it might have been carved from the
heart of a tree. Its length was smooth, as if it had been
polished lovingly for centuries. But its ends were
bound with iron bands, the heels of the original Staff
of Law which Berek Halfhand had formed from a limb
of the One Tree.
Vain and Findail had given their lives to it, rigid
structure and fluid vitality. But their qualities had
been transformed by wild magic and the passion of
Linden's torn spirit. And their union had been shaped,
guided, by the deep knowledge with which Berek had
forged his iron. Thus the lore of the ur-viles and the
Earthpower of the Dohim had become the pure
instrument of Law.
Eagerly Linden rose to meet the Staff. When the
creature placed it in her grasp, she felt a rush of
warmth from the wood. Its possibilities flowed into her
like heat. At the same time, she was filled with
memories of Andelain: of hillsides as lush as lawns
bedizened with wildflowers and aliantha; of the proud
outstretched health of Gilden trees with their wreaths
of golden leaves thick about them; of small streams,
and groves of oak, and swaths of briar-rose, all vibrant
with Earthpower.
She felt that she was remembering the Land as it had
once existed in the mind of its Creator, before Lord
Foul was imprisoned within the Arch of Time; before
Foul had corrupted the Land with hidden banes like
the Illearth Stone, and had gained the service of fell
beings like the Ravers. And she tasted as well the
Creator's grief. Having created the Arch, the structure
of beginning and end which allowed life to exist, the
Creator could not alter events within that structure
without violating it. Therefore Lord Foul's
imprisonment itself gave him the freedom to destroy
what the Creator had made.
Such treasures as the Staff of Law had been brought
into being so that the inhabitants of the Land would
have the means to oppose Lord Foul themselves; to
fight for the intended beauty of the world.
For a moment, at least, while she held the Staff for the
first time in many years, Linden felt equal to her
enormous task. Unlike Covenant's ring, the Staff
suited her. She understood its uses instinctively;
trusted herself with it. Its natural rightness seemed to
send healing into every cell and impulse of her being.
She did not realize that she was weeping until she
thought to thank the Waynhim and discovered that she
could see nothing clearly. Tears blurred her gaze,
turning the light to streaks of consolation, and
confusing the definition of the figures around her.
When she blinked the tears from her eyes, however,
she found that the Staff's guardian no longer stood
before her. The creature had stepped back, making
way for Anele.
The old man faced her with his hands poised near the
Staff as though he meant to wrest it from her grasp.
Liand and Mahrtiir hovered behind him, waiting to
see what he would do; ready to intervene. But they
were visibly reluctant to disturb him.
Anele's hands trembled as he studied the Staff, and his
blind gaze seemed to ache with yearning. How many
decades had passed since he had last stood in the
presence of his birthright? How much recrimination
and self-loathing had he suffered before he
had fallen into madness?
The touch of the Staff might heal him as well.
Yet he did not close his hands on the immaculate
wood; did not so much as brush it with his fingertips.
Instead he stood motionless while Linden grieved for
him and the entire chamber seemed to hold its breath.
Then, trembling, he lowered his arms.
In a small voice, he murmured unsteadily, "I am
unworthy of such astonishment. The day has not yet
come when I may be whole." His throat closed on a
sob. When he had swallowed it, he whispered, "Until
that time, I must remain as I am.
"Do not mourn for me." The effort of renunciation left
him desolate. "Know that I am content to behold the
Staff in your care."
Then he turned away and hid his face in his hands.
Liand's eyes were damp as he watched the old man.
Mahrtiir scowled fiercely, too proud for sadness; but
his manner was gentle as he guided Anele back to his
seat and
offered vitrim to his lips.
For a while, Linden could not stop her tears. The day
has not yet come- She believed him: there was no
falsehood in him. But the thought that he needed to
remain as he was hurt her more than she could
express. With the Staff, she possessed the power to
impose any healing that he might require. Yet he
refused her. He was not ready-or his circumstances
were not.
"Linden," asked Liand softly, "will you heed his desire
for forbearance? Your weariness is extreme, but surely
it does not outweigh his suffering?"
Hugging the Staff of Law to her chest, Linden cast her
health-sense deeply into the old man, as she had done
once before in the Verge of Wandering: again she
sought the means to succor him. But he had changed in
more ways than one. The same yearning or compulsion
which had brought him close to sanity had also
galvanized his native puissance. She would have to
force her way past powerful defenses in order to reach
him.
That violence might do him harm that she could not
repair.
She wiped her eyes on her sleeve. "Look at him," she
told Liand. "He's choosing to be this way." His
madness, like his blindness, was necessary to him still.
"If I try to heal him, he'll fight me. And maybe he's
right. He certainly has the right."
And she had neither the wisdom nor the arrogance to
make his decisions for him.
After a moment, Liand answered sadly, "I see what
you see, though it baffles me. Perhaps he must
determine the time and place of his healing." Then the
Stonedownor asked in a tone of pleading, "What does
he desire, if not the Staff which he lost?"
"You heard him," Linden sighed. "He needs to believe
in himself. He still thinks he's unworthy."
Grieving, she returned to her seat on the stone ledge.
Anele had assured her that he was content. And she,
too, needed healing. Her tasks were far from complete.
She still had to return to her proper time, and could
not do so without entering a caesure. But
her first experience had nearly destroyed her. Until
she became stronger, she would not be able to endure a
second.
And Esmer had warned her of betrayals- The
Waynhim are valiant, he had said, and too many of
them will perish if you do not contrive their salvation.
He had brought with him or elicited some peril when
he had appeared in this time. Now she and her
companions as well as the Ranyhyn were in danger.
Fervidly she clung to the smooth wood of the Staff for
comfort. When she had settled herself on the ledge, she
drank a few swallows of the musty vitrim and let its
potency carry the Staff's warmth like chrism into the
depths of her weariness.
he had rested there for only a short time, however,
when Stave and Esmer approached her together.
Animosity bristled between them, yet they were
momentarily united in their resolve to question her.
Holding the Staff across her lap, she looked into the
shifting green of Esmer's gaze and the steady brown of
Stave's, and waited wearily for them to speak.
"What will you do," Esmer demanded abruptly, "now
that you have obtained your desire? It appears that
you are indeed the Chosen, for the Demondim-spawn
have chosen you. Perhaps they are not alone in their
selection. Will you now cease to be the Wildwielder,
setting aside white gold that you may dedicate yourself
to the service of Law? If you do so, how will you return
to your proper time? And if you do not, how will you
bear the burden of such powers?
"Either alone will transcend your strength, as they
would that of any mortal. Together they will wreak
only madness, for wild magic defies all Law. That is its
power and its peril.
"You must declare yourself, so that I"-he caught
himself-"so that all those here may find their own
paths."
He did not need to ask, If you set aside the ring, who
will take it up? That question was implicit in every line
of his face.
He may have wished to possess Covenant's ring
himself.
While Esmer spoke, Stave stepped aside as if to
dissociate himself from his antagonist's demand. But
when Esmer was finished, the Master said, "I also ask
this. We must not remain in this time. The hazard is
too great. And you must not wield both wild magic and
Law, lest you be torn asunder.
"Therefore I ask it. What is your intent?"
Linden considered both men through a blur of fatigue.
Stave remained suspicious of her, she was sure of that.
Yet she trusted him. Esmer, on the other hand-
S
Deliberately she turned to Mahrtiir and Liand.
"This depends on you," she told the Manethrall
carefully, "at least to some extent. I already know
what Liand will say. And Anele needs to stay near the
Staff. But I haven't asked you.
"Do you want to go back to your people? It should be
possible." Once she had created a Fall, the Ranyhyn
would be able to find their way. "But if we do that, I
can't stay with you. I have too many-"
"Ringthane," Mahrtiir put in before she could explain,
"this is needless." The light from the stone pots glinted
in his eyes. "I will accompany you wherever your
purpose leads. I seek a tale which will remain in the
memories of the Ramen when my life has ended. Such
renown I will never earn among them. They are"-his
mouth twisted"too cautious to be remembered."
Then he shrugged. "In this I will not command the
Cords. However, they feel a debt which they wish to
repay." He grinned at a thought which he kept to
himself. "And you have found favor in their sight.
They will not be parted from you."
"All right." Linden did not try to argue with him,
although he and the Cords might well perish in her
company. She needed as much rest as she could get.
And some buried part of her had already made her
decision. Raising her eyes to Esmer and Stave again,
she repeated, "All right.
"I'm going to Andelain. I know I've got too much
power. And I don't know where to look for my son."
Long ago, the spirits of Covenant's friends had guided
and comforted him there. Perhaps she, too, would find
her loved Dead. "I'm hoping that someone there can
tell me what to do."
Esmer made a sound like a hiss of vexation and turned
away; but Stave continued to face her with his usual
flat stoicism. Whatever her answer meant to him
remained shrouded. When her silence made it clear
that she had no more to say, however, his manner
seemed to intensify.
"Very well," he replied. "You wish to enter Andelain.
Perhaps you will do so. Yet you have not named a
more immediate intention. What will you do now?
"As I have said, we must not remain in this time. And
the peril grows with every moment of delay. Esmer has
threatened a betrayal which it would be unwise to
confront. And the hazard that our actions may violate
Time accumulates against us. It is folly to indulge in
rest when the need for departure becomes ever more
urgent."
Linden groaned to herself. She had hoped to postpone
arduous questions for a while; until the benignant
warmth of the Staff could knit together her frayed
resources. Yet Stave deserved an answer. All of her
companions did, the Waynhim as much as the Ramen
and Liand.
Searching for a way to convey what she felt, she turned
to the Stonedownor as to a touchstone of honesty.
"Liand?"
At once, he stopped tending Anele to look at her.
"Yes?"
"What was it like for you? In the caesure? What
happened to you while we were there?"
His eyes widened, then seemed to grow dark,
benighted by memory. "Linden-" He ducked his head
to hide his discomfort. Yet he concealed nothing. "To
speak of it is difficult. The pain- I had not conceived it
possible to experience such pain.
"And to endure it-" His voice sank until it was barely
audible. "That I could not have done, had the ur-viles
left me unprotected. But I felt their blackness about
me through the pain, warding away the worst of the
Fall."
Then he raised his head again. "There is a disturbance
in their lore which sickened me," he told Linden's
concerned gaze. "Yet it was a little thing in the greater
evil of the Fall. I would not have survived to speak of it
if the ur-viles had not preserved me."
Linden thanked him quietly, and released him.
"That's bad enough," she said to Stave. "The rest of us
aren't Haruchai. And we don't have Anele's
Earthpower. We're"-she shuddered-"vulnerable.
"But it's not the only problem. I don't know if you
realize that I failed. In the caesure. I almost let us all-"
Her own memories nearly choked her. "I couldn't use
Covenant's ring. I was in too much pain.
"We're only here because the ur-viles saved us. The
ur-viles and the Ranyhyn." And because she had
found a way to make use of Joan's madness-which she
would not have been able to do if the creatures had not
given her their strength. "Since I healed you, I've been
cut off from wild magic."
A moment of restless movement passed among the
Waynhim; but Linden ignored it. "I'm aware of the
danger. I need rest"-badly-"but that wouldn't stop me
if I knew how to get us out of here. I wouldn't let the
fact that I'm terrified of all that pain stop me. But
somehow I'm going to have to relearn how to use
Covenant's ring, and I'm not sure I can do that."
The Staff of Law would restore her, if she gave it time.
It would ward her against the Fall's torment. But it
would not give her access to argence. That she had to
rediscover within herself; and she did not know how
she had lost the way.
Stave stood before her, impassive and unswayed. "The
pain will be less severe," he pronounced. "You will not
be required to oppose the current of the Fall " He
paused to glance around the cave. When he faced
Linden again, he said, "And you will not be blocked
from wild magic. That hindrance is caused by Esmer's
presence, as he has said, and he is gone."
Startled, Linden looked quickly for Cail's son. But
Stave was right. Esmer had simply faded away;
evaporated like water.
She tried to ask, "Why-?" but she could not complete
the question.
Moments ago, the Waynhim had seemed restive. They
must have been reacting to Esmer's disappearance.
1F
11
"Your intention to enter Andelain displeased him,"
replied the Master. "Therefore he has departed."
Displeased-?
While Linden stared at Esmer's absence, she
scrambled to understand Stave's revelation.
Esmer had refused to enter the caesure with her. In
my presence, you will surely fail. And he had said that
the Waynhim were blinded to the proximity of white
gold. It is an effect of my nearness.
Damn it, she should have known
But he could not have caused her failure in the Fall.
That was the result of her own weakness, not of his
interference.
"Chosen " Stave's concentration gave his tone a
cutting edge.. "We must depart now, while Esmer is
absent, and his betrayal has not yet come upon us."
Abruptly Liand jumped to his feet. "You mislead us,
Master," he put in. "The decisions which Linden must
make are not as plain as you wish them to appear."
Before Stave could retort, Liand rushed on. "If I
comprehend aright, our presence here endangers the
Arch of Time. And we are in peril of Esmer's betrayal.
But there is another peril which you do not name." He
seemed suddenly furious at everything that the
Masters had done in the name of their unyielding
convictions. "If we hasten to depart, the harm which
Esmer has wrought will fall upon the Waynhim alone.
Without our aid, it may be that they will be destroyed.
"You are a Master of the Land. Do you deem the
Waynhim unworthy of our concern?"
The young man's anger-and his loyalty-raised an echo
of determination in Linden. With an effort, she set
aside her confusion and self-doubt. Tightening her grip
on the Staff, she concentrated instead on the hope that
Stave had given her; and on the passion of Liand's
support.
Stave's mien hinted at scorn as he answered the young
man. "Esmer's harm is directed against the Chosen. If
she is no longer present in this time, the peril to the
Waynhim will dissipate. He gains naught by their
destruction."
"Nothing," Linden countered, defending Liand in her
turn, "except a violation of the Land's history."
Stave studied her as though she had surprised him.
"You said yourself," she continued, "that there
haven't been any significant battles or powers in the
South Plains. If the danger doesn't dissipate, and the
Waynhim defend themselves, that might change.
"But even if they let themselves be exterminated-"
They know their plight, yet they
do not flinch from it. "We don't know what Esmer
might have unleashed. Whatever it
is, it could be powerful enough to change history no
matter what the Waynhim do." Liand's eyes shone as
if Linden had vindicated him.
Stave gave a slight shake of his head. "If he were
capable of such things, he would have done so ere now.
The Arch of Time would already have fallen."
Yet time remained intact: she knew that. Stave's words
still reached her in sequence. One thing still led to
another
"No," she said like a sigh. "It doesn't work that way
for him. He's too conflicted. We're his friends, or his
enemies. He hates you and approves of me. Or maybe
it's the other way around. As far as I can tell, the only
simple thing about him is his respect for the
Ranyhyn." Nothing else had compelled him to refrain
from killing Stave. "He doesn't want them hurt."
Mahrtiir nodded in confirmation.
Closing her eyes, Linden rubbed at the frown knotted
between her brows. "Maybe he is powerful enough to
bring down the Arch. I don't know. But he can't do it.
He needs a balance of some kind. He can't do anything
really destructive if he doesn't help us at the same
time. He can't help us without betraying us.
"He had to at least warn us. He needs that. And if he
didn't, we wouldn't have a chance to save the
Ranyhyn."
The Master regarded her closely. "You cannot be
certain of this."
"No," she admitted. When had she ever been certain
of anything except her loves? "But neither can you.
And until we are sure, I'm not leaving. The Waynhim
have already suffered enough. I won't leave them until
I know they aren't going to be wiped out."
Esmer had threatened even the ur-viles with
destruction.
For a long moment, Stave appeared to consider her
words. Then he lifted his shoulders in a small shrug.
"Very well," he said. "You will do as you wish, and I
will serve you as well as I am able. In this time, it is
useless to oppose you. But understand that nothing has
been resolved between us."
As he turned away, Linden bowed her head over the
Staff. She was content with his response. He was
Haruchai, inflexible by nature as well as conviction.
Yet he had already conceded more than she could have
expected from him.
® he might have closed her eyes then and slept; let
vitrim and the Staff work
within her undisturbed. But Liand was too restless to
leave her alone. And she had been postponing his
questions for hours. Sighing to herself, she gave up on
sleep in order to relieve some of his imposed ignorance.
While she told him tales of her time with Thomas
Covenant, one rambling anecdote after another in no
particular order, the Waynhim began to busy
themselves around the cave. At first she wondered
what they were doing; but then she saw that they were
preparing a meal. Apparently they did not live on
vitrim alone-or did not expect their guests to do so.
i
From a side tunnel, they produced a stone pot shaped
like a cauldron. One of their flaming urns they placed
near the center of the chamber; and when they had
muttered over it for a few moments, intensifying its
heat with chants and gestures, they balanced the larger
pot on top of it. Then they began sorting ingredients
which Linden could not identify into the cooking pot.
As they worked, she continued to talk; and gradually
her oblique narrative began to take on another
purpose. Instead of answering questions Liand did not
how know to ask, she mined her memories: words
were the picks and shovels with which she delved for
courage and insight. And the names of her lost friends
were an incantation. By their magic, she created a
place for herself in the Land, a role-and imagined
herself able to fulfill it.
"I thought that the Sunbane and the Ravers were as
bad as things could get. For a long time, I didn't think
I would ever see anything worse than the shedding of
the Haruchai." Through the Clave, Lord Foul had
attempted genocide against Stave's ancestors, draining
their blood to feed the Banefire. "But when Caer-
Caveral was gone, and the Sunbane broke into
Andelain for the first time-"
The people and places and needs that she remembered
explained her to herself.
"Lord Foul was responsible for all of it," she said
quietly. "He isn't called the Despiser and Corruption
for nothing. He's contempt and despair. Every time
any being or power tramples on life, he's there.
Laughing-"
Only the agony of an entire world could appease his
own innominate anguish.
"I'm sure there are times when I act like I've lost my
mind. I probably confuse the hell out of you. But you
already know what's happening for me. Whenever I do
something that looks insane, just remember that Lord
Foul has my son."
When she stopped at last, she found all of the attention
in the chamber focused on her. The Waynhim had
paused in their preparations to regard her as they
would an oracle. Mahrtiir's concentration was as
precise as a hawk's. Even Stave's posture conveyed an
unexpected impression of respect.
Liand had been listening with wonder on his face. As
she looked at him, however, he drew an unsteady
breath and shook off his entrancement.
"Now I am able to grasp why Anele is troubled when
he speaks of `astonishment. I know not how to name
what you have become to me. I feel that I have gained
the experience of years in these past days, and every
fact or detail which once seemed com
monplace has taken on a new significance.
"To my eyes, you do not appear `insane: Rather you
surpass my capacity for expression. When you speak
of that which you have done, and of those whom you
have known, you appear to inhabit a realm of
antiquity and grandeur. I would say that at your side I
seem paltry to myself, yet that belies what is in my
heart, for it is not I who am diminished, but rather you
who are exalted."
He glanced around the cave as if he sought
confirmation, but only Mahrtiir nodded an
acknowledgment. Stave and the Waynhim simply
studied Linden and listened as if the fates of worlds
were being decided; and Anele sprawled on his ledge,
sleeping soundly.
Linden did not know how to respond. If he believed
that she occupied "a realm of antiquity and
grandeur," how could he understand that she was
terrified and confused, or that she depended on his
uncomplicated support?
After a moment, she said, "It isn't like that. I'm more
ordinary than you think." Covenant fit Liand's
description. She did not. "I just can't afford to let it get
in my way."
Holding the young man's gaze, she added, "Do you
think that I belong in this position? That I was born to
wield tremendous powers and make decisions that
could affect the world? No. I do it because I don't
know how else to fight for what I love." Or for herself.
"If Lord Foul hadn't kidnapped Jeremiah, I wouldn't
even be here."
As she spoke, her weariness seemed to slip from her
shoulders, shrugged aside by the importance of what
she was trying to say.
"That makes you braver than I am," she told Liand.
"Don't you know that? You didn't have to leave Mithil
Stonedown. You didn't have to help me. Hell, as far as
you knew, there wasn't even anything at stake. But you
did it anyway.
"You did it because you didn't believe in your own life.
The Masters made it too small for you, and you
jumped at your first chance to make it bigger."
Let Stave take offense if he would. She had not kept
secret her reaction to what his people had done.
"If there's anyone here," she pronounced like an
article of faith, "who deserves to `inhabit a realm of
antiquity and grandeur,' it's you. And Mahrtiir." She
met the Manethrall's gaze briefly. "Bhapa. Pahni.
You're less selfish than I am. You haven't lost a
helpless kid who needs you. Instead you decided to risk
your entire lives for the simple reason that you
consider it worth doing."
In response, Liand regarded her as though she had
lifted him out of himself. All of the Waynhim
continued to study her closely, and Mahrtiir's
eagerness for battle shone in his eyes.
But Stave stood near the center of the chamber with
his arms folded across his chest and his emotions
hidden. His native reticence defied her discernment.
But the scar under his eye caught the light of the urns
and gleamed redly.
0l ventually the Waynhim resumed their preparations;
and Linden watched them, haunted by Esmer's dark
promises. Too many of them will perish if you do not
contrive their salvation. He might conceivably have
been referring to the harm
h
that the creatures suffered from the Staff; but she did
not believe so. He had spoken too often of betrayal.
When she realized that she was fretting, she asked the
Manethrall if Pahni and Bhapa should be warned of
the danger. He assured her, however, that the Cords
had been trained as hunters and scouts; sentinels for
the great horses. No doubt the urviles were wary as
well: they had their own reasons to distrust Esmer.
And the senses of the Ranyhyn were preternaturally
acute. They would be able to detect any threat before it
fell upon the Waynhim.
With as much patience as she could muster, Linden
waited for the creatures to ready their meal.
Fortunately they did so without further delay. Using
wooden ladles, they filled stone bowls with a steaming
broth that looked like sludge and smelled like stagnant
pond water. These they offered to their guests before
partaking themselves.
In spite of its superficial reek, the steam curling from
the bowls spoke to Linden's senses of much-needed
sustenance. The aura of the broth was redolent with
nourishment; and she was surprised to find that she
was hungry. Her first sip threatened to gag her, but
the second went down more easily, and the third she
swallowed almost
eagerly.
Meeting her glance, Liand gave her a rueful smile.
Politely he consumed some of his broth. Then he set
down his bowl with an air of relief and turned to assist
Mahrtiir with Anele.
Together Liand and the Manethrall roused the old
man and encouraged him to sup.
While she ate, Linden studied the stone of the cave,
trying to read its old, slow, imponderable sentience, as
Anele sometimes did. With the Staff in her lap, she
thought for a moment that she could detect hints of
knowledge in the clenched rock. But her human mind
slid past them too rapidly to be sure of their presence.
Because her attention was elsewhere, she did not notice
Pahni's approach until the Cord appeared at the
mouth of the outward tunnel.
The young woman-Linden still thought of her as a girl-
ventured hesitantly into the cave. She may have feared
to interrupt some important conclave or invocation.
Her face was set, however, and she did not allow
timidity or self-consciousness to hold her back.
Avoiding the Waynhim, she advanced toward Linden
and Mahrtiir.
All of the creatures stopped what they were doing and
turned to consider her with their moist nostrils.
Liand flashed a broad smile at the Cord. But the
pleasure fell from him when he recognized the quality
of her determination.
Instinctively Linden rose to her feet. She held the Staff
upright beside her, its heel planted on the floor, as if
she meant to call forth its power.
Mahrtiir stood also; and Stave joined them. Liand
mopped unceremoniously at a
spill of broth in Anele's beard, then surged erect as
well.
Hurrying now, the young woman offered them a quick
Ramen bow.
The Manethrall replied with a brusque nod. "Speak,
Cord. We have awaited some
word of what transpires in the night."
In the night-? Linden was surprised to realize that so
much time had passed. Darkness would limit even the
unquantified perceptions of the Ranyhyn.
"Manethrall." Pahni bowed again reflexively. Her
voice held a tremor of anxiety as
she said, "Shortly before sunset, Esmer came among
us. He attempted to draw the
Ranyhyn away." She frowned to mask a distinctly
Ramen disdain. "I had not thought
him so foolish. He should have known that they would
not abandon their riders." "He is troubled," Mahrtiir
replied. His tone made it clear that he did not consider
being troubled an adequate excuse.
Pahni nodded. "Yet we were concerned, Bhapa and I,
for he spoke slightingly to us,
foretelling death. Then he departed, though we could
not name where or how he had
gone.
"Because of his words, we widened our guard over the
Ranyhyn. Still we found no
sign of peril.
"Shortly after moonrise, however, came Naharahn-the
proud mare who has
shown me such honor-"
Abruptly the Cord fell silent, flustered by her awe and
gratitude. Mahrtiir did not rush her.
When Pahni had taken a deep breath to steady herself,
she was able to continue.
"Naharahn made it known to me that something
discomfited her. What it was I could
not determine by scent or sight or sound. But Whrany,
who bears Bhapa, felt likewise
disturbed. And their unrest spread swiftly among the
other Ranyhyn."
To herself, Linden groaned. She was not ready to
attempt another caesure. But she
did not interrupt the Cord.
"Sure of them," Pahni finished, "Bhapa has descended
toward the plains, seeking
the cause of their concern. Before he departed,
however, we agreed that you must be
forewarned."
As she said this, Pahni looked through her lashes at the
Manethrall as if she half ex
pected him to reprimand her for leaving her assigned
duties.
He did not. Instead he said, "You have done rightly.
Return now to the Ranyhyn." In
spite of his apparent calm, his voice held a rising
eagerness. "We will follow when we
have offered our respect to the Waynhim."
With another nod, he dismissed the Cord.
Bowing once more, Pahni turned and hastened, fleet as
a colt, out of the cave.
I
Liand watched her go as if he wanted to run after her;
but he made no move to leave Linden's side.
"It comes," Stave said impassively. Outside the cave,
Esmer's dark hints were approaching fruition.
Mahrtiir nodded, eager as a blade. He looked like a
man who could hear the call of battle.
Linden leaned heavily on the Staff. She was weary yet,
deeply in need of rest; entirely unprepared. Yet this
was the moment for which she had been waiting. Now
the nature of Esmer's betrayal would declare itself,
and she would know what she had to do to save the
Waynhim and her companions.
The Staff was a powerful tool, fraught with dangerous
possibilities; but it could not help her return to her
proper time. Somehow she would have to find her way
back to
wild magic.
"Linden?" asked Liand. "Does your knowledge of the
Land suggest a name for this disturbance?" He
glanced at Stave. "Is this another dark wonder which
the Masters have concealed from us?"
"I don't know." Abruptly she pulled herself upright.
She had needs more profound than rest. At this
moment, they began with the Waynhim, although they
extended far beyond her ability to measure them.
"Stave will tell us as much as he can. When the time
comes."
Esmer had asked, How will you bear the burden of
such powers? Either alone will
transcend your strength. Together they will wreak
only madness
Apparently he had always intended to "help" her face
his betrayal by removing the
barrier that his presence imposed on her access to
Covenant's ring. "Mahrtiir is right," she added. "It's
time to go."
At once, she turned toward the waiting creatures.
The Waynhim knew what threatened them: she was
certain of that. Like the urviles, they understood
Esmer's intentions better than she did. Yet they had
made no obvious move to prepare a defense. And she
suspected that they would not, unless she led the way.
Surrendering the Staff, they had to some extent made
her responsible for the outcome of their lives.
"I wish you could tell me what's coming," she said
gravely. "I can't even imagine how much danger I've
put you in." She had brought Cail's son to them. "But
it doesn't change my debt to you. I don't know what
would have happened to the Staff without you-or what
would happen to the Land-but I think we would all be
doomed.
"One thing I'm sure of. You did the right thing.
You've been faithful to your Weird."
With all the dignity she could muster, she bowed,
holding the Staff before her in acknowledgment. Then,
so that she would not falter, she turned to Stave and
said, "We've waited long enough. Let's find out how
bad this is."
The Haruchai also bowed to the Waynhim, as did
Mahrtiir and Liand. Then the Stonedownor urged
Anele to his feet; Mahrtiir hastened into the lead; and
Stave accompanied Linden across the cave toward the
egress.
As she and her companions passed, the creatures
formed a wedge and followed more slowly, chittering
encouragement or farewells to each other.
The angle of the tunnel beyond the cave soon blocked
out the light. With the last reflected glow of the urns
behind her, Linden could see nothing ahead. At her
back, the bare feet of the Waynhim made a faint
susurrus on the stone. The sound seemed to pursue
her, sibilant and apprehensive, echoing softly about
her ears like supplication.
Too many of them will perish
Trepidation confused her steps; but Stave guided her
with a light touch on her arm, ensuring that she did
not stumble. The warm certainty of the Staff also
sustained her. And soon the darkness receded on
either side as the tunnel opened into the ravine, and
the night sky spread a swath of starlight overhead.
Sand yielding under her boots, she walked along the
bottom of the ravine toward the open night of the
foothills.
There Mahrtiir awaited her with Pahni. When Linden
and Stave reached him, the Manethrall announced in a
contained whisper, "Cord Bhapa has not yet returned.
The Ranyhyn remain on the hillside above us. They
are restive, for the peril draws near. But they will not
flee it." His tone suggested pride in the great horses.
"If you will heed my word," he added, "we will mount
so that they may respond swiftly to your desires."
Bhapa had only one good eye. His night vision would
be hampered
"What about the ur-viles?" Linden asked, whispering
as the Manethrall did.
"An unwary foe," he replied, "might deem that they
have abandoned us, but they have not. Rather they
have secreted themselves among the shadows below
us." Between Linden's company and the advancing
danger. "Doubtless they will attempt surprise on our
behalf." He considered the hillside briefly, then said,
"It may be, also, that they seek to distance themselves
from the Waynhim. If so, they are wise. The
Demondim-spawn will not readily trust each other, or
fight in each other's defense."
Linden peered down the slopes, looked for some hint of
the creatures. But she found none. Their lore and their
blackness concealed them from her senses.
Yet she could see better than she had expected. Above
the jagged line of mountains distant in the east, a
sallow moon a few days from its full had risen,
shedding its wan light, bilious and unresolved, over the
rumpled foothills and sprawling plains. Tn that
uncertain illumination, the undulations of the lowland
seemed to seethe gradually toward the horizon,
ponderous and fluid as seas, and the shallow vales and
clefts which defined the hills were crowded with
darkness. The vague shapes of the Ranyhyn, off to her
right and uphill from her, were as ill-defined as
shadows.
"Ringthane," insisted Mahrtiir. "Will you mount?"
She shook her head. "Not yet. First I want you to talk
to them." She meant the urviles. "You or Pahni.
They'll understand.
"Tell them to come when they hear me shouting." If
she succeeded at tearing open a Fall-and if she could
devise no other response to the peril- "I don't care how
they feel about the Waynhim. I won't be able to save
anyone who isn't near me."
Nodding sharply, the Manethrall turned away and
strode into the night. For a moment, he slipped down
the crease of the dry watercourse. Then he seemed to
fade from sight as if, like the ur-viles, he had cloaked
himself in darkness.
Beyond question the Ramen understood stealth.
"Stave," Linden breathed to the Master, "tell the
Waynhim. I need to know they'll come to me when I
call."
He did not ask why she did not speak to the creatures
herself. Nevertheless she told him, "I have to think."
Noiselessly the Haruchai withdrew into the ravine; and
Liand came to take his place at her side, bringing
Anele with him.
The old man stood as though he were alone, wrapped
in madness. Holding his head up, he studied the dark
with senses other than vision; alert to the nuances of
the night. As if to himself, he murmured, "It is wrong.
Wrong and terrible. Beings of nightmare walk the
hills. They must not be permitted."
At that moment, he appeared as sane as Linden had
ever seen him. She had to think.
Summon a Fall: that was the obvious solution. Recover
her grasp on wild magic and rip open time. Commit
her companions, all of them, ur-viles and Waynhim as
well, to the known horrors of a caesure so that they
would not fall prey to Esmer's betrayal. But she had
pointed out the flaw in that reasoning to Stave.
Something fatal had been unleashed on the South
Plains; and it would not simply disappear, unmake
itself, if she escaped. Deprived of its intended victims,
it might seek to vent its destructiveness elsewhere.
It might turn toward Mithil Stonedown. Liand's
ancestors would have no defense. And such an attack
would violate the known history of the Land. It would
weaken the essential integrity of time.
Therefore Linden could not flee. First she had to meet
the danger. She had brought it here: it was her
responsibility.
And still she could see nothing. Even her health-sense
gave her no hints. The Ranyhyn scented peril on the
air, or felt it through the earth. The Waynhim and the
ur-viles knew their danger. In some fashion, Anele
tasted the approach of nightmares. Yet Linden herself
remained effectively blind.
She held her breath for Bhapa's return, hoping that
the Cord would tell her what
she needed to know. But when the imprecise night
condensed at last into the form of a man, it was
Mahrtiir rather than Bhapa who whispered her name.
"I have done as you required. Now I urge you to heed
me. We must mount. The swiftness of the Ranyhyn will
ward us more surely than any garrote or fist."
"The Manethrall counsels well," Stave observed.
Linden had not seen him return: like Mahrtiir, he
appeared to join her from among the secrets of the
dark. "It is said that there is no glory to compare with
riding a Ranyhyn in battle."
Now Linden did not delay. The Ranyhyn were under
her protection as much as the Waynhim and the ur-
viles. As much as Liand and Anele and the Ramen
With Mahrtiir in the lead, she and her companions
climbed the hillside toward the great horses. Pahni
took charge of Anele so that Liand could stay with
Linden. And behind them came the Waynhim in
formation, chanting rhythmically the rituals of their
lore.
However, the creatures did not ascend the slope.
Instead they positioned themselves below the Ranyhyn,
with the tip of their wedge pointing downward and
somewhat to the east. There they awaited the attack.
A warm breeze drifted into Linden's face. The air had
cooled little since sunset, and baked shale, loose dirt,
and sparse grass held the heat. The minor exertion of
climbing toward the Ranyhyn drew sweat from her
temples, made her shirt cling to her back.
Two or three of the horses whinnied softly in greeting.
Others tossed their manes or stamped their hooves as
if they were eager to run. Linden could not see clearly
enough to tell them apart; but Hyn came to her and
nuzzled her shoulder, urging her to mount.
With the Staff in her hands, Linden relied on Stave to
boost her onto the mare's back. As he did so, the
strained muscles in her legs protested. And she felt
Hyn's disquiet at once. It spoke to her nerves, flesh to
flesh: a visceral quiver like a harbinger of panic. The
great horses were not easily frightened, but Hyn was
afraid now, champing for movement.
When Linden touched the mare's flank with the Staff,
however, Hyn calmed herself, and her quivering
subsided.
Around them, the other riders went to their Ranyhyn.
Pahni needed Liand's help to seat Anele on Hrama:
the old man had not relaxed his concentration
northward, and made no effort to assist them. But the
Master mounted Hynyn unaided, and Mahrtiir
appeared to glide up onto his horse's back. When
Pahni had given Liand a subtle lift, she sprang lightly
onto Naharahn. In moments, Whrany alone remained
unridden.
Still Bhapa had not returned.
A silence spread around them, punctuated only by the
restless movements of the horses and the low, focused
barking of the Waynhim. No night birds called: no
insects chirred or whined. The darkness seemed to be
holding its breath, and the moon's
yellow light illumined little, as though it winced away
from what it might witness. Linden felt an old malice
gather among the slopes below her as if it welled up
from within the ground. She did not know how to
reply to it.
"Chosen," Stave pronounced suddenly, "be warned. It
is dire. We did not know that this evil still endured.
The old tellers have said that the ur-Lord destroyed it
utterly."
As he spoke, Linden felt pressure rise against her
percipience. At the limit of its reach, her health-sense
decried malevolence swelling into the night.
A moment later, she saw a distant flash of emerald like
a flaring instance of sickness, an ignition of pure
desecration. It was swallowed almost immediately by a
black concussion which shook the night, a thunderclap
of vitriol flung by one or several of the ur-viles. Before
the vicious green vanished, however, she recognized it.
It had been etched into her memory by horror.
"God!" she panted. "Oh, God. It can't be."
Beyond mistake that flash of rank emerald was the
power of the Illearth Stone.
Which should have been impossible. Stave was right:
with wild magic, Covenant had extirpated that ancient
bane from the Land. And he had won his expensive
victory thousands of years before Linden had first
been translated to the Land.
Yet she knew from cruel experience that at least one
small corrupt flake of the original Stone had survived
Covenant's victory. In the years before that final
contest, Lord Foul had given fragments of the Illearth
Stone to each of his Giant-Ravers so that they could
command his armies. One such fragment had been
wielded against the defenders of the Land somewhat to
the south and west of Andelain; and during the
conflict, a shard had broken off from that piece of the
Stone: had broken off and been lost.
The air seemed to grow warmer. It felt like a touch of
steam. Nevertheless a chill slid along Linden's spine as
if her sweat had turned to ice.
Lost, the green flake had remained so for centuries,
leaking slow ruin into the hills, until it was discovered
by a village of Woodhelvennin. By then, the Clave had
come to rule the Land, and the lore of the Lords,
which might have warned or protected the
Woodhelven, had been corrupted. So the village was
itself corrupted, generation after generation, until at
last the evil shard was used against Linden, Sunder,
and Holl-ian while Covenant rambled in Andelain
alone.
Later Covenant had destroyed that virulent flake as he
had once shattered the 11learth Stone itself. But
Linden remembered it still. She had felt its evil at a
time when she did not know how to bear such
knowledge.
Now, staring appalled at the lurid emerald after-flash
on her retinas, she wondered: if one little piece of that
terrible bane had survived, why not more than one?
The Giant-Ravers had fought a number of battles
against the Land's defenders. They had
channeled immense forces through their fragments of
the Stone. Other pieces could have broken off and been
lost.
She could imagine no other explanation. Somehow an
enemy of the Land had found such a piece. Or Esmer
had
It was possible. Time seldom hinders me. His access to
the past made almost any act of treachery conceivable.
The thought that she would have to confront the old
bane which had nearly undone both the Council of
Lords and Thomas Covenant shrilled along her nerves,
making her guts squirm with dread.
Another quick flare of green stained the night.
Detonations of acid volleyed around it. The breeze
falling from the mountainsides carried intimations of
slaughter out into the moonlight.
Among the Ranyhyn, shadows seemed to melt and
solidify. Then Bhapa stood at Mahrtiir's knee, gazing
urgently up at the Manethrall. Even in the dark, his
left arm and shoulder blazed with damage: Linden's
dismayed nerves discerned a wound like a deep burn.
Lingering emerald flickered among fine droplets of
black fluid in the hurt. He had been caught at the
fringe of a blast; lashed with power.
"Manethrall-" His throat clenched in pain. Forcing
himself, he gasped softly, "I know not what they are.
But they are many. And they hold-"
He could not find words for what he had beheld.
"We have seen it," Mahrtiir replied through his teeth.
"Mount at once. I cannot now tend to your wound."
The Cord nodded. For a moment, he appeared to
crouch, huddling over his injury; and his hurt burned
at Linden as if she, too, had been splashed with acid.
Then he flung himself onto Whrany's back.
"Describe them, Cord." Stave spoke quietly, but his
tone cut through the restiveness of the horses. "What
is their appearance? What did you discern of them?"
Green malignance slashed the night, momentarily
limning the exposed shape of the foothills. It looked
more savage now, and reached farther: its wielders
were advancing up the slope, or the ur-viles opposing it
had been decimated. Frantic barking rose against the
breeze. Scattered blooms and geysers of obsidian
tattered the flash of emerald, but could not tear it
apart.
Linden clung to the warm wood of the Staff and the
broad strength of Hyn's back, and tried to believe that
she was capable of combating a piece of the Illearth
Stone.
Without wild magic
"They are bitter," Bhapa answered in a congested
voice, "and ancient beyond estimation. So I have felt.
They appear to rise from the ground as if they have
been freed from graves. Some have the size and
semblance of trees, though they walk like men.
JW
Others resemble Cavewights and similar creatures.
Still others wear monstrous shapes- I have never
beheld the like, or heard them named."
Through his teeth, he groaned, "They are too many.
Far too many. The ur-viles cannot hold them."
Linden's heart quailed to hear him. Freed from
graves- Oh, God. She seemed to hear Stave's response
before he spoke. Animate dead
"It should not be so," said the Master. "Yet it is. In
this the recall of the Haruchai is sure." Earlier, days
ago, he had spoken of the lore and bitterness of the
Viles made manifest in slain flesh, corpses with the
puissance of Lords.
Again emerald beat in the air like the throbbing of a
diseased heart. It had come a long way up the hillside.
A spatter of blackness answered it, and fell still. The
Ranyhyn stamped and whickered anxiously.
"We have shared it mind to mind across the
millennia," Stave continued, "undiminished and
unconfused."
The vitriol which the ur-viles wield for destruction
pulsed in their hearts.
"At first I was reluctant to name what I perceive. It
offends Time and all Law. Yet now I am certain."
Abruptly he stopped.
Clad in cerements and rot, their touch was fire.
Sitting Rhohm at Linden's side, Liand was a dark ache
in the moonlight, an outpouring of innominate alarm.
Behind them, Pahni leaned from her mount to succor
Bhapa as best she could, while Anele muttered
execrations into his beard.
"Speak the name, Bloodguard," Mahrtiir put in
harshly. "Your knowledge is needed."
Bursts of green evil echoed through the night,
accumulating like summer lightning. Linden thought
she heard the sound of running; desperate haste. Small
swirls of blackness coalesced along the slope below her,
still some distance from the Waynhim.
The ur-viles had been routed.
As did the Viles, they persisted outside or beyond life
and death. As do the ur-viles, they had forms which
could be touched and harmed.
"They are Demondim," Stave answered. If he felt
either fear or uncertainty, he did not show it. "Esmer
has brought them to this time."
Apparently Cail's son had betrayed Linden and her
companions with a vengeance.
If the legends of the Demondim were accurate, and
their lore as vast and insidious as Stave had reported,
the creatures might be able to destroy the Staff of Law.
Given a little time, they could easily exterminate the
last of the ur-viles and Waynhim. Even wild magic
might not surpass their powers.
"Ringthane," Mahrtiir asked avidly, "will we not give
battle? The ur-viles cannot hold. In moments they will
be swept aside, and the Waynhim with them. We must
ride to their defense."
"No!" Linden protested. "We can't. Not here. Don't
you remember what Stave said? There haven't been
any battles," any extravagant exertions of power, "in
this part of the Land." Not since she had unmade the
Sunbane. "If we fight now," or if she did, "we'll violate
history. We'll damage the Arch of Time."
The mere presence of the Demondim and a flake of the
Illearth Stone might suffice to undermine the
foundations of reality.
Yet the plight of the ur-viles cried out to her. Their
desperate barking had become ragged, frenetic: they
were being overwhelmed. And the Waynhim would be
next. Already the grey creatures stood at the verge of
the Stone's reach. With each mounting flash of
emerald, each multiplied burst of virulence, their
doom advanced on them. She could hear them
chanting, and knew that they were too weak, too few
Shapes that she could not define crowded up the slope,
dark forms like a stormlashed wave breaking
impossibly upward. They seemed to devour the
moonlight so that they were illumined only by green
evil. But now other forces were visible as well, quick
eruptions of a killing opalescence which appeared to
flash from indistinct hands.
"Then what must we do?" snarled Mahrtiir. "It is
intolerable that all who aid us must be slain while we
stand aside."
"Protect me," she answered, acrid with self-restraint.
The Waynhim had preserved the Staff for her. The ur-
viles had exhausted themselves to help her find it. She
wanted to rush to their defense, regardless of the
consequences. But she had recognized her true peril.
"I need time-"
It is an effect of my nearness.
You will not be blocked from wild magic.
She needed time to rediscover the truth about herself.
At last, the Waynhim released the results of their
steady invocation. From their wedge, a shock wave
poured down the hillside; a blast which dwarfed the
one that had warded their cave. Perceptible only
because it was so potent, it crashed against the rising
tsunami of the attackers.
A staggering emerald jolt answered the collision.
Murderous nacre blazed soundlessly from the hands of
the Demondim. Instantly an electric discharge as cruel
as fangs and as lurid as the Despiser's lightning lit the
night; and for that brief moment Linden saw the
Demondim clearly.
Eyeless like the creatures they had spawned, they
resembled their creations in no other way except
darkness. Bhapa was right. They looked like huge trees
ripped somehow intact from centuries of mold and rot;
like Cavewights corroded by time to skeletons and
ferocity; like kresh and other rapt beasts resurrected
to repay their deaths. Among them marched human
corpses, men and women who knew only the animating
lust of their possessors. And there were other figures
as well, monsters in the shape of nightmares. The
Demondim appeared to number in the hundreds, all
surging up
I
ward against the assault of the Waynhim-and all so
long abandoned to the hungry embrace of worms that
they had forgotten whatever they had once known of
their mortality.
Linden could not tell which among them held their
fragment of the Illearth Stone. Perhaps several did in
concert. She saw only that while the Stone blazed its
evil seemed to rave from many of the Demondim at
once, casting back the darkness; tainting the moonlight
with the hues of atrocity.
She no longer believed that her foes held a mere flake
of the ancient bane. To her horrified senses, its power
seemed as absolute as that of the original Illearth
Stone.
When the Waynhim fell, the onslaught would reach
Linden and her companions. She had only a little time
left. A scattering of moments: a few dozen heartbeats.
Too few to save the world
The Ranyhyn were growing frantic. Whrany skittered
and flinched, apparently feeling Bhapa's pain,
yearning to protect his rider. Pahni walked her mount
in tight circles to calm the mare; and Mahrtiir leaned
along his stallion's neck, murmuring fierce promises to
the horse's ears. But Stave sat motionless, with Hynyn
as stolid as a statue under him. And Hrama bore Anele
steadily in spite of the old man's angry muttering.
Linden gripped the Staff until her hands were slick
with sweat, thinking that she would have no choice
except to call forth its power-and praying fervently
that an exertion of Law by its very nature would
sustain rather than weaken the Arch; that the insult to
the integrity of Time would not prove irreparable.
Another tremendous concussion shook the night,
emerald shot through with opalescence and ruin,
dropping the Waynhim to their knees. Faint bursts of
vitriol still attacked the dire force of the bane, but they
were few and widely separated. Only a handful of the
ur-viles remained alive
Esmer had foretold death for the Waynhim. He had
not mentioned the ur-viles. They had discerned
treachery in him from the first, and had set themselves
to guard against him. He may have been glad to think
that they would all perish.
Yet he could do nothing without contradicting his own
intentions. For every betrayal, his conflicted nature
required him to offer help. That was why he had left.
So that Linden could use Covenant's ring.
Stave had assured her that she would be able to do so.
Abruptly she shook off her hesitation. "Here," she said
to Liand. Prompted by an instinct which she could not
have explained, she tossed the Staff to him, trusting
him to catch it. "Keep it safe for me. I'll need it later."
It would only distract her now-and might hinder her in
other ways as well. Its essential nature contradicted
wild magic.
Liand fumbled for it in surprise, secured his grasp on
it; hugged it to his chest. But she did not see his nod of
acceptance, or the promise in his eyes. She had already
dropped away from him in her mind, bowing her head
and covering her face with her hands as if to isolate
herself from him and all her companions.
Esmer was gone. And she held Covenant's ring by
right and need. She had inherited it from him in Kiril
Threndor; had confirmed her claim upon it by
wielding its illimitable fire to shape the new Staff of
Law. It had healed a bullet's passage through her
vulnerable flesh. It had preserved her from the
collapse of Kevin's Watch. If she needed it now, it
would not be denied to her.
It could not.
Scrambling along the twisted pathways of herself, the
lost route to the hidden door, she found the truth.
Stave was right. The door had not vanished. It had
merely been masked by Esmer's aura. In his absence,
she seemed to rediscover it with ease. She was already
desperate: she had forgotten agony and formication
and utter bereavement. And at times the ring's
argence had answered her urgent impulses more
naturally, more readily, than her deliberate choices.
Between one heartbeat and the next, white fire
bloomed from the hard circle under her shirt as
though it had arisen straight out of her heart.
If she had opened her eyes, she would have seen the
faces of her companions turning toward her, defined
by wonder and white fire. If she had reached out with
her percipience, she would have felt a shock of
recognition and eagerness galvanize the Ranyhyn. Her
nerves might have tasted the more distant awe of the
Waynhim and the grim determination of the
remaining ur-viles. She could have found comfort in
the sudden apprehension which momentarily halted
the Demondim.
But she had no attention to spare for the external
details of her situation. As soon as she found the door,
and felt the silver fire of Covenant's ring spring forth
like exaltation, she squeezed her eyes more tightly
shut, bowed more deeply into herself, and pulled her
concentration down to a point as fine as the tip of a
dirk.
With that delicate instrument, she probed the
necessary structure of time.
At once, she felt the wrongness of what she did. She
was attempting a violation as cruel as possession or
rape. On a level too deep for words or understanding,
she seemed to feel the woven fabric of existence
shudder in dismay. If she made even the smallest
mistake, all of reality would be torn apart; and the
rending shriek of ruin would be the last sound the
world ever heard.
Nevertheless she did not falter now. She was Linden
Avery the Chosen, and she meant to prove herself
against the Land's doom.
Lord Foul had taught her to know her own evil. She
could still fear what might happen; but she no longer
feared herself.
She needed to focus her power and her senses so
keenly that she would be able to detect the ligatures
which connected one instant to the next; the bonds of
sequence which caused one heartbeat, one thought, one
event to follow another. If she could
identify the ceaseless, evanescent, and ineluctable fact
of transition which defined time, she would be able to
insert her fire there and sever
-detaching one moment from the next. Opening a
caesure, as Joan did whenever her madness impelled
her to strike herself.
Yet she knew that it would not be enough to simply
replicate Joan's actions; to slow and refine her
perceptions to the pitch that empowered Joan. If she
did, she would have no control over what ensued. Her
task was more complex. While she emulated Joan's
insanity, she had to remember that what she did was
evil. She had to remember its consequences.
Therefore she cast herself deliberately back into the
instant when she had first entered the Fall; when
formication had become the world, leaving her capable
of nothing except featureless gelid whiteness and
Joan's torment. That excruciation she re-created in
her mind as she focused her argence closer and closer
to the gap between the instants. With every piercing
breath, she relived agony.
That pain helped her cling to herself. It reminded her
that she was not Joan; that she was prepared to accept
the cost of her own actions.
She had caused this crisis by the extravagance of her
choices. Uncounted ur-viles had been slain, and most
of the Waynhim would follow. Her friends would die.
The Staff of Law might be destroyed. She herself
might fall in spite of her powers, abandoning Jeremiah
and the Land to Lord Foul's malice. And all because
she had risked leaving her proper time.
Set beside the potential cost of failure, the anguish and
evil of creating a caesure were prices that she was
willing to pay.
Somewhere beyond her attention, emerald flared and
raved, adumbrating malice into the betrayed night.
The Waynhim were driven back. The waves of their
theurgy, shock after shock like combers in a high
wind, were barely adequate to defend them: they could
not stand their ground. The explosions of vitriol from
the ur-viles had become pitifully brief and slight; too
small to hamper the Demondim. The bitter gleaming
of the attackers swept resistance aside.
Watching the doomed contest, Mahrtiir and his mount
could no longer restrain themselves. Howling defiance,
the Manethrall launched his Ranyhyn like thunder
down the hillside. At once, Pahni and Naharahn
pounded after him, chased unsteadily by Bhapa on
Whrany. Pahni added her girlish shout to Mahrtiir's
stentorian roar; but Bhapa was silent.
Only Whrany's fleet skill enabled the injured Cord to
keep his seat. Unable to use his garrote, and fatally
weak, he could not fight. Nevertheless he raced after
his Manethrall and Pahni, trusting the hooves of his
mount to strike for him.
Liand might have followed the Ramen into battle, but
his responsibility for the Staff
held him back. Stave did not move from Linden's side.
And Anele remained where he was, consumed by his
useless imprecations.
If the onslaught came near Linden, she would be
defended only by an untried Stonedownor, a madman,
and one lone Haruchai.
With some part of her mind, she must have been
aware of her companions and the Demondim; must
have felt the proximity of the Illearth Stone and
slaughter. Her sense of urgency increased moment by
moment, and white fire from Covenant's ring spired
higher into the dark, shedding a stark luminescence
across the bare hillsides and the thronging
battleground.
Nevertheless her peril only fed her concentration,
sending her deeper into her task.
It was hard. God, it was hard! Intending to violate
time, she violated as well every instinct for healing and
health which had shaped her life. Caesures were evil:
they attacked the fundamental structures which made
existence possible. And she had committed herself to
wholeness rather than ruin.
Still she did not hold back. She knew the depth of the
Despiser's malice. She felt the lust and hatred of the
Demondim, and the destructiveness of the Illearth
Stone. She understood what would happen if she
allowed such hungers to feed unopposed, and her
whole being rose up in repudiation.
And Liand held the Staff of Law in her name: the only
instrument of power in all the Land which might be
able to halt or contain the vast wrong of a Fall. If he
did not fail her, she could hope to impose limits on the
harm she meant to cause.
Guilt is power. Only the damned can be saved.
When she was ready, she cast a silent appeal to Hyn
and all of the Ranyhyn. Without them, she would be
unable to reach her necessary goal.
Then she released a slash of silver flame which
sundered the night.
Through the riven dark, chaos tumbled forth. A
tremendous migraine swirl of distortion appeared in
the night, destructive as a tornado, and maddening as
a swarm of wasps. It seethed with force as though
every link and interstice of material reality had been
torn apart.
Remembered agony squalled in Linden's nerves as she
saw that she had succeeded.
The caesure boiled no more than a stone's throw to her
right. It seemed to drift toward her with a kind of
hideous nonchalance, sure of its might, and in no
hurry to devour.
Stave barked a warning, and Liand called her name;
but she hardly heard them. With a gesture of wild
magic, a sweep of fire, she redirected the Fall, sent it
sprawling like an avalanche in slow motion down
toward the heart of the battle. At the same time, she
scourged it with flame so that it swelled over the
ground, growing wider until it was vast enough to
consume the entire horde of the Demondim. Then she
urged Hyn into motion after it.
As the mare stretched into a gallop, Linden shouted in
a voice of argence, "Come now!" praying that the
Waynhim and the ur-viles would be able to hear her
through the tumult.
At the same time, she prayed that Mahrtiir and his
Cords still lived, and could respond.
Stave and Liand rode at her sides. Silver fire lit the
stern concentration on the Master's visage: he looked
like a man who believed that he could determine the
outcome of Linden's gamble by sheer force of will.
Liand clung grimly to the Staff, holding it ready. His
fear of the Fall glared in his eyes, but he did not try to
restrain his mount.
Behind them ran Hrama, bearing Anele whether or
not the old man wished to follow.
Linden glimpsed Waynhim racing toward her on all
fours. Among them, a few urviles appeared, splashed
with blood as black as night. As Hyn pounded among
the massed forces of the Demondim, more Ranyhyn
joined her, two or three. But in the light of Covenant's
ring, Linden caught only a brief flash of them. She
could not be sure that more than one of them still
carried a rider.
Then she plunged into the caesure as though it were a
lake of nightmares.
In an instant, utter anguish seemed to swallow her
whole. And as the roiling torment closed over her
head, she began to drown
At that moment, she had no reason to believe she had
not brought death to all that she held dear.
±Pursuit
The unspeakable pain of the Fall was the same: the
disorientation: the sensory insanity. She was trapped
as she had been once before in the simultaneous
shattering of too many realities. Every moment which
would ever come and go in the caesure's path was torn
apart and flung at her like a bleeding gobbet; and
every scrap of time's shredded flesh as it struck her
became a burrowing insect, a wasp or chigger
driven mad by dissociation and avid to lay its ruinous
eggs within her. At the same time, all perceptible
meaning and structure were wiped away, leaving
behind only white emptiness and illimitable cold.
Drowning in all the world's distress at once, Linden
could easily have perished, suffocated by icy
formication and loss. She could just as easily have been
driven mad. But even madness and death required
causality, sequence, interconnection; and the Fall had
severed every link which would have made such
consequences possible.
Yet this experience was essentially unlike her first such
immersion. She did not need to compel the current of
distortion backward, into the past. Nor was she
required to trust that the ur-viles would impose her
will upon it. Instead she could let the terrible forces of
the caesure carry her forward according to their own
peculiar logic. The Earthpowerful instincts of the
Ranyhyn would provide for her redemption.
In addition, she was spared another encounter with
Joan Covenant's demented grief. Somewhere Joan still
stood among her attending skest, reaching out with
wild magic and self-loathing to name her endless pains.
But she had not created this Fall, and did not occupy
it. Her madness played no part in its ravening.
And Linden had one other advantage as well.
Covenant's ring still shone like a beacon through the
fabric of her shirt, lighting her way to survival. Wild
magic was in some sense as disruptive as the caesure,
untrammeled by restriction. For that reason, it had the
power to violate the strictures of time. For the same
reason, however, white gold formed the keystone of the
Arch of Time. Its unfettered passion anchored the
paradox which made finite existence possible within
the infinite universe.
Similarly the hot blaze of Linden's heart anchored her
within herself, enabling her to continue to be who she
was when every mote and particle of her specific being
had been torn asunder.
Duration could not exist within the Fall. Nothing was
possible there except devouring pain and infinite cold
and devastation. Therefore no tangible interval passed
before Hyn galloped free of agony, bearing Linden out
into a flood of sunlight and dazzled blindness.
They had arrived on a slowly rising slope which jolted
the mare's hooves like packed dirt.
Because she had been anchored, and wild magic shone
from her still, Linden was not overwhelmed by her
passage through time and torment. She could still
think, and feel, and choose. Although the intense glare
of the sun filled her vision, effacing sight, her other
senses reached out acutely. With the nerves of her
skin, she felt Stave riding strongly on one side of her,
impervious to the harm of the caesure. On the other
side, Liand held his seat on Rhohm, clinging grimly to
the Staff of Law. Protected by its warm clarity, he also
was not as sick as he would otherwise have been.
A
Close on their heels followed Anele, as unmistakably
himself as his inborn Earthpower could make him-and
as unquestionably insane as the Fall at his back.
Behind Hrama ran three more Ranyhyn, all of them
injured, but still essentially whole. For a moment,
Linden could not tell if they bore riders. The rampant
seething of the Fall and the sudden brightness of the
sun blocked her perceptions. Then she discerned
Mahrtiir clutching his appalled stomach at Anele's
back; Pahni vomiting helplessly past Naharahn's
withers; Bhapa stretched nearly unconscious along
Whrany's neck. Blood throbbed from Bhapa's arm
and shoulder, streaking his mount's torn flanks.
Beside the last Ranyhyn raced more than a dozen
Waynhim and perhaps half that many ur-viles, all that
remained of the bereft creatures which had committed
their lives to Linden and the Staff.
And behind them came the Demondim in a teeming
horde, ecstatic with power and ravenous for victims.
She had accomplished this much, if no more: she had
brought her assailants with her out of the past; had
defused their power to disrupt the integrity of time.
Now she would have to fight them. Hyn would be able
to outrun the Demondim, but Linden's company could
not flee indefinitely. The ur-viles and the Waynhim
were badly hurt; close to exhaustion. And the Ramen
were too ill to defend themselves. Pahni and Bhapa
might not be able to sit their mounts much longer.
Even Mahrtiir's aura felt fragile. The Manethrall
could hardly contain the heaving of his stomach.
Linden had to make a stand.
She intended to turn and strike as soon as she could
see. As soon as she knew where she was. And when.
If the Ranyhyn had misjudged their passage through
the caesure-or if some effect of the Fall had cast them
out prematurely-she might yet be in danger of altering
the Land's history.
The midday brilliance of the sun still blinded her,
however. While Hyn bore her racing over the hard
ground, she blinked her eyes frantically, trying to clear
the dazzle from her sight, and strove to extend her
senses farther around her.
In spite of the sun's brightness, the air was cool on her
sweating cheeks: it smelled of spring. And ahead of her
the ground rose gradually, uninterrupted by swelling
hills. or narrow ravines or streambeds. She was no
longer among the foothills of the Southron Range in
late summer. Somehow Hyn's urgent run must have
carried her out into the South Plains.
Or the Ranyhyn were able to navigate distance as well
as time within a Fall. Linden and her companions may
have crossed many leagues while they traversed the
years.
But whatever the Ranyhyn had done, the Demondim
had matched it. They could not have prevented
Linden's Fall from engulfing them; yet they had
emerged still on the heels of their prey. And their
passage did not daunt them, or diminish their hunger
for slaughter. Stave had said that their lore was
profound and oblique, reaching depths which had
surpassed the Old Lords. Their understanding of
caesures could easily be greater than Linden's.
And they were unexpectedly swift. They rushed
forward as if they were boiling over the ground. For
all her speed, Hyn pulled away from the harrying
creatures slowly. Perhaps she could not run faster. Or
perhaps she held back so that she would not
outdistance the rest of Linden's companions.
Behind them, the Fall still moiled viciously. Linden
had made it large, dangerously large, so that it would
swallow all of the horde. Now its swirling forces
seemed to blot out the world in that direction; and it
flowed after the Demondim as though they sucked it in
their wake.
Nevertheless Linden and those with her gained
distance by increments, creating a small interval of
safety between their desperation and the powers which
pursued them.
How much time had passed? A score of heartbeats?
Two score? In another moment, Linden told herself,
when the gap was a bit wider, she would turn to
counterattack.
With Covenant's ring, she might be able to slow the
Demondim so that her companions could escape; but
she feared to take the risk. Wild magic might
inadvertently draw the Fall toward her too swiftly to
be avoided, or feed its destructiveness in some way
which she could not foresee.
As her vision began to clear, she deliberately silenced
the argence shining through the fabric of her shirt.
Then, without a word, as if she expected Liand to read
her mind, she reached out for the Staff.
He did not fail her. Almost immediately, she felt the
smooth wooden shaft slap into her palm.
Its touch sent a thrill of vitality through her, wiping
away the last effects of the caesure; retrieving her
from the harm which she had imposed on time. In
some fundamental way, wild magic did not suit her: it
was too extravagant and unpredictable for her. She
was a physician by choice, trained to precision and
care; and the teeming ramifications of Covenant's ring
threatened at every moment to expand beyond her
control.
In contrast, the Staff of Law was a healer's implement,
as careful as any scalpel or suture. When she held it,
she grew stronger: at once calmer and more capable,
firmly poised between passion and restraint.
Elevated by the essential certainty of Law, she spoke a
silent word to Hyn, nudged the mare with her heels.
Without hesitation, Hyn peeled away from her
course,'carrying Linden in a steady curve out of the
path of the other Ranyhyn and the Demondimspawn,
and back toward the onrushing horde.
Stave and Liand accompanied her as if they-or their
mounts-had known exactly what she would do. But
Hrama bore Anele onward with the Ramen
thundering behind them, while the ur-viles and
Waynhim scrambled to keep pace.
4
Moment by moment, blinking tears and brightness
from her eyes, Linden regained her sight.
With her companions, she galloped down a slow, wide
slope which stretched ahead of her until it vanished
under the feet of the Demondim and was covered by
the towering storm of the caesure. The sun and its
shadows suggested that she was riding eastward.
As the Ramen raced past her in the opposite direction,
she sensed that Mahrtiir had begun to rally. Hours or
days or centuries ago, he had promised that he and his
Cords would not again be crippled by the effects of a
Fall. Now from a small pouch at his waist he fumbled
out a leaf of dried amanibhavam. Crumbling it in his
hand, he held it under his nose; inhaled a little of the
sharp powder.
The potent grass stung him like a flick of lightning. A
seizure took him, and he thrashed violently on his
mount's back. But the spasm passed in an instant.
When it ended, it left him restored and eager,
galvanized for combat.
Guiding his stallion to Naharahn's side, he thrust his
hand at Pahni's nose until she breathed in a taste of
the amanibhavam. She, too, thrashed for a moment,
then recovered visibly.
But Mahrtiir offered none of the leaf to Bhapa. The
injured Cord lay unconscious along Whrany's neck,
and might have been unseated by the healing grass.
Instead the Manethrall left Bhapa to his mount's care
and led Pahni after Linden toward the charging
Demondim.
As soon as the last of the Waynhim and ur-viles had
passed her, Linden called Hyn to a halt and looked out
over the army of her attackers.
At her side, Liand stopped and stared in dismay. But
Stave gazed at the Demondim like a man who had long
ago forgotten how to be afraid.
Seen by daylight on the wide plain instead of by
moonlight rising among the hills, the horde seemed less
vast; no longer as measureless as night and slaughter.
Nevertheless the sun did not diminish the creatures.
Rather its glare seemed to accentuate their stature and
potency.
Linden could not discern them precisely. They
wavered in and out of definition as if they passed in
front of a rippled glass. At one moment, they appeared
as tangible as - flesh and pain: at the next, they were
translucent, nearly invisible. Whenever she tried to
focus on a specific creature, it blurred away and then
emerged several paces closer to her. And as the
Demondim advanced, their forms steamed and frothed
like acid.
Paled by sunlight, the flaring of power from their
hands was barely visible to ordinary sight; but it
howled at Linden's percipience. And it left behind
stains of midnight which persisted in the air as if the
inherent vitriol of the Demondim had burned holes in
the substance of reality. Until the onrushing caesure
swallowed those stains, they looked vicious enough to
tear down trees and blast boulders.
Still the individual powers of the monstrous creatures
were evanescent compared to the raving evil of the
Illearth Stone. Among them the Demondim bore an
outpouring of emerald so avid and malefic that it
seemed to daunt the sun. From the vantage of higher
ground and Hyn's back, Linden could see now that the
dire green did not arise from any one place or creature
among the horde. The Demondim carried no discrete
fragment of the original Stone. Rather they appeared
to bring its essence with them as if they could draw on
it from some distant source.
"What will you do, Chosen?" demanded Stave. "Is it
your purpose to give combat? That is madness. We
must flee."
The sound of his voice distracted her from the horde;
and as soon as she understood what he had said, she
remembered that he was right. She could not afford to
unleash her power until she knew where she was, and
when.
The Demondim rushed savagely toward her, with the
caesure looming behind them. She had only moments
left
"I have to stop this," she panted. "It's too big-" She
had made it too big. "For God's sake, tell me where we
are!"
Had they reached the time in which they belonged?
"Linden," Liand breathed in sudden astonishment.
"Heaven and Earth, Linden!"
She did not so much as glance at him. Gripping the
Staff, she waited for Stave's answer.
"I am not yet certain," he replied flatly. "The season is
condign. And Kevin's Dirt impends above us. It
appears that our proper time is nigh."
Kevin's Dirt, she thought. Oh, shit! She had not
noticed it overhead because she could not force her
gaze away from the Demondim. But she believed the
Master. Soon her health-sense would begin to fray and
fail.
She had to act now, before the horde advanced
farther; before the truncation of her senses began to
hamper her.
Could she risk wielding the Staff of Law?
She did not know. Yet the Staff itself might protect her
from an irreparable mistake. And she had no time left
for doubt. The Demondim were almost upon her.
Behind them, the caesure which she had created
surged forward. It was her responsibility.
Good cannot be accomplished by evil means,
"Linden!" Liand called again, insisting on her
attention. "Have you beheld-?"
She did not give him a chance to finish. Slipping
abruptly from Hyn's back, she took three stiff strides
toward the leading edge of the horde, then halted to
plant one heel of the Staff in the hard dirt.
The Stonedownor shouted after her: a cry rife with
alarm. She ignored him. Stave and Mahrtiir sprang
from their mounts, poised themselves for battle. She
ignored them as well.
From the vibrant wood of the Staff, she brought forth
a burst of incandescence as bright as sunlight and as
defiant as an oriflamme. While it blazed, she yelled at
the Demondim, "Stop right there! This is as far as you
go!"
Her unexpected challenge threw the creatures into
confusion. She did not know whether they could
understand her, and did not care. They were lore-wise
enough to recognize the Staff of Law. And they had
already felt the presence of Covenant's ring. At once,
the first Demondim scrambled to a halt, blocking the
way for the dire shapes behind them. Nacre power spat
and frothed, pale as air and ruinous as magma,
shedding blackness like glimpses into the heart of the
Lost Deep. Indistinct forms steamed darkly, while
among them rapt emerald seethed for release.
They could not know that she was bluffing
Or perhaps they could. They might perceive that she
was too human and frail to control both of her powers
simultaneously. They needed only a few heartbeats to
resolve their uncertainty and resume their ravening
onrush.
Nevertheless they had given Linden enough time. As
the horde paused, she leaped past it in her mind to
confront the Fall.
She had caused this rent in the fabric of sequence and
causality herself. And she had been swept up in its
chaos only a short while ago. She knew it intimately.
With percipience to guide her, she raised the Staff,
directed it over the heads of the Demondim, and
unleashed its warm puissance into the swarming core
of the caesure.
From the iron-shod end of the wood, flame the rich
yellow hue of sunflowers and ripe corn lashed out, a
streaming ceaseless flail of fire. The Fall was huge: she
had made it so. And it had fed on millennia of severed
instants. But the Staff of Law could draw on the
fathomless reservoir of Earthpower which defined the
Land. Indeed, its possibilities were limited only by the
capacities of its wielder. And Linden had already
proved herself equal to the Sunbane. The evil before
her now was enormous and consuming. Yet it was a
small thing in comparison.
Challenged by the direct vitality of the Staff, the Fall
failed rapidly. For an instant, it mounted upward,
screaming into the heavens. Then it collapsed in on
itself with a noise like a thunderclap, sucking down its
own viciousness until it winked away like a snuffed
candle.
More swiftly than Linden would have believed
possible, the caesure was gone, leaving her with warm
wood quiescent in her hands. Stave and Mahrtiir stood
ready at her sides; and all around her was the sweet
scent of meadows in sunlight, swales of grass and
wildflowers adorned with dew, and trees budding into
leaf.
No longer aware of herself, Linden sank to her knees.
Exerting the Staff, she had expended her own
substance. Her determination was gone, and the very
ground beneath her no longer felt necessary or
immediate.
Apparently howling, although they made no sound, the
Demondim flung them
selves toward her. In the distance, Liand shouted her
name as if he had never stopped calling for her.
Then suddenly Stave took hold of her. Lifting her into
the air, he threw her onto Hyn's back. At the same
time, Mahrtiir sprang astride his mount; and
immediately their two Ranyhyn surged into a gallop,
fleeing the horde. Behind them, Stave followed on
Hynyn.
Uncertain of her balance, and clinging fervently to the
Staff of Law, Linden returned to herself.
There Liand and Pahni joined her. Pounding the hard
ground close together, the five horses stretched their
strength to outdistance the Demondim.
At first, Linden barely noticed them. For a while, she
hardly knew where she was. She felt harried by
exigencies which she no longer recognized or
understood. By degrees, however, their urgency
reclaimed her. Still reeling internally, she glanced
around to check on her companions.
Both Stave and Liand were unhurt: they had not
encountered the Demondim. But Mahrtiir's legs had
been burned, his hands held bleeding sores, and one
cheek wore a swath of blisters. The opalescent blasts of
the creatures had nearly slain him. Perhaps he had
attempted to garrote one of them. Its acid would have
eaten away his fighting cord; chewed into his hands.
Pahni's pain was obvious; but for a moment Linden
could not determine where the Cord had been injured.
Then she noticed that Pahni rode leaning to one side,
protecting the blood which had soaked her tunic along
her ribs.
Reflexively Linden studied Mahrtiir's and Pahni's
wounds until she was sure that they were not mortal.
Given time, the Ramen would heal. With the Staff,
Linden herself could heal them. If the Ranyhyn outran
the horde far enough-and if she recovered her ability
to concentrate
The great horses also had been scored with corrosion.
Blood oozed from galls and welts in their sides. But the
Ranyhyn had avoided hurts severe enough to hamper
their strides.
Reassured, Linden allowed herself to relax a little. As
Hyn strained for speed under her, she grew gradually
stronger.
Then Liand gestured ahead. Shouting over the labor
of. hooves, he repeated, "Linden! Have you beheld it?"
She had not. Since emerging from the caesure, she had
not glanced in that direction.
When at last she lifted her gaze toward the west, she
saw Revelstone looming there like the prow of a
mighty ship.
God in Heaven- Revelstone: Lord's Keep. A few
hundred paces directly in front of her-and some three
hundred leagues from the place where she and her
companions had entered the Fall.
Ili
For a moment, the sight left her stunned; too stupefied
to think. Revelstone? Impossible! Even Hyn's
tremendous strength could not have carried her so far
in less than ten days
Then panic clutched her heart, and she urged Hyn to a
halt, forcing Stave to wheel back toward her; face her.
Ignoring the tumult and hunger of the Demondim, she
demanded, "Revelstone, Stave? How in hell did we get
here?"
Once the habitation of the Lords, the vast stone castle
had later become the fortress from which the Clave
had ruled the Land. Ten years ago she had entered
Lord's Keep twice: first as a prisoner of the Riders;
then as their foe. For her, the intricately carved castle
was flagrant with memories of anguish and bloodshed.
How had the Ranyhyn brought her so far astray?
Liand had told her that Revelstone was important to
the Masters.
Stave gazed past her to gauge the pace of the horde.
Then he met her shaken stare. Deliberately patient, he
replied, "I have said that I would bear tidings to the
Masters. When we entered the Fall, you asked no clear
destination of the Ranyhyn. Therefore they heeded me.
Answering my will, they have borne us hither."
"God damn it-!" Linden began, then bit down her
indignation. What had she expected of Stave? That he
would forsake his responsibilities and beliefs merely
because she disagreed with him? The Haruchai were
not so easily swayed. And he may have served her well.
One destination was as good as another when she did
not know where to look for her son. In addition,
Revelstone might provide a temporary refuge, if she
could convince the Masters to aid her-if enough of
Stave's people lived here-and if the Keep's walls could
withstand the Demondim
Nevertheless Anele would suffer for what Stave had
done.
Clenching her hands on the Staff until her knuckles
ached, she called Hyn into motion again.
As the mare sped forward once more, Linden stared
hard at Revelstone; and her brief hope fell away. She
could not imagine how plain granite might rebuff the
Demondim. Perhaps the creatures would be unable to
pass through solid obstacles; but they had access to the
Illearth Stone
In ancient times, the Keep's walls had been defended
by Lords and lore. Now there_ were no Lords, or any
men and women like them. Yet she and her company
raced toward Revelstone simply because Stave had
willed it so.
She could not believe that she would find safety there.
But where else could she go? The Demondim had not
slowed their pace, and she doubted that she would ever
be strong enough to withstand them all.
And Revelstone should have been a sanctuary. It had
been formed by Giants during the time of High Lord
Damelon, many long centuries before Thomas
Covenant had first entered the Land; delved by stone-
lore and stone-love into the foundations of a
wedge-shaped promontory jutting beyond a spur of
the Westron Mountains. From the sealed watchtower
which guarded its entrance to the elaborately graven
ramparts and balconies, embrasures and coigns, which
defined its walls, it stood just as she remembered it:
proudly, like a work of art, articulating the long-lived
adoration and homage of the lost Giants.
Looking at the Keep now, however, another realization
struck Linden like a blow to the heart; another flash of
anger and fear
Her son had tried to warn her.
That also should have been impossible. In his
condition, it must have been. Yet Jeremiah, who knew
nothing of this place, and had never responded to her
love-ah, Jeremiah had used Legos to build an image of
Revelstone in her living room only a few hours before
Roger Covenant had kidnapped him.
Never having seen them before, he had devised motley
models of both Revelstone and Mount Thunder;
messages in red and blue and yellow bricks. Using the
only language available to him, he had tried to prepare
her for his plight-and hers. But she had failed to
understand him.
In spite of her chagrin, however, she now knew where
to find to him.
But first she needed to reenter Revelstone. That
message had become clear to her as well. Why else had
Jeremiah included it in his construct?
Yet the fact that Stave had brought her here implied
that Lord's Keep was more than simply important to
the Masters. It was the seat of their Mastery. Here they
made their decisions and kept their prisoners. They
would not let Anele go. And they might oppose any use
of the Staff, or of Covenant's ring. Indeed, they might
believe that their commitments required them to wrest
Linden's powers from her.
Ahead of her, Hrama and Whrany waited with their
riders. Bhapa remained unconscious and feverish,
sickened by the burst of vitriol which had torn open
his arm and shoulder. And Whrany's injuries
appeared to be festering, as if the nacre of the
Demondim still gnawed at them. But Anele gazed
blindly about him with a look of confusion, apparently
wondering where he was, or how he had come here.
The Ranyhyn panted with exertion, blowing froth
from their nostrils. Linden could tell at a glance,
however, that they were far from the end of their
strength. Not so the ur-viles and Waynhim. Utterly
spent, and gasping hoarsely, they sprawled in the dirt
beside the horses, unable even to hold up their heads.
If their makers came upon them now, they would be
helpless to defend themselves.
At a thought from Linden, Hyn halted there. Stave and
Liand remained mounted on either side of her; but
Mahrtiir slipped to the ground at once and hastened to
attend to Bhapa.
Now he gave the Cord a scent of his crumbled
amanibhavam. The dried grass-blade did not rouse
him, in spite of its potency. Nevertheless it appeared to
stabilize his
condition, reinforcing his body's natural defenses. He
coughed a few times and squirmed unquietly, then
began to breathe with more ease. By degrees, his fever
receded somewhat.
While the Manethrall cared for Bhapa, Pahni also
dismounted. Although she looked like she might
collapse herself, weakened by the wound in her side,
she went quickly to each of the injured Ranyhyn in
turn, offering them amanibhavam.
Liand watched Linden with his eyes full of
apprehension. He seemed more aware of the gnashing
Demondim than anyone around him. And, like her, he
distrusted the Masters.
Struggling to contain her fears, Linden confronted
Stave. "All right," she panted urgently. "You brought
us here. Now what? How many Masters are there?"
She meant in Revelstone. "And what do you think they
can do?" They had no, power except their native
strength and skill. "We need help, Stave. How can
your people fight those things?"
He had promised her a reckoning. How high a price
was he willing to pay for his convictions?
She was the only one here who could oppose the horde-
and she was already exhausted.
Stave regarded her steadily. Instead of speaking, he
extended his hand toward the high bulk of Lord's
Keep against its background of mountains; and at that
moment the interlocking stone gates in the base of the
watchtower swung open. From the tunnel under the
tower, riders cantered outward as if he had summoned
them forth.
Four abreast, they emerged row after row, first a
dozen of them, then a score; two score; more- And still
they appeared: more men on horseback than Linden
had ever seen at one time. When the last of them had
left the darkness under the watchtower, they must
have numbered eighty or a hundred.
And they were Haruchai, all of them: fell-handed
warriors mounted on hardy mustangs and heavy
destriers, dray horses and racers. They bore no
weapons and no pennons; wore no armor; carried no
shields; wielded no lore or instruments of power.
Nevertheless they rode out from Revelstone to
challenge the horde of the Demondim as if no foe could
stand against them.
"We will not fail," Stave replied to Linden. "While one
of us remains alive, you will be warded."
As soon as the full force of the riders had left the Keep,
they quickened their pace, accelerating from an easy
canter to a headlong charge. Apparently they meant to
reach Linden and her company before the Demondim
could overtake them.
"Revelstone?" Anele asked in bewilderment. "Is it
Revelstone?" But Linden had no time to comfort him.
Briefly Stave cocked his head as if he were listening.
Then he informed Linden,
"The Ranyhyn have served us well. This day is the
second since our departure trom the Verge of
Wandering."
His people could communicate so, mind to mind.
But the assurance that she had regained her proper
time gave her little relief. The horde would soon draw
near enough to strike at her small company. And the
Masters might prove as fatal in their own way as the
Demondim.
Quickly she urged Stave, "Tell them about the ur-
viles." She did not doubt that his people would defend
the Waynhim; but the Haruchai and the ur-viles had
been foes for millennia. "I don't care whether you
approve of anything I've done. This isn't about me.
The ur-viles have earned your protection."
Stave nodded his agreement.
Again Anele asked the air plaintively, "Revelstone?"
Linden could feel the Demondim massing at her back:
Kevin's Dirt had not yet dimmed her percipience. And
when she turned to look at them, she saw that they
were too close. The Masters would barely reach her
before the horde did. If their charge did not
immediately throw back the onslaught, she and her
friends would find themselves in the midst of the
battle.
When she had gathered her reserves, she called up a
soothing current of strength from the Staff and sent it
flowing toward the Waynhim and the ur-viles.
They were not creatures of Law. And her senses could
not read them. Still she knew that she would not harm
them. She trusted herself here. She had already healed
the Staff's guardian among the Waynhim.
They would die if they remained helpless, unable to
fight or run.
The Waynhim stirred almost at once, rousing to lift
their heads and sniff at the fraught air. Then the ur-
viles did the same. Some of them slapped at their skin
as if to beat off insects. Others flung themselves from
side to side, or scrabbled at the dirt. Yet they grew
stronger.
As soon as they began to regain their feet, Linden
called back her power.
Behind her, the horde slowed its pace. New forces
gathered and swirled among the monsters. Apparently
the Demondim were preparing to meet the charge of
the Masters.
"Come on," she muttered to her companions. "Let's
go." She had been in danger for too long. "We need
some distance."
With a touch of her hand, she asked Hyn to bear her
away.
The Haruchai thundered closer. The hooves of their
mounts raised banners of dust from the bare ground.
Twisting on Hrama's back, Anele appeared to look
straight at Linden, in spite of his blindness. "Anele is
betrayed," he announced bitterly. "You have given
him to them."
While she gazed at him in sorrow, he slipped suddenly
to the ground, ducked past Rhohm, and dashed away
"Anele!" she shouted: too late. She had already missed
the instant when she might have deflected him.
-directly toward the massed forces of the Demondim.
As his bare feet touched the dirt, his entire aura
changed. His baffled bitterness vanished, replaced by
savage fire like a yowl of repudiation. Running toward
the horde, he seemed to set the air aflame, igniting it
with outrage. His feet left smoking burns on the
ground, and his whole form glowed like iron in the
forge, too hot to be touched or endured.
Any other mortal being would have been flash-burned
to ash and cinders. Only his inherited Earthpower
enabled him to withstand the abrupt magma which
had taken possession of him.
Linden shouted his name. This had happened to the
old man once before. In the communal center of the
Ramen encampment, he had become a conflagration in
human form. Raging at her, he had nearly scorched
the eyes from her skull.
That same spirit had claimed Anele again.
In a clattering rush, the first wave of the Masters
swept around Linden and her company toward the
Demondim; and Anele flung himself against the
monsters as if he meant to challenge their vast evil
with the lava of his own pain.
He had taken even Stave by surprise; yet Stave reacted
before Linden could do more than flinch and cry out.
At his silent command, Hynyn reared and turned,
springing away to join the tumultuous charge of the
Haruchai.
The Master may have intended to strike Anele down,
as he had among the Ramen.
Leaping for their mounts, Mahrtiir and Pahni
positioned themselves to defend Linden. The ur-viles
and Waynhim rallied together; staggered chanting into
loose formations on either side of her. Liand yelled at
her, but she could not hear him through the din of
hooves. Haruchai pounded past her, row after row of
them. Then they seemed to disappear in their own
dust.
Desperately she groped for power-and found none. She
could not concentrate: the implications of Anele's
transformation seemed to beat about her head,
confusing. her attention. When she tried to wield both
Covenant's ring and the Staff of Law, neither
answered her.
In the Verge of Wandering, Anele had been possessed
by flame and fury when he had moved from the rich
grass around the shelters onto the bare ground of the
clearing. And here he had been similarly changed
when he had dropped from Hrama's back; when his
feet had found the dirt
Oh my God- Anele!
Linden felt more than heard the clash of flesh and
bone and force as the Haruchai
crashed into the front lines of the Demondim. Too
many riders and too mucn uusi blocked her view. Her
senses had other dimensions, however. She could still
witness the battle.
In spite of their numbers, each of the Masters seemed
as distinct as stone: they slammed into the horde like a
fall of boulders, heavy and irrefusable. But the
monstrous creatures were rife with power. Nacre
corrosion beat in their veins, poured from their hands.
Any one of them singly had the might to shatter walls,
tear down houses. And they had seen the Haruchai
coming: they were ready.
As the riders struck, concerted emerald as vehement
and fatal as the Despiser's own ichor erupted in
response, coruscating through the hues of gems and
verdure to the blinding incandescence of sunfire.
In an instant, the conflict became chaos.
Without transition, the screaming of horses filled the
air. Blood and shredded flesh articulated the dust. The
first rows of the Masters went down like mown wheat,
scythed from their mounts by the vicious strength of
the Vile-spawn and the incarnate puissance of the
Illearth Stone.
The slaughter among the horses was hideous, but in
the initial assault few of the Masters were slain.
Prodigiously swift and skilled, they dove from their
falling mounts between gouts of ruin unleashed by the
hands and limbs and beaks of the Demondim; ducked
under staggering concussions of green force; attacked
their foes and spun away. Yet each quick evasion and
abrupt blow carried them farther into the horde,
deeper among the massed creatures; closer to the
center of the Stone's power. And the Demondim were
too many, the Stone too potent.
Monsters fell around the Haruchai; but none of the
leading warriors survived.
Yet among the tumult Anele remained palpable, vivid
to Linden's discernment: a figure compacted of scoria
and rage. He strode some distance into the battle, then
paused there as if he were contemplating carnage. But
he struck at none of the creatures. None of them struck
at him. Instead he appeared to gather them about him
in swirling eddies which veered closer and then were
flung away by the forces of the fight.
Her fear for him snatched Linden out of her confusion.
Banishing Covenant's ring from her mind, she raised
the Staff high; and from its end shone forth a beacon
of flame as yellow as sunshine and as compelling as
trumpets.
Holding the wooden shaft before her like a standard,
she nudged Hyn into motion.
The mare tossed her head and nickered anxiously, but
did not flinch or falter. At a slow canter, she bore
Linden toward the battle.
Toward Anele.
Immediately Liand, Mahrtiir, and Pahni placed
themselves protectively around her, bringing Hrama
with them, while the ur-viles and Waynhim adjusted
their formations to guard her back.
W
Ahead of her, the shape of the fighting shifted.
Reacting to the outcome of their first attack, the
Masters changed their tactics. Instead of hurtling into
the fray, they fanned out on either side of the horde
and leaped down from their mounts. There they
slapped their horses away so that no more of the
vulnerable beasts would be burned or eviscerated.
Then they fought the onslaught along its edges rather
than forging inward. By so doing, they gave themselves
space in which to dodge and duck and strike back and
dance away.
At once, they became more effective, altering the
proportions of the conflict. More of the Haruchai were
able to keep their feet and take advantage of their
lightning reflexes: more of the monsters dropped.
Still the Demondim were too many. Too few were
stricken down. And they had not yet made concerted
use of the Illearth Stone. Effectively focused, that bane
could sweep away every living being between the horde
and Revelstone.
Then Linden saw in horror that the extravagant
efforts of the Masters did not diminish the horde.
Instead the trees and Cavewights and men and
monsters which fell, apparently slain, seemed to melt
out of existence, disappearing into the ground; and
from the dirt emerged new shapes to replace them.
Now creatures in the form of urviles stood among the
combatants; monsters that resembled Giants; savage
yellow beasts like kresh.
The Demondim arose from the graves of the fallen,
Stave had said, and their touch was fire. They could
resurrect themselves in every form which had ever
been slain before the gates of Revelstone.
It was only a matter of time before all of the Haruchai
were killed.
Abruptly Anele vanished from her perceptions. He had
stood alone amid the clamor, a cynosure of red heat
and fury surrounded by the fading and solidifying
forms of the Demondim, the splashing of opalescent
corrosion, the daunting concussions of the Stone. Then,
without warning, she could no longer discern him.
Blankness answered her questing health-sense. As far
as she could tell, he was utterly gone, erased from the
face of the plain.
Holding a shout of Staff-fire before her, Linden urged
Hyn faster. With her companions braced about her,
she carried her power into the battle.
The Masters parted from her path. They may have
assumed that she meant to measure herself against the
Illearth Stone. But she had no such intention. She was
too weary and mortal to contend with the Stone's
virulence directly. Not while its source remained
hidden from her; unapproachable; immune to assault.
Her only thought was to find Anele.
Like the Haruchai, the Demondim withdrew to allow
her passage. Or she may have driven them back with
the Staff's lucid flame. She no longer knew what she
did. She knew only that she did not mean to turn aside.
Then from within the chaos Hynyn burst into her path,
sides heaving, coat soaxea and glossy with blood. And
on his back sat Stave as if they had endured a furnace
together. Acid had charred the Master's tunic to
tatters, scored galls across his ribs and down his arms.
And it had eaten away the left side of his face. The
bones of his cheek showed through the streaming
wound, and his eye was lost in burns. Nonetheless he
somehow contrived to support Anele's limp form in
front of him.
The old man still lived. His heart beat: air leaked in
and out of his lungs. The Earthpower which had
preserved him through so many other ordeals had
sustained him again.
Linden might have shouted his name, but he would not
have heard her. The heat which had carried him into
the fray was gone, leaving him unconscious.
Frantic now, and stretched past her limits, she whirled
the fire of the Staff around her, forcing more of the
Demondim to pull back. As she did so, she yelled to her
friends and Stave-to the Waynhim and ur-viles-to all
of the embattled Haruchai"Run! We've got to get out
of here!"
The clangor of blows and powers swallowed her cry;
yet the Ranyhyn understood her instantly. As one, they
turned, half sitting on their haunches in order to
launch themselves back the way they had come. With
Hynyn among them, they stretched for Revelstone at a
pounding gallop.
But now Linden hardly noticed what they did.
Between one heartbeat and the next, the battle had
dropped away from her. All of her attention was fixed
on Anele. She clung to him with her senses as if that
might keep him alive.
The Waynhim and ur-viles had been behind her,
guarding her back. Now in an instant the Ranyhyn
rushed past them, leaving them exposed to the assault
of their makers.
Linden did not see that the Masters must have heard
her, or had made their own decision to withdraw. As
she and her companions broke free of the horde,
however, the Haruchai abruptly jumped back from
their opponents and began to run. Some of them
whistled for their mounts. And some of those calls
were answered. But most of the warriors simply ran. A
few followed after the Ranyhyn as if to shield their
flight. A large majority, however, headed for the ur-
viles and Waynhim.
In their own way, the Waynhim had served the Land
as diligently as any of the Lords. And Linden had told
the Masters through Stave that the ur-viles deserved
protection.
Encircling the creatures, the Haruchai took up
positions to fight a rearguard action back toward the
entrance to Lord's Keep.
But Linden was unaware of them. She had closed
herself to all distractions; and so she did not see that
the horde had slowed its pace, allowing its foes to
retreat ahead of it. Apparently the Demondim did not
desire to overwhelm their last descendants and
the surviving warriors, but preferred rather to herd
their opponents toward the illusory haven of
Revelstone. They let the opportunity for carnage
escape them.
While Hyn's hooves beat the hard ground, Linden
counted Anele's heartbeats until she began to believe
that they were not failing; that his peculiar strength
had preserved him somehow. Then, gradually, she
expanded her awareness to include Stave's wounds
and Hynyn's labored gait.
They would live because she did not mean to let them
die. She had already lost too many people who had
trusted her, and had come no nearer to rescuing her
son. Nevertheless she was relieved to discern that they
were in no immediate danger.
Hynyn had lost too much blood: the stallion was in
acute pain. Yet his hurts were not as severe as Stave's.
The Master's pulse had a ragged, thready beat,
hampered by agony, and his burns fumed hotly,
exacerbated by the lingering vitriol of the Demondim.
An ordinary man would already have died
But even Stave's preternatural toughness might fail
him if his injuries were not treated soon. His left eye
was already lost, and his other wounds were worse.
She was not certain that even the theurgy of the Staff
would be enough to save him; and the convictions of
the Masters would probably require them to spurn
hurtloam.
Linden's choices had become too expensive. The prices
that other people paid in her name, because she had
done what she did, seemed too high to be borne.
She was aware of nothing except the hurts of her
companions as the Ranyhyn flashed from sunlight into
the shadows of the tunnel under Revelstone's
watchtower. For a long moment, their hooves raised a
tumult of trod stone and echoes, so that they seemed to
gallop through the residue of the battle which they had
left behind. Then they burst back into the sun's
warmth in the walled courtyard which separated the
watchtower from the main bulk of the Keep, and there
the Ranyhyn scrambled to a halt, stopping urgently on
stiffened legs.
Before them were the massive inner gates of
Revelstone.
The gates stood open as if in welcome. But no lamps or
torches lit the hall beyond them, and the wide jaws of
Lord's Keep offered only darkness.
10.
~au~~~Sanrtuay
As she entered Revelstone for the third time in her life,
Linden Avery yearned
    EaL for illumination.
In a sense, she knew the high forehall well. She had
struggled and survived here against the Clave and the
na-Mhoram's Grim. But it was dark now, and she
could see nothing to assure her that she knew where
she was.
Apparently the Masters did not need light. Their sight
was acute. And their senses were not truncated by
Kevin's Dirt.
She lacked their abilities. Already she could feel her
percipience fading, eroded by the tainted pall which
overhung the Land. Soon she would be able to discern
only the surfaces around her, none of the depths. She
would be blind to all that was not lit and plain.
But she was not blind yet. The Staff of Law in her
hands sustained her when she felt too weary to hold up
her head.
When she and those with her-her companions and
their mounts, the ragged and gasping Demondim-
spawn, and the Masters who had survived the horde,
along with most of their horses-had entered the prow-
shaped promontory of Revelstone, the heavy gates
were closed, both those at the base of the watchtower
and those within the courtyard. The Demondim had
advanced too slowly to kill more of the Land's
retreating defenders; and now the monsters were
sealed out of Revelstone. Scores of people, creatures,
and mounts crowded the forehall, awaiting decisions.
With the gates shut, Linden could no longer taste the
approach of the Illearth Stone; but she trembled to
think what would happen when that immeasurable evil
was unleashed against the wrought stone of Lord's
Keep.
The choices of the Masters had left Revelstone
virtually defenseless. They had denied the Land its
heritage of lore and Earthpower. And Stave's kinsmen
had just demonstrated that mere skill and strength
could not stand against the powers of the
Demondim.
Linden did not dismount. She was reluctant to leave
the security of Hyn's back. Like the Staff, Hyn's
fortitude and loyalty enabled her to exceed herself. In
spite of her ex-
haustion, she called up fire from the Staff and held it
flaming over her head. If she could not accomplish
anything else, she meant to at least see
As the warm buttery light reached for the walls of the
cavernous hall, she studied the condition of her
companions. Only Stave and Bhapa needed care
immediately. Mahrtiir and Pahni had suffered less
dangerous hurts. Indeed, they had already slipped
down from their Ranyhyn to tend Whrany and Hynyn
with amanibhavam and tenderness, stifling their
wonder at the legendary Keep as well as their ancient
animosity toward the Haruchai. And neither Liand
nor the Demondim-spawn had been exposed to acid
and emerald since passing through the Fall. As for
Anele, the old man had emerged scatheless from the
horde. He remained unconscious-perhaps Stave had
struck him again-but he breathed more easily now,
relaxing into natural sleep.
A significant number of the Masters had been
wounded, but none as grievously as Stave. Apparently
every warrior with serious injuries had fallen to the
Demondim. The rest had been able to evade the worst
attacks of the monsters.
Gazing around the forehall, Linden estimated that a
score or two of the Haruchai had spent their lives to
purchase escape for her and her companions.
So much bloodshed- Too much. She had surpassed the
limits of what she could accept.
A Master whom she did not know approached her
through the restless throng, the wavering shadows,
and asked for her attention. He knew her name. No
doubt they all did. Stave had already spoken of her.
She could not imagine what else he might have told his
kinsmen.
This Master carried himself with a commanding
certainty. He may have been a leader among his
people. The silver in his hair lent him dignity: the scars
on his face and arms testified to his prowess. He wore
no insignia or emblems, no marks of status, but the
other Haruchai deferred to him subtly, honoring him
more by posture and stance than by any overt signs of
respect.
Nevertheless Linden ignored him. She had been
pushed beyond herself, and other needs were more
important to her.
While she could still rely on her health-sense to inform
her actions, she sent tendrils of force curling from the
comfortable wood in her hands; extended Law and
healing to both Stave and Bhapa at once.
Stave's eye was a scalded mess. She could not repair it:
she could only clean it and stop the bleeding. Therefore
she closed her heart to it. Fortunately his other injuries
were similar to Bhapa's: far more severe, but alike in
kind. She could apply the same balm of Earthpower to
both men. However, she did not neglect Stave's sore
hip. And she cleared the cataract from Bhapa's eye. He
might have avoided the worst of his hurts if he had
been able to see more clearly; if she had thought to
treat his vision when she had first gained the Staff.
Finally she stretched out her care to the most
dangerous wounds of the Ranyhyn. She did not know
how else to thank them for all that they had done in
her name.
While she worked, a hush filled the hall. Pahni, Liand,
and Mahrtiir regarded her gravely. The older Master
held his peace. None of the other Haruchai made a
sound. The Ranyhyn and even the lesser horses ceased
their restive stamping, their snorted whimpers.
Huddling together, the Waynhim tended to each other
in silence, while the ur-viles licked their wounds.
When she was done, a wave of exhaustion broke over
her, and she nearly faded from consciousness. She had
been under too much strain for far too long. The
Staff's strength lapsed in her tired hands, restoring the
darkness of the forehall, leaving her isolated in her
personal night.
Then Mahrtiir said softly, "My thanks, Ringthane,"
and she roused herself with a jerk. Perhaps she would
be able to rest later: she could not do so now. She had
other responsibilities which she did not mean to
ignore.
"You are Linden Avery the Chosen," announced a
nearby voice, "and you hold both white gold and the
Staff of Law. Stave has spoken of you. I am Handir, by
right of years and attainment the Voice of the Masters.
In their name, I bid you welcome."
His tone suggested his scars and his age, in spite of its
lack of inflection.
"Good for you," Linden muttered gracelessly. The
forehall was as dark as a tomb. It seemed crowded
with fears and suffering; demands which she did not
know how to meet. "If we're so welcome and all, how
about giving us some light?"
Stave had saved her by bringing her here. Without the
aid of the Masters, she would not have been able to
keep her companions, or herself, alive. But he had also
betrayed her. His people would imprison Anele. And
they might well do the same to her.
Jeremiah had tried to warn her
The horses nickered and snorted, clattering their
distress against the stone floor with their hooves; but
no one answered Linden's query until Mahrtiir rasped,
"It is the Ringthane who asks it, sleepless ones. She has
ridden Hyn of the Ranyhyn across fifteen score leagues
and uncounted centuries to this fell place. Will you
disdain even her?"
As if in response to the Manethrall's indignation, a
torch sputtered and took flame at the far end of the
forehall, away from the gates. It revealed a Master
carrying an armload of brands. Without haste, he
began distributing torches among his people.
Vaguely Linden wondered how many Haruchai had
not ridden out to meet the Demondim. How many
losses could they sustain, and still hold fast to their
convictions?
Were there enough Masters to defend the Keep?
As small fires spread from brand to brand, a flickering
light slowly filled the hall. It cast ambiguous shadows
among the people and horses until they resembled
Demondim, fading in and out of definition.
Liand remained mounted behind Handir, two other
Masters, and Mahrtiir's stallion. As soon as she met
the Stonedownor's worried gaze, he said, "My sight
fails, Linden. Soon I will be reduced to what I was in
Mithil Stonedown." The thought clearly grieved him,
but he set it aside. "Yet I see naught to trouble me. But
my heart misgives me still. I do not trust these
Masters, though they have snatched us back from
death."
For his sake, she sighed, "We're safe enough,"
although her voice shook, "at least for now. They may
be Masters, but they're still Haruchai. They'll take
care of us as well as they can."
And they would do so as long as they could, with
Demondim massed beyond the gates, and the power of
the Illearth Stone rampant against them.
Handir waited until she was finished. Then he
informed Liand, "I have bid you welcome. In the
Chosen's name, I have welcomed you all. Has this no
meaning among Stonedownors?"
Facing Linden again, he asserted, "We have become
the Masters of the Land because we are Haruchai.
While Revelstone stands, you are guests among us, and
need fear no harm."
"Does that include the ur-viles?" she asked promptly.
"And the Waynhim? None of us would have survived
without them. Even Stave-"
Her throat closed. Too many Haruchai lay dead
beyond the Keep's gates. The Demondim may have
already assumed their corpses
"We know nothing of their needs," the Voice of the
Masters said inflexibly. "They will be released to the
plateau of Glimmermere, where they may care for
themselves as they are able."
At his words, one of her fears fell away. She had once
visited the eldritch lake of Glimmermere: she had seen
the unassailable purity of its waters. And she had
heard long ago that the plateau above and behind the
promontory of Lord's Keep was guarded by sheer
cliffs for many leagues. In Glimmermere's vicinity, the
Waynhim and ur-viles would be beyond the immediate
reach of the Demondim; safe as long as the Masters
could hold back the horde.
A moment of yearning for the cleanliness of the tarn
undermined Linden's attention, and she missed what
Handir said next. Something about the Ranyhyn-?
Because he appeared to expect a response, she
murmured distantly, "Thank you. I'm sorry I haven't
been more gracious. We've been through a lot."
And her difficulties were far from ended. Entering into
Revelstone had merely transformed them.
Before Handir could reply, Mahrtiir snapped, "The
Ringthane may accept your wishes, Bloodguard. The
Ramen do not. The Ranyhyn will not submit to your
care. Rather you will release them also to the upland
plateau, where they will be tended by
the Ramen, and where they may remain or depart, as
they choose. To propose otherwise is arrogance.
"And your welcome is without substance. You avow
that you will provide for our safety `while Revelstone
stands.' That is scant comfort, sleepless one. You
cannot cast down the Demondim, and are utterly
surpassed by the Illearth Stone. Yet you make no
preparation for defense."
Shadows shifted ominously across the Manethrall's
visage. "You name yourself `the Voice of the Masters:
Heed my voice, Bloodguard. The gates of Revelstone
are mighty, but they will not long remain unbreached.
Ere the sun sets, the Demondim will enter this hall,
and then it will be revealed that your welcome is as
empty as your arrogance. If the Ringthane does not
preserve you, the Masters will perish from the Land."
The gates, Linden thought unexpectedly. Something
about the gates
Handir continued to regard her for a moment as
though he wondered whether Mahrtiir spoke for her.
Then he turned impassively to the Raman.
"You are mistaken, Manethrall, in many things." If
the Master felt either impatience or scorn, his tone
concealed it. "We have offered to care for the Ranyhyn
because we seek to do them honor. They have been too
long absent from the Land, and we have craved their
return. But we intend no disregard toward the Ramen.
Nor will we gainsay your word. The Ranyhyn will be
released, as you have instructed, and you will tend to
them."
Handir paused, apparently offering Mahrtiir an
opportunity to respond. But the Manethrall said
nothing, and his fierce glare seemed to defy the
Masters. With a shrug, Handir continued his reply.
"Preparations against the Demondim have begun,
though you do not witness our efforts. As you have
observed, we cannot equal the might of the Demondim.
Therefore the watchtower is being filled with wood
and oil, and made ready for fire. Any approach to the
gates of Revelstone will fall in flames."
And rise again, Linden thought darkly, until you run
out of fuel. If the gates hold at all.
They troubled her for some reason. There was a
question that she wanted to ask,
but it eluded her. She was too tired to remember
"Other preparations also have begun," the Voice of
the Masters promised. "You may
partake in them, and in the defense of the Keep, if that
is your desire."
Still Mahrtiir glared at the Master on Linden's behalf,
and said nothing.
Again Handir shrugged. The Haruchai with him did
not react to Mahrtiir's bel
ligerence.
"In one matter, however," explained Handir, "you
have spoken sooth. No defense
will ward us from the evil of the Illearth Stone. Yet at
present the Demondim do not
if
wield it against us. Nor do they approach the gates.
For reasons which we do not comprehend, they appear
content to remain at some distance, ensuring that we
cannot flee, but threatening us in no other form.
"We have heard your voice, Manethrall. Hear mine.
Until we have determined how we must respond to the
Chosen, we have no better course than to make our
guests welcome as best we may."
Abruptly Linden jerked up her head. Responsive to
her mood, Hyn took a step or two forward, moving
between Mahrtiir and the Voice of the Masters.
"The gates," Linden said. "Now I remember. Where
in hell did you get gates?"
When she had entered here three and a half thousand
years ago, there were no gates below the watchtower.
They had been destroyed long before. And the
Sandgorgon Nom had shattered the Keep's inner
defenses at Covenant's behest. Yet now both sets of
gates were closed: great interlocking stone doors which
sealed the Keep as effectively as blank walls.
Stave had said that Giants still visited the Land
Handir paused as if he were consulting with his people.
Then he asked, "Do you require to speak of this now,
Chosen? You are weary. Your questions will be
answered when you have rested."
"I don't know how to trust you," Linden countered
thinly. "Stave knows why. Tell me about the damn
gates."
Handir met her gaze with the ambiguous light of the
torches in his eyes. "They were
gifted to Revelstone by the Giants of the Search. More
I will not say now. We will speak
of all that lies between us when you are better able to
do so.
"Here is Gait." With a nod, he indicated a Master
standing behind his shoulder. "He
will guide you to chambers where you may sleep. We
will gather on the morrow to
speak of your plight, and of Revelstone's. There your
questions will be answered." Linden nodded. "All
right. That's fair enough, I guess. God knows I'm
exhausted,"
so tired that she could barely keep her thoughts in
order. "So are my friends. "There's just one more
thing."
One more absolute responsibility. Then she would let
herself sleep. With an effort, she pushed down the
rising force of her weariness, and looked around for
Anele.
She spotted him across the hall from her just as two
Masters reached up to lift him down from Hrama's
back.
He was still asleep. Otherwise he would not have
suffered their touch without protest. But he roused as
soon as they took hold of him, and immediately began
to struggle, thrashing against them as if the touch of
their hard hands burned him.
Reacting to Anele's distress, Hrama whinnied sharply.
The other Ranyhyn tossed their heads and stamped
their hooves anxiously. But they did not move against
the Haruchai.
However, Hyn answered Linden's swift alarm by
shouldering her way between the warriors and their
horses toward the old man. Alert now, and frantic,
Linden shouted over the crowd, "Just a minute! Anele
stays with me!"
In her hands, she held up the Staff like a threat.
At once, half a dozen Masters came together across her
path, forming a barricade against her. Hyn shoved at
them with her chest, then stepped back, awaiting
Linden's will.
"God damn it," Linden protested, "aren't you
listening?" She could have swept them apart in an
instant; but she would not. No matter what happened,
they were not her enemies. "I said he stays with me! I
promised him my protection."
"Protect!" the old man panted as he twisted against
the grasp of his captors. "Linden Avery! Protect
Anele!"
Impassively Handir joined the barrier of Masters. The
torches cast indecipherable shadows across his face.
Galt stood at Hyn's head as if his mere presence might
restrain the mare.
Mahrtiir moved quickly to Linden's side, with Pahni
and Liand close behind him. Like Linden, the
Stonedownor had not yet dismounted. Apprehension
and resolve clenched his face.
"The old man is ours," announced Handir. Stave had
said the same when he had first captured Anele, after
the collapse of Kevin's Watch. "We do not permit
freedom to such beings."
"Oh, for God's sake!" Linden snapped back. "Not this
again. Hasn't Stave talked to you? Don't you people
ever learn?"
Gasping, and unable to break free, Anele abruptly
ceased his struggles. His blind gaze reproached
Linden.
She did not doubt that Hyn and Rhohm could have
thrust past the Masters. No Haruchai would lift his
hand against the Ranyhyn. But that forbearance might
not extend to her and Liand-or to the Ramen-in spite
of Handir's welcome.
"Sure," she went on, "he's full of Earthpower. So are
the Ranyhyn. He can do things other people can't. So
can they. That doesn't make them a threat. His power
isn't something he uses. It's something he is.
"Hasn't Stave told you that he loves the Land as much
as you do? That the only thing he wants is to be of
use?" Anele's helpless stare tore at her heart. "He
can't forgive himself for losing the Staff until he does
something to make restitution." And his madness
made that impossible. "That's why being a prisoner
hurts him so much. He can't do anything to help the
Land when you've got him locked away."
Handir may have shrugged. "Yet the Earthpower
within him cannot be set aside. Therefore his deeds
will serve Corruption, whatever his intentions may be.
And therefore we will not release him."
Furiously Linden turned to scan the hall for Stave. She
had healed him. More than once- He could vouch for
Anele.
She found him moving slowly toward her. His wounds
had left him painfully weak. Nevertheless he spurned
his frailty, holding up his head as though he defied
anyone to challenge him.
"Stave," she urged at once, "tell them. You heard
Anele's story. You know what he's been through.
You've seen what he can do. Tell them."
As if in response, Stave walked arduously past her to
join the barricade between her and the old man.
When he had positioned himself among his kinsmen,
he faced her. "Chosen," he said in a wan voice, "you
also do not appear to learn. Again you have shamed
me with your healing. And I have permitted you to lift
the burden of my failures from me. Do you now
imagine that my people will heed whatever I might
say?
"Anele will not be harmed. That is the given word of
the Haruchai. There is no need to fear for him."
But I promised him! Linden wanted to cry out. Yet she
knew that she could not sway the Master. She could
not sway any of them.
She felt like tearing her hair in frustration. "I can stop
you," she told Handir through her teeth. "You know I
can."
The Voice of the Masters shook his head. His gaze did
not waver. "You hold great powers. Yet if we
determine that we must wrest them from you, do you
truly doubt that we will prevail?"
Her worst fear
Perhaps he could see into her heart. He may have
known that she would not strike out at him.
"Linden." Carefully Liand leaned from Rhohm's back
to rest his hand like an appeal on her arm. "They have
offered us rest and sustenance, which we sorely need.
Many of them were slain to procure our escape. And
they have vowed that they will not harm Anele. Would
it not be well to grant them their will until the morrow,
when we may speak of him again?"
If we're still alive, Linden thought bitterly. If the
Demondim haven't torn this whole place apart.
Mahrtiir made a spitting sound, but did not protest.
Helpless in the hands of the Masters, Anele's gasping
sounded like sobs.
Linden did not glance at Liand. Instead she glared into
Handir's flat visage.
"He's terrified of you. With good reason, as it turns
out. If you hurt just one hair on
his poor old head-" Abruptly she thrust her face closer
to the Master. Whispering, she
warned him, "If you do that, I'll know whose side
you're really on."
Before Handir could respond, she turned Hyn and
rode away to the far end of the forehall, seeking to lose
herself in shadows because she could no longer bear
the reproach in Anele's eyes.
while later, still fuming, she entered the chambers
which had been prepared for her and closed the door
on Galt; nearly slammed it in his face. He was the only
Master present, and her distress required an outlet.
She had seen the Ranyhyn led away, accompanied by
the Ramen and followed by the Demondim-spawn. She
had watched Anele taken from the forehall as gently as
his frail resistance permitted. And she had nodded a
temporary farewell to Liand when one of the Masters
had urged him from her side. Now she was alone with
her anger and her fear.
Anele had survived worse affronts than imprisonment
by the Masters. Physically he would be well. But his
despair might grow too great for his broken mind to
contain.
In addition, most of the ur-viles and Waynhim had
been killed for her sake. A frightening number of the
Haruchai had been slain. Revelstone was besieged: it
would soon fall. In spite of all her efforts, she had
earned no support from Stave. She had risked the
Arch of Time in order to retrieve the Staff; but she still
had done nothing to rescue her son.
She was alone because she needed to be. She did not
know how else to bear her sense of futility.
She had no idea where in the great Keep her rooms
were located. Her scant familiarity with Revelstone
was useless when few of the passages and stairways
were lit. In fact, few of them seemed to be frequented
at all. More than once, her boots had raised dust from
the stone. Occasionally Galt had led her through
pockets of stale air. And they had encountered no one
along the way. The Masters believed that they served
the Land; but Lord's Keep was nearly empty.
Yet her quarters showed signs of care. The rooms were
clean and fresh, with oil lamps glowing on small tables
and stands, and a faint scent of soap in the air.
Roughwoven rugs softened the smooth granite floors,
while similar hangings eased the starkness of the walls.
And when she closed the door and latched it, the old
stone seemed to seal her away from the rest of the
Keep, warding her from Masters and peril.
Here she was safe, at least temporarily, and could rest.
There were three rooms, a compact suite. The outer
door had admitted her to a chamber with a few stone
chairs, a low table for food, and a fireplace with a
supply of wood. Beyond it lay a bedroom, empty
except for a narrow bed, a large rug, and a shut
tered window. And beyond that she found a bathroom
with a basin, a rudimentary commode, a small tub, an
urn filled with fine sand for scrubbing, and a system of
simple valves which opened to release streams of
water. A stand in the corner held a pile of flaxen towels
neatly folded.
When she thought of bathing, she began to tremble.
Reaction setting in, she told herself. For days she had
been under more strain than she knew how to handle:
now she had been given rooms that felt safe, even
though they were threatened by siege and betrayal.
Here she could finally wash off days of grime and
frenzy. With the Staff beside her, she might even be
able to sleep.
Shivering in the cool air, she returned to the main
room, where she built a fire in the hearth, lighting it
with one of the lamps and feeding it with slivers of
wood until it burned strongly. Then she went back to
the bathroom.
Setting aside the Staff cost her an effort. Instinctively
she clung to its severe cleanliness. But she needed a
bath. When she had propped the wood against the
wall, she ran water into the tub and stripped off her
clothes.
In the bath, the cold of the water stung her skin. It
must have arisen from a mountain spring and been
drawn by gravity into pipes and conduits within
Revelstone's walls, where it was kept cold by the
surrounding rock. But she fought the chill. Fumbling
sand onto her arms and legs, her torso, her head, she
rubbed them until she felt raw. Then she pulled her
clothes into the water and did the same to them.
For all of her scrubbing, however, she could not
remove the grass stains from her pants. They had
become part of the fabric, indelible, and cryptic as
runes.
And soon the chattering of her teeth drove her from
the tub. Wrapping one of the rough towels around her,
she hastened toward the warmth of the fire. There
gradually the crackling heat soaked into her, easing
the clench of her muscles and the deep pang of the
cold; and she began to relax.
When she was warm, she returned to the bathroom,
wrung out her clothes, and brought them to the fire,
hanging them over the backs of chairs near the hearth
to dry.
Now she wished that she had a comb. Her hair would
be a mess when it dried. But she ran her fingers
through it by the comfortable flames, untangling it as
best she could. That would have to suffice. She had no
energy left for vanity.
Then she began to feel hungry. Knowing the Haruchai,
she felt sure that one of them-Galt, presumably-stood
outside her door, guarding her; or guarding against
her. If she opened the door, she could ask him for
something to eat.
She did not. Instead she continued to sit by the fire,
staring into the indecipherable dance of the flames
while she forced herself to think about her
circumstances.
And about Anele.
She told herself that she should prepare for the
morrow; for the confrontation she had been promised.
Always assuming, of course, that the Demondim could
be held
back so long. More than that, however, she needed to
devise some stratagem which would allow her to
bypass the horde and head for Mount Thunder.
She had not forgotten her desire to visit Andelain. If
any guidance remained in the Land, she would find it
there. But every day that slipped away from her only
multiplied Jeremiah's suffering. Now that she knew
where to look for him, she intended to postpone other
considerations.
But she could not concentrate: her weary thoughts
seemed to bleed away from her. Rather than making
plans, she found herself remembering the hazard and
bloodshed which had purchased her escape from the
Demondim.
Slain Haruchai and slaughtered horses haunted her.
Blasts of opalescent acid devoured raw chunks of pain
and death, while blurred forms shifted in and out of
definition. Fanged flails of emerald scourged flesh to
tatters, and yet represented only a small portion of the
Illearth Stone's potential evil.
Despite the peril, however, Anele had dropped from
Hrama's back to become an avatar of fire and rage.
When his feet had touched the bare dirt, the bitterness
of some other being had taken possession of him. He
had been transformed
-just as he had been in the open center of the Verge of
Wandering.
Linden struggled to grasp the implications.
In at least one phase of his madness, apparently, the
old man's vulnerability was defined or controlled by
the nature of the ground on which he stood. For the
few days that she had known him in her proper time,
she had only seen his feet touch bare dirt twice; and
both times he had immediately begun to rave with heat
and flame. But in the Land's past he had evinced
nothing similar. Instead every aspect of his madness
with which she was familiar had been modified beyond
recognition. There, in the presence of the Staff, he had
come close to ordinary sanity.
Perhaps his passage through the first caesure had
taken him out of reach
And the same was true, she realized suddenly,
whenever Anele was on horseback. More than once,
she had observed that he seemed less troubled when he
rode. During their escape from Mithil Stonedown,
Lord Foul's grasp on his spirit had disappeared when
he had been lifted onto Somo's back. And after that it
had not recurred until
No, it had not recurred at all; not fully. From Somo's
back, Anele had climbed onto the rocks around the
Mithil's Plunge. Behind the Plunge, he had been
wracked by an entirely different form of pain. And
after that, during their ascent toward the cleft where
they had later been attacked by the kresh-during that
difficult trudge
Damn it, she could not remember. But she seemed to
recall that he had vacillated between varying
manifestations of his insanity, shedding glimpses of
Despite and woe. And where they walked had been
primarily a kind of scrub-grass, hardy and thin,
interspersed with patches of bare dirt and sections of
fallen stone.
He had been standing on grass of that same kind when
Lord Foul had guided her
to hurtloam. And earlier, when the Despiser had first
spoken to her through Anele: the same grass.
Dear God, was it possible?
He has no friend but stone.
Did the surface on which he stood determine the phase
of his madness? Or did that surface control which of
several beings or spirits could locate and possess him?
Thomas Covenant had spoken to her through Anele
twice, on the lush grass of the Verge of Wandering:
grass so rich and high that she had been unable to
walk through it without floundering; the same grass
which had stained her pants with a script which she
did not know how to interpret.
In the rubble of Kevin's Watch, and again among the
shattered rocks which had filled the cleft, as well as on
the piled granite of the ridge above the Verge of
Wandering, he had professed to read what was written
within the stones. He had seemed almost lucid- On
more polished stone, he had appeared more broken
and fearful; but still he had seemed able to understand
what was said to him-and to offer an occasional
coherent response. And
Linden groaned at the memory.
On a plane of exposed gutrock between the walls of the
cleft, he had briefly become sane enough to reveal his
past.
If she were right-if her memories had not misled her-it
was God's truth that he had no friend but stone. Every
other surface under his feet in this time exposed him to
possession and torment.
As she had understood it until now, Anele's madness
had seemed adequately cruel: bitter and undeserved.
But this new vision of his plight was far worse. He had
become the pawn of powers which would have savaged
any less Earthpowerful flesh than his.
She might have stopped then to grieve for him; but
implications continued to tumble through her. If she
were right, Lord Foul could not know where she was
or what she did when Anele was not accessible to him.
That probably accounted for the attack of the kresh.
The Despiser must have expected her to flee Mithil
Stonedown northward, into the South Plains-away
from the Ramen and the Ranyhyn and hope. And
Anele had been hidden from him on Somo's back.
When the old man had reentered Lord Foul's reach
beyond the Mithil's Plunge, the Despiser must have
been taken by surprise. Realizing his error, he must
have sent the kresh in an attempt to prevent Linden
from reaching the mountains.
In addition, Anele's particular vulnerability might
explain why the Demondim had slowed their attack.
By her reasoning, it was no accident that the horde
had not as sailed him when he was filled with fire and
rage. The dire creatures had recognized an ally. In
their midst, Anele's possessor had spoken to them-and
they had heeded him. For some reason, they wanted
Linden and her companions enclosed in Revelstone.
Deep within herself, she trembled at the possibilities.
Evils other than the Despiser also used Anele to keep
track of her; oppose her; guard against her. I have
merely whispered a word of counsel here and there-
And Covenant had warned her to beware of him.
Almost involuntarily, she imagined ways in which she
might benefit from her new understanding. If it
proved true- She could take Anele to the upland
plateau, to the rich grass around Glimmermere, and
ask him for Covenant's guidance. Or she could
The mere consideration of such ideas shamed her.
Anele was a broken old man, and he had already
experienced too many forms of violation. He did not
deserve to be used, even by someone who cared for
him.
But the Despiser had taken her son. And Anele's
madness was defended by Earthpower. Unconsciously
he had shaped his birthright into a bulwark for his
insanity. She could not succor him without committing
an act of violence against the choices which
he had made for himself.
And his plight did not outweigh Jeremiah's. It could
not; not with her. The old man had friends: Liand and
the Ramen; Linden herself; even the ur-viles to some
extent. He had episodes of sanity which enabled him to
articulate his dilemma. And his heritage of
Earthpower protected his underlying identity from the
ravages of his possessors. Jeremiah had none of those
things.
He had only Linden. If she did not redeem him from
Lord Foul, there would be no limit to his agonies.
Therefore
She hid her face in her hands.
-she had no choice. If she could find no alternative, no
other way to reach her son, she would have to make
use of Anele. To manipulate his madness so that it
served her needs.
The prospect dismayed her; but she did not shrink
from it. She had already risked the Arch of Time in the
same cause.
Good cannot be accomplished by evil means.
She understood that. But such convictions, like the
beliefs of the Masters, were too expensive. She could
not afford them.
he might have remained where she was for some time,
warming her weariness by the fire, and considering
possibilities which shamed her. Before she could
remember that she was hungry, however, or that she
needed sleep, she heard a muted
knock at her door.
Sighing, she uncovered her face and rose to her feet.
I
I
h
Her clothes were still too damp to wear. After a
moment's hesitation, she wrapped a couple of towels
tightly around her, then retrieved the Staff and carried
it with her as she went to unlatch the door.
The door was stone, and massive as a cenotaph, yet it
swung easily on its hinges. It must have been
counterbalanced in some way, perhaps by weights
within the walls. Lord's Keep had been wrought by
Giants, and they were wizards of stonework.
In the corridor outside her chambers stood Liand,
Galt, and a woman whom she had never seen before.
The woman held a wicker tray laden with dried fruit,
dark bread, cheese, and a steaming bowl of soup.
Liand smiled uncertainly. "Linden." He seemed
reluctant to enter; unsure of his welcome. "This is the
Mahdoubt." He indicated the woman. "I glean that she
is the Mahdoubt, though I do not presume to know
what the title may signify. When she brought food to
my rooms, I inquired of you, and she replied that she
had not yet served you. Wishing to ascertain that you
are well, I craved her leave to accompany her."
"Yes. Assuredly." The woman plainly did not doubt
her own welcome. Bustling past Linden, she swept into
the room: a short dowdy figure apparently well past
middle age, with a crow's nest of hair askew on her
head, plump flesh hanging from her arms, and
features which might have been sculpted by an unruly
child during a tantrum. About her she wore a robe of
astonishing ugliness, a motley patchwork of scraps and
swaths seemingly selected for their unsuitability to
each other, and stitched together at random.
"The Mahdoubt, indeed," she pronounced as she bent
to place her tray on the low table. "Assuredly. Who
else?" She may have been speaking to herself.
"Meager fare for two. Does the Mahdoubt
comprehend this? She does. But this flirtatious young
man"-she indicated Liand-"has mazed her with
blandishments, and so she did not return to the
kitchens for a second tray.
"A long trudge, that," she remarked to the air. "Long
and weary. And the Mahdoubt can no longer recall her
first youth, though she has been shamelessly
charmed."
For a moment, she studied her tray. Then she bent
again and adjusted its position until it occupied the
exact center of the table. When she straightened her
back, her manner suggested satisfaction.
"Pssht. It is no matter," she informed the room. "One
tray may feed as many as two, if it be kindly shared."
In an effort to make herself stop staring, Linden
turned to Galt. "'The Mahdoubt'?" she asked
unsteadily.
The Master replied with a Haruchai shrug, at once
subtle and expressive. "She is a servant of Revelstone.
The name is her own. More than that we do not
know."
A servant- Linden scowled reflexively. Well, of course,
she thought. If the Land had Masters, it naturally
required servants as well. Men and women who had
been born here for uncounted generations had been
reduced to waiting on the Haruchai.
What fun.
Riding a wave of renewed irritation, she beckoned
Liand into the room and started to close the door on
Galt. But then she caught herself. Facing the Master
past the edge of the door, she demanded, "Wait a
minute. I know you're here to guard me, but I assume
you're also going to at least pretend that I'm a guest.
So tell me something."
Galt lifted an eyebrow. "Chosen?"
"The gates." She held him with her glare. "I'm tired of
waiting for answers. Where did you get them?"
He cocked his head, apparently consulting his
kinsmen. Then he shrugged again. "Very well. As you
have heard, the gates were wrought by the Giants of
the Search. It transpired thus.
"When the First of the Search and Pitchwife, her
mate, had borne the Staff of Law to Sunder and
Hollian, they returned to The Grieve. There they
awaited some word of what had befallen Starfare's
Gem and the other Giants of the Search." Covenant,
Linden, and their companions had left the Giantship
far to the north in the Sunbirth Sea, half crippled
among floes of ice. "But when at last the dromond
gained Coercri, the Giants did not then return to their
homeland. Rather the First led them to Revelstone,
that they might behold the handiwork of their lost
kindred, the Unhomed."
At first while Galt spoke, Linden simply listened, glad
to hear what had become of her long-dead friends.
When she was satisfied that he would indeed answer
her question, however, she began to study the Master
himself. Distracted by other concerns, she had paid no
attention to him in the forehall. And she had seen little
of him except his back during their ill-lit trek to her
rooms. Now she looked at him as if they had never met
before.
He appeared to be less than Stave's age. The
characteristic flat cheeks and brown skin of the
Haruchai resisted the definition of years. But Galt's
lack of scars made him seem untried; therefore young.
"You are aware," he continued, "that the Giants are a
deliberate folk, hasty in neither speech nor deed.
Though they had been long absent from their Home,
they remained in the Land for several years. At first
their efforts were dedicated to the restoration of
Starfare's Gem, which had been sorely damaged.
Later, however, their hearts turned toward
Revelstone, for Lord's Keep also had known harm.
"They admired greatly the craft of the Unhomed, who
had lived and perished in Seareach. In addition, they
wished to honor the valor of all those who had striven
against the Sunbane. And they desired to express their
gratitude for the caamora which the ur-Lord Thomas
Covenant granted to the dead of The Grieve.
Therefore they determined to offer what they named
a'small' restoration to Revelstone.
"They professed that many of the hurts which the
Keep had suffered lay beyond their skill. However, the
fashioning of gates did not surpass them. Here the
Giants of
the Search labored long and mightily so that
Revelstone might once again withstand its foes."
Linden lowered her eyes to mask her own gratitude.
Instinctively she did not want the Master to see what
his explanation meant to her.
She was about to ask him if her friends had ever found
their way Home; but when she looked down, she
noticed his right hand.
It might have belonged to Thomas Covenant. The last
two fingers had been cut away, leaving a ragged scar
in their place. Its smooth pallor suggested that the
mutilation had been performed long ago, perhaps in
Galt's youth-or his childhood.
At the sight, she flinched, stung by a sudden host of
memories. With his maimed right hand, Covenant had
drawn her toward sunlight and love aboard Starfare's
Gem. He had worn his wedding ring on the last finger
of that hand. And she herself had cut away two of
Jeremiah's fingers in order to save the rest.
Beware the halfhand. Covenant and Jeremiah.
Now she had found another among the Masters.
"Linden?" Liand asked anxiously. She could not
conceal her reactions from him. He had begun to know
her too well; or his proximity to the Staff preserved the
vestiges of his health-sense.
But she ignored his concern. The inferences which she
had drawn about Anele seemed to carry her further.
Now she saw implications, portents, too complex for
her to articulate. Hugging the Staff to her chest, she
asked brusquely, "Tell me about your hand."
The Master did not deign to glance down at his missing
fingers. "I am honored to be among the Humbled."
She swallowed curses and waited for him to go on.
"When the Haruchai determined to take upon
themselves the burdens of Mastery," Galt said flatly,
"they recognized their peril. It is the peril of Korik,
Sill, and Doar.
"Their tale is surely known to you. Ruled by the
Illearth Stone, they were made to serve Corruption.
First they were maimed to resemble the Halfhand, ur-
Lord Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. Then they
were sent to bear battle and despair against the
Council of Lords. Thus was the Vow of the Bloodguard
tarnished, and their service brought to an end."
Linden knew the story: she had heard it from Stave
only a few days ago. Still it filled her with dread.
Without haste or emphasis, Galt stated, "The fault of
Korik and Sill and Doar lay in this, that they allowed
their ire at the destruction of the Unhomed to sway
them. They believed that the outrage in their hearts
would raise them to the stature of terrible banes and
deathless malice. From their example, the Haruchai
learned the peril of
such passions. When we determined to become the
Masters of the Land, we determined also that we
would commit no similar fault.
"Therefore in each generation three among us are
selected to be the Humbled, so that the Masters will
not neglect their resolve, or set it aside. Our hands are
severed to resemble Korik's, and Sill's, and Doar's.
Among our people, we embody the error which
destroyed the service of the Bloodguard. While the
Humbled live, the Masters will not forget their peril."
Linden stared at him in dismay. The judgments of the
Haruchai continued to appall her. Again you have
shamed me with your healing. Stave believed that he
deserved the consequences of his failure to defeat
insurmountable odds. And Galt considered his
mutilation an honor
Her voice nearly failed as she asked, "How did they
pick you?"
"Chosen," he replied, "I challenged others of my
people, and was not defeated."
Linden winced. "You wanted this? You wanted to be
maimed?"
He regarded her gravely. "There is no higher place
among us. Only the Voice of the Masters commands
greater deference, and even he will accede when the
Humbled speak as one."
Commands greater deference- Abruptly new
suggestions swept through her; hints of insight like a
glimpse into the secret hearts of the Masters. Hardly
aware of what she did, she closed the door on Galt.
Then she leaned her forehead against the cool stone.
He had given her what she needed.
Now she knew how she would argue for Anele's
release. The Haruchai had founded their Mastery of
the Land on a profound misapprehension.
Perhaps she would be able to postpone making use of
the old man's madness a little longer.
When the rush of inferences had passed, she turned
back to Liand and the Mahdoubt. The older woman
was looking at her, apparently studying her; and for
the first time Linden could see the mismatched color of
her eyes. Her left was the rich blue of violets, but her
right held a startling orange which gave the impression
that it was about to burst from her head.
In spite of her strangeness, however, the Mahdoubt
emanated a comfortable kindness that appealed to
Linden. With the last of her dwindling percipience, she
saw both solid health and untroubled beneficence in
the woman. In response, she felt unexpectedly
protective of the Mahdoubt. At the same time, she
yearned to be protected by her.
Before either the older woman or Liand could speak,
Linden asked, "You're a servant? Why do you do it?
Let the Masters wait on themselves. Why should it be
your job to make their lives easier?"
Liand nodded his agreement.
But the question did not ruffle the Mahdoubt. Indeed,
she appeared to occupy a space beyond the reach of
disturbance. "Pssht, lady," she replied. "Fine
sentiments, assuredly. The Mahdoubt sees that your
heart is great. Upon occasion, however, it misleads
you.
"There is no dishonor in service. The Mahdoubt labors
here, assuredly, and her tasks are weary. Yet by her
efforts she is fed and clad and warmed. At night she
sleeps beyond harm in a kindly bed, with no rough
words.
"Lady, the Mahdoubt has lived too many years to find
pleasure in the tending of sheep and cattle. The endless
labors of crops and farming exceed her old bones. She
and others-pssht, lady, there are many others-are
grateful to end their days in the service of Revelstone.
How otherwise should they provide for themselves?"
The older woman's orange eye appeared to flare
briefly. "Is there some miscomprehension here?" she
asked herself. "Assuredly.
"Lady, the Mahdoubt does not `wait' upon the
Masters. They are who they are, and require no care.
Her labors serve the great Keep and all those within it
who lack the sufficiency of Masters."
Comforted by the Mahdoubt's answer, Linden found
herself smiling at last. "I'm sorry." She could hardly
remember the last time she had smiled at all. "I
shouldn't jump to conclusions like that. I'm just
frustrated by all this Haruchai purity and absolutism.
After a while, I can't help assuming the worst."
Again Liand nodded.
"Assuredly, lady," muttered the Mahdoubt.
"Assuredly. Think no more on it. Is the Mahdoubt
affronted? She is not. Indeed, the days when aught
vexed her are long past."
In the same tone, she added, "Does the wonder of my
gown please you?" She indicated her jarring robe.
"Are you gladdened to behold it? Yes, assuredly, it
must be so. How should it be otherwise? Every scrap
and patch was given to the Mahdoubt in gratitude and
woven together in love."
Linden smiled again. "It's extraordinary." She did not
know what else to say. Certainly she had no wish to
deny the older woman's pride in her garment.
Liand cleared his throat. "That it is woven in love
cannot be mistaken," he remarked politely. "If I may
say so without offense, however, the gratitude is less
plain to me. Will you not speak of it, that I may see
your gown more clearly?"
The Mahdoubt faced him with her plump fists braced
on her hips. "Foolish boy, you must not tease the
Mahdoubt so." Her tone suggested tart amusement.
"Matters of apparel are the province of women,
beyond your blandishment. The lady grasps the
presence of gratitude. And if she does not"-her blue
eye flicked a quick glance at Linden-"yet she will. Oh,
assuredly. It is as certain as the rising and setting of
the sun."
Before he could respond, she turned for the door.
"You must have food. And then you must sleep.
Assuredly. Your need for both is great.
"The Mahdoubt will return with a second tray."
At once, she bustled out of the room as if her
movements were as irresistible as tides.
As the door closed, Liand met Linden's gaze with a
perplexed smile. "That," he said in bafflement, "is an
unforeseen woman. I suspect that I should be wary of
her, yet I feel only fondness. She has comforted me,
Linden." He sighed. "I do not understand it."
Linden frowned. "Makes you want to curse Kevin's
Dirt, doesn't it." Because her percipience had
dwindled, she had felt unable to see deeply into the
Mahdoubt.
A grin quirked Liand's mouth. "Assuredly." But then
his humor fell away. "It is as you say. The loss of my
senses is bitter to me. Until we sojourned among the
mountains, and all the Land was reborn in my sight, I
did not comprehend evil. It has become plain to me
now." Sadness darkened his eyes as he spoke. "Beyond
question the Falls are a great evil. Yet I deem them a
little wrong beside the deprivation imposed by Kevin's
Dirt. It has blinded the people of my home, and
perhaps all the folk of the Land, to the meaning of
their lives."
The lament in his words touched Linden. "Maybe
there's something I can do about that," she said
grimly. "This is the Staff of Law, for God's sake." She
held its reassuring clarity close to her heart. "Once
I've slept for a while," and had some food, "I intend to
find out just how powerful Kevin's Dirt is."
Liand replied with a dark grin of anticipation. In the
brief time that she had known him, he had become a
man who wanted to fight; to strike blows in the Land's
defense, although he had no power, and could not hope
to stand against Lord Foul.
The change in him affected her like the Mahdoubt's
strange aura. She had relied on his protection from the
first. And in turn she ached to protect him. But she did
not know how.
he and Liand shared the contents of the Mahdoubt's
tray in silence. His desire for talk was palpable; yet
tact or empathy kept him quiet. Wordlessly he seemed
to recognize that Linden needed to be left in peace.
She valued his consideration. For the most part,
however, her thoughts had shifted,
leaving him in the background. Galt had evoked
memories which she was too weary to suppress. With
the last of her waning strength, she clung to images of
Jeremiah, and tried to think clearly.
Years before she had met him, Thomas Covenant had
once refused the Land for the sake of a snakebitten
girl. Linden understood his decision. She would do the
same for Jeremiah, if she could find no other way to
save him. But in his place the Masters would not have
made the same choice. For them, the Land's peril
would outweigh the suffering of one lost child.
She knew, however, that she was not being fair to
them. Her situation, and theirs, differed from
Covenant's in one important respect. He had refused
the Land's distant plight for the sake of a child in
immediate peril. For Linden and the Masters, the
immediate peril was the Land's: the distant plight,
Jeremiah's.
Good cannot be accomplished by evil means.
She could not use Covenant's example to explain or
excuse her decisions.
At last, Liand rose to his feet and announced that he
would leave: he must have been able to see that she
was about to fall asleep in her chair. She thanked him
wanly and let him go.
Trapped in her thoughts, she had not realized how
badly she wanted sleep.
But possible horrors followed her into the bedroom.
When she had unwrapped the towels and stretched
herself out among the rough blankets, she feared that
she would not be able to relax. Then she feared that
she would, and that ghouls would ride her dreams,
tormenting her with sorrow.
Rising to use the bathroom a short time later, however,
she found that the daylight filtering through the
shutters over her window had become darkness, and
the fire in her hearth had died to embers. Somehow
night had fallen without her notice.
And in her front room a tray mounded with food had
replaced the one which she and Liand had emptied.
The Mahdoubt must have slipped into her quarters
while she slept.
Linden had forgotten to latch the door when Liand
left.
Nevertheless this evidence of the older woman's care
released knots of tension in her. The Mahdoubt's
kindliness seemed to dismiss nightmares and doom.
Hardly aware of what she did, Linden set the latch,
tossed more wood into the fireplace, and extinguished
all but one of the lamps. Then she toppled like a felled
tree back into bed and slept again.
11.


q~_e ./Casters jtIe Lane
Later she heard Covenant calling her name. "Linden,"
he said, and again, "Lin
.L den," insistently, warning her of imminent danger.
She knew that she ought to heed him, rouse herself;
make choices which her companions could not gainsay
or refuse. But instead she endeavored not to hear him,
thinking that if she could make herself deaf he would
go away. Perhaps he would cease to exist, and then all
of her woes would end at last.
Nevertheless he continued to insist. For reasons which
she could not explain, he shone a flashlight into her
eyes. He commanded an illumination which pierced
her, made her squirm.
A muted thudding accompanied it, a sound like the
distant drumbeat which heralded the collapse of
worlds.
But when she tried to blink away the dazzle and
coercion, she found herself squinting into a fine slit of
sunlight which struck her face between the slats of the
shutter above her bed. The voice intruding on her
dreams was Liand's, not Covenant's: less strict than
Covenant's; and anxious for her. At intervals, he
knocked on her door, attempting to urge her awake.
With a groan, Linden hauled herself out of bed.
How long had she slept? She had no idea. She felt
sodden with sleep, waterlogged with dreams: she had
soaked up too much rest to reach wakefulness easily.
"Coming," she muttered, although she knew that her
muffled voice would not be heard through the heavy
door. "Damn it, I'm coming. Let me get some clothes
on."
Even in the worst emergencies, her former life had not
required her to leave home without clothes.
By the time she had pulled on her jeans, however, and
buttoned her shirt, the familiar urgency of sudden
awakenings had caught up with her. God, what could
have happened? Had the Demondim broken into
Revelstone?
Why had they taken so long? They had the Illearth
Stone
Still barefoot, she padded to the door and opened it on
Liand's concern and Galt's impassivity.
"What?" Her voice was rough with alarm. "What is
it?"
Then she stopped, silenced by the abrupt realization
that her health-sense was now entirely gone. She could
not discern the extent or nature of Liand's concern.
The polished stone of the Keep was closed to her,
lifeless as a sepulcher.
Although she had expected the loss, it hurt her
nonetheless.
"Linden," the Stonedownor murmured as if he were
embarrassed. "I crave your pardon. I was loath to
awaken you, but the Master would have done so if I
did not. The Voice of the Masters has summoned you.
The time has come to speak of Anele's imprisonment"-
he dropped his gaze uncomfortably-"and of other
matters."
She waved a hand to dismiss his apology. "Don't worry
about it." She could not afford to grieve over the
effects of Kevin's Dirt. "I should have been awake
hours ago."
How had she slept so long? She would not have
believed that her fears and frustrations would allow
her to rest so deeply.
Turning to the Humbled, she asked, "What are the
Demondim doing? Are we under attack?"
Without her health-sense, she would not have known it
if the Vile-spawn had torn down the watchtower and
shattered the gates.
Galt regarded her without expression. "It is strange,
Chosen," he admitted as though the information did
not interest him. "Yesterday they arrayed themselves
as they would in preparation for a siege. During the
night, however, they withdrew. There is now no sign of
them within sight of Lord's Keep. Scouts have been
sent to determine if they have truly abandoned their
intent against us. Those Masters have not yet
returned."
Linden stared at him. "They're gone? Is that even
possible?" The horde had seemed so single-minded in
its hunger for bloodshed. "Kevin's Dirt doesn't affect
you. Do you mean to tell me that you can't even sense
the Illearth Stone?"
What had Anele's possessor said to the Demondim?
What did that fiery being want? And why were its
desires heeded by the Demondim?
Galt faced her steadily. "It is as I have said. There is
now no sign of them. Our scouts have not yet
returned."
Well, damn, Linden thought dumbly. She might be
able to leave Revelstone after all. As soon as she had
persuaded the Masters to release Anele, she could
gather her companions and head for Mount Thunder,
following the hints which Jeremiah had constructed
for her.
As soon as she had persuaded
Only then did she notice that Galt had not bowed to
her: not once since they had first been introduced.
Apparently he or his people esteemed her less than
Stave did.
Galt may have wished her to understand that the
Masters had no intention of letting Anele go.
Well, damn, she thought again, this time angrily. Let
them try it. If they think
Nevertheless the prospect of contending for Anele's
soul calmed her. A physician's detachment came to her
aid, a separation of emotion which she had learned
from years of training. Precisely because a struggle
awaited her, she comported herself as though she were
unafraid.
Quietly she asked the Humbled, "Is Handir waiting?
Can we take the time to eat something? I haven't had
breakfast yet."
Let them try to keep Anele from her.
"There is no need for haste," replied Galt. His tone
seemed to imply that the Masters could wait
indefinitely for a woman as weak as she was.
Linden turned back into the room. "In that case," she
suggested to Liand, "why don't you cut up some of
that bread and cheese"-she nodded at the Mahdoubt's
tray-"while I get my boots on? We'll take it with us."
Her attitude appeared to confuse Liand, but he
promptly stifled his reaction, obeying without
hesitation. He may have realized that there were large
issues at stake for her, issues which transcended
Anele's release and the departure of the Demondim.
You hold great powers. Yet if we determine that we
must wrest them from you, do you truly doubt that we
will prevail?
Without the Staff of Law and Covenant's ring, she
would be helpless to defend the Land, or rescue her
son.
Carefully, preparing herself, Linden donned her socks
and then her boots while Liand sliced bread and
cheese into convenient pieces. Then, still calm, she
returned to her bedroom to retrieve the Staff.
She had promised the Stonedownor that she would
attempt to restore their percipience. Without it, she
feared that she would be powerless to sway the
Masters.
But when she took the warm shaft in her hands, she
found that she did not know how to call upon its
strength.
A surge of panic threatened her detachment. She
needed the Staff; perhaps more than she needed wild
magic. She had pinned all of her hopes on Law and
Earthpower. They were the organic antitheses of
caesures and Kevin's Dirt and Despite. And she had
fashioned this Staff with her own hands and heart. It
belonged to her more profoundly than Covenant's
ring. Yet she could discover no power in it. It was
merely wood: lovely to the touch, and flawless, but
nothing more.
Panic would not serve her, however. Instead of trying
to force some response from the Staff, she required
herself to step back emotionally and think.
When she did so, she realized that she had never
before been able to raise any kind of power without
health-sense to guide her. Not during the collapse of
Kevin's Watch: not when she had summoned the ur-
viles to aid Sahah: not in the Verge of Wandering on
Stave's behalf. On each occasion, she had been above
the blinding shroud of Kevin's Dirt. In the rift, she had
failed to find wild magic. And during her time with
Thomas
Covenant, she had never lacked percipience. In the
past, Kevin's Dirt had not existed. And when she had
used the Staff the previous day, her senses had still
retained most of their discernment.
She had always been able to feel the Staff's potential
like a geyser waiting to be released. Without that sight,
she was trapped. She needed the Staff to restore her
healthsense, and needed percipience to use the Staff.
Trust yourself You're the only one who can do this.
But she could not.
Again panic threatened her. She did not hear Liand
enter the bedroom; did not notice him until he placed
his hands on her shoulders.
"Linden," he whispered, trying not to be overheard,
"what is amiss? Has Kevin's Dirt deprived the Staff of
potency?"
Urgently she stared into his eyes; and the sight of his
unaffected worry steadied her. She could not afford to
lose her way now. Too many people had staked their
lives on her. She had to think.
Liand's question gave her a place to start. "No," she
began weakly. "It can't. This is the Staff of Law.
Kevin's Dirt can't change what it is. That's not the
problem." As she spoke, however, her voice grew
stronger. She drew courage from the gentleness of his
touch on her shoulders. "I am. I can't figure out how
to use it. I need my health-sense."
The Stonedownor knew virtually nothing about power.
For that very reason, he might be able to aid her. He
was not hampered by her preconceptions.
If he had trusted her less implicitly, he might have
hesitated. But he seemed to believe beyond question
that her dilemma was a problem she could resolve
rather than an inadequacy she would be unable to
overcome. Still whispering, he said firmly, "Yet you
also have not changed. Kevin's Dirt is merely a veil. It
cannot alter you."
Linden nodded. Her reliance on him was as implicit as
his trust. And of course he was right. Otherwise the
effects of the shroud would have been permanent.
He smiled to encourage her. "Is the wood not warm?"
Warmth, yes. She could feel that. She shifted her
hands to confirm it, and was sure. The shaft radiated a
palpable heat, delicate and reassuring. Again she
nodded.
"If the wood retains its warmth," he asked softly, "can
you not also touch the source of that warmth?"
She did not know. She had not made the attempt.
Prompted by his clear assumption that she would not
fail, she closed her eyes and focused all of her attention
on the sensation of the Staff in her grasp.
The surface of the wood was so smooth that it felt
almost slick; as immaculate as a clear sky, and yet as
full of life and possibilities as the Andelainian Hills. Its
energy was unmistakable. And the more she
concentrated on it, the deeper that vitality seemed to
run. It was a geyser indeed, a tangible wellspring.
There was no measurable limit to the amount of
Earthpower which might pour forth if the Staff were
opened.
All she needed
-was the warmth itself. Kevin's Dirt might close her
senses, but it could not seal the Staff. By its very
nature, the wood's strength would heal her if she
simply immersed herself in its heat.
Wrapping her arms around the Staff, she hugged it to
her heart; and as she did so, her senses began to
bloom.
In moments, she could feel the shaft glowing like hope
in her embrace. With her eyes still shut, she could
discern Liand's simple belief in her. The nerves of her
skin tasted the life in his veins; enjoyed the confident
beating of his heart. And behind him
Ah, behind him stood the living gutrock of the
promontory, the vital and ageless granite into which
the Unhomed had engraved their intricate, enduring,
and passionate love of stone. If she had been content to
do so, she could have spent days or years entranced by
the slow pulse of Revelstone's rock. Eventually she
would have been able to sense and share every life that
inhabited the vast Keep, every love, every fear, every
desire. Given time, she might learn to hear the words
which the stone spoke to itself, as Anele did.
But the thought of the old man brought her back to
herself. She had too much to do. Now she would be
able to do it.
Tears of relief ran down her cheeks as she reached out
to Liand with the Staff's beneficence and freed his
senses from Kevin's Dirt. She did not need to look at
him to recognize his sudden bliss.
"This is temporary," she told him in a husky voice.
"I'll probably have to renew it every day." Or every
few hours. "But now I know how."
"My thanks," he breathed when she was finally able to
open her eyes and face him. "There are no words-
Only know that you have my"-he swallowed
roughly"entire gratitude."
"Then we're even." Without transition, Linden found
that she was eager to confront the Masters. She felt
fundamentally restored, in full possession of her
powers, as if she had reclaimed a birthright. Armed
with the Staff of Law and Covenant's ring, as with
Liand's trust, she was ready for any challenge. "I
could not have done this without you."
Grinning, he replied, "And still your estimate of
yourself falls too low." Then he indicated the room
where Galt waited. "I am inclined to try the patience
of these Masters as far as I may. Yet Anele's plight
remains. And I do not doubt that the Ramen grow
restive." After a brief hesitation, he added, "Also I
fear that Pahni's blindness torments her. She lacks
Bhapa's years, and the Manethrall's, and has not
learned to harden her heart."
"You're right." Linden wiped away her tears; secured
her grip on the Staff. "We should go."
He gave her a humorous bow, which she returned. She
was smiling as they left her bedroom to rejoin the
Humbled.
If Galt had ever experienced impatience, he did not
show it. Linden was sure that he knew what had just
happened. With his Haruchai senses, he had probably
heard every word, felt every change. Nevertheless he
remained stolid; impenetrable. Her restoration gave
him no discernible qualms. He merely acknowledged
her with a nod and turned toward the door.
When Liand had taken a double handful of bread and
cheese, and tucked the food into the front of his jerkin,
he and Linden followed the Master out into the
corridors of Revelstone.
She was vaguely surprised to find them lit at wide
intervals by oil lamps and torches. Since the previous
day, someone-the Mahdoubt, perhaps, or another
servant of Revelstone-had heeded her desire for light.
She could see her way along the disused passages,
down the echoing stairways, across the uninhabited
halls.
If anything, the sparse illumination made the great
Keep seem more abandoned than it had earlier. Now
she could not imagine hosts of people thriving beyond
the reach of her senses. Instead the long stone
corridors and high chambers ached with emptiness.
Lord's Keep had been made by Giants to be occupied
by men and women who loved it; and now those
inhabitants were gone.
Doubtless the Masters respected Revelstone. They may
even have admired it. But they could not take the place
of people who served Earthpower and stone. The huge
gutrock warren needed more than light: it needed use
and warmth.
By complex stages, Galt led Linden and Liand inward
and downward, deeper into the old heart of the Keep;
and as they descended, both the air and the stone grew
colder. The shadows beyond the lamps and torches
intensified until they became as dark as coverts.
Beyond the flat retort of her boot heels, the softer clap
of Liand's sandals, and the nearly inaudible susurrus
of Galt's steps, Linden seemed to hear the muffled
breaths and whispers of lurking enmity. With her
health-sense, she could feel the tremendous weight of
Revelstone's rock leaning over her as if to watch what
she would do.
"Where are we going?" she asked Galt abruptly. The
deserted Keep oppressed her in spite of her new
confidence. She wanted to hear something other than
ramified echoes and emptiness.
"It is near," replied the Humbled. "We will speak
together in the Close, where in ancient times the
Council of Lords gathered to debate the Land's need,
and to determine their response."
Linden sighed. No doubt the Close held meaning for
the Haruchai, but she had
never seen it. Too much of the Land's long history was
hidden from her, or lost. Its undefined significance
seemed to bear down on her like Revelstone's
impending mass.
"Anele will be there?"
"Chosen," Galt answered, "all of your companions
await you, saving only the Demondim-spawn. Already
they have dispersed among the upland hills. We do not
know if they will return."
Gone, she thought. The obscure dictates of their
Weird-or of their Weirds, if the ur-viles and Waynhim
did not agree-had commanded them elsewhere. She
had no idea what their departure meant; but at least
she could believe that they were safe.
Liand offered her a few pieces of bread and cheese.
She accepted them and began to eat while she followed
Galt's strict back.
Then ahead of them she saw an arched entryway
which looked like it might once have held doors. If so,
however, they were long gone; neglected until they had
fallen away. Now the opening gaped like a scream
petrified in granite, an outcry so old that only the stone
could remember it.
But a brighter illumination shone from the entryway.
When Galt led his charges through the entrance,
Linden found herself in a huge chamber lit by many
lamps: the Close. It was a round cavity, both high and
deep, which appeared to have been formed with
conflicting purposes. Above her, almost beyond the
reach of the light, the groined ceiling was intricately
crafted, shaped with reverence, as if to honor
everything that was done and said within the chamber.
But below the entryway the floor slumped to form a
crude pit. At first, the surface sank down in stages
which may once have been tiers. Farther down,
however, the stone resembled poured magma. She
could almost believe that a once-fine audience hall had
been subjected to a terrible heat; fire so hot that the
floor melted and ran, cooling at last into contorted
patterns like memorials of pain at the bottom of the
pit.
In the wall opposite her, Linden saw a pair of gaps
which may once have been smaller doors. But they had
suffered the same damage which had marred the lower
half of the Close, and did not appear to be usable.
Among the wracked shapes at the bottom of the Close
waited Handir, Stave, and perhaps a score of other
Masters. Among them, Linden saw Anele as well as
Manethrall Mahrtiir and his two Cords. The old man
stood at the back of the gathering, guarded or
restrained by two of the Masters. Linden knew at a
glance that he had not been harmed; but his physical
well-being failed to reassure her.
As soon as she entered the hall, the Ramen ascended
the rumpled stone toward her. All three of them were
pale with loss and oppression. Bhapa concentrated on
protecting his newly healed arm and shoulder as he
moved; but Pahni mustered a thin smile for Linden
and Liand. Mahrtiir betrayed more discomfort,
however. He had difficulty
holding up his head, and his fierce features looked
uncharacteristically daunted. He climbed the stone
with a slight hitch in his strides, a subtle flinch.
The Manethrall stopped a step below Linden, Liand,
and Galt, with his Cords behind him in deference.
Avoiding Linden's eyes, he bowed in the Ramen
fashion, then asked uncertainly, "Ringthane, are you
well? Have you been treated courteously?"
He may have expected her to say that she had not.
Because his distress was vivid to her, Linden held up
the Staff of Law like an emblem of authority and
bowed formally. "I'm glad you're here, Manethrall.
Liand and I are fine." The Stonedownor nodded in
confirmation, grinning at Pahni. "Mostly the Masters
ignored us. But a woman called the Mahdoubt took
good care of us.
"How about you? Are you all right?"
Mahrtiir made a transparent effort to gather his
resolve. "We are not. At our word, the Ranyhyn were
released to the grasses of the upland plateau, and to
the eldritch waters of Glimmermere. We accompanied
them, preferring service and the open sky to the veiled
disdain of these Bloodguard. The Ranyhyn remain
there, although we have answered the summons of the
sleepless ones in your name. So much is well."
Linden nodded, waiting for him to go on.
"But, Ringthane-" He faltered; had to force himself to
lift his head so that she could see the shame in his eyes.
"I fear that I will fail you here. This dire place bears
down upon me. The Ramen are born to open skies.
Such enclosure darkens our hearts. Yet there is a
deeper pain which hampers me."
He stepped closer, lowered his voice. "Ringthane, we
are blinded. We were aware of the nature of Kevin's
Dirt, but we had not experienced it in our own flesh.
We-" He scowled in dismay. "I had not known that its
bereavement would be so extreme. I am more than half
crippled, unfit for your service."
Still holding up the Staff, Linden shook her head.
"Manethrall, you're wrong. You and Bhapa and Pahni
are who you've always been," as worthy as loyalty and
valor could make them. "With your permission, I'll
show you what I mean."
He stared at her, perplexed and uncertain. He could
not see her health, or the potency of the Staff. Yet he
assented without hesitation.
Law and Earthpower came easily now. They were
natural to her: as long as she held the Staff, they could
not be taken away. If she had not felt diminished by
Kevin's Dirt earlier, she would not have panicked.
With the warm wood in her hands, she had only to
desire the cleansing of the Ramen's senses, and her
desire was accomplished.
The joy that lit their faces when they could see again
was wonderful to behold. And it was especially acute in
Bhapa. Until this moment, apparently, he had not fully
appreciated the fact that his ordinary sight had been
restored. For years, his vision had been impaired: now
he could see in every sense of the word.
As one, the Ramen prostrated themselves at Linden's
feet as though she were as majestic as the Ranyhyn.
Embarrassed, she lowered the Staff, muttering, "Oh,
get up. Please. I don't want to be treated this way."
Again she explained, "It's temporary. Kevin's Dirt is
still there. But I can renew it as often as we need. And
eventually we'll figure out how to get rid of the cause."
Obediently the Ramen rose to their feet. Now a
palpable current of pleasure flowed between Pahni
and Liand; and Bhapa gazed at Linden with gratitude
in his clear eyes. But Mahrtiir turned away to glare
fiercely down at the waiting Masters.
"Sleepless ones," he called out in a voice that rang
with scorn, "your purpose here has no meaning.
Doubtless you will require the Ringthane to defend her
actions and intentions. Stave has promised a
reckoning, has he not? And you will attempt to
account for your mistreatment of sad Anele, who
harms no one. But your words and your choices are
empty.
"The Ranyhyn have accepted the Ringthane. More,
they have honored her, bowing their heads when they
have never bowed to any living being. And in her name
they have likewise accepted all of her companions, not
excluding Anele. Indeed, at their will they have been
ridden by Ramen, a thing which no Raman has ever
done before.
"Sleepless ones, Bloodguard, you who have ridden so
many Ranyhyn to their deaths, there is no more to be
said. No more! All of your doubts and arrogance have
been answered. If you will not serve the Ringthane,
then you must set aside your Mastery, for you have
declared your infidelity to the Land!"
From the floor of the Close, the Masters regarded
Mahrtiir in silence. Linden could not read their
reactions. Nevertheless their flat stoicism conveyed the
impression that they did not consider Mahrtiir's
indignation worthy of a response.
Their lack of affect vexed Linden. It was no wonder,
she thought grimly, that the Haruchai spoke to each
other mind to mind. They were too enclosed, too
deeply immured within themselves, for any other form
of communication.
Snarling, Mahrtiir turned back to Linden.
"Ringthane, do you choose to submit to this false
council?"
"Submit?" Her tone resembled his. "No. But I'll hear
what they have to say, and I'll answer it. I need them,
Manethrall. The Land needs them. I can't turn my
back on that."
He held her gaze, apparently searching for some flaw
in her determination. Then he nodded once, brusquely.
"Very well. The Ramen will stand beside you,
whatever befalls.
"But heed my warning. These Masters"-he spat the
word-"will not treat honestly with you."
Summoning her professional detachment, she replied,
"I'll take that chance."
The Haruchai would not deign to lie; not under any
compulsion. Not unless they had first lied to
themselves.
When she started down into the Close, Liand and
Mahrtiir walked at her sides, and the Cords arrayed
themselves behind her. Followed by Galt, and
deliberate as a cortege, they descended the hurt stone.
At the bottom of the pit, however, she paused to see
how the gathered Masters would greet her arrival.
For a moment, Stave regarded her with his remaining
eye as if he wished to measure her against his shame.
Then he bowed as he had often done before, impassive
in his respect. But Handir merely inclined his head. He
might have done more to acknowledge one of the
servants of Revelstone.
The rest of the Masters only gazed at her and waited.
Now Linden was near enough to see that both of
Anele's guards had lost the last
two fingers of their right hands. Like Galt, they were
the Humbled.
She swallowed a curse; refused to allow herself that
show of emotion. As Mahrtiir
had just demonstrated, the Masters would not be
swayed by outrage. If they could be swayed at all.
Standing passively between the Humbled, Anele did
not react to Linden's presence. He may have been lost
in the labyrinth of his dismay; unaware of her.
"Chosen," Handir began when she looked toward him
again, "you have been made welcome in Revelstone.
Yet the Manethrall your companion conceives that he
has cause to denounce us. Do you also fault our
purpose here? If so, speak plainly, and you will be
plainly answered."
Mahrtiir stiffened at Linden's side, but did not retort.
He had committed himself to her service, and
remained silent.
Linden faced the Voice of the Masters squarely. "You
know why I'm here. Anele is under my protection. I
want you to let him go. And I hope I can convince you
to help me. The Land needs you. What you've done so
far isn't enough anymore-if it ever was.
"As for your welcome, the Mahdoubt took good care
of me. And she did the same for Liand." The
Stonedownor nodded. "We have no complaints."
Handir held her gaze. "Then I bid you a further
welcome to the Close of Revelstone, where in ages long
past the Council of Lords gathered to consider the
perils of their times. We have selected this to be our
meeting place because it has been harmed by despair
and Earthpower.
"When the first Staff of Law had been destroyed, the
former Bloodguard Bannor sojourned to Revelstone to
discover what had befallen the Lords. From his tales of
that time, the Haruchai learned that here Trell
Atiaran-mate performed a Ritual of Desecration which
nearly brought about the ruin of Lord's Keep. The
outcome of his mad grief is written in this wounded
stone.
"Here you may behold clearly the reasons which have
led us to assume the Mastery
of the Land. You stand upon the consequences of
mortal power and passion. Here you may see explained
the purposes of the Masters, if your eyes are open, and
your heart is not inured to pain.
"It is here," Handir concluded inflexibly, "that you
will be accused. Here you will make answer as you are
able. And here the judgment of the Masters will be
rendered."
"Accused'?" Liand objected in surprise. "Do you
jest?"
"It is as I have said, Ringthane," snarled Mahrtiir.
"The sleepless ones have grown too haughty to be
endured. Do they welcome us? Then let us depart, that
they may no longer be constrained. We have no need
of their judgment."
But Linden gestured both of them to silence. Behind
her chosen detachment, she seethed with indignation;
yet she exposed none of it. She had expected something
like this. Stave had promised her a reckoning. And in
some sense she was ready for it.
"All right," she told Handir quietly. "Accuse away.
I'm eager to hear what you think I should have done
differently." Then she let a flick of anger into her
voice. "But make no mistake about it. I am going to
answer you. And when I'm done, you will by God
answer me.
She had earned that right.
The Voice of the Masters studied her for a moment.
Then he pronounced, "Let it be so."
At his word, most of his people left the bottom of the
pit to position themselves like sentinels or judges
around the lower slopes. Only Handir, Stave, and the
Humbled, with Anele among them, remained facing
Linden.
Firmly she turned her back on the Masters and
stepped aside to sit on a bulge of stone at the edge of
the bottom. Placing the Staff across her knees, she
beckoned for her companions to join her.
Reluctantly Mahrtiir and Liand sat on either side of
her, while the Cords placed themselves behind her.
"Linden," Liand whispered at once, "I mislike this.
The Masters do not relent. Permitting them to accuse
you, you grant them a credence which they do not
merit."
"The Stonedownor speaks truly," Mahrtiir put in
more loudly. "You are beyond these Bloodguard. Your
heed does them too much honor."
"And there is no fault in what you have done," added
Liand. "Why then should they be suffered to speak
against you?"
Linden did not glance at either of them. Nor did she
meet Handir's gaze. Instead she focused her attention
on Stave.
"Trust me," she answered softly. "This has to be
done." Anele's plight required itas did Jeremiah's.
"They may call themselves Masters, but they're still
Haruchai," men so moved by the grandeur of the Old
Lords that they had surrendered love and sleep and
death to their Vow of service. "They can be
persuaded."
Somehow High Lord Kevin had persuaded them
The Manethrall glared about him, but did not protest
further. After a squirming moment, Liand subsided as
well.
Linden went on watching Stave and waited for the
accusations to begin. Handir was the Voice of the
Masters; yet she did not expect him to recite her
crimes. Every question that mattered lay between her
and Stave. He had traveled with her, aided her; had
been badly injured in her name. And she had shamed
him- She was intuitively sure that he would be her
accuser.
"In courtesy," Handir announced, "we will speak as
do the folk of the Land, though it is not natural to us.
The Chosen should hear all that is said of her."
With a grave nod, Stave stepped into the center of the
contorted floor. Ignoring Linden's gaze, he addressed
the Close as though his entire race were in attendance.
"She is Linden Avery the Chosen," he said stolidly,
"the companion of ur-Lord Thomas Covenant the
Unbeliever during the time of the Sunbane. So much is
certain. I have ascertained it beyond doubt. She
accompanied the Unbeliever on his quest for the One
Tree. She shared his return to Revelstone, putting an
end to the evils of the Clave and the Banefire. At his
side in Kiril Threndor, she formed the new Staff of
Law-the Staff which was then lost, and has now been
regained.
"From him she received the white gold ring which is at
once the Land's greatest boon and its most fatal bane."
At least, Linden thought as she listened to him, he
plays fair. He was willing to acknowledge who she was
and what she had done, if Handir and the Humbled
were not.
"When I had learned that she is indeed the Chosen,"
Stave continued without pausing, "I sought to do her
honor by explaining the convictions and purposes of
the Masters. I described the harm which attends
inevitably upon any use of Earthpower. And I offered
the support and aid of the Masters in any condign
quest which might oppose Corruption.
"She has responded with unfailing defiance. At every
turn, she has acted against my counsel. At every turn,
she has striven to deny Anele from us, though his
madness only accentuates the peril of his
Earthpower."
Feigning calm, Linden helped herself to some of
Liand's bread and cheese; ate as if her own heart and
Jeremiah's life were not at stake. Yet inwardly she
squirmed with frustration and yearning, and she could
barely swallow.
"I grant," Stave declared, "that her defiance has
yielded unforeseen boons. Because she fled from me,
we now know that the Ranyhyn and their Ramen yet
live. That is a benison which all who serve the Land
must acknowledge.
"And the Staff of Law has been reclaimed. That is of
inestimable worth. In itself, it is not a use of power. Yet
it is a bastion of Law, and its nature sustains the life of
the
Land. Unused, its presence among us may hamper the
proliferation of Falls, or diminish the pall of Kevin's
Dirt."
The Master was still trying to be fair.
But then he resumed his accusations. "By the same
defiance, however, she has admitted new perils. I have
spoken of Esmer, who professes to be the son of Cail
and the Dancers of the Sea, and whose dark puissance
concerns and dismays even the ur-viles, despite their
ancient loathing for the Land. And there are the
Demondim, of which I will say more.
"However, the greatest accusation is this. She has a
son who has been captured by Corruption. Her desire
to redeem him is both proper and seemly. Yet her
actions in his name have threatened the destruction of
the Arch of Time."
Mahrtiir muttered imprecations under his breath.
Softly Liand asked Linden, "Why do you suffer this?
What manner of men advocate the sacrifice of
threatened children?"
Placing her hand on the young man's arm, she gripped
him hard to quiet him. She already knew what Stave
would say.
The Master ignored her companions. "For the sake of
her son," he proclaimed, "she entered a Fall of
Esmer's summoning, daring the past to seek for the
Staff of Law. There she forged an alliance between the
Waynhim and the ur-viles, which have ever opposed
each other. And when we were beset by the
Demondim, as well as by the power of the Illearth
Stone, she herself caused the Fall which has delivered
both them and us to Revelstone. Doing so, she has
inflicted yet another dire bane upon the Land.
"I am Haruchai and fear nothing. Yet I fear to inquire
what else she may attempt in her son's name."
Mahrtiir breathed an obscenity, but did not interrupt.
"Now she has entered Revelstone holding both white
gold and the Staff of Law." At last, Stave turned to
gaze at Linden. His face held no expression, but
shadows which she could not interpret haunted his
single eye like ghosts. "I do not doubt that she is a
woman of honor, and that all of her purposes are
benign. Indeed, she has spoken eloquently of her love
for the Land. Nevertheless she is mortal, and her
powers surpass the strictures of mortal flesh and
desire. If ever she knows a moment of despair-which is
surely Corruption's intent-she will wreak such ruin as
the Earth has never known."
Then he looked away. "Thus she reenacts the error
which destroyed the fidelity of the Bloodguard. As did
Korik, Sill, and Doar, she commands powers which
exceed her. Yet none will question that those
Bloodguard were men of honor.
"The first principle of our Mastery," he told his
people, "is that the uses of such power must ultimately
serve Corruption. Is it not therefore certain that
Linden Avery the Chosen will in the end become a
servant of the Despiser?
"She will perhaps reply that she is warded from doom
by the purity of her purpose.
Her desire, she may assert, is merely to redeem her son
rather than to defeat Corruption. Yet her own deeds
gainsay her. Twice she has imposed healing upon me
against my desires. Thus she has demonstrated that
she cares nothing for the honor of those who do not
share her purpose.
"Beyond question she has already begun to tread the
path of Corruption's service."
There he stopped, leaving Linden daunted in spite of
herself. His recitation eroded her detachment; her
certainty. In his own way, he had told the truth about
her. if she accepted his assumptions, she could not
contest his conclusion. It was as ineluctable as loss.
Good cannot be accomplished by evil means.
After Esmer had almost beaten Stave to death, she
believed that the Haruchai had given her permission to
treat him. But she could not say the same for her
actions the previous day. In the forehall, she had
reached out with the Staff reflexively; had responded
to Stave's wounds simply because he was hurt.
Again you have shamed me- There she had violated
her own convictions as well as his. If power could
corrupt, then it had already begun to corrupt her.
Now she clutched Mahrtiir's forearm as well, holding
both men to keep them from speaking-and to assure
herself that she was not alone. She could not answer
Stave's charges directly. She had already sacrificed her
right to do so. And the Masters would not yield to
simple contradiction. She had to go further.
She had to show them that their fundamental
assumptions were false. That good could come of deeds
and risks and even purposes which appeared evil.
"Are you done?" she asked grimly. "Is it my turn
yet?"
She was angry at herself; but she knew that anger
would not serve her. She could not undo her mistakes.
And her ire was merely a defense against pain and
fear. Deliberately she put such things aside. Surgeries
were full of bleeding which could not be staunched,
wounds which resisted repair, deaths which defied
refusal. Anger and grief only prevented the surgeon
from accomplishing as much as possible.
When Handir replied with a severe nod, she said more
gently, "I'm not going to contradict anything Stave
told you. It's the truth. Instead I'll give you a better
answer. In fact, I'll give you three.
"But just so you'll know-" she added to Stave. "I'm
sorry I didn't ask your permission yesterday. You're
right. I should have done that."
And accepted his answer.
Her accuser faced her regret without a word. He had
already gone too far to be turned aside.
Sighing, she released her grasp on her friends,
wrapped her hands around the Staff, and rose to her
feet. As Stave withdrew from the center of the floor,
she took a few steps
over the twisted stone, then stopped to plant the heel of
the Staff between her feet and hold up her head.
Briefly she considered revealing the advice that she
had received from Covenant in her dreams. No doubt
Stave had already told his kinsmen what Anele had
said when he had spoken for her dead love. And
Covenant's name might carry weight with the Masters.
But she did not know what to make of his messages-if
in fact they were messages at all, and not the by-
products of her dreaming dreads.
Whatever happened, she needed to withstand the
Masters on her own terms.
Still facing Stave as if he were the only one of his
people who mattered, she said quietly, "We're wasting
time here. The Demondim will be back," she was sure
of that. "We should be deciding what to do, not
blaming each other.
"But you're the Masters of the Land. You've done me
the courtesy of explaining what you think I've done
wrong," when they could have simply left her to the
horde, or taken Covenant's ring and the Staff from
her. "You deserve the same from me."
Only then did she shift her attention to Handir.
Obliquely her words were still addressed to Stave. But
she had already contradicted and defied him enough.
He might hear her more clearly now if she spoke to the
Voice of the Masters.
"Tell me something," she asked abruptly. "How do
they do it?"
Handir lifted an eyebrow. "Chosen?"
"The Demondim. How do they use the Illearth Stone?
You can sense them." And the discernment of the
Haruchai exceeded hers. "Explain it to me.
"At first I thought they must have found some lost
fragment of the original Stone. But now I don't think
so. They have too much power-and too many of them
have it at once. And we all know that the Illearth Stone
was destroyed.
"So how do they do it?"
The older Haruchai paused for a moment, apparently
considering his response. He may have thought that
the capabilities of the Demondim were irrelevant to
Stave's accusations. Still he decided to answer.
"The Demondim wield a Fall. Among them they both
command and sustain it, causing it to serve them. This
Fall spans time to a distant age when the Illearth Stone
remained intact. Similarly it extends deep among the
roots of Gravin Threndor, to the place where the Stone
lay hidden until Drool Rockworm discovered it.
Therefore the might which the Demondim employ is
great. It arises unhindered from its source."
Linden frowned. He might be right- Like the Lost
Deep, where the Demondim had bred their
descendants, the Illearth Stone had once been buried
far beneath Mount Thunder. The Vile-spawn could
conceivably have known the Stone's location centuries
or millennia before Drool Rockworm uncovered it.
But she needed confirmation. "Are you sure? If they
can do that, why don't they just
shatter Time and be done with it? Instead they're
toying with us. Why do they even bother?"
"If Corruption were able to destroy the Arch," replied
Handir, "he would have done so ere now. Some Law or
power constrains him, and his servants with him.
"Observe that the Fall violates the Law of Time, but
that the use of the Illearth Stone which the Fall enables
does not. The Demondim have not altered the past. In
some fashion, the Law of Time intervenes to preserve
itself.
"This we do not comprehend. We know only that the
Falls are perilous and terrible. We cannot say why
their evil does not suffice to undo the Arch. The Lords
spoke of restrictions inherent to the nature of power.
They named `the necessity of freedom,' among others.
However, such lore is beyond our ken. It is only plain
to us that the Demondim act as they do because their
power extends no further."
"All right." Linden nodded, accepting the idea. "For
some reason, they have limits." Obviously something
prevented Lord Foul from using Joan's ring directly.
"That might help us. But it's not enough. Here's the
important question.
"Can you beat them? All of you together?" Every
living Haruchai? "Can you prevent them from turning
this whole place into a pile of rubble?"
Handir faced her as if nothing she might say could
disturb him. "We cannot."
Trying to pierce his impassivity, Linden made a show
of surprise. "And you don't think you need me? You
don't think you need power? You admit you can't save
Revelstone, much less the Land, but you don't want
help?"
From the edge of the floor, Liand nodded vigorous
approval. Mahrtiir watched her with encouragement
gleaming in his eyes.
But the Voice of the Masters was not swayed. "Kevin
Landwaster heeded such concerns," he countered.
"We do not. Our worth and our purposes are
measured by the forces arrayed against us, but we are
not judged by victory or defeat, life or death. Rather
we value ourselves according to our honor and
steadfastness. That the Demondim are able to wield
the might of the Illearth Stone does not require us to
abandon who we are.
"Knowing this, we do not choose to emulate the
Landwaster's despair."
Linden stifled a groan. In Handir's response, she
recognized the passion of the Haruchai for absolute
judgments. Even Cail, who had served the Search for
the One Tree with an almost limitless valor and
fidelity: even he had not questioned the final
denunciation of the Haruchai. His fault was not that he
had succumbed to the merewives, but that he had lived
on after his seduction. She did not doubt that the
Masters would rather die as a race than retract their
chosen form of service.
But she was not prepared to simply strive and fail and
die. Not while her son needed her. Not while the Land
was in such peril.
And she knew that Handir had not told her the whole
truth. He had said nothing
of his people's fear that they would be taken by the
passion which had overcome Cail as well as Korik, Sill,
and Doar. Liand was right about the Masters. They
feared to grieve.
Tightening her grasp on the Staff, she frowned at
Handir. "I think I understand," she said slowly.
"You're mortal. You can't afford to judge yourselves
by standards that transcend your limitations. That was
Korik's mistake. It may even have been Kevin's."
There her detachment faltered. Anger began to throb
in her voice as she continued.
"But that doesn't explain why you don't want help. It
doesn't explain your so-called Mastery of the Land.
"It's one thing to give your best and then accept what
happens. You do that. You've always done it. But this
time you've gone further. This time you think you have
the right to prevent other people from doing the same.
Isn't that true? As far as I can tell, you didn't become
Masters because you want to save the Land. You did it
because you want to stop anyone else from saving it.
"Am I wrong?" she demanded. "Then say so. Tell me
why."
The Voice of the Masters remained relaxed in front of
her; apparently untouched. But his nostrils flared
slightly with each breath, and a small muscle clenched
and released at the corner of his jaw.
Linden thought that she heard indignation in his tone
as he retorted, "That is unjust. We prevent nothing
except the use of power."
"No, you don't," she insisted. "You've gone much
further than that. Stave accused me of healing him
without giving him a choice. You've prevented anyone
from having the choice to use power. In effect, you've
decided in advance that there hasn't ever been and
won't ever be anyone in the Land wise enough to use
Earthpower well. You've prejudged every person and
every decision and every action since the day you
became Masters. And that just doesn't make sense.
"Look at it this way," she said, hurrying so that she
would not be interrupted. "You know what's going to
happen when the Demondim come back. You'll fight
them with everything you've got, and you'll be
slaughtered. But you don't know what would happen if
you trusted me to help you. Or if you helped me find
my son."
Then Linden shook her head. "But that's not a good
example. I'm not ignorant. And so far you haven't
done anything to get in my way. Here's a better one.
"You can't possibly know what the result would be if
Liand had the training and resources to be a
Graveler." She did not glance at the Stonedownor,
although she felt his surprise. "Sunder did. You know
that. And you also know that Covenant would not have
lived long enough to save your people from the Clave if
Sunder hadn't helped him. So how can you believe that
Liand doesn't have the right to know as much as
Sunder did?"
Abruptly she stopped, nearly panting with the force of
her assertion.
Handir raised an eyebrow; but he did not pause to
consult with the other Masters.
"Linden Avery," he replied flatly, "we act as we do
because the alternative is plainly impossible. We
cannot intervene in decisions and actions after their
effects have become known. The opportunity to
prevent them has passed. And we are too few. All the
Haruchai who have ever lived would not suffice to
ward from evil every person who might seek to make
use of Earthpower.
"Yet we have determined that we cannot stand aside.
The evil is too great. And Brinn has become the
Guardian of the One Tree. Are we less than he? Must
we do less than serve as the guardians of the Land?
No. You cannot ask it of us. But if we will serve, how
otherwise may our task be accomplished? We must
prevent the use of Earthpower. No other way is
possible for us."
Linden did not hesitate. She could not. And in her
chambers she had prepared herself for this moment.
Handir had given her the opening she needed.
Breathing hard, she glared at him. "Then look at it
this way," she continued, carried on a rising wave of
anger. "There stand the Humbled." With the back of
her hand, she slapped a gesture toward the Masters
holding Anele. "Galt and-"
Momentarily she stumbled. She did not know their
names.
"The Humbled," Handir informed her, "are Galt,
Clyme, and Branl."
"Fine," she returned. "The Humbled. They're
supposed to be living reminders that you can't master
evils like the Illearth Stone and Ravers and
Corruption. Which sounds good, I have to admit. But
how did they get the job? How did you choose them?"
Again she did not grant their Voice a chance to
interrupt her. "Christ, Handir, they fought for the
privilege." Her words were flames. They leaped and
burned as she uttered them. "They think it's an honor
to be maimed like that. They beat the shit out of each
other for the status of reminding you that you need
humility."
Responding to her passion, the Staff began to burn in
her grasp. Its fire reached higher with every utterance.
If she did not restrain it, the rush of power would light
the unharmed ceiling of the Close.
She would be able to see what the love of the Giants
had crafted there.
For a moment, she let her fire rise. Then, deliberately,
she swallowed her ire until the Staff was quenched.
The force of her emotions served only to remind her
that she was not helpless. It would not increase her
credibility.
Quietly now, she said, "I think you've missed the point
of what happened on the Isle of the One Tree. I don't
know how Cail told the story, but I was there. I saw it.
"Brinn didn't win that fight. He lost. In fact, he
surrendered," just as Covenant had surrendered to
Lord Foul in Kiril Threndor. "He let the Guardian kill
him. And he became the new Guardian by taking the
old one with him when he died.
"I'm sorry, Handir," she finished as calmly as she
could. "If you and the Humbled and the rest of the
Masters are trying to follow Brinn's example, you're
going about it
the wrong way. You haven't just denied everyone else
the right to make their own choices. You've missed the
point."
Handir held up his hand. In spite of his apparent
relaxation, however, his gesture had the certainty of a
blow. With one small motion, he dominated the Close
as if the rectitude and indignation of all his people
were invested in him. Even the light seemed to
concentrate on him, focused by his underlying
authority.
The Cords and Liand stared at him in chagrin.
Mahrtiir swore under his breath.
"It is enough," the Voice of the Masters pronounced
like a knell. "We have heard you. Now you will desist.
Because you are the Chosen, we have suffered the
challenge of your words. But you fault us to no
purpose.
"Perhaps you have described us justly. Perhaps not. It
alters nothing. Your recriminations do not pertain to
the hazard of your actions in the Land. The truth
remains that you have dared the destruction of all the
Earth for the sake of your son. And now you do not
assure us that the danger is past. Rather you seek to
disguise your actions by diminishing ours.
"Yet this answer I will grant to you." The muscles at
the corners of his jaw knotted and released to the beat
of his words. "It is true that we have placed ourselves
foremost in the Land's defense. For this we might
claim to merit respect rather than accusation. But if
we fall, the Land will remain, and all who wish to
strive against Corruption may do so in any fashion
which seems good to them."
"No, Handir," Linden retorted at once. "Now you're
just being dishonest." She had come too far to hold
back. "You've done everything you can to erase that
possibility. You've kept the people of the Land from
knowing anything about Earthpower, or their own
history, or the evils they'll have to face. I tell you, it's
wrong. You've made too many decisions for other
people, and you never had the right.
"But I'm not done," she added immediately. "I've
given you two answers." Inadequacy. Arrogance. "I've
pointed out that you aren't in a position to judge me. If
you refuse to listen, that's your problem, not mine.
"I've got one more answer for you."
Ignorance.
She was desperate now; on the verge of a risk as great
in its own way as daring to enter a caesure. Good
cannot be accomplished by evil means. But the
Masters had denied every other argument. And she
had believed almost from the first that she would not
be able to rescue her son without Anele's help.
As if she knew that she would not be refused, she
looked at the son of Sunder and Hollian among the
Humbled and said softly, "Anele, come here."
The old man had given no sign that he had heard or
understood what was being said around him. He
seemed unaware of anything except the fact that the
Masters had claimed him. Without Linden's
protection, he had no defense.
Yet when she spoke his name, he jerked up his head,
and his moonstone eyes caught a flare of fire from the
lamps. Threshing his arms as if to break free of the
Humbled, although they made no effort to restrain
him, he crossed the tormented stone and flung himself
down in front of her. His thin arms embraced her
knees and the Staff in supplication.
"Protect," he panted. "Oh, protect Anele. They are
heartless. They will devour his soul. They devour all
things, leaving only pain."
Liand started forward to attend to the old man; but
Linden waved him back. She needed Anele where he
was. His contact with the Staff might calm him so that
he could heed her.
To Handir, she said, "You don't really care about
keeping him prisoner. You just want to control him so
he can't do any harm. You've explained that. I think I
understand it. But you haven't thought it through."
Her heart ached in her chest as she considered what
she meant to do. She had found no gap in the Masters'
defenses. Her intentions might taint Anele
irredeemably in their eyes. They might go to any
extreme to keep him. But she had no recourse that she
could see-or accept. Apart from Anele, she had no
arguments left except power. And she would not fight
the Haruchai. The Land needed them. Too many of
them had already spent their lives for her sake.
The old man was her last hope. Therefore she chose to
place him in danger.
With one hand, she clenched her courage to the
smooth shaft of the Staff. The other she lowered so
that it rested on Anele's dismayed head, hoping that
the touch of her palm would reassure him.
Doing so, she also reassured herself.
Although the Masters had conceded nothing, she met
Handir's flat gaze and began.
"Stave must have told you that Anele reads stone. He's
like an Unfettered One. He's taught himself to hear
slowly enough to understand what the rocks are
saying.
"Sure, that means he can tell people about the Land's
history." If he stood on the right kind of stone. "You
don't want that. But it also means he can tell us what
the Earth is saying about its own pain.
"He's already identified threats we wouldn't know
about otherwise. Skurj. A broken Durance.
Kastenessen. That alone makes him too useful to be
locked away. "But he has more to offer. A lot more. If
he's free."
Urgently she wished that she could interpret Handir's
expression. But she had no idea whether he heard her
with sympathy or scorn. She had to trust that the
Masters saw her more clearly than she did them; that
what was in her heart would show through the
inadequacy of her ability to express it.
"If I'm right," she said carefully, "the-I'm not sure
what to call it-the `content' of his madness is controlled
by the surface under his feet. When he stands on
broken
stones, he hears them. When he's on native gutrock, he
becomes sane. But when the stone has been worked in
some way"-by Giants in Revelstone, or by Liand's
people in Mithil Stonedown-"then he's like this. He
seems to understand what's happening, but he can't
always respond appropriately.
"But there's more. Stave wasn't with us all the time.
He didn't see everything that happened."
Impulsively she glanced at Stave. She had withheld
some of her experience with Anele's madness from
him; had distrusted him to that extent. Her concern
that he might take umbrage impelled her to turn away
from Handir for a moment.
The look on his face gave her nothing. The puckering
of his new scars seemed to imply that he would not
forgive her.
It was possible that he did not understand the concept.
Perhaps none of the Haruchai did.
Aching, she faced the older Master again.
"When Anele," oh, Anele, "stands on something other
than stone-bare dirt, or different kinds of grass-he can
be possessed. Sometimes Lord Foul reaches into him
and takes over. The Despiser can see through his eyes,
talk through his mouth.
"And there are other beings-" She would not mention
Covenant: not here, out of desperation. "You've seen
one of them, when you were fighting the Demondim. I
don't know who it was, but it wasn't Anele. When his
feet touched bare dirt, someone else claimed him."
A spirit or power whose hatred was magma.
"You probably think that's a good reason to keep him
locked up." Linden shook her head to dismiss Handir's
objections. "An even better reason than preventing
him from saying too much about the Land's history.
But you're wrong.
"Don't you see?" In spite of her shame, she spoke as
though she had no qualms about sacrificing the old
man to her own needs. "If we understand who can
possess him, and when, we'll have a tremendous
advantage. By hearing what our enemies say, even
when they're trying to mislead us, we might be able to
figure out who they are and what they're doing.
"But there's more. Think about how we could mislead
them. My God, if we were clever enough, we could
make them believe anything we wanted."
Abruptly Liand put in, "Linden, this troubles me." His
aura had become an ache of worry. "Would not Anele
suffer in such use?"
Manethrall Mahrtiir nodded sharply. Bhapa and
Pahni watched Linden with uncertainty on their faces.
It seemed that none of her companions had expected
her to sound so callous.
Vexed by the interruption, and privately sickened by
her own actions, Linden sighed, "Oh, hell, we're all
suffering. Do you actually think it would be any worse
than
l
what he's going through right now? And he wants to
be of use. You heard him," in the cave of the
Waynhim. "He doesn't think he's earned the right to
be healed."
Then she faced Handir again. "I don't see how you can
call yourselves the Masters of the Land and still
believe that he should be kept prisoner."
Briefly Handir gazed around at the other Masters. He
seemed to be communing with them in spite of his
promise that their deliberations would be conducted
aloud. Before Linden could object, however, he turned
back to her.
"We are not persuaded," he announced. "You must
demonstrate his worth."
She flinched, although Handir's demand did not
surprise her. She had expected it; feared it. Indeed, she
had proposed something similar herself. Now,
however, her heart rebelled at the idea of asking Anele
to perform like a trained animal. She still wanted to
postpone the moment when she would be forced to
misuse him.
And she could not be certain of his response.
But she had created a situation in which she had no
choice but to surrender or forge ahead. When she had
risked damaging the Arch of Time to seek for the
Staff, she had in some sense misused everyone with
her. And the Masters had made it plain that she could
not answer them alone, any more than she could
rescue Jeremiah or defeat Lord Foul by herself. She
had to ask for help, and pray that she would get it.
With a silent groan, she stooped to the old man and
urged him to stand.
He seemed reluctant to release her knees. Or perhaps
it was the Staff to which he clung, consoling himself
with its apt warmth. After a moment, however, he
loosened his grasp and rose.
When he had gained his feet, she put her arm around
him and hugged him close. "Anele," she murmured
gently, "I need you. I said I would protect you, and I
want to keep my promise. But I can't do this without
you.
"We're standing on stone," surrounded by stone. "It's
your friend." His only friend. "It's always been your
friend.
"I need you to tell us what it says."
He was no longer the Anele who had averred that he
was content to see the Staff of Law in her hands. That
avatar of his dilemma had been left many centuries in
the past. In this time-Linden's proper time, if not his
own-he had been hounded to destitution by loneliness
and loss as much as by the Masters. Linden could not
be sure that he understood her. She had no reason to
assume that he would comply.
By small shifts and stages, however, as if he had to
remember separately how to move each muscle, he
withdrew from her clasp. Reluctantly he trailed his
fingertips along the Staff. Then he let it go.
"It is sooth." His voice was a low croak which seemed
to hurt his throat. "Anele has no friend but stone. It
does not comfort him. It is not kindly. It is strict, and
full of hurt. But it only speaks. It does not judge. It
does not demand. It does not punish."
The old man shook his head sadly. "For him there is
no other solace."
Hampered by the burden of too much time, he took a
few steps toward the center of the floor. His head
began to flinch from side to side. Apparently trying to
stop it, he covered his face with his hands. Still his
head jerked back and forth as if he feared what he
might see in spite of his blindness.
A moan slipped between his lips and fell away, leaving
the Close hushed and expectant; waiting.
Linden held her breath. Hardly aware of herself, she
retreated to sit once more between Liand and
Mahrtiir. Her attention was fixed on Anele. At that
moment, nothing else mattered.
Barely audible through his hands, Anele breathed,
"Ah, stone. Bone of the world. Forlorn and
unregarded. It weeps eternally, yet none heed its
sorrow. None hear its endless plaint.
"This stone has known love which the Land has
forgotten, the adoration of Giants and Lords. It has
suffered rage. It has been afflicted with Desecration.
"In grief and understanding, it speaks to me of
fathers."
Unself-consciously Linden rested the Staff between her
knees and reached out to her companions. But now
simply gripping Liand's forearm, and Mahrtiir's, did
not suffice. She needed to entwine her fingers with
theirs and grip them until her knuckles ached.
That tight human clench, the Stonedownor on one side
and the Manethrall on the other, seemed to make it
possible for her to bear Anele's words.
Muffled by his hands, his voice was a thin thread of
sound in the huge chamber, as inadequate as the lamps
to fill the Close, and as necessary.
"First," he murmured, "always first, it speaks of the
father who wrought this harm. He was Trell Atiaran-
mate, Gravelingas of Mithil Stonedown. The stone
remembers him compassionately, for he was of the
rhadhamaerl, beloved of all the Earth's rock, and the
plight of his daughter, his only child, had surpassed his
heart's capacity for healing. Rent by her violation and
pain, he here betrayed his love and his lore and
himself, and when his hand was stayed the weight of
his despair bore him down. What remains is the spilth
and contortion of his anguish "
Anele's head jerked, and jerked again. "That sorrow
would exceed any less enduring flesh. But this stone
has more."
His voice seemed to limp between his hands, wincing to
the rhythm of words which only he could interpret.
"It speaks of the Elohim Kastenessen in his Durance,
father to the malice of the merewives. His daughters
are the Dancers of the Sea, and they swim the
fathomless deeps in hunger and cruelty, insatiable for
retribution, while their own scion is torment. Yet they
know glee as well as hunger, for their father has
broken his imprison-
ment, and at his behest the skurj which he once
unwillingly restrained have unleashed their cunning
and frenzy against the Land.
"And in the same breath, it speaks of the Haruchai
Cail, who succumbed to the merewives and fathered
their scion. He also is remembered with compassion,
for only death has spared him from desolation at his
son's torment. Indeed, there is keening here on his
behalf, keening and great sadness. He had been
repudiated by his kindred, and his heart could not
distinguish between its own yearning and the desire of
the merewives. Yet that desire was not love but
malice."
Slowly Anele sank to his knees, borne down by
knowledge. He kept his hands pressed over his eyes,
and his head beat from side to side as if his ears were
full of threnodies. His voice had become a long-
breathed gasping, scarcely strong enough to sustain
the sentences which the stone required of him.
"And it speaks as well of Thomas Covenant, of the
white gold wielder, whose daughter rent the law of
death, and whose son is abroad in the Land, seeking
such havoc that the bones of mountains tremble to
contemplate it. For the wielder also this stone grieves,
knowing him betrayed.
"It speaks of Sunder son of Nassic, Graveler of Mithil
Stonedown, who abandoned all that he had known for
the sake of the wielder and the Land. Him the stone
names because the son whom he brought back from
death in Andelain lost the Staff of Law. In spite of this
father's valor and love, his legacy is sorrow.
"Also it names the Despiser, who is the father of woe.
Yet of him the stone says little. His darkness is beyond
its ken."
Then the old man moaned again, a sound like distant
winds complaining past jagged granite teeth. He began
to pant heavily as if he were suffocating on words.
"And last, at the farthest extent of hearing, it speaks of
Berek the Lord-Fatherer. It has not known him, for
Revelstone had not been fashioned in that age, and he
did not enter here. Yet he and his line prized and
honored deep rock passionately, and until the
Landwaster's Desecration all the Land's stone knew
the savor of joy."
Abruptly he dropped his hands to the floor, crouching
over them as if he could no longer support the weight
of what he heard.
"More," he panted, "Anele cannot read. A seer might
spend his life in study and not hear all that this stone
would tell."
Yet he was not done. While Linden and her
companions still watched him and waited, he flung up
his head and turned to face her, unerring in spite of his
blindness.
"You," he gasped between ragged gulps of air. "You
who promised. Anele begsOh, he begs of you.
"Tell him that he has not failed your need."
Before she knew that she had moved, Linden knelt at
his side, her friends and the Staff and all of the
Masters forgotten. Wrapping her arms around him,
she
hugged him to her heart. "Oh, Anele." Tears which
she could not refuse streamed
down her cheeks. "Anele." His old body trembled in
her embrace. "Of course you
haven't failed me. Dear God, no. You've done more
than I could have asked. You
always have.
"You poor man." Releasing one hand, she brushed
straggling hair out of his face.
Then tenderly she kissed his forehead. "Sometimes you
astonish me."
He had told her, I am unworthy of such astonishment.
But he was wrong.
If he understood her-if he remembered any of his own
past-he did not show it.
Gradually, however, his respiration eased, and the
tension receded from his muscles.
By degrees, he grew quiet in her arms.
Liand had joined her while she concentrated on the old
man. When Anele was still
at last, the Stonedownor helped her raise him to his
feet. Carefully they supported him
to the edge of the floor and seated him between Pahni
and Bhapa.
Only then did Linden retrieve the Staff and return her
attention to the Masters; to
Handir and Stave, who had not spoken since she had
asked for Anele's help.
Shamed by what the old man had endured at her
bidding, she no longer made any
distinction between the two Haruchai.
"I hope you're satisfied," she said thinly. "I've had
enough of this. Don't trust us, or
do. Just make up your minds. I'm done trying to
convince you."
She seemed to see nothing in Handir's mien except
denial. Yet it was not the Voice
of the Masters who replied to her.
It was Stave.
Although he stood at Handir's side as if the two of
them were united against her, he
gave her a deliberate bow. "You are Linden Avery the
Chosen," he began without in
flection, "and we have heard you. You have said much,
to your cost, and to that of your
companions, and to our own. Now I will speak again.
"I have named your perilous deeds. And I have said
that I fear what you may do in
your son's name. I do fear it. For such reasons the
Masters withhold their trust. Yet one
other matter remains unaddressed."
Linden's hopes seemed to gutter until she heard Stave
say, "My people did not par
ticipate in the horserite which you and I have shared. I
have not yet spoken of the will
of the Ranyhyn."
What-?
Suddenly she sat up straighter. Her eyes burned as she
met his flat gaze. Tightening
her grip on the Staff, she waited for Stave to go on.
He had told his people everything else
"You have observed," he remarked almost casually,
"that my stance toward you was
altered by the horserite. You inquired of the cause. I
declined to answer. I replied only
that I awaited the proper time and place to speak.
Both now are upon me."
Still he spoke to Linden as though his words were
meant for her alone. She could only stare at him in
mute surprise as he continued.
"When the Ranyhyn Hynyn and Hyn had borne us to
the vale and the eldritch tarn of their ancient
gathering place, I avowed that I would not take part in
their mindblending rituals."
She remembered his refusal vividly. I am Haruchai.
We have no need of horserites. "You sought there to
humble me," he said, "as you have done here as well.
Yet your words persuaded me when I did not wish to
be swayed.
"You spoke of the time which followed
Kelenbhrabanal's failure to redeem the Ranyhyn from
Fangthane's depredations. And you reminded me that
the great horses were restored to the Land, not by
Lords or Bloodguard, or by any great power."
Facing Linden, but clearly speaking for the benefit of
the other Masters, Stave explained the point which she
had made.
"Rather their return to the Plains of Ra was made
possible by the Ramen. You spoke of `the plain, selfless
devotion of ordinary men and women: And you
averred that the Ranyhyn endeavored to make this
known as a warning, so that such men as we are would
not conceive that we must redeem the Land through
any form of Mastery. To do so, you suggested, would
be to repeat the folly of High Lord Elena, and perhaps
of Kevin Landwaster and Kelenbhrabanal as well."
Stave paused as if to consult his memories; to assure
himself that he had described her argument fairly.
Then he lifted his shoulders in a slight shrug and went
on.
"Also you observed that both the form and the
substance of the horserite offered a warning which I
must not ignore. Therefore I consented to the will of
the Ranyhyn. With you I partook of their dark waters,
and was transformed."
Linden nodded, although he had not asked for her
confirmation. Intent on him, she listened, unable to
turn away.
At last, he lifted his face to the few Masters among the
broad empty spaces of the Close. "The perils which the
Ranyhyn have foreseen for the Chosen are strait and
arduous. They fear her as I do. They fear that the
burdens of this age may be too great for her to bear.
"To me the great horses offered no such caution.
"Masters, kinsmen-" Again Stave paused for thought;
and again he shrugged. Without raising his voice, he
announced distinctly, "When I had drunk of the
mindblending waters, I learned that the Ranyhyn
laughed at me.''
Linden stared, unable to conceal her amazement. At
her side, Liand's aura showed that he, too, had
expected to hear something very different. But
Mahrtiir gave a snort of vindication, which his Cords
echoed more discreetly.
Yet the Masters around the Close listened as if they
felt nothing: no surprise or indignation; no
uncertainty. The features of Handir and the Humbled
were as unreactive as engravings.
Stolidly Stave explained, "Their laughter did not
resemble Corruption's, scornful and demeaning. The
Giants laugh so, and it gives no hurt. Rather it was
kindly and-" He hesitated for a moment, murmuring,
"Such speech is awkward." But then he pronounced
clearly, "Their laughter was both kindly and
affectionate. The Ranyhyn conceived no ill of me. They
merely wished to express that they found amusement
in my belief that our service is sufficient to the Land's
need.
"Our Mastery amuses them. In their sight, we are too
small to comprehend or gauge all of the paths which
may lead to triumph or Desecration. Though they are
beings of Earthpower and mystery, they do not claim
for themselves either the discernment or the courage to
determine the Land's defense."
For a few heartbeats, Stave fell silent. He may have felt
that his people needed time to absorb what he had
said. Then he resumed.
"At the same time, laughing, they desired me to grasp
that they have declared themselves utterly to the
service of the Chosen. They will bear her wheresoever
she wills, until the end of days. Her paths may enter
Falls and the hazardous depths of time. Each and all of
her choices may conduce to ruin. Yet will they bear
her gladly. Indeed, they deem themselves fortunate to
serve her.
"It is sooth," he pronounced as if he were passing
sentence, "that she may damn the Land. Yet the
Ranyhyn believe that she will not. In their eyes, the
Land's life and hope require them to believe that she
will not."
Around him, tension gathered. It seemed to well up
from the twists and flaws of the floor, drift down from
the obscured ceiling, until it became so thick that the
light of the lamps flickered and dimmed.
Stave's kinsmen were taking umbrage.
Now his tone appeared to quicken, although his words
maintained their uninflected tread.
"Masters, you will decide as you must, according to
your beliefs. Doubtless it is difficult for the people who
gave birth to the Guardian of the One Tree to consider
themselves small. But the Manethrall has spoken aptly,
though he knew it not.
"I have shared the horserite of the Ranyhyn, and have
learned that we are not greater than they. Nor are we
greater than the Ramen, who are content with service,
and who do not attempt to alter that which lies beyond
them."
Mahrtiir muttered gruff approval. Surprise and
wonder shone from the faces of his Cords.
Stave's voice took on a palpable sharpness. "Nor are
we greater than this Stonedownor, the least of the
Chosen's companions, for he seeks only to join his
cause with hers, and to partake in beauties and powers
which we have withheld from him."
As he spoke, the assembled Masters watched him with
darkness in their eyes, de-
spite the many lamps; and the muscles at the corners
of Handir's jaw knotted and released with the
heaviness of a deathwatch. Slowly the Humbled closed
their hands into fists.
But Liand seemed not to notice the tightening among
the Haruchai. Instead he simply stared at Stave,
astonished to hear a Master say such things. And
Linden, who felt the rise of tension, ignored it to listen
and hold her breath, waiting for Stave's conclusion.
Finally he turned again so that he stood facing the
Voice of the Masters across the distorted stone. The
lamplight emphasized the unwonted intensity in his
gaze as he announced, "Because I have heard the
laughter of the great horses, I will cast my lot with the
Chosen. I cannot do less than the Ranyhyn. Whatever
may befall her, I will endeavor to prove that I am
equal to my fears."
Linden hugged the Staff of Law to her chest with both
arms, blinking furiously to hold back her tears. She
wept too easily and did not mean to do so now. At last-
she breathed to herself. God, at last!
Stave of the Haruchai had brought her to Revelstone
for this: so that he could declare himself in front of his
people.
He had finally become her friend.
12.


EinJ_-If
7 She could not imagine what the Masters would do
now. But their accumulated judgment had a tangible
force which seemed to bear down upon her from the
sides of the Close, as heavy as Revelstone's
unillumined rock. It felt like animosity.
She spared a glance and a quick nod for Liand's open
relief and Mahrtiir's begrudged approval. Then she
rose to her feet, holding the Staff before her like a talis
man. At once, Liand and the Manethrall came to stand
beside her.
Escorted by her friends, she approached Stave and
bowed deeply, hoping that he
would recognize the scale of her gratitude. However,
the bow which he returned to her
resembled a farewell more than an acknowledgment.
His manner conveyed the im
pression that for her sake he had turned his back on
more things than she could
understand.
She wanted to ask him how the Masters would respond
to his profession of faith;
but her throat was full of other words which
demanded utterance.
Meeting his single gaze, she said with her whole heart,
"Thank you. I owe you more
than I can ever repay.
"You've already done so much for me. You've been
true-" Her voice broke mo
mentarily. "I can't even begin to describe how glad I
am-"
In this place, she could not go further. Handir had not
yet pronounced judgment
upon her.
Dispassionately, as if he had no interest in her
gratitude, Stave replied, "You are Lin
den Avery the Chosen. The Ranyhyn have taught me
that I cannot refuse your service." "Still," she
countered, smiling sadly, "I hope that someday you'll
be sure you did the
right thing."
Because she was determined not to weep, she bowed
again, as deeply as before.
Then she turned toward the Voice of the Masters.
There she froze. The merciless clarity in his eyes
chilled her: it seemed to settle like
frost on her bones. She had to swallow a mouthful of
dread before she could speak. Awkwardly she asked,
"So what's it going to be? Are we on the same side?"
His gaze
covered her with rime. She had to cling to the Staff's
warmth to keep her voice from
shaking. "Will you let me have Anele? Will you give
me your help?"
"How will the sleepless ones refuse?" put in Mahrtiir.
His tone held a sting of as
perity. "Stave has confirmed the will of the Ranyhyn.
Naught else signifies."
But Handir did not choose to heed the Manethrall.
Instead he replied, "Stand aside,
Linden Avery. Another matter requires precedence. I
will reply when it has been ad
dressed."
Commanded by his certainty, she stepped back,
drawing Mahrtiir and Liand
with her.
For a moment, Handir appeared to commune with all
of the Masters mutely, mind
to mind. When he was satisfied with their response, he
nodded sternly; and the three
Humbled moved closer.
Instinctively Linden lifted the Staff higher, thinking
that the Humbled meant to re
claim Anele. But they did not. When they reached
Handir's side, Galt moved forward
to confront Stave.
They faced each other in silence, as poised as
predators, and as relaxed. They might
have been living statues, motionless except for the
subtle flex of their respiration; sculptures positioned to
form a tableau of arcane and ambiguous intent. Then,
without warning, Galt lashed a kick at Stave's chest.
Stave made no move to defend himself. Only a hard
flat exhalation indicated that he was prepared for the
blow. He stood like stone to receive it.
The kick drove him backward a step; two. Linden
could see its impact jolt through him, forceful as a
sledgehammer. But then he regained his poise. Only a
brief accentuation of his breathing betrayed that he
had been struck.
"Heaven and Earth!" Liand cried. Whipping his
garrote from his hair, Mahrtiir launched himself at
Galt's back with the suddenness of a panther. At the
same time, Bhapa and Pahni leaped to their feet and
rushed forward.
"No!" Linden gasped after the Manethrall. "Stop!"
An arm's length from Galt, Mahrtiir halted; wheeled
to face her.
She seemed to feel the power of Galt's kick in her own
chest. She could hardly choke out words.
"This is between them." She understood Galt's attack.
Long ago she had watched the Haruchai pass
judgment on Cail. She had feared that their violence
would kill him. "Stave has to do this. You know how
he feels about help."
Unwitting flames licked along the surface of the Staff.
Grimly she quenched them.
Mahrtiir hesitated. His desire for battle burned like
the fires which lit the Close. But he heard Linden-and
respected her judgment. Growling, "Sleepless ones,"
as though the words were an obscenity, he returned to
her side. With a brusque wave of his hand, he
motioned the Cords back to their seats.
"Linden," protested Liand under his breath, "they are
Masters. They may be able to slay him."
Through her teeth, she repeated, "This is between
them." She could not forget how Esmer had torn into
Stave, delivering millennia of rage despite the
Haruchai's best efforts to defend himself. "He's
already been shamed enough."
Galt did not renew his attack. Instead he withdrew;
and Clyme came forward to take his place.
Again the two Masters faced each other in stillness.
They may have been sparring mentally, probing each
other's mind for openings or weakness. When Clyme
exploded into motion, he did not kick or punch. Rather
he leaped high into the air, driving down at Stave's
shoulder with his elbow and all of his weight.
The Master was trying to cripple Stave
Once again, Stave made no effort to defend himself.
This time, however, he shifted slightly at the last
instant so that Clyme's elbow struck muscle rather
than bone. The blow almost drove him to his knees;
but it broke nothing.
Like Galt, Clyme withdrew, and the last of the
Humbled advanced to challenge Stave.
Apparently Branl had decided to try for surprise by
attacking immediately. Before Stave could set aside the
pain in his shoulder, Branl hooked a vicious punch to
the left side of his face: the blind side. Branl's knuckles
dug deep into the puckered flesh of Stave's scar,
pounding against the damaged tissue and bone
beneath it.
Stave's head rocked as if he had been clubbed: he
barely kept his balance. But he did not repay the blow.
The flat stare of his right eye suggested an acceptance
more profound than resignation.
Branl may or may not have been satisfied. Linden
could not tell. Sympathetic hurts ached in her chest,
her shoulder, her cheek. But the Humbled stepped
aside without hesitation.
Moving slowly, the Voice of the Masters stepped in
front of Stave.
Linden's restraint broke. "Oh, come on!" she snapped,
although she knew that Stave did not desire her
intervention, and would not approve. "How much
longer are you going to do this? There's just one of
him, for God's sake! How much of your
selfrighteousness do you think he can stand?"
Neither Handir nor Stave answered her. But the Voice
of the Masters may have been tired of her objections.
Instead of probing mentally, he addressed Stave aloud.
"You have set yourself against the will of the Masters,
when that will has not yet been decided. Indeed, you
have endeavored to impose your will upon us, shaming
us with your words and your example. But the Masters
are not shamed. We will not be shamed.
"We will consider your words and your example when
we are ready to determine our path. But we will no
longer heed you. Henceforth you are severed from the
Masters, as from all of the Haruchai. When the rite of
our disapproval has been completed, no hand will be
raised against you. If you speak as I do now, you will
be answered. But you are excluded from the true
speech of the Haruchai, and if you call out you will not
be heard. Nor will you be permitted to return to your
home among the mountains. There will be no place for
you. You have declared your allegiance. Now you must
abide
its outcome.
"This is my word. I will not alter it."
So suddenly that Linden hardly saw him move, Handir
attacked.
Like the Humbled, he struck only once. Unlike them,
however, he used just the palm of his hand. And his
blow seemed easy and fluid, hardly more than a light
thrust. Yet Stave burst backward as though he had
been kicked by a Ranyhyn. He tumbled
through the air; slammed helplessly to the rough stone.
For a heartbeat or two, he lay motionless.
Before Linden could start toward him, however, he
raised his head. When he had braced his hands on the
floor, he climbed slowly to his feet. Bright blood pulsed
from the corner of his mouth as he resumed his stance.
She could not imagine where he found the strength to
remain standing.
The Voice of the Masters held Stave's gaze for a long
moment. Then he turned to Linden. "Be content," he
told her stolidly. "The rite has been completed."
Blood splashed the front of Stave's tunic, staining the
ochre fabric with darkness. He did not deign to wipe it
away.
"You're wrong," Linden panted. "It's not over." She
needed all of her resolve to withhold fire from the
Staff. "It'll never be over. Someday you're going to
understand that you've made a terrible mistake."
Handir replied with a slight shrug. When she fell
silent, still panting, he said in the same tone, "There is
much here which the Masters must consider. We will
not choose our response in haste. Nevertheless our
debate must now be curtailed.
"Certain of our scouts seek to return. They run before
the host of the Demondim, calling to forewarn us as
they ride. And they are not alone. They have retrieved
two"he paused and glanced away as if consulting the
air, then met Linden's gaze again"two strangers from
the path of the Vile-spawn." Complex intentions
seemed to undermine the flatness of his gaze. "They
hasten toward us, pursued by the Demondim.
"We are summoned to greet the approach of our
scouts, and of the strangers with them, as well as to
answer an imminent siege."
Linden scowled bitterly; but before she could pose a
question, Handir announced, "This much I may grant,
however. The madman Anele we release to you. Let it
be upon your head if harm should befall the Land
through any deed or inaction of his.
"All else which lies between us must remain
unresolved until events permit consideration and
decision."
Expressionless and impenetrable, the Voice of the
Masters strode past Linden toward the uneven slope
leading up to the entrance of the Close. As one, the
Humbled and the other Haruchai followed after him,
leaving only Stave behind to guide Linden and her
companions.
She would have sworn at his back if she could have
thought of a curse harsh enough to breach his
dispassion.
As soon as Handir and the other Masters had passed,
she hurried toward Stave. "Are you all right?" His
bleeding filled her with shame. She felt an almost
unbearable yearning to cleanse it from him; to heal
him. "Do you want my help?"
He shook his head. "Hurts of the flesh have no
significance. The severance from my people is a deeper
wound, beyond your succor." His eye held her stricken
gaze without flinching. "In their place, I would have
done as they have."
"But, Stave-" She tried to protest, but her dismay
surpassed her.
Swallowing blood, he continued, "We must witness the
approach of the Demondim and these strangers." A lift
of his undamaged shoulder seemed to indicate the
silence in his mind. His voice held an added stiffness
like a hint of denied bereavement. "If we do not, we
will be ignorant of what transpires."
Still Linden wanted to weep for him; rail at the
Masters; demand their acquiescence with fire. But
there had been something in Handir's tone when he
had mentioned strangers- Although she could not read
him, she had felt a change in his demeanor; a slippage
behind his impassivity.
He had recognized the newcomers
She remained motionless for a moment while her mind
wheeled, grasping at possibilities which she could not
define. Then she sighed. "You're right. Let's go."
In spite of his injuries, the Haruchai turned at once to
lead the way.
When she looked toward her friends, Liand nodded in
spite of his chagrin. Glowering, Mahrtiir beckoned for
his Cords to join him; and together Pahni and Bhapa
brought Anele, encouraging him gently.
As she began the ascent to the entryway, Linden's
sense of loss grew. She felt that she was treading across
Trell's pain; that her boot heels wounded the twisted
stone. When she reached the entrance, her mouth had
gone dry; and the air beyond the chamber smelled of
smoke and ashes, as if something more essential than
lamp oil and torches were being consumed.
Now she wished that she had asked Liand to bring
water as well as bread and cheese from her quarters.
She had gained Stave's support and freed Anele. The
Staff in her hands reassured her. But the price-
Revelstone was threatened by Demondim and the
Illearth Stone because she had dared the past. The ur-
viles and Waynhim had been decimated in her name,
and many Haruchai had died. Her defiance had
alienated the Masters. And because he had declared
himself, Stave had suffered a hurt far more profound
than the beating he had received from Esmer. She
wanted water to wash down the taste of what she had
accomplished.
Nevertheless she trudged onward, following her guide
into the unmapped complications of Revelstone.
At first, she and her companions walked the
unfamiliar passages in silence. This part of the Keep
had not been prepared for guests: there were no
lamps, and the torches were far apart, leaving only a
faint tang of smoke in the air. But Stave knew the way
and did not hesitate.
However, Liand emitted a growing disquiet, and his
need to speak soon became palpable. Clearing his
throat, he began awkwardly, "Stave-" Then he
admitted, "I know not how to address you. I have
considered you a Master, but now that title seems"-he
faltered briefly-"false.'
I am Stave," the Haruchai replied. "I need no other
name."
"Very well Liand tried again. "Stave. I wish to say-"
For a moment longer, he struggled. Then he took on
the dignity which Linden had first seen in him during
their flight from Mithil Stonedown. In a firmer voice,
he announced, "I regret that I have thought ill of you.
Yes, and spoken ill as well. Your courage shames me."
Stave may have shrugged. "We are all shamed, you no
more than I"-he glanced at Linden-"and neither of us
more than the Chosen, who should not have been
subjected to the disapproval of the Masters."
He waited until he had led his companions through the
intersection of several corridors. Then he assured the
Stonedownor, "Yet you need have no fear of me. I
have claimed a place at the side of the Chosen, and will
not withdraw from it."
"I do not doubt you," Mahrtiir put in gruffly. "You
have won my esteem as well, Stave of the Haruchai.
The Ramen will never again err by demeaning you."
Stave nodded, but made no other reply.
I have claimed- Again Linden fought back tears. She
feared that she would never be done with weeping. She
had only been in the Land for a few days, and already
she needed so much forgiveness
Even Anele had refused to let her heal him.
They walked on; and Linden's thirst increased; and
the passages of Revelstone seemed to have no end.
Eventually, however, they reached a broad stair which
appeared to curve up indefinitely into the dark rock of
the Keep. And at the foot of the stair they found a
stout figure waiting for them.
The nearest torch was some distance away. In spite of
the gloom, however, Linden soon recognized the
Mahdoubt. The comfortable complacency of the older
woman's aura was unmistakable.
Still shadows seemed to trail about the Mahdoubt like
wisps of fog. But then she faced Linden with her
startling eyes; and at once every scrap and tatter of
obscurity dissipated, evaporated by her oblique
warmth. Now she became more vivid to Linden's
health-sense than any of her companions; more
distinct than the stone of the halls. The Mahdoubt's
presence shone in the dimness, lambent with
abundance and implications. She appeared to
command a personal dimension which was at once
more ordinary and more numinous than any other
place in the Keep.
Apparently Mahrtiir had not encountered the
Mahdoubt before. He started forward to place himself
between Linden and the older woman. But Liand
caught his arm and explained quickly, "She is the
Mahdoubt. She serves Revelstone. And she has cared
for us kindly."
Mahrtiir peered through the dimness. "She serves?"
He sounded surprised. "Yet she is-" He hesitated.
"There is that about her which-" Then he shook his
head. "Perhaps I am mistaken." To the Mahdoubt, he
added, "I crave your pardon. My concerns have misled
me."
Stave said nothing. However, he bowed to the older
woman as he had to Linden, ac
knowledging her worth in spite of his injuries.
The Mahdoubt ignored all of the men. "The lady is
thirsty," she huffed as if to re
prove some fault in Revelstone's hospitality-or in
Linden. "She neglects her own
needs. Is the Mahdoubt pleased? She is not. Oh,
assuredly. Yet it is her burden and her
gift to supply care where it is found lacking."
From within her miswoven robe she produced a flagon
of water which she thrust
unceremoniously at Linden.
As Linden accepted it, the Mahdoubt continued, "The
lady must not delay. Peril
awaits her. Peril and pain, most assuredly. Yet the
Mahdoubt will hinder her a moment.
A little moment."
The woman stepped closer. "Heed her, lady," she
urged, whispering. "The Masters
know not what they do." She appeared to believe that
Stave and the others could not
hear her. "Nor does the lady." She sighed
lugubriously. "Nor does the Mahdoubt, alas." Then
she breathed with an air of intensity, "This, however,
she knows assuredly. Be
cautious of love. It misleads. There is a glamour upon
it which binds the heart to de
struction."
Linden stared at her. "What do you mean? I don't
understand."
The Mahdoubt did not answer. Instead she turned and
walked away. As she moved,
she appeared to wrap herself in shadows so that she
slipped from sight almost at once. Be cautious of love?
"Strange-" Mahrtiir murmured, gazing after the
woman. "For a moment-a mo
ment only-I seemed to see another in her place. Yet the
seeming was brief. It mysti
fies me."
"Stave-?" Linden asked without knowing how to put
her question into words. "She is the Mahdoubt," he
replied stolidly. "She serves Revelstone. Naught else is
certain of her."
With one hand, he gestured toward the stair, urging
his companions to ascend. Linden eyed the heights. She
was too tired for this-and understood too little. But
the Mahdoubt had given her water, and when she
drank deeply she began to feel some
what stronger. Handing the flagon to Liand, she said
with a sigh, "All right. I'm ready.
This can't go on forever."
With her companions, she followed Stave up the stairs.
They seemed to ascend for a long time; but when the
Haruchai at last guided his
small company into a side passage, the way became
easier. And soon Linden saw more
light ahead: not the flickering of torches, or the yellow
glow of lamps, but the bright il
lumination of day.
Stave had brought them to a balcony in the prow of
the Keep, a walled projection
overlooking the courtyard above the inner gates. From
a gap in the ramparts, a narrow
bridge of wooden slats hung suspended between the
Keep and the watchtower, supported by ropes as thick
as hawsers. More ropes served as railings and
handholds on either side of the span.
Stave strode out onto the slats without hesitation. After
a moment, Linden followed, balancing herself with the
Staff, and trusting the ropes to keep her safe.
When she and her companions had crossed the span,
Stave led them past tall piles of firewood and clay tubs
of oil-the Keep's first defense against the Demondim-to
another walled projection like a coign several levels
above the open gates of the tower. From this vantage,
they could see a wide arc of Revelstone's environs:
north toward a region of newly planted fields, south
and west among the hills that buttressed the Keep's
jutting plateau, and east down the long gradual slope
of the bare plain where the previous day Linden and
her company had emerged from her caesure, pursued
by monsters.
Glancing down, she saw Handir and the Humbled on a
similar coign one level below her. Their attention was
fixed to the east. As soon as she looked in that
direction, she saw what held their eyes.
Some distance away, perhaps half a league, the horde
of the Demondim was plainly visible, advancing in an
undifferentiated tumult toward the Keep. Even from
so far away, the Vile-spawn seemed potent enough to
overwhelm the Keep. Their malice howled at Linden's
senses, and a clangor of opalescence stung the skin of
her cheeks. At intervals, rank emerald flashed into the
skies, staining her vision with images of violence; and
concussions followed after them, hard blows which
kicked up spouts and ripples of dust all around the
horde. Despite the distance, faint tremors reached the
watchtower. The stone seemed to shiver in reply,
spreading visceral dread along her nerves.
Briefly the effects of the Illearth Stone consumed
Linden's attention. But then Stave pointed out over the
plain; and she saw a small cluster of riders racing
ahead of the onslaught.
Four Masters mounted on horses galloped for their
lives. She could not guess how long or how far they had
fled: the frenzy of the horses suggested that they had
been ridden hard. But they had opened a gap between
themselves and the Demondim. If they did not fall or
falter, they would reach the watchtower ahead of their
pursuers; in time for Revelstone's defenders to close
the gates.
Peering fearfully across the distance, Linden counted
four horses, four Masters. But two of the mounts bore
other riders as well: the beasts were badly
overburdened. Although their terror goaded them,
they were falling behind their companions. And they
looked like they were about to founder. At erratic
intervals, they stumbled under the weight of their
riders.
When she saw them clearly, Linden's heart seemed to
fail her, and she sank to her
knees. The Staff clattered, forgotten, to the stone
beside her.
The Masters had not rescued strangers. She knew both
of them intimately.
One was Jeremiah; her son beyond question. As the
Master's mount pounded the
dirt, the boy waved his arms, urging the horse to run
faster, and shouted encourage
ment to the other riders.
Even from so far away, Linden could see that his eyes
were afire with excitement. The other stranger was
unmistakably Thomas Covenant.


Here ends 2Ae uner of th'e Earths Book One of "The
Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant." The story
continues in Book Two Fatalenant.

I
Acence: a Stonedownor, sister of Atiaran
Ahamkara: Hoerkin, "the Door" Ahanna: painter,
daughter of Hanna Aimil: daughter of Anest, wife of
Sunder
a-Jeroth of the Seven Hells: Lord of wickedness;
Clave-name for Lord Foul the
Despiser
ak-Haru: a supreme Haruchai honorific
Akkasri na-Mhoram-cro: a member of the Clave
aliantha: treasure-berries Alif, the Lady: a woman
Favored of the gaddhi amanibhavam: horse-healing
grass, dangerous to humans Amatin: a Lord, daughter
of Matin Amith: a woman of Crystal Stonedown
Amok: mysterious guide to ancient Lore Amorine:
First Haft, later Hiltmark Anchormaster: second in
command aboard a Giantship
Andelain, the Hills of Andelain, the Andelainian Hills:
a region of the Land which
embodies health and beauty
Andelainscion: a region in the Center Plains
Anele: a deranged old man; son of Sunder and Hollian
Anest: a woman of Mithil Stonedown, sister of Kalina
Annoy: a Courser
anundivian yajna: "lost" Ramen craft of bone-
sculpting
Appointed, the: an Elohim chosen to bear a particular
burden; Findail
Arch of Time, the: symbol of the existence and
structure of time; conditions which
make the existence of time possible
arghule/arghuleh: ferocious ice-beasts Asuraka: Staff-
Elder of the Loresraat
Atiaran Trell-mate: a Stonedownor, daughter of
Tiaran; mother of Lena
Aumbrie of the Clave, the: storeroom for former Lore
Auspice, the: throne of the gaddhi aussat Befylam:
child-form of the jheherrin
Bahgoon the Unbearable: character in a Giantish tale
Banas Nimoram: the Celebration of Spring
Bandsoil Bounds: region north of Soulsease River
Banefire, the: fire by which the Clave affects the
Sunbane
Bann: a Bloodguard, assigned to Lord Trevor
Bannor: a Bloodguard, assigned to Thomas Covenant
Baradakas: a Hirebrand of Soaring Woodhelven
Bareisle: an island off the coast of Elemesnedene
Benj, the Lady: a woman favored by the gaddhi
Berek Halfhand: Heartthew, Lord-Fatherer, first of
the Old Lords Bern: Haruchai lost to the Clave
Bhapa: a Cord of the Ramen, Sahah's half-brother;
companion of Linden Avery Bhrathair: a people met
by the wandering Giants, residents of Bhrathairealm
on the verge of the Great Desert
Bhrathairain: the town of the Bhrathair
Bhrathairain Harbor: the port of the Bhrathair
Bhrathairealm: the land of the Bhrathair
Birinair: a Hirebrand, Hearthrall of Lord's Keep
Bloodguard, the: Haruchai, a people living in the
Westron Mountains; the defenders of the Lords
bone-sculpting: ancient Ramen craft; marrowmeld
Borillar: a Hirebrand, Hearthrall of Lord's Keep
Bornin: a Haruchai, a Master of the Land
Brabha: a Ranyhyn, Korik's mount
Branl: a Haruchai, a Master of the Land; one of the
Humbled Brannil: man of Stonemight Woodhelven
Brinn: a leader of the Haruchai, protector of Thomas
Covenant; later Guardian of the One Tree
Brow Gnarlfist: a Giant; father of the First of the
Search
caamora: Giantish ordeal of grief by fire
Cable Seadreamer: a Giant, brother of Grimmand
Honninscrave; member of the
Search; possessed of the Earth-Sight
Caer-Caveral: Forestal of Andelain; formerly Hile
Troy Caerroil Wildwood: Forestal of Garroting Deep
caesure: a Fall; a rent in the fabric of time Cail: one of
the Haruchai, protector of Linden Avery Caitiffin: a
captain of the armed forces of Bhrathairealm
Callindrill Faer-mate: a Lord
Callowwail, the river: stream arising from
Elemesnedene Cavewights: evil creatures existing
under Mount Thunder Ceer: one of the Haruchai
Celebration of Spring, the: the Dance of the Wraiths of
Andelain on the dark of the
moon in the middle of spring
Centerpith Barrens: a region in the Center Plains
Cerrin: a Bloodguard, assigned to Lord Shetra Chant:
one of the Elohim Char: a Cord of the Ramen, Sahah's
brother Chatelaine, the: courtiers of the gaddhi
Chosen, the: title given to Linden Avery Circle of
Elders: Stonedown leaders clachan, the: demesne of
the Elohim Clang: a Courser
Clangor: a Courser Clash: a Courser
Clave, the: group which wields the Sunbane and rules
the Land clingor: adhesive leather
Close, the: the Council chamber of Lord's Keep
Clyme: a Haruchai, a Master of the Land; one of the
Humbled Coercri: The Grieve; former home of the
Giants in Seareach
Colossus of the Fall, the: ancient stone figure guarding
the Upper Land Consecear Redoin: a region north of
the Soulsease River Cord: Ramen second rank
Cording: Ramen ceremony of becoming a Cord
Corimini: Eldest of the Loresraat
Corruption: Bloodguard/Haruchai name for Lord
Foul Council of Lords, the: protectors of the Land
Courser: a beast made by the Clave using the Sunbane
Creator, the: maker of the Earth Croft: Graveler of
Crystal Stonedown Crowl: a Bloodguard
croyel, the: mysterious creatures which grant power
through bargains, living off their hosts
Crystal Stonedown: home of Hollian Currier: a
Ramen rank

Damelon Giantfriend: son of Berek Halfhand, second
High Lord of the Old Lords
Dance of the Wraiths, the: Celebration of Spring
Dancers of the Sea, the: merewives; suspected to be the
offspring of the Elohim Kasten
essen and his mortal lover
Daphine: one of the Elohim
Dawngreeter: highest sail on the foremast of a
Giantship
Dead, the: specters of those who have died Defiles
Course, the: river in the Lower Land
Demondim, the: creatures created by Viles; creators of
ur-viles and Waynhim
Demondim-spawn: another name for ur-viles and
Waynhim; Vain
Desolation, the: era of ruin in the Land, after the
Ritual of Desecration
Despiser, the: Lord Foul
Despite: evil; name given to the Despiser's nature and
effects
dharmakshetra: "to brave the enemy," a Waynhim
dhraga: a Waynhim
dhubha: a Waynhim dhurng: a Waynhim
diamondraught: Giantish liquor Din: a Courser
Doar: a Bloodguard
Dohn: a Manethrall of the Ramen
Dolewind, the: wind blowing to the Soulbiter
drhami: a Waynhim
Drinishok: Sword-Elder of the Loresraat
Drinny: a Ranyhyn, Lord Mhoram's mount; foal of
Hynaril
dromond: a Giantship
Drool Rockworm: a Cavewight; leader of the
Cavewights, finder of the Illearth Stone
dukkha: "victim"; a Waynhim
Dura Fairflank: a mustang, Covenant's mount
Durance: a cryptic barrier, apparently broken
durhisitar: a Waynhim
During Stonedown: village destroyed by the Grim;
home of Hamako
Duroc: one of the Seven Words Durris: a Haruchai

EarthBlood: concentrated fluid Earthpower; only
known to exist under Melenkurion
Skyweir; source of the Power of Command
Earthfriend: title first given to Berek Halfhand
Earthpower: natural power of all life; the source of all
power in the Land Earthroot: lake under Melenkurion
Skyweir Earth-Sight: Giantish power to perceive
distant dangers and needs eftmound: gathering-place
for the Elohim eh-Brand: one who can use wood to
read the Sunbane Elemesnedene: home of the Elohim
Elena: daughter of Lena and Thomas Covenant; later
High Lord Elohim, the: a mystic people encountered
by the wandering Giants Elohimfest: a gathering of the
Elohim Emacrimma's Maw: a region in the Center
Plains Enemy: Lord Foul's term of reference for the
Creator
Eoman: a unit of the Warward of Lord's Keep, twenty
warriors and a Warhaft Eoward: twenty Eoman plus a
Haft
Esmer: tormented son of Cail and the Dancers of the
Sea

fael Befylam: serpent-form of the jheherrin
Faer: mare of Lord Callindrill Fall: Haruchai name
for a caesure
Fangs: the Teeth of the Render; Ramen name for the
Demondim Fangthane the Render: Ramen name for
Lord Foul Far Woodhelven: a village of the Land
Father of Horses, the: Kelenbhrabanal, legendary sire
of the Ranyhyn Favored, the: courtesans of the gaddhi
Findail: one of the Elohim; the Appointed Fields of
Richloam: a region in the Center Plains Fire-Lions:
living fire-flow of Mount Thunder fire-stones:
graveling
First Betrayer: Clave-name for Berek Halfhand First
Circinate: first level of the Sandhold First Haft: third
in command of the Warward First Mark: the
Bloodguard commander
First of the Search, the: leader of the Giants who
follow the Earth-Sight
First Ward of Kevin's Lore: primary cache of
knowledge left by High Lord Kevin
Fleshharrower: a Giant-Raver, Jehannum, moksha
Foamkite: tyrscull belonging to Honninscrave and
Seadreamer Fole: a Haruchai
Foodfendhall: eating-hall and galley aboard a
Giantship Forbidding: a wall of power
Forestal: a protector of the remnants of the One Forest
Fostil: a man of Mithil Stonedown; father of Liand
Foul's Creche: the Despiser's home, Ridjeck Thome
Furl Falls: waterfall at Revelstone
Furl's Fire: warning fire at Revelstone

gaddhi, the: sovereign of Bhrathairealm
Gallows Howe: a place of execution in Garroting Deep
Galt: a Haruchai, a Master of the Land; one of the
Humbled Garroting Deep: a forest of the Land Garth:
Warmark of the Warward of Lord's Keep Gay: a
Winhome of the Ramen
ghohritsar: a Waynhim
ghramin: a Waynhim
Giantclave: Giantish conference
Giantfriend: title given first to Damelon, later to
Thomas Covenant
Giants: the Unhomed, ancient friends of the Lords; a
seafaring people of the Earth Giantship: a stone sailing
vessel made by Giants; dromond Giantway: path made
by Giants
Giant Woods: a forest of the Land
Gibbon: the na-Mhoram; leader of the Clave
Gilden: a maple-like tree with golden leaves
Gildenlode: a power-wood formed from the Gilden
trees Glimmermere: a lake on the plateau above
Revelstone Gorak Krembal: Hotash Slay, a defense
around Foul's Creche Gossamer Glowlimn: a Giant,
the First of the Search Grace: a Cord of the Ramen
Graveler: one who uses stone to wield the Sunbane
graveling: fire-stones, made to glow by stone-lore
Gravelingas: a master of the stone-lore Gravin
Threndor: Mount Thunder
Great Desert, the: a region of the Earth; home of the
Bhrathair and the Sandgorgons Great Swamp, the:
Lifeswallower, a region of the Land Grey Desert, the:
a region south of the Land
Grey River, the: a river of the Land
Grey Slayer: plains name for Lord Foul
Greywightswath: a region north of the Soulsease River
Greshas Slant: a region in the Center Plains griffin:
lion-like beast with wings
Grim, the: (also the na-Mhoram's Grim) a destructive
storm sent as an attack by the
Clave
Grimmand Honninscrave: a Giant; Master of
Starfare's Gem; brother of Cable Sea
dreamer
Grimmerdhore: a forest of the Land
Guard, the: hustin; soldiers serving the gaddhi
Guardian of the One Tree, the: mystical figure
warding the approach to the One Tree;
ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol

Haft: commander of an Eoward
Halfhand: title given to Thomas Covenant and to
Berek
Hall of Gifts, the: large chamber in Revelstone devoted
to the artworks of the Land Hamako: sole survivor of
the destruction of During Stonedown Hami: a Ramen
Manethrall
Handir: a Haruchai leader, the Voice of the Masters
Harbor Captain: chief official of the port of
Bhrathairealm Harn: one of the Haruchai, protector of
Hollian Haruchai: a warrior people from the Westron
Mountains Healer: a physician
Hearthrall of Lord's Keep: a steward responsible for
light, warmth, and hospitality Heart of Thunder: cave
of power in Mount Thunder; Kiril Threndor
Hearthcoal: a Giant; cook of Starfare's Gem; wife of
Seasauce Heartthew: a title given to Berek Halfhand
heartwood chamber: meeting-place of a Woodhelven,
within a tree Heer: leader of a Woodhelven
Heft Galewrath: a Giant; Storesmaster of Starfare's
Gem Herem: a Raver, Kinslaughterer, turiya
Hergrom: one of the Haruchai High Lord: leader of
the Council of Lords High Lord's Furl: banner of the
High Lord High Wood: lomillialor, offspring of the
One Tree
Hile Troy: a man formerly from Thomas Covenant's
world; Warmark of High Lord
Elena's Warward
Hiltmark: second in command of the Warward
i
1
Hirebrand: a master of wood-lore
Hoerkin: a Warhaft
Hollian: daughter of Amith, eh-Brand of Crystal
Stonedown Home: original homeland of the Giants
Horizonscan: lookout atop the midmast of a Giantship
Horse, the: human soldiery of the gaddhi
horserite: a gathering of Ranyhyn in which they drink
mind-blending waters in order to share visions,
prophecies, and purpose
Hotash Slay: flow of lava protecting Foul's Creche;
Gorak Krembal Hower: a Bloodguard, assigned to
Lord Loerya
Hrama: a Ranyhyn stallion, mount of Anele
Humbled, the: three Haruchai maimed to resemble
Thomas Covenant; a reminder to the Masters of their
limitations
Hurn: a Cord of the Ramen
hurtloam: a healing mud
Huryn: a Ranyhyn, Terrel's mount
hustaihustin: partly human soldiers bred by Kasreyn
to be the gaddhi's Guard Hyn: a Ranyhyn mare;
mount of Linden Avery
Hynaril: a Ranyhyn, mount of Tamarantha and then
Mhoram Hynyn: a Ranyhyn stallion; mount of Stave
Hyrim: a Lord, son of Hoole

Illearth Stone, the: powerful bane long buried under
Mount Thunder Blender: title given to Thomas
Covenant
Imoiran Tomal-mate: a Stonedownor
Infelice: reigning leader of the Elohim
Irin: a warrior of the Third Eoman of the Warward
Isle of the One Tree, the: location of the One Tree

Jain: a Manethrall of the Ramen
lass: a Haruchai; a Master of the Land
Jehannum: a Raver, Fleshharrower, moksha
jheherrin: soft ones, misshapen by-products of Foul's
making
Jous: a man of Mithil Stonedown; son of Prassan;
father of Nassic; inheritor of an Unfettered One's
mission to remember the Halfhand

Kalina: wife of Nassic; mother of Sunder; woman of
Mithil Stonedown
Kam: a Manethrall of the Ramen
Kasreyn of the Gyre: a thaumaturge; the gaddhi's
Kemper (advisor) in Bhrathairealm
Kastenessen: one of the Elohim; former Appointed
Kelenbhrabanal: Father of Horses in Ranyhyn legends
Keeper: a Ramen rank; one of those unsuited to the
rigors of being a Cord or a
Manethrall
Keep of the na-Mhoram, the: Revelstone Kemper, the:
chief advisor of the gaddhi; Kasreyn Kemper's Pitch:
highest level of the Sandhold
Kenaustin Ardenol: a figure of Haruchai legend,
paragon and measure of all Haruchai
virtues
Kevin Landwaster: son of Loric Vilesilencer, last High
Lord of the Old Lords
Kevin's Dirt: smog-like pall covering the Upper Land;
invisible from below, it blocks
health-sense
Kevin's Lore: knowledge of power left hidden by
Kevin in the Seven Wards Kevin's Watch: mountain
lookout near Mithil Stonedown Khabaal: one of the
Seven Words
Kinslaughterer: a Giant-Raver, Herem, turiya
Kiril Threndor: chamber of power deep under Mount
Thunder; Heart of Thunder Koral: a Bloodguard;
assigned to Lord Amatin Korik: a Bloodguard
kresh: savage giant yellow wolves
krill, the: knife of power forged by High Lord Loric,
awakened to power by Thomas
Covenant
Kurash Plenethor: region of the Land formally named
Stricken Stone, now called
Trothgard
Kurash Qwellinir: the Shattered Hills, region of the
Lower Land protecting Foul's
Creche

Lake Pelluce: a lake in Andelainscion
Lal: a Cord of the Ramen
Landsdrop: great cliff separating the Upper and
Lower Lands
Land, the: generally, area found on the map; a focal
region of the Earth where Earth
power is uniquely accessible
Landsverge Stonedown: a village of the Land
Landwaster: title given to High Lord Kevin Law, the:
the natural order
Law of Death, the: the natural order which separates
the living from the dead Law of Life, the: the natural
order which separates the dead from the living Lena: a
Stonedownor, daughter of Atiaran; mother of Elena
Lifeswallower: the Giant Swamp
lianar: wood of power used by an eh-Brand
Liand: a man of Mithil Stonedown, son of Fostil;
companion of Linden Avery lillianrill: wood-lore;
masters of wood-lore Lithe: a Manethrall of the
Ramen
Llaura: a Heer of Soaring Woodhelven Loerya
Trevor-mate: a Lord
lomillialor: High Wood; a wood of power
Lord: one who has mastered both the Sword and the
Staff aspects of Kevin's Lore Lord-Fatherer: title
given to Berek Halfhand Lord Foul: the enemy of the
Land; the Despiser "Lord Mhoram's Victory": a
painting by Ahanna Lord of Wickedness: a-Jeroth
Lords, the: the primary protectors of the Land Lord's-
fire: staff-fire used by the Lords Lord's Keep:
Revelstone
loremaster: a leader of ur-viles
Loresraat: Trothgard school at Revelwood where
Kevin's Lore is studied Lorewarden: a teacher in the
Loresraat loreworks: Demondim power laboratory
Loric Vilesilencer: a High Lord; son of Damelon
Giantfriend lor-liarill: Gildenlode
Lost, the: Giantish name for the Unhomed
Lost Deep, the: loreworks; breeding pit/laboratory
under Mount Thunder where De
mondim, Waynhim, and ur-viles were created
Lower Land, the: region of the Land east of
Landsdrop lucubrium: laboratory of a thaumaturge
lurker of the Sarangrave, the: monster inhabiting the
Great Swamp

Mahdoubt, the: a strange old woman; a servant of
Revelstone Mahrtiir: a Ramen Manethrall; companion
of Linden Avery maidan: open land around
Elemesnedene Maker, the: jheherrin name for Lord
Foul Maker-place: jheherrin name for Foul's Creche
Malliner: Woodhelvennin Heer, son of Veinnin Mane:
Ramen reference to a Ranyhyn
Maneing: Ramen ceremony of becoming a Manethrall
Manethrall: highest Ramen rank
Manhome: main dwelling place of the Ramen Marid: a
man of Mithil Stonedown; Sunbane victim
Marny: a Ranyhyn, Tuvor's mount
marrowmeld: bone-sculpting; anundivian yajna
master-rukh: iron triangle at Revelstone which feeds
and reads other rukhs Master, the: Clave-name for
Lord Foul
Masters of the Land, the: Haruchai who have claimed
responsibility for protecting the
Land from corruption
Mehryl: a Ranyhyn, Hile Troy's mount
Melenkurion abatha: phrase of invocation or power;
two of the Seven Words Melenkurion Skyweir: a cleft
peak in the Westron Mountains Memla na-Mhoram-
in: a Rider of the Clave merewives: the Dancers of the
Sea
metheglin: a beverage; mead
Mhoram: a Lord; later high Lord; son of Variol Mill:
one of the Seven Words Minas: one of the Seven
Words
mirkfruit: papaya-like fruit with narcoleptic pulp
Mistweave: a Giant
Mithil River: a river of the Land
Mithil's Plunge, the: waterfall at the head of the Mithil
valley Mithil Stonedown: a village in the South Plains
moksha: a Raver, Jehannum, Fleshharrower
Morin: First Mark of the Bloodguard; commander in
original Haruchai army Morinmoss: a forest of the
Land
Morninglight: one of the Elohim
Morril: a Bloodguard, assigned to Lord Callindrill
Mount Thunder: a peak at the center of Landsdrop
Murrin Odona-mate: a Stonedownor Myrha: a
Ranyhyn, Elena's mount

Naharahn: a Ranyhyn mare; mount of Pahni
na-Mhoram, the: leader of the Clave na-Mhoram-cro:
lowest rank of the Clave
na-Mhoram-in: highest rank of the Clave below the
na-Mhoram na-Mhoram-wist: middle rank of the
Clave
Nassic: father of Sunder; son of Jous; inheritor of an
Unfettered One's mission to re
member the Halfhand
Nelbrin: son of Sunder; "heart's child"
Nicor, the: great sea-monster; said to be offspring of
the Worm of the World's End Nom: a Sandgorgon
North Plains, the: a region of the Land Northron
Climbs, the: a region of the Land

Oath of Peace, the: oath by the people of the Land
against needless violence Odona Murrin-mate: a
Stonedownor
Offin: a former na-Mhoram
Old Lords: Lords prior to the Ritual of Desecration
Omournil: Woodhelvennin Heer, daughter of Mournil
One Forest, the: ancient forest covering most of the
Land
One Tree, the: mystic tree from which the Staff of Law
was made orcrest: a stone of power; Sunstone; used by
Gravelers Osondrea: a Lord, later high Lord;
daughter of Sondrea

Padrias: Woodhelvennin Heer; son of Mill
Pahni: a Cord of the Ramen, cousin of Sahah;
companion of Linden Avery
Peak of the Fire-Lions: Mount Thunder; Gravin
Threndor
Pietten: Woodhelvennin child damaged by Lord Foul's
minions; son of Soranal pitchbrew: a beverage
combining diamondraught and vitrim, conceived by
Pitchwife Pitchwife: a Giant; member of the Search;
husband of the First of the Search Porib: a
Bloodguard
Power of Command, the: Seventh Ward of Kevin's
Lore
Pren: a Bloodguard
Prothall: High Lord, son of Dwillian
Prover of Life: title given to Thomas Covenant
Puhl: a Cord of the Ramen
Pure One, the: redemptive figure of jheherrin legend

Quaan: Warhaft of the Third Eoman of the Warward;
later Hiltmark, then Warmark Quest for the Staff of
Law: quest to recover the Staff of Law from Drool
Rockworm Questsimoon, the: the Roveheartswind; a
steady, favorable wind, perhaps seasonal Quirrel: a
Stonedownor, companion of Triock

Ramen: people who serve the Ranyhyn
Rant Absolain: the gaddhi
Ranyhyn: the great horses of the Plains of Ra Ravers:
Lord Foul's three ancient servants
Raw, the: fiord into the demesne of the Elohim
Rawedge Rim, the: mountains around Elemesnedene
Reader: a member of the Clave who tends and uses the
master-rukh
Rede, the: knowledge of history and survival
promulgated by the Clave
Revelstone: Lord's Keep, mountain city formed by
Giants Revelwood: seat of the Loresraat, tree city
grown by Lords rhadhamaerl: stone-lore; masters of
stone-lore rhee: a thick mush, a Ramen food Rhohm: a
Ranyhn stallion, mount of Liand rhysh: a community
of Waynhim; "stead"
rhyshyshim: a gathering of rhysh; a place in which
such gathering occurs Riddenstretch: a region north of
the Soulsease River Rider: a member of the Clave
Ridjeck Thome: Foul's Creche; the Despiser's home
rillinlure: healing wood dust
Ringthane: Ramen name for Thomas Covenant, then
Linden Avery ring-wielder: Elohim term of reference
for Thomas Covenant Rire Grist: a Caitiffin of the
gaddhi's Horse Rites of Unfettering: the ceremony of
becoming Unfettered
Ritual of Desecration: act of despair by which High
Lord Kevin destroyed the Old
Lords and ruined most of the Land
Riversward: a region north of the Soulsease River
Rockbrother, Rocksister: terms of affection between
men and Giants rocklight: light emitted by glowing
stone roge Befylam: Cavewight-form of the jheherrin
Roveheartswind, the: the Questsimoon Rue: a
Manethrall, formerly named Gay Ruel: a Bloodguard,
assigned to Hile Troy
rukh: iron talisman by which a Rider wields the power
of the Sunbane Runnik: a Bloodguard
Rustah: a Cord of the Ramen

sacred enclosure: Vespers-hall at Revelstone
Sahah: a Cord of the Ramen
Saltheart Foamfollower: a Giant; friend of Thomas
Covenant Saltroamrest: bunk hold for the crew in a
Giantship Salttooth: jutting rock in the harbor of
Giants' Home samadhi: a Raver, Sheol, Satansfist
Sandgorgons: monsters of the Great Desert of
Bhrathairealm
Sandgorgons Doom: imprisoning storm created by
Kasreyn to trap the Sandgorgons Sandhold, the: the
gaddhi's castle in Bhrathairealm Sandwall, the: the
great wall defending Bhrathairain
Santonin na-Mhoram-in: a Rider of the Clave
Sarangrave Flat: a region of the Lower Land; the
Great Swamp Satansfist: a Giant-Raver, Sheol,
samadhi Satansheart: Giantish name for Lord Foul
Search, the: quest of the Giants for the wound in the
Earth; later the quest for the Isle
of the One Tree
Seareach: region of the Land occupied by the
Unhorned Seasauce: a Giant; cook of Starfare's Gem;
husband of Hearthcoal Seatheme: dead wife of
Sevinhand
Second Circinate: second level of the Sandhold
Second Ward: second unit of Kevin's hidden
knowledge setrock: a type of stone used with pitch to
repair stone
Seven Hells, the: a-Jeroth's demesne: desert, rain,
pestilence, fertility, war, savagery,
and darkness
Seven Wards, the: collection of knowledge hidden by
High Lord Kevin Seven Words, the: words of power
from Kevin's Lore Sevinhand: Anchormaster of
Starfare's Gem; a Giant Shattered Hills: a region of
the Land near Foul's Creche Sheol: a Raver,
Satansfist, samadhi
Shetra Verement-mate: a Lord
shola: a small wooden glen where a stream runs
between unwooded hills Shipsheartthew: the wheel of
a Giantship Shull: a Bloodguard
Sill: a Bloodguard, assigned to Lord Hyrim
Sivit na-Mhoram-wist: a Rider of the Clave
skest: acid-creatures serving the lurker of the
Sarangrave skurj: ominous, unexplained beings Slen
Terass-mate: a Stonedownor
soft-ones: the jheherrin
Somo: horse taken by Liand from Mithil Stonedown
soothreader: a seer
soothtell: ritual of revelation practiced by the Clave
Soranal: a Woodhelvennin Heer, son of Thiller
Soulbiter, the: a dangerous ocean of Giantish legend
Soulbiter's Teeth: reefs in the Soulbiter Soulcrusher:
Giantish name for Lord Foul Sparlimb Keelsetter: a
Giant, father of triplets
Spikes, the: guard-towers at the mouth of
Bhrathairain Harbor
Spray Forthsurge: a Giant; mother of the First of the
Search
springwine: a mild, refreshing liquor Staff, the: a
branch of Kevin's Lore
Staff of Law, the: a tool of Earthpower; the first Staff
was formed by Berek from the
One Tree and later destroyed by Thomas Covenant;
the second was formed by Lin
den Avery by using wild magic to merge Vain and
Findail
Stallion of the First Herd, the: Kelenbhrabanal
Starfare's Gem: Giantship used by the Search Starkin:
one of the Elohim
Stave: a Haruchai; a Master of the Land; companion
of Linden Avery Stell: one of the Haruchai; protector
of Sunder Stonedown: a stone-village
Stonedownor: one who lives in a stone-village
Stonemight, the: a fragment of the Illearth Stone
Stonemight Woodhelven: a village in the South Plains
Storesmaster: third in command aboard a Giantship
Stricken Stone: region of the Land; now called
Trothgard
Sunbane, the: a power arising from the corruption of
nature by Lord Foul Sunbirth Sea: ocean east of the
Land Sunder: son of Nassic; Graveler of Mithil
Stonedown Sun-Sage: one who can affect the Sunbane
Sunstone: orcrest
sur-jheherrin: descendants of the jheherrin;
inhabitants of Sarangrave Flat suru-pa-maerl: an art
using stone
Swarte: a Rider
Swordmain/Swordmainnir: a Giant trained as a
warrior Sword, the: a branch of Kevin's Lore
Sword-Elder: chief Lorewarden of the Sword at the
Loresraat

Tamarantha Variol-mate: a Lord, daughter of Enesta
Teeth of the Render, the: Fangs; Ramen name for the
Demondim Terass Slen-mate: a Stonedownor,
daughter of Annoria
Terrel: a Bloodguard, assigned to Lord Mhoram; a
commander of the original Ha
ruchai army
test of silence: test of integrity used by the people of
the Land test of truth, the: test of veracity by
lomillialor or orcrest The Grieve: Coercri, home of the
Giants in Seareach Thelma Twofist: character in a
Giantish tale
The Majesty: throne room of the gaddhi; fourth level
of the Sandhold Thew: a Cord of the Ramen
Third Ward: third unit of Kevin's hidden knowledge
Thomin: a Bloodguard, assigned to Lord Verement
Three Corners of Truth, the: basic formulation of
beliefs promulgated by the Clave Tier of Riches, the:
showroom of the gaddhi's wealth; third level of the
Sandhold thronehall, the: the Despiser's seat in Foul's
Creche Tohrm: a Gravelingas; Hearthrall of Lord's
Keep Tomal: a Stonedownor craftmaster
Toril: Haruchai lost to the Clave
Treacher's Gorge: ravine opening into Mount
Thunder
treasure-berries: aliantha; nourishing fruit found
throughout the Land in all seasons Trell Atiaran-mate:
Gravelingas of Mithil Stonedown, father of Lena
Trevor Loerya-mate: a Lord
Triock: a Stonedownor, son of Thuler; loved Lena
Trothgard: a region of the Land; formerly Stricken
Stone Tull: a Bloodguard
turiya: a Raver, Herem, Kinslaughterer
Tuvor: First Mark of the Bloodguard; a commander of
the original Haruchai army tyrscull: a Giantish
training vessel for apprentice sailors

Unbeliever, the: title claimed by Thomas Covenant
Unfettered, the: lore-students freed from conventional
responsibilities to seek individual knowledge and
service
Unfettered One, the: founder of a line of men waiting
to greet Thomas Covenant's return to the Land
Unhomed, the: the Giants living in Seareach
upland: plateau above Revelstone
Upper Land: region of the Land west of Landsdrop
ur-Lord: title given to Thomas Covenant
ur-viles: Demondim-spawn, evil creatures
ussusimiel: nourishing melon grown by the people of
the Land

Vailant: former high Lord before Prothall
Vain: Demondim-spawn; bred by ur-viles for a secret
purpose Vale: a Bloodguard
Valley of Two Rivers, the: site of Revelwood in
Trothgard
Variol Tamarantha-mate: a Lord; later High Lord;
son of Pentil; father of Mhoram Verement Shetra-
mate: a Lord
Verge of Wandering, the: valley in the Southron
Mountains southeast of Mithil Stone
down; gathering place of the Ramen
Vespers: self-consecration ritual of the Lords
viancome: meeting place at Revelwood Victuallin
Tayne: a region in the Center Plains
Viles, the: monstrous beings which created the
Demondim vitrim: nourishing fluid created by the
Waynhim
Voice of the Masters, the: a Haruchai leader;
spokesman for the Masters as a group voure: a plant-
sap which wards off insects Vow, the: Haruchai oath of
service which formed the Bloodguard vraith: a
Waynhim

Ward: a unit of Kevin's lore
Warhaft: commander of an Eoman Warlore: sword
knowledge in Kevin's Lore Warmark: commander of
the Warward
Warrenbridge: entrance to the catacombs under
Mount Thunder Warward, the: army of Lord's Keep
Wavedancer: Giantship commanded by Brow
Gnarlfist
Wavenhair Haleall: a Giant, wife of Sparlimb
Keelsetter; mother of triplets Waymeet: resting place
for travelers maintained by Waynhim
Waynhim: tenders of the Waymeets; rejected
Demondim-spawn, opponents and rela
tives of ur-viles
Weird of the Waynhim, the: Waynhim concept of
doom, destiny, or duty Whane: a Cord of the Ramen
white gold: a metal of power not found in the Land
white gold wielder: title given to Thomas Covenant
White River, the: a river of the land Whrany: a
Ranyhyn stallion, mount of Bhapa
Wightburrow, the: cairn under which Drool
Rockworm is buried Wightwarrens: home of the
Cavewights under Mount Thunder; catacombs
wild magic: the power of white gold; considered the
keystone of the Arch of Time Wildwielder: white gold
wielder; Esmer's name for Linden Avery Windscour:
region in the Center Plains
Windshorn Stonedown: a village in the South Plains
Winhome: Ramen lowest rank
Woodenwold: region of trees surrounding the maidan
of Elemesnedene Woodhelven: wood-village
Woodhelvennin: inhabitants of wood-village
Word of Warning: a powerful, destructive forbidding
Worm of the World's End, the: creature believed by
the Elohim to have formed the foundation of the Earth
Wraiths of Andelain, the: creatures of living light that
perform the Dance at the Celebration of Spring
Weird of the Earth, the: term used by the Elohim to
describe their own nature, destiny, or purpose; could
be read as Word, Worm, or Weird

Yeurquin: a Stonedownor, companion of Triock
Yolenid: daughter of Loerya
St h-en DanaIaon is the author of six previous
Covenant books: Lord Foul's Bane, The Illearth War,
The Power That Preserves, The Wounded Land, The
One Tree, and White Gold Wielder, as well as the Gap
sequence novels and The Man Who ... series of mystery
novels. He lives in New Mexico, where he is at work on
the second novel of The Last Chronicles of Thomas
Covenant.