The Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Book One (44 page)

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.”

Linden's legs folded under her, but she hardly noticed it; hardly recognized that she would have fallen if Liand had not upheld her. Relief had taken the last of her resolve. She might yet 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.

This time she did not dream. Perhaps she had moved beyond the reach of dreams.

H
ungers 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 give her every conceivable aid—as long as what she asked did not interfere with their deeper 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.

While she slept, she had regained her health-sense. Now life and Earthpower
throbbed palpably beneath the surface of all she beheld. Even in the crepuscular air, her surroundings and her companions were lambent with implications. The sensations 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 she did not greatly value the lives of her Cords; that other considerations outweighed individual life and death. Now, however, Linden discerned the truth. The Ramen lived precarious lives, threatened at all times by privation, predators, and self-sacrifice: they could not afford to bewail the cost of their convictions. Nevertheless the bonds which sustained them were strong and enduring.

One look told her that Sahah's grasp on life had become tenuous, stretched as thin as a whisper. Fever glazed her eyes, and pain had cut lines like galls into her cheeks. Internal bleeding left her skin the color of spilth, as if her flesh might slump from her 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: Sahah 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.

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—

Long ago aboard Starfare's Gem, she had once saved the life of a crushed Giant using only her health-sense. She had reached into him with her percipience, had
possessed
him, and caused his own nerves and muscles to pull closed some of his wounds, stanch some of his bleeding. In that way, she had kept him alive long enough for other aid to reach him.

But he had been a Giant, inconceivably strong by human standards. And she had rushed to 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.”

Linden dismissed his point with a jerk of her head. “Can you summon them?” she asked Hami.

Again the woman shook her head.

“Then how were they brought to our aid?” Liand asked impulsively.

The Manethrall shrugged. “They come and go as they wish. I know not how your plight came to their notice. We do not speak their tongue.”

Linden stared at Hami. 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.