The Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Book One (46 page)

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 arête.

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, “I 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.”

Liand frowned. “Does that account for their denial of the Land's history and wonder? 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.

I
n silence, the company finished their descent to the foot of the rubble piled between the cliffs, the base of the arête.

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 arête, 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 arête 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 perspective foreshortened the brusque cliffs on either side so that they seemed to emphasize rather than dwarf the ridge. Staring upward, Linden lost her balance and stumbled as though she had felt a tremor in the rubble, a hint of shattering like the unsteadiness that had presaged the fall of Kevin's Watch.

The rock remembered its own breaking. If she could have heard granite speak, as Anele did, it might have shared with her the convulsion which had ripped it down from the cliffs.

She looked around for the old man. He would heed stone wherever he found it, she was sure of that. If he were in one of the more lucid phases of his madness, he might tell her what he gleaned.

However, she found him seated on a swath of grass sprinkled with wildflowers, gnawing on a strip of jerky which one of the Cords had given him, and muttering imprecations 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.

Beyond the arête, 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 had worn away their roughness until they resembled the floor of his gaol in Mithil Stonedown; the surface of Kevin's Watch.

“Be gone.” Rock muffled his voice. “Anele does not speak. He is commanded. He obeys. Anele obeys.”

Commanded? By the
stones
? Linden resisted an impulse to grab at the threadbare fabric of his tunic; tug him out of his protective covert. Confusion and sunburn pulsed 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 limitations. “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
Elohim.