The Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Book One (63 page)

T
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 detritus 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
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
preserve 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 the 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 certainty 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.