The Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Book One (68 page)

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 Cail'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.

Cail'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
Elohim.
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 ur-viles. 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 ur-viles 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.