The Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Book One (84 page)

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
themselves 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.

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.