Flinching, Linden snatched her percipience toward the south and saw that he was right. The caesure was retracing its ruin, harried by a palpable cloudless storm. And it was coming fast—
Some silent part of her snarled curses, but she paid no attention to them. The Fall’s advance evoked a different clarity than the one that she had tried to impose on herself.
“Go!” she shouted at Galt and his comrades as though she had the right to command them. “Get those people out of there,” away from their riven homes, their lost lives. “Take them west. I’ll try to snuff that thing. But I don’t know what I’m up against. If something goes wrong, they’ll be right in front of it.”
If the skurj came, they would approach from the east.
Because he was a Master, she expected him to refuse. Yet he did not. Wheeling his Ranyhyn, he headed at a gallop into the lowland.
Immediately Branl joined him. Clyme took a moment to unsling the slate from his back and pass it in its harness to Stave, transferring responsibility for Anele. Then he sped after the other Humbled.
In their minds, all three of them may have been calling to the Masters among the Woodhelvennin.
So many people—It would take time to rally them. They were too stunned to think for themselves.
“Mahrtiir!” Linden flung a gesture after the Humbled. “Help those people. What’s coming isn’t just a Fall. Somebody is pushing that thing.” Someone nearby: someone who wanted the caesure to devour the Woodhelvennin—or to assail her. “Get as many of them on horses as you can. Make them move.”
When the Manethrall hesitated, she urged him, “Go! Leave Liand and Anele with me.” She could not ask Liand to watch over Anele and aid the villagers at the same time; and the old man was close to panic, filled by the old dread which had driven him to climb Kevin’s Watch. If he left Hrama’s back and tried to fend for himself—if his feet touched barren ground—“Stave will take care of them.”
“Ringthane.” Mahrtiir nodded an acknowledgment, then turned Narunal to follow the Humbled. As the Ranyhyn gathered speed, the Manethrall shouted. “Cords!”
Bhapa was already in motion, racing to catch up with Mahrtiir. Pahni gave Liand a quick desperate look before she sent Naharahn after Whrany.
Liand had already taken out his orcrest. He gripped it tightly while he murmured to Hrama and Rhohm, imploring them to stay together.
The sight of Liand’s Sunstone made Anele cower as if he feared it—feared sanity—more than the caesure.
On all sides of Linden and her remaining companions were flint, shale, eroded sandstone, dirt. Hardly a hundred paces away lay the torn path of the Fall. If Anele dismounted, even for a moment, Kastenessen would find him. The pain-maddened Elohim would know where to send the skurj. And if he gained full possession of the old man, he might attack Linden directly while she fought the caesure and its unseen drover.
Kastenessen might already be somewhere nearby. Surely he was capable of herding a Fall wherever he wished?
“How long—?” Abruptly she found that she could not speak: her throat was too dry. She had to swallow several times before she could ask Stave, “How much time do we have?”
The Haruchai gazed into the south for a moment, then glanced behind him to consider the tree-dwellers. “If the Woodhelvennin comprehend their peril, and do not refuse to be commanded, they will be spared.”
If the Fall did not change directions to pursue them—
“In that case”—Linden took a deep breath, held it, let it out—“let’s go down there.” She indicated the furrowed ground where the Fall had passed. “We’ll be able to see farther.”
On this terrain, one place would not be more dangerous than another for Anele.
Stave nodded. Beckoning for Liand and Anele to follow, he nudged Hynyn into a trot, angling across the slope to keep his distance from the blasted village while he sought an unobstructed view to the south.
Fighting her urgent anger, Linden dropped back briefly to ride beside Liand. “You know what you have to do?”
His black eyebrows accentuated the apprehension in his eyes. “Linden?”
“Remember what I told you,” she ordered brusquely. “Protect Anele. Whatever happens. Get Stave to help you if you need him. I’ll stop the caesure.” Somehow. “But you have to keep Anele away from Kastenessen. We can’t face another attack right now.”
Of any kind.
When the Stonedownor said, “I will,” biting off the words as though they caused him pain, she left him, riding faster to catch up with Stave.
“Did you hear me?” she asked as she reached Stave’s side. On his back, he bore the pane of slate. “I know how you feel about protecting me. But you can’t fight a Fall. You can’t fight that storm. Helping Liand keep Anele safe is the best thing that you can do for me.”
For a moment, Stave appeared to contemplate what she requested of him. Then he replied evenly, “Your fate is mine, Chosen. I will have no other. Yet while I may, I will do as you desire.” Without expression, he met her gaze. “Have I not shown that I am able to abandon you for the old man’s sake?”
He had left her to retrieve Anele from the horde of the Demondim—
Trying to smile, Linden bared her teeth. “You have. I should know better than to tell you what to do.”
As soon as she reached the center of the caesure’s raked path, she turned to face the south. For a few heartbeats, Hyn’s muscles quivered as if she were afraid; as if she longed to carry Linden out of danger. Then Hynyn snorted assertively, and the mare seemed to calm herself.
The Fall was moving faster than Linden had anticipated. It was already clear to her ordinary sight: a swirling miasma of wrongness in the shape of a tornado. Its emanations burrowed along her nerves as though hornets hived in her belly. And it was growing—The storm driving it seemed to increase its virulence and size as well as its speed. It would strike like the bludgeon of a titan.
Now she could discern the storm itself distinctly, although it had no clouds to account for the lurid punch of its thunder or the bright flare and sizzle of its lightning. Her health-sense perceived the turmoil in etched detail: it resembled a squall at sea. But its forces were too great for a mere squall. Its vehemence suggested the fury of a hurricane.
She had never seen theurgy like that before. More than once, however, she had felt a similar puissance: when Esmer had attacked Stave; and again when he had blocked the ur-viles from assailing Roger and the croyel. Before she and her companions had risked the Land’s past to search for the Staff of Law, the Ramen had informed her that he wields a storm among the mountains—
With it, he had summoned a caesure for her.
“Damn it,” she breathed more to herself than to Stave. “That’s Esmer.”
“So I deem,” replied Stave as though he had not been almost beaten to death by Cail’s son.
For the first time, Linden wondered whether Esmer himself might be the havoc for which he had blamed Stave and the Haruchai.
Yet she could not believe that Esmer intended to threaten her like this. His conflicting inheritances precluded a direct assault. And a desire to ravage the Woodhelvennin seemed out of character. He had never shown the kind of omnivorous malice that delighted Lord Foul, or that Kastenessen and Roger might have enjoyed.
But why, then—?
An instant later, she saw an explanation. Ahead of the caesure, a rider fled desperately. He flogged his horse straight toward her. The Fall and the storm seemed to be chasing him.
She recognized him before Stave stated flatly. “It is the Harrow.”
He was mounted on a brown destrier as large and strongly made as Mhornym, although the beast was not a Ranyhyn: it lacked the characteristic star-shaped blaze on its forehead; the unmistakable tang of Earthpower. Froth splashed from the horse’s mouth and nostrils, and its eyes glared with dumb terror, as its rider lashed its hindquarters with a short quirt. Hunched low over his mount’s neck, with his chlamys flapping, the Harrow rode for
his life just ahead of the caesure.
He had promised Linden his companionship. Now he raced toward her as though he hoped that she would save him.
He was her enemy: she believed that. Oh, he had unmade the threat of the Demondim. But he had also tried to swallow her mind. He had cost her the Mahdoubt’s friendship and support; the Mahdoubt’s life.
And he coveted Covenant’s ring. He wanted the Staff of Law. To tempt her, he had said, There is a service which I am able to perform for you, and which you will not obtain from any other living being.
Nevertheless she did not hesitate. Unfurling plumes of fire from her Staff, she began to tune her percipience to the exact pitch and timbre of the Fall. Her private rages and bereavements had no significance now. The Woodhelvennin were still in peril, and they had already lost too much.
If Esmer sought to destroy the Harrow, he did not do so for Linden’s benefit, or for the Land’s. In him, aid and betrayal were indistinguishable. Perhaps he saw some threat to one of his ruling compulsions in the Harrow’s proposed service. If so, she needed to know more about the Insequent.
With the back of her neck, she felt the villagers stumbling slowly westward. They did not resist the shepherding of the Masters and the Ramen. But there were too many of them—and too many were still in shock. Their progress was sluggish, hampered by grief.
The caesure was no more than a stone’s throw for a Giant away: it towered over her, feral and deadly. The Harrow raced less than ten strides ahead of it, and the gap was narrowing—If she ran out of time, she would be devoured by the conflagration of instants.
She could do this, she told herself. She had done it before. And Esmer’s storm did not camouflage the caesure, or confuse her health-sense. If anything, his efforts to flail the Fall only emphasized its specific ferocity.
Muttering, “Melenkurion abatha,” she raised Law and Earthpower in sunlight flames to meet the impending chaos. “Duroc minas mill.” In one sense, every Fall was different: it occurred in a different place; shattered different fragments of time. But in another, they were all the same, and she knew them well. “Harad khabaal!”
Fervid as a bonfire, her power geysered into the heavens.
The Harrow gestured at her frantically, urging her to rescue him. Lightning in fatal bursts blasted the dirt between her and the destrier. Concussions of thunder shook the ground. Each searing bolt liquefied the shale and flint, leaving molten pools where it struck.
“Anele!”
Liand’s yell nearly broke Linden’s concentration. She felt the old man fling himself headlong from Hrama’s back; felt him hit the stony soil rolling, wild to escape the caesure or the storm, she did not know which. With every nerve, she sensed the eruption of bitter magma that took hold of him.
Instantly Stave wheeled Hynyn away from Linden. At the same time, Liand sprang after Anele, still shouting.
She had no choice: she could not stop Kastenessen now. If she did not quench the Fall, she would do nothing ever again.
Fear for Anele hampered her—and for Stave and Liand as well. Kastenessen would savage the old man; but he would not kill a vessel that could still serve him. Stave and Liand were another matter. The insane Elohim might incinerate them.
Nevertheless Linden had grown stronger, annealed under Melenkurion Skyweir. And Caerroil Wildwood’s runes defined her Staff; sharpened its black possibilities. Hindrances of which she had been unaware had been carved away. Between one heartbeat and the next, she gathered Law and flame into a detonation as great as any that Esmer had unleashed. Shouting the Seven Words, she hurled Earthpower into the core of the caesure.
Time seemed to have no meaning. For an instant or an eternity, she threw her fire at the Fall; and the Harrow raced toward her in a fever of dread; and dire lava gathered at her back. Lightning coruscated near Hyn’s hooves. The caesure appeared to swell as though it feasted on flame.
Then she felt the sudden brilliance of orcrest behind her.
Through Liand’s glaring light, the storm thundered in a voice like a convulsion of despair. “Wildwielder, do not!”
Abruptly Kastenessen’s lava imploded, sucked back into itself.
As if fetters had been struck from her limbs, Linden felt freedom and energy surge through her. Almost calmly, she thought, No, Esmer. Not until I know what’s at stake. Not until one of you bastards tells me the truth.
With Law and Earthpower and repudiation, she lit a deflagration in the Fall’s heart and watched while the tumult of sundered instants swallowed itself whole. Like the scoria of Kastenessen’s rage, the migraine tornado appeared to consume its own substance. Moments before the caesure caught the heels of the Harrow’s mount, the fabric of time was rewoven; restored where it had been rent.
Briefly Esmer’s storm became a stentorian wail of frustration and dismay. Then it started to fray as though intangible winds were pulling it apart. Swirling like the Fall, lightning and thunder dissipated, drifting away toward all of the horizons simultaneously.
The Harrow hauled at his horse’s reins; stopped short of a collision with Linden. At the same time, Esmer stepped out of the air behind the Insequent. Gales seething in his eyes, Cail’s son strode forward as if he meant to assail the Harrow as he had once attacked Stave.
In Esmer’s presence, Linden’s viscera squirmed with an almost metaphysical nausea. But she ignored the sensation. Turning her back on both men, she looked for her friends.
Fifteen or twenty paces away, in the middle of the caesure’s wide gall, Stave stood on the pane of slate, holding Anele upright and unconscious against his chest. On his knees near them, Liand cupped his quenched Sunstone in one hand and gazed at it in wonder, studying it as if he were amazed that the flesh had not been scalded from his fingers.
In the distance beyond them, the Masters and the Ramen continued herding the villagers into motion, a pitiful few on horseback, the rest walking. Frightened and distraught, men, women, and children trudged away from the wreckage of First Woodhelven in the general direction of Lord’s Keep. As a group, they radiated numbness and misery that ran too deep for utterance.
She could not help them: not with Esmer advancing on the Harrow behind her. In another moment, they might begin to lash at each other—or at her—with forces as lethal as the Fall’s.
Gritting her teeth, she returned her attention to Liand, Stave, and Anele.
When she had assured herself that Liand and Stave were unharmed, and that Anele was only asleep, apparently exhausted by mere moments of possession and imposed sanity, she asked unsteadily. “How did you do that? Why aren’t you hurt?”
Liand still stared at his hand and the Sunstone as though they astonished him. “I would not have credited it,” he breathed. “In my heart, I believed that my hand would be destroyed, and perhaps the orcrest with it. But when I touched the stone to Anele’s forehead, the conflagration within him ended. In some fashion that I do not comprehend, Kastenessen has been expelled.”
“I can’t explain it.” Liand’s success confounded Linden. She had hoped only that an imposed sanity might forestall Kastenessen’s violation. She had not expected Liand to exorcise the Elohim once Kastenessen had established his possession. Perhaps contact with orcrest enabled Anele to draw upon his inborn magic. “I’m just glad that you’re all right. All of you.”
“Chosen,” Stave said distinctly, warning her. “attend.”
Instinctively she looked to the Woodhelvennin again. They had stopped moving; stood crowded together on the near side of the brook. Most of them now faced in her direction.
Both the Humbled and the Ramen were galloping swiftly toward her.
Cursing, Linden wheeled Hyn to meet the threat of the Harrow and Esmer—and saw that a multitude of ur-viles had appeared as if they had risen suddenly out of the gouged dirt, accompanied by a much smaller number of Waynhim. Sunshine on the obsidian skin of the ur-viles made them look like avatars of midnight, stark as fuligin. The greyer flesh of the Waynhim had the color of a
sh and exhaustion.
They were the last of their kind—
Shit, she thought. Of course. Ur-viles, Waynhim—and Esmer. It is their intent to serve you. They had come for her sake. They watch against me—
In spite of their distrust for each other, Cail’s son had brought several score of them out of the distant past. And they had earned her faith. Now she did not know whom Esmer was trying to betray.
United as if they had forgotten their long enmity, the ur-viles and Waynhim had formed themselves into two fighting wedges, one led by their only loremaster, the other by a small knot of Waynhim. Barking raucously to each other, the creatures in one wedge faced Esmer. The other formation confronted the Harrow.
The loremaster held an iron scepter or jerrid that fumed with vitriol. The Waynhim brandished short curved daggers that looked like they had been forged of lucent blood.
Both men had stopped. Esmer stood with his fists clenched. His cymar billowed around him as if it were being tugged by winds which Linden could not feel. Spume rose like vapor from the dangerous seas of his eyes. His limbs seemed to quiver with suppressed outrage and alarm.
“Wildwielder,” he said in a voice like a blare of trumpets, “you do not know the harm that this Insequent desires. In another moment, the caesure would have taken him, and you would have been spared much. It was madness to redeem him.”
Closer to Linden, the Harrow sat his destrier with an air of deliberate nonchalance, although he was breathing heavily, and beads of sweat stood on his forehead. From the symbols on his boots to the beads in his leathern doublet, he was a figure of sculpted muscle and casual elegance. The plowshare clasp which secured his chlamys emphasized the neatness of his hair and beard. And the hues of his raiment harmonized with the moisture-darkened shades of his destrier’s coat. Only the lightless depths of his eyes suggested that he had not accidentally wandered into the Land from some more courtly realm where a munificent king or queen presided sumptuously over lordlings and damsels bright with meretricious grace.