The Runes of the Earth

  Immediately Anele jerked down his hands. Terror shone in his sightless eyes. His mouth fumbled to form a cry which might have been, No!

  Still Linden did not hesitate. She expected the prospect of healing to dismay him. He had created his madness for reasons which had seemed compulsory to him. Until he recovered his mind, how could he know whether his need for insanity had passed?

  Ignoring his distress, she overturned her hand and wiped hurtloam across his forehead.

  Instantly the Despiser’s presence vanished from him, fled as if from the touch of dissolution—and Anele went into convulsions.

  Before Linden could react, his whole frame snapped rigid. Blood spurted from his bitten tongue. His eyes rolled up into his head, protruding as if they were about to burst. From his skin sprang an acrid sweat that smelled like gall.

  Anele! Too late, she saw what she had done. The hurtloam was too potent for him. He was already rife with Earthpower: his body could not contain more. It would scorch the marrow of his bones.

  Desperately she slapped at his forehead, trying to remove the sand; but his preterite anguish had already carried him beyond her reach. One fatal scream ripped his throat: he seemed to explode to his feet. In a flurry of thrashing limbs, he flung himself from the riverbank out into the depths of the Mithil.

  And the current bore him away.

  He made no attempt to swim. Instead he pounded water at his forehead while he sank.

  Christ!

  Linden surged upright; dashed after him along the bank. Ahead of her, he broke to the surface, still floundering; foundering. Three more strides, four. Then she would gather herself to dive after him.

  But she had no chance to save him. As she prepared to spring, a length of rope uncoiled through the air from somewhere above her on the slope.

  It splashed the water within Anele’s grasp. Instinctively he threw his arms over it; closed his hands on it; clung to it fervidly as it dragged him across the current toward the bank.

  Linden staggered to a halt.

  Now she saw Liand. Her concentration on Anele had left her blind and deaf to his approach. Unnoticed, he had ridden down the hillside toward her on a hardy mustang, responding to Anele’s peril more swiftly than she could.

  For a moment, he anchored his rope from horseback while Anele struggled toward the riverbank. Then, when the old man began to gain footing, Liand dismounted. Keeping the line taut, he hurried down the slope to help Anele scramble out of the Mithil.

  Soon Anele stood on the grass, streaming and unhealed. Blood spilled from his mouth: the hurtloam was gone from his forehead. While Linden stared at him, Lord Foul let out a snarling laugh.

  Then the old man crumpled to the ground, coughing as if he had filled his lungs with water.

  7.

  Companions in Flight

  Linden stood on the riverbank, so shocked for the moment that she had ceased to move. Anele groveled in the grass in front of her. She saw him as distinctly as if he had been etched in sunfire. Water poured like tears off the broken landscape of his face: he coughed as though he had swallowed too much blood.

  Hurtloam had given back to her the beauty of the Land.

  Beyond question he was full of Earthpower: she could not be mistaken now. Its vitality shimmered in every line of his emaciated limbs, every twist of his abused features. And hurtloam was Earthpower as well, an indisputable instance of healing and glory. It should have lifted him into light like an annunciation. The hurt he had taken from it contradicted its essential nature.

  Now she saw that the loam had not been too potent for him. It had exerted its natural effect. But his inherent energies had become part of his madness, and had opposed his restoration.

  Fortunately she had done him no lasting harm.

  Retrieving his rope swiftly, Liand demanded, “Linden Avery, hear me.”

  But she did not. She saw only Anele.

  He stank of the Despiser.

  However, Lord Foul remained beneath the surface, leaving the old man free to gasp and cough. Linden found that she could still distinguish between the Despiser’s presence and Anele’s madness. But now she discerned other things as well. She saw clearly that the Despiser did not control the phases of Anele’s condition; could not grasp possession of Anele at will. Instead he merely took advantage of a flaw in the defenses which the old man had erected to protect his deepest pain. And that flaw shifted and changed with the unexplained modulations of Anele’s mental state.

  She had no idea how this could be so. Her health-sense did not reach so deeply: not like this, separate from him. If she truly wished to understand his sufferings, she would have to immerse herself in him utterly; intrude upon his fundamental relationship with himself.

  She had done such things before, long ago, and knew what they cost.

  “Linden Avery,” Liand insisted, “do you not hear me? Is this madness?”

  She might have been deaf to him. His voice could not pierce her awareness of Anele’s plight. Yet when she turned toward the Stonedownor, she saw him distinctly as well.

  He was a sturdy young man, full of toughness and health: the more ordinary and friable health of the Land, nourished and sustained by Earthpower, but not transformed by it. He would not survive to an improbable age, or endure decades of bitter privation, as Anele had.

  And he contained no hint of Despite. Instead he emitted sincerity and yearning. The lines of his form expressed an excitement which was turning rapidly into alarm. He was just who he had appeared to be when she had spoken to him earlier: an honest young man, capable of courage and devotion, and largely untried.

  Nothing in his aura or his manner suggested that he could sense Lord Foul’s presence.

  “Do you intend flight?” he asked urgently. “Then why do you tarry here?”

  His mount shared his natural, Land-born vigor, his capacity for toughness—and his apparent blindness to the proximity of evil. It was not entirely whole, however. At one time, it had fallen awkwardly, scraping faint scars into the coat of its chest, and fraying the deep muscles around its lungs. That old injury had damaged its stamina. The pinto might be as willing as Liand, but it lacked his endurance.

  And over them all the sky arched like a vault of crystal: it seemed to chime to the pitch of its essential cleanliness. At first, Linden descried no hint of Kevin’s Dirt. But when she had refined her senses to the memory of that stifling yellow shroud, she tasted it faintly above her, distant and imprecise, like a thin smear of wrong across the crisp purity of the air. It was still there.

  Eventually it would blind her again.

  “Linden Avery!” Liand cried at her. “What ails you? Soon the Masters will hasten in pursuit. If they have not yet discovered your flight, they will do so at any moment. If you desire to avoid them, we must go. We must go now!”

  We?

  At last she heard him.

  Of course she had to go. She had lost too much time; far too much. Indeed, she could hardly imagine why the Haruchai had not retaken her already. How had Liand found her, when they had not?

  But such questions could wait. Escape might still be possible. And Anele might not be able to bear it if he were captured again.

  They had to go.

  We?

  Damn it, she could not afford the time to argue.

  “I’m sorry, Liand.” With an effort, she wrenched herself out of her distraction. “You’re right.” Do something they don’t expect. “Anele can ride with you. I’ll try to keep up.”

  The young man stared, frankly unsure of her. He did not—could not—understand what had happened to her. Or what she had done to Anele.

  At every moment, Linden expected to see Haruchai rush past the rim of the hills; descend on her like raptors. Cursing, she hurried to Anele’s side, tugged on one of his arms.

  Even that small approach to the Despiser filled her nerves with revulsion. But she did not let go.

  “Now, Liand!”

  If Liand could pull Anele
after him onto the pinto’s back, she intended to run and run as long as her new strength lasted, as far and as fast as she was able.

  The old man tensed against her grasp; propped his free arm under him. Unsteadily he climbed to his feet. Behind the blood on his lips, his skin had a pallor of weakness, as if his stubborn fortitude were failing.

  Liand was tangibly unsure of Linden, but he did not hesitate. Springing to his mount’s back, he secured his coil of rope to the rudimentary saddle, then extended his hand to Anele.

  We?

  Linden gave Anele’s arm to Liand, and with her help the Stonedownor heaved Anele up behind him. Inarticulate frights clenched Anele’s face as he clung to Liand for support.

  Yet every hint of Lord Foul’s presence was suddenly gone from him. Between one heartbeat and the next, he had become himself again.

  At once, Liand wheeled his mount. With Linden running beside him, he cantered south along the riverbank, toward the head of the valley; away from Mithil Stonedown and the Masters.

  Marveling at herself, Linden matched Liand’s pace while the terrain allowed the pinto to canter. If she had been less familiar with the wonders of Earthpower, she might have believed that she was dreaming. She was not the same woman who had fallen to her knees only a short time ago. One small handful of hurtloam had apparently erased her mortality. While she ran, exaltation filled her heart. Buoyed by springy grass and soft soil, by the mountain tang of the air and the luxuriant quest of the river, and by hurtloam, she felt that she could run, and go on running, until she arrived at hope.

  The riverbank changed as the valley rose, however, forcing Liand to slow his mount. The hillsides grew steeper, constricting the Mithil in their climb toward the mountains, and rocks and hazards littered the ground along the watercourse. The mustang could have broken an ankle there, or stumbled into the Mithil.

  Above Linden and her companions, the mountains had become sheer and forbidding without apparent transition: a high, jagged wall glowering against intrusion. As she slackened her pace, she felt her lungs strain for breath as if the air had turned abruptly thin, inhospitable.

  Panting, she asked Liand to halt. “Just for a minute. I need to think.”

  Liand reined in the pinto, but did not dismount. The lines of his arms and shoulders told her as plainly as words that he wanted to press on. And Anele needed his support. Worn out by the effects of Lord Foul’s presence, the old man had fallen asleep against Liand’s back.

  The Despiser had not returned. For some reason, he could not.

  That was a relief, for Linden as well as for her battered companion. Now she could talk to Liand without being overheard.

  She needed to understand him. Why was he here? Why was he helping her? And how far was he willing to go—?

  As her pulse slowed, she found that she could feel Kevin’s Dirt more clearly. It seemed to clog her lungs, depriving her not of oxygen but of some more subtle sustenance. Already it had begun to erode her health-sense, fraying her nerves toward blindness. This time the process was slow: the lingering power of hurtloam hindered it. She might not lose true percipience before nightfall. Yet it would eventually fail her.

  By degrees, her exhilaration leaked away, leaving her to the realities of her situation.

  There appeared to be no hurtloam anywhere around her. The hillsides were bare of its eldritch glitter. And the banks of the Mithil had grown steeper as the ground rose to the foothills, putting the river itself effectively out of reach. She would not be able to refresh her health-sense a second time.

  Nor could she share the wonder of such vision with Liand. While her discernment lasted, she would have to see for both of them.

  Muttering curses to herself, she scanned her surroundings.

  The hills that shouldered the watercourse blocked her view of Mithil Stonedown. Past their crests, however, she could still make out the highest seething fringes of the storm which had enabled her escape. They boiled with violence and darkness; but their wrongness was of a different kind than Kevin’s Dirt and caesures. The stormtops violated Law and nature in less harmful ways. Nor did they gust in pursuit of her—or of Covenant’s ring. Instead they remained to harass the village.

  I would not deign to raise my hand—

  Lord Foul had told her the truth about more than hurtloam.

  And as long as the Masters remained to ward the Stonedown, they could not search for her. Hell, they might not yet know that she was gone. It was possible—

  “So far, so good,” she said to Liand’s impatience. “Now what? If we want to escape”—she indicated the mountains—“we need to get up there somehow.”

  To the east lay her easiest road. There the valley diverged more and more from the course of the Mithil; and as it curved into the southeast it rose steadily until it became a vale between mountain heads. From this distance, its slopes appeared to remain grassy and gradual two thousand feet and more above Mithil Stonedown. If she and her companions angled in that direction, they would be able to travel as fast as her stamina could carry her.

  And they would be in plain sight of the valley bottom for at least a league, until they rounded the curve up into the vale. The Haruchai would spot them as soon as the storm over Mithil Stonedown dissipated. Linden’s red shirt assured that.

  She needed another route.

  Even if Liand knew of one, however, she would not be able to stay ahead of the Masters for long. They would travel faster than she could. Ultimately her only realistic hope was that Stave and his people would believe she had fled north, into the open Land.

  Responding to her question, Liand pointed toward the rising cliffs south and slightly west of him. When Linden looked there, she saw a rift between crags ending in a fan of scree above the foothills. The shape of the rift and scree suggested that the slope of loose stone piled higher as it reached out of sight. If it piled high enough, it might provide a route into the Range above the rift.

  But it stood on the far side of the Mithil. And as the watercourse neared the head of the valley, it gathered into a crooked ravine tending somewhat east of south: too ragged and sheer to climb; too wide to cross. Then, at the base of the nearest cliff, it sprang up into a waterfall which thundered from a damp cut high and unattainable in the rock face.

  The rift might as well have been on the dark side of the moon.

  “Great,” Linden muttered in disappointment. “How can we get there? The last I checked, none of us can actually fly.”

  “It will not be difficult.” Lifting his head, Liand indicated the waterfall. “That fall we name the Mithil’s Plunge. For a portion of its way, it pours beyond the cliff, and there we may pass behind it. We must take care that Somo does not slip, but we will be able to do so.

  “Certainly the Masters know of this, as I do. But mayhap they will not readily notice my absence from Mithil Stonedown. I am only a young man whom they tolerate, not a valued companion. And if they do not guess that I accompany you, they may not pursue you there, believing that you have no knowledge of it.”

  Linden nodded. “Good.” So it was possible: she still had a chance.

  But the young man’s answer brought her back to another question. What in hell was he doing here? He was risking more than the disapproval of the Masters; far more than he knew. She could not accept his help simply because he chose to offer it.

  Frowning, she waited until he turned to face her. Then, more harshly than she intended, she said, “But before we go any farther, you have some explaining to do.”

  His eyes widened in surprise.

  “Where do you get this ‘we’ stuff, Liand?” Because she was afraid and unsure, and could not afford to be, she sounded angry. “What are you doing here? Why aren’t you defending Mithil Stonedown, where you belong?”

  The young man swallowed uncomfortably, but did not drop her gaze. “Would you have been able to save your companion without my aid?”

  “That’s not the point. Of course I would have saved him. I can sw
im, for God’s sake.”

  “And will you save him now?” countered Liand. “You are able to gain the mountains, but how will you feed him among the rocks? How will you feed yourself? Can you bear the cold of the peaks?”

  Linden scowled at him. “Oh, hell. You know I can’t. I didn’t exactly plan any of this. I just—” She knotted her fists to contain her frustration. “I just can’t do anything for my son while I’m a prisoner.”

  Liand indicated bundles tied to his saddle. “Then it is well that I have given the matter forethought which you could not. Here I have food and waterskins. Robes and blankets. Rope.

  “Somo alone enhances your flight.” Apparently Somo was the mustang. “I have done much to provide for your escape. All that I can.”

  His eyes begged her to accept him.

  “But—” With an effort, Linden restrained her impulse to swear at him. His manifest sincerity did not deserve it. “But,” she said more quietly, “that’s still beside the point. Obviously I need any help I can get. But your people need you, too. They were fighting for their lives when I ran. How could you leave them?”

  Her demand increased his discomfort. For a moment, he looked away toward the mountains as if he were measuring himself against them. When he met her gaze again, the sunlight on his face exposed the difficulties within him.

  Nevertheless he faced her squarely.

  “At first I did not,” he admitted. He had set his impatience aside. “You know this. I ran to the defense of the Stonedown, thinking that we were assailed by kresh in the storm. But the Masters halted us, saying that there were no kresh, that only the storm itself threatened us.

  “Against that power we could do nothing. And it struck no one. For reasons which I do not grasp, the storm’s violence harmed only our homes. Indeed, it fell only upon those homes which had been left empty. Their families were at work in the fields, or attending other concerns. And the Masters assured us that no lives had been lost—that none would be lost if we did not approach the storm.

  “How they had gained their knowledge, I do not know. But I believed them. And I thought of you, Linden Avery.”