The Runes of the Earth

  Ahead of her, Liand let the mustang pick its way over the rocks at its own pace. Somehow the sodden blanket and Liand’s grasp on the reins kept Somo’s alarm within bounds.

  With her hand on Anele’s arm, Linden felt his fear. Preoccupied with her footing, she initially tasted only a featureless apprehension in him; nothing more. By degrees, however, the character of his distress seeped into her like the waterfall’s power.

  One timorous step at a time, he had passed into a realm of threats altogether his own; a crisis beyond her grasp. When she noticed the change in him at last, it shocked her out of her own frights.

  He may have been becoming sane. If her senses discerned him accurately in this tumult—

  On an uncluttered and comparatively level section of the ledge, he halted suddenly, drawing her to a stop beside him. His teeth gnashed the laden air as if he sought to tear loose bitten chunks of meaning. He may have been crying her name, calling out for help or attention in a voice too mortal to be heard.

  Linden flung her arms about him, holding him still; restraining herself from the howl of the water. She could hardly identify his features. Pressing her forehead against the side of his skull, trying to reach him bone to bone, she shouted, “Anele! Are you all right? I can’t hear you!”

  His voice reached her like a distant vibration in her brain. “Skurj!” he shrieked. “Skurj and Elohim. He has broken the Durance. Skurj mar the very air. Oh, the Earth!

  “Its bones—” Freeing one arm from Linden’s embrace, he pressed his palm to the cliff-side as if he meant to thrust himself away from it; out into the water and death. “Its bones cry out! Even here, they wail!”

  “Anele!” she yelled again. She had nothing to offer him except his name. “Anele!” He had gone beyond her comprehension. Every clench and tremor of his emaciated frame told her that he was sane at last.

  For him, sanity held more horror than any madness.

  “My fault!” he cried as if he were being shattered. “Mine! The Elohim did naught to preserve the Durance. They are tainted. Arrogant. I lost the Staff! The treasure and bulwark of Law. My birthright. I lost it!”

  Sane? Linden gripped him with all her strength. Chills shook her. This was sanity? According to Stave, the Staff of Law had been lost more than three thousand years ago.

  “Anele! What’s wrong? What’s happening to you?”

  Liand could not have heard them. He continued to lead Somo cautiously toward daylight and the westward foothills, abandoning Linden and Anele to the exigency between them.

  Abruptly Anele released the stone of the cliff and wrenched himself around in her grasp. When they were face-to-face, he pressed his forehead against hers. Earthpower latent in his veins throbbed for conflagration. Furiously he drove his anguish into her mouth; down her throat.

  “Are you blind?” he howled; and the greater howl of the Plunge swept his words instantly away. “Do you see nothing? I held it in my hands! It was given into my care. Trusted to me! For years, I studied the Earth, striving for courage. And I lost it!”

  She could not understand him; could hardly think: spray and thunder smothered her mind. Shivers ran through her bones. Lost? The Staff of Law? Millennia ago? Sweet Christ! What manner of sanity had overtaken him? His deprived flesh had suffered the erosion of too much time, but nothing on that order of magnitude. Even her diminished perceptions could not have misread him to such an extent.

  Water streamed down their faces, ran from their chins. His revulsion toward his own failings had become a whirlwind of rage and grief.

  “I could have preserved the Durance!” he cried. “Stopped the skurj. With the Staff! If I had been worthy. But I did not! Instead I betrayed my trust! My word. My birthright.” He might have been weeping. “All the Earth.”

  “Anele!” Desperation surged in Linden. She had to get him out of this place. “Anele, come on!” She could not think. If the storm within him mounted any higher, he might hurl himself from the ledge, and her with him.

  But his passion demanded release. Forcing his forehead against hers, he begged her fervently, “Oh, break me! Slay me! Tear away this pain and let me die! Did you sojourn under the Sunbane with Sunder and Hollian, and learn nothing of ruin?”

  Did you sojourn—?

  Had he recognized her at last?

  In a tumult of confusion and thunder, she jerked her head away. “Damn it, Anele! Of course I understand ruin. It doesn’t give you the right to do this to yourself! For God’s sake, don’t make me drag you out of here!”

  Perhaps in sunlight under an open sky he would become comprehensible to her.

  For an instant, a flare of Earthpower burned in his white eyes, set light to the water beading in his beard. When it passed, it appeared to leave him chastened; covered in gloom. He nodded as if she had doomed him.

  Suddenly frantic to escape the Plunge, Linden took his arm once more and urged him forward, after Liand and the pinto.

  A moment later, Liand’s form restricted the passage. He had come back for them. “Why do you tarry?” he called anxiously. “What is amiss?”

  She did not try to answer him. Instead she waved her arm to send him back the way he had come. As he complied, she continued to scramble grimly over the treacherous stones.

  With all the will that she could muster, she concentrated on her footing. Anele’s sanity confounded her. She yearned for the safety of the sun and understanding.

  Tear away this pain and let me die!

  Elohim she knew; but what in hell were skurj?

  Her boot skidded off a patch of wet moss. She caught herself on Anele’s arm. She was supposed to protect him. She knew him better when he was mad.

  Liand receded ahead of her, drawing her on. He did not appear to fear falling. Perhaps on some atavistic level his people retained their ancient relationship with stone.

  Oh, the Earth! Its bones cry out!

  When at last she and Anele emerged into the bright solace of day, everything between them had changed.

  “Linden Avery.” Liand demanded her attention. “Why did you tarry? Are you harmed?”

  The day’s spring warmth shone through the spray. She kept her grip on Anele. Blinking against the sun’s dazzle, she peered at him with all of her senses.

  He had been sane: her nerves were certain of it. Now, however, a roil of confusion distorted his emanations. His mind had relapsed to madness.

  And his plight was changing. The character of his derangement shifted—and shifted again. Before her eyes, he modulated between the various phases of his insanity; and the landscape of his face appeared to shimmer and blur, smeared out of clarity by the heat of his rapid alternations. She could read nothing in him surely except that he was no longer the man who had cried out to her behind the Mithil’s Plunge.

  He said nothing. For the moment, at least, even language was lost to him.

  Finally Linden allowed herself to turn toward the Stonedownor. “I’m sorry, Liand.” She wiped tears of brightness from her eyes. “Something happened to Anele in there.” She had to shout to make herself heard. “He changed. All of a sudden, he seemed sane,” although everything he had said sounded crazy. “But it’s gone now. I don’t know what came over him.”

  “But you are not harmed?” Liand persisted.

  She shook her head. “Just scared. Everything here”—she gestured at the sky, the mountains, the foothills—“looks so normal.” Undisturbed. “The way the Land is supposed to look. But the things Anele said—”

  She shuddered. “He was terrified. He sees dangers I’ve never even heard of.”

  They were gone now, locked behind his madness.

  In response, Liand’s expression darkened. “The Masters.” His disgust was barely audible through the waterfall’s roar. “The most dire perils stalk the Land, and they tell us nothing.”

  Then he straightened his shoulders. “It would please me greatly to elude them. We must continue our ascent. Exposed on these hillsides, we may yet be discover
ed.” Frowning, he added, “The hue of your raiment will be easily seen.”

  Linden needed no urging to move away from the mind-numbing thunder of the Plunge.

  He had left his mount a short distance away, its reins loosely secured under a hunk of rock. While he wrung out the blanket he had used to cover Somo’s eyes, she said suddenly, “Don’t put that away. I can use it to cover my shirt.”

  The blanket was damp, but it might warm her.

  With a nod of approval, Liand handed it to her. As soon as she had draped the rough brown wool over her shoulders, she returned to Anele.

  The old man did not react to her presence, or her voice. However, he allowed her to reclaim his arm. Pulling him with her, she started up the hillside.

  With Liand and Somo a pace or two below her, she headed in the general direction of the rift.

  Their path angled to the west as it challenged the tumbled foothills. Farther in that direction, along the northward reach of the mountains, the foothills were like fingers knotted in the valley floor, pulling the valley wider; and between the fingers lay steep vales and clefts. Here, however, in the head of the valley, the slopes were more even, draped down from the cliffs like a mussed skirt. Linden and her companions were spared the abrupt rises and drops of the northwestward hills.

  Nevertheless their ascent was arduous. The stubborn grasses and wind-twisted brush which marked the hillside could not always hold the soil in place under the pressure of their feet, and they often had to scramble in order to gain ground. At the same time, the slope grew steadily steeper, with less vegetation to anchor the dirt. The distance from the passage behind the Mithil’s Plunge to the fan of scree below the rift may have been no more than a stone’s throw for a Giant; but after an hour’s labor Linden and her companions still had not reached their immediate aim.

  They must have been visible from the vicinity of Mithil Stonedown. Until they reached the shelter of the rift, they had to hope that they were too small to be noticed from so far away.

  Clinging to the blanket, she paused for a moment’s rest. Her respiration had become a deep heaving, and her legs trembled with each step. Sunlight and exertion had dried the blanket as well as her clothes; but that had proved to be a curse as much as a blessing. For a while, she had been grateful for anything which eased her various chills. Gradually, however, her dampness had become sweat and hard breathing, and even the crisp breeze of this elevation could not cool her. As the strength she had gained from hurtloam and treasure-berries faded, she began to believe that she would prove too weak for her task.

  More and more, she relied on Anele’s support. In spite of his emaciation, he remained hardy: he seemed to forge upward as if he had never done anything else. His eldritch toughness helped her continue the climb.

  His skin against hers described the irregular fluctuations of his mental estate. At odd intervals, he veered close to sanity: less frequently, she felt the Despiser’s dark scorn moil in his depths. Masques of rage and grief and appalled endurance drifted through him like shadows. But he did not speak; and she had no energy to spare for his complex lunacy. As she forced her trembling steps upward, her awareness of him withdrew. She only clung to him and labored onward.

  Ahead of her, Liand and his horse ascended more easily; had to wait for her more often. Although Somo’s hooves dragged the untrustworthy hillside downward, the mustang had stamina to spare in spite of its old wound. And Liand possessed the characteristic toughness of Stonedownors. He and his mount would be able to keep going long after Linden dropped.

  They were here on her account; and yet their chances of escape would have been much higher without her.

  Then Liand called softly, “Soon, Linden Avery!” and she looked up from her benumbed concentration to see him standing at the edge of the scree.

  Lowering her head, she forced her quivering muscles to bear her to his side.

  He had already taken a waterskin from one of his packs. Now he handed it to her. She held it shaking to her lips and drank until she had soothed her dry mouth and raw throat. Then she passed the waterskin to Anele.

  While the old man sucked at the skin, Liand unpacked a little bread and sun-dried fruit. “We should not tarry here,” he remarked, “exposed to the sight of the Masters. I fear, however, that you near the end of your endurance. And Somo cannot bear you on this terrain. Our flight will fail if our haste exceeds your strength.”

  He handed food to her first, then to Anele.

  Linden thanked him with a nod. She was breathing too hard to speak.

  Slowly she chewed bread and fruit, and tried to imagine sustenance flooding through her veins, filling the courses of her heart. Jeremiah needed her. She did not mean to fail him. While she ate, she surveyed the climb ahead and endeavored to believe that she could master it.

  That she could master herself.

  For a while, Liand gave her silence; a chance to gather her resolve. But his tension increased as he waited, and eventually he asked, “Are you able to continue, Linden Avery? Until we gain shelter, every delay is perilous.”

  “I’ll do it,” she muttered. “Able or not.” Then she gave him a wry frown. “But you have got to stop calling me ‘Linden Avery.’ I feel like I’m in church.”

  She had spent too many hours there as a child, wearing her one nice dress and fidgeting while a preacher levied strictures against her; a preacher who knew nothing about her pain—or her mother’s.

  But she could not expect Liand to understand such things. “I’m ‘Linden,’ ” she added. “That’s enough. I don’t need so much formality.”

  He studied her as if she had asked him to commit an act of irreverence. “Very well,” he said cautiously. “You will be ‘Linden’ to me.”

  Then he turned away and began to repack Somo’s burdens.

  Anele also seemed eager for movement. He had grown restive, shuffling his feet on the scree. He started upward without any urging.

  Setting her teeth, Linden stumbled into motion and followed her companions.

  There the ascent became harder for her. The slope of shale and loose stones increased the likelihood that she might fall; perhaps break an ankle. At the same time, however, she found that she could use her hands to help her climb. If she simply let the blanket hang across her shoulders, her arms could ease some of the strain on her legs. In that way, in spite of her weakness, she was able to keep pace with Anele, Liand, and Somo for a time.

  She scraped her palms; bruised her newly healed elbows and shins. The thinning air stung her lungs until phosphenes plucked erratically at her vision, dissolving boulders and wedged stones to bright swirls and then resolving them to granite again, schist and obsidian, feldspar and quartz. But she fixed Jeremiah’s face before her and went on climbing.

  Halfway to the rough edges of the rift, however, she began to fall behind her companions. The blanket slipped from her shoulders, but she was unaware that she had lost it. The tremors in her legs expanded to her arms and chest. Eventually she found herself approaching each step as a discrete event, isolated in time from the one before it and the one which would come next. During that instant, nothing existed for her except the effort of heaving herself upward.

  Then finally she discovered that her legs no longer shook and her cheek lay along a sheared plane of stone. Flakes of mica sent small gleams of sunlight into her eyes, but she could hardly distinguish them from the dissociated dance of anoxia. Had the air become so thin already? And why had the sun not warmed the chill from these rocks? She seemed to enjoy their cool touch, but could not understand it.

  There was something missing, she knew that, but it eluded her until Liand grasped her arms and urged her upright. “Linden, come,” he panted softly, “the rift is nigh, you will be able to rest soon,” and she realized that she had stopped moving. Her legs must have failed without her knowledge or consent.

  Stunned by exertion, she let Liand help her to her feet.

  Anele had apparently disappeared, perhaps tr
anslated upward and out of reach by a rush of Earthpower; but Somo stood nearby. The pinto had flecks of froth on its nostrils: its chest heaved for breath. Still it had more strength than she did.

  She had lost her son. She would have wept, but she had no tears.

  Feigning a confidence which he palpably did not feel, Liand told her, “Here,” and placed her hand on one of the bindings which secured his mount’s packs. “Hold here. Somo will support you. The way is not far. In the shade of the cliffs, we will rest.”

  Obediently she closed her fingers on the leather. She may have nodded: she could not be sure. Like her legs, her neck seemed to twitch for reasons of its own; but she had gone numb, and its motions lay beyond her awareness.

  After that, the instances of effort which had defined her became a blur, and she climbed without recognizing what she did, drawn upward by Somo’s strength and Liand’s courage; and by the knowledge—the only thing she knew—that she needed to grow stronger.

  When she returned to herself, she lay among boulders in the shadow of high cliffs, one near her head, the other a stone’s cast from her feet. Far above her, the sky still held the sun, and would for some time yet. But where she lay, a deep gloaming covered her, and all her courage had fallen away.

  Liand stood nearby, watching her; making no attempt to hide his anxiety. When she met his gaze at last, he knelt beside her. Gently he put her hand on the throat of a waterskin. Then he reached under her arms to help her sit up.

  “First water,” he said as if he knew what she needed. “Then bread. Later I will give you meat and fruit.”

  Sitting, she felt cold air tug through the bullet hole in her shirt, noticed its dry touch on her forehead. Her skin was no longer damp. She did not particularly need water. Or she had stopped sweating some time ago—

  Perhaps that explained her weakness.

  With Liand’s help, she guided the waterskin to her mouth, drank a few swallows. Almost instantly, sweat seemed to spring from all her pores at once.