The Runes of the Earth

  Linden’s legs folded under her, but she hardly noticed it; hardly recognized that she would have fallen if Liand had not upheld her. Relief had taken the last of her resolve. She might yet recover from the effects of Kevin’s Dirt.

  Somewhere she found the strength to say, “Thank you,” for more gifts than she could name.

  Then she let herself sleep.

  This time she did not dream. Perhaps she had moved beyond the reach of dreams.

  Hungers woke her, several of them, the need for food among others. Her arms ached as though she had spent the night longing to embrace her son. She craved the necessary sustenance of comprehension. And an inchoate anticipation ran in her veins. She opened her eyes with the suddenness of surprise, like a woman who had been told that the world around her had been made new.

  She found herself lying on bracken under the shelter of a lean-to in the first grey promise of dawn. The air was cold enough to sting her skin; but blankets and warmth enclosed her. Someone—Liand, probably—had put her to bed.

  When she raised her head to look around, everything that she saw and felt had been transformed.

  The dimness of dawn shrouded details; and yet she knew beyond question that the season was spring. The air itself told her: it whispered of thawing snows and new growth; of readiness inspired to germination. The bracken assured her that it had dried and fallen long ago, and would sprout again; and dew wet the hardy grass in profusion, already restoring the soil’s life.

  The Ramen were up before her, moving about the camp in preparation for food and departure. The wide sky did not yet shed enough light to let her study their faces; but she needed no illumination to discern their essential fortitude, or to feel the clarity of their devotion. She could see beyond question that they were a people who kept faith: as unwavering in their service as Haruchai, and as unwilling to compromise.

  Yet they were more human than Stave’s kind. They lacked the surpassing strength of Haruchai; did not live as long. And their fidelity took another form. They were not men and women who aspired to measure themselves against the perils of the wide Earth. They nurtured no ambitions which might seduce them. Instead they strove only to remain who they were, generation after generation, without doubt or hesitation.

  Gazing at them from her warm bed, Linden felt both humbled and exultant. Do something they don’t expect. Somehow she had found her way to people who would give her every conceivable aid—as long as what she asked did not interfere with their deeper commitments. What those commitments might be, she could not guess, and did not try. At this moment, she was content to know that she could trust the Ramen.

  While she slept, she had regained her health-sense. Now life and Earthpower throbbed palpably beneath the surface of all she beheld. Even in the crepuscular air, her surroundings and her companions were lambent with implications. The sensations of percipience sang in her nerves like joy.

  Pushing back her blankets, she arose into the chill to see how Sahah fared; and as she did so the mountains seemed to spring up around her as if they had been called into being by the dawn.

  Beyond the escarpment that sheltered the camp, peaks reached into the heavens on all sides. These were the lower and more modest crests which buttressed the Land, rather than the higher bastions, hoary with age and rime, deeper in the Southron Range. Few of them still held ice and snow, and those only in patches which seldom felt the sun. Nonetheless they reared around the camp like guardians, massive and vertiginous: the true titans of the Earth. The air drifting down their rugged sides tasted like an elixir, sharp and pristine. With their bluff granite and their enduring hearts, they formed a place of safety in their midst.

  Splashing her boots with dew, she strode toward the campfire where she had left Sahah; and even the heavy aching of her muscles could not blunt her anticipation. Torn fibers and strained ligaments merely hurt. They did not dim the restoration of her senses.

  At once, Liand called her name, waved, and hastened to join her. Seeing him, she knew instantly that he had been awake for some time, too eager and young to sleep long in the company of Ramen. And she recognized that he, too, had felt the renewed touch of health-sense. He reveled in discernment as if he were exalted; drunk on the new depth and significance of everything around him. Excitement seemed to crow and preen in every line of his form.

  “Linden,” he called joyously, “is it not wondrous?” Clearly he felt too many wonders to name them all.

  Smiling at his pleasure, she continued toward the campfire.

  She was still ten paces away when she began to feel Sahah’s wracked distress.

  Manethrall Hami and two of her Cords squatted beside the woman; and Linden saw at a glance that they had been there all night: their vigil haunted their eyes. Hami’s matter-of-fact manner the previous day had conveyed the impression that she did not greatly value the lives of her Cords; that other considerations outweighed individual life and death. Now, however, Linden discerned the truth. The Ramen lived precarious lives, threatened at all times by privation, predators, and self-sacrifice: they could not afford to bewail the cost of their convictions. Nevertheless the bonds which sustained them were strong and enduring.

  One look told her that Sahah’s grasp on life had become tenuous, stretched as thin as a whisper. Fever glazed her eyes, and pain had cut lines like galls into her cheeks. Internal bleeding left her skin the color of spilth, as if her flesh might slump from her bones at any moment.

  The state of her abdomen cried out to Linden’s senses.

  It could have been worse; far worse. Care and amanibhavam had accomplished this: Sahah still lived.

  Antibiotics and transfusions might yet save her.

  But the left side of her belly was swollen and seeping, crimson with sepsis. The internal ooze of bile had undone the effects of hot water and amanibhavam. Infection ate like acid at her fading endurance.

  The Cords whom Hami had sent for hurtloam might return by midday; but Sahah would not last so long.

  “Ringthane.” The Manethrall’s voice was a rasp of weariness. “We have considered opening her wound to apply more amanibhavam.” She showed Linden a small bowl of the Ramen’s sovereign poultice. In water the pulped leaves emitted such potency that the scent stung Linden’s nostrils. “But I determined to await your counsel. Hampered in discernment, you have shown that you are capable of much. If you are now able to see, perhaps you are also able to tell us what we must do.”

  Pride made what she wanted to say difficult for her. The previous day she had discounted Linden’s offer of help.

  “Three Cords have fallen at my word. They are honored among us, for they were valiant against the kresh. Yet they were Ramen, flesh and bone, and we are too few for the promises we have made. If you possess any lore or power which may retrieve Sahah from death—” For a moment, her eyes misted as though she might weep.

  Linden turned away to spare Hami the sight of her own uncertainty. The Ramen knew that she had power. They had felt the presence of Covenant’s ring under her shirt.

  She could read Sahah’s condition in frightening detail. Every rent tissue, every oozing duct, every mangled vessel was plain to her percipience; as vivid as a dissection. And everywhere within the Cord’s abdomen thronged the killing secretions of bile and pus. Sahah’s belly might have been the Great Swamp in miniature, its waters and growths and life made toxic by the leakage of Mount Thunder’s terrible banes.

  Studying Sahah’s plight, Linden groaned to herself. She was a doctor, for God’s sake. She was supposed to know how to heal people.

  She had done so in the past—

  Long ago aboard Starfare’s Gem, she had once saved the life of a crushed Giant using only her health-sense. She had reached into him with her percipience, had possessed him, and caused his own nerves and muscles to pull closed some of his wounds, stanch some of his bleeding. In that way, she had kept him alive long enough for other aid to reach him.

  But he had been a Giant, inconceivably st
rong by human standards. And she had rushed to his side immediately, before his condition could worsen. And his life had been sustained by the healing vitality of diamondraught. And there had been no danger of infection: no polluted fangs and claws; no spilled bile; no punishing climb up the rift.

  Her health-sense alone would not suffice. Sahah could not be saved without power: without hurtloam or the Staff of Law.

  Or wild magic.

  Linden had already demonstrated to herself that she did not understand how to access white gold.

  But even if she had been a master of argence, she might still have failed. Covenant’s ring was too puissant: its forces could more readily gouge out mountainsides than cleanse infections or seal internal wounds. And he had taught her that wild magic grew more rampant with use, not more delicate or subtle.

  Yet the Manethrall and the Cords watched her as Liand did, as if she had led them to expect miracles.

  Finally, because she did not know what else to do, Linden looked around the camp for Stave.

  He stood apart from the Ramen as though he had been there all night, alone, and had no need for rest or friendship. He may have been waiting for her, however: as soon as she met his gaze, he came to join her.

  The Haruchai had never been known as healers. They lived by their skills, or they died, and did not count the cost.

  “Stave,” she said when he had acknowledged her with a nod. “Manethrall.” She could not have explained what she had in mind. For all she knew, she would be unable to make it work. For Sahah’s sake, however, she did not hesitate. “I want to try something.”

  Mutely Hami proffered her bowl.

  Linden shook her head. “Not that. She’s too weak. It’ll kill her. First we need to make her stronger.

  “Do either of you know where the ur-viles went?”

  The Manethrall shook her head; and Stave said, “They were ever secret creatures, more accustomed to caverns and warrens than to open sky. I cannot guess where they have hidden themselves, but I deem that you”—his tone implied, even you—“would be loathe to follow.”

  Linden dismissed his point with a jerk of her head. “Can you summon them?” she asked Hami.

  Again the woman shook her head.

  “Then how were they brought to our aid?” Liand asked impulsively.

  The Manethrall shrugged. “They come and go as they wish. I know not how your plight came to their notice. We do not speak their tongue.”

  Linden stared at Hami. For a moment, she heard a vibration that sounded like dishonesty in the Manethrall’s tone. Something in her response was meant to mislead—

  Yet Linden saw immediately that Hami had told the literal truth: she did not know how to call the ur-viles. The Manethrall wished to conceal or avoid something; but it had no relevance to Sahah’s straits. Hami might well have sacrificed all her Cords in battle, but she would risk none of them for the sake of an untruth.

  “Then I’ll have to do it.” Abruptly Linden started to walk away from her companions. “Keep everyone back. I’ve never done this before. I don’t know what’s going to happen.” Before anyone could question her, she headed out of the camp away from the escarpment.

  She had no particular direction in mind: she only wanted a little distance. At her back, she heard Liand object to being left behind. The Manethrall’s command restrained him from following, however, if Stave’s did not.

  Anxious and uncertain, Linden paced the wiry grass until she felt in the sensitive skin between her shoulder blades that she had reached a safe remove. There she stopped, facing away from the camp. Because she had no lore to guide her, and no experience, she sank to her knees. Perhaps that suppliant stance would convey what words could not.

  “I don’t know how to do this,” she told the dawn and the mountain breeze. “I don’t know if you can hear me. Or if you care. But you’ve already helped us once.

  “And once you saved the world.”

  As she spoke, she slowly closed her eyes; turned her concentration inward. Without watching what she did, she pulled Covenant’s ring from under her shirt and folded it in her cupped palms as if she were praying. Somewhere hidden within her lay a door which could be opened on silver and conflagration. She knew that: otherwise she would already be dead. But it seemed to occupy a place in her heart and mind which she could only approach as if by misdirection. She had not yet learned how to find that door at will.

  “You know who I am.” She spoke softly. If the ur-viles could or would not hear her, no shout would reach them. “With this white gold ring and my own hand, I used Vain to make a new Staff of Law, as you intended.” Vain had been given to Covenant, but he had acknowledged and served her. “With your help, I went as far as I could go against the Despiser.”

  Far enough to heal the ravages of the Sunbane. But only Covenant’s self-sacrifice had sufficed to contain Lord Foul’s malice.

  “Now I’m back. This time I intend to do more.”

  She thought of Jeremiah, alone and tormented. Of Anele’s terrors and bereavements. Of Lord Foul’s words in the old man’s mouth. Of a yellow shroud tainting the Land.

  She had heard Covenant say while she dreamed, Trust yourself.

  And within her a door which she could not find shifted on its hinges.

  “I want your help again,” she continued, “if you’ll give it. Not against the Despiser this time,” although she sought that as well. “One of the Ramen is dying. She needs vitrim. You can save her.

  “In Vain’s name I ask it, and my own. Hear me, please. Otherwise a young woman,” hardly more than a girl, “who fought with you against the kresh is going to die.”

  Reaching out as if blindly with the fingers of her volition, the hand of choice, she grasped for the handle and unfurled white flame into the new day.

  It could have been a high sheet of fire or a small tendril: she neither knew nor cared. Only a moment of wild magic; scarcely more than a heartbeat. Then she opened her hands and let Covenant’s ring fall; left it dangling against her chest. Still with her eyes closed, she bowed her forehead to the grass.

  If the ur-viles helped her now, they might do so again.

  They might help her save Jeremiah.

  She heard nothing except the mild curiosity of the breeze; felt nothing except the gravid silence of the mountains. Yet when she raised her head and opened her eyes, she saw an ur-vile standing before her on the grass with an iron cup in its hands.

  In the burgeoning dawn, the aroma of vitrim—dusky, thick as silt—could not be mistaken.

  11.

  Hints

  The Ramen broke camp when Linden and Liand had eaten a brief meal. Then they set off along the escarpment, traveling generally eastward toward a narrow gorge between two of the surrounding mountains.

  Somo had arrived during the night, guided by Ramen. The mustang appeared hale and ready, undamaged by the difficulties of the rift. That visibly erased Liand’s last doubts about the Ramen. Now he shared their company, and Linden’s, with a young man’s eagerness.

  Sahah they left behind with a few of her companions to care for her. Under the sustaining influence of vitrim, the injured Cord had rallied. She could not be moved: her life still hung precariously from the strings of her native toughness. Nevertheless the infection in her belly and the fever in her eyes had receded. She sipped water as well as vitrim willingly. At intervals, her mind cleared enough to let her speak. Linden believed—and Manethrall Hami agreed—that Sahah would live until the Cords who had been sent for hurtloam returned.

  As the company moved, one of the Cords retrieved Anele from the mountainside above the scarp. Linden had noticed the old man’s absence only after her concern for Sahah had eased. She had felt little alarm, however, although she needed Anele in ways which she could hardly name: the Manethrall had promised that the Ramen would not lose him. When Linden asked after him, Hami answered that he had roused early and wandered away, she could not say why: to avoid the Master’s presence, perhaps, or to
commune with his demons alone. In any case, he rejoined Linden and the Ramen without any obvious reluctance. As he accompanied them toward the gorge, he mumbled to himself incomprehensibly, as if he were engaged in a debate that no one else could hear or understand.

  He had been reclaimed by madness, and his blindness had the distracted cast of a man who wandered among ghosts and saw only death.

  With her renewed senses, Linden might have tried to pierce his confusion. But she feared the prices they both might pay for such an intrusion. Any possession was a form of psychic violence which might damage the last shards of his sanity. And she herself would be in danger from his madness. When she had entered Covenant years ago to free him from the imposed stasis of the Elohim, his blankness had overcome her, and for a time she had been as lost as Jeremiah. Ceer had died protecting her because she had been so completely absent from herself.

  For the present, at least, she was unwilling to take the risk. Her own emotional state was too frangible.

  Her success with Covenant’s ring had given her a grim, febrile exhilaration. She had found the door to power within herself, and would be able to do so again. In addition, the restoration of her senses seemed to fill her with possibilities. To that extent, at least, she had regained her ability to make effective choices. To influence her own fate—and Jeremiah’s. She was no longer entirely dependent on the willingness of others to guide and aid her.

  Unfortunately her more profound dilemmas remained unchanged. Beneath her transient joy lurked frustration and despair like a buried lake of magma, a potential volcano. Every step that she took in the company of the Ramen, like every tale that she heard—like wild magic itself—was necessary to her. Yet none of them brought her nearer to Jeremiah.

  If her muscles had not stiffened to an acute soreness during the night, so that merely walking demanded most of her concentration, she might have been defenseless against the larger difficulties of her situation.