With Liand and Stave a few paces behind her, each bearing two or three bundles and bedrolls, she approached the sun-dappled obscurity of Salva Gildenbourne.
She did not understand why Kastenessen was wasting his time on an undefended forest when he could have torn out the Land’s heart by attacking Andelain. Surely that would have been the most effective way to counter her opposition and ruin her hopes? Under Melenkurion Skyweir, Roger had spoken of A portal to eternity. He had told her, You’ve done everything conceivable to help us become gods. Yet now he and Kastenessen appeared to have no larger objective than her death.
She looked over her shoulder to confirm that Branl and Galt were ready to follow Stave and Liand. Then she secured her grip on the Staff and took Anele into the thick veil of the trees.
As her eyes adjusted to Salva Gildenbourne’s crepuscular atmosphere, she found that Mahrtiir and Clyme had already passed beyond a curve in the rill. But even if the watercourse had run straight, the Manethrall and the Humbled might have been veiled by the tangle of brush and saplings that arched over the stream. Here and there, small instances of sunshine filtered through the leaves; and in those etched rays—narrow shafts of light made precise and precious by shadows—gnats and other insects danced like motes of dust. At first, the plash of her boots in the risible current seemed loud. But gradually the jungle swallowed the implications of her passage. She could not hear Anele’s breathing: she could hardly recognize her own. She moved through a louring silence as if she had inadvertently crossed the borders of deafness or substance.
When she looked back now, she could not see Galt and Branl, or the place where they had entered Salva Gildenbourne. Liand’s features, and Stave’s, were only distinct when a moment of light touched them.
For a time, she and Anele walked down the watercourse with comparative ease. At intervals, they had to duck under hanging branches or sidestep fallen logs, but they did not encounter any significant obstructions. As they followed their gnarled path, however, they began to meet trees that had toppled across the stream. The roots of the trees had been undermined by changes in the watercourse, perhaps, or the trunks had been struck by lightning, or they had collapsed and died under the burden of too much time. Some had failed so long ago that they had sunk into the streambed, feeding moss and mushrooms with their decay. Others were more recent victims of the forest’s unchecked growth, and they bristled with branches as rampant as thickets. Linden and Anele could not pass without scrambling over or crawling under the trunks, forcing their way through the boughs.
More and more, Salva Gildenbourne resembled a maze. Linden could not tell how much time had passed, or in which direction she was moving. In spite of the woodland’s naturalness, its fundamental untamed health, she seemed to wander a fatal wilderland, trackless and involuted, where she was doomed to trudge in circles until her courage drained away. She only knew that she was making progress when Bhapa or Pahni appeared suddenly to relate that they had found no hazards: no lurking Cavewights or other predators; no scent or impression of the skurj; no sign that any other sentient beings had joined the chary animals and birds among the trees.
Whenever Bhapa paused to speak with Linden, he assured her that Mahrtiir was unharmed and fearless in the distance ahead. But Pahni lingered for Liand rather than for Linden. She whispered to him privately, confirming that he was well; promising him her utmost care.
The brief visits of the Cords comforted Linden. When they disappeared back into the jungle, she felt an unreasoning fear that she would not see them again. They were Ramen, highly skilled: she did not doubt that they understood caution better than she did. Nonetheless her apprehension grew as she advanced into the dusk and misdirection of Salva Gildenbourne.
She was not worried about Cavewights now: not here, amid the massed impediments of the forest. They would not be able to fight effectively. In addition, she suspected that Roger was too craven to assail her alone. He would insist on allies, support; overwhelming force. Nor was she concerned about wolves or other natural predators. If they were not mastered and compelled, they would instinctively keep their distance from unfamiliar prey.
And she could discern no other dangers. Riotous growth and decay surrounded her: old monolithic cedars, contorted cypresses behung with moss, broad-boughed Gilden vivid and golden where flecks of sunlight touched them, lush ferns and creepers, occasional aliantha and other stubborn shrubs. Such things filled her senses; walled her away from everything except the stream and her immediate companions. Even time faded: she was no longer sure of it. Whenever Liand passed her a bit of cheese or fruit or bread, she was surprised to find that she was hungry.
Still her trepidation deepened like the imposed dusk of the jungle. And Anele felt as she did—or his nerves were attuned to other dimensions of hazard and knowledge. He became increasingly agitated. He flung his head from side to side, and his hands trembled. For no apparent reason, he slapped his face as if he sought to rouse himself from a stupor. Linden heard or tasted small fluctuations in his mental state; but she could not interpret them.
Then, in a crook of the stream, she and the old man began to cross a wide sandbar littered with the moldering remains of a scrub oak or a stunted sycamore. Abruptly he clutched at her shoulder. Grimaces and flinching passed like darker shadows over his obscured features: his arms shook with the force of an intention which he seemed unable to express.
“Anele? What is it?”
At once, Liand moved closer. Stave stepped back to study the jungle.
Bhapa and Pahni had given no warning. Linden could not remember when she had last seen them.
Anele shuddered. He dug his toes deeper into the sand, or into the decayed and crumbling deadwood, Linden did not know which.
“Linden Avery,” he whispered. His voice was hoarse with strain. “Chosen. Hear me.”
“I’m listening.” She feared that he had been possessed again. But if some potent being had slipped through the cracks in his mind, she could not feel its presence. He may have been speaking for the sand, or the rotting wood; or for Salva Gildenbourne.
Urgently he hissed. “Only rock and wood know the truth of the Earth. The truth of life. But wood is too brief. Morinmoss redeemed the covenant, the white gold wielder. The Forestal sang, and Morinmoss answered. Now those days are lost. All vastness is forgotten. Unsustained, wood cannot remember the lore of the Colossus, the necessary forbidding of evils—”
Anele broke off; wrenched himself away from Linden. With one hand and then the other, he slapped his face. Then he scrubbed at his seamed forehead, his milky eyes, his weathered cheeks, as if he were struggling to wipe away his derangement.
“Linden,” Liand murmured, “Linden,” but he did not seem to want her attention. Rather he gave the impression that he was trying to remind her of who she was.
“I’m here, Anele.” Linden stifled an impulse to summon fire from the Staff, cast away shadows. The light of Law might enable him to speak more clearly. But she did not want to announce her location. “Go on. I’m listening.”
Morinmoss redeemed the covenant—?
The old man threw out his arms as if he were opening his heart to the forest. “There is too much. Power and peril. Malevolence. Ruin. And too little time. The last days of the Land are counted.” His voice became a growl of distress. “Without forbidding, there is too little time.”
He wedged his feet deeper into the damp sand and rot.
“Anele.” Linden reached out to take hold of his arm. She did not know how else to steady him, anchor him, except by repeating his name. “Are we in danger? Are the skurj coming?”
Anele, make sense.
Flatly Stave announced, “I descry no threat. The Manethrall and the Humbled report nothing. The Cords are distant, but they do not convey alarm.”
As if in response, Anele urged Linden. “Seek deep rock. The oldest stone. You must. Only there the memory remains.”
She stared at him. Memory—? Did he mean the ancient
lore which had been lost when the sentience of the One Forest failed, and the last Forestal was gone? Did he believe that the bones of the Earth remembered what the trees had forgotten?
Did the sand into which he had pushed his feet believe it?
“I don’t understand,” she protested. “The Elohim taught that lore to the One Forest.” Anele had told her so himself. “They remember it even if the trees don’t. And they obviously care,” although she could not explain their actions—or their inaction. “Otherwise they wouldn’t have tried to warn the Land. Why can’t we just ask them?”
Anele gnashed his teeth. “Forget understanding,” he snapped. “Forget purpose.” His eyes were hints, nacre and frenetic, in his shadowed face. “Forget the Elohim. They, too, are imperiled. Become as trees, the roots of trees. Seek deep rock.”
“Anele, please.” Linden wanted to swear at him. “I’m not the one who can read stone. You are. Even if I could reach deep enough,” even if she had not lost her only opportunity under Melenkurion Skyweir. “I can’t hear rock.
“I have to go to Andelain. I have to believe in what I’m doing. Covenant told me to find him. I don’t know where else to look.”
Briefly the old man pulled at his bedraggled hair. Then he appeared to make a supreme effort, as if he were clasping at lucidity that leaked through his fingers like water; and his voice changed. For a moment, a handful of words, he sounded like Sunder; like his own father, eerie and sorrowing.
“He did not know of your intent.”
Then he jerked his feet out of the sand and stamped into the stream to wash them clean of perceptions which he could not articulate. In a small voice that reminded Linden of Hollian’s, he murmured. “We are not alone. Others also are lost.”
After that, he lapsed into aimless babbling, as inchoate as the secrets of the rill.
Damn it, Linden breathed to herself. Damn it. She already knew that Sunder and Hollian did not wish her to enter Andelain. Anele had been completely sane when he had spoken for his long-dead parents. He had held the orcrest, and could not have been mistaken. But everything else—
Forget the Elohim. They, too, are imperiled.
The Elohim—? The people who had called themselves the heart of the Earth? The people who had said, We stand at the center of all that lives and moves and is?
Others also are lost.
Only rock and wood know the truth—
“Linden,” Liand suggested quietly, “perhaps it would be well to offer him the orcrest? Without it, he cannot speak plainly.”
She shook her head. “I wish. But we can’t risk calling attention to ourselves. We don’t know what the skurj can sense.”
Or Kastenessen—
Studying the old man, Liand nodded sadly.
When Stave urged her to continue, Linden took Anele’s arm and drew him with her along the watercourse.
Darker shadows merged into each other. The flickers of light between the leaves grew more evanescent and rare, implying that the sun had fallen far down the western sky. Still her sense of time remained vague, obscured by shade and the stream’s writhen path. She could have believed that she had spent an hour or days in Salva Gildenbourne, and had drawn no nearer to the boundaries of Andelain. Eventually she might find that time had no meaning at all; that Roger and Kastenessen and the Despiser had nothing to fear because she had snared herself in a place from which she could not escape.
For a while, she continued walking only because she knew that she had no choice. Her steps became an apparently endless trudge over slick stones and damp sand. The mounting gloom seemed to swallow her mind as the trees swallowed sound. She was beginning to think that she was too tired to go on much farther when Stave announced suddenly. “Cord Bhapa approaches in haste.”
Anele tugged against her grasp on his arm, but she did not let him go.
“Has he found some sign of the skurj?” asked Liand tensely.
“I do not know.” Stave’s voice seemed to fade behind Linden. He had stopped to scrutinize the jungle. “He is not Haruchai. I discern only his alarm.”
They, too, are imperiled, Linden repeated to herself for no particular reason. Others also are lost. Someday she would be tired enough to forgive herself. She hoped that that day would come soon.
Then Anele broke free of her, and she felt a belated pang of anxiety. She heard him splash through the stream, but she was no longer able to see him: the shadows were too thick. Instead she felt him scramble westward out of the watercourse, fleeing into darkness.
“Liand!” she called softly. “Go after him. Find Pahni.” Intentionally or not, Anele was heading toward the young Cord. “Keep him safe.”
The skurj terrified the old man. After his fashion, he had good reason. And Linden could not think of any other danger—apart from a caesure—that might frighten him into abandoning his protectors.
Liand paused only long enough to drop his burdens beside the rill. Then he sped after Anele.
Wheeling, Linden located Stave more by his impassive aura than by his vague shape. She was about to ask him where Bhapa was when she felt the Cord’s approach through the undergrowth—
—his approach and his fear. He was close to panic; closer than he had been three and a half thousand years ago, when he had returned, seriously injured, to describe the advance of the Demondim. He had never seen such monsters before. Among them, they had wielded the emerald bane of the Illearth Stone. Yet they had not scared him this badly.
“Clyme returns,” Stave told her, “responding to the Cord’s alarm. The Manethrall cannot move as swiftly. He has elected to scout eastward alone, seeking to discover more of this peril.” A moment later, the Haruchai added, “Branl also draws nigh. Like the Manethrall, Galt searches to the east.”
Linden hoped that the Humbled would keep their distance until she knew what she was up against. And she did not want Mahrtiir left alone. But she doubted that Clyme, Branl, and Galt would heed her wishes.
Her fingers itched on the written surface of the Staff. Its shaft was visible only because it was darker, blacker, than the masked dusk.
Bhapa seemed to rush toward her headlong. In his place, she would have tripped and fallen; crashed into tree trunks; blinded herself on whipping branches. But he was Ramen, and his craft did not desert him. Sprinting, he slipped through the jungle and sprang down into the watercourse.
Linden could not see his expression, but she smelled his sweat and desperation. His aura was as loud as a shout.
“Ringthane.” With a fierce effort, he controlled his breathing. “I have felt the skurj.”
She had expected this; assumed it. Nevertheless Bhapa’s words inspired an atavistic dread. On some irrational level, she must have hoped—
Gritting her teeth, she asked. “How many? Can you tell?”
“I felt one. But—” Frustration sharpened the edges of Bhapa’s fear. “Ringthane, I cannot be certain. Such ravening and rage are altogether beyond my knowledge. Its seeming is of a multitude. And it does not advance through the forest. Rather it flows beneath the roots of the trees. I was forewarned of its presence when I beheld leaves withering for no clear cause, and with unnatural speed, as though years of blight had passed within moments. When I then pressed my fingers to the earth, I felt—”
The Cord shuddered. Hoarsely he concluded. “I believe that I have outrun it. But its passage is swift, and it does not turn aside. I fear that it is aware of us”—he faltered—“of you. Of your powers, Ringthane.”
“The skurj draws nigh.” Stave’s voice held no inflection. “It is but one, as the Cord has discerned. And it does not rise. If it does not alter its course, it will pass below us.”
Aware—? Linden thought, scrambling to understand. Below us? The fires which she and her company had seen earlier had been at least twenty leagues away. If one of the skurj had crossed that distance unerringly, it must have been guided somehow.
It had been directed by its master. Or Bhapa was right: the monster coul
d sense—
But she had not made any use of the Staff.
Below us?
Anele! Instinctively she whirled toward the west. She was merely human. Perceptions attuned to theurgy would not detect her unless she exerted her Staff or Covenant’s ring. The Haruchai would be more noticeable than she was; easier to spot. But Anele was full of Earthpower, rife with it: he had been born to it. Although his heritage was deeply submerged, he might be a beacon for any extraordinary percipience. And if he had stepped on bare dirt, even for an instant—
As she searched the evening for some hint of the old man, she saw a glimmer of white brilliance through the dark trunks and brush; and her heart seemed to stop.
Orcrest. Liand was using the orcrest.
Oh, God!
Below us. Below Stave and her. Liand’s Sunstone would attract Kastenessen’s creature. Trying to calm Anele—or perhaps simply to light their way—Liand had inadvertently exposed himself to the skurj.
Yelling, “Watch out!” she snatched power from the runes of the Staff; sent cornflower fire gusting out along the watercourse. “I’m going to try to stop that thing!” For an instant, the stream blazed as if the current had become incandescent. Then she concentrated her flame and drove it into the ground, down through sand and soil and stone, to intercept the skurj before it passed.
Stunned, Bhapa stared at her. But Stave appeared to understand. Grabbing the Cord’s arm, he drew Bhapa away from her; out to the fringes of her fire.
At first, she could not feel the monstrous creature. Her boots muffled the sensitivity of her feet, and her nerves had not found the pitch of ravening and rage which had appalled Bhapa. Urgently she sent Earthpower and Law deeper and deeper into the earth, deeper than the oldest roots of the most thirsty trees, and still no hunger responded to her flames.
Then Stave shouted. “Ware, Chosen! The skurj rises!”
In front of her, the watercourse spat filth in a spray of water, rocks, sand. The soil of its banks began to seethe as if the trees and brush were suppurating. Leaves overhead withered and charred. At the same time, she smelled gangrene; a miasma of sickness and rot; necrosis. Disease boiled upward as though dirt and stone and wood were dying flesh.