The Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Book One (30 page)

“But if you remain free, apt and able to satisfy me, my release is assured. Your
attempts to oppose me will secure it. The Arch will be torn asunder, and I will reclaim my rightful place among the eternal Heavens. My Enemy will be unable to thwart me.”

Cunningly the rank voice added, “There is more, but of my deeper purpose I will not speak.”

Then the Despiser stated brusquely, “It must therefore be plain that I do not desire your capture. And it must surely be plain as well that you will fail to evade the
Haruchai
if you are not restored to your fullest strength. You require hurtloam. The
Haruchai
have ensured that no lore remains which might aid you. Only Earthpower will suffice.”

Linden stared at him, momentarily horrified and transfixed. Forces have been set in motion—But then she fought down her dismay. Gritting her teeth, she demanded, “Stop it. Don't be so damn cryptic. It's petty. And you're wasting time.

“Just tell me what you've done.”

Anele's mouth twisted, although his trapped soul made no sound.
“Done?”
the Despiser chortled. “I?” His delight wrung Anele's scrawny frame. “Naught. Apart from the claiming of your vacant son, I have merely whispered a word of counsel here and there, and awaited events.

“The
caesures
are none of mine. Also I had no hand in your blindness, for I did not utter the fine riposte of Kevin's Dirt. If you fear what has been
done,
think on the
Elohim
and feel despair. They serve me as do the
Haruchai,
unwittingly, and in arrogance.”

Linden muttered a curse. “And you expect me to
believe
you? You didn't send that storm?”

Anele's hands jerked to his head, pulled at his scraps of hair. “Shame upon you, woman. Shame and excruciation! You undervalue my enmity. That pitiable assault serves me well enough, but it is too crude, far too crude. I would not deign to raise my hand for such an unsubtle ploy.”

Not?
Shaken by uncertainty, Linden fell silent. In this, at least, she did believe her foe. Lord Foul was not one to refuse credit for his actions. He enjoyed his own malice too much.

Yet if he did not send the storm—

She was weak; too weak. She could not summon strength which she did not possess.

—who did?

How many enemies did Mithil Stonedown have?

For a moment longer, Anele squirmed as though his guts were being torn. Then he whirled away, sprinting for the Mithil.

As he ran, Lord Foul called back at her, “Refuse me and be damned! That you will be captured is certain! Then you will be helpless while your son remains in my hands!”

She had been holding her fears at bay: now they broke past her restraint. She had so little power, and had lost so much time. The river might be her only chance to avoid the Masters.

Stiffly she let the slope carry her downward after Anele.

Ahead of her, the old man sprawled on his belly at the edge of the watercourse. His head stretched past the rim of the grass: he might have been searching for his lost mind among the ripples and eddies of the river. From her angle, the current appeared to twist past within reach of his face.

One step at a time, she closed the gap; jerked to a stop at his side. “What now, Foul?” she panted heavily. “Do you tell fortunes by staring into riverbeds?”

“More than you know, fool,” retorted the Despiser. “Men commonly find their fates graven within the rock, but yours is written in water.”

Then his arm flapped, pointing downward. “There,” he announced, “as I promised.” An undercurrent of distress or loathing marred his glee. “Hurtloam.”

Ah, shit. The last of Linden's resistance leaked away, and she folded to her knees. Hurtloam, is it? She felt herself falling into a defeated weariness.
Now
what was she supposed to do? Trust the
Despiser
?

Yet Anele's distress was terrible to behold. He needed to be healed of his vulnerability, freed from madness, more than he needed anything else in life; perhaps more than he needed to live.

That would never happen while the
Haruchai
kept him, and she remained blind.

She had promised to protect him. And he was her only link to her son. The old man was possessed by Lord Foul, who also held Jeremiah. Whenever the Despiser taunted her through Anele, he connected her, however tenuously, to her son. If she could
see,
she might be able to reach Jeremiah—

In fact, Anele might be the only link she would ever have.

Below her, the Mithil complicated the air with whispers of escape. Her panting silence seemed to make her companion frantic. Grimaces and revulsion clenched his features as he pointed downward again. “There!” His eyes glistened with white terror. “Are
you
mad as well? It is
hurtloam,
I tell you.”

You require healing.

Half hypnotized by his intensity, Linden looked over the riverbank; but she saw nothing to account for his insistence. Absorbed by its own concerns, the river moiled past little more than an arm's length below the grassy rim of its bank. Where Anele pointed, in a notch between slick stones at the lapping edge of the water, lay a roughly triangular patch of fine sand. She could not distinguish it from other patches of sand nearby, among similar stones.

The murmuring of the water filled her head.

“There!”
Lord Foul repeated; but it might have been Anele who pleaded with her.
“This doddering cripple is rife with Earthpower, which I loathe. In this he cannot be mistaken.”

He had told her that hurtloam would renew her health-sense. Without it, she might never learn how to use Covenant's ring. Only percipience offered her any hope—

The Despiser sought harm and freedom. If hurtloam could truly restore her, then her foe had something to gain by offering it to her: something virulent and dangerous.

But she also might gain something. She might be able to turn his designs against him.

Do something they don't expect.

Holding her breath to contain the clamor of her heart, Linden stretched her arm over the rim of the bank as if she had at last become sure of herself.

With her palm, she touched the damp triangle of sand—and felt nothing.

Anele had squeezed his eyes shut. His head bobbed furiously, signaling lunatic assent.

Carefully she pushed her fingers into the sand; scooped up a handful.

For a moment, she felt only cool moisture against her skin.

Her companion rolled over onto his back; covered his face with his gnarled hands. He made whimpering sounds that she could not hear.

Then Linden saw a faint gleam like a spark in the sand. She nearly winced in surprise as spangles of light began to tingle over her palm. Glints of gold seemed to catch the sunlight, swirling like cast embers or the tiny reflections of Wraiths.

As they swirled, they spread a sparkling sensation into her hand. Bits and motes of vitality soaked her fingers and palm, then swept along her forearm to her elbow and shoulder. Involuntarily, hardly aware of what she did, she raised the sand closer to her face so that she could peer into it; and gleaming like a taste of renewal expanded into her chest, wiping away weariness and exertion as though they had never touched her.

Soon the exuberant tang of Earthpower, numinous and ineffable, thronged throughout her senses, lifting her into a realm of perception as keen as crystal, as vibrant as the language of the sun.

From her hand to her arm, from her shoulder to her ribs and thighs, one by one her bruises evaporated as though they had been blessed away. Her abrasions faded. Palpably caressed, her torn muscles and strained ligaments regained their elasticity and vigor; their eagerness. The harsh effort of flight slipped from her as though she had forgotten it. In a wave of transformation, she felt herself exalted to health.

That
was hurtloam, there in her palm. That tincture of pure health had been stirred like wealth by the washing of the river into the plainer substance of the sand: a subtle and transcendent instance of the Land's essential mystery. It was not common, oh, no, not common at all: most of the sand and soil on either side of the Mithil gave no hint of it. But now she could discern it without difficulty here and there, in small whorls and traces between the stones, as though it called out gladly to her nerves.

The River itself called out to her as it curled and chuckled in its course. Its waters sang to her of nourished growth and protracted journeys; of life renewed after sleep. In its bright running, she heard the music of winter storms among the peaks, the yearning chords of the current's long hunger for the sea.

Wherever it found her, the grass on which she lay pressed its green and burgeoning richness to her skin. It spoke of health won by fine, cunning roots from the thin fertility of the sand and loam which cloaked the underlying stone: soil too recently worn from granite, obsidian, and schist to provide the abundant sustenance that enriched the Center Plains and the Andelainian Hills.

And beneath the grass and the soil and the first rocks, she felt the living skeleton of the slopes and crests: obdurate stone that hugged to its heart secrets at once enduring and elusive, tangible enough to be tasted, yet too vast and slow to hear.

Gradually the hurtloam in her hand lost its gleaming as it expended its potency. Nevertheless it had lifted her to her feet: it had lifted up her heart. Tears of gladness blurred her sight as she faced the crisp morning, the burnished sunshine. All around her, the savor of the new season filled the air with possibilities. From its place near the height of noon, the sun warmed away the last of her bruises and fatigue.

In that way, one small handful of sand and hurtloam and Earthpower restored to her the glory of the Land. She felt positively reborn. For reasons which she could not begin to comprehend, Lord Foul had guided her here so that she might set aside her blindness and futility.

At last, she turned her renewed percipience toward her companion.

He still lay on his back with his hands covering his face. Now, however, she did not need to see his features or hear his voice in order to discern his insanity. His posture and his skin, his breathing and the angle of his bones, proclaimed it to her. She knew beyond question that his mind had been broken by more loss than it could endure.

And she knew as well, though the knowledge surprised her, that the Despiser had played no part in Anele's derangement. The incoherence of Anele's mind allowed Lord Foul entrance; permitted the Despiser to speak. Yet the Land's foe had not caused that madness.

Anele's straits brought an ache to her heart. He required healing; absolutely required it. He had already suffered far too long.

Now, suddenly, she had the means to help him.

“Anele,” she asked softly, “can you hear me?”

He did not respond. His hands covered his eyes urgently. Lord Foul still held him: she could see that. However, the Despiser had withdrawn from the surface, from mastery, leaving the old man at the mercy of his fears.

Linden did not hesitate. Her health-sense seemed to set her free. Two quick steps along the riverbank carried her toward another swirl of fine gleams in the sand.
Crouching, she reached down to wash the expended hurtloam from her hand and scoop up more.

Glad fire sang in her fingers as she moved to Anele's side, knelt near his head. “Anele,” she said again, “if you can hear me,” if Lord Foul permitted him hearing, “I have more hurtloam. I'm going to put it on your forehead. It should heal you.”

She was not sure that even this power could knit his mind together. But she had no doubt that it would do him good. If nothing else, it would reduce the damage which years of flight and dread had done to his old flesh.

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.