The Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Book One (43 page)

So that she would not falter, she raised the cup at once and sipped from it.

The liquid tasted like dust and neglect: she had difficulty swallowing it. Nonetheless it seemed to fill her flesh with excitement; eagerness transformed almost instantly to sustenance as soon as it touched her stomach. With every beat of her heart, the cold lost its grip on her. The edges of the wind still drew tears from her eyes; but now they were tears of relief and possibility.

A kind of giddiness came over her, and she nearly laughed aloud. “Here,” she said, handing the cup to Liand. “Try it. You'll like it. If you can ignore the taste.”

He hesitated, hampered by confusion.

“Go on,” she told him. “Just a sip.” Rejuvenation in waves washed her weariness aside, riding the scend of her pulse. Light seemed to shine from her nerves, mapping its own life within her. Liand should have been able to discern the glow she emitted.

Stave certainly could.

The young man would not refuse: she knew that. He had already wandered too far beyond the boundaries of his experience, and had no one else to guide him. Cautiously he eased the iron cup to his lips and tasted its contents.

The Master did not move or speak. Instead he faced the ur-viles as though he were carved of darkness.

For a long moment, Liand remained motionless over the cup. Then, softly, he began to laugh: a quiet, clean sound like the sweep of a broom brushing away cobwebs and anxiety.

“I am astonished. The savor is indeed unpleasant. I have tasted brackish water and dying mosses which were kinder to my tongue. Yet it outshines
aliantha
in my veins.

“Linden Avery, I would not have believed it possible.”

She nodded gladly; but before she could reply, the nearest ur-vile retrieved its cup, then retreated among its fellows. At once, a larger creature bearing a pointed iron rod like a jerrid stepped forward: the loremaster. Instinctively she braced herself, uncertain of the creature's intentions.

But the loremaster only barked at its weapon, and gradually a crimson flame flowered from its tip, blooming until it resembled the blaze of a torch. Soon the fire shed a pool of incarnadine over the broken tumble of the slope; and Linden realized that the loremaster meant to light the way.

The ur-viles were still trying to help her. Spilling red illumination on all sides, the loremaster and its followers began to retreat up the rubble as if to draw her and her companions forward.

According to Stave, they were a great evil. And they should all have died millennia ago. Lord Foul had certainly tried to destroy them. Yet, impossibly, they were here. Like
Anele, they seemed to have been displaced in time. If Anele's account of himself could be trusted—

Linden glanced at Stave; at Liand. The Master regarded her flatly, conceding nothing. But Liand nodded. “Let us go. This
vitrim
warms me strangely. While its virtue endures, we would do well to escape the wind.”

Linden faced the loremaster. “Lead the way. We'll follow you.”

Manethrall Hami had told her that the creatures understood human speech.

In response, they retreated farther; and she began to climb after them, lifted over the rocks by their weird encouragement.

E
ven with their help, the climb was painful and prolonged.
Vitrim
was not hurtloam; it gave her energy, but could not heal sore muscles or aching joints.

Before long, her legs began to tremble, and her balance wavered in the sullen light. Nevertheless she was glad that she no longer needed Stave to carry her. She could not afford to be dependent on him.

The ur-viles had given her more than sustenance. The illumination in her veins had enabled her to reclaim some necessary sense of herself.

Still the ascent was arduous. Gradually she grew numb, worn down by the effort of forcing her boots upward, scraping her shins and palms over the jagged memories of the rocks, expending her given warmth and strength. Anele's past, and the One Forest's, ceased to pain her. The strange aid of the ur-viles lost its disturbing eloquence. As she climbed and climbed, the rift and the wind and the darkness shrank down to a splash of crimson light, a precarious tumble of stones. If anyone spoke to her, she no longer heard them.

At some point, one of the Ramen appeared. Perhaps Hami had sent the young man back as a guide. Then the way became steeper; more perilous. Linden might have been scaling a precipice from which she could have slipped at any moment to fall for the rest of her life. But she did not slip—or her companions upheld her—and after a time the wind lost its flensing edge. Then she found herself kneeling on soil and grass instead of stone, under a fathomless expanse of stars.

There she could walk more easily; and Liand or one of the Cords supported her when she sagged. Several Ramen accompanied her now, although the ur-viles had vanished somewhere, leaving her to darkness and starlight. Eventually she rounded a hill into the shelter of an escarpment lambent with fires.

Ordinary campfires of brush and wood, three of them, shed warmth and flames against a jut of stone which protected a hollow at the base of the scarp; and around
them were gathered several Ramen, more than Linden remembered. Some of them tended their injured comrades, boiling water and preparing salves. Others readied food, while still others devised lean-tos to soften the last of the wind, or gathered bracken for bedding. Linden smelled
amanibhavam
and stew.

While she could, she went to help the Ramen clean and bandage the wounds of Cords who had nearly died saving her life, and Liand's, and Anele's.

The old man had reached the camp ahead of her, guided here by Ramen if he had not found the way on his own. Already he lay in one of the lean-tos, apparently sleeping, felled by exhaustion.

Linden aided the injured until she found the young woman who had been nearly disemboweled.

The woman lay on her back near one of the campfires; unconscious; pallid as wax. Several Cords squatted around her. Someone had placed a strip of leather between her jaws. She must have needed it earlier, to help her endure the jostling climb from the rift. Now her lips hung slack around it, baring her teeth.

Without her health-sense, Linden felt fundamentally truncated. She did not need percipience, however, to know that the woman's condition had worsened. The Cords had lifted flaps of torn skin and muscle aside so that they could attempt to cleanse the wound; and through the pulsing ooze of blood, Linden saw that the claws of the
kresh
had ripped into the woman's intestines and liver. In addition, a number of the fine ducts which connected the liver and the bowel had been severed: they leaked bile into the blood. That alone could cause the wound to mortify.

Linden needed a scalpel and sutures, clamps and sponges, IVs—and some very powerful antibiotics.

She had nothing.

With boiling water the Cords had made a salve of their
amanibhavam.
Surely they were right about its healing properties? But even so—She knew of nothing in the Land except hurtloam which might be potent enough to save this woman's life.

Or wild magic, if she had known how to raise it—and if she could have wielded its fire with exactly the right delicacy and precision—and if she could have
seen
what she was doing—

Sighing to herself, she asked the nearest Cord, “Is there any hurtloam around here? Can you find it? Or do you have some other way to treat her? She'll die if we don't do something soon.”

At once, the Cord jumped to his feet and hastened away, apparently intending to consult with Manethrall Hami. The other Ramen stared at Linden, mutely asking for her help.

Grimly she set aside her exhaustion. “All right,” she murmured. “I need soft cloth.
Something to soak up the blood and bile. And more boiling water. We'll use your salve when we've cleaned her as much as we can.”

Two of the Cords withdrew promptly. One returned with several pale brown blankets which he tore into strips. The other brought an earthenware bowl full of steaming water.

Trusting her instincts, Linden took the first strip of cloth, showed it to the Cords. “Here's what we're going to do.” When she had dipped the cloth into the bowl just enough to moisten it, she lowered it softly into the puddled bile along the woman's descending colon. By increments, the fabric absorbed splotches of red and yellow; stains of mortality. When it was sodden, she lifted it away; wrung it out over the grass; dipped it again into the bowl.

“Do it
gently,
” she instructed the Cords. “We want to clean out as much of this mess as we can. Especially the bile”—she pointed—“that yellow ooze.”

They nodded. Three of them joined her, setting moist cloths in the wound to sponge up small amounts of fluid, then squeezing out as much as they could and repeating the process.

The woman's bleeding slowed as they worked: she had already lost too much blood. She needed a transfusion as badly as antibiotics. But Linden had no means to provide it.

She did not notice that an audience had gathered until Liand said her name in a way that made her lift her head. As far as she could tell, they were all there, Liand and Stave, Manethrall Hami, perhaps as many as thirty other Ramen: everyone except Anele. They studied what she did with uncertainty in their eyes; but none of them sought to interfere.

The intensity of their attention reminded Linden that she did not know the injured Cord's name. She knew none of their names, except Hami's.

Liand cleared his throat. “Linden,” he repeated. “The Ramen know a place where ‘hurtloam' may be found. The Manethrall has sent Cords. But it is five leagues distant, and the way is difficult. They cannot reach it and return before midday.”

He hesitated, then asked, “Will Sahah live so long?”

Hami may have nodded: Linden was not sure. She returned her blunted gaze to the young Cord. Sahah, she thought. A young woman named Sahah with her guts ripped open: younger than Liand, hardly more than sixteen. If she had not been in such pain, she would have looked like a girl.

Abruptly Linden's hands began to shake, and a blur of weariness filled her gaze. “I don't know. Probably not.” If she did, she would spend her last hours in agony. “Unless
amanibhavam
is some kind of wonder drug.”

Sahah.

But there was nothing more she could do: not without power. “That's enough,” she told the Cords helping her. “Now your salve.” The Ramen had said that it was too potent for human flesh. “Give her as much as you think she can tolerate.”

Somehow she struggled to her feet. If Liand had not put his arm around her, she might not have been able to stand. “Close the wound,” she added. “Keep her warm. And give her water, if she can swallow it.”

Falling blood pressure might kill the Cord before sepsis and trauma took her.

“Linden Avery,” said the Manethrall firmly. “You are in sooth a healer. Yet you feel distress. Do you fear that you have failed Sahah? That she will perish because your care does not suffice?”

Linden nodded dumbly.

“It may be so,” Hami admitted. “I think not, however. Ringthane—” She faltered momentarily. “How may this be said? You have strange lore. I cannot know its extent.”

Linden might have murmured something; but the Manethrall was not done.

“There is a shroud of evil upon the Land. Mayhap you know this. It is one reason among several that we do not return to our ancient homes.

“It hampers discernment.”

Again Linden nodded. “Kevin's Dirt.”

“You have felt its bale,” Hami explained. “We do not. For you, sight and touch and scent are constrained. You cannot see what is plain to us.”

Unsteadily Linden reached out to Hami; gripped the Manethrall's shoulders for support. Blinking to clear her sight, she tried to understand Hami's kindness. “See—?”

The Ramen were like the
Haruchai
? Still able to
see
?

“Indeed,” the Manethrall answered. “You do not perceive that the pall of Sahah's death has been diminished by your care. Nor do you discern the surpassing balm of
amanibhavam.
You cannot see that her end is no longer certain.”