The Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Book One (75 page)

Guided by uncertainty, as she had been ever since she had first met Thomas Covenant, Linden gradually refined her percipience until, like Stave and Mahrtiir, she could feel the character of the shimmering.

They were right: there was power in the air. If Hyn had carried her into the bottom of the crease, she would have been stung by forces strong enough to stun her. Yet any harm that she might have suffered would have been a necessary side effect of the power, not its intent. It had been placed here for another purpose.

To conceal something, as Stave had suggested? Or to forewarn its wielders?

Or both?

In any case, its evanescent presence implied—

“Linden—?” Liand began. But he was too bewildered to complete his question.

—that the lore of the ur-viles had not failed. Some potent being or beings lurked nearby.

And it or they did not wish to be found. Or taken by surprise.

“All right,” she murmured under her breath. “All right.”

She could still hope.

Then she asked more loudly, “Now what?”

At her side, Stave shrugged. “I know little of such lore. The
Haruchai
do not require it. If you will not turn aside, we must continue to rely upon the guidance of the ur-viles.”

Unless Linden called up white fire and simply tore the shimmering aside—

She no longer trusted that she would be able to do so. Her failure to find her own power in the
caesure
had nearly doomed her and everyone with her.

Thinking that she should return to the ur-viles, see if they were in any condition to take action, she touched Hyn's neck; and the Ranyhyn turned to trot back toward the creatures.

Already most of their fluid had wisped away into the sunlight; and another group of ur-viles had joined those nearby, sprawling exhausted beside their fellows. More limped over the crest of the hill, their black skin streaked with dust and expenditure. They, too, sagged to the ground with the other ur-viles, too worn out to go farther. Now only the loremaster remained absent. When it reached her, Linden's company would be complete.

Pitying their prostration, she slipped from Hyn's back, walked a few steps to stand among the creatures, then slowly lowered herself to her knees so that she would not appear to be looking down on them.

Her companions also dismounted, leaving only Anele astride his Ranyhyn. He
ignored them as he had ignored everything since he had been taken from his cave. His battered forehead he veiled in Hrama's mane.

For a moment, Linden hesitated, unsure of herself. But the pressure of her plight did not release her. Wiping the sweat from her forehead, she addressed the creatures softly, pleading with them yet again.

“I don't know what to do. I keep saying that. This is beyond me. I know you're exhausted. You've already done more than I have any right to ask. But I need even more.”

The thought of confronting the mirage with Covenant's ring made her stomach clench.

“Is there anything we can do for you? Do you eat
aliantha
?” She had seen none, but she did not doubt that the Ramen—or the Ranyhyn—would be able to find treasure-berries. “Do you need water?” Liand and the Ramen carried several waterskins. “Can you make more
vitrim
?”

The ur-viles regarded her with their wide nostrils and did not respond.

All right, she insisted, trying to reassure herself. She could not tell whether the situation required action or not. Nonetheless
she
did. A form of madness crouched in the background of her mind, awaiting its opportunity to spring. She had to do something—

Somehow she needed to find her way back to wild magic.

Surging to her feet, she turned roughly away and strode past her companions down the hillside toward the dry streambed.

So that she would not blunder into the shimmering, she watched for it askance, approaching it cautiously. Whoever or whatever had placed the barrier there might have no desire to do harm. It or they might recognize the presence of white gold. Hell, they might even recognize
her.
The ur-viles had certainly done so.

She had to take the chance.

Liand followed a step or two behind her, murmuring her name as though he did not know how else to aid her. And Stave walked at her shoulder. At a word from the Manethrall, Bhapa and Pahni unslung their waterskins and went to offer water to the Demondim-spawn. Mahrtiir himself followed Linden, Liand, and Stave down the slope.

This time, the ur-viles uttered no warnings. All of her companions seemed to understand what she meant to do.

A few paces from the watercourse, Linden stopped. She no longer needed to sense the mirage obliquely: she could feel its implications like a faint tingle on the skin of her face. When she had chosen a steady place to stand, a stretch of bare dirt where the thin soil did not shift under her feet, she lifted Covenant's ring from under her shirt and wrapped her fingers around it. Then she closed her eyes and went looking within herself for fire; for the hidden door which opened on wild magic.

She should have been able to find it. She was certainly desperate enough. And twice now she had summoned argence by conscious choice. But the knowledge that she had
failed in the
caesure
hampered her concentration. The possibility that she might fail once more—that she might never again have access to the power she needed—blocked her from clarity. She could not rediscover the door.

A low breeze skirled around her, carrying heat to her skin, drawing sweat from her temples and ribs. The pressure of the sun made her feel weak, denatured like the lore-serpent. Instead of white fire, she found a sensation of nausea twisting in her guts as if she were dehydrated or ill.

Abruptly all of the ur-viles began to bark. Their raucous shouts held a note of alarm. Startled, Linden looked back up the slope toward the creatures.

The loremaster had rejoined them. As weary as its fellows, it could barely support itself on all fours. The stain of dust on its eyeless face gave it a stricken aspect, as if it had caught a scent which appalled it.

The heads of all the ur-viles were turned, not toward Linden and the streambed, but in the direction of the open plains.

Liand gasped softly; and Stave said with sudden harshness, “Attend, Chosen.”

Wheeling to face northward, Linden muttered involuntarily, “Oh, hell. What's
he
doing here?”

Less than a stone's cast below her, Esmer came striding up the hillside. He moved smoothly, easily, ascending the slope with unspoken puissance. His gilded cymar flowed like water on the breeze, alternately caressing and concealing his limbs. The strange fabric seemed to shift in hue with each step, modulating from the bright blue-and-gold of sun-burnished waves to the ominous shade of storm-frothed seas.

The plain shock of his appearance here, millennia before his proper time, made Linden feel like retching.

He was headed toward a point midway between her and the ur-viles. As he drew near, however, he paused as if to consider both groups. Then he advanced on the Demondim-spawn with a spume of hauteur in his eyes.

Some of them struggled to rise. Others cowered on the ground, nearly groveling. Only the loremaster managed to haul itself erect. With its scepter in its hands, it confronted Esmer's approach unsteadily; but the iron looked cold, inert. To Linden's eyes, the creature seemed too weak to withstand a blow—or even a rough word. Esmer's vast power would sweep the loremaster from the face of the hills.

And still she could not find the door—She had lost her access to wild magic entirely.

When he reached the ur-viles, Esmer stopped, clenching his fists on his hips. “This is abject,” he sneered. “Has the mighty lore of the Demondim become so frail? And do you dare to set yourselves against me? You do well to grovel, lest my betrayals destroy you utterly.”

The loremaster responded with a bark of defiance. But Linden felt no force from the creature; no strength at all.

As if he had decided to begin a slaughter, Esmer stooped suddenly to slap a prone ur-vile with the palm of his hand.

Linden felt her heart laboring in her chest. Esmer's palm struck between the creature's shoulder blades. She expected a gout of blood; expected to see the ur-vile's spine shattered. But instead a small iron bowl appeared in Esmer's hand. He seemed to have snatched it out of the ur-vile's flesh.

From the bowl, she sensed the unmistakable must and potency of
vitrim.

Pacing imperiously among the creatures, Esmer carried the bowl to the loremaster and thrust it at the big ur-vile. “Drink,” he commanded. “
Drink,
and may the Seven Hells consume your bones. This weakness is intolerable.

“You are needed.”

Then he turned his back on the creatures to stride like an act of violence toward Linden and her companions.

She breathed in hard gasps, trying to quell her nausea. Esmer's conflicted emanations left her half stunned: she could hardly think. What was he
doing
here? How had he come?

And why was he so angry?

Fearlessly Stave stepped forward to stand in front of Linden. After an instant's hesitation, Liand joined him. Muttering Ramen curses, Mahrtiir placed himself shoulder-to-shoulder with Stave and Liand. And Pahni and Bhapa followed Esmer down the slope. The set of their faces said that they were ready to sacrifice themselves, if they were needed.

The Ranyhyn had accepted Esmer. He had been the friend of the Ramen—

“Stand aside!” he barked at Linden's guardians. For a moment, he sounded like an ur-vile, guttural and enraged; and distant lightnings glared in his eyes. “This delay is fatal. The defenders of the Staff are unsure of you. And they are blinded to white gold. Already they prepare to abandon their covert. They will flee if they are not given battle.

“Then will you be betrayed in earnest, and nothing will undo the harm that I have wrought.”

He could easily have gone around Linden and her companions; but he seemed to need a kind of permission from them.

Or from her.

“Go ahead,” she breathed, although she hardly heard herself. Her head reeled. The defenders of the Staff—? She wanted to challenge him; demand an explanation. The Staff was
here
? But surprise and confusion seemed to compel her acquiescence.

Some part of him wanted to help her.

He had already betrayed—?

When she spoke, Stave, Liand, and Mahrtiir stepped out of Esmer's way. He swept past them scornfully, ignoring Linden as if she had fulfilled her role and no longer had any significance.

Together, she and her companions turned to watch him approach the dry streambed.

He did not pause as he neared the shimmering. Instead he plunged into the crease between the hills like the onset of a gale.

And like a gale, he tore reality asunder.

A tremendous concussion shook the ground. For an instant, dirt and grass and rocks sprang into the air like waterspouts, force-driven geysers. Unable to keep her feet, Linden pitched headlong down the slope; landed with dust in her eyes and mouth. Liand fell beside her: even Mahrtiir staggered to his knees. Only Stave contrived to remain upright.

The blast passed quickly, leaving in its wake a rain of broken stones, rent grass, clods of soil. Blinking desperately to clear her sight, Linden saw Esmer standing undisturbed in the bottom of the watercourse, facing up the ravine. The fall of debris came nowhere near him.

She coughed convulsively at the dust in her lungs; but she made no sound. Liand appeared to call her name, yet his voice did not reach her. The concussion had taken her hearing.

And—

Oh, God.

The sand on which Esmer stood was no longer the bottom of a small ravine. The crease between the hills was gone; ripped out of existence. In its place stood a wider streambed, higher and more rugged walls. As the slopes rose on either side, the walls piled upward, forming a deep cut in the bedrock of the hills—an incision filled with shadows and implied peril.

At the end of the cut, fifty or a hundred paces up the ravine, gaped the broad mouth of a cave. It seemed as full of darkness as a sepulcher.

Esmer, Linden tried to say. God in Heaven. Esmer! But she heard nothing.

Then Stave came to her side. His hands clasped her shoulders, lifted her to her feet as if she were weightless. His lips moved, conveying nothing.

Liand scrambled upright a moment later. He shook his head, raised his hands to his ears. Fear flashed in his eyes as he realized that he had been deafened. In a rush, he flung his arms around Linden and held her close as if to assure himself that she was whole.

Their deafness would pass: she knew that already. The concussion had only shocked her auditory nerves. If her eardrums had ruptured, she would have felt more pain. In a moment, Liand would discern the same for himself.

Struggling against his embrace, she turned to see what Esmer was doing.

At the same time, the ur-viles launched themselves down the slope, galvanized by alarm or
vitrim.
Their jaws worked: they appeared to bark frenetically. In spite of their weariness, they held their blades glowing in their fists. As they hastened toward the new ravine, they managed to form a ragged wedge.