The Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Book One (85 page)

Liand watched Linden with his eyes full of apprehension. He seemed more aware of the gnashing Demondim than anyone around him. And, like her, he distrusted the Masters.

Struggling to contain her fears, Linden confronted Stave. “All right,” she panted urgently. “You brought us here. Now what? How many Masters
are
there?” She meant in Revelstone. “And what do you think they can do?” They had no power except their native strength and skill. “We need help, Stave. How can your people fight those things?”

He had promised her a reckoning. How high a price was he willing to pay for his convictions?

She was the only one here who could oppose the horde—and she was already exhausted.

Stave regarded her steadily. Instead of speaking, he extended his hand toward the high bulk of Lord's Keep against its background of mountains; and at that moment the interlocking stone gates in the base of the watchtower swung open. From the tunnel under the tower, riders cantered outward as if he had summoned them forth.

Four abreast, they emerged row after row, first a dozen of them, then a score; two score; more—And still they appeared: more men on horseback than Linden had ever seen at one time. When the last of them had left the darkness under the watchtower, they must have numbered eighty or a hundred.

And they were
Haruchai,
all of them: fell-handed warriors mounted on hardy mustangs and heavy destriers, dray horses and racers. They bore no weapons and no pennons; wore no armor; carried no shields; wielded no lore or instruments of power. Nevertheless they rode out from Revelstone to challenge the horde of the Demondim as if no foe could stand against them.

“We will not fail,” Stave replied to Linden. “While one of us remains alive, you will be warded.”

As soon as the full force of the riders had left the Keep, they quickened their pace, accelerating from an easy canter to a headlong charge. Apparently they meant to reach Linden and her company before the Demondim could overtake them.

“Revelstone?” Anele asked in bewilderment. “Is it Revelstone?” But Linden had no time to comfort him.

Briefly Stave cocked his head as if he were listening. Then he informed Linden,
“The Ranyhyn have served us well. This day is the second since our departure from the Verge of Wandering.”

His people could communicate so, mind to mind.

But the assurance that she had regained her proper time gave her little relief. The horde would soon draw near enough to strike at her small company. And the Masters might prove as fatal in their own way as the Demondim.

Quickly she urged Stave, “Tell them about the ur-viles.” She did not doubt that his people would defend the Waynhim; but the
Haruchai
and the ur-viles had been foes for millennia. “I don't care whether you approve of anything I've done. This isn't about me. The ur-viles have earned your protection.”

Stave nodded his agreement.

Again Anele asked the air plaintively, “Revelstone?”

Linden could feel the Demondim massing at her back: Kevin's Dirt had not yet dimmed her percipience. And when she turned to look at them, she saw that they were too close. The Masters would barely reach her before the horde did. If their charge did not immediately throw back the onslaught, she and her friends would find themselves in the midst of the battle.

When she had gathered her reserves, she called up a soothing current of strength from the Staff and sent it flowing toward the Waynhim and the ur-viles.

They were not creatures of Law. And her senses could not read them. Still she knew that she would not harm them. She trusted herself here. She had already healed the Staff's guardian among the Waynhim.

They would die if they remained helpless, unable to fight or run.

The Waynhim stirred almost at once, rousing to lift their heads and sniff at the fraught air. Then the ur-viles did the same. Some of them slapped at their skin as if to beat off insects. Others flung themselves from side to side, or scrabbled at the dirt. Yet they grew stronger.

As soon as they began to regain their feet, Linden called back her power.

Behind her, the horde slowed its pace. New forces gathered and swirled among the monsters. Apparently the Demondim were preparing to meet the charge of the Masters.

“Come on,” she muttered to her companions. “Let's go.” She had been in danger for too long. “We need some distance.”

With a touch of her hand, she asked Hyn to bear her away.

The
Haruchai
thundered closer. The hooves of their mounts raised banners of dust from the bare ground.

Twisting on Hrama's back, Anele appeared to look straight at Linden, in spite of his blindness. “Anele is betrayed,” he announced bitterly. “You have given him to
them.
”

While she gazed at him in sorrow, he slipped suddenly to the ground, ducked past Rhohm, and dashed away—

“Anele!” she shouted: too late. She had already missed the instant when she might have deflected him.

—directly toward the massed forces of the Demondim.

As his bare feet touched the dirt, his entire aura changed. His baffled bitterness vanished, replaced by savage fire like a yowl of repudiation. Running toward the horde, he seemed to set the air aflame, igniting it with outrage. His feet left smoking burns on the ground, and his whole form glowed like iron in the forge, too hot to be touched or endured.

Any other mortal being would have been flash-burned to ash and cinders. Only his inherited Earthpower enabled him to withstand the abrupt magma which had taken possession of him.

Linden shouted his name. This had happened to the old man once before. In the communal center of the Ramen encampment, he had become a conflagration in human form. Raging at her, he had nearly scorched the eyes from her skull.

That same spirit had claimed Anele again.

In a clattering rush, the first wave of the Masters swept around Linden and her company toward the Demondim; and Anele flung himself against the monsters as if he meant to challenge their vast evil with the lava of his own pain.

He had taken even Stave by surprise; yet Stave reacted before Linden could do more than flinch and cry out. At his silent command, Hynyn reared and turned, springing away to join the tumultuous charge of the
Haruchai.

The Master may have intended to strike Anele down, as he had among the Ramen.

Leaping for their mounts, Mahrtiir and Pahni positioned themselves to defend Linden. The ur-viles and Waynhim rallied together; staggered chanting into loose formations on either side of her. Liand yelled at her, but she could not hear him through the din of hooves.
Haruchai
pounded past her, row after row of them. Then they seemed to disappear in their own dust.

Desperately she groped for power—and found none. She could not concentrate: the implications of Anele's transformation seemed to beat about her head, confusing her attention. When she tried to wield both Covenant's ring and the Staff of Law, neither answered her.

In the Verge of Wandering, Anele had been possessed by flame and fury when he had moved from the rich grass around the shelters onto the bare ground of the clearing. And here he had been similarly changed when he had dropped from Hrama's back; when his feet had found the dirt—

Oh my God—
Anele!

Linden felt more than heard the clash of flesh and bone and force as the
Haruchai
crashed into the front lines of the Demondim. Too many riders and too much dust blocked her view. Her senses had other dimensions, however. She could still witness the battle.

In spite of their numbers, each of the Masters seemed as distinct as stone: they slammed into the horde like a fall of boulders, heavy and irrefusable. But the monstrous creatures were rife with power. Nacre corrosion beat in their veins, poured from their hands. Any one of them singly had the might to shatter walls, tear down houses. And they had seen the
Haruchai
coming: they were ready.

As the riders struck, concerted emerald as vehement and fatal as the Despiser's own ichor erupted in response, coruscating through the hues of gems and verdure to the blinding incandescence of sunfire.

In an instant, the conflict became chaos.

Without transition, the screaming of horses filled the air. Blood and shredded flesh articulated the dust. The first rows of the Masters went down like mown wheat, scythed from their mounts by the vicious strength of the Vile-spawn and the incarnate puissance of the Illearth Stone.

The slaughter among the horses was hideous, but in the initial assault few of the Masters were slain. Prodigiously swift and skilled, they dove from their falling mounts between gouts of ruin unleashed by the hands and limbs and beaks of the Demondim; ducked under staggering concussions of green force; attacked their foes and spun away. Yet each quick evasion and abrupt blow carried them farther into the horde, deeper among the massed creatures; closer to the center of the Stone's power. And the Demondim were too many, the Stone too potent.

Monsters fell around the
Haruchai;
but none of the leading warriors survived.

Yet among the tumult Anele remained palpable, vivid to Linden's discernment: a figure compacted of scoria and rage. He strode some distance into the battle, then paused there as if he were contemplating carnage. But he struck at none of the creatures. None of them struck at him. Instead he appeared to gather them about him in swirling eddies which veered closer and then were flung away by the forces of the fight.

Her fear for him snatched Linden out of her confusion. Banishing Covenant's ring from her mind, she raised the Staff high; and from its end shone forth a beacon of flame as yellow as sunshine and as compelling as trumpets.

Holding the wooden shaft before her like a standard, she nudged Hyn into motion.

The mare tossed her head and nickered anxiously, but did not flinch or falter. At a slow canter, she bore Linden toward the battle.

Toward Anele.

Immediately Liand, Mahrtiir, and Pahni placed themselves protectively around her, bringing Hrama with them, while the ur-viles and Waynhim adjusted their formations to guard her back.

Ahead of her, the shape of the fighting shifted. Reacting to the outcome of their first attack, the Masters changed their tactics. Instead of hurtling into the fray, they fanned out on either side of the horde and leaped down from their mounts. There they slapped their horses away so that no more of the vulnerable beasts would be burned or eviscerated. Then they fought the onslaught along its edges rather than forging inward. By so doing, they gave themselves space in which to dodge and duck and strike back and dance away.

At once, they became more effective, altering the proportions of the conflict. More of the
Haruchai
were able to keep their feet and take advantage of their lightning re-flexes: more of the monsters dropped.

Still the Demondim were too many. Too few were stricken down. And they had not yet made concerted use of the Illearth Stone. Effectively focused, that bane could sweep away every living being between the horde and Revelstone.

Then Linden saw in horror that the extravagant efforts of the Masters did not diminish the horde. Instead the trees and Cavewights and men and monsters which fell, apparently slain, seemed to melt out of existence, disappearing into the ground; and from the dirt emerged new shapes to replace them. Now creatures in the form of ur-viles stood among the combatants; monsters that resembled Giants; savage yellow beasts like
kresh.

The Demondim arose from the graves of the fallen,
Stave had said,
and their touch was fire.
They could resurrect themselves in every form which had ever been slain before the gates of Revelstone.

It was only a matter of time before all of the
Haruchai
were killed.

Abruptly Anele vanished from her perceptions. He had stood alone amid the clamor, a cynosure of red heat and fury surrounded by the fading and solidifying forms of the Demondim, the splashing of opalescent corrosion, the daunting concussions of the Stone. Then, without warning, she could no longer discern him. Blankness answered her questing health-sense. As far as she could tell, he was utterly gone, erased from the face of the plain.

Holding a shout of Staff-fire before her, Linden urged Hyn faster. With her companions braced about her, she carried her power into the battle.

The Masters parted from her path. They may have assumed that she meant to measure herself against the Illearth Stone. But she had no such intention. She was too weary and mortal to contend with the Stone's virulence directly. Not while its source remained hidden from her; unapproachable; immune to assault. Her only thought was to find Anele.

Like the
Haruchai,
the Demondim withdrew to allow her passage. Or she may have driven them back with the Staff's lucid flame. She no longer knew what she did. She knew only that she did not mean to turn aside.

Then from within the chaos Hynyn burst into her path, sides heaving, coat soaked and glossy with blood. And on his back sat Stave as if they had endured a furnace together. Acid had charred the Master's tunic to tatters, scored galls across his ribs and down his arms. And it had eaten away the left side of his face. The bones of his cheek showed through the streaming wound, and his eye was lost in burns. Nonetheless he somehow contrived to support Anele's limp form in front of him.