The Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Book One

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Then she plunged into the caesure as though it were a lake of nightmares.

  In an instant, utter anguish seemed to swallow her whole. And as the roiling torment closed over her head, she began to drown—

  At that moment, she had no reason to believe she had not brought death to all that she held dear.

  9.

  Pursuit

  The unspeakable pain of the Fall was the same: the disorientation: the sensory insanity. She was trapped as she had been once before in the simultaneous shattering of too many realities. Every moment which would ever come and go in the caesure’s path was torn apart and flung at her like a bleeding gobbet; and every scrap of time’s shredded flesh as it struck her became a burrowing insect, a wasp or chigger driven mad by dissociation and avid to lay its ruinous eggs within her. At the same time, all perceptible meaning and structure were wiped away, leaving behind only white emptiness and illimitable cold.

  Drowning in all the world’s distress at once, Linden could easily have perished, suffocated by icy formication and loss. She could just as easily have been driven mad. But even madness and death required causality, sequence, interconnection; and the Fall had severed every link which would have made such consequences possible.

  Yet this experience was essentially unlike her first such immersion. She did not need to compel the current of distortion backward, into the past. Nor was she required to trust that the ur-viles would impose her will upon it. Instead she could let the terrible forces of the caesure carry her forward according to their own peculiar logic. The Earthpowerful instincts of the Ranyhyn would provide for her redemption.

  In addition, she was spared another encounter with Joan Covenant’s demented grief. Somewhere Joan still stood among her attending skest, reaching out with wild magic and self-loathing to name her endless pains. But she had not created this Fall, and did not occupy it. Her madness played no part in its ravening.

  And Linden had one other advantage as well. Covenant’s ring still shone like a beacon through the fabric of her shirt, lighting her way to survival. Wild magic was in some sense as disruptive as the caesure, untrammeled by restriction. For that reason, it had the power to violate the strictures of time. For the same reason, however, white gold formed the keystone of the Arch of Time. Its unfettered passion anchored the paradox which made finite existence possible within the infinite universe.

  Similarly the hot blaze of Linden’s heart anchored her within herself, enabling her to continue to be who she was when every mote and particle of her specific being had been torn asunder.

  Duration could not exist within the Fall. Nothing was possible there except devouring pain and infinite cold and devastation. Therefore no tangible interval passed before Hyn galloped free of agony, bearing Linden out into a flood of sunlight and dazzled blindness.

  They had arrived on a slowly rising slope which jolted the mare’s hooves like packed dirt.

  Because she had been anchored, and wild magic shone from her still, Linden was not overwhelmed by her passage through time and torment. She could still think, and feel, and choose. Although the intense glare of the sun filled her vision, effacing sight, her other senses reached out acutely. With the nerves of her skin, she felt Stave riding strongly on one side of her, impervious to the harm of the caesure. On the other side, Liand held his seat on Rhohm, clinging grimly to the Staff of Law. Protected by its warm clarity, he also was not as sick as he would otherwise have been.

  Close on their heels followed Anele, as unmistakably himself as his inborn Earthpower could make him—and as unquestionably insane as the Fall at his back.

  Behind Hrama ran three more Ranyhyn, all of them injured, but still essentially whole. For a moment, Linden could not tell if they bore riders. The rampant seething of the Fall and the sudden brightness of the sun blocked her perceptions. Then she discerned Mahrtiir clutching his appalled stomach at Anele’s back; Pahni vomiting helplessly past Naharahn’s withers; Bhapa stretched nearly unconscious along Whrany’s neck. Blood throbbed from Bhapa’s arm and shoulder, streaking his mount’s torn flanks.

  Beside the last Ranyhyn raced more than a dozen Waynhim and perhaps half that many ur-viles, all that remained of the bereft creatures which had committed their lives to Linden and the Staff.

  And behind them came the Demondim in a teeming horde, ecstatic with power and ravenous for victims.

  She had accomplished this much, if no more: she had brought her assailants with her out of the past; had defused their power to disrupt the integrity of time.

  Now she would have to fight them. Hyn would be able to outrun the Demondim, but Linden’s company could not flee indefinitely. The ur-viles and the Waynhim were badly hurt; close to exhaustion. And the Ramen were too ill to defend themselves. Pahni and Bhapa might not be able to sit their mounts much longer. Even Mahrtiir’s aura felt fragile. The Manethrall could hardly contain the heaving of his stomach.

  Linden had to make a stand.

  She intended to turn and strike as soon as she could see.

  As soon as she knew where she was. And when.

  If the Ranyhyn had misjudged their passage through the caesure—or if some effect of the Fall had cast them out prematurely—she might yet be in danger of altering the Land’s history.

  The midday brilliance of the sun still blinded her, however. While Hyn bore her racing over the hard ground, she blinked her eyes frantically, trying to clear the dazzle from her sight, and strove to extend her senses farther around her.

  In spite of the sun’s brightness, the air was cool on her sweating cheeks: it smelled of spring. And ahead of her the ground rose gradually, uninterrupted by swelling hills or narrow ravines or streambeds. She was no longer among the foothills of the Southron Range in late summer. Somehow Hyn’s urgent run must have carried her out into the South Plains.

  Or the Ranyhyn were able to navigate distance as well as time within a Fall. Linden and her companions may have crossed many leagues while they traversed the years.

  But whatever the Ranyhyn had done, the Demondim had matched it. They could not have prevented Linden’s Fall from engulfing them; yet they had emerged still on the heels of their prey. And their passage did not daunt them, or diminish their hunger for slaughter. Stave had said that their lore was profound and oblique, reaching depths which had surpassed the Old Lords. Their understanding of caesures could easily be greater than Linden’s.

  And they were unexpectedly swift. They rushed forward as if they were boiling over the ground. For all her speed, Hyn pulled away from the harrying creatures slowly. Perhaps she could not run faster. Or perhaps she held back so that she would not outdistance the rest of Linden’s companions.

  Behind them, the Fall still moiled viciously. Linden had made it large, dangerously large, so that it would swallow all of the horde. Now its swirling forces seemed to blot out the world in that direction; and it flowed after the Demondim as though they sucked it in their wake.

  Nevertheless Linden and those with her gained distance by increments, creating a small interval of safety between their desperation and the powers which pursued them.

  How much time had passed? A score of heartbeats? Two score? In another moment, Linden told herself, when the gap was a bit wider, she would turn to counterattack.

  With Covenant’s ring, she might be able to slow the Demondim so that her companions could escape; but she feared to take the risk. Wild magic might inadvertently draw the Fall toward her too swiftly to be avoided, or feed its destructiveness in some way which she could not foresee.

  As her vision began to clear, she deliberately silenced the argence shining through the fabric of her shirt. Then, without a word, as if she expected Liand to read her mind, she reached out for the Staff.

  He did not fail her. Almost immediately, she felt the smooth wooden shaft slap into her palm.

  Its touch sent a thrill of vitality through her, wiping away the last effects of the caesure; retrieving her from the harm which she had impose
d on time. In some fundamental way, wild magic did not suit her: it was too extravagant and unpredictable for her. She was a physician by choice, trained to precision and care; and the teeming ramifications of Covenant’s ring threatened at every moment to expand beyond her control.

  In contrast, the Staff of Law was a healer’s implement, as careful as any scalpel or suture. When she held it, she grew stronger: at once calmer and more capable, firmly poised between passion and restraint.

  Elevated by the essential certainty of Law, she spoke a silent word to Hyn, nudged the mare with her heels. Without hesitation, Hyn peeled away from her course, carrying Linden in a steady curve out of the path of the other Ranyhyn and the Demondim-spawn, and back toward the onrushing horde.

  Stave and Liand accompanied her as if they—or their mounts—had known exactly what she would do. But Hrama bore Anele onward with the Ramen thundering behind them, while the ur-viles and Waynhim scrambled to keep pace.

  Moment by moment, blinking tears and brightness from her eyes, Linden regained her sight.

  With her companions, she galloped down a slow, wide slope which stretched ahead of her until it vanished under the feet of the Demondim and was covered by the towering storm of the caesure. The sun and its shadows suggested that she was riding eastward.

  As the Ramen raced past her in the opposite direction, she sensed that Mahrtiir had begun to rally. Hours or days or centuries ago, he had promised that he and his Cords would not again be crippled by the effects of a Fall. Now from a small pouch at his waist he fumbled out a leaf of dried amanibhavam. Crumbling it in his hand, he held it under his nose; inhaled a little of the sharp powder.

  The potent grass stung him like a flick of lightning. A seizure took him, and he thrashed violently on his mount’s back. But the spasm passed in an instant. When it ended, it left him restored and eager, galvanized for combat.

  Guiding his stallion to Naharahn’s side, he thrust his hand at Pahni’s nose until she breathed in a taste of the amanibhavam. She, too, thrashed for a moment, then recovered visibly.

  But Mahrtiir offered none of the leaf to Bhapa. The injured Cord lay unconscious along Whrany’s neck, and might have been unseated by the healing grass. Instead the Manethrall left Bhapa to his mount’s care and led Pahni after Linden toward the charging Demondim.

  As soon as the last of the Waynhim and ur-viles had passed her, Linden called Hyn to a halt and looked out over the army of her attackers.

  At her side, Liand stopped and stared in dismay. But Stave gazed at the Demondim like a man who had long ago forgotten how to be afraid.

  Seen by daylight on the wide plain instead of by moonlight rising among the hills, the horde seemed less vast; no longer as measureless as night and slaughter. Nevertheless the sun did not diminish the creatures. Rather its glare seemed to accentuate their stature and potency.

  Linden could not discern them precisely. They wavered in and out of definition as if they passed in front of a rippled glass. At one moment, they appeared as tangible as flesh and pain: at the next, they were translucent, nearly invisible. Whenever she tried to focus on a specific creature, it blurred away and then emerged several paces closer to her. And as the Demondim advanced, their forms steamed and frothed like acid.

  Paled by sunlight, the flaring of power from their hands was barely visible to ordinary sight; but it howled at Linden’s percipience. And it left behind stains of midnight which persisted in the air as if the inherent vitriol of the Demondim had burned holes in the substance of reality. Until the onrushing caesure swallowed those stains, they looked vicious enough to tear down trees and blast boulders.

  Still the individual powers of the monstrous creatures were evanescent compared to the raving evil of the Illearth Stone. Among them the Demondim bore an outpouring of emerald so avid and malefic that it seemed to daunt the sun. From the vantage of higher ground and Hyn’s back, Linden could see now that the dire green did not arise from any one place or creature among the horde. The Demondim carried no discrete fragment of the original Stone. Rather they appeared to bring its essence with them as if they could draw on it from some distant source.

  “What will you do, Chosen?” demanded Stave. “Is it your purpose to give combat? That is madness. We must flee.”

  The sound of his voice distracted her from the horde; and as soon as she understood what he had said, she remembered that he was right. She could not afford to unleash her power until she knew where she was, and when.

  The Demondim rushed savagely toward her, with the caesure looming behind them. She had only moments left—

  “I have to stop this,” she panted. “It’s too big—” She had made it too big. “For God’s sake, tell me where we are!”

  Had they reached the time in which they belonged?

  “Linden,” Liand breathed in sudden astonishment. “Heaven and Earth, Linden!”

  She did not so much as glance at him. Gripping the Staff, she waited for Stave’s answer.

  “I am not yet certain,” he replied flatly. “The season is condign. And Kevin’s Dirt impends above us. It appears that our proper time is nigh.”

  Kevin’s Dirt, she thought. Oh, shit! She had not noticed it overhead because she could not force her gaze away from the Demondim. But she believed the Master. Soon her health-sense would begin to fray and fail.

  She had to act now, before the horde advanced farther; before the truncation of her senses began to hamper her.

  Could she risk wielding the Staff of Law?

  She did not know. Yet the Staff itself might protect her from an irreparable mistake. And she had no time left for doubt. The Demondim were almost upon her. Behind them, the caesure which she had created surged forward. It was her responsibility.

  Good cannot be accomplished by evil means.

  “Linden!” Liand called again, insisting on her attention. “Have you beheld—?”

  She did not give him a chance to finish. Slipping abruptly from Hyn’s back, she took three stiff strides toward the leading edge of the horde, then halted to plant one heel of the Staff in the hard dirt.

  The Stonedownor shouted after her: a cry rife with alarm. She ignored him. Stave and Mahrtiir sprang from their mounts, poised themselves for battle. She ignored them as well.

  From the vibrant wood of the Staff, she brought forth a burst of incandescence as bright as sunlight and as defiant as an oriflamme. While it blazed, she yelled at the Demondim, “Stop right there! This is as far as you go!”

  Her unexpected challenge threw the creatures into confusion. She did not know whether they could understand her, and did not care. They were lore-wise enough to recognize the Staff of Law. And they had already felt the presence of Covenant’s ring. At once, the first Demondim scrambled to a halt, blocking the way for the dire shapes behind them. Nacre power spat and frothed, pale as air and ruinous as magma, shedding blackness like glimpses into the heart of the Lost Deep. Indistinct forms steamed darkly, while among them rapt emerald seethed for release.

  They could not know that she was bluffing—

  Or perhaps they could. They might perceive that she was too human and frail to control both of her powers simultaneously. They needed only a few heartbeats to resolve their uncertainty and resume their ravening onrush.

  Nevertheless they had given Linden enough time. As the horde paused, she leaped past it in her mind to confront the Fall.

  She had caused this rent in the fabric of sequence and causality herself. And she had been swept up in its chaos only a short while ago. She knew it intimately.

  With percipience to guide her, she raised the Staff, directed it over the heads of the Demondim, and unleashed its warm puissance into the swarming core of the caesure.

  From the iron-shod end of the wood, flame the rich yellow hue of sunflowers and ripe corn lashed out, a streaming ceaseless flail of fire. The Fall was huge: she had made it so. And it had fed on millennia of severed instants. But the Staff of Law could draw on the fathomless reservoir o
f Earthpower which defined the Land. Indeed, its possibilities were limited only by the capacities of its wielder. And Linden had already proved herself equal to the Sunbane. The evil before her now was enormous and consuming. Yet it was a small thing in comparison.

  Challenged by the direct vitality of the Staff, the Fall failed rapidly. For an instant, it mounted upward, screaming into the heavens. Then it collapsed in on itself with a noise like a thunderclap, sucking down its own viciousness until it winked away like a snuffed candle.

  More swiftly than Linden would have believed possible, the caesure was gone, leaving her with warm wood quiescent in her hands. Stave and Mahrtiir stood ready at her sides; and all around her was the sweet scent of meadows in sunlight, swales of grass and wildflowers adorned with dew, and trees budding into leaf.

  No longer aware of herself, Linden sank to her knees. Exerting the Staff, she had expended her own substance. Her determination was gone, and the very ground beneath her no longer felt necessary or immediate.

  Apparently howling, although they made no sound, the Demondim flung themselves toward her. In the distance, Liand shouted her name as if he had never stopped calling for her.

  Then suddenly Stave took hold of her. Lifting her into the air, he threw her onto Hyn’s back. At the same time, Mahrtiir sprang astride his mount; and immediately their two Ranyhyn surged into a gallop, fleeing the horde. Behind them, Stave followed on Hynyn.

  Uncertain of her balance, and clinging fervently to the Staff of Law, Linden returned to herself.

  There Liand and Pahni joined her. Pounding the hard ground close together, the five horses stretched their strength to outdistance the Demondim.

  At first, Linden barely noticed them. For a while, she hardly knew where she was. She felt harried by exigencies which she no longer recognized or understood. By degrees, however, their urgency reclaimed her. Still reeling internally, she glanced around to check on her companions.

  Both Stave and Liand were unhurt: they had not encountered the Demondim. But Mahrtiir’s legs had been burned, his hands held bleeding sores, and one cheek wore a swath of blisters. The opalescent blasts of the creatures had nearly slain him. Perhaps he had attempted to garrote one of them. Its acid would have eaten away his fighting cord; chewed into his hands.