“Linden,” Liand murmured, “Linden,” but he did not seem to want her attention. Rather he gave the impression that he was trying to remind her of who she was.
“I’m here, Anele.” Linden stifled an impulse to summon fire from the Staff, cast away shadows. The light of Law might enable him to speak more clearly. But she did not want to announce her location. “Go on. I’m listening.”
Morinmoss redeemed the covenant-?
The old man threw out his arms as if he were opening his heart to the forest. “There is too much. Power and peril. Malevolence. Ruin. And too little time. The last days of the Land are counted.” His voice became a growl of distress. “Without forbidding, there is too little time.”
He wedged his feet deeper into the damp sand and rot.
“Anele.” Linden reached out to take hold of his arm. She did not know how else to steady him, anchor him, except by repeating his name. “Are we in danger? Are the skurj coming?”
Anele, make sense.
Flatly Stave announced, “I descry no threat. The Manethrall and the Humbled report nothing. The Cords are distant, but they do not convey alarm.”
As if in response, Anele urged Linden. “Seek deep rock. The oldest stone. You must. Only there the memory remains.”
She stared at him. Memory-? Did he mean the ancient lore which had been lost when the sentience of the One Forest failed, and the last Forestal was gone? Did he believe that the bones of the Earth remembered what the trees had forgotten?
Did the sand into which he had pushed his feet believe it?
“I don’t understand,” she protested. “The Elohim taught that lore to the One Forest.” Anele had told her so himself. “They remember it even if the trees don’t. And they obviously care,” although she could not explain their actions-or their inaction. “Otherwise they wouldn’t have tried to warn the Land. Why can’t we just ask them?”
Anele gnashed his teeth. “Forget understanding,” he snapped. “Forget purpose.” His eyes were hints, nacre and frenetic, in his shadowed face. “Forget the Elohim. They, too, are imperilled. Become as trees, the roots of trees. Seek deep rock.”
“Anele, please.” Linden wanted to swear at him. “I’m not the one who can read stone. You are. Even if I could reach deep enough,” even if she had not lost her only opportunity under Melenkurion Skyweir. “I can’t hear rock.
“I have to go to Andelain. I have to believe in what I’m doing. Covenant told me to find him. I don’t know where else to look.”
Briefly the old man pulled at his bedraggled hair. Then he appeared to make a supreme effort, as if he were clasping at lucidity that leaked through his fingers like water; and his voice changed. For a moment, a handful of words, he sounded like Sunder; like his own father, eerie and sorrowing.
“He did not know of your intent.”
Then he jerked his feet out of the sand and stamped into the stream to wash them clean of perceptions which he could not articulate. In a small voice that reminded Linden of Hollian’s, he murmured. “We are not alone. Others also are lost.”
After that, he lapsed into aimless babbling, as inchoate as the secrets of the rill.
Damn it, Linden breathed to herself. Damn it. She already knew that Sunder and Hollian did not wish her to enter Andelain. Anele had been completely sane when he had spoken for his long-dead parents. He had held the orcrest, and could not have been mistaken. But everything else-
Forget the Elohim. They, too, are imperilled.
The Elohim-? The people who had called themselves the heart of the Earth? The people who had said, We stand at the centre of all that lives and moves and is?
Others also are lost.
Only rock and wood know the truth-
“Linden,” Liand suggested quietly, “perhaps it would be well to offer him the orcrest? Without it, he cannot speak plainly.”
She shook her head. “I wish. But we can’t risk calling attention to ourselves. We don’t know what the skurj can sense.”
Or Kastenessen-
Studying the old man, Liand nodded sadly.
When Stave urged her to continue, Linden took Anele’s arm and drew him with her along the watercourse.
Darker shadows merged into each other. The flickers of light between the leaves grew more evanescent and rare, implying that the sun had fallen far down the western sky. Still her sense of time remained vague, obscured by shade and the stream’s writhen path. She could have believed that she had spent an hour or days in Salve Gildenbourne, and had drawn no nearer to the boundaries of Andelain. Eventually she might find that time had no meaning at all; that Roger and Kastenessen and the Despiser had nothing to fear because she had snared herself in a place from which she could not escape.
For a while, she continued walking only because she knew that she had no choice. Her steps became an apparently endless trudge over slick stones and damp sand. The mounting gloom seemed to swallow her mind as the trees swallowed sound. She was beginning to think that she was too tired to go on much farther when Stave announced suddenly. “Cord Bhapa approaches in haste.”
Anele tugged against her grasp on his arm, but she did not let him go.
“Has he found some sign of the skurj?” asked Liand tensely.
“I do not know.” Stave’s voice seemed to fade behind Linden. He had stopped to scrutinise the jungle. “He is not Haruchai. I discern only his alarm.”
They, too, are imperilled, Linden repeated to herself for no particular reason. Others also are lost. Someday she would be tired enough to forgive herself. She hoped that that day would come soon.
Then Anele broke free of her, and she felt a belated pang of anxiety. She heard him splash through the stream, but she was no longer able to see him: the shadows were too thick. Instead she felt him scramble westward out of the watercourse, fleeing into darkness.
“Liand!” she called softly. “Go after him. Find Pahni.” Intentionally or not, Anele was heading toward the young Cord. “Keep him safe.”
The skurj terrified the old man. After his fashion, he had good reason. And Linden could not think of any other danger-apart from a caesure- that might frighten him into abandoning his protectors.
Liand paused only long enough to drop his burdens beside the rill. Then he sped after Anele.
Wheeling, Linden located Stave more by his impassive aura than by his vague shape. She was about to ask him where Bhapa was when she felt the Cord’s approach through the undergrowth
— his approach and his fear. He was close to panic; closer than he had been three and a half thousand years ago, when he had returned, seriously injured, to describe the advance of the Demondim. He had never seen such monsters before. Among them, they had wielded the emerald bane of the Illearth Stone. Yet they had not scared him this badly.
“Clyme returns,” Stave told her, “responding to the Cord’s alarm. The Manethrall cannot move as swiftly. He has elected to scout eastward alone, seeking to discover more of this peril.” A moment later, the Haruchai added, “Branl also draws nigh. Like the Manethrall, Galt searches to the east.”
Linden hoped that the Humbled would keep their distance until she knew what she was up against. And she did not want Mahrtiir left alone. But she doubted that Clyme, Branl, and Galt would heed her wishes.
Her fingers itched on the written surface of the Staff. Its shaft was visible only because it was darker, blacker, than the masked dusk.
Bhapa seemed to rush toward her headlong. In his place, she would have tripped and fallen; crashed into tree trunks; blinded herself on whipping branches. But he was Ramen, and his craft did not desert him. Sprinting, he slipped through the jungle and sprang down into the watercourse.
Linden could not see his expression, but she smelled his sweat and desperation. His aura was as loud as a shout.
“Ringthane.” With a fierce effort, he controlled his breathing. “I have felt the skurj.”
She had expected this; assumed it. Nevertheless Bhapa’s words inspired an at
avistic dread. On some irrational level, she must have hoped
Gritting her teeth, she asked. “How many? Can you tell?”
“I felt one. But-” Frustration sharpened the edges of Bhapa’s fear. “Ringthane, I cannot be certain. Such ravening and rage are altogether beyond my knowledge. Its seeming is of a multitude. And it does not advance through the forest. Rather it flows beneath the roots of the trees. I was forewarned of its presence when I beheld leaves withering for no clear cause, and with unnatural speed, as though years of blight had passed within moments. When I then pressed my fingers to the earth, I felt-”
The Cord shuddered. Hoarsely he concluded. “I believe that I have outrun it. But its passage is swift, and it does not turn aside. I fear that it is aware of us”- he faltered- “of you. Of your powers, Ringthane.”
“The skurj draws nigh.” Stave’s voice held no inflection. “It is but one, as the Cord has discerned. And it does not rise. If it does not alter its course, it will pass below us.”
Aware-? Linden thought, scrambling to understand. Below us? The fires which she and her company had seen earlier had been at least twenty leagues away. If one of the skurj had crossed that distance unerringly, it must have been guided somehow.
It had been directed by its master. Or Bhapa was right: the monster could sense-
But she had not made any use of the Staff.
Below us?
Anele! Instinctively she whirled toward the west. She was merely human. Perceptions attuned to theurgy would not detect her unless she exerted her Staff or Covenant’s ring. The Haruchai would be more noticeable than she was; easier to spot. But Anele was full of Earthpower, rife with it: he had been born to it. Although his heritage was deeply submerged, he might be a beacon for any extraordinary percipience. And if he had stepped on bare dirt, even for an instant-
As she searched the evening for some hint of the old man, she saw a glimmer of white brilliance through the dark trunks and brush; and her heart seemed to stop.
Orcrest. Liand was using the orcrest.
Oh, God!
Below us. Below Stave and her. Liand’s Sunstone would attract Kastenessen’s creature. Trying to calm Anele-or perhaps simply to light their way-Liand had inadvertently exposed himself to the skurj.
Yelling, “Watch out!” she snatched power from the runes of the Staff; sent cornflower fire gusting out along the watercourse. “I’m going to try to stop that thing!” For an instant, the stream blazed as if the current had become incandescent. Then she concentrated her flame and drove it into the ground, down through sand and soil and stone, to intercept the skurj before it passed.
Stunned, Bhapa stared at her. But Stave appeared to understand. Grabbing the Cord’s arm, he drew Bhapa away from her; out to the fringes of her fire.
At first, she could not feel the monstrous creature. Her boots muffled the sensitivity of her feet, and her nerves had not found the pitch of ravening and rage which had appalled Bhapa. Urgently she sent Earthpower and Law deeper and deeper into the earth, deeper than the oldest roots of the most thirsty trees, and still no hunger responded to her flames.
Then Stave shouted. “Ware, Chosen! The skurj rises!”
In front of her, the watercourse spat filth in a spray of water, rocks, sand. The soil of its banks began to seethe as if the trees and brush were suppurating. Leaves overhead withered and charred. At the same time, she smelled gangrene; a miasma of sickness and rot; necrosis. Disease boiled upward as though dirt and stone and wood were dying flesh.
When her power touched the surging creature, she staggered. The sheer vehemence of the skurj struck her like a physical blow. God, it was strong-
Putrefaction clogged her throat: she could hardly breathe. She tasted similarities to Roger’s bitter scoria. But the forces which confronted her now were worse; purer. They resembled the ruddy extravagance of volcanoes: tremendous energies barely contained by the world’s friable shell.
As it came, she read the nature of the skurj. Mindless as cyclones and earthquakes, the monster was a product of organic magic. It had been born in magma: it throve in infernos and molten stone. And it ate the living earth. The earth’s flesh sustained its savagery. Yet it was not an inherent evil comparable to the Illearth Stone. Nor did it exist outside the bounds of Law, as did the Viles and their descendants. And it did not intend ruin: it had no intention except appetite.
Over the course of millennia, however, all of the skurj had received the legacy of Kastenessen’s rage. During his Appointed Durance, they had been transmogrified; harnessed to his service. From him, they had inherited perversion. Goaded by his hate, they had become havoc and insatiable sickness.
The creature rising to devour trees and dirt and Linden did not reason, and knew no fear. Therefore it could not be turned aside. It would eat and eat, afflicting everything in its vicinity with rot, until the very Earth was torn open at last.
Gasping at the stench, Linden felt her courage fail. She could not move or think. Around her, a wide span of the watercourse and the forest boiled and frothed, immedicably diseased. The Staff was useless to her. The skurj consumed her flames; swallowed or ignored her power.
Covenant had told her to find him. Lord Foul and the croyel held Jeremiah. She and all of her companions were here because she had decided to take the Land’s fate into her own hands. Now she was helpless. Before she saw Kastenessen’s beast for the first time, it had already defeated her.
For an instant, the fabric of reality seemed to rip like a fouled tapestry. The ground pitched and heaved; dropped her to her knees. The pustulent reek of mortification filled her lungs, her nerves, her wailing mind.
Then the skurj erupted from the earth, and she gaped into its avid mouth.
It rose as tall as a Giant above her, and as thick as a cedar. Its hide was as heavy and hot as slag: the entire length of the creature emitted a terrible heat. Yet the hide shed no light. Even the tremendous kraken maw and gullet gave no illumination. Only the teeth, the fearsome fangs, long as stakes, curved and keen as scimitars, row after row of them filling the jaws: only the teeth shone. They burned with a sick red slashing radiance like lamps along the passage into hell.
Linden did not move. She believed that she could not. Her weakness was her birthright: her parents had spent their lives so that she would receive and accept their last gifts.
Nevertheless she was not the woman she had once been; the emotional cripple who had watched, frozen, while Jeremiah had surrendered his hand to Lord Foul, and Covenant had sacrificed himself for Joan. Her heart had become stone-and the stone held.
She did not move, but she could whisper. Gazing into the fanged throat of slaughter, she murmured. “Melenkurion abatha. Duroc minas mill. Harad khabaal.”
The skurj arched over her, mindless and savage. Its lambent teeth strained toward her. It could have swallowed her in a heartbeat. Yet it did not strike. Hearing her, it hesitated, caught by the potency of the Seven Words.
Then Clyme appeared on the poisoned ground beyond the skurj; and the suddenness of his arrival wrenched Linden from her paralysis. He was a Master, a potential antagonist. But he was also Haruchai: he would not hold back. Already she saw him gather himself to spring at the monster.
One touch of that fierce hide would burn the flesh from his bones. One flash of those wicked fangs would sever his limbs.
She was on her feet before she heard herself howl. “Clyme, no!” Screaming the Seven Words, she flung the full strength of the Staff at the skurj. Every scrap of her desperation and weakness and Earthpower she transmuted to fire and hurled against the creature.
Frantically she unleashed strength enough to set Salva Gildenbourne ablaze. But the focus of her terror and resolve was so single-minded that none of her flames touched the trees.
The skurj reared above her. Its jaws stretched to devour her inadequacy. For a moment or two, however, a handful of heartbeats, her coruscating incendiary repulsion sufficed to stop the beast. Although it ate her power, sh
e lashed it with more force than it could consume.
Hampered by fire and the invocation of Law, the skurj reached toward her with its bright fangs-and failed to strike.
“Clyme!” Stave shouted: a stentorian roar which Linden scarcely heard. “Humbled! Preserve the Stonedownor! His orcrest may serve to distract this abomination!”
The skurj forced Linden backward step after step. Its brute force, prodigious and incapable of dismay, threatened to overwhelm her. Among the roots of Melenkurion Skyweir, she had outfought the combined theurgies of Roger and the croyel. But there she had drawn directly upon the EarthBlood: Earthpower unconstrained by mortality and fragile flesh. Here she had only herself.
Then Clyme turned from the creature and ran westward into the trees, followed by Bhapa and then Branl. When she saw that only Stave remained with her, in instant danger, Linden felt a touch of relief. Retreating, she grew stronger.
Grimly she poured torrential fire into the creature’s jaws; down its gullet. She was Linden Avery the Chosen. With no resources except the Staff of Law, the Seven Words, and her own granite, she had survived Melenkurion Skyweir’s convulsion. And Caerroil Wildwood had completed her Staff. Nothing limited the puissance available to her except her own abilities; her circumscribed humanity.
Still she retreated. She had no choice. The creature was too strong: she could not hold it back entirely. But her moment of defeat had passed. As the jaws of the skurj blazed toward her, she reached deeper and deeper into herself for power.
Half of the beast’s serpentine length remained buried beneath it. Balancing as if it were coiled, the creature thrust itself forward. With every violent movement, the fangs burned closer to Linden, and the ground boiled and rotted.
Stave stood directly behind her; supported her with his hands on her shoulders. In part, he gave her his intransigence, his unyielding Haruchai valour. But he also steadied her as she stumbled backward over sand and rocks. Unable to fight the creature himself, he preserved her from falling.
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