In gratitude and extreme fever, Linden howled the Seven Words, and hurled conflagration as intense as a solar flare at the skurj- and learned the real purpose of Kevin’s Dirt.
Within its definitions-within the bounds of Earthpower and Law-the Staff had no limits except those of its wielder. And Linden’s doubt and terror had passed. She had been annealed in her battle with Roger and the croyel: she was prepared to unleash any amount of flame against the skurj. It was not alone. Doubtless more of its kind rushed to assail her. She would have to slay them all. The Land’s life as well as Jeremiah’s depended on her. She did not mean to fail.
She should have been able to ask the Staff for as much Earthpower as she needed.
But she had forgotten the cloying pall of Kevin’s Dirt. The blindness, the truncation of percipience, which it imposed was only one of its effects. Fighting for her life, she discovered that Kevin’s Dirt hampered other forms of Earthpower as well.
It restricted her fire.
During her battle with Roger and the croyel, Kevin’s Dirt had not constrained her. It had not existed in that time. And it had not prevented her from extinguishing caesures, or from slaying Cavewights and kresh, because those exertions had not required as much raw force as she sought here. Caesures violated all Law: all Law aided her against them. And Cavewights and kresh were perishable, as prone to immolation as any man or woman or child.
But now-God!
Kevin’s Dirt had been created for this: to inhibit the uttermost use of Earthpower. Linden was not being driven backward because she was human and weak, but rather because her attempts to summon the full resources of the Staff were clogged by a ubiquitous fug of wrongness.
And this skurj was only one. There would be more.
Stave was right: Linden needed a distraction. She needed to risk Liand and the orcrest and perhaps all of her companions. She could not stop even one of these monsters with Earthpower. She would die in moments if she did not cast the Staff aside and oppose the skurj with wild magic.
But that would take time. She had not begun to master Covenant’s ring. And white gold defied Law. By its very nature, the Staff would hamper her. It might block her altogether. Even if she surrendered it to Stave, she might not be able to invoke the wild magic that destroys peace swiftly enough to prevent the skurj from crushing her.
Stave! she cried in silence because she could not stop howling the Seven Words. Get Liand!
Stave could not hear her thoughts. She had to rely on his instinctive comprehension of her peril. She would falter and die if Liand did not distract the creature.
Just for a moment. Please.
I am not going to lose my son!
Her task should have been impossible. Without Stave’s support, she would have fallen. Nevertheless she continued to block the monster’s jaws, opposing its fury with fire and utter dismay.
Dimly she heard a voice that was not hers. Somewhere in the distance, Mahrtiir yelled, “Ringthane!” as if the word were a battle cry.
Another roar answered his, as loud as the crushing of boulders.
Then the Manethrall crashed into her from the side; drove her staggering through the stream to collide heavily with the bank of the watercourse.
At once, her power collapsed. The breath and stench were driven from her lungs: she nearly lost her grasp on the Staff. In the sudden cessation of flame, night closed like a tomb over the forest. Only the fangs of the skurj still shone, gaping for prey.
Linden twisted to the side. She clutched for Covenant’s ring.
Between her and the monster’s maw, she saw in silhouette the mighty form of a Giant. Limned by rows of ravenous burning, he advanced on her with his arms raised over his head. In his hands, he gripped a longsword taller than she was, a wave-bladed flamberge.
We are not alone. Others also are lost.
The Giant’s features were a contorted yammer of rage and insanity as he swung his sword, trying to hack Linden in half.
Chapter Nine: The Long Journey of the Lost
Stunned by her impact with the bank of the watercourse, Linden could not breathe. She had no capacity for power. Every Giant whom she had ever known had been her friend: bluff, kindly, humorous, extravagant of heart. Some of them she had loved. She would have felt a rush of joy if she had heard that those sea-and stone-loving people had returned to the Land.
The figure looming over her with butchery in his hands was unmistakably a Giant. He was at least twice her height, twice as broad, and muscled like an oak. His weathered features looked like they had been chiselled from brown marble. Even the cropped cut of his beard might have been shaped stone.
Yet he could not have belonged to the race that had called the people of the Land “Rockbrother” and “Rocksister” in friendship and mirth. She had seen Giants in every extreme of desperation and agony, outrage and sorrow, yearning and fear, as well as in affection and laughter and comradeship; but she had never seen one raving with madness, or frantic for bloodshed.
She could not save herself. The wave-lined blade of his longsword plunged toward her: it would hit with the force of a guillotine. Her shocked heart would not have time to beat again.
When Mahrtiir had knocked her aside, he had fallen with her. But he had rebounded to his feet in the same motion. More swift than she would ever be, he confronted the Giant, gripping his garrote between his fists. Eyeless and human, he may nonetheless have hoped to loop his cord over the flamberge, alter its arc.
The sword was sharp iron: it would sever the garrote as though the Manethrall and his weapon did not exist.
But Stave was faster than the Manethrall-and far stronger. Cartwheeling past Mahrtiir, he intercepted the Giant’s blow with his feet; slammed his heels against the vicious plummet of the Giant’s hands.
Deflected, the longsword hammered into the earth a hand span from Linden’s shoulder.
The Giant’s might buried his blade halfway to its hilt. Raging, he snatched it back to strike again.
Stave landed on his feet. At once, he leapt at the Giant’s arms, trying to pin them together; hamper the Giant’s next blow.
The Giant jerked him into the air as if he were a trivial encumbrance.
In that instant, the skurj surged forward. It sank its fangs into the Giant’s shoulder.
All light vanished as the terrible jaws closed. Linden sensed rather than saw the beast heave the Giant upward and shake him, driving its bite deeper.
She felt Stave spring clear; felt Mahrtiir search eyelessly for an opening in which he could use his garrote.
She heard the Giant howl-
— in fury: not in pain.
Now she discerned that he was armoured in stone. He wore a cataphract of granite slabs which had been fused together by some Giantish lore. Briefly the stone protected him.
But the skurj fed on earth and rock: it chewed through the armour. Cruel curved fiery teeth searched for flesh and muscle and bone. In spite of the Giant’s tremendous strength, his entire arm would be torn away.
Still his screams were rage rather than excruciation.
He had just tried to kill Linden. But he was a Giant, a Giant. Instinctively she scrambled upright to defend him. Wielding the Staff with both hands, she hurled a frantic yell of flame at the creature.
In the sudden blaze of Earthpower, its multiplied fire reflecting from the stream’s turmoil, she saw the jungle along the eastern edge of the watercourse erupt with Giants.
They arrived too abruptly to be counted. Linden recognised only that they were all women; that they, too, wore stone armour and brandished longswords; and that Galt was among them.
They attacked like an explosion.
One of them hacked with a massive stone glaive at the monster’s jaws. Some act of cunning or magic had hardened the sword. A single blow cut the mad Giant free. Ruddy horror splashed from the exposed fangs.
Another woman slashed iron through the thick hide of the skurj, spilling viscid blood that reeked of rot and diseas
e. Then she plunged her fist into the wound-into the living magma-as if she sought to rip out the creature’s heart. The monster’s heat tore a shout of pain from her throat; but she did not withdraw.
A third Giant chopped at the beast’s body where it emerged from the ground as if she were trying to fell a tree.
Dumbfounded, Linden remembered that Giants could endure fire, even lava-at least for a short time. In their caamora, their ritual of grief, they purged sorrow by immersing their flesh in flames and anguish.
By that means, Covenant had released the Dead of The Grieve. Saltheart Foamfollower had enabled him to cross over Hotash Slay.
Nevertheless she snatched back her own blaze so that it would not interfere with the creature’s assailants.
When the skurj dropped the raving Giant, he rolled to his feet. Swinging his flamberge, he charged at Linden again.
Only Mahrtiir stood between her and the shaped blade.
By the light of the Staff, she saw the Giant clearly. Flagrant lunacy gripped his features like a rictus: his desire for her death burned in his eyes. And some time ago-a year or more-his face had suffered an edged wound. A deep, scarred dent crossed his visage from above his left eye and over the bridge of his nose into his right cheek. It gave him a crumpled look, as though the bones of his skull had tried to fold in on themselves.
He was no more than two quick strides from her, near enough to have slain Mahrtiir if he had noticed the Manethrall, when one of the women clubbed at his temple with the pommel of her longsword. At the same time, Stave kicked a leg out from under him. He fell so heavily that the ground lurched.
He tried to rise, still gripping his flamberge. But the Giant who had struck him stamped her foot down on his blade; and another woman pounced at him, landing with her knees on his back.
A heartbeat later, the Giant who had freed him from the skurj joined her companions. Like him-like all of the Giants-she wore armour of stone. Dropping her glaive, she reached under her cataphract and drew out two sets of iron shackles. With the help of the other women, she forced his arms behind him and secured his wrists together. Then she fettered his ankles.
As soon as he was bound, his captors jumped back. He hauled his knees under him, heaved himself upright, surged to his feet. Without hesitation, he charged at Linden again as if he meant to kill her with his teeth; bite open her throat.
Grimly the Giant who had shackled him punched him in the centre of his forehead.
Her blow stopped him; may have stunned him: it seemed to alter his rage. His roar became urgent gasping. “Slay her!” he pleaded hugely. “Are you blind? Are you fools? Slay her!”
He did not appear to be aware of his damaged shoulder.
Muttering bitterly, one of the other women jammed a rock into his mouth to gag him. Then she pulled back his head and pushed down on his shoulders, forcing him to his knees.
The Giant hacking at the creature’s trunk had nearly cut through it; but still the skurj fought, flinging fetid gouts of blood in all directions. Its fangs flared murderously despite its maimed jaw. Where its blood struck armour, the sick fluid frothed and fumed, but did not corrode the stone.
Other Giants slashed at the monster. However, they did not press their attacks. Instead they distracted the beast so that it did not turn its teeth against the woman who had thrust her arm into its viscera. Her shout had thickened to a strangled snarl of pain, but she continued to grope inside the skurj, trying to grasp some unimaginable vital organ.
Then she pulled away. For an instant, Linden thought that the Giant had suffered more fire and hurt than she could endure. But in her fist, she clutched a rancid pulsing mass.
With a hideous shriek that nearly split Linden’s eardrums, the skurj collapsed. At first, the conflagration of its fangs continued to throb and flicker. Slowly, however, darkness filled the creature’s maw, and she knew that it was dead.
Growling Giantish obscenities, the woman flung the monster’s organ far out over the trees.
The woman who had produced the shackles retrieved her stone longsword. When she had wiped it on the bank of the watercourse, she slipped it into a sheath at her back.
Fumbling as if he were disoriented, Mahrtiir felt his way to Linden; touched her face and arms to assure himself that she was unharmed. “Mane and Tail, Ringthane,” he murmured. “Are they Giants? Truly?”
She seemed to hear weeping in the background of his voice. But he was too proud to surrender to his astonishment and relief.
When she tried to answer, her throat closed on the words.
How many Giants were there? She counted ten women and the madman. Two stood guard over him, ensuring that he did not regain his feet. Seven quickly formed a protective perimeter around Linden, Stave, Mahrtiir, and Galt. And one-the Giant with the shackles and the stone glaive-turned toward Linden.
She was a bit shorter and less muscular than her prisoner, but she emanated great strength. Streaks of grey marked her short hair, which appeared to sweep back from her forehead of its own accord. The lined toughness of her skin suggested age-whatever that word might mean among people who lived as long as Giants-but there was no hint of diminished vigour in her demeanour or her movements. Combat and hardship smouldered in her eyes. The precise symmetry of her features was marred by a deep bruise on her right cheekbone. Rerebraces of hardened leather protected her upper arms: old scars latticed her forearms and hands.
Her manner announced that she was the leader of the Giants.
Both Stave and Galt bowed deeply, honouring the ancient respect of the Haruchai for the Giants; and Stave said. “We are timely met, Giant. Unexpected aid is twice welcome. And we”- he flicked a glance at Galt- “I did not anticipate your return to the Land.”
The woman ignored Stave and the Humbled. To Linden, she said brusquely, “You would do well to extinguish your flame. In this dire wood, darkness is less perilous than power.”
Linden swallowed heavily, struggling to clear her throat of relief and dismay and memory. The Giant’s air of command and obvious prowess reminded her poignantly of the First of the Search. This woman’s countenance did not resemble the First’s. Nor did her armour. Nonetheless she seemed to have emerged from Linden’s distant past, bringing with her Linden’s love for the First and Pitchwife, for lost Honninscrave and doomed Seadreamer.
And Linden had failed against the skurj. She was adrift in recollection, bereavement, inadequacy. Because she could not find any other words, she said dully, “You killed it.”
She had done little more than slow the monster. Soon it would have consumed her-
The Staffs light was all that kept the Giants from vanishing.
“For a short time,” the Giant replied. “Its death and your magicks will soon draw others of its kind. They will devour its remains and multiply. When they have feasted, two or three will become four or six. With each death, their numbers increase.
“Again I ask you to quench your flame. Then we must depart with as much haste as we may. These creatures-knowing nothing of them, we name them were-menhirs- are not laggardly. Ere long they will assail us in numbers too great for our strength.”
Linden stared in chagrin. With each death-? The skurj reproduced by eating their own dead? Trembling, she clung to Earthpower and Law; to herself. Without fire, she would be at the night’s mercy.
What in God’s name were the Giants doing here? And why did one of them want to kill her?
“You’re a Swordmain,” she murmured as if she were stupefied. All of the Giants were Swordmainnir. Even the madman- “Like the First of the Search.”
They could have been a war party-
Grimly the Giant answered, “And you are Linden Avery, called Chosen and Sun-Sage”- she grinned like a threat- “if the tales of our people have not been excessively embellished. As the Master has said, we are timely met. But if you do not-”
Sudden relief shook Linden. With a convulsive effort, she stifled her fire; let herself fall into darkness. She was know
n: these Giants knew her. She did not need to fear facing them without light.
The survivors of the Search had carried stories of their adventures back to their people. The Giants loved such tales; told and retold them in eager detail. And their lives were measured by centuries rather than years or decades. They would not have forgotten her. Or Covenant. Or the love for the Land which the First and Pitchwife had learned in Andelain.
For a moment, she was lost; blinded. The intense mephitic stench and sickness of the monster’s corpse overwhelmed her senses. She required other dimensions of perception in order to distinguish the figures around her, Stave, Galt, and Mahrtiir as well as the Giants.
Unsteadily she said, “I don’t know how to thank you. I couldn’t stop that thing.” It was only one of the skurj- “Kevin’s Dirt is worse than I thought. We would all be dead if you hadn’t found us.”
“Linden Avery”- the Giant’s tone was iron- “our cause for gratitude is no less than yours. We must exchange tales. Yet our foremost need is for distance from this beast’s remains.”
“Chosen,” Stave said at once. “the Swordmain speaks sooth. We have now no guard to the east, and the skurj surely draw nigh. We must gather our companions and make haste.”
“Companions’?” asked the woman sharply. You are not alone’?”
“Only some of us are here.” Linden’s voice still shook. “We have-” She was about to say, — a madman of our own to worry about. But the injustice of comparing Anele to the Giant who had tried to hack her down stopped her. “We have an old man with us. The others are protecting him.”
“They approach,” stated Galt flatly. “Though you do not acknowledge our presence, Giant, you hear us. Watch to the west.”
“The unwelcome of the Masters is not forgotten,” the woman rasped. “We-” Then she halted: Linden felt her stiffen. “Stone and Sea! Your companions are a beacon, Linden Avery. Surely every were-menhir- do you name them skurj? — within a score of leagues speeds hither.”
At once, the leader of the Giants shouted, “Quell your power, stranger! You summon a peril too swift to be outrun!”
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