The Runes of the Earth t3cotc-1

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Apparently Cail’s son had betrayed Linden and her companions with a vengeance.

  If the legends of the Demondim were accurate, and their lore as vast and insidious as Stave had reported, the creatures might be able to destroy the Staff of Law. Given a little time, they could easily exterminate the last of the ur-viles and Waynhim. Even wild magic might not surpass their powers.

  “Ringthane,” Mahrtiir asked avidly, “will we not give battle? The ur-viles cannot hold. In moments they will be swept aside, and the Waynhim with them. We must ride to their defence.”

  “No!” Linden protested. “We can’t. Not here. Don’t you remember what Stave said? There haven’t been any battles,” any extravagant exertions of power, “in this part of the Land.” Not since she had unmade the Sunbane. “If we fight now,” or if she did, “we’ll violate history. We’ll damage the Arch of Time.”

  The mere presence of the Demondim and a flake of the Illearth Stone might suffice to undermine the foundations of reality.

  Yet the plight of the ur-viles cried out to her. Their desperate barking had become ragged, frenetic: they were being overwhelmed. And the Waynhim would be next. Already the grey creatures stood at the verge of the Stone’s reach. With each mounting flash of emerald, each multiplied burst of virulence, their doom advanced on them. She could hear them chanting, and knew that they were too weak, too few-

  Shapes that she could not define crowded up the slope, dark forms like a storm-lashed wave breaking impossibly upward. They seemed to devour the moonlight so that they were illumined only by green evil. But now other forces were visible as well, quick eruptions of a killing opalescence which appeared to flash from indistinct hands.

  “Then what must we do?” snarled Mahrtiir. “It is intolerable that all who aid us must be slain while we stand aside.”

  “Protect me,” she answered, acrid with self-restraint. The Waynhim had preserved the Staff for her. The ur-viles had exhausted themselves to help her find it. She wanted to rush to their defence, regardless of the consequences. But she had recognised her true peril. “I need time-”

  It is an effect of my nearness.

  You will not be blocked from wild magic.

  She needed time to rediscover the truth about herself.

  At last, the Waynhim released the results of their steady invocation. From their wedge, a shock wave poured down the hillside; a blast which dwarfed the one that had warded their cave. Perceptible only because it was so potent, it crashed against the rising tsunami of the attackers.

  A staggering emerald jolt answered the collision. Murderous nacre blazed soundlessly from the hands of the Demondim. Instantly an electric discharge as cruel as fangs and as lurid as the Despiser’s lightning lit the night; and for that brief moment Linden saw the Demondim clearly.

  Eyeless like the creatures they had spawned, they resembled their creations in no other way except darkness. Bhapa was right. They looked like huge trees ripped somehow intact from centuries of mould and rot; like Cavewights corroded by time to skeletons and ferocity; like kresh and other rapt beasts resurrected to repay their deaths. Among them marched human corpses, men and women who knew only the animating lust of their possessors. And there were other figures as well, monsters in the shape of nightmares. The Demondim appeared to number in the hundreds, all surging upwards against the assault of the Waynhim-and all so long abandoned to the hungry embrace of worms that they had forgotten whatever they had once known of their mortality.

  Linden could not tell which among them held their fragment of the Illearth Stone. Perhaps several did in concert. She saw only that while the Stone blazed its evil seemed to rave from many of the Demondim at once, casting back the darkness; tainting the moonlight with the hues of atrocity.

  She no longer believed that her foes held a mere flake of the ancient bane. To her horrified senses, its power seemed as absolute as that of the original Illearth Stone.

  When the Waynhim fell, the onslaught would reach Linden and her companions. She had only a little time left. A scattering of moments: a few dozen heartbeats.

  Too few to save the world-

  The Ranyhyn were growing frantic. Whrany skittered and flinched, apparently feeling Bhapa’s pain, yearning to protect his rider. Pahni walked her mount in tight circles to calm the mare; and Mahrtiir leaned along his stallion’s neck, murmuring fierce promises to the horse’s ears. But Stave sat motionless, with Hynyn as stolid as a statue under him. And Hrama bore Anele steadily in spite of the old man’s angry muttering.

  Linden gripped the Staff until her hands were slick with sweat, thinking that she would have no choice except to call forth its power-and praying fervently that an exertion of Law by its very nature would sustain rather than weaken the Arch; that the insult to the integrity of Time would not prove irreparable.

  Another tremendous concussion shook the night, emerald shot through with opalescence and ruin, dropping the Waynhim to their knees. Faint bursts of vitriol still attacked the dire force of the bane, but they were few and widely separated. Only a handful of the ur-viles remained alive-

  Esmer had foretold death for the Waynhim. He had not mentioned the ur-viles. They had discerned treachery in him from the first, and had set themselves to guard against him. He may have been glad to think that they would all perish.

  Yet he could do nothing without contradicting his own intentions. For every betrayal, his conflicted nature required him to offer help. That was why he had left.

  So that Linden could use Covenant’s ring.

  Stave had assured her that she would be able to do so.

  Abruptly she shook off her hesitation. “Here,” she said to Liand. Prompted by an instinct which she could not have explained, she tossed the Staff to him, trusting him to catch it. “Keep it safe for me. I’ll need it later.”

  It would only distract her now-and might hinder her in other ways as well. Its essential nature contradicted wild magic.

  Liand fumbled for it in surprise, secured his grasp on it; hugged it to his chest. But she did not see his nod of acceptance, or the promise in his eyes. She had already dropped away from him in her mind, bowing her head and covering her face with her hands as if to isolate herself from him and all her companions.

  Esmer was gone. And she held Covenant’s ring by right and need. She had inherited it from him in Kiril Threndor; had confirmed her claim upon it by wielding its illimitable fire to shape the new Staff of Law. It had healed a bullet’s passage through her vulnerable flesh. It had preserved her from the collapse of Kevin’s Watch. If she needed it now, it would not be denied to her.

  It could not.

  Scrambling along the twisted pathways of herself, the lost route to the hidden door, she found the truth. Stave was right. The door had not vanished. It had merely been masked by Esmer’s aura. In his absence, she seemed to rediscover it with ease. She was already desperate: she had forgotten agony and formication and utter bereavement. And at times the ring’s argence had answered her urgent impulses more naturally, more readily, than her deliberate choices.

  Between one heartbeat and the next, white fire bloomed from the hard circle under her shirt as though it had arisen straight out of her heart.

  If she had opened her eyes, she would have seen the faces of her companions turning toward her, defined by wonder and white fire. If she had reached out with her percipience, she would have felt a shock of recognition and eagerness galvanise the Ranyhyn. Her nerves might have tasted the more distant awe of the Waynhim and the grim determination of the remaining ur-viles. She could have found comfort in the sudden apprehension which momentarily halted the Demondim.

  But she had no attention to spare for the external details of her situation. As soon as she found the door, and felt the silver fire of Covenant’s ring spring forth like exaltation, she squeezed her eyes more tightly shut, bowed more deeply into herself, and pulled her concentration down to a point as fine as the tip of a dirk.

  With that delicate instrument
, she probed the necessary structure of time.

  At once, she felt the wrongness of what she did. She was attempting a violation as cruel as possession or rape. On a level too deep for words or understanding, she seemed to feel the woven fabric of existence shudder in dismay. If she made even the smallest mistake, all of reality would be torn apart; and the rending shriek of ruin would be the last sound the world ever heard.

  Nevertheless she did not falter now. She was Linden Avery the Chosen, and she meant to prove herself against the Land’s doom.

  Lord Foul had taught her to know her own evil. She could still fear what might happen; but she no longer feared herself.

  She needed to focus her power and her senses so keenly that she would be able to detect the ligatures which connected one instant to the next; the bonds of sequence which caused one heartbeat, one thought, one event to follow another. If she could identify the ceaseless, evanescent, and ineluctable fact of transition which defined time, she would be able to insert her fire there and sever-

  – detaching one moment from the next. Opening a caesure, as Joan did whenever her madness impelled her to strike herself.

  Yet she knew that it would not be enough to simply replicate Joan’s actions; to slow and refine her perceptions to the pitch that empowered Joan. If she did, she would have no control over what ensued. Her task was more complex. While she emulated Joan’s insanity, she had to remember that what she did was evil. She had to remember its consequences.

  Therefore she cast herself deliberately back into the instant when she had first entered the Fall; when formication had become the world, leaving her capable of nothing except featureless gelid whiteness and Joan’s torment. That excruciation she re-created in her mind as she focused her argence closer and closer to the gap between the instants. With every piercing breath, she relived agony.

  That pain helped her cling to herself. It reminded her that she was not Joan; that she was prepared to accept the cost of her own actions.

  She had caused this crisis by the extravagance of her choices. Uncounted ur-viles had been slain, and most of the Waynhim would follow. Her friends would die. The Staff of Law might be destroyed. She herself might fall in spite of her powers, abandoning Jeremiah and the Land to Lord Foul’s malice. And all because she had risked leaving her proper time.

  Set beside the potential cost of failure, the anguish and evil of creating a caesure were prices that she was willing to pay.

  Somewhere beyond her attention, emerald flared and raved, adumbrating malice into the betrayed night. The Waynhim were driven back. The waves of their theurgy, shock after shock like combers in a high wind, were barely adequate to defend them: they could not stand their ground. The explosions of vitriol from the ur-viles had become pitifully brief and slight; too small to hamper the Demondim. The bitter gleaming of the attackers swept resistance aside.

  Watching the doomed contest, Mahrtiir and his mount could no longer restrain themselves. Howling defiance, the Manethrall launched his Ranyhyn like thunder down the hillside. At once, Pahni and Naharahn pounded after him, chased unsteadily by Bhapa on Whrany. Pahni added her girlish shout to Mahrtiir’s stentorian roar; but Bhapa was silent.

  Only Whrany’s fleet skill enabled the injured Cord to keep his seat. Unable to use his garrote, and fatally weak, he could not fight. Nevertheless he raced after his Manethrall and Pahni, trusting the hooves of his mount to strike for him.

  Liand might have followed the Ramen into battle, but his responsibility for the Staff held him back. Stave did not move from Linden’s side. And Anele remained where he was, consumed by his useless imprecations.

  If the onslaught came near Linden, she would be defended only by an untried Stonedownor, a madman, and one lone Haruchai.

  With some part of her mind, she must have been aware of her companions and the Demondim; must have felt the proximity of the Illearth Stone and slaughter. Her sense of urgency increased moment by moment, and white fire from Covenant’s ring spired higher into the dark, shedding a stark luminescence across the bare hillsides and the thronging battleground.

  Nevertheless her peril only fed her concentration, sending her deeper into her task.

  It was hard. God, it was hard! Intending to violate time, she violated as well every instinct for healing and health which had shaped her life. Caesures were evil: they attacked the fundamental structures which made existence possible. And she had committed herself to wholeness rather than ruin.

  Still she did not hold back. She knew the depth of the Despiser’s malice. She felt the lust and hatred of the Demondim, and the destructiveness of the Illearth Stone. She understood what would happen if she allowed such hungers to feed unopposed, and her whole being rose up in repudiation.

  And Liand held the Staff of Law in her name: the only instrument of power in all the Land which might be able to halt or contain the vast wrong of a Fall. If he did not fail her, she could hope to impose limits on the harm she meant to cause.

  Guilt is power. Only the damned can be saved.

  When she was ready, she cast a silent appeal to Hyn and all of the Ranyhyn. Without them, she would be unable to reach her necessary goal.

  Then she released a slash of silver flame which sundered the night.

  Through the riven dark, chaos tumbled forth. A tremendous migraine swirl of distortion appeared in the night, destructive as a tornado, and maddening as a swarm of wasps. It seethed with force as though every link and interstice of material reality had been torn apart.

  Remembered agony squalled in Linden’s nerves as she saw that she had succeeded.

  The caesure boiled no more than a stone’s throw to her right. It seemed to drift toward her with a kind of hideous nonchalance, sure of its might, and in no hurry to devour.

  Stave barked a warning, and Liand called her name; but she hardly heard them. With a gesture of wild magic, a sweep of fire, she redirected the Fall, sent it sprawling like an avalanche in slow motion down toward the heart of the battle. At the same time, she scourged it with flame so that it swelled over the ground, growing wider until it was vast enough to consume the entire horde of the Demondim. Then she urged Hyn into motion after it.

  As the mare stretched into a gallop, Linden shouted in a voice of argence, “Come now!” praying that the Waynhim and the ur-viles would be able to hear her through the tumult.

  At the same time, she prayed that Mahrtiir and his Cords still lived, and could respond.

  Stave and Liand rode at her sides. Silver fire lit the stern concentration on the Master’s visage: he looked like a man who believed that he could determine the outcome of Linden’s gamble by sheer force of will. Liand clung grimly to the Staff, holding it ready. His fear of the Fall glared in his eyes, but he did not try to restrain his mount.

  Behind them ran Hrama, bearing Anele whether or not the old man wished to follow.

  Linden glimpsed Waynhim racing toward her on all fours. Among them, a few ur-viles appeared, splashed with blood as black as night. As Hyn pounded among the massed forces of the Demondim, more Ranyhyn joined her, two or three. But in the light of Covenant’s ring, Linden caught only a brief flash of them. She could not be sure that more than one of them still carried a rider.

  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.

  Chapter Nine: 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, untrammelled 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.