Against All Things Ending (85 page)

He was succeeding. By increments so small that Linden could barely discern them, he dragged the wood out of the coils.

If the monster tried to shift its grasp, it would lose the Staff altogether.

Nevertheless Stave could not win. Linden saw that. The lurker would change its tactics. Another tentacle would arise to toss the
Haruchai
aside. Or he would be punched down into the water and mud, forced under until he drowned.

He needed help.

The Swordmainnir understood his peril as clearly as Linden did. With a Giantish battle cry, Latebirth charged into the marsh. Three against two tentacles, she, Bluntfist, and Cabledarm fought to create an opening so that one of them could reach Stave. An instant later, Onyx Stonemage abandoned her watch against the Feroce and rushed to Coldspray’s assistance.

In response, a fifth tentacle joined the fray.

Linden could not bear it. Covenant had told her repeatedly to trust herself.
She can do this
. The pain in her leg demanded deeds that had no name.

She was too weak to shout. Her lungs held too much water. Stonemage, Latebirth, and the other were too embattled to hear her. Trusting herself meant trusting her friends. It meant trusting Frostheart Grueburn.

“Tell them,” she gasped. Her throat felt raw, scorched by flame, scraped by smoke. “Save Coldspray. I’ll help Stave.”

Grueburn must have heard her. Must have believed her. Clarion as a thunderclap, the Giant roared over the tumult, “
To the Ironhand!
Linden Giantfriend aids Stave!”

They all must have believed in Linden. Crashing like a berserker, Latebirth turned to head toward Rime Coldspray with Stonemage. An instant later, Halewhole Bluntfist did the same, leaving Cabledarm to engage three tentacles alone.

Without hesitation, Cabledarm dove beneath the fouled surface, the scourged spray. Then she surged to her feet near one of the arms. Streaming with muck and fronds, with gobbets of putrid flesh, she swung her sword two-handed; hacked into the thick muscle and sinew of the tentacle.

Her blow bit deep. The Feroce wailed as though they had been pierced. Acid pulsed in Linden’s leg.

Another tentacle struck Cabledarm down. But the arm that she had hurt toppled, loud as a scream, back into the fen.

It did not rise again. Instead it fled, plowing a writhen furrow in the water.

At the same time, Stonemage drove a headlong thrust into the heavy mass striving to crush Coldspray��and Latebirth threw her whole body into a horizontal slash—

—and Linden reached out with percipience and desperation for the Staff of Law.

It was hers. It was
hers
, Goddammit! She had fashioned it with wild magic from her own love and bereavement as much as from Vain and Findail. Only its iron heels had once belonged to Berek. And it had answered her call when she had needed Earthpower to heal a dying Waynhim. It would answer her now.

While one tentacle held Cabledarm underwater, and another swatted Bluntfist aside, knocking the Swordmain away as if she were weightless, Linden summoned fire from her Staff.

Panting the Seven Words, she did her best to spare Stave. But she could not afford to concentrate on his safety. To harm the lurker, she needed her fiercest flame. For reasons that she did not try to understand, the monster wanted the Staff. It would not let go unless she made it flinch.

From the Staff, she called one small tongue of fire, flame blacker than the tinged darkness. Then another. Another.

Every sign of Earthpower and Law made Linden stronger. The Seven Words filled her mouth. She could not recover the lost cleanliness of her theurgy; but she could make it hurtful. Between one heartbeat and the next, her little flames became ebon incandescence: a deflagration of condensed midnight.

The wails of the Feroce turned to bereft shrieks as power like a piece of an obsidian sun burned into the lurker’s flesh.

Floundering, the tentacle released its grip. Stave clung to the Staff as the monster dropped it and him into the marsh.

Instantly water quenched Linden’s fire. Her alarm for Stave extinguished it. A dark wind like an in-rush seemed to sweep every vestige of her power from the Sarangrave.

But she had done enough. A convulsion of pain clutched the lurker. Twisting in anguish, tentacles cudgeled the night. One blade-bitten arm released Rime Coldspray. As the Ironhand fell heavily between Latebirth and Stonemage, Cabledarm gained her feet; broke the surface and whooped for rank air. The tentacle that Linden had burned squirmed away beneath the whipped water.

In flailing pain, the monster withdrew. The suction of massive shapes moving away hit the fen like an eruption. Waves high enough to reach the chests of the Giants crashed in all directions: a thunder of water and rot. The pressure of moisture in Linden’s chest eased as if a thunderstorm had passed.

At the same time, the Feroce ran after the lurker. Wailing as one, they dashed for the refuge of the Sarangrave. And as they splashed into the Flat, their fires winked out. In water, they appeared to have no need or use for magicks.

Before the last flame vanished, however, Linden saw Stave stand up from the muck. Clots of mud and bits of corpses stuck to his skin. Rancid fronds and stems hung like vestments from his shoulders. But in his hands he held the Staff of Law as if it could not hurt him; as if even the black savagery with which Linden had wounded the lurker could not touch him.

When she saw him—when she discerned Coldspray upright with Latebirth and Stonemage, and Cabledarm apparently unscathed, and Bluntfist wading vehemently through the swamp—Linden felt relief rise in her like a tide.

Relaxing at last in Grueburn’s arms, she hardly noticed that the pain of her cut shin and calf was gone.

8.

The Amends of the Ranyhyn

Heading into the teeth of a bitter wind, the companions trudged toward the comparative shelter where they had intended to spend the night.

As soon as Stave handed the Staff to Linden, she stroked dark fire from the wood to counter the effects of her eerie ordeal. Then she extended Earthpower to soothe everyone around her.

They did not need it to the same extent that she did. Even Rime Coldspray did not require healing: her cataphract and bulk of muscle had preserved her. And Stave was
Haruchai
. He had been scalded by Linden’s burst of incandescence: beneath their coating of muck, his palms and forearms were blistered. Yet he seemed to shed his pain like water until it was gone.

Like Cirrus Kindwind, Stormpast Galesend, and Grueburn, Manethrall Mahrtiir and Jeremiah had played no part in the struggle. They had no discernible hurts.

Nevertheless Linden tended them all. She had put them in peril. Without knowing it, she had succumbed to the theurgies of the Feroce. She did not understand what the creatures had done, or how; but she felt sure that they had sent her mind back to Haven Farm. By some means, their green flames had caused that rupture in her reality. They had broken her connection to her present. And she had
believed
—

Somehow the fact that she had cut herself the previous night had left her vulnerable. Driven by memories, she had led or compelled her companions toward the Sarangrave. Where the lurker could reach them—and her Staff.

Now she tried to make restitution. At least for a time, she was not ashamed of the hue of her power. She felt more chagrin over the immediate consequences of her weakness.

And other issues were more important.

Who or what were the Feroce? What manner of magic did they wield? Why did they serve the lurker? Why did the lurker crave her Staff?

And why had the Ranyhyn abandoned their riders?

Carried in Grueburn’s arms, Linden felt Mahrtiir’s presence nearby. The long strides of the Giants forced him to trot, but the effort suited his compressed anger, his silent fulmination at his own uselessness. And at the actions of the Ranyhyn? Linden could not tell.

Slack as a discarded puppet, Jeremiah dangled in the cradle of Galesend’s clasp. He stared at nothing, as though the sky were empty of stars. Linden still did not know whether he ever blinked. Yet Earthpower pulsed in his veins. It had become part of him, as essential and vibrant as blood—and as devoid of purpose as his sealed thoughts.

Stave had dismissed his pain; but he was still covered in filth, stained from head to foot with mud, despoiled flesh, and the shredded remains of plants that fed on rot. And Coldspray, Cabledarm, and Bluntfist were no cleaner. Fetid water drained from the confines of their armor as they plodded between barricades of hills. Latebirth and Onyx Stonemage had not fallen: only their legs were caked and sodden, roped with mire and stems and putrid skin like vines. Yet their strides were as leaden as those of their comrades, clogged with old death, as if the touch of the Flat’s foulness had wounded them emotionally.

Or as if—

Linden groaned to herself.

—they had suffered some spiritual blight while she had floundered to escape the conflagration of the farmhouse.

Why did you prevent our aid?

God, what had she done?

In the confusion of flames and terror, she had thrown her medical bag. Because Covenant had told her,
Do something they don’t expect
. And because the marks on her jeans had shown the way. She must have thrown the Staff at the same time; must have believed that the Staff
was
her bag.

Over and over again, she had used her bag to beat back flames while she fled from ruin to ruin along the throat of She Who Must Not Be Named. The lurker’s creatures had found such things in her mind. Appalled past endurance, she had wielded her bag like a weapon against incineration. An instrument of power—

Some horror has befallen you!

Oh, hell. She must have used Staff-fire to repel her friends—to keep them away from her—as she ran down the engulfed hallway of hallucination or memory toward Sarangrave Flat.

Fortunately the Giants could withstand flames. Stave must have evaded her desperation. The Manethrall must have kept his distance, knowing himself powerless.

Nevertheless she was a danger to all of her companions.

But Covenant had also said,
Just trust yourself
. She must have done that; must have obeyed her instincts as well as her fears. She had seen a map in the random stains of blood and grass. And she had cast her Staff into the heart of her dismay. If she had not done so, the lurker would have taken her as well. The rupture imposed by the Feroce would have closed too late. No one would have been able to save her.

While she wondered how she would tell her friends what had happened to her, they brought her to the breach in the hills where they had sheltered earlier. When Grueburn set her on her feet in the hollow, Linden spent a quick moment confirming that Stave’s burns were not septic; that Rime Coldspray’s chest and neck and joints were indeed whole; that Cabledarm, Latebirth, Bluntfist, and Stonemage had no grave hurts. Then she turned the energies of her Staff on the stone around her, tuned Earthpower and Law to the pitch of heat. If Stave and the Swordmainnir did not suffer from the wind, at least she, Jeremiah, and Mahrtiir would be warm. And heat would dry wet garments. Then some portion of filth could be brushed off.

How had the Feroce mastered her so easily? She knew the answer. The cuts that she had made in her lower leg had exposed her true weakness. The gradient of her descent into despair was increasing.
You tread paths prepared for you by Fangthane’s malice.
Everything that she did and felt exacerbated her entanglement in the Despiser’s designs.

But her cuts had also saved her.
There is hope in contradiction
. They had given meaning to
the mark of fecundity and long grass
. Her own blood had interpreted a script which she had worn since she had visited the Verge of Wandering.

That rich valley was a habitation or resting-place for the Ramen and the Ranyhyn.

As she considered what had happened, Linden grew more troubled by the behavior of the Ranyhyn. The great horses had faced other horrors in her name. Why had they abandoned the company now? When she was becoming weaker?

Sighing, Rime Coldspray unfastened her armor and dropped it. Then she seated herself, resting against the warmed stone. Cabledarm and Halewhole Bluntfist followed her example: the other Swordmainnir did not. Apparently they intended to remain on guard. Scowling with disgust, Latebirth and Stonemage rubbed dirt from their legs. Cirrus Kindwind drew her sword and left the hollow to watch the length of the breach. Stormpast Galesend continued to hold Jeremiah as if she did not want to disturb him. But Grueburn stayed close to Linden. Perhaps the Swordmain intended to intervene if the Feroce returned.

Linden wanted to question Mahrtiir. He or no one would be able to explain the Ranyhyn. But before she could frame her first query, a distant whinny pierced the wind.

It sounded like Hynyn’s voice.

It sounded angry.

Another neigh carried into the breach, coming closer. Kindwind looked quickly in both directions; answered her companions by shaking her head. Nevertheless Mahrtiir left the warmth of the hollow to stand beside the maimed Giant.

Linden held her breath until she felt the faint thud of hooves through the hard ground. Then she relaxed slightly. One of the horses was coming closer. More than one had returned.

A moment later, the Manethrall faced the south. Kindwind nodded in that direction. To show her respect, she sheathed her blade. Through the wind, Linden heard hooves more clearly. At last, she saw Hynyn’s proud head past the rim of the shelter; saw the glare of ire in the stallion’s eyes.

Without hesitation, Mahrtiir prostrated himself. But Hynyn did not regard the Manethrall. The stallion was too angry—or, Linden thought suddenly, too ashamed. Instead Hynyn fixed his attention on Stave. Dim in the night, the star on his forehead nonetheless resembled a demand.

Stave appeared to understand. Perhaps he simply trusted Hynyn. Or perhaps he had formed a desire in his mind, confident that the stallion would heed him. He had done something similar when he, Linden, and their companions had ridden through a
caesure
to Revelstone. Saying nothing, he strode at once to Hynyn’s side; vaulted onto the horse’s back.

Still ignoring Mahrtiir, Hynyn wheeled in the breach and trotted away.

While Linden and the Giants watched, the Manethrall rose to his feet. His bandage did not conceal the fact that his own wrath was unappeased. Linden knew him well enough, however, to feel sure that he was not angry at Hynyn. Rather he seemed to share the stallion’s vexed pride.

“Manethrall of the Ramen,” Coldspray asked quietly, “do you comprehend what has transpired here?”

Mahrtiir’s hands curled and tightened as if they ached for his garrote. Through his teeth, he muttered, “Hynyn offers amends. By the deeds of the Ranyhyn were we brought into peril. But of those who suffered tangible harm, only Stave rides. Therefore only Stave is suited to receive their first contrition.” Bitterly the Manethrall shrugged. “More than that I have not been given to know.”

Trying to be careful with his emotions, Linden did not ask why the horses had risked venturing so close to the Sarangrave. Instead she said, “There’s too much that I don’t understand. If the Ranyhyn are afraid of the lurker, they must have a reason.” A good reason. Otherwise they would never have forsaken their riders. “Can you tell us what it is?”

“I cannot,” Mahrtiir snapped. He may have meant, Do not ask me. “No Raman has partaken of the horserite. We do not share their thoughts and knowledge in that fashion.”

Linden bit her lip; did not pursue an answer. Instead she only gazed at the Manethrall, watching passions writhe beneath the surface of his self-command.

The Giants studied him mutely. He could not discern their faces, except with his health-sense. Yet he must have felt their concern, their curiosity, their desire for comprehension—and their willingness to respect his silence. For a few moments, he appeared to wrestle with himself. Then, by slow degrees, his shoulders sagged.

“Yet we speculate.” He kept his voice low. “How can we not? They are the Ranyhyn. It was known even to Bloodguard and Lords that they fear the abomination of the Sarangrave—they who master every other dread. How then can we not endeavor to grasp the nature of their sole frailty?”

He rubbed his cheeks; checked the security of his bandage. As if he were assuming a painful burden, he began to explain.

“The tale of great
Kelenbhrabanal
, Father of Horses, has been widely shared. It is no secret that in a distant age, when an onslaught of
kresh
and other evils threatened the Ranyhyn with extinction,
Kelenbhrabanal
sought to treat with Fangthane. Seeking to spare his failing herd,
Kelenbhrabanal
offered his own life in return for theirs. To this dark exchange, Fangthane consented readily, intending betrayal. Thus
Kelenbhrabanal
surrendered his throat to his foe, and his blood was shed to the last drop—and still the
kresh
came, ravaging, until the Ranyhyn could not survive except by flight. The home of their hearts they forsook. Nor did they return until they had won the Ramen to their service, to fend and fight for them.

“This tale all the folk of the Land once knew. Now it has been forgotten.”

Linden had heard the story before: the Giants had not. They listened avidly, with their love for tales in their eyes.

“But among the Ramen,” Mahrtiir continued, “the mystery of
Kelenbhrabanal
has been contemplated for uncounted generations.” Gradually a tinge of sorrow crept into his voice. “Across the centuries, telling and re-telling our tales, we have wondered, and wondered again. And always we have returned to the same question.
How
was
Kelenbhrabanal
slain?

“In every age of the Lords, we were assured that Fangthane is a bodiless evil. Aye, he is able to master or discard physical substance at will. And doubtless his theurgies are capable of tangible manifestation. Yet his essence is incorporeal. In this, he resembles the Ravers, who wield no direct force when they do not possess a host.

“How, then, was
Kelenbhrabanal
’s murder effected?” The Manethrall had slipped into a reverie of sadness. As he spoke, he turned his head slowly from side to side as if he were searching for insight. “If Fangthane assumed flesh to slay the Father of Horses, he risked physical death under
Kelenbhrabanal
’s hooves. And
Kelenbhrabanal
was too great a sire to be overcome by the manner of magicks which Fangthane wields indirectly.

“Yet
Kelenbhrabanal
was indeed slain. His blood was shed. Generation after generation, the Ramen have asked of themselves, How? By what means was
Kelenbhrabanal
’s life torn from him?