The Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Book One (49 page)

The Ramen planned challenges for Linden and her companions. They had apparently lost or abandoned the Ranyhyn somewhere, although they had once been the inseparable servants of the great horses. Occasionally Hami had hinted at other secrets.

Somehow the ur-viles had avoided Lord Foul's attempts to destroy them. Linden believed that they had enabled her escape from Mithil Stonedown.

The Despiser held Jeremiah. The Staff of Law had been lost.

Anele claimed to be the son of Sunder and Hollian, who had died three and a half millennia ago.

And somewhere Roger Covenant and his mind-crippled mother walked the Land, seeking ruin as avidly as Lord Foul himself.

It was too much;
too much.
Linden could not absorb it all, or find her way through it. Because she understood nothing, she could do nothing. Covenant was dead: her dreams, illusions. Anele spoke only when his madness permitted it; and then his revelations gave her no guidance. And Stave, she suspected, knew little more than she did. Denying the Land's past, the Masters also denied themselves.

Liand may have been right about them. Perhaps they feared to grieve.

She did not need a feast, or more stories. She had no use for unspecified challenges. Hell, she hardly needed life. She already had a bullet hole in her shirt.

She needed
help.

When at last she lifted her head from her hands, she saw Anele standing on the grass beyond the edge of the clearing. A kind of fever shone from his blind face, and his whole body seemed to concentrate toward her.

He was beckoning as though he had heard her prayers and wished to answer them.

Briefly Linden considered ignoring him. Surely he would only confuse her further? Even from this distance, however, she could see that his madness had entered a new phase, one unfamiliar to her. He was in the grip of an intention so acute that it made him frantic.

Dusk had entered the vale while she counted her dilemmas. Behind the mountains, the sun declined from the Land, and their shadows filled the air with omens. Cold
drifted furtively down from the heights. Soon the Ramen would be ready to share their meal, and the challenges would begin.

Sighing, Linden forced her stiff body upright and walked across the open ground to meet Anele among the grass.

As soon as she drew near, he reached for her with both hands; took hold of her shoulders and pulled her closer as if he meant to fling his arms around her. “Linden,” he breathed in a voice suffused with weeping. “Oh, Linden. I'm so glad to see you.”

A voice she knew.

Tears streamed from his moonstone eyes, shocking her as sharply as the sound of that voice in his mouth. She had seen him weep often; but this was different. Until this moment, she had never seen him shed tears of sympathy.

Sympathy and pleasure.

“I didn't think I would ever see you again.” He spoke quickly, almost babbling, as if he had too much to say, and too little time. “I wouldn't have believed it. But it fits. It's right. You're the only one who can do this.”

Thomas Covenant's voice.

She knew it as well as she knew her own, and loved it more. Through his madness, Anele spoke Covenant's words to her in Covenant's voice.

Her lungs heaved for air and found none. Covenant, she panted, nearly fainting. Oh, my love. The sound of him struck the whole vale to stillness. In an instant, the Ramen and all their doings had ceased to exist; lapsed to dreaming. Stave and Liand occupied the clearing in some other world, a dimension of reality which no longer impinged on hers. Her beloved did not speak to them.

Anele embraced her, a hard clasp with all the strength of Covenant's heart. Then he held her at arm's length so that he could gaze at her blindly. His eyes were awash in yearning.

“Linden,” he said, “listen to me,” still hurrying. “I don't have time. There's so little I can tell you.”

Covenant was dead, here and in the world they had once shared. She had spent ten years grieving for him. But this was the Land, and the Laws governing Life and Death had been broken.

She faced him mutely through her own tears, helpless to find words for her sorrow and rue. If she had opened her mouth, she would have sobbed like a child.

“The Law binds me in so many ways.” Anele was Covenant's surrogate, his only voice. “If it didn't, it wouldn't be worth fighting for.

“And he opposes me. Here, like this, he's stronger than I am. Poor Anele can't hold me. I'm already fading.”

As he said so, she saw that it was true. The old man remained palpable before her. His fingers gripped her shoulders urgently: in some other life, they might have hurt
her. But within him another form of lunacy struggled against Covenant's presence. In spite of Covenant's desire, and Anele's rapt submission, a rabid force gathered loathing to expel her love.

He opposes me. The same
he
who had commanded Anele not to speak earlier? Or some other foe?

Anele's madness now did not resemble his near-sanity on the ridge.

“You're in trouble here.” Already her beloved's voice sounded like tatters, scraps of presence. “Serious trouble.” She was losing him again. “You need the ring. But be careful with it.” His death had nearly undone her. “It feeds the
caesures.
”

Covenant!

She could not bear to lose him a second time.

“Linden,” he urged at the limit of himself, “
find
me. I can't help you unless you find me.”

The next instant, Anele shoved her aside with such vehemence that she nearly fell. Before she could grasp at him, cry Covenant's name, try to pierce Anele's turmoil with her health-sense, the old man rushed past her onto the bare dirt and stubble of the clearing.

She pursued him at a run. She was too late: she saw that clearly, although his face was turned away. The transformation of his aura could not be mistaken. Nevertheless she raced to catch up with him; hold him.

He opposes me. The being who now possessed Anele had made a mistake. He had manifested himself within her reach.

She had forgotten fear, caution, peril. She intended to know her enemy, this one if no other. If she could, she meant to wrest his presence from Anele's tortured soul.

Anele halted a few strides into the clearing. She caught up with him almost at once. Without hesitation, she grabbed at his shoulder so that he would turn to face her; so that she could see his possessor in his blinded eyes.

Even through his filthy raiment, that touch scorched her fingers.

Cries of surprise and warning went up from the Cords. Manethralls snatched for their garrotes. Instinctively Linden flinched back. Anele's old flesh had become fire; reified flame. Without transition, he roared with heat like scoria. His skin should have been charred from his bones by the burning ferocity of the being within him.

Earthpower wrapped the old man like a cocoon, however, and his fiery possessor could not harm him.

Wildly Linden clutched at Covenant's ring as Anele's head swung in her direction. But then she froze, shocked helpless by his appearance.

Anele took a single, predatory step toward her. His jaws stretched open, impossibly wide: his few teeth strained at the air: his throat glowed like a glimpse into a furnace.

From the pit of his power, he exhaled straight into Linden's face.

His breath struck her like a blast off a lake of magma; like the fume of a volcano. Instantly her eyebrows and lashes were burned away. The hair around her face crisped and stank, and her sunburn became agony. Around the clearing, the air itself ignited in flames and dazzles.

She had already begun to fall when Stave leaped to the old man's side and struck him down.

Anele's heat vanished so suddenly that she feared Stave had broken his neck.

 For a while, Linden went a little insane herself, demented by an excess of confusion and pain. There were no words in all the world to contain her dismay.

At a command from Manethrall Hami, several Cords shouldered Stave away from Anele's outstretched form. The Manethrall examined Anele swiftly, confirmed that he was no longer filled with fire, then assured Linden that he was merely unconscious, not slain. Cords lifted him from the dirt and bore him away. But Linden regarded none of it. She hardly understood it.

From beyond death, Covenant had tried to reach her. His spirit still endured somewhere within the spanning possibilities of the Arch of Time. Under other circumstances, her heart might have been lifted by the knowledge that he sought to communicate with her; that he strove to answer her prayers—

But he had been so viciously thrust aside. Some flagrant power had dismissed him as though he had no significance. He seemed to be at the mercy of some malignant being. Like her son in Lord Foul's hands—

Her gaze streamed with grief. She could not shut it out. Even when she closed her eyes, her heart blurred and ran. She could not bear it that her lost love had tried to help her, and had been silenced.

Find me.

Liand knelt at her side: he spoke to her softly, trying to ease her in some way. Stave
stood nearby, unrepentant. No doubt he believed that he had saved her and the Ramen from a futile grave. Perhaps he had. Linden neither knew nor cared.

It fits. It's right. You're the only one who can do this.

Covenant's assurance could not comfort her now: not after what had happened to Anele.

But then one of the Cords handed Liand a small clay bowl. When he began to stroke the poultice of the Ramen lightly onto her scorched features, the whetted aroma of
amanibhavam
stung her nostrils. In Covenant's name, she allowed herself one harsh sob as if she were gasping for air; for life. Then she struggled to sit up.

Her beloved had told her in dreams,
You need the Staff of Law.
That she understood.

She was sick to death of helplessness.

Liand supported her; propped her so that she could lean against him while she gathered herself. “Do not be in haste,” he advised, whispering. “You are burned and utterly weary. I see no deep hurt in you, but I am no healer and may be mistaken.”

Softly he murmured, “Surely now the Ramen will forego their challenges. They must grasp that you can bear no more.”

The Stonedownor had first met Linden less than two days ago. Clearly he did not yet know her very well.

She swallowed to clear her throat; pushed away the poultice in his hand. Once again, she was struck by the blackness of his eyebrows. Frowning, they shrouded his eyes with foreboding; omens of loss.

Through her teeth, she breathed, “Help me up. I can't do this without you.”

You're in trouble here.

The young man braced her to her feet easily: he felt as sturdy and reliable as stone. When she tried to stand on her own, she wavered for a moment, undermined by the heat like guilt on her burned face. But Liand upheld her; and she did not hesitate. As soon as she found her balance, she said, “Take me to Anele.”

Manethrall Hami had come toward her as she rose: the woman tried to intervene. But Linden insisted, “
Now,
Liand. Before it's too late.”

Before all trace of the being who had possessed Anele vanished.

Before she remembered to be afraid.

At once, Hami stepped back. She gave instructions to one of the nearby Cords, a young woman with flowing hair the same hue as Liand's eyebrows. The Cord moved like her hair as she led him and Linden out of the clearing.

Linden clung to him. She was not done with him; not at all.

The Cord walked quickly past two or three shelters, then entered one near the edge of the encampment. Following her, Linden and Liand found Anele sprawled on a bed of piled grass and bracken.

Linden saw at once that Hami had described the old man accurately: he was
unconscious, stunned, not broken. Yet his breathing had an obstructed sound, fraught with pain. His eyes were closed; mercifully, so that their blindness did not accuse her of failing him. His neck and the side of his head ached in response to Stave's blow. But the
Haruchai
had measured out his strength precisely. He had cracked no bones, done no lasting harm. Anele would heal cleanly.

Because of the Earthpower in him, his hurts would probably heal more swiftly than Linden's sore muscles and burned skin.

But she was not concerned with his bodily recovery. Other exigencies drove her. And still she did not hesitate. If she paused for thought or doubt, she would remember that what she meant to do was perilous. It might destroy her.

“Here.” Hurrying now, she released Liand and lifted the chain from around her neck; thrust the chain and Covenant's ring into Liand's hands. “Take this. Hold it for me.” Without its weight, her neck felt instantly naked, exposed to attack. “Guard it.”

He stared at her in shock. His hands cupped the chain and the ring as though he feared to close his fingers.

“If anything happens to me,” she ordered, “anything at all—anything that scares you—get the hell out of here.
Do not
try to help me. Take that,” the ring, “and
run.
Don't come back until one of the Ramen tells you I'm all right.”

Otherwise—

He could not have known the reason for her command. Nevertheless he nodded dumbly, unable to speak.

Trusting the Stonedownor, she spared no consideration for what might happen if any of the powers that wracked Anele succeeded at entering her. Instead she dropped immediately to her knees beside the old man's bed, pressed her palms to the sides of his head, and plunged her percipience into him as if she were falling.

At that moment, her attempt to possess him seemed a lesser evil than abandoning him to more torment.

L
ater she climbed unsteadily to her feet and reclaimed Covenant's ring from Liand's anxious hands.

She understood her failure well enough. And God knew that she should have expected it. She simply did not know how many more defeats she could bear.

“Linden?” Liand murmured, still fearful that she had been harmed, although he must have been able to see that she had not. “Linden—” His voice trailed away.

Weak with regret, she answered, “He's protecting himself.” Of course. “I can't reach him.” How else had he survived his vulnerability for so long? “There's a wall of
Earthpower in his mind.” It was wrapped like cerements around the core of his identity. “I can see how badly he's been hurt. But I can't get in to where the damage is.”

The flaw in his defenses which permitted him to be possessed was sealed away; beyond her reach. She knew now that she would never be able to help him without power. She needed some force potent enough to cut through the barriers which he had erected.

Covenant's ring would do it. Anele's inborn Earthpower preserved him, but it could not withstand wild magic. Even at its most delicate, however, that fire was too blunt and fierce to be used on anyone's mind. She might blast every particle of his psyche long before she discovered how to make him whole.

Her beloved was right. Even if she had imagined him in dreams. She needed the Staff of Law. Without it, there was nothing she could do for Anele.

“I grieve for him,” Liand offered helplessly. “He has been made a plaything for powers which surpass him. It is wrong, Linden.” Then the young man's tone sharpened. “It is evil. More so than
kresh.
As evil as Falls and Kevin's Dirt.”

Linden nodded. If she spoke, she would not be able to contain her bitterness.

She had forgotten the presence of the woman who had guided her to Anele until the Cord touched Liand's arm, asking for his attention. When he glanced at her, the young woman—like Sahah, she was hardly more than a girl—said bashfully, “If the Ringthane is willing, and Anele requires no other care, the gathering of the Ramen awaits her. Her need for sustenance is plain.”

Liand snorted. Taking a step forward as if to defend Linden, he demanded, “And do the Ramen intend still to affront the Ringthane with challenges which they do not name?”

In response, the Cord lifted her chin, and her Ramen pride flared in her eyes. “You are discourteous, Stonedownor.
I
do not doubt that the Ringthane is equal to any challenge.”

Tiredly Linden interposed herself between them. “Please tell Manethrall Hami that we'll be there in a few minutes.”

To her own ears, her voice sounded too thin to be heeded; too badly beaten. However, the Cord quickly ducked her head, gave a deep Ramen bow, and hastened away, as graceful as water.

Sighing, Linden turned to meet Liand's protests.

“Linden—” he began. “I fear you are unwise. You cannot behold yourself as I do. The weariness in you—”

She lifted her hands. Instead of contradicting him, she said as clearly as she could, “Thank you.”

He shook his head. “I have done naught deserving of thanks. And I would be an ill companion if I did not—”

Again she interrupted him. “For being here. For being my friend. I'd almost forgotten what that feels like.

“Don't worry about me. The Ramen won't hurt me. Even if they decide they don't trust me, they won't hurt any of us. They aren't like that.”

Frowning, he studied her for a moment. Then he acceded. “Your sight is more discerning than mine. And the Cord spoke truly. Your need for aliment is great.”

She smiled wanly. “Then let me hold on to you. I don't want to fall on my face in front of all those Manethralls.”

Liand replied with a sympathetic grimace; offered her his arm. Together they walked back to the clearing in the center of the encampment.

A
s soon as they stepped from the grass onto the beaten dirt, Manethrall Hami approached them with concern in her eyes.

“Ringthane,” she said sternly, “it shames me that you were harmed in our care. Such fire is an aspect of the old man's plight which we have not witnessed before. Believing you to be safe among so many Ramen, we relaxed our vigilance. Plainly we should not have done so.”