Thomas Covenant 8 - The Fatal Revenant (90 page)

they were not delayed. Then she asked Bhapa about the condition of the Humbled. She had not seen them since they had ridden away the previous morning.

The Cord considered her question for a moment, then shrugged. “Their hardiness is remarkable,” he admitted as if he begrudged them any admiration. “No Raman heals as they do. Yet they are not what they were. The rigors of our journey hamper them.

With rest, I do not doubt that their full strength would soon return. Without it-“

Facing Mahrtiir rather than Linden, the Cord fell silent.

“Then, Cord,” replied the Manethrall gruffly, “it falls to you, and to Cord Pahni, to increase your vigilance.

“Ringthane.” He turned the hollows of his bandage toward Linden. “If you will

accept my counsel, it is this. Request of the sleepless ones that they ride with you on the morrow. Permit my Cords to assume all the tasks of scouting. If the Masters are not yet whole, their skills will provide better service nearby than at a distance.

“Warded by Narunal’s discernment where mine does not suffice, I will ride ahead of you. Thus any sudden threat will strike first against he who has the least worth in your defense.”

Surprised by Mahrtiir’s suggestion, Linden faltered. Too many people had already sacrificed themselves in her name-and now the Manethrall proposed to offer himself as bait. She could not bear to think of him as having the least worth; or to consider losing him.

Hesitating, she looked to Stave.

“The Manethrall’s counsel is apt,” he said at once. “I do not fear for the

Humbled. But the Land’s foes must oppose you. They cannot suffer you to obtain High Lord Loric’s krill. When they appear, you must have every aid nigh about you.”

In response, Linden made a stern effort to shake off her reluctance. In a moment of imposed coherence, Anele had informed her severely, All who live share the Land’s plight. Its cost will be borne by all who live.

All right,” she said through her teeth. “We’ll do that.” This you cannot alter. In the attempt, you may achieve only ruin. “Bhapa, I need you to find the Humbled for me.” She had no means to contact them herself, except by a dangerous display of her powers; and the Masters would not heed Stave’s mental voice. “Make sure that they understand what we want, and why. I don’t think that they’ll object.” They would reason as Stave did. But if they do, tell them that they’ll have to argue

with me in person. You’re just the messenger.”

When the Manethrall nodded his approval, Bhapa replied, “As you wish, Ringthane.” Whistling for Rohnhyn, he strode out into the last of the gloaming and passed from sight. Briefly Linden heard the crunch of hooves on the stones. Then Bhapa and his mount were gone.

He did not return until after moonrise.

But when he reentered the

watercourse, he reported that the Humbled would rejoin Linden as she approached Salva Gildenbourne in the morning. “They, too, deem the Manethrall’s counsel apt.”

That night, Linden did not expect to sleep. The rocks on which she lay seemed full of memories and fears, as legible to her flesh as they were to Anele’s peculiar sight. They jutted against her like tangible reminders of

all that she had gained and lost since she had first approached the Hills of Andelain with Covenant, Sunder, and Hollian. But she called a faint current of Earthpower from the Staff to soothe her taut nerves. Then she closed her eyes to rest them-and when she opened them again a moment later, dawn had come upon her, as stealthy and unforeseen as the results of every choice that she had ever made.

Her companions roused quickly, at

once eager and apprehensive. Anele scented the air fretfully, as if he could smell trouble; but the fragmentation of his mind prevented him from describing what he sensed. Perhaps anticipating another battle, Liand frowned darkly. However, he could not conceal the growing excitement behind his concern. Salva Gildenbourne promised to be unlike anything that he had ever seen.

Pahni also may have wished to gaze

upon the vast woodland: her only knowledge of the Land’s olden forests came from Ramen tales. Yet her anxiety for Liand dominated her. And Bhapa’s emotions were similar, although he worried for the Manethrall rather than Liand. As for Mahrtiir, his belief that he had lost much of his usefulness dulled his characteristic hunger for peril and striving. The role which he had chosen for himself resembled that of a sacrificial lamb.

Only Stave faced the new day as if it were like any other. His single eye and his flat mien suggested neither hope nor trepidation.

As soon as the companions had eaten, Pahni kissed Liand quickly. Then the Cords summoned their Ranyhyn and rode away to assume the responsibilities of the Humbled.

In moments, Stave and Liand had repacked the bedding and supplies.

Hyn and Hynyn, Rhohm, Hrama, and Narunal answered Stave’s whistle almost immediately, as if they had their own reasons for excitement or alarm. With Anele between them, Liand and Linden followed Mahrtiir and Stave to meet the horses.

The early sky looked too pristine to hold any omens. As the sun mounted, it spread light and azure across the heavens, immaculate and unfathomable; absolved from taint. If

Anele were indeed able to detect an ominous scent, Linden could not. She smelled only the freshness of a bright day after rain; the gentle pleasure of grasses and wildflowers and loam in springtime.

First at a canter, then a liquid run, the Ranyhyn bore their riders into the southeast, toward the last obstacle or opportunity between Linden’s company and Andelain.

Here the ground rose into a sequence of low ridges like striations across the landscape. Where the slopes were gradual, the horses confronted them directly, pounding upward without hesitation, and descending in a rush as smooth and secure as the surface of Glimmermere. But where the ridges jutted more steeply, Narunal angled across their sides; and the other Ranyhyn followed seamlessly, letting Mahrtiir’s mount lead them by a stone’s throw.

In the vale between the second and third ridge, Branl awaited Linden and her companions. At the same time, Galt approached them from the south. Although he rode at a full gallop, he conveyed no impression of haste or urgency. And Stave said nothing: apparently he heard no warning in the thoughts of the Humbled. While Hynyn and Narunal nickered a greeting to Bhanoryl, all of the Ranyhyn ran at the next rise as if it were level ground.

As Hyn kept pace with the other horses, still following Mahrtiir and Narunal, Linden looked around for Clyme. Presumably Bhapa and Pahni were far ahead, searching the air and the grass and the rumpled slopes for hints of ambush. But Linden wanted to see Clyme. He would come from the east, the most likely direction of attack.

Soon he appeared against the sky on the crest of the fourth ridge. Like Galt, he rode at speed, but without indicating

the proximity of foes.

In the vale beyond that ridge-low ground as narrow as a barranca, but not as sheer, with a freshet from the previous day’s rain running through it-Clyme met Linden and her companions. At once, she asked the Manethrall for a halt. The morning was still early, and the stream between the ridges lay in shadow. But she did not need broad daylight in order to study the condition of the Humbled.

They were closer to wholeness than she had imagined; closer than she would have believed possible. Some of their cuts and gashes had already become scars. The rest were healing cleanly. And their cracked or broken bones were almost entirely mended.

Like their strength, the native resilience of the Haruchai was more than human. Hard riding had not harmed them. It had only slowed their recuperation.

Satisfied, Linden said quietly, All

right.” Doubtless the Humbled remained uncertain of her. Perhaps their suspicions had increased. “Let’s get going.” Nevertheless she trusted them with her life-and with the lives of her friends as well. “I’ve been waiting to see Andelain again for years.”

Without hesitation, the Manethrall headed along the vale until he reached a place where the Ranyhyn could surge up the sides of the next ridge.

Slowly he increased his lead-or the other horses held back-until he rode a dozen strides or more ahead of Linden and her defenders.

Passing the crest, the riders ran out of shadow and down a gentle expanse of sunlit grass toward another rise. But it was little more than a line of low hillocks, and did not slow the Ranyhyn. Perhaps half a league beyond it stood a much higher ridge with more difficult slopes. Here and there, lichen-mottled

fists and foreheads of bedrock jutted from the hillsides like buttresses. The horses were forced to pick a crooked and cautious way upward.

At the end of that ascent, however, Linden and her companions saw Salva Gildenbourne for the first time. As if involuntarily, they stopped to gaze at the forest’s immanent majesty.

It lay on the far side of a last ridge, a small interruption like a ripple in the

earth. From the vantage of higher ground, Linden could see that Salva Gildenbourne was indeed vast. It stretched from the eastern horizon across her path and into the west, where it began to curve by slight degrees toward the south: a rich variegated green panoply bedecked at intervals with the ineffable gold of Gilden trees, and prodigal with the new growth of spring and rain; profligate with life and subtle Earthpower.

By her estimation, she was roughly fifteen leagues from Andelain. At this elevation, she might have been able to hope for a glimpse of the Hills which held the Land’s defining glory. But Sunder and Hollian had wrought well when they had brought forth Salva Gildenbourne. In addition, the forest had flourished for millennia on the overflow of Andelain’s fecundity. The woodland was too deep, dense, and tall to permit any faint emanation of the Hills to reach Linden’s senses.

Still she searched the southeast so avidly that moments passed before she felt the tension thick around her; the growing apprehension of her companions. Then she heard Liand say anxiously. “Linden,” and she saw him point toward the east.

The four Haruchai were gazing in that direction. Anele did the same in spite of his blindness. Mahrtiir had already ridden past the crest; but Narunal had halted when the other Ranyhyn did,

and the Manethrall’s face also was turned to the east.

As soon as Linden saw the smoke seething out of the trees at the farthest limit of her sight, she wondered how she had failed to notice it immediately.

The smoke itself was black and fatal, but it was only smoke: it did not cry out to her health-sense. Natural fires were possible. Yet the season was spring. Showers had soaked the woods.

Nonetheless Salva Gildenbourne was burning.

And there was more.

At that distance, she did not expect to see flames; but she discerned something worse. Rather than fire, she descried a kind of diseased Earthpower, an organic mystical energy distilled and polluted until it had become as fiery as a furnace, as hot as lava, and incandescent with hunger.

Instantly, instinctively, Linden knew the cause of the blaze. You’ll recognize them when you see them. Foul showed you what they’re like. In imposed visions during her translation to the Land, she had seen spots of wrongness bloom like chancres in the body of the Land, eruptions of ruin among the grass and beauty of the landscape. And from those vile pustulent boils, buboes, infections, had squirmed forth devouring monsters which seemed to emerge from the

depths of volcanoes. Serpentlike and massive, with kraken jaws formed to rip and swallow earth and grass and trees, those beasts had feasted on the Land as if it were flesh. Ravenously they had consumed the vista of her vision.

Since then, she had learned to name the monsters. They were skurj, and they served Kastenessen because he had released them when he won free of his Durance.

They were a distortion rather than a shattering of Law, but they had one quality in common with caesures: they were discrete, localized; individually small compared to Salva Gildenbourne, or to the wider Land. However, enough of them together could wreak enormous devastation. Their combined hungers might prove to be as ruinous as the Sunbane.

Linden did not say their name aloud. None of her companions uttered it.

Instead she asked softly so that she would not gasp or groan, “How far-? Stave, can you tell how far away they are?”

“A score of leagues,” the former Master replied as if he were unacquainted with dread or horror. “Perhaps somewhat more.”

“More,” stated Galt flatly.

“Are you able to determine their

number’?” asked Liand. “I cannot.”

Roger had told Linden that

Kastenessen had not brought very many of them down from the north yet, but she had no confidence that Covenant’s son had given her the truth.

“The distance precludes certainty,” answered Stave. “but they do not appear to be as many as ten. Salva Gildenbourne has endured substantial harm. The source of this smoke is not

the only region where the trees have suffered. Other portions also have been devoured, some at the verge, some in the depths, and some nigh unto Andelain itself. Yet the savaging of the forest is fresh only at the site of the smoke. Earlier flames were extinguished by rain.” He looked to the Humbled for confirmation. “Therefore we judge that this smoke reveals where Kastenessen’s beasts feed, and that the skurj are few in number.”

At the sound of that name, Anele groaned.

“It is conceivable,” Stave continued implacably. “that they feed for a time, then burrow beneath the trees to emerge in another place. But this is by no means certain. It is also conceivable that other skurj lurk within the earth. Indeed, it is conceivable that beasts in far greater numbers are masked by trees and distance, and that the razing of Andelain has already begun.

“Nor are we able to estimate the swiftness of the skurj. We can be certain only that Kastenessen is aware of your journey, and of your purpose. He will not find it difficult to gauge the point at which you will enter Salva Gildenbourne.”

Linden swallowed at the dread beating in her throat. “Then we need to move fast. And we need to go now,” before the distant monsters could cross twenty leagues of forest.