Part 47 (2/2)

He had left her to retrieve Anele from the horde of the Demondim- Trying to smile, Linden bared her teeth.

”You have. I should know better than to tell you what to do.”

As soon as she reached the center of the caesure's raked path, she turned to face the south. For a few heartbeats, Hyn's muscles quivered as if she were afraid; as if she longed to carry Linden out of danger. Then Hynyn snorted a.s.sertively, and the mare seemed to calm herself.

The Fall was moving faster than Linden had antic.i.p.ated. It was already clear to her ordinary sight: a swirling miasma of wrongness in the shape of a tornado. Its emanations burrowed along her nerves as though hornets hived in her belly. And it was growing-The storm driving it seemed to increase its virulence and size as well as its speed. It would strike like the bludgeon of a t.i.tan.

Now she could discern the storm itself distinctly, although it had no clouds to account for the lurid punch of its thunder or the bright flare and sizzle of its lightning. Her health-sense perceived the turmoil in etched detail: it resembled a squall at sea. But its forces were too great for a mere squall. Its vehemence suggested the fury of a hurricane.

She had never seen theurgy like that before. More than once, however, she had felt a similar puissance: when Esmer had attacked Stave; and again when he had blocked the ur-viles from a.s.sailing Roger and the croyel. Before she and her companions had risked the Land's past to search for the Staff of Law, the Ramen had informed her that he wields a storm among the mountains- With it, he had summoned a caesure for her.

”d.a.m.n it,” she breathed more to herself than to Stave. ”That's Esmer.”

”So I deem,” replied Stave as though he had not been almost beaten to death by Cail's son.

For the first time, Linden wondered whether Esmer himself might be the havoc for which he had blamed Stave and the Haruchai.

Yet she could not believe that Esmer intended to threaten her like this. His conflicting inheritances precluded a direct a.s.sault. And a desire to ravage the Woodhelvennin seemed out of character. He had never shown the kind of omnivorous malice that delighted Lord Foul, or that Kastenessen and Roger might have enjoyed.

But why, then-?

An instant later, she saw an explanation. Ahead of the caesure, a rider fled desperately. He flogged his horse straight toward her. The Fall and the storm seemed to be chasing him.

She recognized him before Stave stated flatly. It is the Harrow.”

He was mounted on a brown destrier as large and strongly made as Mh.o.r.n.ym, although the beast was not a Ranyhyn: it lacked the characteristic star-shaped blaze on its forehead; the unmistakable tang of Earthpower. Froth splashed from the horse's mouth and nostrils, and its eyes glared with dumb terror, as its rider lashed its hindquarters with a short quirt. Hunched low over his mount's neck, with his chlamys flapping, the Harrow rode for his life just ahead of the caesure.

He had promised Linden his companions.h.i.+p. Now he raced toward her as though he hoped that she would save him.

He was her enemy: she believed that.

Oh, he had unmade the threat of the Demondim. But he had also tried to swallow her mind. He had cost her the Mandoubt's friends.h.i.+p and support; the Mandoubt's life.

And he coveted Covenant's ring. He wanted the Staff of Law. To tempt her, he had said, There is a service which I am able to perform for you, and which you will not obtain from any other living being.

Nevertheless she did not hesitate. Unfurling plumes of fire from her Staff, she began to tune her percipience to the exact pitch and timbre of the Fall. Her private rages and bereavements had no significance now. The Woodhelvennin were still in peril, and they had already lost too much.

If Esmer sought to destroy the Harrow, he did not do so for Linden's benefit, or for the Land's. In him, aid and betrayal were indistinguishable. Perhaps he saw some threat to one of his ruling compulsions in the Harrow's proposed service. If so, she needed to know more about the Insequent.

With the back of her neck, she felt the villagers stumbling slowly westward. They did not resist the shepherding of the Masters and the Ramen. But there were too many of them-and too many were still in shock. Their progress was sluggish, hampered by grief.

The caesure was no more than a stone's throw for a Giant away: it towered over her, feral and deadly. The Harrow raced less than ten strides ahead of it, and the gap was narrowing-If she ran out of time, she would be devoured by the conflagration of instants.

She could do this, she told herself. She had done it before. And Esmer's storm did not camouflage the caesure, or confuse her health-sense. If anything, his efforts to flail the Fall only emphasized its specific ferocity.

Muttering, ”Melenkurion abatha,” she raised Law and Earthpower in sunlight flames to meet the impending chaos. ”Duroc minas mill.” In one sense, every Fall was different: it occurred in a different place; shattered different fragments of time. But in another, they were all the same, and she knew them well. ”Harad khabaal!”

Fervid as a bonfire, her power geysered into the heavens.

The Harrow gestured at her frantically, urging her to rescue him. Lightning in fatal bursts blasted the dirt between her and the destrier. Concussions of thunder shook the ground. Each searing bolt liquefied the shale and flint, leaving molten pools where it struck.

”Aneler Liand's yell nearly broke Linden's concentration. She felt the old man fling himself headlong from Hrama's back; felt him hit the stony soil rolling, wild to escape the caesure or the storm, she did not know which. With every nerve, she sensed the eruption of bitter magma that took hold of him.

Instantly Stave wheeled Hynyn away from Linden. At the same time, Liand sprang after Anele, still shouting.

She had no choice: she could not stop Kastenessen now. If she did not quench the Fall, she would do nothing ever again.

Fear for Anele hampered her-and for Stave and Liand as well. Kastenessen would savage the old man; but he would not kill a vessel that could still serve him. Stave and Liand were another matter. The insane Elohim might incinerate them.

Nevertheless Linden had grown stronger, annealed under Melenkurion Skyweir. And Caerroil Wildwood's runes defined her Staff; sharpened its black possibilities. Hindrances of which she had been unaware had been carved away. Between one heartbeat and the next, she gathered Law and flame into a detonation as great as any that Esmer had unleashed. Shouting the Seven Words, she hurled Earthpower into the core of the caesure.

Time seemed to have no meaning. For an instant or an eternity, she threw her fire at the Fall; and the Harrow raced toward her in a fever of dread; and dire lava gathered at her back. Lightning coruscated near Hyn's hooves. The caesure appeared to swell as though it feasted on flame.

Then she felt the sudden brilliance of orcrest behind her.

Through Liand's glaring light, the storm thundered in a voice like a convulsion of despair. ”Wildwielder, do not!”

Abruptly Kastenessen's lava imploded, sucked back into itself.

As if fetters had been struck from her limbs, Linden felt freedom and energy surge through her. Almost calmly, she thought, No, Esmer. Not until I know what's at stake. Not until one of you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds tells me the truth.

With Law and Earthpower and repudiation, she lit a deflagration in the Fall's heart and watched while the tumult of sundered instants swallowed itself whole. Like the scoria of Kastenessen's rage, the migraine tornado appeared to consume its own substance. Moments before the caesure caught the heels of the Harrow's mount, the fabric of time was rewoven; restored where it had been rent.

Briefly Esmer's storm became a stentorian wail of frustration and dismay. Then it started to fray as though intangible winds were pulling it apart. Swirling like the Fall, lightning and thunder dissipated, drifting away toward all of the horizons simultaneously.

The Harrow hauled at his horse's reins; stopped short of a collision with Linden. At the same time, Esmer stepped out of the air behind the Insequent. Gales seething in his eyes, Cail's son strode forward as if he meant to a.s.sail the Harrow as he had once attacked Stave.

In Esmer's presence, Linden's viscera squirmed with an almost metaphysical nausea. But she ignored the sensation. Turning her back on both men, she looked for her friends.

Fifteen or twenty paces away, in the middle of the caesure's wide gall, Stave stood on the pane of slate, holding Anele upright and unconscious against his chest. On his knees near them, Liand cupped his quenched Sunstone in one hand and gazed at it in wonder, studying it as if he were amazed that the flesh had not been scalded from his fingers.

In the distance beyond them, the Masters and the Ramen continued herding the villagers into motion, a pitiful few on horseback, the rest walking. Frightened and distraught, men, women, and children trudged away from the wreckage of First Woodhelven in the general direction of Lord's Keep. As a group, they radiated numbness and misery that ran too deep for utterance.

She could not help them: not with Esmer advancing on the Harrow behind her. In another moment, they might begin to lash at each other-or at her-with forces as lethal as the Fall's.

Gritting her teeth, she returned her attention to Liand, Stave, and Anele.

When she had a.s.sured herself that Liand and Stave were unharmed, and that Anele was only asleep, apparently exhausted by mere moments of possession and imposed sanity, she asked unsteadily. ”How did you do that? Why aren't you hurt?”

Liand still stared at his hand and the Sunstone as though they astonished him. ”I would not have credited it,” he breathed. ”In my heart, I believed that my hand would be destroyed, and perhaps the orcrest with it. But when I touched the stone to Anele's forehead, the conflagration within him ended. In some fas.h.i.+on that I do not comprehend, Kastenessen has been expelled.”

”I can't explain it.” Liand's success confounded Linden. She had hoped only that an imposed sanity might forestall Kastenessen's violation. She had not expected Liand to exorcise the Elohim once Kastenessen had established his possession. Perhaps contact with orcrest enabled Anele to draw upon his inborn magic. ”I'm just glad that you're all right. All of you.”

”Chosen,” Stave said distinctly, warning her. ”attend.”

Instinctively she looked to the Woodhelvennin again. They had stopped moving; stood crowded together on the near side of the brook. Most of them now faced in her direction.

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