Part 54 (2/2)

”I don't understand,” she protested. ”The Elohim taught that lore to the One Forest.” Anele had told her so himself. ”They remember it even if the trees don't. And they obviously care,” although she could not explain their actions-or their inaction. ”Otherwise they wouldn't have tried to warn the Land. Why can't we just ask them?'

Anele gnashed his teeth. ”Forget understanding,” he snapped. ”Forget purpose.” His eyes were hints, nacre and frenetic, in his shadowed face. ”Forget the Elohim. They, too, are imperiled. Become as trees, the roots of trees. Seek deep rock.”

”Anele, please.” Linden wanted to swear at him. ”I'm not the one who can read stone. You are. Even if I could reach deep enough,” even if she had not lost her only opportunity under Melenkurion Skyweir. ”I can't hear rock.

”I have to go to Andelain. I have to believe in what I'm doing. Covenant told me to find him. I don't know where else to look.”

Briefly the old man pulled at his bedraggled hair. Then he appeared to make a supreme effort, as if he were clasping at lucidity that leaked through his fingers like water; and his voice changed. For a moment, a handful of words, he sounded like Sunder; like his own father, eerie and sorrowing.

”He did not know of your intent.”

Then he jerked his feet out of the sand and stamped into the stream to wash them clean of perceptions which he could not articulate. In a small voice that reminded Linden of Hollian's, he murmured. ”We are not alone. Others also are lost.”

After that, he lapsed into aimless babbling, as inchoate as the secrets of the rill.

d.a.m.n it, Linden breathed to herself.

d.a.m.n it. She already knew that Sunder and Hollian did not wish her to enter Andelain. Anele had been completely sane when he had spoken for his long-dead parents. He had held the orcrest, and could not have been mistaken. But everything else- Forget the Elohim. They, too, are imperiled.

The Elohim-? The people who had called themselves the heart of the Earth? The people who had said, We stand at the center of all that lives and moves and is?

Others also are lost.

Only rock and wood know the truth- ”Linden,” Liand suggested quietly, ”perhaps it would be well to offer him the orcrest? Without it, he cannot speak plainly.”

She shook her head. ”I wish. But we can't risk calling attention to ourselves. We don't know what the skurj can sense.”

Or Kastenessen- Studying the old man, Liand nodded sadly.

When Stave urged her to continue, Linden took Anele's arm and drew him with her along the watercourse.

Darker shadows merged into each other. The flickers of light between the leaves grew more evanescent and rare, implying that the sun had fallen far down the western sky. Still her sense of time remained vague, obscured by shade and the stream's writhen path. She could have believed that she had spent an hour or days in Salve Gildenbourne, and had drawn no nearer to the boundaries of Andelain. Eventually she might find that time had no meaning at all; that Roger and Kastenessen and the Despiser had nothing to fear because she had snared herself in a place from which she could not escape.

For a while, she continued walking only because she knew that she had no choice. Her steps became an apparently endless trudge over slick stones and damp sand. The mounting gloom seemed to swallow her mind as the trees swallowed sound. She was beginning to think that she was too tired to go on much farther when Stave announced suddenly. ”Cord Bhapa approaches in haste.”

Anele tugged against her grasp on his arm, but she did not let him go.

”Has he found some sign of the skurj?” asked Liand tensely.

”I do not know.” Stave's voice seemed to fade behind Linden. He had stopped to scrutinize the jungle. ”He is not Haruchai. I discern only his alarm.”

They, too, are imperiled, Linden repeated to herself for no particular reason. Others also are lost. Someday she would be tired enough to forgive herself. She hoped that that day would come soon.

Then Anele broke free of her, and she felt a belated pang of anxiety. She heard him splash through the stream, but she was no longer able to see him: the shadows were too thick. Instead she felt him scramble westward out of the watercourse, fleeing into darkness.

”Liand!” she called softly. ”Go after him. Find Pahni.” Intentionally or not, Anele was heading toward the young Cord. ”Keep him safe.”

The skurj terrified the old man. After his fas.h.i.+on, he had good reason. And Linden could not think of any other danger-apart from a caesure*that might frighten him into abandoning his protectors.

Liand paused only long enough to drop his burdens beside the rill. Then he sped after Anele.

Wheeling, Linden located Stave more by his impa.s.sive aura than by his vague shape. She was about to ask him where Bhapa was when she felt the Cord's approach through the undergrowth -his approach and his fear. He was close to panic; closer than he had been three and a half thousand years ago, when he had returned, seriously injured, to describe the advance of the Demondim. He had never seen such monsters before. Among them, they had wielded the emerald bane of the Illearth Stone. Yet they had not scared him this badly.

”Clyme returns,” Stave told her, ”responding to the Cord's alarm. The Manethrall cannot move as swiftly. He has elected to scout eastward alone, seeking to discover more of this peril.” A moment later, the Haruchai added, ”Branl also draws nigh. Like the Manethrall, Galt searches to the east.”

Linden hoped that the Humbled would keep their distance until she knew what she was up against. And she did not want Mahrtiir left alone. But she doubted that Clyme, Branl, and Galt would heed her wishes.

Her fingers itched on the written surface of the Staff. Its shaft was visible only because it was darker, blacker, than the masked dusk.

Bhapa seemed to rush toward her headlong. In his place, she would have tripped and fallen; crashed into tree trunks; blinded herself on whipping branches. But he was Ramen, and his craft did not desert him. Sprinting, he slipped through the jungle and sprang down into the watercourse.

Linden could not see his expression, but she smelled his sweat and desperation. His aura was as loud as a shout.

”Ringthane.” With a fierce effort, he controlled his breathing. ”I have felt the skurj.”

She had expected this; a.s.sumed it. Nevertheless Bhapa's words inspired an atavistic dread. On some irrational level, she must have hoped Gritting her teeth, she asked. ”How many? Can you tell?”

”I felt one. But-” Frustration sharpened the edges of Bhapa's fear. ”Ringthane, I cannot be certain. Such ravening and rage are altogether beyond my knowledge. Its seeming is of a mult.i.tude. And it does not advance through the forest. Rather it flows beneath the roots of the trees. I was forewarned of its presence when I beheld leaves withering for no clear cause, and with unnatural speed, as though years of blight had pa.s.sed within moments. When I then pressed my fingers to the earth, I felt-”

The Cord shuddered. Hoa.r.s.ely he concluded. ”I believe that I have outrun it. But its pa.s.sage is swift, and it does not turn aside. I fear that it is aware of us”-he faltered-”of you. Of your powers, Ringthane.”

”The skurj draws nigh.” Stave's voice held no inflection. ”It is but one, as the Cord has discerned. And it does not rise. If it does not alter its course, it will pa.s.s below us.”

Aware-? Linden thought, scrambling to understand. Below us? The fires which she and her company had seen earlier had been at least twenty leagues away. If one of the skurj had crossed that distance unerringly, it must have been guided somehow.

It had been directed by its master. Or Bhapa was right: the monster could sense- But she had not made any use of the Staff.

Below us?

Anele! Instinctively she whirled toward the west. She was merely human. Perceptions attuned to theurgy would not detect her unless she exerted her Staff or Covenant's ring. The Haruchai would be more noticeable than she was; easier to spot. But Anele was full of Earthpower, rife with it: he had been born to it. Although his heritage was deeply submerged, he might be a beacon for any extraordinary percipience. And if he had stepped on bare dirt, even for an instantAs she searched the evening for some hint of the old man, she saw a glimmer of white brilliance through the dark trunks and brush; and her heart seemed to stop.

Orcrest. Liand was using the orcrest. Oh, G.o.d!

Below us. Below Stave and her. Liand's Sunstone would attract Kastenessen's creature. Trying to calm Anele-or perhaps simply to light their way-Liand had inadvertently exposed himself to the skurj.

Yelling, ”Watch outs' she s.n.a.t.c.hed power from the runes of the Staff; sent cornflower fire gusting out along the watercourse. ”I'm going to try to stop that thing!” For an instant, the stream blazed as if the current had become incandescent. Then she concentrated her flame and drove it into the ground, down through sand and soil and stone, to intercept the skurj before it pa.s.sed.

Stunned, Bhapa stared at her. But Stave appeared to understand.

Grabbing the Cord's arm, he drew Bhapa away from her; out to the fringes of her fire.

At first, she could not feel the monstrous creature. Her boots m.u.f.fled the sensitivity of her feet, and her nerves had not found the pitch of ravening and rage which had appalled Bhapa. Urgently she sent Earthpower and Law deeper and deeper into the earth, deeper than the oldest roots of the most thirsty trees, and still no hunger responded to her flames.

Then Stave shouted. ”Ware, Chosen! The skurj rises!”

In front of her, the watercourse spat filth in a spray of water, rocks, sand. The soil of its banks began to seethe as if the trees and brush were suppurating. Leaves overhead withered and charred. At the same time, she smelled gangrene; a miasma of sickness and rot; necrosis. Disease boiled upward as though dirt and stone and wood were dying flesh.

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