Part 55 (1/2)

When her power touched the surging creature, she staggered. The sheer vehemence of the skurj struck her like a physical blow. G.o.d, it was strong*

Putrefaction clogged her throat: she could hardly breathe. She tasted similarities to Roger's bitter scoria. But the forces which confronted her now were worse; purer. They resembled the ruddy extravagance of volcanoes: tremendous energies barely contained by the world's friable sh.e.l.l.

As it came, she read the nature of the skurj. Mindless as cyclones and earthquakes, the monster was a product of organic magic. It had been born in magma: it throve in infernos and molten stone. And it ate the living earth. The earth's flesh sustained its savagery. Yet it was not an inherent evil comparable to the Illearth Stone.

Nor did it exist outside the bounds of Law, as did the Viles and their descendants. And it did not intend ruin: it had no intention except appet.i.te.

Over the course of millennia, however, all of the skurj had received the legacy of Kastenessen's rage. During his Appointed Durance, they had been transmogrified; harnessed to his service. From him, they had inherited perversion. Goaded by his hate, they had become havoc and insatiable sickness.

The creature rising to devour trees and dirt and Linden did not reason, and knew no fear. Therefore it could not be turned aside. It would eat and eat, afflicting everything in its vicinity with rot, until the very Earth was torn open at last.

Gasping at the stench, Linden felt her courage fail. She could not move or think. Around her, a wide span of the watercourse and the forest boiled and frothed, immedicably diseased. The Staff was useless to her. The skurj consumed her flames; swallowed or ignored her power.

Covenant had told her to find him. Lord Foul and the croyel held Jeremiah. She and all of her companions were here because she had decided to take the Land's fate into her own hands. Now she was helpless. Before she saw Kastenessen's beast for the first time, it had already defeated her.

For an instant, the fabric of reality seemed to rip like a fouled tapestry. The ground pitched and heaved; dropped her to her knees. The pustulent reek of mortification filled her lungs, her nerves, her wailing mind.

Then the skurj erupted from the earth, and she gaped into its avid mouth.

It rose as tall as a Giant above her, and as thick as a cedar. Its hide was as heavy and hot as slag: the entire length of the creature emitted a terrible heat. Yet the hide shed no light. Even the tremendous kraken maw and gullet gave no illumination. Only the teeth, the fearsome fangs, long as stakes, curved and keen as scimitars, row after row of them filling the jaws: only the teeth shone. They burned with a sick red slas.h.i.+ng radiance like lamps along the pa.s.sage into h.e.l.l.

Linden did not move. She believed that she could not. Her weakness was her birthright: her parents had spent their lives so that she would receive and accept their last gifts.

Nevertheless she was not the woman she had once been; the emotional cripple who had watched, frozen, while Jeremiah had surrendered his hand to Lord Foul, and Covenant had sacrificed himself for Joan. Her heart had become stone-and the stone held.

She did not move, but she could whisper. Gazing into the fanged throat of slaughter, she murmured. ”Melenkurion abatha. Duroc minas mill. Harad khabaal.”

The skurj arched over her, mindless and savage. Its lambent teeth strained toward her. It could have swallowed her in a heartbeat. Yet it did not strike. Hearing her, it hesitated, caught by the potency of the Seven Words.

Then Clyme appeared on the poisoned ground beyond the skurj; and the suddenness of his arrival wrenched Linden from her paralysis. He was a Master, a potential antagonist. But he was also Haruchai: he would not hold back. Already she saw him gather himself to spring at the monster.

One touch of that fierce hide would burn the flesh from his bones. One flash of those wicked fangs would sever his limbs.

She was on her feet before she heard herself howl. ”Clyme, no!” Screaming the Seven Words, she flung the full strength of the Staff at the skurj. Every sc.r.a.p of her desperation and weakness and Earthpower she trans.m.u.ted to fire and hurled against the creature.

Frantically she unleashed strength enough to set Salva Gildenbourne ablaze. But the focus of her terror and resolve was so single-minded that none of her flames touched the trees.

The skurj reared above her. Its jaws stretched to devour her inadequacy. For a moment or two, however, a handful of heartbeats, her coruscating incendiary repulsion sufficed to stop the beast. Although it ate her power, she lashed it with more force than it could consume.

Hampered by fire and the invocation of Law, the skurj reached toward her with its bright fangs-and failed to strike.

”Clyme!” Stave shouted: a stentorian roar which Linden scarcely heard. ”Humbled! Preserve the Stonedownor! His orcrest may serve to distract this abomination!”

The skurj forced Linden backward step after step. Its brute force, prodigious and incapable of dismay, threatened to overwhelm her. Among the roots of Melenkurion Skyweir, she had outfought the combined theurgies of Roger and the croyel. But there she had drawn directly upon the EarthBlood: Earthpower unconstrained by mortality and fragile flesh. Here she had only herself.

Then Clyme turned from the creature and ran westward into the trees, followed by Bhapa and then Branl. When she saw that only Stave remained with her, in instant danger, Linden felt a touch of relief. Retreating, she grew stronger.

Grimly she poured torrential fire into the creature's jaws; down its gullet. She was Linden Avery the Chosen. With no resources except the Staff of Law, the Seven Words, and her own granite, she had survived Melenkurion Skyweir's convulsion. And Caerroil Wildwood had completed her Staff. Nothing limited the puissance available to her except her own abilities; her circ.u.mscribed humanity.

Still she retreated. She had no choice.

The creature was too strong: she could not hold it back entirely. But her moment of defeat had pa.s.sed. As the jaws of the skurj blazed toward her, she reached deeper and deeper into herself for power.

Half of the beast's serpentine length remained buried beneath it. Balancing as if it were coiled, the creature thrust itself forward. With every violent movement, the fangs burned closer to Linden, and the ground boiled and rotted.

Stave stood directly behind her; supported her with his hands on her shoulders. In part, he gave her his intransigence, his unyielding Haruchai valor. But he also steadied her as she stumbled backward over sand and rocks. Unable to fight the creature himself, he preserved her from falling.

In grat.i.tude and extreme fever, Linden howled the Seven Words, and hurled conflagration as intense as a solar flare at the skurj-and learned the real purpose of Kevin's Dirt.

Within its definitions-within the bounds of Earthpower and Law-the Staff had no limits except those of its wielder. And Linden's doubt and terror had pa.s.sed. She had been annealed in her battle with Roger and the croyel: she was prepared to unleash any amount of flame against the skurj. It was not alone. Doubtless more of its kind rushed to a.s.sail her. She would have to slay them all. The Land's life as well as Jeremiah's depended on her. She did not mean to fail.

She should have been able to ask the Staff for as much Earthpower as she needed.

But she had forgotten the cloying pall of Kevin's Dirt. The blindness, the truncation of percipience, which it imposed was only one of its effects.

Fighting for her life, she discovered that Kevin's Dirt hampered other forms of Earthpower as well.

It restricted her fire.

During her battle with Roger and the croyel, Kevin's Dirt had not constrained her. It had not existed in that time. And it had not prevented her from extinguis.h.i.+ng caesures, or from slaying Cavewights and kresh, because those exertions had not required as much raw force as she sought here. Caesures violated all Law: all Law aided her against them. And Cavewights and kresh were perishable, as p.r.o.ne to immolation as any man or woman or child.

But now-G.o.d!

Kevin's Dirt had been created for this: to inhibit the uttermost use of Earthpower. Linden was not being driven backward because she was human and weak, but rather because her attempts to summon the full resources of the Staff were clogged by a ubiquitous fug of wrongness.

And this skurj was only one. There would be more.

Stave was right: Linden needed a distraction. She needed to risk Liand and the orcrest and perhaps all of her companions. She could not stop even one of these monsters with Earthpower. She would die in moments if she did not cast the Staff aside and oppose the skurj with wild magic.

But that would take time. She had not begun to master Covenant's ring. And white gold defied Law. By its very nature, the Staff would hamper her. It might block her altogether. Even if she surrendered it to Stave, she might not be able to invoke the wild magic that destroys peace swiftly enough to prevent the skurj from crus.h.i.+ng her.

Stave! she cried in silence because she could not stop howling the Seven Words. Get Liand!

Stave could not hear her thoughts. She had to rely on his instinctive comprehension of her peril. She would falter and die if Liand did not distract the creature.

Just for a moment. Please.

I am not going to lose my son!

Her task should have been impossible. Without Stave's support, she would have fallen. Nevertheless she continued to block the monster's jaws, opposing its fury with fire and utter dismay.

Dimly she heard a voice that was not hers. Somewhere in the distance, Mahrtiir yelled, ”Ringthanef' as if the word were a battle cry.

Another roar answered his, as loud as the crus.h.i.+ng of boulders.

Then the Manethrall crashed into her from the side; drove her staggering through the stream to collide heavily with the bank of the watercourse.

At once, her power collapsed. The breath and stench were driven from her lungs: she nearly lost her grasp on the Staff. In the sudden cessation of flame, night closed like a tomb over the forest. Only the fangs of the skurj still shone, gaping for prey.