Fatal Revenant

Seven Words, she flung the full strength of the Staff at the skurj. Every scrap of her desperation and weakness and Earthpower she transmuted 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 circumscribed 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 passed. 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 valour. 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 gratitude 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 passed. 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 assail 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 extinguishing 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 prone to immolation as any man or woman or child.

But now-God!

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 crushing 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, “Ringthane!” as if the word were a battle cry.

Another roar answered his, as loud as the crushing 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.

Linden twisted to the side. She clutched for Covenant’s ring.

Between her and the monster’s maw, she saw in silhouette the mighty form of a Giant. Limned by rows of ravenous burning, he advanced on her with his arms raised over his head. In his hands, he gripped a longsword taller than she was, a wave-bladed flamberge.

We are not alone. Others also are lost.

The Giant’s features were a contorted yammer of rage and insanity as he swung his sword, trying to hack Linden in half.

Chapter Nine: The Long Journey of the Lost

Stunned by her impact with the bank of the watercourse, Linden could not breathe. She had no capacity for power. Every Giant whom she had ever known had been her friend: bluff, kindly, humorous, extravagant of heart. Some of them she had loved. She would have felt a rush of joy if she had heard that those sea-and stone-loving people had returned to the Land.

The figure looming over her with butchery in his hands was unmistakably a Giant. He was at least twice her height, twice as broad, and muscled like an oak. His weathered features looked like they had been chiselled from brown marble. Even the cropped cut of his beard might have been shaped stone.

Yet he could not have belonged to the race that had called the people of the Land “Rockbrother” and