The Illearth War

them. The four men watched her from a short distance.

She made no complex or strenuous preparations. Raising the Staff, she sat erect and tall on Myrha's back for a moment, faced the slide. From Covenant's point of view, her blue robe and the Ranyhyn's glossy coat met against the mottled grey background of scree and rubble. She and Myrha looked small in the deep sheer valley, but the conjunction of their colours and forms gave them a potent iconic appearance. Then she moved.

Singing a low song, she advanced to the foot of the slide. There she gripped the Staff by one end, and lowered the other to the ground. It appeared to pulse as she rode along the slide's front, drawing a line in the dirt parallel to the fall. She walked Myrha to one wall, then back to the other. Still touching the ground with the Staff, she returned to the centre.

When she faced the slide again, she lifted the Staff, and rapped once on the line she had drawn.

A rippling skein of verdigris sparks flowed up the fall from her line. They gleamed like interstices of power on every line or bulge of rock that protruded from the slope. After an instant, they disappeared, leaving an indefinite smell like the aroma of orchids in the air.

The muffled groaning of the fall faded somewhat.

“Come,” the High Lord said. “We must climb at once. This Word will not endure.”

Briskly, Morin and Bannor started forward. Amok loped beside them. He easily kept pace with the Ranyhyn.

As he looked upward, Covenant felt nausea like a presage in his guts. His jaw muscles knotted apprehensively. But he slapped his mount with his heels, and rode at the moaning fall.

He caught up with the Bloodguard. They took positions on either side of him, followed Elena and Amok onto the slope.

The High Lord's party angled back and forth up the slide. Their climbing balanced the danger of delay against the hazard of a direct attack on the slope. Covenant's mustang laboured strenuously, and its struggles contrasted with the smooth power of the Ranyhyn. Their hooves kicked scuds of shale and scree down the fail, but their footing was secure, confident. There were no mishaps. Before long, Covenant stood on the rounded V atop the slide.

He was not prepared for what lay beyond the blockage. Automatically, he had expected the south end of the valley to resemble the north. But from the ridge of the landslide, he could see that the huge scalloped wounds above him were too big to be explained by the slide as it appeared from the north.

Somewhere buried directly below him, the valley floor plunged dramatically. The two avalanches had interred a precipice. The south face of the slide was three or four times longer than the north. Far below him, the valley widened into a grassy bottom featured by stands of pine and a stream springing from one of the walls. But to reach that alluring sight, he had to descend more than a thousand feet down the detonating undulation of the slide.

He swallowed thickly. “Bloody hell. Can you hold that?”

“No,” Elena said bluntly. “But what I have done will steady it. And I can take other action-if the need arises.”

With a sharp nod, she started Amok down the slope.

Bannor told Covenant to stay close behind him, then eased his Ranyhyn over the edge after Amok. For a moment, Covenant felt too paralyzed by prophetic trepidation to move. His dry, constricted throat and awkward tongue could not form words. Hellfire, he muttered silently. Hellfire.

He abandoned himself, pushed his mustang after Bannor.

Part of him knew that Morin and then Elena followed him, but he paid no attention to them. He locked his eyes on Bannor's back and tried to cling there for the duration of the descent.

Before he had gone a hundred feet, the skittishness of his mount drove everything else from his mind. Its ears flinched as if it were about to shy at every new groan within the fall. He heaved and sawed at the reins in an effort to control the horse, but he only aggravated its distress. Faintly, he could hear himself mumbling, “Help. Help.”

Then a loud boom like the crushing of a boulder shivered the air. A swath of slide jumped and shifted. The rubble under Covenant began to slip.

His mount tried to spring away from the shift. It shied sideways, and started straight down the slope.

Its lunge only precipitated the slide. Almost at once, the mustang was plunging in scree that poured over its knees.

It struggled to escape downward. Each heave increased the weight of rubble piling against it.

Covenant clung frantically to the clingor saddle. He fought to pull the horse's head aside, make his mount angle out of the slide's main force. But the mustang had its teeth on the bit now. He could not turn it.

Its next plunge buried it to its haunches in the quickening rush of rubble. Covenant could hear Elena shouting stridently. As she yelled, Bannor's Ranyhyn sprang in front of him. Ploughing through the scree, it threw its weight against his mount. The impact almost unseated him, but it deflected his horse. Guided by Bannor, the Ranyhyn shoved against the horse, forced it to fight toward the cliff.

But the avalanche was already moving too heavily. A small boulder struck the mustang's rump; the horse fell. Covenant sprawled down the slope out of Bannor's reach. The rubble tumbled him over and over, but for a moment he managed to stay above it. He got his feet under him, tried to move across the slide.

Through the gathering roar of the fall, he heard Morin shout, “High Lord!” The next instant, she flashed by him, riding Myrha straight down the outer edge of the slide. Fifty feet below him, she swung into the avalanche. With a wild cry, she whirled the Staff of Law and struck the fall.

Fire blazed up through the slide. Like a suddenly clenched fist, the rubble around Covenant stopped moving. His own momentum knocked him backward, but he jumped up again in time to meet Bannor as the Bloodguard landed his Ranyhyn on the small patch of steady ground. Bannor caught Covenant with one hand, swung him across the Ranyhyn's back, charged away out of the slide.

When they reached the relatively still ground against the cliff wall, Covenant saw that Elena had saved him at the risk of herself. The stasis which she had applied to the slipping tons of the avalanche was not large enough to include her own position. And an instant later, that stasis broke. An extra breaker of rubble dropped toward her.

She had no second chance to wield the Staff. Almost at once, the wave of scree crashed over her and Myrha.

An instant later, she appeared downhill from Myrha.

The Ranyhyn's great strength momentarily sheltered her.

But the fall piled against Myrha's chest. And Covenant's mustang, still madly fighting the slide, hurtled toward the Ranyhyn. Instinctively, Covenant tried to run back into the avalanche to help Elena. But Bannor held him back with one hand.

He started to struggle, then stopped as a long clingor rope flicked out over the slide and caught the High Lord's wrist. With his Ranyhyn braced against the wall below Covenant and Bannor, First Mark Morin flung out his line, and the adhesive leather snared Elena. She reacted immediately. “Flee!” she yelled to Myrha, then clutched the Staff and heaved against the waist-deep flow of scree as Morin pulled her to safety.

Though the great mare was battered and bleeding, she had other intentions. With a tremendous exertion, she lunged out of the mustang's path. As the screaming horse tumbled past, she turned and caught its reins in her teeth.

For one intense moment, she held the mustang, hauled it to its feet, swung it in the direction of the wall.

Then the avalanche swept them down a steep bulge. The sudden plunge sank her. With a rushing cry, the weight of the landslide poured over her.

Somehow, the mustang kept its feet, struggled on down the slope. But Myrha did not reappear.

Covenant hugged his stomach as if he were about to retch. Below him, Elena cried, “Myrha! Ranyhyn!” The passion in her voice appalled him. Several moments passed before he realized that his rescue had carried his companions more than two-thirds of the way down the slide.

“Come,” Bannor said flatly. “The balance has broken. There will be more falls. We are imperilled here.” His efforts had not even quickened his breathing.

Numbly, Covenant sat behind Bannor as his Ranyhyn picked its way along the wall to the High Lord and Morin. Elena looked stricken, astonished with grief. Covenant wanted to throw his arms around her, but the