The Runes of the Earth

fevers.

She was sick with visions: the memories and prescience of the Ranyhyn.

In some sense, the great horses transcended the Law of Time. They knew when they would be needed. They knew how far they would be required to go-

Hands gripped her shoulders, attempting to steady her. A man’s voice-Liand’s? – murmured her name repeatedly, called her back to herself.

She feared that he would stop if she could not answer. Between tremors, she tried to say, “The tarn,”

She thought that she spoke aloud. Certainly her strained throat felt the effort and pain of sound. But she could not hear herself. The loud rain on the roof of the shelter muffled her voice.

“The horserite.”

Around her, Cords echoed, “Horserite,” as though in awe that she had been so privileged. Softly the woman’s voice, Hami’s, said, “As we deemed. The Ranyhyn possess insight needful to her.”

They did not understand. How could they? They barely existed, rendered vague by shivering. Linden could not focus her eyes on them. Only Stave seemed fully real to her beyond the intervening flames: as irrefutable as stone.

“Just Hyn and Hynyn,” she croaked hoarsely. No other Ranyhyn. “The others couldn’t bear it. They’re too ashamed.”

That shocked the Ramen. They blurred like tears. Voices protested, “No,” and, “No.” Someone hissed through the rain, “It is false. She lies.”

Stave blinked at the glaze in his eyes. Sternly he retorted, “It is sooth.” He nodded at Linden past the fire. “Behold her. Do you discern falsehood?”

“Do not shame yourselves,” Hami told the indignation of her people. “Do you lack sight? She has no falsehood in her.”

Fever had burned away any lies that Linden might have wished to believe.

“We are Ramen,” the Manethrall informed the Cords severely. “We will hear the truth.”

They heeded her, but Linden did not. Her heart seemed to bleed memories for which she had no words and no courage. Running hard enough to vanquish time, she had shared the visions of the Ranyhyn: images not of Kelenbhrabanal and Fangthane, but of the child Elena, daughter of Lena and rape.

Another warning-

At that time, Elena was a young girl, lovely as only a child could be, and innocent in spite of her mother’s instability. Lena had been deranged by violation and yearning, rendered unfit to raise a child. And both of Lena’s parents, Trell and Atiaran, had been broken to some extent by the crime against their daughter. Thus Elena was effectively abandoned by her own family; left to the care of a young, unregarded man who adored Lena. For the Land’s sake, he had effectively adopted Elena. His embittered tenderness, and the boon of the Ranyhyn, were all that had sustained her.

To Linden, the girl’s loneliness and need were as vivid as Jeremiah’s, as acute as her son’s compelled maiming. The great horses had seen Elena clearly. Once each year, every year, a Ranyhyn, an old stallion, had approached Mithil Stonedown in order to relieve Lena’s bereavement; and so he had witnessed again and again how the child’s life was transformed for that brief time. When the mare Myrha had taken the stallion’s place, she had seen her potency in Elena’s heart more vividly than any man or woman who might have loved the child.

“Because of Elena,” Linden explained as clearly as she could, although she had no words. “That’s why the Ranyhyn are ashamed. The horserite doomed her.”

If Jeremiah had been granted Ranyhyn rather than hospitals and surgery after his ordeal in Lord Foul’s bonfire, an excitement like Elena’s might have drawn him out of himself.

Surely the Ramen remembered Elena’s participation in that rite millennia ago? They had not been present. Perhaps no Raman had ever witnessed or shared a horserite. But they must have heard the tale-

“They blame themselves,” she told the eager flames, “for what she became.”

Precisely because the Ranyhyn had recognised the nature of their power within Elena, Myrha had borne her to that long-ago conclave. They saw far ahead in time; sensed the danger which would confront Elena years later. And they had hoped to dissuade her from accepting her heritage of harm.

Now they knew that they had failed terribly.

They had shown Elena the arrogance of Kelenbhrabanal’s despair, thinking to teach her that failure was preferable to violation. Lena should have resisted Covenant with all her strength. Better to combat Fangthane directly and die than to believe that some grand sacrifice might alter Fangthane’s nature-or the Land’s fate.

But Elena had missed the lesson. She was deafened to it by the thunder of hundreds of hooves; blinded by the communion of the Ranyhyn. Covenant’s gift had left her insensible. She already adored the great horses. From their rite, she had learned something akin to worship for Kelenbhrabanal. His sacrifice had seemed splendid to her: an act of valour so transcendental that it could not be tainted or surpassed.

The horserite had not dissuaded her from ruin. Rather it had set her more firmly on the path to destruction.

Speaking hurt Linden’s mouth and throat: words bit like blades of glass, slivers of the past. Nevertheless she forced herself to say, “They think she got the idea of commanding Kevin from Kelenbhrabanal.”

Perhaps she would have raised the Father of Horses himself if he had possessed the mighty lore of the Old Lords.

Now the Ranyhyn saw that they had fallen prey to an arrogance of their own. Discerning Elena’s vulnerability, they had believed themselves wise enough to guide her future.

If Hyn and Hynyn had stopped there, however, Linden could have endured their self-blame; perhaps even refuted it. Her soul would not have sickened within her. The shame of the great horses, she might have said, was itself arrogant. The Ranyhyn had claimed responsibility for Elena’s actions when that burden belonged properly and solely to Elena herself.

But the two horses did not stop. When they had shared their racial memories of Elena, they began their tale again from the beginning-with one appalling alteration. In their visions, they replaced Elena’s visage with Linden’s.

Still trying to warn her.

“Now they’re afraid of me,” she moaned, “for the same reason. They believe-”

She could not say it. It hurt too much.

Their minds united with her, Hyn and Hynyn retold the same story as if it had happened to Linden rather than Elena; as if Linden’s mother and father had been Atiaran and Trell as well as Lena and Covenant. And she experienced it with them: it transpired anew. It held the same abandonment and grief, the same failed cherishing, the same loneliness-and the same exalting in-rush of love for the Ranyhyn. Mercilessly, Hyn and Hynyn described Elena’s introduction to the murder and betrayal of Kelenbhrabanal as if that crisis were indistinguishable from Linden’s experience of the Land with Covenant under the Sunbane.

And still the images of the horserite did not end. The Ranyhyn had erred with Elena, perhaps, by not revealing the true extent of her peril. She had been a child, too young to apprehend the truth of their prophecies. They had feared to overwhelm her.

On behalf of all their kind, Hyn and Hynyn did not make that mistake with Linden.

Instead they found within her a still graver hurt. Galloping in frenzy, they touched the ravaged memories of moksha Raver’s possession, the killing horror of Jehannum’s malice. And with that knowledge, they caused her to experience what was being done to her son.

To damaged Jeremiah, who had no defence except blankness.

Linden could focus only on Stave. Surely he had seen the same visions, felt the same dismay? The Ranyhyn had not brought him to their horserite against his will in order to spare him. Yet he sat beyond the flames as though he were untouched, unmoved; implacable as blame.

Liand had not stopped murmuring her name. But now he crooned as if he meant to comfort her, “Linden, no. No.

“The Ranyhyn do not fear you. They cannot.”

His support could not interrupt her trembling. She was too ill for any solace.