The Runes of the Earth

soon as the passage widened, the Master vaulted over the rocks to block her path. She collided headlong with his hard form.

“Chosen,” he insisted severely, “this is madness. The Staff is lost. Haste and wildness will not recover it.”

Linden thrust against him, trying uselessly to force him aside. “Damn it,” she protested, “why do you think the ur-viles stopped? You saw them. They smelled something.

“We have to catch up with them before they find the Staff.”

She should have stayed with them. But how could she have known that Anele’s desperation would mislead her?

Stave’s visage showed no reaction; but he turned to run ahead of her, leading her between the tall stones. With Mahrtiir behind them, they burst free of the rocks and dashed for their waiting Ranyhyn.

When they reached the ravine above the hollow where they had left the ur-viles, Linden began to believe that she was not too late. She could feel power throbbing in the air: the walls of the ravine channelled emanations of darkness and force upward. Then she knew that the creatures were at work nearby. They had not yet moved away.

To her senses, their theurgy felt like questing.

Still responding to her urgency, the Ranyhyn galloped through the ravine and down the hillside. As they neared the knotted wedge of the Demondim-spawn, however, they slowed to a canter, then a walk. With Hynyn and Mahrtiir’s mount beside her, Hyn came to a halt half a dozen strides from the spot where the ur-viles laboured. There Linden stared, transfixed, at what the creatures were doing. She had never seen power used in this fashion before.

Its obsidian force stung her health-sense so that her vision blurred and her nose ran. A flush like remorse spread across her skin, and her mouth was filled with the taste of copper and yearning.

A low rise swelled in the bottom of the hollow. At the crown of the rise, the ur-viles had gouged or dug a narrow ditch like a gutter in a circle eight or ten paces wide. Now the loremaster, with the other creatures packed tightly behind it, held its iron jerrid or sceptre with the point planted in the ditch; and as the ur-viles chanted together, black power as fluid as oil and as rank as offal streamed from the iron into the gutter.

The liquid seemed to suck away the day’s brightness. Within the ditch, the circle was crowded with shadows that writhed and wailed, although they made no sound. Linden rubbed the damp from her eyes, trying to see more clearly. The loremaster’s iron bled force slowly, yet the ditch was already full. The ur-viles must have begun their invocation soon after she and her companions had departed for Anele’s cave.

Within the circle, the twisting shadows refused to take definite forms. They remained indistinct: shapeless and tormented; allusive as a masque. Yet their very vagueness conveyed a sense of intention; of desire and searching.

“Stave?” she murmured softly.

What the hell are they doing?

But the Master did not answer.

Still the shadows roiled and yearned. But now by increments they appeared to direct their attention away from the wedge and the mountains, across the foothills into the west. Their squirming forms seemed to beckon in that direction.

As they did so, the ditch began to overflow. Viscid black fluid poured like a serpent from the gutter, slithering through the soil and grass as if in obedience to the commands of the trapped shadows.

Slowly at first, then with more celerity, the snake of power glided across the hollow and went questing down the hillside. In moments, it was long enough to have drawn all of the liquid from the ditch. However, the ur- viles contrived to replenish the fluid as rapidly as it flowed away. Their ditch remained full, holding the shadows in place against the direct contradiction of the sun.

The black serpent called to Linden’s percipience, urging her to follow where it led.

After a time, a small group of ur-viles- perhaps a third of the creatures-broke from the wedge and trotted away beside the serpent’s squirming length. They did not run, but they moved quickly enough to outpace their liquid power.

Each of them carried an iron dagger with a crimson blade as bright as burning blood.

With an effort, Linden wrenched herself out of her transfixion. If the lore of the ur-viles could locate the Staff of Law in this fashion, she did not mean to be left behind. Murmuring, “Come on,” to Mahrtiir and Stave, she urged Hyn into motion. “We should see where this is going.” Obediently the mare began to canter around the hollow after the creatures.

The line of darkness did not appear to flow swiftly. And its progress had slowed. Perhaps its power was attenuated by its distance from the circle and the shadows. Or it may have been diminished by the fact that fewer creatures now fed it. Yet it had already dropped into a fold of ground between foothills and begun to squirm up the far slope, searching the rocks and tufts of grass as if it were unsure of its way.

There the trailing ur-viles caught up with it. At once, they placed themselves near the serpent’s head, four in a row on each side, and dropped to their knees facing each other. Raucous as crows, their harsh voices rose as each of them plunged its dagger into the snake’s fluid body.

Fresh power thrummed in the air: the serpent writhed as though it had been goaded. Then it began to move ahead with more speed and certainty.

The ur-viles remained where they were to sustain the fluid.

Its course ran almost due west. In this region, however, the mountains gradually withdrew into the south, drawing their foothills with them. As a result, the serpent’s path angled slowly toward the plains, leading Linden and her companions deeper and deeper into the piled heat of summer.

The moisture in her eyes became sweat as she rode. Helpless to do anything else, she wiped them on the sleeve of her shirt, and concentrated on the tortuous progress of the search.

The serpentine blackness soon began to falter again as its elongation weakened it. Shortly, however, eight more ur-viles came trotting across the slopes, dispatched by the loremaster and the dwindling wedge to extend the reach of their power. These creatures also knelt behind the serpent’s head in order to stab their glowing daggers into its liquid flesh.

Once again, the dark fluid flowed ahead with renewed strength.

Softly, fearing to disturb the ur-viles’ concentration, Linden asked Stave, “How much longer can they keep this up?”

She did not expect an answer; but her constrained urgency demanded an outlet. As far ahead as she could see, the foothills continued to unfold in sequence, as rumpled as a dropped blanket, and devoid of any features- caves or copses, ravines, fallen stones-which might have concealed the Staff.

The Master shrugged. “They are Demondim-spawn. Who can measure the extent of their lore? The Haruchai have seen them perform far greater feats, in Corruption’s service.”

Linden could not think of any reason why the Staff might not have been taken tens or even hundreds of leagues from the place where Anele had lost it.

In the heat of her concentration, she had forgotten the rest of her companions. Fortunately Stave had not. Turning to the Manethrall, he asked Mahrtiir to ride back toward the hollow in case Liand, Anele, and the Cords needed help or guidance.

The Manethrall visibly disliked accepting a suggestion from Stave. However, he apparently recognised that the request was reasonable. Inclining his head more to Linden than to the Haruchai, he turned his Ranyhyn and cantered away.

She hardly saw him go. She had no attention to spare for pragmatic concerns. She had risked too much by coming here, and could think of nothing except the search before her.

Again the flowing liquid began to lose its way. Before it failed altogether, however, the last of the ur-viles arrived to sustain it, leaving only the loremaster behind to command the shadows.

Until then, Linden’s attention had been fixed on the serpent’s progress: she had given no thought to the price which the ur-viles paid for their exertions. They were too alien to be understood in human terms. But now she saw that the Demondim-spawn were trembling with weariness. Their peculiar nature did not protect them