The Runes of the Earth

streaked with dust and expenditure. They, too, sagged to the ground with the other ur-viles, too worn out to go farther. Now only the loremaster remained absent. When it reached her, Linden’s company would be complete.

Pitying their prostration, she slipped from Hyn’s back, walked a few steps to stand among the creatures, then slowly lowered herself to her knees so that she would not appear to be looking down on them.

Her companions also dismounted, leaving only Anele astride his Ranyhyn. He ignored them as he had ignored everything since he had been taken from his cave. His battered forehead he veiled in Hrama’s mane.

For a moment, Linden hesitated, unsure of herself. But the pressure of her plight did not release her. Wiping the sweat from her forehead, she addressed the creatures softly, pleading with them yet again.

“I don’t know what to do. I keep saying that. This is beyond me. I know you’re exhausted. You’ve already done more than I have any right to ask. But I need even more.”

The thought of confronting the mirage with Covenant’s ring made her stomach clench.

“Is there anything we can do for you? Do you eat aliantha?” She had seen none, but she did not doubt that the Ramen-or the Ranyhyn-would be able to find treasure-berries. “Do you need water?” Liand and the Ramen carried several waterskins. “Can you make more vitrim?”

The ur-viles regarded her with their wide nostrils and did not respond.

All right, she insisted, trying to reassure herself. She could not tell whether the situation required action or not. Nonetheless she did. A form of madness crouched in the background of her mind, awaiting its opportunity to spring. She had to do something-

Somehow she needed to find her way back to wild magic.

Surging to her feet, she turned roughly away and strode past her companions down the hillside toward the dry streambed.

So that she would not blunder into the shimmering, she watched for it askance, approaching it cautiously. Whoever or whatever had placed the barrier there might have no desire to do harm. It or they might recognise the presence of white gold. Hell, they might even recognise her. The ur-viles had certainly done so.

She had to take the chance.

Liand followed a step or two behind her, murmuring her name as though he did not know how else to aid her. And Stave walked at her shoulder. At a word from the Manethrall, Bhapa and Pahni unslung their waterskins and went to offer water to the Demondim-spawn. Mahrtiir himself followed Linden, Liand, and Stave down the slope.

This time, the ur-viles uttered no warnings. All of her companions seemed to understand what she meant to do.

A few paces from the watercourse, Linden stopped. She no longer needed to sense the mirage obliquely: she could feel its implications like a faint tingle on the skin of her face. When she had chosen a steady place to stand, a stretch of bare dirt where the thin soil did not shift under her feet, she lifted Covenant’s ring from under her shirt and wrapped her fingers around it. Then she closed her eyes and went looking within herself for fire; for the hidden door which opened on wild magic.

She should have been able to find it. She was certainly desperate enough. And twice now she had summoned argence by conscious choice. But the knowledge that she had failed in the caesure hampered her concentration. The possibility that she might fail once more-that she might never again have access to the power she needed-blocked her from clarity. She could not rediscover the door.

A low breeze skirled around her, carrying heat to her skin, drawing sweat from her temples and ribs. The pressure of the sun made her feel weak, denatured like the lore-serpent. Instead of white fire, she found a sensation of nausea twisting in her guts as if she were dehydrated or ill.

Abruptly all of the ur-viles began to bark. Their raucous shouts held a note of alarm. Startled, Linden looked back up the slope toward the creatures.

The loremaster had rejoined them. As weary as its fellows, it could barely support itself on all fours. The stain of dust on its eyeless face gave it a stricken aspect, as if it had caught a scent which appalled it.

The heads of all the ur-viles were turned, not toward Linden and the streambed, but in the direction of the open plains.

Liand gasped softly; and Stave said with sudden harshness, “Attend, Chosen.” Wheeling to face northward, Linden muttered involuntarily, “Oh, hell. What’s he doing here?”

Less than a stone’s cast below her, Esmer came striding up the hillside. He moved smoothly, easily, ascending the slope with unspoken puissance. His gilded cymar flowed like water on the breeze, alternately caressing and concealing his limbs. The strange fabric seemed to shift in hue with each step, modulating from the bright blue-and-gold of sun-burnished waves to the ominous shade of storm-frothed seas.

The plain shock of his appearance here, millennia before his proper time, made Linden feel like retching.

He was headed toward a point midway between her and the ur-viles. As he drew near, however, he paused as if to consider both groups. Then he advanced on the Demondim-spawn with a spume of hauteur in his eyes.

Some of them struggled to rise. Others cowered on the ground, nearly grovelling. Only the loremaster managed to haul itself erect. With its sceptre in its hands, it confronted Esmer’s approach unsteadily; but the iron looked cold, inert. To Linden’s eyes, the creature seemed too weak to withstand a blow-or even a rough word. Esmer’s vast power would sweep the loremaster from the face of the hills.

And still she could not find the door-She had lost her access to wild magic entirely.

When he reached the ur-viles, Esmer stopped, clenching his fists on his hips. “This is abject,” he sneered. “Has the mighty lore of the Demondim become so frail? And do you dare to set yourselves against me? You do well to grovel, lest my betrayals destroy you utterly.”

The loremaster responded with a bark of defiance. But Linden felt no force from the creature; no strength at all.

As if he had decided to begin a slaughter, Esmer stooped suddenly to slap a prone ur-vile with the palm of his hand.

Linden felt her heart labouring in her chest. Esmer’s palm struck between the creature’s shoulder blades. She expected a gout of blood; expected to see the ur-vile’s spine shattered. But instead a small iron bowl appeared in Esmer’s hand. He seemed to have snatched it out of the ur-vile’s flesh.

From the bowl, she sensed the unmistakable must and potency of vitrim.

Pacing imperiously among the creatures, Esmer carried the bowl to the loremaster and thrust it at the big ur-vile. “Drink,” he commanded. “Drink, and may the Seven Hells consume your bones. This weakness is intolerable.

“You are needed.”

Then he turned his back on the creatures to stride like an act of violence toward Linden and her companions.

She breathed in hard gasps, trying to quell her nausea. Esmer’s conflicted emanations left her half stunned: she could hardly think. What was he doing here? How had he come?

And why was he so angry?

Fearlessly Stave stepped forward to stand in front of Linden. After an instant’s hesitation, Liand joined him. Muttering Ramen curses, Mahrtiir placed himself shoulder-to-shoulder with Stave and Liand. And Pahni and Bhapa followed Esmer down the slope. The set of their faces said that they were ready to sacrifice themselves, if they were needed.

The Ranyhyn had accepted Esmer. He had been the friend of the Ramen-

“Stand aside!” he barked at Linden’s guardians. For a moment, he sounded like an ur-vile, guttural and enraged; and distant lightnings glared in his eyes. “This delay is fatal. The defenders of the Staff are unsure of you. And they are blinded to white gold. Already they prepare to abandon their covert. They will flee if they are not given battle.

“Then will you be betrayed in earnest, and nothing will undo the harm that I have Wrought.”

He could easily have gone around Linden and her companions; but he seemed to need a kind of permission from them.