carried him along.
Nonetheless Linden was sure of him. He was an argument that would persuade the Waynhim to aid her. If they were deaf to him, they would hear no other appeal.
“Thank you,” she murmured as Liand and the old man drew near. Then she said, “Let him go. Let’s see what he does.”
Liand complied with a nod. When he had released Anele, he stepped back.
Shadows made pools of darkness in the sockets of Anele’s blind eyes. He appeared entirely lost; too far gone in dismay to be aware of his surroundings or situation. In some preterite way, however, he may have understood what was needed of him. Or perhaps his inborn Earthpower reacted to the lore of the Waynhim. As soon as Liand removed his support, the old man took a few tottering steps toward the creature and dropped to his knees.
Clasping his hands before his face as if he were praying, he bowed his face to the sand. Then he spread out his arms and prostrated himself like an act of supplication.
The Waynhim considered him carefully. It came to stand over him; sniffed all around him as though tasting the tale of his life in his aggrieved scent. And as it did so, the creature increasingly gave the impression that it had been wounded; galled by sorrow or suffering.
If Linden could have seen its cause, the creature’s care and pain would have explained the Waynhim to her. One more hint, a final glimpse or insight, might enable her to comprehend their dilemma.
Trying to elicit that hint, she told the Waynhim softly, “This is Anele, son of Sunder and Hollian. They were chosen to hold the Staff of Law when I passed from the Land, and Covenant was lost. He inherited it from them. You found it in the cave where he lived while he studied the Land, trying to determine the form of service that was right for him.”
She did not add, He only made one mistake. Look at what it cost him. The creature could discern the truth for itself.
When the Waynhim had finished its examination, it barked a few guttural syllables into the gloom and retreated to stand once more near the mouth of the cave. There it stayed, apparently forbidding Linden to enter; refusing her-
After a moment, Mahrtiir demanded tensely, “Esmer, what was said? Has the Waynhim given its answer?”
Esmer hid his surging gaze in the crook of his arm and did not reply.
Stave waited with his arms folded across his chest. His flat features betrayed no reaction.
Linden kept her attention fixed on the creature and the cave.
As the sun declined past midafternoon, the shadows thickened, obscuring the face of the Waynhim, filling the mouth of the cave with potential night. Within herself, Linden fretted; but outwardly she remained calm. The Waynhim could argue that the end did not justify the means, but they could not deny that Anele was the rightful wielder of the Staff or that he was in no condition to bear that responsibility. Nor could they believe that the Staff was not desperately needed. Anele’s plight demonstrated the Land’s more eloquently than any words.
And the delay was not prolonged. Soon the darkness within the cave appeared to condense, concentrating gradually into the form of a second Waynhim.
This creature moved with an arduous limp, as if every movement tormented its sore and swollen joints. As it emerged from the cave, Linden saw that its flesh was afflicted with oozing galls and eruptions like the stigmata of a plague. From half of its face the skin had peeled away, leaving raw tissues which throbbed and bled with each beat of its heart. Boils and blisters distorted its mouth as if it had swallowed acid, and a rank green fluid dripped like pus from both of its nostrils.
Its pain cried out to her, as articulate as weeping, although the Waynhim made no sound.
It came forward a few steps, then stopped, wavering on its feet as if it had reached the end of its strength.
“Heaven and Earth!” Liand breathed. “What has befallen it? Is this an ailment? Has some cruel force wrought such harm?”
“Esmer?” demanded Mahrtiir harshly.
Linden understood now: the poor creature’s suffering gave her the hint she needed. How else might the Waynhim have responded to Anele’s plight, except by revealing their own?
Nevertheless the truth appalled her. And she had no power. Some force or confusion had sealed shut the door to wild magic within her.
Like Anele, still prostrate in the sand beside her, she sank to her knees before the damaged creature and bowed her head.
Gruffly Esmer responded, “The Demondim-spawn are not creatures of Law. They were not born as natural creatures, nor do they wither and perish as the Law of Life requires. Rather they were conceived by lore, created to redeem the loathing of the Demondim for their own forms.”
Ah, God. Linden feared that this crisis would be too much for her; that the dilemma of the Waynhim exceeded her scant strength. But these creatures were not her enemies. And they had shown her what they required in order to trust her.
“Those offspring,” Esmer continued, “which the Demondim deemed worthy, they nurtured. Those which failed their intent, they cast aside. Yet the ur-viles and the Waynhim differ primarily in their interpretations of the Weird or Wyrd or Word which gives them purpose. In their physical substance, they are alike, and the Law which gives form to mortal life has no place in them.”
On her knees with her eyes closed and her chest full of yearning, Linden considered her straits. She could not use Covenant’s ring. But the Waynhim held the Staff of Law; her Staff. How distant was it? How deeply had the Waynhim sequestered it?
Could her health-sense extend so far?
The damaged creature had taken some time to reach the ravine. But its pain was terrible, and all its steps were slow. It could not have come a long way.
With her eyes closed, she listened to Esmer’s voice. It moved her like a lament.
“For that reason,” he explained, “the Staff of Law is inimical to them. Though the Waynhim serve the Land, and have always done so, their service stands outside the bounds of Law. Their lore is in itself a violation of Law. The fact of their service does not alter their nature.
“Therefore the mere proximity of the Staff harms them. If its influences are not guided and controlled by a condign hand, its power must destroy them. Unprotected, no Waynhim or ur-vile can long endure its presence and remain whole “
And therefore the Waynhim understood Linden’s dilemma; the dilemma of every white gold wielder. The damaged creature in front of her demonstrated that they could be persuaded.
Comforted by the knowledge, she sank into Esmer’s words and the Waynhim’s pain; and as she did so, her percipience expanded outward, following the hard guidance of the ravine’s stone walls into the cave.
She did not consciously search for the Staff. The wrong kind of concentration would block her senses. Instead she simply drifted. And she found herself thinking, not of the Staff itself, or of how she had made it, or of its cost, but rather of Andelain and beauty.
If she had not visited that bastion of loveliness with Thomas Covenant, she would not have loved the Land as he did. Until that time, she had known only the Sunbane; and so the ineffable glory of Earthpower had been hidden from her.
“Sensing that the Staff had been abandoned,” Esmer said as if from an impossible distance, “these Waynhim sought it out, that they might preserve it from the Despiser’s Servants.”
Linden could almost hear the Forestal of Andelain’s song. It had been retained in the depths of her memories, melodic as trees, poignant as flowers: an eldritch music which had spangled and enumerated with glory every blade of grass, every petal, every leaf, every woodland creature.
“Yet the nearness of the Staff harms all Demondim-spawn.” Esmer’s voice had become a threnody in the dim ravine. “Over the years, it would unmake these Waynhim entirely. Therefore they selected from among their number one to bear the burden-one to transport the Staff from its former resting place, and here to become its final guardian. Thus the Waynhim hoped to satisfy their Weird without bringing ruin upon this rhysh, for it is the last in all the Land.
