The Runes of the Earth

her shirt, lighting her way to survival. Wild magic was in some sense as disruptive as the caesure, untrammelled by restriction. For that reason, it had the power to violate the strictures of time. For the same reason, however, white gold formed the keystone of the Arch of Time. Its unfettered passion anchored the paradox which made finite existence possible within the infinite universe.

Similarly the hot blaze of Linden’s heart anchored her within herself, enabling her to continue to be who she was when every mote and particle of her specific being had been torn asunder.

Duration could not exist within the Fall. Nothing was possible there except devouring pain and infinite cold and devastation. Therefore no tangible interval passed before Hyn galloped free of agony, bearing Linden out into a flood of sunlight and dazzled blindness.

They had arrived on a slowly rising slope which jolted the mare’s hooves like packed dirt.

Because she had been anchored, and wild magic shone from her still, Linden was not overwhelmed by her passage through time and torment. She could still think, and feel, and choose. Although the intense glare of the sun filled her vision, effacing sight, her other senses reached out acutely. With the nerves of her skin, she felt Stave riding strongly on one side of her, impervious to the harm of the caesure. On the other side, Liand held his seat on Rhohm, clinging grimly to the Staff of Law. Protected by its warm clarity, he also was not as sick as he would otherwise have been.

Close on their heels followed Anele, as unmistakably himself as his inborn Earthpower could make him-and as unquestionably insane as the Fall at his back.

Behind Hrama ran three more Ranyhyn, all of them injured, but still essentially whole. For a moment, Linden could not tell if they bore riders. The rampant seething of the Fall and the sudden brightness of the sun blocked her perceptions. Then she discerned Mahrtiir clutching his appalled stomach at Anele’s back; Pahni vomiting helplessly past Naharahn’s withers; Bhapa stretched nearly unconscious along Whrany’s neck. Blood throbbed from Bhapa’s arm and shoulder, streaking his mount’s torn flanks.

Beside the last Ranyhyn raced more than a dozen Waynhim and perhaps half that many ur-viles, all that remained of the bereft creatures which had committed their lives to Linden and the Staff.

And behind them came the Demondim in a teeming horde, ecstatic with power and ravenous for victims.

She had accomplished this much, if no more: she had brought her assailants with her out of the past; had defused their power to disrupt the integrity of time.

Now she would have to fight them. Hyn would be able to outrun the Demondim, but Linden’s company could not flee indefinitely. The ur-viles and the Waynhim were badly hurt; close to exhaustion. And the Ramen were too ill to defend themselves. Pahni and Bhapa might not be able to sit their mounts much longer. Even Mahrtiir’s aura felt fragile. The Manethrall could hardly contain the heaving of his stomach.

Linden had to make a stand.

She intended to turn and strike as soon as she could see.

As soon as she knew where she was. And when.

If the Ranyhyn had misjudged their passage through the caesure- or if some effect of the Fall had cast them out prematurely-she might yet be in danger of altering the Land’s history.

The midday brilliance of the sun still blinded her, however. While Hyn bore her racing over the hard ground, she blinked her eyes frantically, trying to clear the dazzle from her sight, and strove to extend her senses farther around her.

In spite of the sun’s brightness, the air was cool on her sweating cheeks: it smelled of spring. And ahead of her the ground rose gradually, uninterrupted by swelling hills or narrow ravines or streambeds. She was no longer among the foothills of the Southron Range in late summer. Somehow Hyn’s urgent run must have carried her out into the South Plains.

Or the Ranyhyn were able to navigate distance as well as time within a Fall. Linden and her companions may have crossed many leagues while they traversed the years.

But whatever the Ranyhyn had done, the Demondim had matched it. They could not have prevented Linden’s Fall from engulfing them; yet they had emerged still on the heels of their prey. And their passage did not daunt them, or diminish their hunger for slaughter. Stave had said that their lore was profound and oblique, reaching depths which had surpassed the Old Lords. Their understanding of caesures could easily be greater than Linden’s.

And they were unexpectedly swift. They rushed forward as if they were boiling over the ground. For all her speed, Hyn pulled away from the harrying creatures slowly. Perhaps she could not run faster. Or perhaps she held back so that she would not outdistance the rest of Linden’s companions.

Behind them, the Fall still moiled viciously. Linden had made it large, dangerously large, so that it would swallow all of the horde. Now its swirling forces seemed to blot out the world in that direction; and it flowed after the Demondim as though they sucked it in their wake.

Nevertheless Linden and those with her gained distance by increments, creating a small interval of safety between their desperation and the powers which pursued them.

How much time had passed? A score of heartbeats? Two score? In another moment, Linden told herself, when the gap was a bit wider, she would turn to counterattack.

With Covenant’s ring, she might be able to slow the Demondim so that her companions could escape; but she feared to take the risk. Wild magic might inadvertently draw the Fall toward her too swiftly to be avoided, or feed its destructiveness in some way which she could not foresee.

As her vision began to clear, she deliberately silenced the argence shining through the fabric of her shirt. Then, without a word, as if she expected Liand to read her mind, she reached out for the Staff.

He did not fail her. Almost immediately, she felt the smooth wooden shaft slap into her palm.

Its touch sent a thrill of vitality through her, wiping away the last effects of the caesure; retrieving her from the harm which she had imposed on time. In some fundamental way, wild magic did not suit her: it was too extravagant and unpredictable for her. She was a physician by choice, trained to precision and care; and the teeming ramifications of Covenant’s ring threatened at every moment to expand beyond her control.

In contrast, the Staff of Law was a healer’s implement, as careful as any scalpel or suture. When she held it, she grew stronger: at once calmer and more capable, firmly poised between passion and restraint.

Elevated by the essential certainty of Law, she spoke a silent word to Hyn, nudged the mare with her heels. Without hesitation, Hyn peeled away from her course, carrying Linden in a steady curve out of the path of the other Ranyhyn and the Demondim-spawn, and back toward the onrushing horde.

Stave and Liand accompanied her as if they-or their mounts-had known exactly what she would do. But Hrama bore Anele onward with the Ramen thundering behind them, while the ur-viles and Waynhim scrambled to keep pace.

Moment by moment, blinking tears and brightness from her eyes, Linden regained her sight.

With her companions, she galloped down a slow, wide slope which stretched ahead of her until it vanished under the feet of the Demondim and was covered by the towering storm of the caesure. The sun and its shadows suggested that she was riding eastward.

As the Ramen raced past her in the opposite direction, she sensed that Mahrtiir had begun to rally. Hours or days or centuries ago, he had promised that he and his Cords would not again be crippled by the effects of a Fall. Now from a small pouch at his waist he fumbled out a leaf of dried amanibhavam. Crumbling it in his hand, he held it under his nose; inhaled a little of the sharp powder.

The potent grass stung him like a flick of lightning. A seizure took him, and he thrashed violently on his mount’s back. But the spasm passed in an instant. When it ended, it left him restored and eager, galvanised for combat.

Guiding his stallion to Naharahn’s side, he thrust his hand at Pahni’s nose until she breathed in a taste of the amanibhavam. She, too, thrashed for a moment, then recovered visibly.

But Mahrtiir offered none of the leaf to Bhapa. The injured Cord lay unconscious along Whrany’s neck, and might have been unseated by the healing grass. Instead the Manethrall left Bhapa to his mount’s care and led Pahni after Linden toward the charging Demondim.

As soon as the last of the Waynhim and ur-viles had passed her, Linden called Hyn to a halt and looked out over the army of her attackers.