The Runes of the Earth

At her side, Liand stopped and stared in dismay. But Stave gazed at the Demondim like a man who had long ago forgotten how to be afraid.

Seen by daylight on the wide plain instead of by moonlight rising among the hills, the horde seemed less vast; no longer as measureless as night and slaughter. Nevertheless the sun did not diminish the creatures. Rather its glare seemed to accentuate their stature and potency.

Linden could not discern them precisely. They wavered in and out of definition as if they passed in front of a rippled glass. At one moment, they appeared as tangible as – flesh and pain: at the next, they were translucent, nearly invisible. Whenever she tried to focus on a specific creature, it blurred away and then emerged several paces closer to her. And as the Demondim advanced, their forms steamed and frothed like acid.

Paled by sunlight, the flaring of power from their hands was barely visible to ordinary sight; but it howled at Linden’s percipience. And it left behind stains of midnight which persisted in the air as if the inherent vitriol of the Demondim had burned holes in the substance of reality. Until the onrushing caesure swallowed those stains, they looked vicious enough to tear down trees and blast boulders.

Still the individual powers of the monstrous creatures were evanescent compared to the raving evil of the Illearth Stone. Among them the Demondim bore an outpouring of emerald so avid and malefic that it seemed to daunt the sun. From the vantage of higher ground and Hyn’s back, Linden could see now that the dire green did not arise from any one place or creature among the horde. The Demondim carried no discrete fragment of the original Stone. Rather they appeared to bring its essence with them as if they could draw on it from some distant source.

“What will you do, Chosen?” demanded Stave. “Is it your purpose to give combat? That is madness. We must flee.”

The sound of his voice distracted her from the horde; and as soon as she understood what he had said, she remembered that he was right. She could not afford to unleash her power until she knew where she was, and when.

The Demondim rushed savagely toward her, with the caesure looming behind them. She had only moments left-

“I have to stop this,” she panted. “It’s too big-” She had made it too big. “For God’s sake, tell me where we are!”

Had they reached the time in which they belonged?

“Linden,” Liand breathed in sudden astonishment. “Heaven and Earth, Linden!”

She did not so much as glance at him. Gripping the Staff, she waited for Stave’s answer.

“I am not yet certain,” he replied flatly. “The season is condign. And Kevin’s Dirt impends above us. It appears that our proper time is nigh.”

Kevin’s Dirt, she thought. Oh, shit! She had not noticed it overhead because she could not force her gaze away from the Demondim. But she believed the Master. Soon her health-sense would begin to fray and fail.

She had to act now, before the horde advanced farther; before the truncation of her senses began to hamper her.

Could she risk wielding the Staff of Law?

She did not know. Yet the Staff itself might protect her from an irreparable mistake. And she had no time left for doubt. The Demondim were almost upon her. Behind them, the caesure which she had created surged forward. It was her responsibility.

Good cannot be accomplished by evil means,

“Linden!” Liand called again, insisting on her attention. “Have you beheld-?”

She did not give him a chance to finish. Slipping abruptly from Hyn’s back, she took three stiff strides toward the leading edge of the horde, then halted to plant one heel of the Staff in the hard dirt.

The Stonedownor shouted after her: a cry rife with alarm. She ignored him. Stave and Mahrtiir sprang from their mounts, poised themselves for battle. She ignored them as well.

From the vibrant wood of the Staff, she brought forth a burst of incandescence as bright as sunlight and as defiant as an oriflamme. While it blazed, she yelled at the Demondim, “Stop right there! This is as far as you go!”

Her unexpected challenge threw the creatures into confusion. She did not know whether they could understand her, and did not care. They were lore-wise enough to recognise the Staff of Law. And they had already felt the presence of Covenant’s ring. At once, the first Demondim scrambled to a halt, blocking the way for the dire shapes behind them. Nacre power spat and frothed, pale as air and ruinous as magma, shedding blackness like glimpses into the heart of the Lost Deep. Indistinct forms steamed darkly, while among them rapt emerald seethed for release.

They could not know that she was bluffing-

Or perhaps they could. They might perceive that she was too human and frail to control both of her powers simultaneously. They needed only a few heartbeats to resolve their uncertainty and resume their ravening onrush.

Nevertheless they had given Linden enough time. As the horde paused, she leaped past it in her mind to confront the Fall.

She had caused this rent in the fabric of sequence and causality herself. And she had been swept up in its chaos only a short while ago. She knew it intimately.

With percipience to guide her, she raised the Staff, directed it over the heads of the Demondim, and unleashed its warm puissance into the swarming core of the caesure.

From the iron-shod end of the wood, flame the rich yellow hue of sunflowers and ripe corn lashed out, a streaming ceaseless flail of fire. The Fall was huge: she had made it so. And it had fed on millennia of severed instants. But the Staff of Law could draw on the fathomless reservoir of Earthpower which defined the Land. Indeed, its possibilities were limited only by the capacities of its wielder. And Linden had already proved herself equal to the Sunbane. The evil before her now was enormous and consuming. Yet it was a small thing in comparison.

Challenged by the direct vitality of the Staff, the Fall failed rapidly. For an instant, it mounted upward, screaming into the heavens. Then it collapsed in on itself with a noise like a thunderclap, sucking down its own viciousness until it winked away like a snuffed candle.

More swiftly than Linden would have believed possible, the caesure was gone, leaving her with warm wood quiescent in her hands. Stave and Mahrtiir stood ready at her sides; and all around her was the sweet scent of meadows in sunlight, swales of grass and wildflowers adorned with dew, and trees budding into leaf.

No longer aware of herself, Linden sank to her knees. Exerting the Staff, she had expended her own substance. Her determination was gone, and the very ground beneath her no longer felt necessary or immediate.

Apparently howling, although they made no sound, the Demondim flung themselves toward her. In the distance, Liand shouted her name as if he had never stopped calling for her.

Then suddenly Stave took hold of her. Lifting her into the air, he threw her onto Hyn’s back. At the same time, Mahrtiir sprang astride his mount; and immediately their two Ranyhyn surged into a gallop, fleeing the horde. Behind them, Stave followed on Hynyn.

Uncertain of her balance, and clinging fervently to the Staff of Law, Linden returned to herself.

There Liand and Pahni joined her. Pounding the hard ground close together, the five horses stretched their strength to outdistance the Demondim.

At first, Linden barely noticed them. For a while, she hardly knew where she was. She felt harried by exigencies which she no longer recognised or understood. By degrees, however, their urgency reclaimed her. Still reeling internally, she glanced around to check on her companions.

Both Stave and Liand were unhurt: they had not encountered the Demondim. But Mahrtiir’s legs had been burned, his hands held bleeding sores, and one cheek wore a swath of blisters. The opalescent blasts of the creatures had nearly slain him. Perhaps he had attempted to garrote one of them. Its acid would have eaten away his fighting cord; chewed into his hands.

Pahni’s pain was obvious; but for a moment Linden could not determine where the Cord had been injured. Then she noticed that Pahni rode leaning to one side, protecting the blood which had soaked her tunic along her