The Runes of the Earth

And they were Haruchai, all of them: fell-handed warriors mounted on hardy mustangs and heavy destriers, dray horses and racers. They bore no weapons and no pennons; wore no armour; carried no shields; wielded no lore or instruments of power. Nevertheless they rode out from Revelstone to challenge the horde of the Demondim as if no foe could stand against them.

“We will not fail,” Stave replied to Linden. “While one of us remains alive, you will be warded.”

As soon as the full force of the riders had left the Keep, they quickened their pace, accelerating from an easy canter to a headlong charge. Apparently they meant to reach Linden and her company before the Demondim could overtake them.

“Revelstone?” Anele asked in bewilderment. “Is it Revelstone?” But Linden had no time to comfort him.

Briefly Stave cocked his head as if he were listening. Then he informed Linden, “The Ranyhyn have served us well. This day is the second since our departure from the Verge of Wandering.”

His people could communicate so, mind to mind.

But the assurance that she had regained her proper time gave her little relief. The horde would soon draw near enough to strike at her small company. And the Masters might prove as fatal in their own way as the Demondim.

Quickly she urged Stave, “Tell them about the ur-viles.” She did not doubt that his people would defend the Waynhim; but the Haruchai and the ur-viles had been foes for millennia. “I don’t care whether you approve of anything I’ve done. This isn’t about me. The ur-viles have earned your protection.”

Stave nodded his agreement.

Again Anele asked the air plaintively, “Revelstone?”

Linden could feel the Demondim massing at her back: Kevin’s Dirt had not yet dimmed her percipience. And when she turned to look at them, she saw that they were too close. The Masters would barely reach her before the horde did. If their charge did not immediately throw back the onslaught, she and her friends would find themselves in the midst of the battle.

When she had gathered her reserves, she called up a soothing current of strength from the Staff and sent it flowing toward the Waynhim and the ur-viles.

They were not creatures of Law. And her senses could not read them. Still she knew that she would not harm them. She trusted herself here. She had already healed the Staff’s guardian among the Waynhim.

They would die if they remained helpless, unable to fight or run.

The Waynhim stirred almost at once, rousing to lift their heads and sniff at the fraught air. Then the ur- viles did the same. Some of them slapped at their skin as if to beat off insects. Others flung themselves from side to side, or scrabbled at the dirt. Yet they grew stronger.

As soon as they began to regain their feet, Linden called back her power.

Behind her, the horde slowed its pace. New forces gathered and swirled among the monsters. Apparently the Demondim were preparing to meet the charge of the Masters.

“Come on,” she muttered to her companions. “Let’s go.” She had been in danger for too long. “We need some distance.”

With a touch of her hand, she asked Hyn to bear her away.

The Haruchai thundered closer. The hooves of their mounts raised banners of dust from the bare ground.

Twisting on Hrama’s back, Anele appeared to look straight at Linden, in spite of his blindness. “Anele is betrayed,” he announced bitterly. “You have given him to them.”

While she gazed at him in sorrow, he slipped suddenly to the ground, ducked past Rhohm, and dashed away-

“Anele!” she shouted: too late. She had already missed the instant when she might have deflected him.

– directly toward the massed forces of the Demondim.

As his bare feet touched the dirt, his entire aura changed. His baffled bitterness vanished, replaced by savage fire like a yowl of repudiation. Running toward the horde, he seemed to set the air aflame, igniting it with outrage. His feet left smoking burns on the ground, and his whole form glowed like iron in the forge, too hot to be touched or endured.

Any other mortal being would have been flash-burned to ash and cinders. Only his inherited Earthpower enabled him to withstand the abrupt magma which had taken possession of him.

Linden shouted his name. This had happened to the old man once before. In the communal centre of the Ramen encampment, he had become a conflagration in human form. Raging at her, he had nearly scorched the eyes from her skull.

That same spirit had claimed Anele again.

In a clattering rush, the first wave of the Masters swept around Linden and her company toward the Demondim; and Anele flung himself against the monsters as if he meant to challenge their vast evil with the lava of his own pain.

He had taken even Stave by surprise; yet Stave reacted before Linden could do more than flinch and cry out. At his silent command, Hynyn reared and turned, springing away to join the tumultuous charge of the Haruchai.

The Master may have intended to strike Anele down, as he had among the Ramen.

Leaping for their mounts, Mahrtiir and Pahni positioned themselves to defend Linden. The ur-viles and Waynhim rallied together; staggered chanting into loose formations on either side of her. Liand yelled at her, but she could not hear him through the din of hooves. Haruchai pounded past her, row after row of them. Then they seemed to disappear in their own dust.

Desperately she groped for power-and found none. She could not concentrate: the implications of Anele’s transformation seemed to beat about her head, confusing her attention. When she tried to wield both Covenant’s ring and the Staff of Law, neither answered her.

In the Verge of Wandering, Anele had been possessed by flame and fury when he had moved from the rich grass around the shelters onto the bare ground of the clearing. And here he had been similarly changed when he had dropped from Hrama’s back; when his feet had found the dirt-

Oh my God- Anele!

Linden felt more than heard the clash of flesh and bone and force as the Haruchai crashed into the front lines of the Demondim. Too many riders and too much dust blocked her view. Her senses had other dimensions, however. She could still witness the battle.

In spite of their numbers, each of the Masters seemed as distinct as stone: they slammed into the horde like a fall of boulders, heavy and irrefusable. But the monstrous creatures were rife with power. Nacre corrosion beat in their veins, poured from their hands. Any one of them singly had the might to shatter walls, tear down houses. And they had seen the Haruchai coming: they were ready.

As the riders struck, concerted emerald as vehement and fatal as the Despiser’s own ichor erupted in response, coruscating through the hues of gems and verdure to the blinding incandescence of sunfire.

In an instant, the conflict became chaos.

Without transition, the screaming of horses filled the air. Blood and shredded flesh articulated the dust. The first rows of the Masters went down like mown wheat, scythed from their mounts by the vicious strength of the Vile-spawn and the incarnate puissance of the Illearth Stone.

The slaughter among the horses was hideous, but in the initial assault few of the Masters were slain. Prodigiously swift and skilled, they dove from their falling mounts between gouts of ruin unleashed by the hands and limbs and beaks of the Demondim; ducked under staggering concussions of green force; attacked their foes and spun away. Yet each quick evasion and abrupt blow carried them farther into the horde, deeper among the massed creatures; closer to the centre of the Stone’s power. And the Demondim were too many, the Stone too potent.

Monsters fell around the Haruchai; but none of the leading warriors survived.

Yet among the tumult Anele remained palpable, vivid to Linden’s discernment: a figure compacted of scoria and rage. He strode some distance into the battle, then paused there as if he were contemplating carnage. But he struck at none of the creatures. None of them struck at him. Instead he appeared to gather them about him in