The Runes of the Earth

swirling eddies which veered closer and then were flung away by the forces of the fight.

Her fear for him snatched Linden out of her confusion. Banishing Covenant’s ring from her mind, she raised the Staff high; and from its end shone forth a beacon of flame as yellow as sunshine and as compelling as trumpets.

Holding the wooden shaft before her like a standard, she nudged Hyn into motion.

The mare tossed her head and nickered anxiously, but did not flinch or falter. At a slow canter, she bore Linden toward the battle.

Toward Anele.

Immediately Liand, Mahrtiir, and Pahni placed themselves protectively around her, bringing Hrama with them, while the ur-viles and Waynhim adjusted their formations to guard her back.

Ahead of her, the shape of the fighting shifted. Reacting to the outcome of their first attack, the Masters changed their tactics. Instead of hurtling into the fray, they fanned out on either side of the horde and leaped down from their mounts. There they slapped their horses away so that no more of the vulnerable beasts would be burned or eviscerated. Then they fought the onslaught along its edges rather than forging inward. By so doing, they gave themselves space in which to dodge and duck and strike back and dance away.

At once, they became more effective, altering the proportions of the conflict. More of the Haruchai were able to keep their feet and take advantage of their lightning reflexes: more of the monsters dropped.

Still the Demondim were too many. Too few were stricken down. And they had not yet made concerted use of the Illearth Stone. Effectively focused, that bane could sweep away every living being between the horde and Revelstone.

Then Linden saw in horror that the extravagant efforts of the Masters did not diminish the horde. Instead the trees and Cavewights and men and monsters which fell, apparently slain, seemed to melt out of existence, disappearing into the ground; and from the dirt emerged new shapes to replace them. Now creatures in the form of ur-viles stood among the combatants; monsters that resembled Giants; savage yellow beasts like kresh.

The Demondim arose from the graves of the fallen, Stave had said, and their touch was fire. They could resurrect themselves in every form which had ever been slain before the gates of Revelstone.

It was only a matter of time before all of the Haruchai were killed.

Abruptly Anele vanished from her perceptions. He had stood alone amid the clamour, a cynosure of red heat and fury surrounded by the fading and solidifying forms of the Demondim, the splashing of opalescent corrosion, the daunting concussions of the Stone. Then, without warning, she could no longer discern him. Blankness answered her questing health-sense. As far as she could tell, he was utterly gone, erased from the face of the plain.

Holding a shout of Staff-fire before her, Linden urged Hyn faster. With her companions braced about her, she carried her power into the battle.

The Masters parted from her path. They may have assumed that she meant to measure herself against the Illearth Stone. But she had no such intention. She was too weary and mortal to contend with the Stone’s virulence directly. Not while its source remained hidden from her; unapproachable; immune to assault. Her only thought was to find Anele.

Like the Haruchai, the Demondim withdrew to allow her passage. Or she may have driven them back with the Staff’s lucid flame. She no longer knew what she did. She knew only that she did not mean to turn aside.

Then from within the chaos Hynyn burst into her path, sides heaving, coat soaked and glossy with blood. And on his back sat Stave as if they had endured a furnace together. Acid had charred the Master’s tunic to tatters, scored galls across his ribs and down his arms. And it had eaten away the left side of his face. The bones of his cheek showed through the streaming wound, and his eye was lost in burns. Nonetheless he somehow contrived to support Anele’s limp form in front of him.

The old man still lived. His heart beat: air leaked in and out of his lungs. The Earthpower which had preserved him through so many other ordeals had sustained him again.

Linden might have shouted his name, but he would not have heard her. The heat which had carried him into the fray was gone, leaving him unconscious.

Frantic now, and stretched past her limits, she whirled the fire of the Staff around her, forcing more of the Demondim to pull back. As she did so, she yelled to her friends and Stave-to the Waynhim and ur-viles- to all of the embattled Haruchai- “Run! We’ve got to get out of here! ”

The clangour of blows and powers swallowed her cry; yet the Ranyhyn understood her instantly. As one, they turned, half sitting on their haunches in order to launch themselves back the way they had come. With Hynyn among them, they stretched for Revelstone at a pounding gallop.

But now Linden hardly noticed what they did. Between one heartbeat and the next, the battle had dropped away from her. All of her attention was fixed on Anele. She clung to him with her senses as if that might keep him alive.

The Waynhim and ur-viles had been behind her, guarding her back. Now in an instant the Ranyhyn rushed past them, leaving them exposed to the assault of their makers.

Linden did not see that the Masters must have heard her, or had made their own decision to withdraw. As she and her companions broke free of the horde, however, the Haruchai abruptly jumped back from their opponents and began to run. Some of them whistled for their mounts. And some of those calls were answered. But most of the warriors simply ran. A few followed after the Ranyhyn as if to shield their flight. A large majority, however, headed for the ur-viles and Waynhim.

In their own way, the Waynhim had served the Land as diligently as any of the Lords. And Linden had told the Masters through Stave that the ur-viles deserved protection.

Encircling the creatures, the Haruchai took up positions to fight a rearguard action back toward the entrance to Lord’s Keep.

But Linden was unaware of them. She had closed herself to all distractions; and so she did not see that the horde had slowed its pace, allowing its foes to retreat ahead of it. Apparently the Demondim did not desire to overwhelm their last descendants and the surviving warriors, but preferred rather to herd their opponents toward the illusory haven of Revelstone. They let the opportunity for carnage escape them.

While Hyn’s hooves beat the hard ground, Linden counted Anele’s heartbeats until she began to believe that they were not failing; that his peculiar strength had preserved him somehow. Then, gradually, she expanded her awareness to include Stave’s wounds and Hynyn’s laboured gait.

They would live because she did not mean to let them die. She had already lost too many people who had trusted her, and had come no nearer to rescuing her son. Nevertheless she was relieved to discern that they were in no immediate danger.

Hynyn had lost too much blood: the stallion was in acute pain. Yet his hurts were not as severe as Stave’s. The Master’s pulse had a ragged, thready beat, hampered by agony, and his burns fumed hotly, exacerbated by the lingering vitriol of the Demondim. An ordinary man would already have died-

But even Stave’s preternatural toughness might fail him if his injuries were not treated soon. His left eye was already lost, and his other wounds were worse. She was not certain that even the theurgy of the Staff would be enough to save him; and the convictions of the Masters would probably require them to spurn hurtloam.

Linden’s choices had become too expensive. The prices that other people paid in her name, because she had done what she did, seemed too high to be borne.

She was aware of nothing except the hurts of her companions as the Ranyhyn flashed from sunlight into the shadows of the tunnel under Revelstone’s watchtower. For a long moment, their hooves raised a tumult of trod stone and echoes, so that they seemed to gallop through the residue of the battle which they had left behind. Then they burst back into the sun’s warmth in the walled courtyard which separated the watchtower from the main bulk of the Keep, and there the Ranyhyn scrambled to a halt, stopping urgently on stiffened legs.

Before them were the massive inner gates of Revelstone.

The gates stood open as if in welcome. But no lamps or torches lit the hall beyond them, and the wide jaws