The Runes of the Earth

A Raver had told her, You are being forged as iron is forged to achieve the ruin of the Earth. You have been chosen, Linden Avery, because you can see. But Lord Foul had misjudged her. Because she could see, she had learned to loathe and oppose him. In the end, her health-sense had made her effective against the Sunbane.

She had lived without it for ten years now, but she treasured it still. For a while, the loss of it rent her heart.

However, she had no time for grief. The hole in her shirt and the scar on her chest changed nothing. She needed answers; understanding. And she hungered for companionship. Therefore she needed Anele.

She repeated his name more strongly. “Can you hear me? Are you all right?”

He jerked as though she had slapped him. “You!” For a moment he rubbed at his eyes as if he wanted to force his blindness aside. Then he rolled over and lurched upright. “You are here.” Coughing at the dust in his throat, he leaned against the boulder behind which he had lain, braced his feet on a canted shelf of stone. “I did not delude myself. You have saved me.”

Before she could respond, he fumbled toward her. Instinctively she reached out to help him. One of his hands found her arm, gripped it hard. With the other, he reached up to explore her face as if he thought that he might recognise her by touch.

In spite of herself, Linden flinched. But the old man held her.

“The Law of Death was broken,” he murmured, apparently speaking to himself while his fingertips traced her expression, “long ago.” He held his head cocked to one side, considering her eyelessly. “The Law of Life was sundered in Andelain. Such things are possible.”

She stared at him, baffled at first by the change in his manner. The angle of his head suggested a derangement of some kind. Yet his madness had apparently passed with the smog. He sounded sane now, in possession of himself.

Capable of answers.

“I’m Linden,” she told him at once. “Linden Avery. I just got here. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of me. I don’t know what’s going on. But I-”

Abruptly he dropped his hand. With one trembling finger, he pointed at Covenant’s ring hanging outside her shirt.

“And you have power. That is well. You will have need of it.”

His words disturbed her as if they had been pronounced by an oracle. He had become strangely knowledgeable since the collapse of the Watch. She did not know how to approach him.

“I was worried,” she responded awkwardly as she slipped the ring back under her shirt. “You disappeared while we were falling. I was afraid you were dead.”

He cocked his head farther. “I feared you. You might have been-” He shuddered; and with his free hand he rubbed the top of his head roughly. “The folk of this region are kindly toward me. Kevin’s Dirt blinds them, and they cannot see me. Upon occasion they grant me food and shelter. But they are not blinded. If any Master came upon me, I would be taken and doomed. Therefore I did not seek you out.”

Cautious with him, Linden did not ask him to explain who they were. That question could wait. First she needed to know more about his mental state; his apparent recovery. Gently she inquired, “‘Kevin’s Dirt’? What’s that?”

In spite of her care, he winced. Suddenly impatient, he demanded, “You have beheld it, have you not? From the Watch? An evil which concealed all the Land? That is Kevin’s Dirt.”

“Yes, of course,” she replied, confused. “A dirty yellow cloud, like smog. But it’s gone now.”

Anele snorted. “It is not. You are merely blind.”

Floundering, she said, “I don’t understand.”

With a jerk, he cocked his head over to the other side. “Do you behold me now? Do you discern what I am?”

“Of course-” she began, then stopped herself. “Not the way I did,” she admitted. There the distortion of his mind, and the Earthpower in his veins, had been plain to her. Now she could not detect them.

“You are blind,” he repeated scornfully. “Kevin’s Dirt blinds you. On the Watch you stood above it. It could not affect you. Now-” He smacked his lips as if in disdain or regret. “You are unaware of it because it blinds you. You do not see me. Only the Masters-”

Abruptly he tightened his grip on her forearm. Without transition, his manner became fearful. “Do they come?” he whispered. “I have no sight, and their stealth exceeds my hearing.”

Although he could not watch her, Linden made a show of looking around the hillsides, studying the slope of rubble. “I don’t see anyone. We’re alone, at least for now.”

Anele clutched at her with both hands. “They will come.” His voice shook. “You must protect me.”

That was the opening she needed. Taking him by the shoulders, she held him firmly. “I will. I’ve already promised that. And I’ve kept you alive so far. No one will hurt you, or trap you, while I can do anything about it.”

Slowly his features relaxed. “From the breaking of the Watch,” he responded softly, “yes. With power. Such things are possible.” He released a low sigh. “I have failed my power. It was given into my hands, but I have betrayed that trust.”

His Earthpower? Linden wondered obliquely. Had “Kevin’s Dirt” deprived him of his nature, as it had blinded her health-sense? Or did he refer to something else?

But she did not pursue such questions. Instead she broached her own needs. “That’s right,” she began. “I saved you. Now you can help me.

“Anele, I’m a stranger. I was here once before, but that was a very long time ago. Now everything has changed.” She appealed to him as she had so often appealed to her patients, asking them for hints to guide their treatment. “You have to understand that I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know anything about Kevin’s Dirt, or Masters, or that sick aura-”

“The caesure,” he offered helpfully. If his eyes had been whole, they might have been as bright as a bird’s.

Linden nodded. “All right, that caesure. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what it does,” except cause harm and dread. “I can’t even imagine what Lord Foul is trying to accomplish-”

At the Despiser’s name, Anele winced again. Shrugging her hands away, he crouched against the stone. His head turned fearfully from side to side: he might have been trying to locate a threat.

“The Grey Slayer,” he breathed. “Maker of Desecration. He seeks to destroy me. He sends his caesures to achieve ruin. Kevin’s Dirt blinds the Land. The Masters name him their foe, yet they serve him and know it not.”

“Anele.” Linden stooped to his side, sure now that he was still mad. “I said I would protect you,” She did not believe for a moment that the Despiser’s caesures were aimed at him. “You know how powerful I am.”

Carefully she touched him again, stroked his shoulder, hoping to convince his nerves, if not his faulty mind, that he was safe with her.

“But Lord Foul has taken my son. My son, Anele.” This old man had once been someone’s son, cherished as she cherished Jeremiah. If he could remember- “I have to get him back.”

For Jeremiah’s sake, she risked saying, “That means I have to find the Despiser.”

Anele did not respond. She could not be sure that he had understood her. Nevertheless some of the tension in his shoulder eased.

“I don’t know how to do that.” She took a deep breath and held it for a moment to steady herself. “I have a white gold ring. I have power. But I can’t help my son if I don’t know where Lord Foul is. I can’t even imagine where to look.

“Anele, I need answers. I need you to answer my questions.”

Still the old man did not speak. However, he appeared to be considering her words. She fell silent herself, trusting her hand on his shoulder to communicate what she could not.

After a while, he shifted so that he could sit with his back to the stone. His scrawny legs sprawled pitifully in front of him. His feet were twisted and scarred, gnarled with old injuries and calluses. He must have lived without the benefit of sandals for many long years.