The Runes of the Earth

Without her health-sense, Linden felt profoundly truncated, almost crippled. But she needed to understand him. As gently as she could, she pursued him.

“Here?” she prompted, her voice soft. “On the floor?”

“On stone,” he acknowledged. “You do not protect Anele. He has no friend but stone.”

In another phase of his madness, he had claimed that the rocks around him spoke.

“Anele-” Muttering to herself at the pain in her muscles, Linden squatted to sit beside him. Deliberately she set her shoulder against his, hoping to reassure him. “I said I Would protect you. I meant it. I just haven’t figured out how yet.”

Then she asked, “What does stone do for you? Why do you need it?”

How could walls and floors guard him from dreaming?

The old man struggled for an answer. “Anele tries-He strives-So hard. It pains him. Yet he tries and tries.”

She waited.

After a long moment, he finished, “Always. Trapped and lost. Anele tries. He must remember.”

Remember what? she wanted to ask. What kind of knowledge did his fractured mind conceal from him? Why had he chosen madness?

But if he could have answered that question, he would not have been in such straits. Seeking a way to slip past his barricades, she asked instead, “Do you remember me?”

He flashed her a blind glance, then turned his head away. “Anele found you. High up. The Watch. It pursued him. He fled. You were there.”

So much he retained, if no more.

“Do you remember what happened to us?” Linden kept her tone calm, almost incurious. She wanted him to believe that he was safe with her. “Do you remember what happened to the Watch?”

In spite of her caution, however, she had disturbed him. He seemed to shrink into himself. “It came. Anele fell. Fire and darkness. White. Terrible.”

Perhaps she had not phrased her question simply enough. Gently, softly, she tried again.

“Anele, are you still alive?”

If he could have caused the wall to swallow him, he might have done so. “It came,” he repeated. “They came. Worse than death.”

Linden sighed to herself. Her brief percipience on Kevin’s Watch had given her the impression that he was fundamentally responsible for his own condition. He had chosen insanity as a form of self-defence. Having chosen it, however, he could not simply set it aside. He would have to find his own way through it, for good or ill.

The same necessity ruled her, as it ruled Jeremiah.

Hoping to comfort him, she reached out to squeeze the old man’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it.” Covenant had said the same to her. “It’s easier to remember when you don’t try too hard.

“Once I figure out what to do, we’ll get out of here. In the meantime, I’m sure the Masters will bring us more food and water. And I need someone to talk to”- a new idea occurred to her in mid-sentence- “preferably someone who isn’t one of them.

She wanted to talk to a Stonedownor. If the Haruchai would allow her.

Deliberately she climbed to her feet. Limping to the outer doorway, she pushed the leather curtain aside and leaned her head into the sunlight.

The door opened on a narrow passage of packed dirt between flat-roofed stone dwellings. A mid-morning sky arched overhead, deep blue and apparently untrammelled in spite of Kevin’s Dirt. A few birds called to each other in the distance, but she heard nothing else; saw no one. The whole village might have been deserted.

She wanted to bask in the sun’s warmth for a moment, let its touch sink into her hurts; but almost immediately one of the Haruchai appeared around the corner of her gaol.

She recognised the unscarred Master who had helped Stave capture Anele and her.

“Linden Avery.” He bowed as Stave had done, with both fists extended from the level of his heart. “I am Bornin. You are welcome among us. What is your desire?”

She nodded a bow. His characteristic stolidity brought back her sense of betrayal and outrage. However, she kept her reaction to herself. “Thank you, Bornin,” she replied evenly. “There are a couple of things you could do for me, if you don’t mind.”

Expressionlessly he waited for her to continue.

“We could use more water and something to eat,” she explained. “And I want to talk to one of the Stonedownors. Is there anyone around who can spare me a little time?”

If she could not seek out comprehension, she would make it come to her.

Bornin appeared momentarily uncertain. “What will a Stonedownor reveal to you that we cannot?”

“I’m not sure,” she answered noncommittally. “I might ask what it’s like to live without Earthpower. Or I might just want some company. Anele isn’t much of a conversationalist.”

The Haruchai seemed to consult the open air. Then he nodded. “Very well, Linden Avery. Do you wish to accompany me, or will you await my return?”

Thinking of Anele, she swallowed her desire for freedom and sunshine, and let the curtain drop between herself and Bornin.

The old man lifted his head briefly, then returned to his fractured thoughts.

“Anele,” she said on an impulse, “you’ve scrambled to survive for a long time. Decades. Does anyone ever help you? Do you have any friends?”

How was it possible for a demented old man to keep himself alive? Hunger and injuries, if not sheer loneliness, should have killed him long ago.

Again he raised his white eyes. For a moment, he appeared to consider her question seriously. “Anele is lost,” he said almost calmly. “Always alone. And always harried. They seek him.

“But-” Concentration and gloom filled his sightless gaze. “Folk are kind. When they are far away. Even here-Anele is fed. Given raiment. When they are far away.

“And-”

His voice trailed off as if he had lost the thread of a memory.

“And?” Linden prompted.

Come on, Anele. Give me something. I can’t do it all alone.

“And-” he began again. He seemed to cower against a wall deep inside himself. “Creatures. Dark. Fearsome. Lost things, long dead. Anele fears them. He fears-

“They feed him. Force blackness into him. Make him strong. Heal him, whispering madness.

“Madness.”

Without warning, he shouted in protest, “Creatures make Anele remember!”

Then he collapsed to his side, clutching his knees to his chest, hiding his face.

“Anele!” At once, Linden dropped to the floor beside him, tugged him into the cradle of her arms. “Oh, Anele, I’m so sorry. I know you suffer. I didn’t mean to remind you. I just-”

She had no way of knowing what might cause him pain. Helpless to do otherwise, she held him and rocked him until his tension eased and he grew still.

At the same time, she tried to comfort herself. She had been in worse straits than this. The Clave had imprisoned her for days: a Raver had demeaned her utterly. In Kiril Threndor, moksha Jehannum had tortured her while Covenant confronted the Despiser. Oh, she had been in worse straits. Much worse.

But Jeremiah had not. Even when he had held his right hand in the bonfire: even then. That agony had been relatively brief; and he had found a way to escape from it. It could not be compared to the torments Lord Foul might devise for him. His dissociation would not defend him from the malice of a being who could possess him-

While you are apart from him, you cannot know his sufferings.

And he could hope for nothing from her. She did not know where to look for him-and might not have been able to reach him if she had known.

Anele’s state frustrated and pained her; but it also protected her. If she had not felt compelled to care for