The Runes of the Earth

Liand led her onto a ledge in the cliff-face, wide enough to be traversed safely, but complicated with piled stones and small boulders, as well as with moisture and moss as slick as ice. She had to test her footing carefully as she moved, holding back her weight until she had confirmed that the sole of her boot would grip the next step. Constantly the water howled at her to fall, and fall, and fall again. She had entered the demesne of irrefusable forces. Reality seemed to deliquesce along her nerves, soaking into her clothes and running from her skin in rivulets, chilling her heart.

Ahead of her, Liand let the mustang pick its way over the rocks at its own pace. Somehow the sodden blanket and Liand’s grasp on the reins kept Somo’s alarm within bounds.

With her hand on Anele’s arm, Linden felt his fear. Preoccupied with her footing, she initially tasted only a featureless apprehension in him; nothing more. By degrees, however, the character of his distress seeped into her like the waterfall’s power.

One timorous step at a time, he had passed into a realm of threats altogether his own; a crisis beyond her grasp. When she noticed the change in him at last, it shocked her out of her own frights.

He may have been becoming sane. If her senses discerned him accurately in this tumult-

On an uncluttered and comparatively level section of the ledge, he halted suddenly, drawing her to a stop beside him. His teeth gnashed the laden air as if he sought to tear use bitten chunks of meaning. He may have been crying her name, calling out for help or attention in a voice too mortal to be heard.

Linden flung her arms about him, holding him still; restraining herself from the howl of the water. She could hardly identify his features. Pressing her forehead against the side of his skull, trying to reach him bone to bone, she shouted, “Anele! Are you all right? I can’t hear you!”

His voice reached her like a distant vibration in her brain. “Skurj!” he shrieked. “Skurj and Elohim. He has broken the Durance. Skurj mar the very air. Oh, the Earth!

“Its bones-” Freeing one arm from Linden’s embrace, he pressed his palm to the cliff-side as if he meant to thrust himself away from it; out into the water and death. “Its bones cry out! Even here, they wail!”

“Anele!” she yelled again. She had nothing to offer him except his name. “Anele!” He had gone beyond her comprehension. Every clench and tremor of his emaciated frame told her that he was sane at last.

For him, sanity held more horror than any madness.

“My fault!” he cried as if he were being shattered. “Mine! The Elohim did naught to preserve the Durance. They are tainted. Arrogant. I lost the Staff! The treasure and bulwark of Law. My birthright. I lost it!”

Sane? Linden gripped him with all her strength. Chills shook her. This was sanity? According to Stave, the Staff of Law had been lost more than three thousand years ago.

“Anele! What’s wrong? What’s happening to you?”

Liand could not have heard them. He continued to lead Somo cautiously toward daylight and the westward foothills, abandoning Linden and Anele to the exigency between them.

Abruptly Anele released the stone of the cliff and wrenched himself around in her grasp. When they were face-to-face, he pressed his forehead against hers. Earthpower latent in his veins throbbed for conflagration. Furiously he drove his anguish into her mouth; down her throat.

“Are you blind?” he howled; and the greater howl of the Plunge swept his words instantly away. “Do you see nothing? I held it in my hands! It was given into my care. Trusted to me! For years, I studied the Earth, striving for courage. And I lost it!”

She could not understand him; could hardly think: spray and thunder smothered her mind. Shivers ran through her bones. Lost? The Staff of Law? Millennia ago? Sweet Christ! What manner of sanity had overtaken him? His deprived flesh had suffered the erosion of too much time, but nothing on that order of magnitude. Even her diminished perceptions could not have misread him to such an extent.

Water streamed down their faces, ran from their chins. His revulsion toward own failings had become a whirlwind of rage and grief. With the Staff!

“I could have preserved the Durance!” he cried. “Stopped the skurj. With the Staff! If I had been worthy. But I did not! Instead I betrayed my trust! My word. My birthright.” He might have been weeping. “All the Earth.”

“Anele!” Desperation surged in Linden. She had to get him out of this place. “Anele, come on!” She could not think. If the storm within him mounted any higher, he might hurl himself from the ledge, and her with him.

But his passion demanded release. Forcing his forehead against hers, he begged her fervently, “Oh, break me! Slay me! Tear away this pain and let me die! Did you sojourn under the Sunbane with Sunder and Hollian, and learn nothing of ruin?”

Did you sojourn-?

Had he recognised her at last?

In a tumult of confusion and thunder, she jerked her head away. “Damn it, Anele! Of course I understand ruin. It doesn’t give you the right to do this to yourself! For God’s sake, don’t make me drag you out of here!”

Perhaps in sunlight under an open sky he would become comprehensible to her.

For an instant, a flare of Earthpower burned in his white eyes, set light to the water beading in his beard. When it passed, it appeared to leave him chastened; covered in gloom. He nodded as if she had doomed him.

Suddenly frantic to escape the Plunge, Linden took his arm once more and urged him forward, after Liand and the pinto.

A moment later, Liand’s form restricted the passage. He had come back for them. “Why do you tarry?” he called anxiously. “What is amiss?”

She did not try to answer him. Instead she waved her arm to send him back the way he had come. As he complied, she continued to scramble grimly over the treacherous stones.

With all the will that she could muster, she concentrated on her footing. Anele’s sanity confounded her. She yearned for the safety of the sun and understanding.

Tear away this pain and let me die!

Elohim she knew; but what in hell were skurj?

Her boot skidded off a patch of wet moss. She caught herself on Anele’s arm. She was supposed to protect him. She knew him better when he was mad.

Liand receded ahead of her, drawing her on. He did not appear to fear falling. Perhaps on some atavistic level his people retained their ancient relationship with stone.

Oh, the Earth! Its bones cry out!

When at last she and Anele emerged into the bright solace of day, everything between them had changed.

“Linden Avery” Liand demanded her attention. “Why did you tarry? Are you harmed?”

The day’s spring warmth shone through the spray. She kept her grip on Anele. Blinking against the sun’s dazzle, she peered at him with all of her senses.

He had been sane: her nerves were certain of it. Now, however, a roil of confusion distorted his emanations. His mind had relapsed to madness.

And his Plight was changing. The character of his derangement shifted-and shifted again. Before her eyes, he modulated between the various phases of his insanity; and the landscape of his face appeared to shimmer and blur, smeared out of clarity by the heat of his rapid alternations. She could read nothing in him surely except that he was no longer the man who had cried out to her behind the Mithil’s Plunge.

He said nothing. For the moment, at least, even language was lost to him.

Finally Linden allowed herself to turn toward the Stonedownor. “I’m sorry, Liand.” She wiped tears of brightness from her eyes. “Something happened to Anele in there.” She had to shout to make herself heard. “He changed. All of a sudden, he seemed sane,” although everything he had said sounded crazy. “But it’s gone now. I don’t know what came over him.”

“But you are not harmed?” Liand persisted.