The Runes of the Earth

become their prey. Therefore I made haste to place myself ahead of the pack. At the Methyl’s Plunge, I left my mount so that it might not fall to the kresh, and continued on foot.”

Stave looked into Linden’s face as if she rather than Liand had questioned him. “Linden Avery, are you answered?”

He might have asked, Will you trust me now?

Because he distrusted her, she replied, “I thought Lord Foul sent that storm. I Wanted to draw it off.”

In his arms, she was entirely vulnerable to him. No doubt he could have broken her neck with one hand. Nevertheless she had enough faith in him to add, “And no, I don’t trust you. What you Masters are doing appalls me. The Haruchai I knew weren’t that arrogant.”

She could not bring herself to tell him about Jeremiah.

By rough increments, the rift narrowed, its walls leaning toward each other as though they yearned to seal away the ancient pain of the stones. As the gloom grew deeper, it brought with it a cold that seemed to congeal against Linden’s skin. Above her on the slope, Anele had begun to falter. Apparently he had exhausted his desperation. In spite of Somo’s difficulties with the ascent, Stave and even Liand diminished the old man’s lead.

“The Haruchai whom you knew,” Stave told Linden stiffly, “had not yet experienced the meaning of Brinn’s victory over ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol. We had seen the Staff of Law lost and regained. We had seen it un-made and then made anew. When it was lost yet again, we could not continue as we were.

“Brinn has proven himself equal to the guardianship of the One Tree. Will you tell us that we may not prove equal to other guardianships as well?”

“Of course not,” Linden murmured through the soft whisper of Stave’s breathing and the harder rhythm of Liand’s. “But I’ve seen your people die. It’s your definition of guardianship that frightens me. You’re asking too much of yourselves.”

He responded with a slight shrug. “What would you have us do?”

Still grieving for the trees, she turned her gaze downward, and her heart lurched as she saw a moiling line seethe past the rim of the rise. A darkness heavier than shade poured up the scree like a viscid spill flowing in reverse, running backward in time into the storehouse of the mountains’ memories. If she had not lost most of her health-sense, she might have felt ferocity and fangs pelting over the rocks after her scent.

In moments, the upward-cresting tide of kresh had filled the cleft from wall to wall. And still it crashed higher, and gathered to crest again: God, hundreds of them, more wolves than she could have imagined in one pack.

“Hurry,” she panted to Stave as if that were her only reply. Alarm clogged her throat. “They’re coming.”

One Master and an untried Stonedownor would never hold back that tide.

Liand flung a look over his shoulder, cursed under his breath, and began to haul on Somo’s reins, trying to hasten the pinto with his own strength.

But Stave did not quicken his pace, or glance behind him. “They will outrun us,” he said stolidly. “That cannot be altered. Over these rocks the mount travels poorly” He had told Liand to abandon the supplies-and Somo. “Haste will only exhaust your companions to no purpose.”

Then how-? she wanted to ask; demand. How do you expect us to survive? An instant later, however, she realised that Stave had no such expectation. Her flight into the rift had created this plight. He had merely pursued her so that he could fight on her behalf.

While she could, she rested in his arms and tried to focus her remaining percipience inward, searching for the link or passage which might connect her to the limitless power of Covenant’s ring.

The howling of the pack echoed up the rift; and the sound seemed to sharpen the chill on Linden’s skin. In it she heard more than ordinary animal ferocity. As they raced upwards, the kresh gave tongue to a more personal and fervid hunger; a desire not merely for food and blood, but for destruction. Redoubled by the cliffs, their howls suggested Lord Foul’s eager malice.

The Despiser had guided her to hurtloam. He had taunted her with Jeremiah’s suffering, the Land’s pain. And now he sent wolves to feast on her flesh?

No. She did not believe it. Lord Foul did not desire her death. Not yet.

He had sent the wolves to prevent her.

Prevent her from what? She could not imagine. Nevertheless she was abruptly certain that the true threat of the kresh surpassed mere fangs and rending.

When Lord Foul had aided her earlier, he may have expected her to flee in the opposite direction, toward the Land she knew. And he had not touched Anele again, however briefly, until after she and her companions had passed the Mithil’s Plunge.

If she gained the mountains, she might thereby foil some aspect of the Despiser’s machinations.

Even here, her foe had something to fear from her.

Ahead of her, Anele had stopped climbing. He had mounted no more than halfway up the cleft. A harsh ascent remained between him and the possibilities of the mountains. Yet he knelt among the rocks as if he had come to the end of his stamina-or his heart.

Peering through the shadows in alarm, Linden saw that he had halted at the lower edge of a rising plane of unbroken stone. There the fall of rubble had exposed a stretch of native granite which reached from cliff to cliff and perhaps a dozen strides upward.

The rough surface offered a few moments of easier flight. Yet the old man had faltered below it-

“Anele!” she called up to him. “Keep going! We have to keep going!”

With a twist of his shoulders, he looked back at her in Stave’s embrace; at Liand and Somo, and the rising wave of wolves. A faint cry reached her among the howls and echoes as he floundered to his feet and staggered onto the exposed gutrock.

He managed three steps, or four. Then he fell on his face and lay still.

“Hurry!” Linden panted to Stave. “God, Anele.”

This time the Haruchai heeded her. Springing into a run, he sped forward.

Behind them, Liand laboured over the rocks as swiftly as his mount could climb. Scant heartbeats later, Stave reached the plane of stone; strode to Anele’s prone form There he set her on her feet.

At Once, she dropped to her knees and found the old man gasping as if in terror. What’s wrong?”

Her health-sense had declined too far: she could not discern the source of his distress. She only knew that he had not exhausted his strange strength. But when she touched his arm, she realised that he was indeed terrified; that he was wracked, nearly undone by remorse and sanity.

Behind the Plunge, he had radiated similar emanations. Yet the character of his aura here had substantial differences. There he had writhed in self-recrimination, scourged by the consequences of his supposed crimes. I lost the Staff! He had blamed himself for impossible faults; mistakes which he could not have made. Here his dismay was more intimate. His fears seemed to come from the foundation of his being, the bedrock upon which his commitments and beliefs had once stood.

Although he did not move, he seemed to rise to meet her as if her touch had evoked him in some way; called him up from an abyss to speak to her.

“How was it possible?” he panted as if he were answering her. “I was not blind. Not deaf.” Echoes of hunger chased his words away. “I felt the wrongness of it. A thing which severed Law from Law. Yet I-

“Why am I not slain? I do not merit life. How is it that I am permitted to continue, when I have imperilled all the Land?”

Abruptly Somo’s hooves clattered on the plain stone. Tugged forward by Liand, the pinto came to Stave’s side and halted, blowing froth and trepidation from its nostrils. Its eyes rolled wildly. If Liand had not gripped the mustang’s reins, held them hard, Somo might have wheeled and fled into the jaws of the wolves.

“Anele.” Urgently Linden grasped the old man’s shoulders, rolled him over so that he lay on his back. If he had truly become sane at last- “Go on. Keep talking. I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.”

Distant howls beat about her head, resounding from the cliffs to harry her. The wolves had already swarmed halfway to her position. Any hope, however irrational, that she and her companions might outrace the