The Runes of the Earth

sixteen. If she had not been in such pain, she would have looked like a girl.

Abruptly Linden’s hands began to shake, and a blur of weariness filled her gaze. “I don’t know. Probably not.” If she did, she would spend her last hours in agony. “Unless amanibhavam is some kind of wonder drug.”

Sahah.

But there was nothing more she could do: not without power. “That’s enough,” she told the Cords helping her. “Now your salve.” The Ramen had said that it was too potent for human flesh. “Give her as much as you think she can tolerate.”

Somehow she struggled to her feet. If Liand had not put his arm around her, she might not have been able to stand. “Close the wound,” she added. “Keep her warm. And give her water, if she can swallow it.”

Falling blood pressure might kill the Cord before sepsis and trauma took her.

“Linden Avery,” said the Manethrall firmly. “You are in sooth a healer. Yet you feel distress. Do you fear that you have failed Sahah? That she will perish because your care does not suffice?”

Linden nodded dumbly.

“It may be so,” Hami admitted. “I think not, however. Ringthane-” She faltered momentarily. “How may this be said? You have strange lore. I cannot know its extent.”

Linden might have murmured something; but the Manethrall was not done.

“There is a shroud of evil upon the Land. Mayhap you know this. It is one reason among several that we do not return to our ancient homes.

“It hampers discernment.”

Again Linden nodded. “Kevin’s Dirt.”

“You have felt its bale,” Hami explained. “We do not. For you, sight and touch and scent are constrained. You cannot see what is plain to us.”

Unsteadily Linden reached out to Harm; gripped the Manethrall’s shoulders for support. Blinking to clear her sight, she tried to understand Hami’s kindness.

“See-?”

The Ramen were like the Haruchai? Still able to see?

“Indeed,” the Manethrall answered. “You do not perceive that the pall of Sahah’s death has been diminished by your care. Nor do you discern the surpassing balm of amanibhavam. You cannot see that her end is no longer certain.”

Fatigue and relief clogged Linden’s throat. She could hardly find enough breath to ask, “How-?”

“Ringthane?”

Linden had spent barely a day and a half in the Land; and already too many People had died for her. But Sahah might live?

She tried again. “How can you see?”

Now Hami understood her. “It is no great wonder. Among these mountains we stand above the ill which you name Kevin’s Dirt. It does not hinder us because it does not touch us.” that she

Linden’s legs folded under her, but she hardly noticed it; hardly recognised that she would have fallen if Liand had not upheld her. Relief had taken the last of her resolve. She might yet recover from the effects of Kevin’s Dirt.

Somewhere she found the strength to say, “Thank you,” for more gifts than she could name.

Then she let herself sleep.

This time she did not dream. Perhaps she had moved beyond the reach of dreams.

Hungers woke her, several of them, the need for food among others. Her arms ached as though she had spent the night longing to embrace her son. She craved the necessary sustenance of comprehension. And an inchoate anticipation ran in her veins. She opened her eyes with the suddenness of surprise, like a woman who had been told that the world around her had been made new.

She found herself lying on bracken under the shelter of a lean-to in the first grey promise of dawn. The air was cold enough to sting her skin; but blankets and warmth enclosed her. Someone-Liand, probably-had put her to bed.

When she raised her head to look around, everything that she saw and felt had been transformed.

The dimness of dawn shrouded details; and yet she knew beyond question that the season was spring. The air itself told her: it whispered of thawing snows and new growth; of readiness inspired to germination. The bracken assured her that it had dried and fallen long ago, and would sprout again; and dew wet the hardy grass in profusion, already restoring the soil’s life.

The Ramen were up before her, moving about the camp in preparation for food and departure. The wide sky did not yet shed enough light to let her study their faces; but she needed no illumination to discern their essential fortitude, or to feel the clarity of their devotion. She could see beyond question that they were a people who kept faith: as unwavering in their service as Haruchai, and as unwilling to compromise.

Yet they were more human than Stave’s kind. They lacked the surpassing strength of Haruchai; did not live as long. And their fidelity took another form. They were not men and women who aspired to measure themselves against the perils of the wide Earth. They nurtured no ambitions which might seduce them. Instead they strove only to remain who they were, generation after generation, without doubt or hesitation.

Gazing at them from her warm bed, Linden felt both humbled and exultant. Do Something they don’t expect. Somehow she had found her way to people who would give her every conceivable aid- as long as what she asked did not interfere with their deeper commitments. What those commitments might be, she could not guess, and did not try. At this moment, she was content to know that she could trust the Ramen.

While she slept, she had regained her health-sense. Now life and Earthpower throbbed palpably beneath the surface of all she beheld. Even in the crepuscular air, her surroundings and her companions were lambent with implications. The sensations of percipience sang in her nerves like joy.

Pushing back her blankets, she arose into the chill to see how Sahah fared; and as she did so the mountains seemed to spring up around her as if they had been called into being by the dawn.

Beyond the escarpment that sheltered the camp, peaks reached into the heavens on all sides. These were the lower and more modest crests which buttressed the Land, rather than the higher bastions, hoary with age and rime, deeper in the Southron Range. Few of them still held ice and snow, and those only in patches which seldom felt the sun. Nonetheless they reared around the camp like guardians, massive and vertiginous: the true titans of the Earth. The air drifting down their rugged sides tasted like an elixir, sharp and pristine. With their bluff granite and their enduring hearts, they formed a place of safety in their midst.

Splashing her boots with dew, she strode toward the campfire where she had left Sahah; and even the heavy aching of her muscles could not blunt her anticipation. Torn fibres and strained ligaments merely hurt. They did not dim the restoration of her senses.

At once, Liand called her name, waved, and hastened to join her. Seeing him, she knew instantly that he had been awake for some time, too eager and young to sleep long in the company of Ramen. And she recognised that he, too, had felt the renewed touch of health-sense. He revelled in discernment as if he were exalted; drunk on the new depth and significance of everything around him. Excitement seemed to crow and preen in every line of his form.

“Linden,” he called joyously, “is it not wondrous?” Clearly he felt too many wonders to name them all.

Smiling at his pleasure, she continued toward the campfire.

She was still ten paces away when she began to feel Sahah’s wracked distress.

Manethrall Hami and two of her Cords squatted beside the woman; and Linden saw at a glance that they had been there all night: their vigil haunted their eyes. Hami’s matter-of-fact manner the previous day had conveyed the impression that she did not greatly value the lives of her Cords; that other considerations outweighed individual life and death. Now, however, Linden discerned the truth. The Ramen lived precarious lives, threatened at all times by privation, predators, and self-sacrifice: they sustained afford to bewail the cost of their convictions. Nevertheless the bonds which sustained them were strong and enduring.