The Runes of the Earth

ascent of the ridge had stretched more than her physical limitations. “I’m the best friend you’ve ever had. The Ramen want to help you. Liand wants to help you. Even Stave,” God damn it, “doesn’t want to see you in pain.

“Come out of there and talk to me.”

While she lacked the courage to challenge his plight, she had no one to blame but herself for her frustration.

“Do you not feel it?” protested the old man. “Are you not commanded? Anele must not speak.”

Liand, Stave, and the Ramen gathered behind Linden, drawn by Anele’s strangeness and her intensity. She paid them no heed.

“No,” she countered, “I don’t feel it. The only power here is yours.” In her spent state, she might have surrendered to any coercive force. “Make sense. Why in God’s name would the stones command you not to speak?”

So suddenly that she fell back in surprise, Anele jerked his head up, flung himself around to face her. The rush of returning blood stained his cheeks crimson, stark as stigmata. His white eyes glistened with fury.

“The stones do not command it, fool! This is the true rock of the Earth, too honest to be impugned. It only remembers, and holds fast.”

Then he sagged. He may have felt Linden’s shock, although he could not see it. With every word, his anger seemed to fray and drop away, leaving him defenceless.

“Do you not understand?” His voice shook. “It holds.”

“Then who?” she returned quickly, trying to catch him while he could still answer. “Who commands you?”

What secrets had the stones told him?

Urgently she searched him for hints of the Despiser’s presence-and found none.

“He does not wish it.” Now each word cost Anele more effort, greater distress. Compulsion seemed to accumulate against him. “He commands. If Anele did not obey, he would whisper what this rock”- he flapped his arms, apparently indicating the cliffs as well as the ridge- “cries out. He would tell of the Appointed Durance, the skurj, the Elohim.

“He would name Kastenessen-”

There Anele’s resistance crumbled. Whimpering, he leaped to his feet and fled over the rocks as though he were being whipped away from utterance.

Linden hung her head. Oh, Anele. Was there no end to his sufferings? He could not tell her the things she needed to know without being tormented in some way. Only his inherited Earthpower kept him alive: a cruel gift which enabled or coerced him to survive more anguish than any mortal heart should have been able to bear.

He commands-

Not Lord Foul: not this time. Some other being or power-

She was being stalked. A potent enemy hunted her steps; someone who wanted her to fail-Someone other than the Despiser.

After a moment, Manethrall Hami told one of her Cords, “Go. See that no harm comes to him.” At once, the Cord hastened away.

Liand cleared his throat. “Linden? Do you comprehend him? What are skurj? Who is Kastenessen?”

Cursing mutely, Linden forced herself to stand. Anele had spoken a name that she recognised.

Stave must have recognised it as well-

Instead of answering Liand’s questions, she sighed, “Give me time. I need to think.”

Anele had referred to skurj several times now, and to a Durance. Under the Mithil’s Plunge, he had wailed those names against the water’s thunder. They meant nothing to her.

Kastenessen, on the other hand-

“There is darkness nigh,” Stave announced abruptly, “potent and fatal. We have been warned of such perils. Perhaps it lives among the Ramen, concealing itself from their discernment.”

Dumb with bafflement, Linden stared at the Master. Liand’s eyebrows rose. Quick indignation flashed from Manethrall Hami to her Cords.

Stave ignored the Ramen. “We cannot oppose a being who remains hidden from our senses,” he told Linden, “and who is yet able to command the old man’s madness.” Holding her gaze, he added, “Who but the Elohim wield such power?”

Still she stared at him. She understood him too well. The Elohim were certainly capable of masking their presence from any form of percipience.

And beyond question the Masters had been forewarned. Years ago, according to

Liand, an Elohim had visited Mithil Stonedown. That strange, Earthpowerful being had spoken of terrible banes, which he had not explained.

Beware the halfhand.

But Hami was not swayed. She held herself on the balls of her feet, poised for combat. “You conceive that we harbour darkness,” she said through her teeth. “You credit that of us.”

Despite her stiff pride, an undercurrent in her tone hinted to Linden that Stagy’ might be right.

With an effort, Linden shook off her confusion. “We have to know,” she sighed to the Master. “You can see Anele as well as I can.” Better. “Lord Foul isn’t the only power that uses him. There’s so much he could tell us. We need to know who commanded him not to talk.”

Whoever it had been, that being lacked the Despiser’s ability to take full possession of the old man. An Elohim could certainly have done so. But this he had not entirely succeeded at coercing Anele. In some sense, he was a weaker foe.

Damn it, Anele was using too many indefinite pronouns. Behind the Plunge, he had cried, He has broken the Durance. Was that the same he who had just tried to silence the old man? Apparently not.

How many, enemies did she have?

She needed to know what the stone had told Anele. Somehow she had to confront his insanity. She had to find the courage somewhere-

Stave paid no heed to the Manethrall’s anger. Briefly he appeared to consider Linden’s statement. Then he nodded in agreement.

“The answer lies with the Ramen. We must discover it among them.” He paused again before saying, “There is no other way for us. The Masters must know of this new threat.”

The scar on his cheek underlined his hard gaze as he turned away, leaving Linden to Liand and the Ramen.

At the same time, Hami also turned away, concealing her secrets.

Leaning on Liand for support, Linden followed them to begin the long descent from the ridge. Her frustration had become a swollen blackness within her, a thunderhead fraught with lightning. She did not know how to contain the storm.

If she did not discover some clear answer to her questions soon, the cistern of her soul would crack open.

At the foot of the arete, with her boots on the marge of the sheltered vale’s rich grass, she released Liand in order to raise her eyes from the long path and look around.

The mountains seemed to have grown while she stumbled downward. From the perspective of the ridge, they had not appeared so tall; and the grassland cupped among them might have stretched for leagues. Now, however, they reared ponderously into the heavens, stern visages of granite gazing down with the august hauteur of titans. And the lower terrain of the valley looked smaller, reduced in scale by its place among the high massifs. The far mountainsides seemed almost attainable.

In contrast, the grass was even more lush and prodigal than it had appeared from the ridge’ Over the millennia, time and weather had filled the vale with fertility. Grass the colour of distilled emeralds grew to the