The Runes of the Earth

curried ceaselessly for generations, one a roan stallion, the other a dappled grey mare; and their long manes and tails flew like pennons.

In the centre of their foreheads, white stars blazed like heraldry, emblems of lineage and Earthpower.

As one, the Ramen bowed low to them: an action as natural and necessary as breathing to the horse- tenders of Ra. Liand gaped openly, transfixed, unable to look away.

“This is the true challenge of the Ramen,” Esmer explained gruffly. “The Ranyhyn have accepted me.” He sounded both forlorn and proud. “Now they have come to accept you, the Haruchai as well as yourself. And they are precious to me. Their approach stayed my hand. I will not gainsay them.”

The horses advanced across the clearing until they were mere strides from Linden and Stave. There they halted. She held her breath as they shook their heads and flourished their manes, gazing at her and the Haruchai gravely. The blowing sounds they made may have been greetings.

Then together they bent their forelegs and bowed their noses to the dirt as if in homage.

PART II. “the only form of innocense”

Chapter One: Spent Enmity

When the Ranyhyn had departed, the Cords bore Stave into one of their open-sided shelters and laid him gently down on a bed of thick grass and bracken near the small cook-fire. At Linden’s command, they brought more wood and built up the fire to a sturdy blaze. Shamed that the Ramen had not kept Manethrall Hami’s promises, they would have done more; but Linden sent them away when she was satisfied that Stave had been made as comfortable as possible.

She needed to be alone with his plight; and with her own.

Without some extreme intervention, he would die soon. He had begun to haemorrhage around his broken ribs and punctured lung. Even his extraordinary vitality could not ward him from death much longer.

And the Ramen had no hurtloam. Again they sent out Cords for the healing mud; but to their knowledge the nearest source lay far from the Verge of Wandering.

Because she was afraid, Linden considered simply borrowing a knife and cutting him open. But she knew better. Even with the sterile resources of a modern operating theatre at her disposal, she could not have saved him surgically without transfusions; and she had none to give him. If she used a knife, she would only hasten his death from blood loss.

And she was in no condition to work on him. She was already exhausted. The burned skin of her face throbbed in spite of the soothing effects of amanibhavam. And she had received too many shocks-

Yet his life was in her hands. If she did not rise above herself-and do it now-he would die.

She would have found her fears easier to bear if Stave had not regained conscious while the Cords settled him in his bed. His eyes were glazed with agony, and he could breathe only in harsh gasps; but he recognised her beside him. Dully he watched her every movement.

Without his gaze upon her, she might have felt less ashamed of her limitations. “Chosen,” he said at last, thinly; a blood-spattered trickle of sound between his lips. “Do not.”

There was no room for fear in what she had to do. Because she could not be calm, she held her alarm at bay with anger.

“Shut up,” she told him. “Save your strength. This isn’t up to you.”

She also feared what he might say to sway her.

But he persisted. “Chosen, heed me. There are tales of your healing. Do not heal me. I have failed. I am Haruchai. Do not shame me with my own life.”

If any tears had remained to her, Linden might have wept for him.

A few Cords lingered outside the shelter, Bhapa, Char, and Pahni among them, no doubt hoping to be of assistance. She caught herself on the verge of yelling at them, ordering them furiously away, so that no one else would hear Stave beg.

Instead she instructed them to turn their backs. “And don’t let anyone else in here. I need to be alone with this.”

She did not know how else to bear her own weakness and Stave’s supplication.

When the Cords had obeyed her, she confronted him as though she meant to strike him where he lay.

“Don’t talk like that,” she said like an act of violence. “Don’t tell me not to heal you.” Not to at least make the attempt. “You failed long before we came here, but you haven’t used that as an excuse to give up.”

The Master swallowed blood. “How have I failed?”

“Well, what would you call it? Anele is just a crazy old man,” whatever else he might be. “Until I came along, the Ramen were the only friends he had, and he didn’t see them very often.” God, she needed to be angry. `But he’s been haunting the mountains above Mithil Stonedown for decades.

“You’re the Haruchai. As you keep saying. But you couldn’t catch him. Wasn’t that a failure?”

Stave’s mien gave her no hint of his reaction. He might have felt perplexed or scornful behind his anguish. “He was aided.”

“By ur-viles, you mean?” she countered. “The ur-viles you didn’t even know existed? That’s another failure. You’ve made yourselves the Masters of the Land. The caretakers-But I’ve only been here for three days, and I’ve already encountered half a dozen things you didn’t know.”

She had nothing to give her light except the unsteady radiance of the cook-fire; nothing to guide her except a numinous discernment which she had lacked for ten long years. And Stave would not last much longer.

“Listen to me,” she told him grimly. “You didn’t fail to capture Anele because he was aided. You failed because there aren’t enough of you for the job. You’re spread too thin.

“And you’ve isolated yourselves. Nobody can help you because you won’t even let them know what the dangers are. I understand why you thought that was a good idea. At least I think I do. But you can’t have it both ways. Every choice has consequences. Either you’re the Masters of the Land,” alone and inviolate, beyond compromise, “in which case there simply aren’t enough of you. Or you’re just the Land’s friends, people like the Ramen, in which case you shouldn’t even try to prevent Earthpower from being misused occasionally.”

Did he grasp what she meant? She could not tell. His dispassionate suffering seemed to defy comprehension. But that made no difference to her now. She was preaching to herself as much as to him.

“So you failed,” she assured him more gently. “So what? It isn’t your fault that Esmer beat you. You didn’t lose because there’s something wrong with you. You lost because he’s stronger than you are.” She, too, might fail because she was not strong enough. “It’s the same problem the Bloodguard had with the Illearth Stone.

“Don’t tell me not to heal you,” she repeated. “You’re wasting your breath. And you still have work to do. Somebody has to tell your people what’s been going on, and I’m sure as hell not going to do it.”

Riding the thrust of that affirmation, she sent her senses into him like an appeal for understanding.

Something in her words must have reached him. Instead of clenching his will against her, Stave asked in a growing froth of blood, “What then is your intention? If you will not forewarn the Land-?”

Her percipience slipped into him with the subtlety of a low breeze, hardly more than a sigh: a soft extension of her essence into his.

“When I figure that out, I’ll let you know.” At last, the exertion of her health-sense enabled her to regain her physician’s detachment. She was almost calm as she added, “In the meantime, you can help me.” Help her to think; to concentrate unselfconsciously. “I don’t understand this grievance the Ramen have against your people. What did the Haruchai do that’s supposed to be so terrible?