The Runes of the Earth

they move exists at once.”

He seemed oblivious to the way in which his words intensified the air between them. Covenant had told her that white gold fed the Falls.

“Wait a minute,” she protested. “Wait. I need to be sure I understand this. You can’t mean that I’m doing it?”

“No,” Esmer stated as if the truth should have been obvious. “There is other white gold in the Land, a ring in the possession of a madwoman.”

Linden groaned to herself. As she had feared from the beginning, Joan must have preceded her to the Land; summoned her. Joan was responsible for the caesures.

“She knows little of what she does,” Esmer continued, “and intends less. Yet there is savagery in her, a hunger for ruin as great as that of the Raver which torments her. As her nightmares devour her, so caesures devour the Land, displacing objects and beings and powers, corroding the Law of Time. That the harm is not greater-that the Law of Time has not already been shattered-is due only to the form of her madness.

“There is no willingness in her. She is merely haunted and broken and used. She cannot choose freely to abdicate her soul. Thus is her power restrained from utter havoc.”

Oh, Joan. For a moment, Linden could not go on. Now she knew surely that she had caused the Land’s peril when she had restored Joan’s ring. Her fears then had been accurate; prescient. But she had set them aside because she had not understood that wild magic might reach across the boundary between realities.

Somehow Joan’s wedding band, the emblem of her weaknesses and failures, had exposed her to the Despiser. The Falls were born of her despair, her self-inflicted pain.

No wonder she had grown calmer when the ring touched her skin. Inadvertently Linden had given her an outlet for her anguish.

“I did that,” Linden murmured. “I was supposed to take care of her, but I didn’t. Instead I made it possible-”

Esmer gave her one quick glance, a look full of emeralds and suffering. Sweat beaded among the shadows on his face, and his lips were pale with strain. Then he turned away once more.

Shaken, she did not immediately recognise that her nausea in his presence was growing worse; that his emanations were becoming more intense. In spite of her dismay, however, her nerves felt him clearly. He lived in endless conflict with himself; and his mothers’ harsh loathing had begun to regain its force.

Trembling as if she were chilled, she forced herself to set aside her chagrin. “Are you all right?” she asked hesitantly.

“Your time is short,” retorted Esmer. “You waste me. If I do not depart soon, I will smother this Haruchai where he lies. Then the Ranyhyn will be lost to me forever.”

She swore to herself. It was too much. She had too many questions, and could not think quickly enough.

Trying to hurry, she said, “I’m sorry. Make it easy on yourself. Just correct me if I’m wrong.

“Anele is here,” brought forward through the millennia, “because he stumbled into a caesure.”

The old man had said as much. But she had not known then that the Falls were composed of severed instants. Now she guessed that within a caesure it might be possible to cross time; that anyone who entered a caesure would almost inevitably emerge somewhen else.

Esmer nodded: an angry jerk of his head.

Still guessing, Linden offered, “So did the ur-viles.”

That would explain how they had survived Lord Foul’s efforts to exterminate them.

Cail’s son snorted as if she had missed the point. “They did not “stumble.” They knew what they did. They entered the Fall to flee the Despiser. Also they sought a time when they would be needed against him.”

Linden bit her lip. “And they found it here? Now?”

“Wildwielder,” he answered, “they have found you.” Complex ire strained his voice. “It is their intent to serve you.”

Through her nausea, she saw implications of violence gather in him; possible lies. Cail’s son would answer her honestly. Would the scion of merewives do the same?

“When you were imprisoned by the Haruchai,” he continued mordantly, “the ur- viles sent a storm to enable your escape. When you were endangered by kresh, they hastened to your aid. And when I first entered your presence, they came to ensure that you would not be harmed.

“They keep watch against me. They know who I am.”

Half sneering, he muttered, “They are puissant after their fashion. Perhaps they might withstand me. But my lore exceeds theirs. Therefore they fear me.”

Linden feared him herself.

Scrambling for some form of confirmation, reassurance, she returned to her earlier question. “But Anele? He really is the son of Sunder and Hollian? He lost the Staff of Law because he left it in his cave?”

Esmer replied with another harsh nod.

Wrapping her arms around herself, Linden finally risked naming her unspoken intent. Hugging her heart, she asked, “Could he find it again? If he went back to the past?”

Abruptly, Esmer jumped to his feet. Linden winced, afraid that he would stride out of the shelter; leave her still too ignorant to proceed. But he did not. Instead he began to articulate his tension by pacing back and forth in front of her. His head jerked as if he were arguing with himself, debating honesty and blows. A sheen of sweat lay on his cheeks.

Still he did not look at her.

“If his madness permits,” he answered between his teeth. “If he is able to remember. Or if he becomes sane.”

Anele had remembered often enough in the past.

Esmer would depart in moments: she felt that clearly. The bifurcation of his nature was too strong for him. He would never find peace until he had used up his mothers’ loathing-or burned away his father’s passion.

There was so much that she wanted to know; but she could live without it. For the time being, at least-To one question, however, she positively required an answer. Otherwise she would be helpless.

“Esmer,” she urged softly, “hang on. Just one more.

“How do I do it?”

“Wildwielder?”

“How do I go back there? To the past? How do I find the Staff?”

She could do what Anele had done; enter one of the caesures. But Esmer had said that within them every moment existed simultaneously. How could she sort her way through so much time? How could she navigate every possibility of three and a half thousand years?

“For you all things are possible.” He spread his hands in a gesture too rough to be a shrug. “You are the Wildwielder.”

Then he protested, “But do you comprehend that we speak of Law? Of sequence and causality which must not be broken? If the past is altered, the Arch of Time itself is threatened. Once rent, it can never be made whole.”

“So I’ll have to be careful.” She would not let him sway her. “If the Staff is lost, then it hasn’t been used. It hasn’t affected anything.” And its mere existence would support the integrity of Time. “If we can retrieve it,” she and Anele, “after it was lost-if we can bring it back to the present without using it-the past won’t be altered. Nothing that has already happened will change.”

As she spoke, Esmer stopped moving. Apparently she had surprised him. Just for a moment, his accumulating conflicts seemed to pause; and in that pause, Linden again received the impression that she had gratified him somehow, nourished some deep need.

Slowly he turned to face her. His eyes reflected green fury and supplication from the embers of the cook- fire.

“Do you regard yourself so highly?” His tone sneered at her; implored her. “Do you deem that you are wise