Stephen Donaldson - Fatal Revenant

Kastenessen might already be somewhere nearby. Surely he was capable of herding a Fall wherever he wished?

“How long-?” Abruptly she found that she could not speak: her throat was too dry. She had to swallow several times before she could ask Stave, “How much time do we have?”

The Haruchai gazed into the south for a moment, then glanced behind him to consider the tree-dwellers. “If the Woodhelvennin comprehend their peril, and do not refuse to be commanded, they will be spared.”

If the Fall did not change directions to pursue them-

“In that case”- Linden took a deep breath, held it, let it out-let’s go down there.” She indicated the furrowed ground where the Fall had passed. “We’ll be able to see farther.”

On this terrain, one place would not be more dangerous than another for Anele.

Stave nodded. Beckoning for Liand and Anele to follow, he nudged Hynyn into a trot, angling across the slope to keep his distance from the blasted village while he sought an unobstructed view to the south.

Fighting her urgent anger, Linden dropped back briefly to ride beside Liand. “You know what you have to do?”

His black eyebrows accentuated the apprehension in his eyes. “Linden?”

“Remember what I told you,” she ordered brusquely. “Protect Anele. Whatever happens. Get Stave to help you if you need him. I’ll stop the caesure .” Somehow. “But you have to keep Anele away from Kastenessen. We can’t face another attack right now.”

Of any kind.

When the Stonedownor said, “I will,” biting off the words as though they caused him pain, she left him, riding faster to catch up with Stave.

“Did you hear me?” she asked as she reached Stave’s side. On his back, he bore the pane of slate. “I know how you feel about protecting me. But you can’t fight a Fall. You can’t fight that storm. Helping Liand keep Anele safe is the best thing that you can do for me.”

For a moment, Stave appeared to contemplate what she requested of him. Then he replied evenly, “Your fate is mine, Chosen. I will have no other. Yet while I may, I will do as you desire.” Without expression, he met her gaze. “Have I not shown that I am able to abandon you for the old man’s sake?”

He had left her to retrieve Anele from the horde of the Demondim-

Trying to smile, Linden bared her teeth. “You have. I should know better than to tell you what to do.”

As soon as she reached the centre of the caesure ’s raked path, she turned to face the south. For a few heartbeats, Hyn’s muscles quivered as if she were afraid; as if she longed to carry Linden out of danger. Then Hynyn snorted assertively, and the mare seemed to calm herself.

The Fall was moving faster than Linden had anticipated. It was already clear to her ordinary sight: a swirling miasma of wrongness in the shape of a tornado. Its emanations burrowed along her nerves as though hornets hived in her belly. And it was growing-The storm driving it seemed to increase its virulence and size as well as its speed. It would strike like the bludgeon of a titan.

Now she could discern the storm itself distinctly, although it had no clouds to account for the lurid punch of its thunder or the bright flare and sizzle of its lightning. Her health-sense perceived the turmoil in etched detail: it resembled a squall at sea. But its forces were too great for a mere squall. Its vehemence suggested the fury of a hurricane.

She had never seen theurgy like that before. More than once, however, she had felt a similar puissance: when Esmer had attacked Stave; and again when he had blocked the ur-viles from assailing Roger and the croyel . Before she and her companions had risked the Land’s past to search for the Staff of Law, the Ramen had informed her that he wields a storm among the mountains -

With it, he had summoned a caesure for her.

“ Damn it,” she breathed more to herself than to Stave. “That’s Esmer.”

“So I deem,” replied Stave as though he had not been almost beaten to death by Cail’s son.

For the first time, Linden wondered whether Esmer himself might be the havoc for which he had blamed Stave and the Haruchai .

Yet she could not believe that Esmer intended to threaten her like this. His conflicting inheritances precluded a direct assault. And a desire to ravage the Woodhelvennin seemed out of character. He had never shown the kind of omnivorous malice that delighted Lord Foul, or that Kastenessen and Roger might have enjoyed.

But why , then-?

An instant later, she saw an explanation. Ahead of the caesure , a rider fled desperately. He flogged his horse straight toward her. The Fall and the storm seemed to be chasing him.

She recognised him before Stave stated flatly. It is the Harrow.”

He was mounted on a brown destrier as large and strongly made as Mhornym, although the beast was not a Ranyhyn: it lacked the characteristic star-shaped blaze on its forehead; the unmistakable tang of Earthpower. Froth splashed from the horse’s mouth and nostrils, and its eyes glared with dumb terror, as its rider lashed its hindquarters with a short quirt. Hunched low over his mount’s neck, with his chlamys flapping, the Harrow rode for his life just ahead of the caesure .

He had promised Linden his companionship. Now he raced toward her as though he hoped that she would save him.

He was her enemy: she believed that. Oh, he had unmade the threat of the Demondim. But he had also tried to swallow her mind. He had cost her the Mahdoubt’s friendship and support; the Mahdoubt’s life.

And he coveted Covenant’s ring. He wanted the Staff of Law. To tempt her, he had said, There is a service which I am able to perform for you, and which you will not obtain from any other living being.

Nevertheless she did not hesitate. Unfurling plumes of fire from her Staff, she began to tune her percipience to the exact pitch and timbre of the Fall. Her private rages and bereavements had no significance now. The Woodhelvennin were still in peril, and they had already lost too much.

If Esmer sought to destroy the Harrow, he did not do so for Linden’s benefit, or for the Land’s. In him, aid and betrayal were indistinguishable. Perhaps he saw some threat to one of his ruling compulsions in the Harrow’s proposed service. If so, she needed to know more about the Insequent.

With the back of her neck, she felt the villagers stumbling slowly westward. They did not resist the shepherding of the Masters and the Ramen. But there were too many of them-and too many were still in shock. Their progress was sluggish, hampered by grief.

The caesure was no more than a stone’s throw for a Giant away: it towered over her, feral and deadly. The Harrow raced less than ten strides ahead of it, and the gap was narrowing-If she ran out of time, she would be devoured by the conflagration of instants.

She could do this, she told herself. She had done it before. And Esmer’s storm did not camouflage the caesure , or confuse her health-sense. If anything, his efforts to flail the Fall only emphasised its specific ferocity.

Muttering, “ Melenkurion abatha ,” she raised Law and Earthpower in sunlight flames to meet the impending chaos. “ Duroc minas mill .” In one sense, every Fall was different: it occurred in a different place; shattered different fragments of time. But in another, they were all the same, and she knew them well. “ Harad khabaal!”

Fervid as a bonfire, her power geysered into the heavens.

The Harrow gestured at her frantically, urging her to rescue him. Lightning in fatal bursts blasted the dirt between her and the destrier. Concussions of thunder shook the ground. Each searing bolt liquefied the shale and flint, leaving molten pools where it struck.