Stephen Donaldson - Fatal Revenant

Linden hoped that the Humbled would keep their distance until she knew what she was up against. And she did not want Mahrtiir left alone. But she doubted that Clyme, Branl, and Galt would heed her wishes.

Her fingers itched on the written surface of the Staff. Its shaft was visible only because it was darker, blacker, than the masked dusk.

Bhapa seemed to rush toward her headlong. In his place, she would have tripped and fallen; crashed into tree trunks; blinded herself on whipping branches. But he was Ramen, and his craft did not desert him. Sprinting, he slipped through the jungle and sprang down into the watercourse.

Linden could not see his expression, but she smelled his sweat and desperation. His aura was as loud as a shout.

“Ringthane.” With a fierce effort, he controlled his breathing. “I have felt the skurj .”

She had expected this; assumed it. Nevertheless Bhapa’s words inspired an atavistic dread. On some irrational level, she must have hoped

Gritting her teeth, she asked. “How many? Can you tell?”

“I felt one. But-” Frustration sharpened the edges of Bhapa’s fear. “Ringthane, I cannot be certain. Such ravening and rage are altogether beyond my knowledge. Its seeming is of a multitude. And it does not advance through the forest. Rather it flows beneath the roots of the trees. I was forewarned of its presence when I beheld leaves withering for no clear cause, and with unnatural speed, as though years of blight had passed within moments. When I then pressed my fingers to the earth, I felt-”

The Cord shuddered. Hoarsely he concluded. “I believe that I have outrun it. But its passage is swift, and it does not turn aside. I fear that it is aware of us”- he faltered- “of you. Of your powers, Ringthane.”

“The skurj draws nigh.” Stave’s voice held no inflection. “It is but one, as the Cord has discerned. And it does not rise. If it does not alter its course, it will pass below us.”

Aware-? Linden thought, scrambling to understand. Below us? The fires which she and her company had seen earlier had been at least twenty leagues away. If one of the skurj had crossed that distance unerringly, it must have been guided somehow.

It had been directed by its master. Or Bhapa was right: the monster could sense-

But she had not made any use of the Staff.

Below us?

Anele! Instinctively she whirled toward the west. She was merely human. Perceptions attuned to theurgy would not detect her unless she exerted her Staff or Covenant’s ring. The Haruchai would be more noticeable than she was; easier to spot. But Anele was full of Earthpower, rife with it: he had been born to it. Although his heritage was deeply submerged, he might be a beacon for any extraordinary percipience. And if he had stepped on bare dirt, even for an instant-

As she searched the evening for some hint of the old man, she saw a glimmer of white brilliance through the dark trunks and brush; and her heart seemed to stop.

Orcrest . Liand was using the orcrest .

Oh, God!

Below us . Below Stave and her. Liand’s Sunstone would attract Kastenessen’s creature. Trying to calm Anele-or perhaps simply to light their way-Liand had inadvertently exposed himself to the skurj .

Yelling, “ Watch out! ” she snatched power from the runes of the Staff; sent cornflower fire gusting out along the watercourse. “I’m going to try to stop that thing!” For an instant, the stream blazed as if the current had become incandescent. Then she concentrated her flame and drove it into the ground, down through sand and soil and stone, to intercept the skurj before it passed.

Stunned, Bhapa stared at her. But Stave appeared to understand. Grabbing the Cord’s arm, he drew Bhapa away from her; out to the fringes of her fire.

At first, she could not feel the monstrous creature. Her boots muffled the sensitivity of her feet, and her nerves had not found the pitch of ravening and rage which had appalled Bhapa. Urgently she sent Earthpower and Law deeper and deeper into the earth, deeper than the oldest roots of the most thirsty trees, and still no hunger responded to her flames.

Then Stave shouted. “Ware, Chosen! The skurj rises!”

In front of her, the watercourse spat filth in a spray of water, rocks, sand. The soil of its banks began to seethe as if the trees and brush were suppurating. Leaves overhead withered and charred. At the same time, she smelled gangrene; a miasma of sickness and rot; necrosis. Disease boiled upward as though dirt and stone and wood were dying flesh.

When her power touched the surging creature, she staggered. The sheer vehemence of the skurj struck her like a physical blow. God, it was strong -

Putrefaction clogged her throat: she could hardly breathe. She tasted similarities to Roger’s bitter scoria. But the forces which confronted her now were worse; purer. They resembled the ruddy extravagance of volcanoes: tremendous energies barely contained by the world’s friable shell.

As it came, she read the nature of the skurj . Mindless as cyclones and earthquakes, the monster was a product of organic magic. It had been born in magma: it throve in infernos and molten stone. And it ate the living earth. The earth’s flesh sustained its savagery. Yet it was not an inherent evil comparable to the Illearth Stone. Nor did it exist outside the bounds of Law, as did the Viles and their descendants. And it did not intend ruin: it had no intention except appetite.

Over the course of millennia, however, all of the skurj had received the legacy of Kastenessen’s rage. During his Appointed Durance, they had been transmogrified; harnessed to his service. From him, they had inherited perversion. Goaded by his hate, they had become havoc and insatiable sickness.

The creature rising to devour trees and dirt and Linden did not reason, and knew no fear. Therefore it could not be turned aside. It would eat and eat , afflicting everything in its vicinity with rot, until the very Earth was torn open at last.

Gasping at the stench, Linden felt her courage fail. She could not move or think. Around her, a wide span of the watercourse and the forest boiled and frothed, immedicably diseased. The Staff was useless to her. The skurj consumed her flames; swallowed or ignored her power.

Covenant had told her to find him. Lord Foul and the croyel held Jeremiah. She and all of her companions were here because she had decided to take the Land’s fate into her own hands. Now she was helpless. Before she saw Kastenessen’s beast for the first time, it had already defeated her.

For an instant, the fabric of reality seemed to rip like a fouled tapestry. The ground pitched and heaved; dropped her to her knees. The pustulent reek of mortification filled her lungs, her nerves, her wailing mind.

Then the skurj erupted from the earth, and she gaped into its avid mouth.

It rose as tall as a Giant above her, and as thick as a cedar. Its hide was as heavy and hot as slag: the entire length of the creature emitted a terrible heat. Yet the hide shed no light. Even the tremendous kraken maw and gullet gave no illumination. Only the teeth, the fearsome fangs, long as stakes, curved and keen as scimitars, row after row of them filling the jaws: only the teeth shone. They burned with a sick red slashing radiance like lamps along the passage into hell.

Linden did not move. She believed that she could not. Her weakness was her birthright: her parents had spent their lives so that she would receive and accept their last gifts.

Nevertheless she was not the woman she had once been; the emotional cripple who had watched, frozen, while Jeremiah had surrendered his hand to Lord Foul, and Covenant had sacrificed himself for Joan. Her heart had become stone-and the stone held.