The Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Book One (94 page)

The old man had given no sign that he had heard or understood what was being said around him. He seemed unaware of anything except the fact that the Masters had claimed him. Without Linden's protection, he had no defense.

Yet when she spoke his name, he jerked up his head, and his moonstone eyes caught a flare of fire from the lamps. Threshing his arms as if to break free of the Humbled, although they made no effort to restrain him, he crossed the tormented stone and flung himself down in front of her. His thin arms embraced her knees and the Staff in supplication.

“Protect,” he panted. “Oh, protect Anele. They are heartless. They will devour his soul. They devour all things, leaving only pain.”

Liand started forward to attend to the old man; but Linden waved him back. She needed Anele where he was. His contact with the Staff might calm him so that he could heed her.

To Handir, she said, “You don't really care about keeping him prisoner. You just want to control him so he can't do any harm. You've explained that. I think I understand it. But you haven't thought it through.”

Her heart ached in her chest as she considered what she meant to do. She had found no gap in the Masters' defenses. Her intentions might taint Anele irredeemably in their eyes. They might go to any extreme to keep him. But she had no recourse that she could see—or accept. Apart from Anele, she had no arguments left except power. And she would not fight the
Haruchai.
The Land needed them. Too many of them had already spent their lives for her sake.

The old man was her last hope. Therefore she chose to place him in danger.

With one hand, she clenched her courage to the smooth shaft of the Staff. The other she lowered so that it rested on Anele's dismayed head, hoping that the touch of her palm would reassure him.

Doing so, she also reassured herself.

Although the Masters had conceded nothing, she met Handir's flat gaze and began.

“Stave must have told you that Anele reads stone. He's like an Unfettered One. He's taught himself to hear slowly enough to understand what the rocks are saying.

“Sure, that means he can tell people about the Land's history.” If he stood on the right kind of stone. “You don't want that. But it also means he can tell us what the Earth is saying about its own pain.

“He's already identified threats we wouldn't know about otherwise.
Skurj.
A broken Durance. Kastenessen. That alone makes him too useful to be locked away.

“But he has more to offer. A lot more. If he's free.”

Urgently she wished that she could interpret Handir's expression. But she had no idea whether he heard her with sympathy or scorn. She had to trust that the Masters saw her more clearly than she did them; that what was in her heart would show through the inadequacy of her ability to express it.

“If I'm right,” she said carefully, “the—I'm not sure what to call it—the ‘content' of his madness is controlled by the surface under his feet. When he stands on broken
stones, he hears them. When he's on native gutrock, he becomes sane. But when the stone has been worked in some way”—by Giants in Revelstone, or by Liand's people in Mithil Stonedown—“then he's like this. He seems to understand what's happening, but he can't always respond appropriately.

“But there's more. Stave wasn't with us all the time. He didn't see everything that happened.”

Impulsively she glanced at Stave. She had withheld some of her experience with Anele's madness from him; had distrusted him to that extent. Her concern that he might take umbrage impelled her to turn away from Handir for a moment.

The look on his face gave her nothing. The puckering of his new scars seemed to imply that he would not forgive her.

It was possible that he did not understand the concept. Perhaps none of the
Haruchai
did.

Aching, she faced the older Master again.

“When Anele,” oh, Anele, “stands on something other than stone—bare dirt, or different kinds of grass—he can be possessed. Sometimes Lord Foul reaches into him and takes over. The Despiser can see through his eyes, talk through his mouth.

“And there are other beings—” She would not mention Covenant: not here, out of desperation. “You've seen one of them, when you were fighting the Demondim. I don't know who it was, but it wasn't Anele. When his feet touched bare dirt, someone else claimed him.”

A spirit or power whose hatred was magma.

“You probably think that's a good reason to keep him locked up.” Linden shook her head to dismiss Handir's objections. “An even better reason than preventing him from saying too much about the Land's history. But you're wrong.

“Don't you see?” In spite of her shame, she spoke as though she had no qualms about sacrificing the old man to her own needs. “If we understand who can possess him, and when, we'll have a tremendous advantage. By hearing what our enemies say, even when they're trying to mislead us, we might be able to figure out who they are and what they're doing.

“But there's more. Think about how we could mislead
them.
My God, if we were clever enough, we could make them believe anything we wanted.”

Abruptly Liand put in, “Linden, this troubles me.” His aura had become an ache of worry. “Would not Anele suffer in such use?”

Manethrall Mahrtiir nodded sharply. Bhapa and Pahni watched Linden with uncertainty on their faces.

It seemed that none of her companions had expected her to sound so callous.

Vexed by the interruption, and privately sickened by her own actions, Linden sighed, “Oh, hell, we're all suffering. Do you actually think it would be any worse than
what he's going through right now? And he wants to be of use. You heard him,” in the cave of the Waynhim. “He doesn't think he's earned the right to be healed.”

Then she faced Handir again. “I don't see how you can call yourselves the Masters of the Land and still believe that he should be kept prisoner.”

Briefly Handir gazed around at the other Masters. He seemed to be communing with them in spite of his promise that their deliberations would be conducted aloud. Before Linden could object, however, he turned back to her.

“We are not persuaded,” he announced. “You must demonstrate his worth.”

She flinched, although Handir's demand did not surprise her. She had expected it; feared it. Indeed, she had proposed something similar herself. Now, however, her heart rebelled at the idea of asking Anele to perform like a trained animal. She still wanted to postpone the moment when she would be forced to misuse him.

And she could not be certain of his response.

But she had created a situation in which she had no choice but to surrender or forge ahead. When she had risked damaging the Arch of Time to seek for the Staff, she had in some sense misused everyone with her. And the Masters had made it plain that she could not answer them alone, any more than she could rescue Jeremiah or defeat Lord Foul by herself. She had to ask for help, and pray that she would get it.

With a silent groan, she stooped to the old man and urged him to stand.

He seemed reluctant to release her knees. Or perhaps it was the Staff to which he clung, consoling himself with its apt warmth. After a moment, however, he loosened his grasp and rose.

When he had gained his feet, she put her arm around him and hugged him close. “Anele,” she murmured gently, “I need you. I said I would protect you, and I want to keep my promise. But I can't do this without you.

“We're standing on stone,” surrounded by stone. “It's your friend.” His only friend. “It's always been your friend.

“I need you to tell us what it says.”

He was no longer the Anele who had averred that he was content to see the Staff of Law in her hands. That avatar of his dilemma had been left many centuries in the past. In
this
time—Linden's proper time, if not his own—he had been hounded to destitution by loneliness and loss as much as by the Masters. Linden could not be sure that he understood her. She had no reason to assume that he would comply.

By small shifts and stages, however, as if he had to remember separately how to move each muscle, he withdrew from her clasp. Reluctantly he trailed his fingertips along the Staff. Then he let it go.

“It is sooth.” His voice was a low croak which seemed to hurt his throat. “Anele has no friend but stone. It does not comfort him. It is not kindly. It is strict, and full of hurt. But it only speaks. It does not judge. It does not demand. It does not punish.”

The old man shook his head sadly. “For him there is no other solace.”

Hampered by the burden of too much time, he took a few steps toward the center of the floor. His head began to flinch from side to side. Apparently trying to stop it, he covered his face with his hands. Still his head jerked back and forth as if he feared what he might see in spite of his blindness.

A moan slipped between his lips and fell away, leaving the Close hushed and expectant; waiting.

Linden held her breath. Hardly aware of herself, she retreated to sit once more between Liand and Mahrtiir. Her attention was fixed on Anele. At that moment, nothing else mattered.

Barely audible through his hands, Anele breathed, “Ah, stone. Bone of the world. Forlorn and unregarded. It weeps eternally, yet none heed its sorrow. None hear its endless plaint.

“This stone has known love which the Land has forgotten, the adoration of Giants and Lords. It has suffered rage. It has been afflicted with Desecration.

“In grief and understanding, it speaks to me of fathers.”

Unself-consciously Linden rested the Staff between her knees and reached out to her companions. But now simply gripping Liand's forearm, and Mahrtiir's, did not suffice. She needed to entwine her fingers with theirs and grip them until her knuckles ached.

That tight human clench, the Stonedownor on one side and the Manethrall on the other, seemed to make it possible for her to bear Anele's words.

Muffled by his hands, his voice was a thin thread of sound in the huge chamber, as inadequate as the lamps to fill the Close, and as necessary.

“First,” he murmured, “always first, it speaks of the father who wrought this harm. He was Trell Atiaran-mate, Gravelingas of Mithil Stonedown. The stone remembers him compassionately, for he was of the
rhadhamaerl,
beloved of all the Earth's rock, and the plight of his daughter, his only child, had surpassed his heart's capacity for healing. Rent by her violation and pain, he here betrayed his love and his lore and himself, and when his hand was stayed the weight of his despair bore him down. What remains is the spilth and contortion of his anguish.”

Anele's head jerked, and jerked again. “That sorrow would exceed any less enduring flesh. But this stone has more.”

His voice seemed to limp between his hands, wincing to the rhythm of words which only he could interpret.

“It speaks of the
Elohim
Kastenessen in his Durance, father to the malice of the
merewives.
His daughters are the Dancers of the Sea, and they swim the fathomless deeps in hunger and cruelty, insatiable for retribution, while their own scion is torment. Yet they know glee as well as hunger, for their father has broken his
imprisonment, and at his behest the
skurj
which he once unwillingly restrained have unleashed their cunning and frenzy against the Land.

“And in the same breath, it speaks of the
Haruchai
Cail, who succumbed to the
merewives
and fathered their scion. He also is remembered with compassion, for only death has spared him from desolation at his son's torment. Indeed, there is keening here on his behalf, keening and great sadness. He had been repudiated by his kindred, and his heart could not distinguish between its own yearning and the desire of the
merewives.
Yet that desire was not love but malice.”

Slowly Anele sank to his knees, borne down by knowledge. He kept his hands pressed over his eyes, and his head beat from side to side as if his ears were full of threnodies. His voice had become a long-breathed gasping, scarcely strong enough to sustain the sentences which the stone required of him.

“And it speaks as well of Thomas Covenant, of the white gold wielder, whose daughter rent the law of death, and whose son is abroad in the Land, seeking such havoc that the bones of mountains tremble to contemplate it. For the wielder also this stone grieves, knowing him betrayed.

“It speaks of Sunder son of Nassic, Graveler of Mithil Stonedown, who abandoned all that he had known for the sake of the wielder and the Land. Him the stone names because the son whom he brought back from death in Andelain lost the Staff of Law. In spite of this father's valor and love, his legacy is sorrow.

“Also it names the Despiser, who is the father of woe. Yet of him the stone says little. His darkness is beyond its ken.”

Then the old man moaned again, a sound like distant winds complaining past jagged granite teeth. He began to pant heavily as if he were suffocating on words.

“And last, at the farthest extent of hearing, it speaks of Berek the Lord-Fatherer. It has not known him, for Revelstone had not been fashioned in that age, and he did not enter here. Yet he and his line prized and honored deep rock passionately, and until the Landwaster's Desecration all the Land's stone knew the savor of joy.”