Fearing that Stave might take offense, Linden put in, "With your permission, Manethrall, I want to look at your injured. Where I come from, I'm a physician. I don't have any drugs or supplies with me, but I might be able to do something for them." Uncertainly she added, "You lost lives for us. I want to help, if I can."

Hami shrugged. "As you will, Ringthane. But your aid is not necessary. The Ramen are hardy, and I have taught my Cords the care of such wounds. Also"-a fierce grin twisted her lips-"our grievance against all kresh is ancient and enduring, ill-measured in mere centuries. Had you not been threatened, we would have assailed them still."

Linden wanted to ask, And the urviles? Would they have joined you? But she was too weary for such questions. Murmuring, "Thanks," she gestured for Liand to join her as she crossed the gutrock to join the Cords who were treating their hurt comrades.

They nodded to her courteously when she squatted among them, but did not pause in what they were doing.

They were nine, and none unmarked by the battle.

However, they had suffered only scrapes and scratches, bruises. The wounds of the other five were more serious. Torn flesh hung in strips from the arms and legs of two of them, a man and a woman. Fangs had ripped grisly chunks out of one man's shoulder and another's thigh. As severe as those hurts appeared, however, they were small compared to the injuries of the fifth Raman.

The woman had been nearly eviscerated.

Three Cords labored to keep her alive. The rest tended the other four.

"Damn it," Linden muttered to herself. Peritonitis for sure. Even if the woman's intestines were not too badly rent, and could be sewn intact back into her abdomen, she would develop a killing infection almost at once.

Indeed, all of the wounds would turn septic: the claws and teeth of the kresh assured that.

Fire, she thought. We need a fire.

And then: hurtloam.

With an effort, she swallowed the fatigue clogging her throat. "Do you know hurtloam?" she asked the Cords.

"We do," one of the men answered, abrupt with concentration. He appeared younger than Liand: too young for such work. Strain and pride stretched a pallor across his cheeks. All of the Cords were little more than adolescents. "It is not found here." Not among these broken stones. "Nor do we often bear it with us. Its virtue slowly fades when it is lifted from the earth, and we lack the lore to sustain it. But we are Ramen. That which we have must suffice."

From a pouch at his waist, he sifted into his palm a few sprigs of what appeared to be dried ferns or grass.

Petals lay among them: the same flowers that Manethrall Hami wore around her neck. The Cord separated one sprig from the others, returned the rest to his pouch. Then he spat onto the herb in his palm; and at once a sharp tang pricked Linden's nose.

"This is amanibhavam," he told her, "the flower of health and madness. Fresh, it is too potent for human flesh, bringing ecstasy and death. Dried, however, it may be borne."

Rubbing the damp herb between his hands, he wiped it into the gutted woman's wound.

She gasped in pain; and Linden nearly gasped as well, shocked by the crudeness of such care. Damn it. She needed her healthsense; needed to know what amanibhavam was and did.

The suffering of the Ramen hung about her head; agony stifled by pride and fortitude. The other Cords had similar pouches. They dabbed bits of saliva and fern under strips of ripped tissue and bound the skin back into place with cloth bandages; rubbed the same mixture as though it were a sovereign poultice into bitten shoulders and thighs. She had witnessed miracles of healing in the Land. With percipience and power, she had wrought a few herself. But this The last blood of the dead oozed from their wounds to stain the gutrock. Its lost scent tightened the back of her throat. They had died brutally, mangled almost beyond recognition. One had had her face ripped away. Another's spine had been crushed in the massive jaws of a wolf.

These dead and injured young people had saved Linden's life. She remembered evil; but on a purely visceral level, she had forgotten the real cost of Lord Foul's malice.

Staggering, she heaved herself upright. "Manethrall,"

she breathed urgently. "Hami. They're going to die."

The Manethrall came smoothly down the stone to consider the plight of her Cords. Then she met Linden's troubled stare. "It may be so," she admitted sadly. "Kresh are in 1.all ways dire and filthy beasts. Yet amanibhavam has rare virtue. It may yet redeem these wounds. We can do naught else in this place. We must depart."

"No." Linden shook her head unsteadily. "It's too dangerous. We can't move them." Especially the gut- torn woman. In a rush, she added, "Liand and I know where to find aliantha."

Hurtloam was out of the question. Without percipience, she would not be able to identify it. And Liand had never seen it.

Manethrall Hami raised her eyebrows. "That would be a benison. Is it near?" Linden gestured down toward the Mithil valley. "Send one of your Cords with me,"

she urged. "Or with Liand, if I'm too weak. They can bring some back." "Will they return before nightfall?"

Linden swallowed roughly. "No."

"Then I will send no one. You have knowledge of the Land, but mayhap you do not know these mountains.

With the setting of the sun, a wind as harsh as ice will blow here. Lacking shelter, they"-she meant her injured Cords-"will perish. Also you may succumb, for you are not hardy.

"We must ascend. Beyond the rims of this cleft, we will be capable of shelter and fire."

Fire to boil water, cauterize wounds, burn away as much infection as possible. There was no wood for fuel in the rift.

Linden felt a pang of despair, and she faltered.

"Or we could go down," she offered hesitantly. "Get out of the wind. Find aliantha." Do what Stave wanted.

"Mithil Stonedown will help us."

Severity sharpened the Manethrall's face. "Ringthane, we love the Land. It is the long dream of the Ramen that we will one day return there-to the Plains of Ra and Manhome, where we belong." Her voice implied a suppressed outrage. "But we will not enter any place where these Masters hold sway."

Turning away, she added, "My Cords will endure, if they are able. They are Ramen.

Stave regarded her impassively, as though he did not deign to take umbrage.

Linden could not imagine what grudge the Ramen held against the Haruchai. However, she herself feared to return to Mithil Stonedown. Stave had surprised her by promising the Manethrall two days. In her experience, his people neither compromised nor negotiated.

When she had absorbed the hard fact that she could do nothing for the Cordsthat all her years of training were useless here-she sat down to save her strength.

The shadows in the rift approached true twilight, and the tops of the walls seemed too far away to reach. She did not believe that she would be able to climb so high.

Dumbly she watched one of the Cords treat Liand's arm. She had become certain that the Ramen meant him no harm.

The Cord applied a touch of amanibhavam and saliva to the gash, then bound it with a bandage of clean cloth. As he felt the effects of the poultice, Liand frowned at first, then gradually relaxed into a smile. "I know not what other benefits this grass may have," he told Linden when he had thanked the Cord, "but it assuredly softens pain. For that I am grateful."

Linden nodded vacantly. Her uselessness galled her.

For the time being, at least, she had come to the end of herself.

Scant moments later, however, Manethrall Hami called her Cords into motion. Around Linden, the comparatively whole young men and women prepared themselves to carry their dead and fallen comrades, some in slings across their backs, others cradled in their arms. Liand readied Somo for an ascent they could scarcely see. And Linden realized that she was staring at a darkness deeper than shadows: the urviles.

Without thinking about it, she had expected them to depart. Surely they had already done what they came to do? Yet they remained, obviously waiting for something. Did they mean to accompany the Ramen?

Did they anticipate another attack? Or were they wary of the moment when their interests might diverge from those of the Ramen?

Then Stave came to her side. "Chosen," he announced, "I must bear you again." Gloom obscured his features.

If he had bared his teeth at her, she would not have known it. "If I do not, your weariness will hold you here, and you will be exposed to cold beyond your endurance."

Too worn out to do otherwise, she surrendered herself and the immediate future to his ambiguous care.

As the Cords settled their burdens, the urviles also prepared to move. Apparently the disturbing creatures intended to accompany them.

Then the Ramen began to climb. Linden had assumed that they would move slowly and rest often, laden as they were. But she soon saw that she had underestimated their toughness. They managed the jagged slope more swiftly than she could have imagined.

And the urviles ascended with ease. The proportions of their limbs aided them here: although they looked awkward upright, they could use their hands for climbing as readily as their feet. Somehow they had put their weapons away, so that their hands were empty; unencumbered.

Soon it became obvious that only Liand and Somo could not match the pace of the Ramen. Alone, Liand might have kept up well enough; but in the deepening twilight the mustang had to pick its footing carefully.

Otherwise it might snap a foreleg among the stones.

At a word from Manethrall Hami, the lone unburdened Cord dropped back to Liand. "Join your companions," the young woman told him brusquely.

"I will guide your mount."

"No." Liand may have shaken his head. "I brought Somo to this. The responsibility is mine."

The Cord might have argued; but Stave put in, "You have wrought sufficient folly for one day, Stonedownor. Do not be foolish in this.

The horselore of the Ramen sur passes you. Your mount will fare better in her care than in yours."

"Linden?" Liand asked out of the darkness. He may have meant, What should I do? He may have meant, Tell this damn Master to leave me alone.

Sighing to herself, Linden answered, "I think the Ramen know what they're doing.

Somo should be safe with her."

"Very well," Liand muttered to the Cord. "I have tended the mounts of Mithil Stonedown since I grew tall enough to curry them. If you do not return Somo to me, you will answer for it."

The young woman snorted under her breath, but made no other retort.

Liand scrambled up the rocks to Stave's side. "I know nothing of these Ramen, Mas ter," he said softly. "You have concealed them from us. If I am foolish, how could it be otherwise? You have kept secret all that might have made us wise." Stave ignored the justice of Liand's accusation.

Overhead the sky had turned purple with evening.

Slowly it dimmed toward black. For some time now, the breeze had gathered force as cold poured like a stream into the narrows of the rift. Linden felt chills seep into her skin in spite of Stave's intransigent warmth. Soon she would start to shiver under the mounting weight of the wind.

A day and a half in the Land, hardly more than that, and she had already become as helpless as an infant.

Jeremiah needed her. More than that: he needed her to be a figure of power, the stuff of legends; rapt with wild magic and efficacy. Yet here she lay, cradled weakly in the arms of a man who had turned his back on such things.

Ahead of her, the Ramen and urviles moved in their distinct groups, as obscure as clouds against the vague background of the rocks. Yearning to find some use for herself, she asked abruptly, "Stave, will you talk to me?"

He replied without turning his head. "What do you wish me to say?"

"Tell me what you know about urviles." She desired a concession from him; some thing more personal than the forbearance he had shown the Ramen. "You called them a great evil, but they don't act like it."

Out of the gloaming, Stave said, "They are as strange to us as to you. We cannot account for them. We have never understood them."

Linden persisted. "You still know more about them than I do. Their history. Where they come from. All I've ever heard is that they were made, not born.

Created by the Demondim-whoever they were. I need more.

"Isn't there anything else you can tell me?"

For a long moment, Stave appeared to consider the deeper ramifications of her question. Deliberately over the centuries, the Haruchai had suppressed the history of the Land. Now she asked him to speak of it-and in Liand's presence.

Finally he countered, "Chosen, do you comprehend what you request? This foolish young man has elected to dare his fate with you. If I give you answer, and he seeks later to relate what he has heard, we must prevent him.

"You appear to value kindness. Will you treat him so roughly?"

Before Linden could object, Liand put in stiffly, "Your words sow confusion, Master. You threaten me rather than the Chosen. Therefore the choice is mine to make.

To pretend otherwise is not honest. It ill becomes you."

A subliminal tension seemed to run through Stave's chest. "Have a care, Stonedownor," he replied. "You are not equal to such determinations."

"Because," Linden protested, "you don't allow him to be." Stave's inflexibility exasperated her. "He's right.

If you think he's too ignorant to understand the risks, that's your doing. No one else's."

The Haruchai had made themselves responsible for all the Land. Under the circumstances, the unexpected aid of the urviles must have undermined Stave's convictions. And he may have felt disturbed by the way in which the presence of the Demondimspawn lent credibility to Anele's impossible tale. Perhaps his need to understand the creatures was as acute as Linden's.

"Very well," he said at last. His voice held no hint of concession. "I will answer. This Stonedownor must be wary of us as he sees fit."

The indistinct group of the Ramen appeared nearer than it had earlier. Stave was gaining on them-or they had slowed their pace to listen.

"You have been told, Linden Avery, that the Haruchai first came to the Land in the time of High Lord Kevin Landwaster." Having accepted this task, Stave spoke steadily, in spite of his taciturn nature. Nevertheless his tone conveyed an impression of awkwardness, as though he were translating a richer and more numinous tongue into blunt human language. "I say this again to explain that they did not know the High Lord's father, Loric son of Damelon, who earned the name of Vilesilencer. They heard only tales of those years, and of the black Viles which had haunted the Land. We cannot now declare which of those tales were true."

Linden settled herself in the Master's arms. His decision to speak gave her an obscure comfort. It suggested that he could still compromise, in spite of his native severity.

"It was said by some," he told her as well as Liand and the listening Ramen, "that the Vile, were creatures of miasma, evanescent and dire, arising from ancient banes buried within Mount Thunder as mist arises from tainted waters. Others claimed that they were specters and ghouls, the tormented spirits of those who had fallen victim to Corruption's evil. And yet others proclaimed that they were fragments of the One Forest's lost soul, remnants of spirit rent by the slaughter of the trees, and ravenous for harm.

"No." Liand may have shaken his head. "I brought Somo to this. The responsibility is mine."

The Cord might have argued; but Stave put in, "You have wrought sufficient folly for one day, Stonedownor. Do not be foolish in this. The horselore of the Ramen surpasses you. Your mount will fare better in her care than in yours."

"Linden?" Liand asked out of the darkness. He may have meant, What should I do?

He may have meant, Tell this damn Master to leave me alone.

Sighing to herself, Linden answered, "I think the Ramen know what they're doing. Somo should be safe with her."

"Very well," Liand muttered to the Cord. "I have tended the mounts of Mithil Stonedown since I grew tall enough to curry them. If you do not return Somo to me, you will answer for it."

The young woman snorted under her breath, but made no other retort.