"He has been a friend to the Ramen as to the Ranyhyn, giving us no cause for mistrust. Of one thing I am certain, however. No urging of his has caused us to act against the will of the Ranyhyn. For that reason, we regret nothing that we have done, though we have indeed returned to the Verge of Wandering in a time of peril."

Before Linden could respond, she heard movement behind her. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Liand enter the streambed with Anele. The Stonedownor supported Anele with his arm around the old man's waist. Anele appeared to have lost all volition and strength: he accompanied Liand only because the young man half carried him along.

Nonetheless Linden was sure of him. He was an argument that would persuade the Waynhim to aid her. If they were deaf to him, they would hear no other appeal.

"Thank you," she murmured as Liand and the old man drew near. Then she said, "Let him go. Let's see what he does."

Liand complied with a nod. When he had released Anele, he stepped back.

Shadows made pools of darkness in the sockets of Anele's blind eyes. He appeared entirely lost; too far gone in dismay to be aware of his surroundings or situation. In some preterite way, however, he may have understood what was needed of him. Or perhaps his inborn Earthpower reacted to the lore of the Waynhim. As soon as Liand removed his support, the old man took a few tottering steps toward the creature and dropped to his knees.

Clasping his hands before his face as if he were praying, he bowed his face to the sand. Then he spread out his arms and prostrated himself like an act of supplication.

The Waynhim considered him carefully. It came to stand over him; sniffed all around him as though tasting the tale of his life in his aggrieved scent. And as it did so, the creature increasingly gave the impression that it had been wounded; galled by sorrow or suffering.

If Linden could have seen its cause, the creature's care and pain would have explained the Waynhim to her.

One more hint, a final glimpse or insight, might enable her to comprehend their dilemma.

Trying to elicit that hint, she told the Waynhim softly, "This is Anele, son of Sunder and Hollian. They were chosen to hold the Staff of Law when I passed from the Land, and Covenant was lost. He inherited it from them. You found it in the cave where he lived while he studied the Land, trying to determine the form of service that was right for him."

She did not add, He only made one mistake. Look at what it cost him. The creature could discern the truth for itself.

When the Waynhim had finished its examination, it barked a few guttural syllables into the gloom and retreated to stand once more near the mouth of the cave. There it stayed, apparently forbidding Linden to enter; refusing her After a moment, Mahrtiir demanded tensely, "Esmer, what was said? Has the Waynhim given its answer?"

Esmer hid his surging gaze in the crook of his arm and did not reply.

Stave waited with his arms folded across his chest. His flat features betrayed no reaction.

Linden kept her attention fixed on the creature and the cave.

As the sun declined past midafternoon, the shadows thickened, obscuring the face of the Waynhim, filling the mouth of the cave with potential night. Within herself, Linden fretted; but outwardly she remained calm. The Waynhim could argue that the end did not justify the means, but they could not deny that Anele was the rightful wielder of the Staff or that he was in no condition to bear that responsibility. Nor could they believe that the Staff was not desperately needed. Anele's plight demonstrated the Land's more eloquently than any words.

And the delay was not prolonged. Soon the darkness within the cave appeared to condense, concentrating gradually into the form of a second Waynhim.

This creature moved with an arduous limp, as if every movement tormented its sore and swollen joints. As it emerged from the cave, Linden saw that its flesh was afflicted with oozing galls and eruptions like the stigmata of a plague. From half of its face the skin had peeled away, leaving raw tissues which throbbed and bled with each beat of its heart. Boils and blisters distorted its mouth as if it had swallowed acid, and a rank green fluid dripped like pus from both of its nostrils..

Its pain cried out to her, as articulate as weeping, although the Waynhim made no sound.

It came forward a few steps, then stopped, wavering on its feet as if it had reached the end of its strength.

"Heaven and Earth!" Liand breathed. "What has befallen it? Is this an ailment? Has some cruel force wrought such harm?"

"Esmer?" demanded Mahrtiir harshly.

Linden understood now: the poor creature's suffering gave her the hint she needed. How else might the Waynhim have responded to Anele's plight, except by revealing their own?

Nevertheless the truth appalled her. And she had no power. Some force or confusion had sealed shut the door to wild magic within her.

Like Anele, still prostrate in the sand beside her, she sank to her knees before the damaged creature and bowed her head.

Gruffly Esmer responded, "The Demondimspawn are not creatures of Law. They were not born as natural creatures, nor do they wither and perish as the Law of Life requires. Rather they were conceived by lore, created to redeem the loathing of the Demondim for their own forms."

Ah, God. Linden feared that this crisis would be too much for her; that the dilemma of the Waynhim exceeded her scant strength. But these creatures were not her enemies. And they had shown her what they required in order to trust her.

"Those offspring," Esmer continued, "which the Demondim deemed worthy, they nurtured. Those which failed their intent, they cast aside. Yet the urviles and the Waynhim differ primarily in their interpretations of the Weird or Wyrd or Word which gives them purpose. In their physical substance, they are alike, and the Law which gives form to mortal life has no place in them."

On her knees with her eyes closed and her chest full of yearning, Linden considered her straits. She could not use Covenant's ring. But the Waynhim held the Staff of Law; her Staff. How distant was it? How deeply had the Waynhim sequestered it?

Could her healthsense extend so far?

The damaged creature had taken some time to reach the ravine. But its pain was terrible, and all its steps were slow. It could not have come a long way.

With her eyes closed, she listened to Esmer's voice. It moved her like a lament.

"For that reason," he explained, "the Staff of Law is inimical to them. Though the Waynhim serve the Land, and have always done so, their service stands outside the bounds of Law. Their lore is in itself a violation of Law. The fact of their service does not alter their nature.

"Therefore the mere proximity of the Staff harms them. If its influences are not guided and controlled by a condign hand, its power must destroy them.

Unprotected, no Waynhim or ur-vile can long endure its presence and remain whole "

And therefore the Waynhim understood Linden's dilemma; the dilemma of every white gold wielder.

The damaged creature in front of her demonstrated that they could be persuaded.

Comforted by the knowledge, she sank into Esmer's words and the Waynhim's pain; and as she did so, her percipience expanded outward, following the hard guidance of the ravine's stone walls into the cave.

She did not consciously search for the Staff. The wrong kind of concentration would block her senses. Instead she simply drifted. And she found herself thinking, not of the Staff itself, or of how she had made it, or of its cost, but rather of Andelain and beauty.

If she had not visited that bastion of loveliness with Thomas Covenant, she would not have loved the Land as he did. Until that time, she had known only the Sunbane; and so the ineffable glory of Earthpower had been hidden from her.

"Sensing that the Staff had been abandoned," Esmer said as if from an impossible distance, "these Waynhim sought it out, that they might preserve it from the Despiser's Servants."

Linden could almost hear the Forestal of Andelain's song. It had been retained in the depths of her memories, melodic as trees, poignant as flowers: an eldritch music which had spangled and enumerated with glory every blade of grass, every petal, every leaf, every woodland creature.

"Yet the nearness of the Staff harms all Demondimspawn." Esmer's voice had beCome a threnody in the dim ravine. "Over the years, it would unmake these Waynhim entirely. Therefore they selected from among their number one to bear the burdenone to transport the Staff from its former resting place, and here to become its final guardian. Thus the Waynhim hoped to satisfy their Weird without bringing ruin upon this rhysh, for it is the last in all the Land.

"The outcome of their choosing stands before us."

Perpetually wounded in the name of service.

Like the Waynhim, the Forestal's song was full of sorrow, carried on an undercurrent of woe. And like the Waynhim, it did not flinch from its own resolve.

Oh, Andelain! Forgive! For I am doomed to fail this war.

I cannot bear to see you die-and live, Foredoomed to bitterness and all the grey Despiser's lore.

But while I can I heed the call Of green and tree; and for their worth I hold the glaive of Law against the Earth.

Linden's memories of Andelain and music bore her along until she found what she sought: the precise aura and potency of the Staff of Law.

"And yet," Mahrtiir put in, "they would refuse the Staff to the Ringthane, she who above all others has the greatest need-"

He stopped, unable to express his bafflement and chagrin.

"Manethrall," answered Esmer, "they must satisfy their Weird. I have named their reasons. They do not count the cost to themselves."

They did not; but Linden counted it for them. She had spent her life responding to such needs.

Her nerves recognized the Staff with gladness. The Land had gifted her with healthsense, and she could not mistake the Staff's particular emanations. It was the incarnation of rightness, the tangible bulwark of the strictures, sequences, necessities-the commandments-which made life and beauty possible.

While it remained intact, Lord Foul could never entirely extinguish hope.

And she was its maker. Inspired by her love for Covenant and the Land, for all of her friends, she had expended herself in white fire to create an instrument against the Sunbane. She did not need to be in contact with it in order to wield its benison. She needed only to feel its strength and know that it was hers.

Guided and controlled, Esmer had said. By a condign hand.

Kneeling still, with her eyes closed and her head bowed, Linden Avery the Chosen reached out to claim the only power which had ever truly belonged to her.

Somewhere in the distance, Liand whispered, "Heaven and Earth! Look to her. She is exalted-"

Together, as if they had momentarily set aside their antagonism, Esmer and Stave replied, "She has discovered the Staff."

"What will she do?" Liand asked in wonder.

Stave did not reply; but Esmer murmured softly, "Behold."

Filling her hands with the vast possibilities of Law, Linden turned her thoughts to the damaged Waynhim standing unsteadily before her.

Her eyes remained closed. She did not need to gaze upon the creature to know its suffering. Its wounds-the inadvertent and unavoidable corrosion of its substancewere plain to her in every detail. Her own flesh felt them.

The Staff of Law had inflicted these hurts. With the Staff, she could heal them.

Thus she answered the denial of the Waynhim. They were the last remnant of their kind, and deserved no less than to be made whole.

When her task was complete, the sun had fallen farther down the sky, and the slow approach of evening left the ravine deep in shadows. Nevertheless her heart felt like daybreak, bright and full of promise."Contrive tIeir salvation"

When Linden rose at last to her feet, nearly staggering with weariness, the healed Waynhim and its companion made raw-edged sounds which Esmer translated as welcome. Courteously Stave and Mahrtiir returned grave thanks. Leaving Bhapa and Pahni with the Ranyhyn, and the urviles to fend for themselves, Linden and her small company followed the Waynhim into the cave.

She leaned heavily against Liand, needing his support.

And Mahrtiir held Anele upright: the old man seemed too lost to fend for himself. Stave walked alone, while Esmer trailed behind as if he had been dispossessed.

Formal as a procession, they proceeded along the dark stone throat until they reached a turning, where the passage opened into a wide chamber lit like a meeting hall. There the rest of the rhysh waited to offer welcome also, bowing after their fashion and chittering among themselves like delighted birds.

Healing the creature that warded the Staff, Linden had apparently healed them all. Even the Waynhim which had first met her in the ravine had lost its grieving air, and none of the others showed any signs of harm.

She had in some sense validated the meaning of their lives.

After the summer heat on the South Plains, the atmosphere of the cave felt blessedly cool, soothing to her raw nerves. The Waynhim guided their guests to ledges like seats in the wall of the cave; and when she sat down the worn stone seemed to embrace her in spite of its unyielding surfaces. This sensation, she knew, was an effect created by the Waynhim. They wished her to understand that she had arrived in a place of peace.

The light in the cave had a warm luminescence tinged with emerald and flickers of rust. It arose from a number of stone pots spaced like braziers around the wide floor; and flames danced and twisted at their rims. Yet Linden could see that the fires were fed, not by oil or wood, but by lore. Instead of smoke, they cast a scent of cloves and coriander into the air.

Liand sat near her, although now she did not need his care. The Waynhim had brought her closer to the Staff of Law: she could feel its nearness effortlessly. Its stern beneficence filled her with an unfamiliar contentment.

Stave remained standing as if to do the Demondimspawn honor. And Esmer wandered aimlessly around the chamber, looking vaguely rueful, troubled by sorrows which he did not explain. But Mahrtiir also sat on one of the ledges, studying the Waynhim as though he meant to memorize every detail so that he would be able to tell his people a tale worthy of his fierce ambitions.

Seated as well, Anele rested against the stone, mumbling into his thin beard. But some essential change had taken place in him. When Linden looked at him, she saw that his old rue and shame had lost some of their vehemence. He had been ground down by too many years and too much regret; and yet, in spite of his mumbling, he appeared almost sane. His proximity to the Staff seemed to soothe him, easing his long bereavement.

The Waynhim offered an iron cup of vitrim to each of their guests, although Esmer waved his aside with apparent disdain. Then they gathered together in the center of the chamber, forming themselves into a loose wedge with the Staff's guardian at its tip. Again the healed creature bowed to Linden, barking words she could not understand. When she also had bowed, it walked slowly out of the chamber into one of several side-tunnels that interrupted the walls of the cave.

Hushed and expectant, everyone waited while the creature disappeared on its errand.

Soon it returned, bearing the Staff of Law in its hands.

Linden's heart lifted again at the sight. The Staff's unique nature spoke to her senses. It was taller than the Waynhim-nearly as tall as she was herself-and formed of a pale wood which gleamed in the lore-light; wood so pale that it might have been carved from the heart of a tree. Its length was smooth, as if it had been polished lovingly for centuries. But its ends were bound with iron bands, the heels of the original Staff of Law which Berek Halfhand had formed from a limb of the One Tree.

Vain and Findail had given their lives to it, rigid structure and fluid vitality. But their qualities had been transformed by wild magic and the passion of Linden's torn spirit. And their union had been shaped, guided, by the deep knowledge with which Berek had forged his iron. Thus the lore of the urviles and the Earthpower of the Dohim had become the pure instrument of Law.

Eagerly Linden rose to meet the Staff. When the creature placed it in her grasp, she felt a rush of warmth from the wood. Its possibilities flowed into her like heat. At the same time, she was filled with memories of Andelain: of hillsides as lush as lawns bedizened with wildflowers and aliantha; of the proud outstretched health of Gilden trees with their wreaths of golden leaves thick about them; of small streams, and groves of oak, and swaths of briar-rose, all vibrant with Earthpower.

She felt that she was remembering the Land as it had once existed in the mind of its Creator, before Lord Foul was imprisoned within the Arch of Time; before Foul had corrupted the Land with hidden banes like the Illearth Stone, and had gained the service of fell beings like the Ravers. And she tasted as well the Creator's grief. Having created the Arch, the structure of beginning and end which allowed life to exist, the Creator could not alter events within that structure without violating it. Therefore Lord Foul's imprisonment itself gave him the freedom to destroy what the Creator had made.

Such treasures as the Staff of Law had been brought into being so that the inhabitants of the Land would have the means to oppose Lord Foul themselves; to fight for the intended beauty of the world.

For a moment, at least, while she held the Staff for the first time in many years, Linden felt equal to her enormous task. Unlike Covenant's ring, the Staff suited her. She understood its uses instinctively; trusted herself with it. Its natural rightness seemed to send healing into every cell and impulse of her being.

She did not realize that she was weeping until she thought to thank the Waynhim and discovered that she could see nothing clearly. Tears blurred her gaze, turning the light to streaks of consolation, and confusing the definition of the figures around her.

When she blinked the tears from her eyes, however, she found that the Staff's guardian no longer stood before her. The creature had stepped back, making way for Anele.

The old man faced her with his hands poised near the Staff as though he meant to wrest it from her grasp.

Liand and Mahrtiir hovered behind him, waiting to see what he would do; ready to intervene. But they were visibly reluctant to disturb him.

Anele's hands trembled as he studied the Staff, and his blind gaze seemed to ache with yearning. How many decades had passed since he had last stood in the presence of his birthright? How much recrimination and selfloathing had he suffered before he had fallen into madness?

The touch of the Staff might heal him as well.

Yet he did not close his hands on the immaculate wood; did not so much as brush it with his fingertips.

Instead he stood motionless while Linden grieved for him and the entire chamber seemed to hold its breath.

Then, trembling, he lowered his arms.

In a small voice, he murmured unsteadily, "I am unworthy of such astonishment. The day has not yet come when I may be whole." His throat closed on a sob. When he had swallowed it, he whispered, "Until that time, I must remain as I am.

"Do not mourn for me." The effort of renunciation left him desolate. "Know that I am content to behold the Staff in your care."