The urviles have earned your protection."

Stave nodded his agreement.

Again Anele asked the air plaintively, "Revelstone?"

Linden could feel the Demondim massing at her back: Kevin's Dirt had not yet dimmed her percipience. And when she turned to look at them, she saw that they were too close. The Masters would barely reach her before the horde did. If their charge did not immediately throw back the onslaught, she and her friends would find themselves in the midst of the battle.

When she had gathered her reserves, she called up a soothing current of strength from the Staff and sent it flowing toward the Waynhim and the urviles.

They were not creatures of Law. And her senses could not read them. Still she knew that she would not harm them. She trusted herself here. She had already healed the Staff's guardian among the Waynhim.

They would die if they remained helpless, unable to fight or run.

The Waynhim stirred almost at once, rousing to lift their heads and sniff at the fraught air. Then the urviles did the same. Some of them slapped at their skin as if to beat off insects. Others flung themselves from side to side, or scrabbled at the dirt. Yet they grew stronger.

As soon as they began to regain their feet, Linden called back her power.

Behind her, the horde slowed its pace. New forces gathered and swirled among the monsters. Apparently the Demondim were preparing to meet the charge of the Masters.

"Come on," she muttered to her companions. "Let's go." She had been in danger for too long. "We need some distance."

With a touch of her hand, she asked Hyn to bear her away.

The Haruchai thundered closer. The hooves of their mounts raised banners of dust from the bare ground.

Twisting on Hrama's back, Anele appeared to look straight at Linden, in spite of his blindness. "Anele is betrayed," he announced bitterly. "You have given him to them."

While she gazed at him in sorrow, he slipped suddenly to the ground, ducked past Rhohm, and dashed away "Anele!" she shouted: too late. She had already missed the instant when she might have deflected him.

-directly toward the massed forces of the Demondim.

As his bare feet touched the dirt, his entire aura changed. His baffled bitterness vanished, replaced by savage fire like a yowl of repudiation. Running toward the horde, he seemed to set the air aflame, igniting it with outrage. His feet left smoking burns on the ground, and his whole form glowed like iron in the forge, too hot to be touched or endured.

Any other mortal being would have been flash-burned to ash and cinders. Only his inherited Earthpower enabled him to withstand the abrupt magma which had taken possession of him.

Linden shouted his name. This had happened to the old man once before. In the communal center of the Ramen encampment, he had become a conflagration in human form. Raging at her, he had nearly scorched the eyes from her skull.

That same spirit had claimed Anele again.

In a clattering rush, the first wave of the Masters swept around Linden and her company toward the Demondim; and Anele flung himself against the monsters as if he meant to challenge their vast evil with the lava of his own pain.

He had taken even Stave by surprise; yet Stave reacted before Linden could do more than flinch and cry out.

At his silent command, Hynyn reared and turned, springing away to join the tumultuous charge of the Haruchai.

The Master may have intended to strike Anele down, as he had among the Ramen.

Leaping for their mounts, Mahrtiir and Pahni positioned themselves to defend Linden. The urviles and Waynhim rallied together; staggered chanting into loose formations on either side of her. Liand yelled at her, but she could not hear him through the din of hooves. Haruchai pounded past her, row after row of them. Then they seemed to disappear in their own dust.

Desperately she groped for power-and found none. She could not concentrate: the implications of Anele's transformation seemed to beat about her head, confusing. her attention. When she tried to wield both Covenant's ring and the Staff of Law, neither answered her.

In the Verge of Wandering, Anele had been possessed by flame and fury when he had moved from the rich grass around the shelters onto the bare ground of the clearing. And here he had been similarly changed when he had dropped from Hrama's back; when his feet had found the dirt Oh my God-Anele!

Linden felt more than heard the clash of flesh and bone and force as the Haruchai crashed into the front lines of the Demondim. Too many riders and too mucn uusi blocked her view. Her senses had other dimensions, however. She could still witness the battle.

In spite of their numbers, each of the Masters seemed as distinct as stone: they slammed into the horde like a fall of boulders, heavy and irrefusable. But the monstrous creatures were rife with power. Nacre corrosion beat in their veins, poured from their hands.

Any one of them singly had the might to shatter walls, tear down houses. And they had seen the Haruchai coming: they were ready.

As the riders struck, concerted emerald as vehement and fatal as the Despiser's own ichor erupted in response, coruscating through the hues of gems and verdure to the blinding incandescence of sunfire.

In an instant, the conflict became chaos.

Without transition, the screaming of horses filled the air. Blood and shredded flesh articulated the dust. The first rows of the Masters went down like mown wheat, scythed from their mounts by the vicious strength of the Vile-spawn and the incarnate puissance of the Illearth Stone.

The slaughter among the horses was hideous, but in the initial assault few of the Masters were slain.

Prodigiously swift and skilled, they dove from their falling mounts between gouts of ruin unleashed by the hands and limbs and beaks of the Demondim; ducked under staggering concussions of green force; attacked their foes and spun away. Yet each quick evasion and abrupt blow carried them farther into the horde, deeper among the massed creatures; closer to the center of the Stone's power. And the Demondim were too many, the Stone too potent.

Monsters fell around the Haruchai; but none of the leading warriors survived.

Yet among the tumult Anele remained palpable, vivid to Linden's discernment: a figure compacted of scoria and rage. He strode some distance into the battle, then paused there as if he were contemplating carnage. But he struck at none of the creatures. None of them struck at him. Instead he appeared to gather them about him in swirling eddies which veered closer and then were flung away by the forces of the fight.

Her fear for him snatched Linden out of her confusion.

Banishing Covenant's ring from her mind, she raised the Staff high; and from its end shone forth a beacon of flame as yellow as sunshine and as compelling as trumpets.

Holding the wooden shaft before her like a standard, she nudged Hyn into motion.

The mare tossed her head and nickered anxiously, but did not flinch or falter. At a slow canter, she bore Linden toward the battle.

Toward Anele.

Immediately Liand, Mahrtiir, and Pahni placed themselves protectively around her, bringing Hrama with them, while the urviles and Waynhim adjusted their formations to guard her back.

W.

Ahead of her, the shape of the fighting shifted.

Reacting to the outcome of their first attack, the Masters changed their tactics. Instead of hurtling into the fray, they fanned out on either side of the horde and leaped down from their mounts. There they slapped their horses away so that no more of the vulnerable beasts would be burned or eviscerated.

Then they fought the onslaught along its edges rather than forging inward. By so doing, they gave themselves space in which to dodge and duck and strike back and dance away.

At once, they became more effective, altering the proportions of the conflict. More of the Haruchai were able to keep their feet and take advantage of their lightning reflexes: more of the monsters dropped.

Still the Demondim were too many. Too few were stricken down. And they had not yet made concerted use of the Illearth Stone. Effectively focused, that bane could sweep away every living being between the horde and Revelstone.

Then Linden saw in horror that the extravagant efforts of the Masters did not diminish the horde.

Instead the trees and Cavewights and men and monsters which fell, apparently slain, seemed to melt out of existence, disappearing into the ground; and from the dirt emerged new shapes to replace them.

Now creatures in the form of urviles stood among the combatants; monsters that resembled Giants; savage yellow beasts like kresh.

The Demondim arose from the graves of the fallen, Stave had said, and their touch was fire. They could resurrect themselves in every form which had ever been slain before the gates of Revelstone.

It was only a matter of time before all of the Haruchai were killed.

Abruptly Anele vanished from her perceptions. He had stood alone amid the clamor, a cynosure of red heat and fury surrounded by the fading and solidifying forms of the Demondim, the splashing of opalescent corrosion, the daunting concussions of the Stone. Then, without warning, she could no longer discern him.

Blankness answered her questing healthsense. As far as she could tell, he was utterly gone, erased from the face of the plain.

Holding a shout of Staff-fire before her, Linden urged Hyn faster. With her companions braced about her, she carried her power into the battle.

The Masters parted from her path. They may have assumed that she meant to measure herself against the Illearth Stone. But she had no such intention. She was too weary and mortal to contend with the Stone's virulence directly. Not while its source remained hidden from her; unapproachable; immune to assault.

Her only thought was to find Anele.

Like the Haruchai, the Demondim withdrew to allow her passage. Or she may have driven them back with the Staff's lucid flame. She no longer knew what she did. She knew only that she did not mean to turn aside.

Then from within the chaos Hynyn burst into her path, sides heaving, coat soaxea and glossy with blood. And on his back sat Stave as if they had endured a furnace together. Acid had charred the Master's tunic to tatters, scored galls across his ribs and down his arms.

And it had eaten away the left side of his face. The bones of his cheek showed through the streaming wound, and his eye was lost in burns. Nonetheless he somehow contrived to support Anele's limp form in front of him.

The old man still lived. His heart beat: air leaked in and out of his lungs. The Earthpower which had preserved him through so many other ordeals had sustained him again.

Linden might have shouted his name, but he would not have heard her. The heat which had carried him into the fray was gone, leaving him unconscious.

Frantic now, and stretched past her limits, she whirled the fire of the Staff around her, forcing more of the Demondim to pull back. As she did so, she yelled to her friends and Stave-to the Waynhim and urviles-to all of the embattled Haruchai"Run! We've got to get out of here!"

The clangor of blows and powers swallowed her cry; yet the Ranyhyn understood her instantly. As one, they turned, half sitting on their haunches in order to launch themselves back the way they had come. With Hynyn among them, they stretched for Revelstone at a pounding gallop.

But now Linden hardly noticed what they did.

Between one heartbeat and the next, the battle had dropped away from her. All of her attention was fixed on Anele. She clung to him with her senses as if that might keep him alive.

The Waynhim and urviles had been behind her, guarding her back. Now in an instant the Ranyhyn rushed past them, leaving them exposed to the assault of their makers.

Linden did not see that the Masters must have heard her, or had made their own decision to withdraw. As she and her companions broke free of the horde, however, the Haruchai abruptly jumped back from their opponents and began to run. Some of them whistled for their mounts. And some of those calls were answered. But most of the warriors simply ran. A few followed after the Ranyhyn as if to shield their flight. A large majority, however, headed for the urviles and Waynhim.

In their own way, the Waynhim had served the Land as diligently as any of the Lords. And Linden had told the Masters through Stave that the urviles deserved protection.

Encircling the creatures, the Haruchai took up positions to fight a rearguard action back toward the entrance to Lord's Keep.

But Linden was unaware of them. She had closed herself to all distractions; and so she did not see that the horde had slowed its pace, allowing its foes to retreat ahead of it. Apparently the Demondim did not desire to overwhelm their last descendants and the surviving warriors, but preferred rather to herd their opponents toward the illusory haven of Revelstone. They let the opportunity for carnage escape them.

While Hyn's hooves beat the hard ground, Linden counted Anele's heartbeats until she began to believe that they were not failing; that his peculiar strength had preserved him somehow. Then, gradually, she expanded her awareness to include Stave's wounds and Hynyn's labored gait.

They would live because she did not mean to let them die. She had already lost too many people who had trusted her, and had come no nearer to rescuing her son. Nevertheless she was relieved to discern that they were in no immediate danger.

Hynyn had lost too much blood: the stallion was in acute pain. Yet his hurts were not as severe as Stave's.

The Master's pulse had a ragged, thready beat, hampered by agony, and his burns fumed hotly, exacerbated by the lingering vitriol of the Demondim.

An ordinary man would already have died But even Stave's preternatural toughness might fail him if his injuries were not treated soon. His left eye was already lost, and his other wounds were worse.

She was not certain that even the theurgy of the Staff would be enough to save him; and the convictions of the Masters would probably require them to spurn hurtloam.

Linden's choices had become too expensive. The prices that other people paid in her name, because she had done what she did, seemed too high to be borne.

She was aware of nothing except the hurts of her companions as the Ranyhyn flashed from sunlight into the shadows of the tunnel under Revelstone's watchtower. For a long moment, their hooves raised a tumult of trod stone and echoes, so that they seemed to gallop through the residue of the battle which they had left behind. Then they burst back into the sun's warmth in the walled courtyard which separated the watchtower from the main bulk of the Keep, and there the Ranyhyn scrambled to a halt, stopping urgently on stiffened legs.

Before them were the massive inner gates of Revelstone.

The gates stood open as if in welcome. But no lamps or torches lit the hall beyond them, and the wide jaws of Lord's Keep offered only darkness.au~~Sanrtuay As she entered Revelstone for the third time in her life, Linden Avery yearned EaL for illumination.

In a sense, she knew the high forehall well. She had struggled and survived here against the Clave and the na-Mhoram's Grim. But it was dark now, and she could see nothing to assure her that she knew where she was.

Apparently the Masters did not need light. Their sight was acute. And their senses were not truncated by Kevin's Dirt.

She lacked their abilities. Already she could feel her percipience fading, eroded by the tainted pall which overhung the Land. Soon she would be able to discern only the surfaces around her, none of the depths. She would be blind to all that was not lit and plain.

But she was not blind yet. The Staff of Law in her hands sustained her when she felt too weary to hold up her head.

When she and those with her-her companions and their mounts, the ragged and gasping Demondimspawn, and the Masters who had survived the horde, along with most of their horses-had entered the prow- shaped promontory of Revelstone, the heavy gates were closed, both those at the base of the watchtower and those within the courtyard. The Demondim had advanced too slowly to kill more of the Land's retreating defenders; and now the monsters were sealed out of Revelstone. Scores of people, creatures, and mounts crowded the forehall, awaiting decisions.

With the gates shut, Linden could no longer taste the approach of the Illearth Stone; but she trembled to think what would happen when that immeasurable evil was unleashed against the wrought stone of Lord's Keep.

The choices of the Masters had left Revelstone virtually defenseless. They had denied the Land its heritage of lore and Earthpower. And Stave's kinsmen had just demonstrated that mere skill and strength could not stand against the powers of the Demondim.

Linden did not dismount. She was reluctant to leave the security of Hyn's back. Like the Staff, Hyn's fortitude and loyalty enabled her to exceed herself. In spite of her exhaustion, she called up fire from the Staff and held it flaming over her head. If she could not accomplish anything else, she meant to at least see As the warm buttery light reached for the walls of the cavernous hall, she studied the condition of her companions. Only Stave and Bhapa needed care immediately. Mahrtiir and Pahni had suffered less dangerous hurts. Indeed, they had already slipped down from their Ranyhyn to tend Whrany and Hynyn with amanibhavam and tenderness, stifling their wonder at the legendary Keep as well as their ancient animosity toward the Haruchai. And neither Liand nor the Demondimspawn had been exposed to acid and emerald since passing through the Fall. As for Anele, the old man had emerged scatheless from the horde. He remained unconscious-perhaps Stave had struck him again-but he breathed more easily now, relaxing into natural sleep.

A significant number of the Masters had been wounded, but none as grievously as Stave. Apparently every warrior with serious injuries had fallen to the Demondim. The rest had been able to evade the worst attacks of the monsters.

Gazing around the forehall, Linden estimated that a score or two of the Haruchai had spent their lives to purchase escape for her and her companions.

So much bloodshed-Too much. She had surpassed the limits of what she could accept.

A Master whom she did not know approached her through the restless throng, the wavering shadows, and asked for her attention. He knew her name. No doubt they all did. Stave had already spoken of her.

She could not imagine what else he might have told his kinsmen.

This Master carried himself with a commanding certainty. He may have been a leader among his people. The silver in his hair lent him dignity: the scars on his face and arms testified to his prowess. He wore no insignia or emblems, no marks of status, but the other Haruchai deferred to him subtly, honoring him more by posture and stance than by any overt signs of respect.

Nevertheless Linden ignored him. She had been pushed beyond herself, and other needs were more important to her.

While she could still rely on her healthsense to inform her actions, she sent tendrils of force curling from the comfortable wood in her hands; extended Law and healing to both Stave and Bhapa at once.

Stave's eye was a scalded mess. She could not repair it: she could only clean it and stop the bleeding. Therefore she closed her heart to it. Fortunately his other injuries were similar to Bhapa's: far more severe, but alike in kind. She could apply the same balm of Earthpower to both men. However, she did not neglect Stave's sore hip. And she cleared the cataract from Bhapa's eye. He might have avoided the worst of his hurts if he had been able to see more clearly; if she had thought to treat his vision when she had first gained the Staff.