Surely entering Berek’s camp would be less dangerous than redirecting the entire past of the Ranyhyn?
“I told you,” Jeremiah crowed. “Sometimes she does exactly the right thing. This is going to work. She’ll make it work.”
For a long moment, Covenant studied her sceptically, as if he suspected a trick of some kind. Then he seemed to throw up his hands. “It’s worth a try. Berek is still in the dark about almost everything. He hardly knows what he can do, or how he can do it. He isn’t likely to recognise the truth about any of us. And he definitely has horses.
“I should warn you, though,” he added grimly. “You’ll have to make this work because I sure as hell can’t. He doesn’t realise it yet, but he’s full of Earthpower. He can erase us. If he so much as touches us, this whole ordeal will be wasted.”
Linden nodded to herself. She was not surprised: she was only sure. If she stepped aside from the Theomach’s “path,” he would correct her.
At first, she led the way, not because she knew the location of Berek’s battle, but because she was in a hurry to leave the hilltop. She did not want to exhaust herself by following the difficult crests: she needed the less arduous passage of the valley bottom, in spite of its death-laden atmosphere. So she headed downward across the slopes at the best pace that she could manage, keeping her back to the west.
Her haste caused her to slip often as her boots skidded over buried stones or bones. Sometimes she fell. But her cloak gave her a measure of protection from the snow. She did not slow her steps until she reached the floor of the valley.
There the implications of the fallen were stronger. The mere thought that she trod over abandoned corpses daunted her. But the sun was westering; and with its light behind her, she did not suffer from its flagrant glare. Now she moved more slowly for the same reason that she had hurried to reach the valley: she feared exhaustion. The laborious hesitation-and-plunge of every step drained her strength. And the cold grew sharper as the sun lost its force. If she tried to walk too quickly, she would soon defeat herself.
Before long, Covenant and Jeremiah caught up with her. For a time, they matched her burdened plod, keeping a safe distance from her. But they both seemed proof against exertion as well as cold; and gradually they began to draw ahead as if they were reluctant for her company.
“Covenant, wait,” Linden panted. “I have another question.” She did not want to be left behind.
Covenant and Jeremiah exchanged comments too low for her to hear. Then they slowed their strides.
Hardly able to control her breathing, she asked. “How far do we have to go’?”
“Three leagues,” Covenant answered brusquely. “Maybe more. At this rate, we won’t get there until after dark.”
Until even the insufficient warmth of the sun had vanished from the Last Hills.
If she did not think about something other than her own weakness, she would lose heart altogether. “I have no idea what were getting into,” she admitted. “I know that there are things the Theomach doesn’t want you to say. But what can you tell me?”
Covenant scowled at her. “You want me to describe the battle? What does it matter? People are hacking at each other, but they’re too tired to be much good at it. From one minute to the next, most of them don’t know if they’re winning or losing. There’s yelling and screaming, but mostly it’s just hacking.”
Linden shook her head. She had already been in too many battles. “I meant Berek. You said that he doesn’t realise what he can do. Or how he can do it. But he summoned the FireLions. He must have some kind of lore.”
“Oh, well.” Covenant seemed to lose interest. “It wasn’t like that. He didn’t exactly summon the FireLions. He didn’t even know they existed. But he got their attention, and for that he only had to be desperate and bleeding. And he had to have a little power. The real question is, where did he get power?
“According to the legends, when Berek was desperate and bleeding and beaten on Mount Thunder, the rocks spoke to him. They offered him help against the King if he pledged to serve the Land. So he swore he would, and the rocks sent the FireLions to decimate the King’s forces.
“But that doesn’t actually make sense. Sure, the stone of the Land is aware. That’s especially true in Mount Thunder, where so many forces have been at work for so long. But it doesn’t talk. I mean, it doesn’t talk fast enough for most people to hear it.
“So how did Berek do it?” Covenant asked rhetorically. “How did he tap into the little bit of Earthpower he needed to call down the FireLions?”
Concentrating so that she would not think about her weariness, Linden waited for him to go on.
“This is the Land, remember,” Covenant said after a moment. She could not read him with her health-sense; but his manner betrayed that he was losing patience again. His tone gave off glints of scorn. “Earthpower runs near the surface. And Berek has what you might call a natural affinity. He just didn’t know it. The damn stones were more aware than he was.”
“Then how-?” Linden began.
Without transition, Covenant seemed to digress. “It’s easy to criticise Elena,” he drawled. “Silly woman. Didn’t she know despair is a weakness, not a strength?” He was talking about his own daughter. “Didn’t she know Kevin dead was bound to be weaker than he was alive?
“But she had precedent. She understood that better than anybody. Which is probably why they made her High Lord. No matter what you’ve heard, the Old Lords were all about despair. It gave them some of their greatest victories. And it’s what saved Berek.
“It opened him up. Tapped into his natural affinity. Being half insane with pain and blood loss and despair made him raw enough to feel what’s really going on here. What the life of the Land is really like. That’s all it took. When he finally felt the Earthpower in Mount Thunder, he felt it in himself as well. And the FireLions felt that. They responded to it because that’s what they do.”
As Covenant’s restiveness mounted, he began to pull ahead, taking Jeremiah with him. Without turning his
head, he finished, “The rest of it, all the legends people told about him-That stuff was just a way to make what happened sound heroic.”
Because of Berek, everything in the Land had changed. It had been made new. He had given its inhabitants their heritage of Earthpower. Yet Covenant disdained Berek’s achievement.
She did not ask him to wait for her: she hardly wanted his company now. But in one sense, he had not answered her question. Breathing painfully, she increased her pace for a moment.
“Just tell me one more thing,” she panted at his back. “What’s Berek like? What kind of man is he?”
If she wanted the first Halfhand’s help while he fought a fierce battle that would leave many of his supporters dead, she needed to know enough about him to gain his sympathy.
Covenant quickened his strides. Keeping his face to the east, he replied harshly, “He’s charismatic as all hell. Basically a good man, or his despair wouldn’t have left him so raw. And half the time he has no earthly idea what he’s doing.”
Then, for no apparent reason, he added. “When Elena summoned Kevin, he didn’t fail her. She failed him.”
After that, he and Jeremiah left Linden to struggle along as well as she could.
Gradually the uneven shadows of the hills spread into the valley. As much as possible, trying to conserve her strength, Linden followed the trail that Covenant and Jeremiah broke in the crust ahead of her. But more and more often, their way took her into the shade; and then she understood that the coming night would be far more cruel than the day. The temperature of the air seemed to plummet whenever she crossed out of the light.