12.
She Who Must Not
024
Like a ghost, Thomas Covenant occupied discrete realities simultaneously, and had no effect on any of them.
In one, he saw everything that happened around him. He recognized every event from the moment when Esmer touched his forehead until he stood near Linden’s collapse above a rabid lake of fire, gazing at She Who Must Not Be Named. He felt everything, feared everything. But he had no volition, no power to act. He could do nothing to help his companions. He could only care and grieve and groan and dread. In that dimension, the part of him that made choices was out of reach.
It wandered elsewhere, among his memories, where nothing was required of him because everything had already happened. Perhaps he needed to recall those people and places and deeds: perhaps he did not. But they did not need him. He was merely a spectator, as oneiric as a figment, amid the fragments and rubble of things past; shattered stretches of time. And because his memories were broken, he did not know how to find his way through them. They were out of sequence; could not lead him back to himself.
Esmer had cast him into a realm of contradictory knowledge and bewilderment where every impulse of his heart was thwarted. Instead of responding to the company’s plight, or to the killing deluge which Linden had unleashed in the cavern, or to her final failure in the face of the bane’s emergence, Covenant remembered.
Earlier, while the company fled from the Lost Deep, he had observed ur-viles reconsidering their Weird millennia ago. The Demondim had not been fools: they had not made the ur-viles to be fools. Even the Waynhim—the accidents or miscalculations of breeding—had been discerning and lorewise, capable of recondite insights. Their black cousins had been far too intelligent for the contemptuous use which Lord Foul had made of them.
Their Weird as they had first understood it expressed their self-loathing: better to die promoting the end of all things than to live flawed and hateful in a world meant for beauty. Perishing by the thousands in the Despiser’s wars, however, the ur-viles had recognized that the logic of their servitude could reach only one conclusion. And in battle at the gates of Lord’s Keep, the Waynhim had demonstrated by valor and commitment that other choices were possible. Thus the Waynhim had prodded the ur-viles to question themselves.
When the Despiser had been defeated, therefore, the black Demondim-spawn had withdrawn to the Lost Deep to search their lore and their oldest legacies for a reply to the challenge posed by the Waynhim. Among the ineffable achievements of the Viles, the ur-viles had probed the history of their makers, and of their makers’ makers, until they reached an era before the Viles had ventured across the Hazard and been swayed by the Ravers.
In the Lost Deep, miracles of old lore had reminded the ur-viles that they had sprung from creatures not ruled by disgust for their own natures. There the ur-viles found that their first progenitors had conceived truths which spanned Time: truths which in turn enabled the ur-viles to estimate distant outcomes. They saw clearly where their service to the Despiser would lead them in the end—and what would be required to counter the syllogisms of Lord Foul’s scorn.
They hesitated. For centuries, they contemplated what they had come from, and what they were, and what they might wish to be. And eventually they reached new conclusions. As a result, they began the assiduous studies and exhaustive labors by which they created Vain.
Vain and manacles.
But while the Swordmainnir carrying Linden and her human companions followed the Waynhim, Covenant fell deeper. Other memories took the place of the ur-viles.
In a different fissure, he regarded an image which did not exist: an image which had never existed, except as a symbol or metaphor for a more profound and inarticulate truth. The image of a young woman. A woman fresh with loveliness and self-discovery. A woman brimming with new passion, ready to give and receive the kind of adoration which would define Her days. In his eyes, She was the reason that men and women had discovered love; the cause of every whole and holy desire.
Studying Her, he saw Her betrayed.
Hers was the tale which had given rise to that of Diassomer Mininderain, seduced and misled; abandoned to darkness. During the creation of the Earth, She had been cast down. By the sealing of the Arch of Time, She had been imprisoned. She was Mininderain and Emereau Vrai and the Auriference and scores or hundreds of other women. Indirectly She was Lena and Joan. At its core, Hers was the tale of every love which had ever been used or abused and then discarded.
The tale of She Who Must Not Be Named.
Heart-wrung by Her plight, Covenant watched Her arise amid water and flames, a lake of conflagration; and he understood that behind Her appalling malice and hunger lay a quintessential wail of lamentation, forlorn and deathless: the devouring grief of a heart that knew no other response to absolute treachery.
Perhaps deliberately—perhaps cruelly—Esmer had sent Covenant to this place among his riven memories. They might have been precious to him, had he been able to act on them. But they were the past: he could not change them.
Remembering love and loss, he, too, was lost.
Nevertheless he knew everything that happened around him. He saw and heard and felt: he cared so much that the straits of his companions rent him. Above all, uselessly, he understood Linden’s protracted ordeal. He regarded the effect of finding her son, and of being unable to free the boy from the croyel. He saw the hopelessness of her decision to flee the Lost Deep. When she had found the strength to treat his hands, his pride in her had been as poignant as yearning. During her fall from the Hazard, the futility of his desire to leap after her had filled him with anguish. With the ineffable discernment of a spectre, he had witnessed the consequences of her plunge toward agony. The despair that had crawled and fed on her failing sanity, he had experienced as though it should have been his.
Still she had continued to struggle and strive. When the thews of her resolve, of her essential self, had parted at last, his most acute reaction had been relief for her. Later, if she lived, she would think the worst of herself. For the moment, however, she had found a small escape from pain.
Yet she was not likely to survive. She and Covenant and everyone with them were about to die.
He saw no great harm in his own demise. Linden esteemed him too highly. But the others—For reasons that he could no longer recall, Linden and Jeremiah were essential to the Land. Dire futures hinged on Liand and Anele. Manethrall Mahrtiir and his Cords were needed desperately. There was no hope without Stave and the Masters and the Giants. And Covenant did not discount the Ardent, who alone knew how to rescue the company. Nor did he dismiss the Demondim-spawn, who still yearned to relieve their instinctive self-disgust.
Everyone who had come so far in Linden’s name, or in the Land’s, had a part to play. Even Esmer might find within himself the will to become his father’s son rather than Kastenessen’s minion. Even Covenant—
He would have given much to believe the same of Roger. But Roger was his mother’s son, not his father’s; and Joan had chosen the path of her doom long ago. Like Elena, she could no longer escape what she had made of herself, except through extinction.
Covenant had been removed from the Arch of Time. His responsibility for it had been taken from him. But Joan and Roger remained. They were his burdens to bear.
Therefore he, too, needed to live.
She Who Must Not Be Named had no intention of letting any of Her victims survive. Doubtless Esmer would avoid Her hungers. The croyel would certainly try to do so, taking Jeremiah with it. And the ur-viles and Waynhim might be able to evade destruction. But everyone else—
Through Esmer’s treachery, they also had become Covenant’s burdens. And Covenant loved Linden. In different ways, he loved all of her friends and companions: even the Masters, who had misled themselves to the brink of the Land’s annihilation. There was no one else who could save them.
Yet he remained lost.
As he examined his circumstances, however, he began to imagine that he was not altogether impotent. Almost by definition, betrayals had flaws. Esmer’s were no different.
The Humbled had caused Covenant to swallow vitrim; and that musty liquid was an unnatural approximation of hurtloam. It provided a partial mimicry of hurtloam’s sovereign healing.
When he had been offered hurtloam in Andelain, he had refused it. He had insisted on numbness and leprosy. It doesn’t just make me who I am. It makes me who I can be.
Now the dour taste and energy of vitrim galvanized his desire to be himself: a leper and pariah who knew better than to heed Despite. Because it was an artificial elixir, it could not bring new life to his nerves. But it made him stronger—
And there was another flaw as well.
Esmer’s effect on him bore no resemblance to the stasis which the Elohim had once used against him. The Elohim had severed him from thought and concern; from any kind of reaction. Esmer had merely knocked him off balance, tripping him into the maze of broken time. He could still think and care and strive. In that sense, he was only lost, not helpless. And anything that could be lost could also be found.
If he climbed high enough, or used his memories in the right way, he might conceivably rediscover his physical present by his own efforts.
If Esmer did not cast him down again.
If.
He had to try. The bane was coming closer.
After uncounted ages within the Arch, Covenant did not have enough time.
She Who Must Not Be Named lifted Herself like a pyre from the burning waters. Even at a distance, She appeared to tower over the company. Her fury shook the ledge in spite of Esmer’s efforts to steady it. For no clear reason except that they were Giants and courageous, all of the Swordmainnir except Rime Coldspray stood at the edge of falling and flames with their weapons ready. They must have known that no mortal blade would cut their foe; yet they confronted Her simply because they refused to accept defeat.
In that respect, they could have been Saltheart Foamfollower’s daughters.
Behind them, the Ironhand still supported Jeremiah with one arm, holding the krill against the croyel’s throat. Despite the bane’s ferocity, Jeremiah’s muddy eyes gazed at nothing. Spittle slid from one corner of his mouth. But the croyel had lost its feral grin. Squirming its talons deeper into the boy’s flesh, the creature seemed to brace itself for one last ploy, some act of power or cunning that might save its life.
Without hesitation, Stave scooped Linden into his arms and carried her to the wall, leaving the Giants room to swing their swords. Glimpsed past lank, untended strands of hair, the slackness of her mouth and the unfocused glaze of her eyes told Covenant that she had become as unreactive as her son. She had endured too much—He could only pray in silence that something within her still lived and loved, and could be reached.
Clyme and Branl had already dragged him back from the edge of the shelf. Galt stood in front of him like Bannor or Brinn: a display of resolve as brave as that of the Giants, and as wasted. At the same time, the Cords had taken Liand and the Staff, their Manethrall, and Anele as far from the rim of the ledge as they could. There Anele squatted against the wall as if he sought to curl his emaciated frame into the stone. Whispering aimlessly, he slapped at his old cheeks.
Nearby the Ardent wrapped every shred of his marred raiment around himself as though he hoped irrationally to ward his plump flesh with cloth. Panic glistened among the reflected fires in his eyes.
Higher up on the ledge, the ur-viles and Waynhim barked feverishly, strident with imprecations or despair. Their baying and yells appeared to be directed at Esmer.
Clad in wounds and tatters, Esmer ignored the Demondim-spawn. Apparently his efforts to scorn the people whom he had betrayed had failed. Dismay twisted his visage as he regarded the bane.
Relishing its immanent feast, She Who Must Not Be Named glowered higher and howled like a call for vengeance. Soon She would loom over the company.
Abruptly the croyel croaked in Jeremiah’s voice, “Esmer. Get us out of here. Esmer.”
Coldspray tightened her grip threateningly; but the monster was too frightened to heed the pain of the krill.
“It wasn’t supposed to come to this,” the croyel gasped. “She wasn’t supposed to be able to stop the skurj. You have to save us.”
Only Jeremiah’s loose features and silted gaze confirmed that the boy was not pleading for himself.
“You won’t regret it. Kastenessen will forgive you. He’ll heal you. If he doesn’t, we’ll make him. But you have to get us out of here.”
There it was: the path out of himself that Covenant needed. If Linden had been able to hear the croyel, its use of Jeremiah would have clawed her soul. In her present state, she was spared that immediate hurt. But Covenant felt it on her behalf. Her pain was his.
It reminded him—
Hit me. Hit me again.
In Andelain, his first taste of corporeal pain had brought him back to himself, albeit temporarily. It had confirmed the bond between his body and his spirit.
Now the thought of what Linden would suffer when she regained consciousness was enough. Vitrim had given him strength. And he was a rightful white gold wielder. He stood in the indirect presence of wild magic that Esmer would not or could not block.
Defying Esmer’s influence, Thomas Covenant stepped out of the Land’s past and became present.
Instant consternation lashed in Esmer’s eyes. He shrank back as if he dreaded what the Unbeliever had become.
Ignoring Cail’s son, Covenant turned away. His hands and feet were still numb; dead. But they were not useless. Thanks to Linden, he could flex his fingers. When the time came—if he lived that long—he would be able to grasp the krill.
But he did not need Loric’s dagger now. It would not daunt She Who Must Not Be Named. He required other suasions.
How much time had passed? The bane had not reached the ledge yet, but She had the power to strike whenever She wished.
Had She felt the change in him? Did She mean to destroy him first? Did She see in him an image of Her first betrayer?
Perhaps. That was possible. He did not doubt that the stains of what he had done to Lena—and, in a different fashion, to Elena—still clung to him. She Who Must Not Be Named may well have discerned his resemblance to the Despiser.
But if She wanted terror from him, retribution for his crimes, she was going to be disappointed.
The Humbled met Covenant’s return with widened eyes, raised eyebrows. They did not resist as he pulled his arms free of Branl and Clyme, stepped past Galt.
In two strides, he reached Stave and Linden.
“Attend, Swordmainnir,” called Mahrtiir softly. “The first Ringthane stands among us once more.”
His voice should have been too small to pierce the bane’s fiery clamor. Yet the Giants heard him. Kindwind, Grueburn, and Latebirth turned sharply to peer at Covenant. Their comrades took a step back from the rim of the ledge.
Linden lay limp in Stave’s arms. She saw nothing, heard nothing. In her snagged and punctured shirt, her stigmatized jeans, she looked as forlorn as a waif; too weak to continue breathing. Just for an instant, Covenant remembered that he had seen her like this before. When he had rescued her from the Clave, she had been as unreactive; as beaten. Turiya Herem had touched her, and she had fled into herself to escape the implications of the Raver’s malice.
But she had recovered. After a while, she had come back to Covenant. He had to believe that she would so do again.
Lord Foul had proclaimed that her fate was written in water. Perhaps the Despiser had spoken more truly than he knew.
Cursing the ease with which he was distracted, Covenant refused other memories, less immediate prayers. He had no time. Grimly he forced himself to look at Stave rather than Linden.
He did not need words. He saw swift comprehension in the gleam of Stave’s eye. For the sake of their companions, however, so that he would not be misunderstood, Covenant forced himself to say, “I want my ring. I’ll give it back. If any of us live through this.”
Solemn as an icon, Stave nodded. Cradling Linden, he opened one of his hands; offered Covenant’s wedding band and its chain to the Unbeliever.
Unaccustomed to his recent amputation, Covenant clutched at the chain. Awkwardly he hooked it with two fingers to ensure that he did not drop it. Then he lifted it over his head so that the ring hung against his chest.
Muttering again, “I’ll give it back,” he turned to confront She Who Must Not Be Named.
She heaved closer. Heat beat against his face, parched his eyes: the fury of the burning lake and the bane’s passion. If he had not been drenched, his clothes might have caught fire. Her mouths gaped and gnashed, brandishing their teeth. Their shrill roar overcame the thunderous plunge of waters. The bottomless thud of Her heartbeat made his bones tremble.
At the end of the cavern, the flames began to die as the flood extinguished the last of the skurj. But the bane fed the conflagration around Her huge bulk. Fire lapped at the jutting tips of stalagmites, the fanged ends of stalactites, the stubborn travertine and granite and limestone of the walls. Covenant’s jeans and T-shirt steamed until he seemed wreathed in mortality; but the heat hurt only the exposed skin of his face and arms.
While She Who Must Not Be Named readied Herself to attack, he raised his voice against Her.
“Listen to me!” he shouted with all the authority at his command. “You can kill us whenever you want! But first you should listen to me!
“You’ve forgotten what you are!”
Looming high, the bane paused as though he had taken Her by surprise.
In indignation or yearning, Esmer hissed, “You are demented. I know not how you have won free. I care not. But do you dream that you are able to reason with She Who Must Not Be Named?”
Covenant kept his back to Esmer. He had no attention to spare. No attention—and no time.
“You’ve forgotten who you are!” he called up at the eternal being. “But that’s not all. You’ve forgotten who trapped you here! It wasn’t the Creator. He loved you then. He loves you now. And it sure as hell wasn’t us. Or any of your other victims. It was the Despiser. A-Jeroth of the Seven Hells.
“You’ve forgotten that he made you like this. You’ve forgotten that he tricked you. He’s your worst enemy, but you serve him because you’ve forgotten!”
Faced with Covenant’s audacity, the bane writhed as though his words were blows. Tortured visages in wild succession bared their teeth and shrieked and vanished, rolled under or absorbed.
In a voice so immense that the cavern itself seemed to shout, She answered, “You speak to me! You speak to me! I will devour you—I will devour you all—and gain no ease for my hunger! If I fed upon worlds, I would not be sated!”
Gritting his teeth, Covenant refused to admit that he was appalled. “You aren’t listening!” he countered as if he were fearless. “You should. You should at least notice that the Despiser has made you his lackey.”
Fires danced and gibbered. “Do you think to resist me?” With every countenance, the bane sneered. “Then do so. I revel in the struggles of my viands.”
Covenant shook his head. His voice echoed her vehemence. “I said, listen to me. I’m not going to fight you. Of course I’m not going to fight you.” Even he might not be able to overcome Esmer’s ability to suppress wild magic. And if he succeeded, the consequences might be disastrous. A battle on that scale would wreak vast havoc. It might breach the Arch of Time. But he had other hopes for his ring. “I just want to show you something.”
“Show?” retorted his antagonist. “You wish to show? If I have forgotten what or who I am, I have forgotten the import of any mere object or display.”
“Not this, you haven’t.” With the back of his halfhand, Covenant lifted his ring. “You’ll recognize it as soon as you look.” His passion for Linden and the Land and life skirled among the flames: it seemed to resound from the pronged vault of the cavern. “I’m not talking about white gold or wild magic. I’m talking about what it is. A wedding band. It’s a symbol of everything you’ve ever wanted. Everything you’ve ever lost.
“Look!” he urged her. “Look at it. You know what it is. It’s every love and every promise that were never broken. It’s fidelity and passion that endure. It’s what you thought you were getting when the Despiser whispered in your ear.”
Searching for words that She might heed, he insisted, “Trying to destroy the Earth isn’t his worst crime. No. The worst was lying to you. Lying to you. No mortal atrocity can ever be that bad because mortals die. Your suffering never ends.”
His asseveration—or the implications of his ring—appeared to shock the bane. Rising higher, She reared back from the ledge. The anguish written on Her many miens became more pronounced. Women who could have been Lena or Joan whimpered and keened. Their voice sank to frayed whispers.
“Little man. Human. Fool. You know nothing of woe.”
“That’s true,” Covenant admitted, although his experience of loss was as old as the Arch. “Our lives are too short. Nothing that dies can understand eternal pain. But we’re willing to try. And we intend to put a stop to it.
“Let us go. We’ll set you free.”
Some promises were too terrible to be kept. This was one. Nonetheless he prayed that he was telling the truth. Beyond question, the destruction of the Arch of Time would release She Who Must Not Be Named. But he doubted that the ruin of creation would relieve Her plight. She needed something more than mere devastation. Her torment would continue until the Despiser’s evil had been answered. Until She learned to love again, and forgive.
“Free?” She cried bitterly. “You will set me free? I cannot hear you, little man. You are too small to appease my pain.”
Scrambling for arguments, Covenant replied, “Then give me a chance.” If his wedding ring did not sway her, he had other ideas. “Maybe I’ll find something you can hear.”
While hunger and flames seemed to hesitate, he turned his back.
“Esmer.”
Esmer flinched. “Timewarden?”
Mute with incomprehension, the Giants stared. Awe or dread shone in Liand’s eyes. Ignoring Esmer, the Haruchai studied Covenant impassively. Perhaps they thought that he knew what he was doing—
Like Linden and everyone else, they deserved more from him.
Facing Esmer, Covenant said, “She’s forgotten who she is.” Deliberately he took risks that terrified him. “Why don’t you tell her? Why don’t you tell her her true name?”
Cail’s son was descended from Elohim: he shared many of the Earth’s secrets.
“No!” Esmer’s chagrin shook the ledge. Storms whipped alarm like foam from his eyes. “I cannot. I will not! Do you not grasp that her forgetting is necessary? It is imperative!
“Recall the convulsion which caused the rift of Landsdrop. It arose from Her imprisonment. Her betrayal and wrath and weeping as She was cast down sundered this region of the Earth to its foundations. If Her name is restored to Her—if She is enabled to remember—the result will be a cataclysm of such rage that it shatters the whole of Gravin Threndor.
“She will remain. I will depart. But you and all who accompany you will perish. Doubtless your son also will perish. Yet Kastenessen and a-Jeroth and the Ravers will endure. The skurj and the Sandgorgons and your former mate will endure. And the shattering of Mount Thunder will not slow the Worm of the World’s End.”
“Tell me!” the bane howled eagerly. “I care nothing for you! Tell me who I am!”
Through his teeth, Esmer finished, “Do not ask such folly of me. I will not comply.”
“Then I will devour you!” Roaring. “I will gnash your bones and suck their marrow! I will make morsels of your flesh to feed my eternal lament! I will—!”
Covenant interrupted Her as if he had passed beyond death into utter fearlessness. “No, you won’t.”
Fire and rage tried to override him. “Also I will ensure that consciousness lingers within you, so that you may share the excruciation of these others whom I have consumed!”
Face after face wailed like the damned, and found no relief.
Covenant swung back to confront the bane again. “No,” he repeated sternly, “you won’t.” He had no reason to think that She would listen to him. Nevertheless he spoke with the strength of Time, as though all the ages of the Arch made him irrefusable. “I’m not done. There may be other answers. I just need a little time. We aren’t going anywhere. You know that. All you have to do is give me a little time.”
Feigning an assurance that he could not feel, he turned his back on Her again.
She Who Must Not Be Named may have been astonished at his impudence. Or perhaps he had struck a spark of yearning for Her true self into the fierce tinder of Her heart. Women yowled threats from many throats, but did not advance to kill him.
Slowly he looked around at his companions, meeting each gaze in turn. Then he said with an ache of sadness, “I’m sorry about this. I hate doing it. But it’s my last shot. If it doesn’t work, I’m out of ideas.”
That was not true. A strange certainty gripped him: an assurance which he could not have justified, even to himself. He had another gambit in reserve. But he wanted the bane to believe him. He wanted Esmer to believe him. So that they would wait.
Abruptly Jeremiah squirmed against Coldspray’s grasp; attempted to twist free. “You bastard!” The fear and fury of the croyel burned in his gaze. “You sonofabitch! If you aren’t going to at least fight, just kill me! Mom would beg you, if she knew what you’re doing. If she wasn’t so pitiful. If she ever figured out the real reason you surrendered to Foul all those centuries ago is, you’re afraid to put up a struggle.”
Muttering to herself, Rime Coldspray shifted her grip to prick the creature’s throat with the point of Loric’s krill.
Quick fright glared in the croyel’s eyes. The creature let Jeremiah subside.
Manethrall Mahrtiir cleared his throat. “Pay no heed to the croyel, Covenant Timewarden.” In spite of his blindness—or perhaps because of it—he appeared to have shrugged off the massive intimidation of Mount Thunder’s gutrock. “We comprehend your rejection of combat. I cannot speak for the Masters. Doubtless the Swordmainnir will speak for themselves. But we who have been the Ringthane’s first companions and friends in this time are content to abide the outcome of your efforts.”
“As ever,” growled the Ironhand, “the Manethrall is well-spoken. It is a cause for wonder that one so combative of heart is possessed of such courtesy.”
“I appreciate that,” Covenant replied through his teeth. “But right now, I don’t need you. I need Anele.”
Pahni stared in alarm, clearly frightened for the old man. As if to himself, Liand asked, “Anele?”
“He’s part Earthpower,” Covenant explained. “It’s inherent in him,” the legacy of his transubstantiated parents. “He can do things even Berek and the other High Lords couldn’t.”
Fearing that at any moment the bane’s hunger might overcome Her desire to hear Her true name, Covenant faced the old man.
The Humbled watched him as if they were trying to gauge the likelihood of Desecration. If Her name is restored to Her—Esmer regarded Covenant with bafflement and nausea.—the result will be a cataclysm—
“Anele,” Covenant said more harshly than he intended. “You’re on rock. You’re so full of its memories, you hardly know what’s going on. But I think there are still some things you understand.
“I want you to ask for Liand’s orcrest. I need to talk to you sane.”
Anele’s moonstone eyes glistened. They flicked toward Covenant and away as if Covenant were as fearsome as She Who Must Not Be Named. His head jerked roughly from side to side. His wrinkled hands seemed to pluck pleading from the air.
“I hear.” His voice quavered. “I do not comprehend. This stone knows too much of evil. It remembers horror. Its supplication fills my ears.”
Abruptly he slapped himself hard, first with his right hand, then with his left, as though he sought to silence the confusion of his thoughts. Then he extended one scrawny arm, rigid as a demand, toward Liand.
Liand did not hesitate: he gave Anele the Sunstone.
As Anele’s fingers closed on it, he jerked back his head and screamed as if a dagger had been driven through his chest. Behind Covenant, the bane’s raw countenances paused in their wailing as though they had been startled by the sheer desolation of Anele’s cry. As though they recognized it—
An instant later, a rush of theurgy from the orcrest swept away the old man’s illucidity. Between one heartbeat and the next, his manner cleared as if he had become suddenly deaf to the myriad hoary murmurings of granite and limestone and madness.
When he lowered his head, his blind gaze held Covenant’s. Slowly he straightened his back and shoulders. As he did so, he appeared to acquire the dignity of a Lord.
Through a tumult of fire and ferocity and plunging waters, he said, “Timewarden.” Alarm and severity blurred together in his tone. Spray dripped from his straggling beard. “I implore you. Do not.”
“I’m sorry, Anele.” Mutely Covenant cursed himself. “You’ve been through too much already. And you aren’t done. But I’m running out of choices here. We need your help.”
Clutching the orcrest like a talisman, Anele protested, “It is not for this that I am made mad.”
“I know.” Intuitively Covenant understood, although he could not have said how or why. Those memories were gone. He remembered only that Anele held some portion of the Earth’s fate in his gnarled grasp—and that his time had not yet come. “But if we don’t survive now, you’ll never get the chance to finish what you started.
“I think you can talk to the Dead. I think Sunder and Hollian can hear you.” Covenant paused to swallow pity. “And I think it’s possible they know how to help us.”
For the moment, that was all he wanted: a way to distract the bane from slaughter. Somehow.
Dismay twisted Anele’s visage. “My father and my mother speak only in my dreams.” He sounded forlorn, rent by prolonged sorrow and abasement; by a lifetime of disappointment in himself. “There I am mute. Yet in Andelain I did not dream, and still they counseled me. Here I am not mute. I will ask. If I am not answered, I can do nothing.”
Covenant wanted to say, Neither can I. But he kept his dread to himself. Aloud he told Anele, “They’ll answer. They love you. They love the Land. Hell, they even love me. And they haven’t forgotten what Linden means to them.”
To all of us.
Anele nodded vaguely: he was no longer listening. His eyelids fluttered. Then they closed. He began to mutter prayers or invocations too frail to be heard over the cacophony of floods and devoured anguish.
“Timewarden?” Liand’s query was an accusation. “To our sight, the recovery of his mind by orcrest causes acute suffering. If the Dead do not bring us to destruction by naming the bane, what can they offer to justify his hurt?”
“Peace, Stonedownor.” Wrapped in his ribbands, the Ardent was barely audible. “It is a worthy attempt. I deem that the Dead possess no fatal knowledge of this evil.”
Covenant held up his truncated halfhand. Wait. He did not glance away from Anele. Just wait.
Above him, She Who Must Not Be Named held Herself in abeyance, anticipating revelation.
Then Bhapa gave a wordless shout. Covenant spun away from Anele as the spectres of Sunder and Hollian took shape on either side of the Despiser’s first victim.
Dim against the burning of the waters, the fiery vehemence of the bane, and the writhen stalactites, the Dead were limned in silvery evanescence: the Graveler and the eh-Brand. Amid the forces rampant in the cavern, they looked incomplete, as if they lacked the strength to manifest themselves fully. Nonetheless they were like their son, rife with Earthpower. Though they were little more than silhouettes, they withstood the flames, endured the thunder of torrents.
Briefly they gazed at Anele with aching regret. Before he or Covenant could speak, they turned to each other and nodded as if they had reached an agreement.
We have no value here. Covenant heard them in his mind. Perhaps everyone heard them. We serve only to confirm Her woe and wrath. Yet your need is plain. We will insist upon other aid.
As suddenly as they had come, they vanished—
Wait! Covenant shouted voicelessly, not to Sunder and Hollian, but to his companions.
Frantically Anele thrust the orcrest at Liand. As soon as Liand accepted it, the old man crumpled to the lurching stone.
An instant later, Stormpast Galesend swept him into her arms.
—and High Lord Elena appeared directly in front of She Who Must Not Be Named.
When Elena saw the bane, she began to shriek like every damned woman who had ever been consumed.
As if in surprise or recognition, the bane replied with Her own cries. Elena was brighter than Sunder and Hollian: a cynosure of pain wracked by the harm that she had done, and by the use which Lord Foul had made of her. Together the bane’s howling and hers scaled higher, louder. They were a firestorm of screams. The tortures of the doomed scourged the air; lashed Covenant’s hearing. Liand and the Ramen covered their ears. Several of the Giants flinched. Blood spread from the corners of Esmer’s eyes.
Covenant understood. Oh, he understood—Sunder and Hollian had made the right choice. Elena had loved, and been betrayed, and suffered. And she was Covenant’s daughter, excruciated by self-abhorrence for millennia: the bane’s perfect food. The perfect bait. The bane could not ignore such ripe anguish.
But when She Who Must Not Be Named opened Her maws, Elena fled toward the end of the cavern. Covenant’s daughter was a Law-Breaker; but she had once been a High Lord. Long ago, she had been consumed by evil—and had been freed by her father. Her horror of being devoured was greater than the punishments which she had exacted from herself. Frantically, as if she remembered being her father’s daughter, she tried to escape.
Ravening, the bane thrashed in pursuit; flung out long arms of theurgy to snatch Elena from the air. Somehow she eluded them.
And while She Who Must Not Be Named gave chase, Covenant forced himself to turn away. With his partial fists clenched, and his heart pounding out rage and rue, he faced Cail’s son.
Through the chaos of screams, he snarled, “I guess you finally picked a side.”
His last gambit.
Blood stained Esmer’s cheeks. “I have not.” His tone echoed Elena’s dismay. “I serve the Wildwielder as I serve Kastenessen.”
“Then you’ve got it wrong. This is all treachery. Sure, you’ve told us a few things that might have been useful, if we weren’t as good as dead. But under the circumstances, they hardly count.”
Desperation and shrieks accumulated in the cavern. Wails broke stalactites from the ceiling, sent turbulence across the rising flood. The Swordmainnir retreated to form a tight cluster around their companions. Some of them watched Elena’s flight. Others searched Covenant as though he had appalled them.
“I do as I must.” Like Anele, Esmer seemed to plead for mercy. “You cannot save me. Earlier I averred my wish for death. That course is no longer open to you.”
“I know,” Covenant retorted. “But there’s a way out.” Elena’s cries rent his heart. “A way to serve both sides of who you are. Aid and betrayal at the same time.”
Esmer shook his head, scattering red droplets. “I cannot comprehend why you have not been redeemed. It is madness! I have granted those who wish to serve you ample opportunity. That is my aid to the Wildwielder. Yet I am spurned.”
Covenant had no idea what Esmer meant. But he could not afford to pursue the question. Tendrils of power had already grasped the Dead High Lord. The bane’s mouths gaped to rend Elena’s spectre.
Linden had refused her the gift which Berek, Damelon, and Loric had given Kevin. Now she was being sacrificed—
Covenant had no time.
“Don’t change the subject,” he snapped. “Look at us, Esmer. We’re finished. If this is how you aid Linden, it’s just pathetic. You can’t hurt her now. You can only make sure we all die.
“That’s probably good enough for Kastenessen. But you haven’t thought it through. You haven’t thought about what happens when She Who Must Not Be Named gets my ring.
“That isn’t just betrayal.” Swallowing dread like bile, Covenant insisted, “It’s the betrayal. Treachery pure and absolute. With that kind of power—”
“She is complete in herself,” Esmer countered. Blood rimmed his eyes. It formed streaks like shame down the sides of his face. “She cares naught for such theurgies.
“You are indeed betrayed, but not by me.”
Abruptly the bane gave a vast roar of triumph. An avid pounce and gnash slashed Elena’s voice from the air.
Elena!
Involuntarily Covenant turned. But Giants blocked his view. He did not see his lost daughter eaten by the many maws of She Who Must Not Be Named. He saw only the bane’s towering savagery as She consumed Elena—
—who had never been forgiven.
This was his fault, his. Not by me. Then by whom? He could not think of anyone to blame except himself. Who else had failed Linden and her companions and Elena badly enough for the failure to be called treachery?
Fiercely he faced Esmer again. With his own rage and grief, he rasped, “Sure. She’s complete. I understand that. She wants my ring because it’s a wedding ring. She doesn’t care about white gold. Wild magic can’t make Her any more eternal.
“But it’ll make Her victims into monsters.” It was the symbol and instrument of everything that they had ever desired; everything that had been taken from them. “They’ll be capable of endless butchery. They won’t have to wait for the Worm. Hell, they won’t even need the Worm. And they’ll probably start with Kastenessen just because he’s using Her. But they won’t stop there.
“It’s going to be the end of everything, and it’s your doing!
“You can’t want that. Not if you’re still Cail’s son.”
Almost as an afterthought, he added, “If you let us go now, you can always get us later. If Kastenessen doesn’t like it, you can tell him you saved his life.”
Mouths and teeth and fire advanced on the ledge again. Esmer’s chagrin was as vivid as the bane’s hunger.
“I remember my father.”
“Then do something about it. Don’t let her get my ring.”
For an instant, Esmer appeared to hesitate. Storms scattered the blood in his eyes. Winds and screaming whipped at his hair, tugged his torn cymar, stung his damaged flesh. Out of nowhere, hail pelted the company like a fall of stones.
Then he wrapped himself in nothingness and disappeared.
The bane’s glee seemed to deafen the world. Excoriation and rage reared over the ledge. Covenant did not have time to see the Demondim-spawn race away, fleeing for their lives; barking incantations of concealment.
But Esmer was gone.
As though he had spent his entire life waiting for this moment, the Ardent flung his ribbands around the company and snatched them all into darkness.