3.
—Whatever the Cost
035
After a while, the Giants stirred from the circle. Rime Coldspray was the first to rise; but Grueburn, Cabledarm, and the others soon followed her example. Their frustration was obvious. Nevertheless they conveyed a clear unwillingness to demand more from Linden—or from Covenant. Instead, at a word from the Ironhand, they drew apart. When they had walked a short way up the shallow canyon, they seated themselves again, facing each other. In low voices, little more than a susurrus carried by the twilight breeze, they spoke together, holding their own less condensed Giantclave.
Linden could not make out what they were saying, and did not try. They were Giants: she trusted their hearts more than she trusted her own.
She still sat against her chosen rock, facing Covenant without looking at him. Liand and Pahni remained near her: a show of solidarity that she valued, but did not want. And Stave stood at her back as if his devotion had indurated him against uncertainty. Such deliberate faith relied too heavily on strengths which she did not possess.
Farther away, Galt controlled the croyel and Jeremiah. Barely visible against the purpling sky—as remote and uninflected as outcroppings—Clyme and Branl watched for threats in all directions.
Around the sand where the Swordmainnir had been sitting, Manethrall Mahrtiir paced, unable to contain his tension. Linden caught flashes of vexation from him, a gnashing ire at his own uselessness. His tight strides resembled an iteration of protest. He seemed to want more than he had received from the Unbeliever.
Squatting near Linden, Bhapa made a studious effort to mask his anxiety from Mahrtiir. He kept his head down, tried to cast no shadow on Mahrtiir’s attention. Yet whenever Bhapa’s eyes caught the glow of the krill, Linden saw them flick toward the Manethrall and away again.
Mahrtiir ached for a sense of purpose: Bhapa did not. He wanted his Manethrall to make his decisions for him.
Anele had fallen asleep, apparently oblivious to impatience. Mouth hanging open, he snored and snorted at intervals; twitched occasionally; shifted his limbs as if in dreams he sought to become one with Stormpast Galesend’s armor. Nevertheless his slumber was deep: the long collapse into unconsciousness of the aged, the overwrought, and the appalled. Studying him, Linden suspected that he would not hear her if she called his name.
Let him sleep, then, she thought. He had endured enough to earn any amount of rest.
In that, she knew, he was not alone.
She meant to sleep soon herself. But unresolved concerns still crawled along her nerves. After a while, she realized that some part of her was waiting for Covenant to speak. Covenant or Mahrtiir. Irrationally she hoped to hear something that would shed illumination into the gloom. But the only light came from the krill, and from the dwindling glow of dusk.
Sighing to herself, she rose to her feet. When Liand moved to join her, she rested a hand on his shoulder to stop him. With a glance, she asked Stave to accompany her as she crossed the sand toward the stream.
At the water’s edge, she picked out a flat stone and sat down. Gazing out over the current, she settled the Staff in her lap and tried to find names for a few of her many needs.
The Staff was an ebon shaft across her legs, as stark in its blackness as the Earth’s deepest caverns. Caerroil Wildwood had given her runes like commandments, but she did not know how to obey them.
Standing beside her, Stave waited in silence.
After a moment, she murmured like the low voice of the stream, “Escape has a price. I learned that a long time ago. There’s always a price. Getting out of the Lost Deep”—she did not want to remember the bane—“was hard, and I think we’re still paying for it. Maybe that’s why everything looks so murky right now. We haven’t finished paying.”
“Chosen,” replied Stave quietly, as if her title were a commentary on what she had said.
Linden gave him a chance to say more. When he did not, she resumed.
“You told me that Covenant convinced Esmer to leave. But you didn’t tell me how he did it.” By cunning and desperation—“Or how he had time. The last thing I remember”—she clenched herself against nightmares—“we were all about to die.”
Stave’s tone became harder as he answered, “The Unbeliever’s efforts were made possible by Anele.”
Linden turned her head to study the former Master. Anele—?
“First,” Stave explained, “the Unbeliever endeavored to sway the bane directly. Then he sought aid from the old man. Perhaps because Anele stood upon stone, or perhaps because our peril clarified his madness, he met the Unbeliever’s appeal by claiming the sunstone. Then he reached out to his parents among the Dead. In response, Sunder Graveler and Hollian eh-Brand appeared before us as the bane prepared to strike. At once, however, they withdrew. In their stead, the spectre of High Lord Elena came or was compelled to our succor.
“Such was her anguish, Chosen, that she drew the heed of the bane. While the bane sought to consume her, the Unbeliever gained an opportunity to dissuade Esmer from our immediate ruin.”
Within herself, Linden staggered. Anele did that? He did that? At Covenant’s urging? How had the old man managed it? And how had Covenant known that Anele was capable of such things?
At least now she knew why she had encountered Elena in her nightmares. God in Heaven! Covenant had sacrificed his own daughter. Indirectly, perhaps: he may not have foreseen exactly what Anele would do, or what the outcome might be. Nevertheless—
But Linden could hardly blame him. In Andelain among the Dead, she had refused Elena’s tormented shade any form of absolution. Inadvertently she had ensured that Elena’s spirit would be the precise sustenance that the bane craved most.
Linden was as much responsible as Covenant—or as Anele and his parents—for the lost High Lord’s terrible doom.
Profoundly shaken, she could not find words for the questions which followed from what Stave had told her. And in his own fashion, he was surely aware of her distress. Nevertheless his voice did not soften as he added, “The arguments by which the ur-Lord banished Esmer ensured that Cail’s son will strike again.”
Ah, God. Trying to understand, Linden asked, “Do you know how Covenant did it? What did he say that convinced Esmer to leave?”
Stave hesitated momentarily. “I am uncertain, Chosen,” he admitted. “The Unbeliever spoke of the peril to Kastenessen if the bane obtained possession of white gold. Yet the degree to which Esmer heeded him was unclear. Rather Esmer appeared to expect that some other powers or beings would balance the scales of aid and betrayal on his behalf. He averred, ‘I cannot comprehend why you have not been redeemed. I have given those who wish to serve you ample opportunity. Yet I am spurned.’ Also he said in protest, ‘You are indeed betrayed, but not by me.’ The import of his words, however—” The Haruchai shrugged.
—those who wish to serve you—Linden groped for meaning, and found none. Surely every possible friend and ally had been present while the bane loomed? She did not count the Ranyhyn. They could not have accompanied her into the Lost Deep.
Then who—? “Oh, hell,” she muttered. Not the Elohim: that was out of the question. “I don’t get it. And I am tired to death of people who seem to think that being cryptic is their life’s work.” Even Covenant on occasion. “Just once, I want to meet someone who calls a spade a damn shovel.”
Stave could have made a claim for the Haruchai; but he surprised her by saying, “The Demondim-spawn do so. That we cannot comprehend their speech is a lack in us, not in them. It is not their intent to thwart understanding.”
Slowly Linden nodded. He was right, of course. The shared resolve of the ur-viles and Waynhim may have been inexplicable in human terms, but they had done everything in their power to make their purposes clear. If not for Esmer—
Damn Esmer.
After a moment, she said unsteadily, “All right. I wasn’t being fair.” Then she added, “And the Humbled aren’t cryptic. They’re just reticent. And suspicious.” They stood on ground that shifted under them like quicksand. Everything that they had done in her company had taken them farther from their essential commitments. “What do they think about all this?” She waved an aimless gesture as if she meant the stream and the dusk-clad hills. “They’ve been putting up with me for days—presumably because they don’t expect me to survive. But they sure as hell don’t approve.
“What are they going to do?”
They had been maimed to resemble Covenant. In a sense, he was all that they had left.
Stave considered briefly. When he answered, his tone hinted at vehemence in spite of his native stoicism.
“To say that they mislike all that has transpired does them scant justice. At the heart of their Mastery lies a desire”—he corrected himself—“nay, a compulsion to forestall Desecration. The deeds of Kevin Landwaster, following as they did upon the humiliation inflicted by the Vizard, have hardened the hearts of my kinsmen in ways which they do not discern. Indeed, I did not perceive the hardness of my own heart until my thoughts were transformed in the horserite. I was not conscious of this truth, that for us shame and grief have become more terrible than any other fate.
“If the Land is crushed under the heel of Corruption, the Masters will not fault themselves. They will give of their utmost, and will bear the cost without shame or sorrow. But if they permit some new Desecration when prevention lies within their power, their loss will efface all meaning from their lives. From this seed grows the Mastery of my kin in every guise.”
In different ways, Stave had told Linden such things before. However, his perspective on his tale had shifted.
“They weren’t always that way?” she asked carefully. Like the Humbled, the Haruchai that she had known long ago had seemed as intransigent as basalt.
“They were not,” Stave stated. “When our ancestors first entered the Land, seeking some anodyne in combat for the lessons learned from the Vizard, they remained susceptible to gratitude. There the generosity of High Lord Kevin and his Council gave them cause to believe that the wound of their humiliation might be healed by service. Therefore they swore the Vow of the Bloodguard. And therefore they complied when Kevin Landwaster commanded their absence. They did not grasp that he did so in order to preserve them from the dictates of his despair.
“Even in the time of new Lords, some”—the former Master appeared to search for a word—“some softness endured within them, though it was concealed. But their perception of service, and of themselves, had been slain when Korik, Sill, and Doar became the minions of Corruption. And their hearts were further hardened by the abhorrent use made of them by the Clave.
“Now they are the Masters. Those with us are the Humbled. Their greatest desire is to bereave you of your powers so that you will not haunt them with images of some new Desecration.”
Oh, God. Linden wanted to defend herself, to argue on her own behalf, and could not. Long ago, turiya Raver had told her much the same thing. As if the final truth about her were beyond question, he had said, You are being forged as iron is forged to achieve the ruin of the Earth. Descrying destruction, you will be driven to commit all destruction.
And the Despiser had already succeeded with her. She had awakened the Worm—
But Stave was not done. Stiffly he continued, “Yet you have brought the Unbeliever among us. The ur-Lord Thomas Covenant. For the Masters, as for all Haruchai, he is the true Halfhand, Illender, Prover of Life. We have no experience of High Lord Berek Heartthew. We have merely heard his tale. But Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever is another matter altogether.
“He has forbidden the Humbled to oppose you. Indeed, he has demanded their fidelity to you. And his deeds in your name—his very manner toward you—confirm his desires.
“Thus the Humbled are caught in a contradiction for which they have no answer. They execrate those actions which they perceive as Desecration. Yet the Unbeliever himself stands before them, he whom they have been maimed to emulate. By his mere presence, he falsifies their understanding of Desecration.
“Now they must refuse him and grieve, or they must accept you and be shamed. Either choice is intolerable. Nevertheless they remain Haruchai. Therefore they must choose. Yet they cannot—and must—and cannot—and must.”
Finally the undercurrent of ire in Stave’s tone left him. He sounded almost gentle as he said, “For this reason, Linden, if for no other, they will withhold their opposition from you. Rather they will serve the Unbeliever. He is the ur-Lord, the Halfhand. They will trust in him to answer their contradiction.”
His assertion was like a promise of hope. Yet it did not comfort her. She was not one of the Land’s true heroes. Her loves were too small, too specific; too human. And she carried a burden of anger and darkness too heavy to be set down. Covenant had rejected her love. How could she trust any hope that depended on his support?
As calmly as she could, she asked, “How did you do it, Stave? How did you become so different?” In Revelstone, he had answered that question. Nevertheless she needed to ask it again. “You see things that the other Masters don’t. And you care differently.” He had called her by her given name. “How did that happen?”
He did not hesitate. As if the truth had become easy for him, he replied, “The Ranyhyn have laughed at my pride and shame. And the kindliness of their laughter has eased my fear of grief. Made one with them, and with you, by the eldritch waters of their tarn, I was resurrected to myself.”
After a moment, Linden was relieved to realize that her eyes were full of tears. They flowed like the stream, and with the same offer of solace. If nothing else, she had recovered her ability to weep.
Perhaps her bedrock despair was not as unyielding as she had feared.
036
Later she returned to the stretch of sand where Covenant sat with Liand, Pahni, and Bhapa. While Mahrtiir paced, and Anele snored to himself, Galt stood with Jeremiah and the croyel like a carving in the Hall of Gifts, a close grouping of conflicted figures as unreadable as the first dim gleam of stars. Farther up the canyon, the Swordmainnir continued their Giantclave, speaking quietly so that they would not disturb their companions.
Knowing that she needed rest, Linden stretched out on the sand with one arm folded beneath her head for a pillow. But then she decided that she would not sleep. She feared her dreams. Instead, she told herself, she would only relax and think until she was ready to face the challenge of Jeremiah’s straits.
But the sand seemed to settle around her, adjusting to her contours as comfortably as a bed. Between one thought and the next, she dropped like a stone into a soothing river of slumber.
When she awoke, she knew at once that midnight had passed. Dawn was still some hours away. And there was no moon. Apart from the impersonal glitter of the stars, the only light was the ghostly illumination of High Lord Loric’s krill. Its gem shed silver streaks past Jeremiah and the croyel as if Linden had awakened in the insubstantial realm of the Dead.
From his seat across the sand, Covenant regarded her with argent like instances of wild magic in his eyes. Linden could not tell whether or not he had slept. She was only sure that he was present, concentrating on her as though she embodied futures which had no reality without her.
Around the floor of the canyon, several of the Giants slept like Anele, abandoned to their need for rest. Liand and Pahni had gone somewhere, apparently seeking a degree of privacy. Alone among his human companions, Bhapa had hidden from his doubts and dreads in slumber. However, the Ironhand, Frostheart Grueburn, and Onyx Stonemage remained watchful, although they lay propped against boulders in attitudes of rest. Barely visible against the heavens, Clyme and Branl stood motionless on their respective hillcrests. And Mahrtiir still paced, measuring out his frustration in bearable increments. To avoid disturbing the sleepers, he had gone down to the water’s edge, where he fretted back and forth beside the stream.
As quietly as she could, Linden grasped the Staff of Law and rose to her feet. While she brushed sand from her clothes, she confirmed that Jeremiah’s racecar still nestled in her pocket; that Covenant’s ring hung on its chain around her neck. The time had come. She was not ready for it. Perhaps she had never been ready for anything. Nevertheless she had made up her mind.
Now or never.
How often had she said that to herself?
But when she turned toward Galt and Jeremiah, Covenant spoke. In a low rasp like the subtle scrape of a saw on rotted wood, he said, “Linden, listen to me.”
She faced him. After an instant of hesitation, she went to stand over him so that he would not need to raise his voice.
“What is it?” she asked softly. Had he remembered something? Something that might help her with Jeremiah?
“I want you to understand,” he replied. “Whatever you have to do, I’m on your side. For what it’s worth, I think you’re doing the right thing. You said it yourself. First things first. Everything else can wait.” With a touch of grim humor, he added, “It’s not like any of our problems are going to solve themselves.
“But—” His voice caught. When he continued, he seemed to be forcing himself. “Wild magic is like a beacon. Especially now. If you decide to try it—and remember I’m on your side—any number of our enemies will know where we are. They’ll feel it. Even if they aren’t Elohim.”
Awkwardly he spread his hands as if to show her that they were full of darkness. “Please believe me, Linden. I’m not advising you. I’m not trying to tell you what to do—or what not to do. Just be aware. There’s more than one kind of danger here. Caesures aren’t the only bad thing that can happen when somebody uses white gold.”
Linden heard the tension in his tone; but she was not really listening. As soon as she realized that he had nothing to offer except a warning, her attention shied away. She could not afford to be even more afraid. Not now. Not while her first and most necessary commitment was to Jeremiah.
She had already been given enough warnings.
As if she were answering Covenant’s appeal, she said, “So Kastenessen knows where Joan is.”
“That’s not—!” Covenant began with sudden ferocity. But then he caught himself. More mildly, he said, “Of course he knows. Hellfire, Linden. I’m starting to think even I know. Or I would, if I could just remember. Or I should be able to guess.
“All I’m trying to say is, I’m on your side.” He may have meant, Whatever happens. “I trust you.”
His response struck a sudden spark into the tinder of her heart. Before she could stop herself, she retorted in a whisper as scalding as tears, “You keep saying that, but I don’t know what it means. You told me not to touch you!”
Do you think I love anyone enough to leave Jeremiah the way he is?
Just for an instant, he looked so stricken that she thought he might cry out. But then the lines of his face resumed their familiar strictures. Masking the reflections in his eyes, he said gruffly, “I’m broken, Linden. I told you. I don’t know what I’m becoming, and I don’t know what I’ll have to do about it. I trust you. It’s me I’m worried about.”
With one truncated finger, he pointed at Jeremiah. “Try everything you can think of. We need him.”
Then he withdrew into himself. He had not fallen into his memories: that was plain. Nevertheless he had erected a barrier against her.
For a moment longer, she glared at him, striving by force of will and need to make him meet her gaze. God, she wanted—! But there was nothing that she could say. And she had no right to rail at him. Not after doing him so much harm.
Aching, she turned toward Jeremiah, Galt, and the croyel.
Briefly she paused to rally her resolve. Then she said to Galt, “Come on. We should let the others sleep as long as they can. Let’s climb out of this canyon.”
From an open ridge or hilltop, she might find some form of guidance among the stars.
The hairless skull of the croyel cast Galt’s face into shadow: she felt rather than saw him nod. At once, he drew Jeremiah away from the sleepers toward one of the easier slopes on the northern side of the canyon. As he walked, the krill’s gem cast shifting gleams like omens across the bare dirt and shale of the hillsides.
Linden followed, bracing herself on the Staff. Stave fell into step at her side. Together Coldspray and Grueburn rose to accompany her, leaving Stonemage to watch over the others. With the nerves of her skin, Linden tasted Mahrtiir’s indecision; knew the moment when he made up his mind. Leaving the stream, he went to Covenant and stood there until Covenant muttered a familiar curse and heaved himself to his feet. The two men trailed after Coldspray and Grueburn.
As Galt started upward, picking a careful path in the darkness, Stave said quietly, “Chosen, there remains one matter of which you have not been apprised.” Then he paused.
Concentrating on the uncertainties of the slope, Linden asked, “Yes?” to prompt him.
“While you were absent within yourself,” he replied, “the Unbeliever sought aid for you from the Ardent. He desired your return, as did all who accompany you. But the Ardent professed himself unable to succor you.”
Again Stave paused. When he resumed, Linden heard hints of anger and apprehension in his tone.
“Here I must be exact, for I cannot interpret his words. To the Unbeliever, the Ardent answered, ‘The lady has gone beyond my ken. I perceive only that her need for death is great.’”
Instinctively Linden flinched.
“ ‘Or perchance,’” Stave continued, “ ‘the need is her son’s. But do I speak of her death, or of her son’s? Does her plight, or his, require the deaths of others? Such matters have become fluid. Every current alters them.’”
Without inflection, the former Master admitted, “I have scrupled to speak of this. If it is indeed sooth that your fate is now ‘writ in water,’ of what worth are further pronouncements? The import of the Ardent’s words may be vast or trivial. Unable to distinguish augury from emptiness, I thought to spare you added alarm.”
“But now?” Linden asked more sharply than she intended. Why tell me now?
“Now,” Stave answered, “I fear for you. Should you fail, the outcome will be heinous to you. And should you succeed”—he appeared to consider the night’s implications—“we cannot know what will emerge from the clutches of the croyel. In this matter, I now perceive that I resemble the Unbeliever. I seek both to assure you of my place at your side and to caution you against every form of peril.”
“All right,” Linden muttered. “Fine.” The ascent that Galt had selected was not difficult: she was breathing harder than necessary. “So the Ardent thinks that one of us needs death. Or deaths. Or we did. Or we will. So what? How is that a surprise? The Worm of the World’s End is coming. Everything is about death.”
Her father had killed himself in front of her. She had ended her mother’s life. For her, becoming a doctor had begun as an attempt to reject the legacy of her parents. If she turned her back on Jeremiah’s plight, she would have nothing left except warnings and doom.
Stave’s only response was a firm nod, as if his acceptance of her had become complete.
Now I fear for you. That scared Linden. Its mere simplicity made it more ominous. But in her former life, she had faced innumerable emergencies: she knew the dangers of panic. Since that time, she had fallen so far from herself that Linden Avery the physician no longer seemed to exist. Climbing the hillside with a clog of dread in her throat, however, she felt old reflexes return to life. Her sense of peril triggered responses so deeply trained that they were almost autonomic. Gradually calm settled into her nerves. Step by step, she shed her fears, and began to breathe more easily.
She could do this, she told herself. As long as she refused to panic. And here she was not alone. Several of her friends accompanied her, of course—but she was not thinking of them. No, where Jeremiah’s possession was concerned, she was not alone because the Land itself stood with her. Its gifts were her aides, her surgical team: health-sense, the Staff of Law, Loric’s krill, even wild magic. In spite of a landscape left arid and stricken by ancient warfare and bloodshed, she and Jeremiah ascended a hillside in a place where health and self-determination and even sanity were his birthright.
In addition, she had other help, aid for which she had not asked. Roused by Pahni’s skilled instincts, or by his own empathy, Liand trailed behind Covenant and Mahrtiir. In one hand, the Stonedownor held his piece of orcrest shining in the dark like a sustained moment of sunlight; a small display of wonder, human and ineffable. Already his light blurred the crisp precision of the stars.
Linden wanted to send him away. She intended to spare him. For Jeremiah’s sake, she did not.
More friends. More support. More Earthpower.
Here, if nowhere else in the Land, she could do this.
As long as she was careful.
Her pulse was strong in her veins, hard but unappalled, as she and Stave topped the rise a few paces behind Galt and Jeremiah, and reached the crest of a ridge like a contorted spine twisting east and south away from the distant loom of Landsdrop.
Here the whole ridgecrest was an exposed seam of gypsum, sickly white against the darker terrain: a pale road into the east. Around Linden, the wan glitter of starlight lay like immanence on the friable crust. On one side, the hills piled higher against the south. On the other, they canted slowly lower, apparently slumping toward the fens and marshes of Sarangrave Flat. From her vantage, she seemed able to see for leagues in spite of the darkness; yet she descried no sign of the Sarangrave itself. Its ominous sprawl was still occluded by hills, or it was simply too far away for her senses. The breeze blowing over the baked slopes was cool, almost chill, and slightly moist; but it suggested none of the Sarangrave’s verdure and rot, or of the lurker’s bitter appetites.
Black against the softer hues of minerals and sandstone, Clyme stood atop a hill a long stone’s throw to the north. From the far side of the canyon, Branl watched the south.
Galt had stopped Jeremiah at the highest point of the ridge. Now he turned the boy to face Linden. As Linden and Stave halted as well, the Ironhand and Frostheart Grueburn arrived behind them. Outlined by the glow of Liand’s Sunstone, Covenant plodded upward in stark contrast to blind Mahrtiir’s lighter, more confident strides. Soon Liand and Pahni would reach the foot of the ascent.
All right, Linden said to herself. The time had come.
Placing herself so that the shadow of Jeremiah’s head protected her eyes from the krill’s piercing silver, she leaned on the Staff and considered her options.
Long ago—and without the enhancement of her Staff—she had reached deep into Covenant, in spite of his organic resistance to percipience. On one occasion, she had triggered a release of power from his ring. On another, she had entered him to free him from the machinations of the Elohim. And more than once, she had gone to the extreme of attempting to possess him. Terrified by his willingness to hazard himself, she had striven to stop him—
She could try something similar for Jeremiah. In the Lost Deep, she had seen that the croyel had made its mind and life inextricable from her son’s. She could not simply separate them. But there were other possibilities. Without question, the croyel would fight her. With the Land’s best instrument of Earthpower and Law in her hands, however, she might be able to penetrate the creature’s defenses. One thin neural strand at a time, she might be able to sever or extirpate the malign tangle of the croyel’s grasp. And if she could do that—if she could do it without harming or tainting or even touching Jeremiah’s own sentience—
The Ranyhyn had warned her against possessing her son.
Galt would cut the creature’s throat for her without hesitation. The krill would slice through the croyel’s theurgies as readily as ordinary flesh.
If.
She might fail. The task would be as challenging as her efforts to protect Revelstone from the Illearth Stone in the hands of the Demondim. At the same time, it would require far more delicacy. She would need an almost supernal degree of precision and care. One mistake, any mistake, might harm the core of Jeremiah’s consciousness for as long as he remained alive.
And the croyel might prove too strong for her. She doubted that: here nothing hindered her access to health-sense and Earthpower. Yet the sheer sickness of the monster’s nature might be more than she could suffer. It would hurt her as intimately as the Sunbane, but it would do so with intent. While she reached into Jeremiah, the croyel might reach into her—
If it were capable of possessing two distinct minds at once, the monster might endeavor to rule her as well as Jeremiah.
Galt would not permit that. Liand and Covenant would not.
And if her first efforts did not relieve Jeremiah, she still had Covenant’s ring.
In the Lost Deep, Esmer had said that only white gold could oppose She Who Must Not Be Named. Surely wild magic might sweep aside the croyel’s magicks? With raw force, Linden might be able to accomplish what subtlety and precision could not.
All right. Behind her, Liand and Pahni gained the spine of gypsum. Orcrest spread its forgiving light across Jeremiah’s slack form and scruffy cheeks. It humanized the silt that defined his gaze. Again Linden confirmed that Jeremiah’s racecar rested in her pocket, as ambiguous as runes. Then, gripping her Staff until her knuckles ached, she readied herself to examine the nature of the croyel’s hold over her son.
“Pay attention,” she murmured to no one in particular. “I don’t know what I’m getting into here. I’m going to try to make that thing let go. If I succeed, things might happen fast.” The croyel would seek another host, or defend itself in some other fashion. “And if I don’t, I might need help breaking away.”
Unexpectedly Jeremiah raised his head. Despite the emptiness of his eyes, he spoke with mordant sarcasm. “Do your worst.” Sarcasm or fright. “Or your best, if you think that’ll help. You can’t even read those runes. When it comes to power, you’re like a kid playing with bonfires. You’re too ignorant to do anything except kill your son. If that’s what you want.”
“Oh, stop,” Linden replied impatiently. “Have you forgotten the last time you tried to fight me? Have you already forgotten that you were terrified? You did your worst, and I’m still here.”
Unfurling cornflower fire like an oriflamme from her Staff, Linden Avery the Chosen cast herself into the core of Jeremiah’s enslaved mind.
Entering him was easier than she had imagined. The croyel could not ward against this specific manifestation of Earthpower and health-sense—or it did not wish to oppose her. And Jeremiah’s natural barriers were too weak to resist her. Between heartbeats, she found herself in a place like a graveyard at dusk, in twilight so dim and grainy that it might never have known full sunshine; a place littered with the poorly tended memorials of a fallen army.
Veiled in greyness as if a fine powder of midnight filled the air, the writhen mounds of graves sprawled in all directions as far as her senses could reach. At first, she did not understand them, or know where she was. The gloaming was pervasive and depthless, as if the failed light had no source. No stars shone overhead. The black sky was impermeable, as blank as the lid of a tomb. Nothing stirred the air, neither cold nor heat nor recognition. Nothing grew, or gave off scent, or implied life. Despite the wan illumination, there was nothing here except an innumerable clutter of graves: the buried remains of a multitude utterly decimated.
Bewildered and suddenly afraid, Linden extended the reach of her senses. She pushed hard against the flat vault of the heavens, thrust discernment down into the ground; strove to relieve the illimitable bereavement of the gloom.
By slow degrees, she began to see.
At first, she perceived only that there was more to the lid or sky than she had initially realized. Some weight or power worked there, holding it down; sealing it shut. At the boundaries of her health-sense, she felt the presence of a dark resolve.
Driven by fear, she pushed harder.
Yes: resolve. Concentrating her percipience, she smelled or heard its bitter force and malevolence; its hatred; its atrocious strength. It was a web, at once tangled and thetic, sequacious; deliberate in its snarled confusion. It lay tightly bound across the sky as if to preclude any possibility that the lid would lift. But it did not cover only the heavens. When she had tuned her nerves to the hue and thrum of its fierce theurgies, she saw that it enclosed the wide landscape of graves completely. It squirmed far beneath her feet as well as far overhead, a sepulcher of magicks from which neither life nor death would escape.
And it was warm: as warm as the force of repulsion which Jeremiah had wielded when Roger and the croyel had lured her into the Land’s past. Warm and malign.
Hesitantly she risked drawing the fire of her Staff into the twilight. But her flames were invisible. They seemed as ineffective as dying breaths.
Yet she felt their presence, discerned them with her health-sense. Apparently her power could not cast back the gloaming. Nonetheless it was here. She could use it.
Remembering horserite visions and supreme care, she extended her strength to pluck gently at one clenched strand of the web.
It responded instantly. From that precise spot, a shaft of lightning blazed down.
Lurid and obscene, it lit the thronged burials from horizon to horizon. Instinctively Linden recoiled; and dusk closed back over the landscape like a clap of inaudible thunder, too loud to register on any mortal hearing.
But the blast did not touch Linden. Instead it struck a grave perhaps a dozen paces distant. At once, the mound of barren ground began to seethe. Briefly it appeared to moil and bubble as though the force of the lightning had liquefied the dirt. Then the mound scattered in clumps as something under it struggled to claw free.
Oh, God! Something alive—
A hand thrust clear of the dirt. The right hand, a halfhand. Missing the index and middle fingers.
More dirt was shoved aside. Clods slid off the mound. Dust drifted in the vacant air; thickened the gloom. Straining, a head forced its way into view.
Jeremiah’s head.
Appalled and paralyzed, Linden watched as her son labored out of the dirt: first his head and one arm; then the other arm and his chest. When he could brace his hands on either side of him, he rose in a frenzy of effort, shedding clots of earth.
He was naked. And he was whole; untouched by the ruin of bullets. Standing at last, swaying unsteadily with his calves and feet still buried, he flung his gaze toward her like a wail.
His eyes retained the color of old mud. But they were clear. And conscious. He seemed to see her as vividly as she saw him.
For a moment, his jaw worked as though he had forgotten speech. Then he said, “Mom,” in a voice like the drift and settle of dust. “Help me.”
Linden knew then that he had never belonged to the Despiser. No servant of Lord Foul would beseech—
But before she could summon an answer, he began to fray and fade. Impalpable breezes tugged through him as if he had as little substance as mist; as little meaning. While she fought herself, floundering to call out or rush forward, Jeremiah slowly dissipated like a banished ghost.
Soon he had dissolved completely; become as crepuscular and eternally lightless as the air that absorbed him.
As the last residue of his plea evaporated, the earth of his grave re-formed to cover him again. Soon there was no sign that he had ever emerged from life or death.
As though the harsh flare of lightning had been a revelation, Linden understood. She understood.
She was inside an incarnation of her son’s mind, a reification of his imprisonment made corporeal by health-sense and Earthpower. The tangling web of magicks knotted around the graveyard was the power of the croyel; the power that ruled him. With cruel bolts of energy, the monster unleashed what it needed from the boy: the ordinary language and movement and memory which enabled the croyel to carry out its charade of being Jeremiah. And the graves, the endless graves, careless mounds scattered beyond the farthest extent of Linden’s senses—
Sweet Christ! The graves were Jeremiah’s thoughts. They were the workings of his trapped mind moment by moment, each as solid as a corpse, and as transient as mist—and all buried alive within him.
Buried.
Alive.
Within him.
In that flash of comprehension, she forgot everything that might have been fear or paralysis. Horror she remembered—horror and unendurable rage—but every emotion that might have limited or constrained her vanished as though it had been exorcised. Jeremiah! If mere lightning could raise discrete fragments of her son’s self, she could resurrect them all with Earthpower and fury. She could set every grave ablaze, arouse in fire every instance of the identity which he had never been able to manifest as his own. In their thousands, their myriad thousands, she could gather them into herself before they evaporated and were reimmured. And then she could—
Possessing Jeremiah, she would remain in his crypt. And the croyel would fight her. Oh, it would fight! With every scrap of its native puissance, with every particle of its gleaned lore and cunning, it would do battle to make her its prisoner as well.
Within the smaller world of Jeremiah, the creature’s magicks were as vast as firmaments.
But she: ah, she existed outside her son’s mind. She had a separate identity and a physical self which the croyel could not grasp. And she was not the monster’s only foe. Galt would not hesitate to cut its throat. Fear would hamper its efforts to contain her.
She could do this!
She, Linden Avery, who had already roused the Worm of the World’s End.
All she had to do—all she had to do—was exert enough Earthpower and outrage within Jeremiah’s mind to possess him.
But she had experienced possession. She knew its cost.
In her metaphysical hands—the clasp of health-sense and revelation—she felt the runes which defined her Staff awaken and burn. They seemed hot enough to scour the flesh from her bones. She could not read them. Nevertheless her nerves interpreted them as if their meaning were written in pain.
She had enough power. She could retrieve Jeremiah’s mind. But would her son thank her for replacing one form of possession with another? Even if she only violated the integrity of his deepest self in order to rescue him?
She might forget everything else; but she could not forget the Ranyhyn horserite. Not again. Not while runes of fire burned Caerroil Wildwood’s irrefragable anguish into her hands.
The Forestal’s ciphered bereavement had assisted her efforts to call Thomas Covenant back from death. She had thought then that she had stumbled upon the sole purpose of the runes.
Now she knew otherwise.
Must it transpire that beauty and truth shall pass utterly when we are gone?
She had made a promise to Caerroil Wildwood on Gallows Howe. He did not mean to let her forget it. Her unfurled fire had become visible; but it did not shed yellow light or smell of cornflowers. Instead it spread sheets and gouts of utter blackness through the caliginous air. In her hands, the runes demanded remembrance, and even Earthpower had become despair.
Her own extremity took her to the horserite. Surrounded by graves, she recalled the blending of minds which she had shared with Hynyn and Hyn; the images which had appalled her—
First the Ranyhyn had told her High Lord Elena’s tale from their perspective, as they now saw it. They had acknowledged the flaws in their foresight, the reasons why their efforts had achieved the opposite of their intended effect. Then—Ah, God. Then they had told the same tale again as though it described Linden herself rather than Elena. They had shown Linden her own inherited capacity for Desecration. And when they had appalled her to the core of her spirit, they had gone further—
Drawing upon her experience of turiya Herem and moksha Jehannum, the Ranyhyn had described Jeremiah’s plight as it appeared to them. They had reminded her that blankness was his only defense: he could only retain the beleaguered fragments of himself by concealment. And when she could bear no more, they had gone still further.
They had caused her to see herself as if she were Jeremiah possessed. On that image, they had superimposed Thomas Covenant lost in the stasis imposed by the Elohim. And they had shown her the consequences of her yearning to set them free.
In compelled visions, Linden had seen the Worm of the World’s End emerge from her resolve to restore Covenant. More than that—worse than that—she had seen her beloved son’s visage break apart and become despicable: as vile as the Despiser’s malevolence, and as irredeemable.
With every resource at their disposal, the Ranyhyn had assured her that possession was not the answer. If with fire and need she breathed her life into every one of Jeremiah’s uncounted corpses and gathered them into herself, she would commit a crime for which there was no possible exculpation.
Remembering, she wanted to howl at the unrelieved sky of her son’s suffering. But she did not.
Like the Ranyhyn, she was not done.
The flame of her Staff had become blackness—but it was still power. She could still try to break through the croyel’s bitter mastery. She could do that without touching Jeremiah’s soul.
As soon as she made the attempt, however, she discovered that she was wrong. Her first flagrant blast elicited another strike of lightning from the croyel’s defenses. A second bolt sizzled into the heart of a second grave. Coruscation moiled and spat in the mounded earth. Again Jeremiah fought free of the ground. When he gained his feet, he said like the gloom and the wafting dust, “Mom, don’t. This is what Lord Foul wants.”
Then he was gone, dissipated; returned to living death.
She began to shout the Seven Words—and another incinerating blast inscribed horror across the twilight. Another avatar of Jeremiah’s misery arose; uttered its brief, forlorn supplication; dissolved back into its grave.
Realization dropped her to her knees among the incoherence of the mounds. She could not—oh, she could not! Not like this. She could not strive for her son’s release: not while she remained within him. Her efforts would break down his defenses. Struggling against the croyel, she would exacerbate his agony until it became damnation.
He did not belong to the Despiser. Not yet. Linden had seen him, heard him. His graves both imprisoned and protected him.
But if his own mother destroyed that protection—Violated heart and soul, he would become Lord Foul’s. Whether or not she succeeded at freeing him.
Kneeling, Linden felt the same aghast anguish which had sickened her after the horserite. The idea that she might do that to her son, not in visions, but in tangible truth—
It could have broken her. Perhaps it should have. But it did not. She still was not done. She had other sources of power. She could make other choices.
In a rush like a sudden fever, she surged back to her feet. Deliberately she tightened her grip on burning runes.
Contained within Jeremiah’s mind and the croyel’s malice, she tried to make her physical throat and mouth and tongue cry aloud.
Liand, help me! Get me out of here!
She may have succeeded: Liand may have heard her. Or he may simply have seen her peril and understood.
Like a burst of sunlight, the salvific radiance of orcrest touched the back of her neck and the side of her face.
Touched and took hold.
An instant later, she staggered for balance as her boots rediscovered the bare gypsum of the ridgecrest under a wilderness of stars. Jeremiah stood, unclaimed, in front of her. The croyel bared its fangs in a feral grin. Struck by the shining of the Sunstone, the creature’s eyes glared yellow triumph.
Stave caught her at once; steadied her. In her hands, flames as black as the Staff crawled across the surface of the wood, elucidating the runes. But the fires had already begun to fade. They had already faded. Only the pain deep in her palms and fingers retained Caerroil Wildwood’s admonition.
Shocked by ebony, Giants called her name. Manethrall Mahrtiir muttered curses under his breath. Liand grasped her arm with his free hand, seeking some assurance that she was unharmed.
Linden flung him off. She flung them all off. She had no time for explanations—and no language for what had happened. She needed to act now, now, while images of her son’s plight remained as precise and piercing as shards of glass in her mind.
Covenant tried to say something, but his voice sounded as cut as the runes, impossible to scry.
Because she did not plan to channel her attack through the krill’s gem, she feared to hold and wield two instruments of power at the same time. Either alone will transcend your strength—Febrile with haste, she thrust her Staff into Stave’s hands. Liand might try to use it: Stave would not.
Then she pulled the chain that held Covenant’s ring over her head. Shoving her index finger into the band, the way Covenant had worn it, she closed her fist on the chain. With her other hand, she tugged Jeremiah’s racecar out of her pocket; held it up in front of him like a talisman.
She did not know how to carry out her intentions. The ring did not belong to her: she lacked Covenant’s inherent relationship with wild magic. But for that very reason—and because her health-sense retained its crystalline clarity—she trusted herself. Her limitations as well as her senses would prevent her from committing any grievous harm. And if her efforts announced her to Kastenessen—or to Joan—she did not care. Jeremiah’s straits outweighed every other fear.
Racing within herself as though she had become sure of her passage, she reached the secreted chamber where her access to wild magic lay dormant. Without a pause, she threw open the door.
In that instant, the ring released a shaft of argent incandescence like the lightnings which had roused brief avatars of her son from their graves.
It was too much: too potent; too dangerous. She knew that immediately. It was wild magic: it resisted control. Its brilliance blinded her. Its sheer force seemed to efface the night. Yet the ring’s potential for ruin did not daunt her. She had invoked this fire in the past, more than once. She believed that she would be able to master it.
It was only too strong because she had called upon it so fiercely. When she had gauged every dimension of its strength, she would refine it to suit her purpose.
Its imperfection is the very paradox of which the Earth is made—
Obliquely she saw avarice throbbing in Loric’s krill. Covenant’s bitten curses confirmed it: the grim consternation of the Giants confirmed it. Joan—or turiya Herem—had already noticed Linden. In moments, the krill might grow hot enough to damage Galt’s hands. It had nearly destroyed Covenant’s. But Linden ignored that possibility. She intended to work quickly; to finish her task before the Master suffered.
—and with it a master may form perfect works and fear nothing.
While Liand and the Ramen stared at her, Linden pulled her power out of the heavens and began forging it into a spike like the flame of a cutting torch, a nail with a point as precise as a star and as piercing as a dagger.
At the periphery of her awareness, she felt the rest of the Swordmainnir surge onto the ridgecrest, bringing Bhapa with them. In the shaped rock of her breastplate, Stormpast Galesend carried Anele. The old man was awake now, taut with alertness, apparently watching Linden. Her wild fire and the shining of Loric’s gem seemed to catch and burn in his blind eyes.
But Linden ignored her companions. Her whole heart was concentrated on fury and white gold; on energies chaotic enough to rend the heavens, and pure enough to savage the croyel’s brain.
It was hard—Ah, it was hard. More difficult than creating a caesure to escape the Land’s past: more arduous than summoning the sheer might to resurrect Covenant. Long ago, he had warned her that wild magic accumulated, that it gathered force with every use; that its fire always resisted containment. She had experienced the danger herself.
But she was not merely Linden Avery the Chosen. She was the by God Sun-Sage! Unfettered, her health-sense made her capable of perceptions and evaluations which Thomas Covenant himself could not match. She did not need to fear true havoc: the ring was not hers. And the blood in her veins was rage. It had transformed every other passion of her life.
For Jeremiah’s sake, she could muster a degree of control that might have surpassed any rightful white gold wielder.
With every resource at her command, she formed a knife of argent which would coruscate through the croyel’s brain without laying waste to the graveyard of Jeremiah’s consciousness.
When her weapon was ready, she moved closer to her son. Holding up the racecar so that he could see it—so that it might serve as an anchor or lodestone for his buried thoughts—she aimed wild magic like a honed scream at the monster’s face.
At the same time, however, she sent percipience like tendrils of supplication and tenderness back into Jeremiah. She did not reach so deeply now; did not enter him entirely. Instead she extended her senses only far enough to gauge his condition while she threatened the croyel.
Rigid with strain, she panted through her teeth, “This is it, you vile bastard. I’m done with you. Let him go or die, one or the other. I will not—!”
The creature’s gaze interrupted her. Its eyes glared yellow terror. Sweat as rank as the halitus of a charnel glistened on its hairless skin. For an instant, Linden believed that she would succeed. Surely the croyel understood that she would kill it without remorse? Surely it wanted to live?
But then she realized that the monster’s stare was fixed, not on her, but on Liand.
The croyel still feared him more than it feared her. It had done so from the first.
A heartbeat later, Jeremiah howled in agony. Within him, energies from all directions began to scourge his interred sentience. Bolts of ferocity lashed dozens of graves at a time, hundreds. Molten earth boiled around aspects of himself as they writhed to their feet. But this time, the blazing shafts did not raise him and then withdraw. No, this time each strike was sustained—It burned and burned him until each risen avatar was reduced to whimpering and ash; true death.
The croyel was not merely excoriating moments of Jeremiah’s mind: it was incinerating them entirely. Dozens or hundreds of his lost thoughts had already been destroyed.
How many of them could the monster slaughter before Linden killed it? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Then her son’s mind would be crippled. The damage would be irretrievable.
In horror and fury, Linden wanted to punch wild magic straight through the croyel’s skull. She could halt Jeremiah’s torment almost instantly. She would lose a thousand pieces of him, or ten thousand, or a hundred thousand. But the graveyard was immense; almost limitless. Like any mind. A gently nurtured brain could recover from appalling amounts of harm. In her former life, she had seen such things happen. And there she had lacked the healing powers of her Staff—
Nevertheless she stopped herself. Jerked backward a step. Quenched Covenant’s ring as rapidly as she could. Wrenched the band from her finger; shoved both the ring and the racecar deep into her pockets.
Withdrew her threat.
Because the croyel—
Her whole body trembled until she felt the barrage of lightning inside Jeremiah cease.
—feared Liand more than it feared her.
Liand and orcrest.
Covenant was shouting her name. How long had he been trying to get her attention? She had no idea. She was crying again, and could not stop. Hellfire, Linden! he may have yelled. You can’t do this! Wild magic is the wrong kind of power!
She knew that now.
Stave’s strong arms held her until her initial rush of trembling faded. Unable to stanch her tears for her, he did what he could by pushing the Staff of Law into her hands.
He had said, Should you fail, the outcome will be heinous to you. And she had certainly failed.
Nevertheless he was wrong. As long as Liand did not fail—
For a moment, stars seemed to reel around her, wheeling overhead as if she had thrown them into turmoil. The Sunstone still shone, refusing the immediate dark. The light of Loric’s krill throbbed with intimations of greed and murder. Yet to Linden the black sky felt as heavy and fatal as a cenotaph.
Stepping back from the brink of Jeremiah’s fate, she had made herself small again: too small to have any meaning among the forlorn immensities of stars and night, the hard truths of barren hills and crumbling gypsum. But she could bear her own littleness. It was enough for her.
As long as Liand did not fail.
Still quaking in the marrow of her bones, she accepted the burden of herself from Stave. The touch of the Staff’s runes continued to hurt her hands, but the burn was receding. Soon she would be able to find comfort in the clean wood again.
Around her, eight Giants loomed like menhirs against the nightscape. Liand stood poised at her side, gripping his orcrest, eager to talk to her; as eager as a man who had identified the import of his life. A few steps away, blind Mahrtiir appeared to watch over Covenant. The Humbled could not: Clyme and Branl remained on their chosen hillcrests, and Galt’s hands were full.
Behind Liand’s far shoulder, Pahni waited with sun-yellow and silver lights like fears in her wide eyes. A stride or two behind the other Swordmainnir, Galesend still bore Anele in her armor. The old man watched Linden and Liand, Jeremiah and the croyel, with his head jerking fearfully from side to side as if he had stumbled to the edge of an inner precipice. With one hand, he made plucking motions in Liand’s direction as though he wanted the Stonedownor’s attention.
Halfway between Anele and Mahrtiir, Bhapa fretted, unsure of his duty to men who could not see.
“Linden Giantfriend—” began Rime Coldspray. But she appeared to have no language for what she wanted to say, or to ask. Her strong jaws chewed emotions which defied expression.
“I was afraid of this,” Covenant muttered. “Linden, I’m so sorry. Sometimes we just have to—”
He did not complete the thought. Like Jeremiah, he sank into silence as if it were a grave.
Quietly intense, Liand said, “Linden, I grieve for you, and for your son. Yet there is an admixture of eagerness in my sorrow, though it is selfish to feel thus. While the boy remains among us, hope also remains.
“And I have not yet tested my strength.”
His Sunstone glowed like a promise. He was the first true Stonedownor for millennia. There was no one like him in the Land.
Linden wanted to cry out, Don’t talk about it! Don’t explain it! Just do it! My God, he’s buried alive in there!
But she stifled her demand. Like her, other people needed to make their own decisions. Liand would do what he could. Somehow she contained herself while he sought words for his excitement.
“In Revelstone,” he said, almost whispering, “you spoke of orcrest. I had learned that it gives light at need, and has the virtue to find wholeness among the fragments of Anele’s thoughts. To this, you added other knowledge, lore which has proven its worth. And you spoke—”
He seemed to swallow wonder and anticipation that bordered on exaltation. “Linden, you spoke of healing. When you had informed me of orcrest’s power to wash away the effects of Kevin’s Dirt, you made mention of healing. Healing of the spirit rather than of the flesh. From this surely arises the ancient use of Sunstone as a test of truth.”
While Linden ground her teeth, Liand said more strongly, “It is in my heart that your son’s plight, first and last, is an affliction of the spirit. If orcrest is puissant to bind together Anele’s incoherence, mayhap it is able also to seal your son’s soul against ravage. How may such a creature as the croyel endure any test of truth? I am uninstructed in the ways of Earthpower.” As he spoke, he seemed to become taller in Linden’s sight; more solid. “Yet both my heart and my eyes assure me that the magicks of orcrest are anathema to this hideous being.
“Linden Avery, I ask your leave to attempt your son’s release.”
Before Linden could reply, Onyx Stonemage countered, “And if the croyel exceeds your strength? What then? We have seen Linden Giantfriend’s flame transformed to blackness. I pray that the alteration proves fleeting. Yet if she who is adept at Earthpower can be tainted thus, how will you endure?
“Liand of Mithil Stonedown, I honor your willing valor. I am proud to name you among my companions. But when you gaze into this lost boy’s heart, his possessor will gaze into yours. Then mayhap no admixture will remain to ease our own lament.”
Linden started to say, Do it, Liand. At some better time, she might have added, I trust you. While urgency clogged her throat, however, she felt the sickening migraine aura of a caesure slam into existence among the hills.
Whirling, she scrambled to focus her senses. Around her, Giants turned, scanning the horizons swiftly. Groaning to himself, Bhapa hastened toward Manethrall Mahrtiir.
“Protect Anele!” the old man gasped frantically. “He is the hope of the Land! It seeks him!”
“It is there, Chosen,” Stave announced, pointing into the northeast. “It writhes a league or more distant. At present, it does not threaten us. Yet it seethes toward us. If it does not veer aside or disperse itself, you must oppose it.”
He was right. As soon as Linden located the Fall, she felt it clearly: a miasma of corruption as vicious as a swarm of hornets, and as massive as Revelstone’s watchtower, chewing its way through the Law of Time. It lurched from side to side, apparently reacting to the whims and impulses of Joan’s madness rather than to the terrain. But it was coming—
Damn it!
“Stave’s discernment is certain,” growled the Ironhand. “A great evil advances against us. Its path is erratic, aye, yet it hastens in its own fashion. If we do not scatter before it, we must have some other defense.
“Is this a caesure? A Fall? You have spoken of such wrongs, but ere now we have not beheld their like.”
No one answered her. “Whatever you’re going to do,” Covenant snapped at Liand, “do it soon. Joan won’t stop with just one. Turiya won’t let her. She’ll keep trying until she finds the range.”
Linden jerked a look at the croyel—and nearly wailed. The creature’s whole face radiated triumph like a cynosure.
For the space of a heartbeat, she froze while her entire reality split into fragments. A dismembered part of her recalled inhabiting Joan’s mind in the core of a Fall: a lorn figure who should have perished long ago; a madwoman so weak and wounded that only turiya Raver’s compulsion and the ministrations of the skest kept her alive. Standing between thrashing seas and a wilderland of rubble, she used blasts of wild magic to destroy small pieces of stone and Time, creating caesures from the riven remains of granite; of sequence and causality. Nothing except her broken humanity and her inability to make her own choices prevented her from tearing the whole Arch from its foundations.
At the same time, another part of Linden gaped mutely at the croyel, crying, Why aren’t you afraid? Surely the creature was in the same danger? Surely the merest touch of a Fall would destroy the croyel as effectively as any physical death?
Why was turiya Herem willing to risk the destruction of a monster that both Roger and Lord Foul wanted alive?
But Linden had no time for this. When her heart beat again, her scattered mind sprang back into focus.
“Go!” With a shove, she sent Liand toward Jeremiah. “Save him if you can! Caesures are my problem!”
Then she swung the Staff of Law and begged it for fire.
If Joan struck again, and closer—If the Raver could impose that much coherence—
A moment later, dark flames bloomed from the Staff; and some of the aftereffects of wielding white gold left her. This conflagration was hers in spite of its compelled blackness: it felt right in her hands. And she was not Joan. She could choose. Earthpower and Law could heal the harm of wild magic. As long as Joan did not contrive to strike the exact place where Linden stood, the exact moment, Linden would be able to protect Liand.
“Ringwielder, no!” Pahni cried. “You must not permit this! I implore you! The peril is too great!”
She meant the peril to Liand.
“Cord!” barked Mahrtiir harshly. “Be silent! This matter is not ours to adjudge.”
Pahni ignored her Manethrall. “Liand, please. You are my love! I will beseech you on my knees, if that will sway you. Leave this hazard to those who are not so loved.”
Linden watched the coming storm of evil and readied herself. But she studied Liand more closely than she regarded the caesure, praying that he would not falter. That the Sunstone would not crumble to dust in his fist.
Liand turned from Jeremiah to wrap his arms around Pahni. So quietly that Linden barely heard him, he told the Cord, “Fear for me, my love. I fear for myself. Yet in Linden Avery’s company, and in your embrace, and in orcrest, I have found myself when I had not known that I was lost. If I do not give of my utmost here, I will become less than my aspirations. I will prove unworthy of the gifts which I have discovered in you.”
“But if you are slain—!” Pahni moaned.
“If I am slain,” he replied so tenderly that Linden’s heart lurched, “you will remain to serve the Land, and the Ranyhyn, and the Ringwielder, as you must. My love will abide with you. Grief is strength. The use that you will make of it vindicates me.”
While Liand held Pahni tight, a second caesure violated the night.
It opened its destructive horrors to Linden’s left—and closer than the first; much closer. Like an eruption, it split the air no more than half a dozen paces from Clyme’s position north of the ridge. Then the chaos of instants lunged toward him. But he sprang away, preternaturally swift. Scanning the hills for other threats, he kept his distance from the Fall.
Like the first, this caesure swarmed toward Jeremiah and the croyel as if it were drawn by the bright passion of Loric’s krill.
Through his teeth, Covenant rasped, “Soon would be good. Now would be better.”
He may have been speaking to Linden as much as to Liand.
Gently Liand separated himself from Pahni, raised his Sunstone high; strode toward Jeremiah.
The croyel’s look of triumph was gone. The nausea in the creature’s eyes echoed the sick squirming in Linden’s chest.
As he advanced, Liand made his light brighter, and still brighter. It lit Jeremiah’s slack features like a small sun, challenging the night; burned like ruin on the monster’s sweating face. Impossibly torn, Linden tried to concentrate on the caesures, and could not. She needed to stop those gyring evils. But her need to witness what happened between Liand and the croyel—what happened to her son—was greater.
“Hellfire, Linden!” Covenant shouted. “Pay attention! Joan isn’t done. Look at the krill! Saving Jeremiah won’t do any good if a caesure gets us!”
The gem around which High Lord Loric had forged his dagger was throbbing like a heart in ecstasy.
Caesures aren’t the only bad thing that can happen—
Joan’s attacks were Linden’s doing: she knew that. She had announced her location. But the effort of turning her back on Jeremiah and Liand surpassed her.
She had to do it. If Liand failed now—If he failed because of her—
Shaking with strain, she lifted ebon flame to meet savagery and madness.
—when somebody uses white gold.
Nearly in tears, she faced the Fall squirming toward her from Clyme’s hilltop. It was closer. Again she tried to believe that she could do this. She had quashed other caesures by affirming the structures of Law and the passion of Earthpower. She could do the same here. Surely she could do the same here?
But Liand was reaching out to touch Jeremiah’s forehead with his Sunstone; and there were no ur-viles or Waynhim nearby to help Linden transcend herself.
The crash of the third caesure would have sent her sprawling if Stave had not caught her. It struck the ridge directly behind her. In the midst of the company.
While alarms squalled in her nerves, Stave spun her to confront the assault.
Virulent sickness nearly undid her. The caesure was not large: not by the measure of other evils which she had encountered. But it boiled and twisted right where—
God in Heaven!
—right where Covenant and Mahrtiir and several of the Giants had been standing.
In the first rush of panic, Linden could not count her companions. She did not know whether any of them had been taken. The Fall was no more than ten steps from Liand and Jeremiah.
Then her heart hammered once; and she saw Covenant plunge down the side of the ridge wrapped in Mahrtiir’s arms. Grueburn snatched Pahni aside. On all sides, Swordmainnir sprang out of the caesure’s path.
Frantic with haste, Stormpast Galesend staggered backward—
—and tripped—
—spilling Anele out of her armor.
With the second thud of her heart, Linden became flame.
God, she hated caesures!
She knew this evil; knew it in every nerve and sinew of her being. She had experienced it too often. She needed only percipience and dread to focus Earthpower on the complex distortions shredding Time’s necessary Law. If she had been stronger, or better, or clearer, she might have been able to reach straight through the Fall into Joan’s excoriated heart. But she did not require that much force to counter the storm itself. While she believed in the commandments of linear cause and inevitable effect, she could stitch them together as she had once sewn a patch of her shirt onto the Mahdoubt’s gown.
Watched by the abandoned stars, she flung black fire into the caesure and began its unmaking.
She did not have to grasp every severed instant and restore its proper sequence. The Staff’s rich outpouring performed that repair for her. And Caerroil Wildwood’s runes made the wood’s theurgies more specific than her own instincts for health and wholeness; more definite. Almost immediately, the caesure started to implode. The collision of energies within Joan’s maelstrom caused a deflagration which shrank as it burned.
In moments, the Fall vanished as though it had been sucked away, inhaled by the sovereign rightness of healed Time.
Yet encroaching evils still wailed in the night. The caesure which had struck near Clyme surged closer. Joan’s initial attack continued the hard wrench-and-lurch of its advance.
And Anele had risen to his feet on bare dirt: crumbling sandstone and gypsum, exposed chunks of shale, the friable detritus of erosion and ancient wars.
Anele!
He radiated raw power as horrendous as the caesures, but far more conscious; full of intention and screaming rage. With gestures like shrieks of lava, he dismissed Giants, swept obstacles aside. A fulvous crimson like primal brimstone blazed in his blind eyes, the hue of fangs in the maws of the skurj.
Howling, he rushed at Liand.
Kastenessen had taken possession of the old man. In agony, the Elohim had come to rescue the croyel and claim Jeremiah.
Linden could not react quickly enough. She was too human; too horrified. But Stave had already left her side to stand in Anele’s path.
Long days ago, the former Master had lost an eye to the horde of the Demondim. Nevertheless he had struck down Anele then, borne the old man to safety. Now he did not hesitate to confront Kastenessen’s charge.
A slash of power flung Stave aside as if he were a handful of desiccated bones.
Standing in the heart of the orcrest’s clean light, Liand seemed unaware of his peril. Oblivious to every darkness, he touched Jeremiah’s forehead with his Sunstone: the sum and incarnation of his Stonedownor birthright.
Galt saw the threat. Of course he saw it. His flat eyes watched Anele. Yet the Master remained motionless, uncharacteristically trapped by conflicting commitments. He gripped Loric’s krill. And he was swift. He could have driven death into the center of Kastenessen’s fury. Could have killed Anele. Distrusting the old man’s heritage of Earthpower, Galt might have slain him without a qualm.
But he could not do so without releasing the croyel.
Freed from the blade at its throat, the monster would surely support Kastenessen. It might destroy or deflect Galt before the Humbled could harm Anele.
Perhaps Galt considered killing the croyel and Jeremiah before confronting Kastenessen. Perhaps he did not have time to weigh every implication, Covenant’s commands against the cause of Kevin’s Dirt.
Screaming like Elena, Linden finally hurled black Earthpower against the Elohim. But she was too late. Anele shed her fire like water as he slapped his hands to the sides of Liand’s head.
Compelled by Kastenessen’s strength, the old man filled Liand’s fragile skull with lava. In a spray of blood and bone and tissues, Liand’s head was torn apart.
Then Stormpast Galesend hurtled forward. She slammed into Anele; wrapped her arms around the old man’s incinerating force; carried him past Liand and Jeremiah, Galt and the croyel. Ignoring the murderous heat in her clasp, the instantaneous burn like a furnace-blast, she somehow remembered to roll as she fell so that Anele’s flesh lost contact with the ground.
In the instant before Galesend hit him, however, Anele contrived to catch the orcrest as it dropped from Liand’s dead fingers. Linden saw the old man clearly. Kastenessen was trying to destroy the Sunstone—
—until Galesend snatched Anele off the dirt.
When Galesend landed on her back in a welter of stones and snarled pain, Kastenessen’s power vanished. The orcrest went dark. Night seemed to crash down onto the ridge like the sealing of a sepulcher despite the hungry throb of the krill’s gem and the swelling rapacity of the caesures.
Galt remained as rigid as a carving in the Hall of Gifts. Jeremiah stood like an empty husk while the croyel gibbered and spat on his back. Gushing blood, Liand slumped to his knees; leaned forward until he rested like an act of contrition against Jeremiah’s legs.
When your deeds have come to doom—
Unconscious in Galesend’s arms, Anele still gripped the inert Sunstone as though his life depended on it.
—remember that he is the hope of the Land.
The impending Falls were all that kept Linden from wailing like a maimed child.