Against All Things Ending (The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Book 3)

7.
Implications of Trust
049
Among eight Giants who towered over her, and Stave and Mahrtiir, who had never wavered, and Jeremiah, who remained as abandoned as a derelict, Linden Avery stood alone, staring hopelessly at the writhe of the ravine where Thomas Covenant, Branl, and Clyme had ridden out of sight.
If she had been able to look at herself, she would have seen a bedraggled figure, worn and unkempt. Her hair had not known the touch of soap or brush for more days than she could count. After her attempts to wash it, it had dried into matted, impossible tangles. Her features had been eroded by care and loss until they resembled Covenant’s flensed countenance, but without his indomitable strictures. And the red of her shirt had lost much of its vividness, its clarity. The flannel was a mess of plucked threads and little rents dominated by the bullet hole over her heart. The swatch of fabric which she had torn from the hem for the Mahdoubt no longer seemed to have any significance: it merely made her look even more like a refugee from a better life. The grass stains on her jeans below the knees were as indecipherable as Caerroil Wildwood’s runes.
And the Staff of Law, stained to fuligin when its shaft should have been as clean as the One Tree’s heartwood—Its import lies beyond my ken. Even her use of its flame had become darkness, echoing the condition of her soul: stark and irredeemable.
Covenant’s departure was an open wound. Without his ring, he had no defense against caesures and chaos. He could not even control the seduction of his broken memories. And Joan knew him: she—or turiya Raver—could sense his touch on Loric’s krill. Linden urgently wished to believe that he was not riding to his death; but that hope eluded her.
His abandonment left her with nothing to shield her. In spite of his vulnerabilities, she had counted on him in ways that were too profound for language. Yet he considered his ex-wife more important, or more urgent. It’s like Joan has me on a string. I can’t do anything else until I deal with her.
He had told Linden, You have other things to do, but she could not imagine what they might be.
Because Jeremiah was all that endured of the loves which had shaped her life, she dropped the Staff and went to him. With both arms, she hugged him hard, trying to anchor herself on the form that she had nurtured and tended for so many years. He was only a husk of the young man he should have been; an empty hull. But he had always been like this: his vacancy did not diminish his hold on her. And now she knew how he had concealed himself. She had stood in the graveyard of his mind. In some sense, she understood how he had resisted the croyel’s torments, and the Despiser’s.
But she did not understand why Anele’s gift of Earthpower had failed to rouse her son. That mystery surpassed her. The vigor of his new theurgies was clear to every dimension of her health-sense. It should have sufficed—yet it was not enough.
While Linden clung to her son, Rime Coldspray cleared her throat. “Linden Giantfriend.” Her voice was husky with weariness. A little food and a sufficiency of water could not replenish her spent strength. Nevertheless she sounded grimly determined. “The day flees from us. Soon the sun will near the rim of Landsdrop, and still we stand in this harm-ridden region. We must not delay longer. The Worm of the World’s End will not await our readiness to meet it.”
Linden tightened her grip on Jeremiah for a moment. Then she let him go. The Ironhand was right. The sunlight slanted from the west, casting shadows like omens after Covenant. The fact that the Worm seemed like an abstraction, a mere word rather than an imminent threat, did not lessen its significance. Turning away from her son, Linden faced the leader of the Swordmainnir.
As if for the first time, she saw how deeply exertion had chiseled Coldspray’s visage. The Ironhand bore the marks of strain and imponderable effort like galls on her forehead, around her eyes, along the sides of her mouth. Faint tremors shook her muscles whenever she moved.
Apart from his bandage, Manethrall Mahrtiir’s features reflected Coldspray’s. His posture slumped uncharacteristically: he carried himself like a man who had cut off his hands by sending his Cords away. Of the three who had labored to honor Anele and Galt, only Stave showed no sign that he had paid a price. His hurts were internal, masked by his Haruchai mien and his stoicism.
Fortunately the other Giants had recovered more fully. They had fought as hard as Rime Coldspray; had suffered as much from their wounds. And the healing which Linden had provided for them had been as swift as cruelty: it had its own cost. Latebirth still moved gingerly, protecting her ribs. Both Cabledarm and Frostheart Grueburn were limping, and Onyx Stonemage looked unsure of her balance. Nevertheless they had rested longer, and eaten more, than their Ironhand. They looked ready to wear their armor and carry supplies and travel, at least for a while.
For that Linden could be grateful.
“All right,” she sighed to Coldspray. “I’m sick of this place anyway. But there’s still the question of where we’re going, or what we think that we can do when we get there.” Bitterly she added, “Assuming that no one attacks us on the way.
“Covenant—” She swallowed bile and grief. “Abandoning us like that. It changes things.” It changed everything. “Maybe we should rethink this whole situation.”
Rime Coldspray opened her mouth to reply; but Mahrtiir spoke first. “Ringthane.” Fatigue thickened his voice until he seemed to be groaning. “Ere we consider such matters, will you not make some new attempt to bestir your son?” Without his Cords, he was a different man: smaller in some way; perhaps more fragile. Time and again, he had relied on Bhapa and Pahni to compensate for his blindness. “As he is, he remains helpless. And much has been altered since you last strove to retrieve his mind. Can you not now discover some means to restore him to himself?”
Linden shook her head; but she did not respond at once. She had to search for words to describe perceptions which had become plain to her. How often do I have to talk about trust? She had made too many mistakes. Worse, she had made the same ones too often. She needed to believe that better solutions existed; but she did not know how.
With an effort of will, she forced herself to say, “He isn’t helpless in there. Not really. He’s like Anele. He chose this. It’s his only defense. Or it was. That deserves some respect. I can’t think of any other way that he could have protected himself.
“So maybe he’s stuck there now,” she conceded to forestall protests. “He’s been like this for a long time. Maybe he wants to come out and just can’t find the way. But I can’t help him unless I go deeper than I did before.” Much deeper: deep enough to drag him from his graves. “I’ll have to possess him. And that’s just wrong. The Ranyhyn warned me. They showed me how bad things can get if I insist on violating people who have the right to make their own decisions.”
More than once, in differing ways, Anele had opposed her impulse to heal him. Before the horserite, Stave had done the same in spite of the injuries that he had received from Esmer.
“I used to be a doctor. A healer for people with broken minds. And the one thing I learned is that I couldn’t heal them.” God, this was hard to admit! She had learned to accept the truth where her patients were concerned. But to say the same about her own son—“They had to heal themselves. My only real job was to help them feel safe so that maybe they would believe that they could risk healing themselves.
“I’m not much of a healer anymore.” She had committed such slaughter—“But possession is still wrong. I know because it’s been done to me.” By moksha Jehannum. “And I’ve done it myself.” To Covenant. “Covenant keeps telling me to trust myself, but that doesn’t make much sense.” She meant that it was impossible. “Not after what I’ve accomplished so far. What does make sense to me is trusting the Ranyhyn.
“They went to a lot of trouble to warn me.” She did not want to remember the images with which they had filled her thoughts. “I think it’s time that I stopped ignoring them.”
Attempts must be made, Mahrtiir had told her days ago, even when there can be no hope. But he had also said, And betimes some wonder is wrought to redeem us.
She anticipated objections. How could her companions grasp what she was trying to say? None of them had been taken by Ravers, or had participated in Joan’s lurid agony, or had become carrion. But Coldspray’s only reply was a frown of consideration. None of the other Giants offered an argument. Stave regarded Linden impassively; accepted her. And Mahrtiir—
The Manethrall relaxed visibly. She had eased some unspoken doubt or burden for him. His shoulders lifted as he announced, “Then I see no cause to alter our intent. Earlier we resolved to entrust our course to the will of the Ranyhyn. That choice I have approved. I do so again. Few as we are, we can select no better path. Let Stave of the Haruchai summon the great horses. Let us renew our intent to abide by their guidance.”
His counsel was a gift. Linden did not want to make more decisions. And in one respect, she was like the Ramen. The prospect of the Ranyhyn eased her spirits. She could find a kind of solace, comfort as visceral as a caress, in the kindness of Hyn’s eyes, the security of the mare’s strong strides.
Briefly the Ironhand considered Mahrtiir’s advice. For a moment, she scanned the reactions of her comrades. When she returned her attention to the Manethrall, and to Linden, her countenance opened into a broad grin.
“Manethrall, your words are folly. By some measure, they are madness. For that reason, they are a delight to us. Are we not Giants? Fools all? And do we not desire to cast our strength against the utter ravage of the Earth? What fate, therefore, can be more condign for us, than that we must commit every passion and every life to the will of beasts that cannot reveal their purposes? Earlier we assented to this course because we saw no other. Now we do so because it gladdens our hearts.
“If it should chance that the Earth and Time endure, tales will one day be told of Giants who dared the destruction of all things at the behest—I mean no offense, Manethrall—at the behest of mere horses.”
Mahrtiir also was grinning. Unlike Coldspray’s, however, and those of the other Giants, his expression had a whetted edge, fierce and eager, like a promise of vindication.
If Roger or Kastenessen, Linden thought, or even Lord Foul had seen the Manethrall at that moment, they might have felt apprehension writhing in their guts.
“All right,” she said again. She tried to sound stronger, and may have succeeded. “Let’s see how much ground we can cover without getting into trouble.” She meant, Without running into another attack. But she also meant, Without asking too much of the Giants. “I’ll never be any readier than this.”
Nodding to Linden, Mahrtiir, and the Swordmainnir in turn, Stave raised his hand to his mouth and began the ritual summoning which his ancestors had used during the time of the Bloodguard, and of the Council of Lords.
Three whistles, each as piercing as cries; each separated by half a dozen heartbeats. Linden scarcely had time to shake her head in wonder at the inexplicable magic which enabled the horses of Ra to know hours or days or seasons in advance when and where they would be called, and to arrive when they were needed. Then she heard the muted impact of hooves cantering on packed sand.
She should not have been able to hear it at that distance. Perhaps the sound carried simply because the horses were Ranyhyn, majestic and ineffable, as vital as the Land’s pulse of Earthpower, and as numinous as the Hills of Andelain. Soon, however, she saw them. Constrained by the litter of boulders and the quirks of the slopes, they came in single-file: first proud Hynyn, roan and magisterial, then Hyn dappled grey with her star like heraldry on her forehead, then Narunal, palomino and eager—as eager as Mahrtiir, with the same air of fierceness. Just for an instant, Linden thought that there would be no more. But another Ranyhyn followed behind Narunal, another roan, as like to Hynyn as a son, but less heavily muscled, less broad in the chest, and somewhat smaller.
Hynyn, Hyn, and Narunal: Stave, Linden, and Mahrtiir. The last of the ten that had set out from Revelstone with the begrudged permission of the Masters.
And a mount for Jeremiah.
A mount for Jeremiah, who had never ridden and would not throw himself off balance, and could therefore sit his Ranyhyn as safely as if the beast were made of stone.
Linden had watched Naybahn and Mhornym carry Branl and Clyme away. She believed that she would never see Rhohm, Hrama, and Bhanoryl again: their riders were dead. As for Rohnhyn and Naharahn, Bhapa and Pahni, she did not know what to think. She could hardly believe that they would be able to sway the Masters.
But Jeremiah had a mount! He would be better cared-for aback a Ranyhyn than he would have been in her arms. And maybe—Oh, maybe! The experience of riding might serve to guide or lure him out of his dissociation.
She had seen stranger things during her years at Berenford Memorial. Sometimes a simple touch was enough, if it were the right touch given at the right moment—by the right person.
Her hugs were not the reassurance that Jeremiah needed; or she was not. The knowledge was anguish. Nonetheless she told herself that she could be content with any form of consolation that restored his mind.
In their disparate fashions, Stave and Mahrtiir greeted the approach of the Ranyhyn. As the Giants watched, simultaneously bemused and entranced, the former Master spoke formally of Land-riders and proud-bearers, sun-flesh and sky-mane. At the same time, the Manethrall prostrated himself, pressing his forehead to the sand in a manner that seemed both self-effacing and exultant.
Clearly none of the horses had run hard or suffered trials: a dramatic contrast to their state when they had been called in Andelain. They must have left the Hills in plenty of time, and known of a comparatively direct descent from the Upper Land.
With his neck imperiously arched, Hynyn stamped to a halt in front of Stave and whinnied like a shout of defiance. Prancing, Hyn moved among the Giants toward Linden. The mare’s affection was plain as she nuzzled Linden’s shoulder, asking to be petted. Linden complied willingly; but she did not look away from Hyn’s companions.
Narunal stopped near Mahrtiir’s out-stretched arms and nickered a soft demand. Apparently the stallion was impatient with Mahrtiir’s obeisance and wanted him to rise. The fourth horse paused a few paces behind the others. The younger roan’s eyes were fixed on Jeremiah, but Linden could not interpret their expression. Was that pride? Anticipation? Dread?
When Hynyn whinnied again, Mahrtiir rose to his feet. For a moment, he stroked Narunal’s nose and neck, communing in some intuitive fashion with his mount. Then he turned to Linden.
“Ringthane,” he pronounced distinctly, “here is Khelen, young among the stallions of the herd. Youth to youth, he has come to bear your son—if you will consent. But he requires your consent. He has not yet inherited his sire’s pride, and he is cognizant—as are all of the great horses—that he offers to assume a charge both perilous and exalted. Will you grant him leave to care for your son? He will do so with his life.”
Linden could not imagine how the Manethrall knew such things. Nevertheless she believed him. Carefully courteous, she replied, “Please thank Khelen for me. He has my consent.”
Mahrtiir answered her with a Ramen bow; but he said nothing. Doubtless he had reason to trust that the Ranyhyn understood her. Instead of relaying her words, he whirled away and sprang onto Narunal’s back. Indeed, he seemed to flow into his seat as though he had spent all of his life riding; as though he and his Cords were not the first Ramen to ever sit astride Ranyhyn.
Tentatively Khelen moved a few steps closer to Jeremiah.
“Again with your consent, Linden Giantfriend,” said Stormpast Galesend briskly. But she did not wait for Linden’s response. Lifting Jeremiah, the Swordmain set him down on Khelen’s back.
Hoping, Linden held her breath.
For a long moment, Khelen stood utterly motionless. If the fouled scent of Jeremiah’s pajamas disturbed him, the young stallion did not show it. Instead he appeared to be waiting for some reaction from Jeremiah: some flinch of fright or hint of relaxation. But Jeremiah gave no sign of consciousness. His mind was too deeply buried. He sat exactly as he had stood a few heartbeats earlier, slack-lipped and silt-eyed, oblivious to the saliva gathering at the corners of his mouth.
Oh, well, Linden sighed to herself. Maybe when Khelen started to walk—or to run—
Finally Khelen tossed his head, made a whickering sound like a query. Hynyn answered with a snort of command; and the younger roan began to move away from the stream, carrying Jeremiah as if the boy were a treasure.
At last, Linden looked away. When she glanced at Stave, he came to boost her onto Hyn’s back.
Almost at once, Hyn’s familiar ability to communicate ease and stability settled into Linden’s muscles, although she had not ridden for days that felt as long as seasons. As Stave mounted Hynyn, Linden nodded to Rime Coldspray, who answered with a grin as wide as Pitchwife’s.
“Thus we turn to a new heading,” the Ironhand proclaimed, “foolishly, and glad of it. Many have been the vagaries of our journey, and extreme its trials. Each new course has been as unforeseen as the Soulbiter, as unforeseeable—and betimes as reluctant to permit passage. Yet never, I deem, have we sailed seas as chartless as those now spread before us.
“Had we the strength for exuberance, we would announce with songs our pleasure that in the Sargasso of the Earth’s fate we will be guided by the innominate mystery of these Ranyhyn.”
“Aye,” assented Frostheart Grueburn gruffly. “And if we reserve our breath for wheezing, we will trust that joy is in the ears that hear, not in the mouth that does not sing.”
Chuckling, Cabledarm shouldered a sack of supplies. In spite of her unsteadiness, Onyx Stonemage took another: the last of the Ardent’s foodstuffs and waterskins. Cirrus Kindwind hefted the only bedroll. Then, laughing softly, she tossed it to Stave: a feigned admission that it was too heavy for her. The Haruchai caught it as if it were weightless and set it across his thighs.
“Ringthane?” Mahrtiir asked with something of Hynyn’s brazen assurance in his voice.
“Sure,” Linden muttered. She was watching Jeremiah again as if her attentiveness might serve to rouse him. “I assume that you can tell the Ranyhyn what we want.” Somehow. “If they refuse, we’ll know soon enough.”
The Manethrall barked like one of the ur-viles. Then he bent low over Narunal’s neck, stroking the stallion as he whispered words in a language that sounded like nickering. Linden thought that she caught Kelenbhrabanal’s name, but the rest escaped her.
If the Giants understood, they only grinned, and checked their weapons, and readied themselves to leave the stream.
Narunal responded with a neigh as clarion as Hynyn’s. At once, Mahrtiir’s mount turned to retrace his path along the floor of the ravine. Without any sign from Stave that Linden could discern, Hynyn followed. And Khelen went next, stepping with such care that Jeremiah was not jostled or disturbed in any way.
Snorting soft reassurances, Hyn took a position behind Khelen. And after them came the eight Swordmainnir led by Rime Coldspray, with Bluntfist in the rear.
Clearly the Ranyhyn had elected to accept at least this much responsibility for the company’s role in the Land’s fate.
050
While the ravine twisted westward, and its floor formed a comparatively clear path, the Ranyhyn followed it. But as the company moved beyond the region of battle, beyond the cairns, the hills on both sides began to slump. At intervals now, Linden glimpsed more distant landscapes to the north and south: barren slopes interspersed with swaths of dirt and gravel like long-desiccated swales.
When Narunal and the other Ranyhyn finally turned away from the fading trail of sand onto a broad field of grit and fine dust made hazardous by shards of flint, they surprised Linden by heading into the southeast.
Surely they should be going northwest? Toward Mount Thunder, if not toward Salva Gildenbourne? In that direction, the skurj and the Sandgorgons were laying waste to the forest as they moved to defend Kastenessen. Yet the horses chose the southeast, picking their way warily among flint splinters and knives.
Were they following Covenant? Linden’s heart squirmed at the thought. He had suggested that he intended to look for Joan along the same heading that the Ardent had taken from the Lost Deep: this heading. Did the Ranyhyn believe that Covenant would need Linden’s help when he faced his ex-wife at last?
If so, she wanted to hurry. She feared losing him to a caesure more than his rejection; his efforts to spare her.
But the company could not hasten: not yet. The horses had to be careful where they placed their hooves. And the Giants—They plodded doggedly ahead as if they were impervious to sharp stones, raising small puffs of dust with every heavy step; but weariness clogged their strides. They moved like women carrying boulders on their backs.
“Stave?” Linden tried not to raise her voice or sound apprehensive. “Did Covenant go this way? Can you tell?”
Stave said nothing. Instead Mahrtiir answered, “The Ranyhyn have diverged from their path toward us. Yet ahead of us lie the marks of three horses, one shod. I judge that we trail after Naybahn, Mhornym, and the Harrow’s mount.
“Lacking ordinary sight,” he admitted, vexed by his limitations, “I am no longer capable of true Ramen scoutcraft. Yet the Timewarden’s passage with the Humbled is plain here. For the present, his way is ours.”
“Can you tell—?” Linden began. She did not know the extent of Mahrtiir’s communion with Narunal and the other horses. “Can you tell if we’re going to keep on following him?”
“Ringthane, I cannot.” His assertion clearly did not trouble the Manethrall. “The bond between the Ranyhyn and their Ramen is not”—he seemed to search for the right word—“explicit in that fashion. We are the servants of the great horses, nothing more. And the essence of our service is service. We do not vaunt ourselves by endeavoring to comprehend more than we are given.”
“So you don’t know what they have in mind?”
“I do not,” Mahrtiir stated calmly.
Linden scowled at his back. “Then how do you know that they understand what we’re asking them to do?”
“Ringthane.” Now the Manethrall’s tone revealed an edge of asperity. “That we do not strive to grasp the thoughts of the Ranyhyn does not imply that they cannot grasp ours. How otherwise are we able to serve them, if they cannot comprehend us?
“The Timewarden has spoken of trust. And you have given your assent. If you now wish to recant, do so. Ask of Hyn what you will. Command her according to the dictates of your heart. I will await the outcome with interest.”
Just for a moment, Linden considered taking the dare. She wanted another chance to be with Covenant. To protect him if she could. To understand why he had turned his back on her.
But then she shook her head; resisted an impulse to slap herself.—spoken of trust. She needed some way to control her accelerating descent into darkness; and she knew from long experience that she could not refuse the logic of despair if she became incapable of trust. Eventually she would succumb—
Days ago, she had urged her companions to doubt her. All well and good, as far as it went. She had doubted herself: therefore she had needed to believe that her friends made their own choices freely. But the ultimate implication of her insistence then was that she had doubted them.
Was that not why Kevin Landwaster had committed the Ritual of Desecration? He had blamed himself for the Land’s plight—and had not trusted any other power to accomplish what he could not.
Now Mahrtiir had effectively challenged her to admit the truth about her doubts; and she could not. She had already done too much harm. She no longer had any real choice except to cling to her friends and the Ranyhyn.
In the end, every other alternative would lead her back to She Who Must Not Be Named.
Her silence seemed to satisfy Mahrtiir. He held his head high and his back straight, concentrating ahead of Narunal as he led the company off the flints into a region of shale and sandstone mounded like barrows or the detritus of glaciers.
There the Ranyhyn could have quickened their pace safely. But they did not. Even at a canter, Covenant and the Humbled might be leagues ahead of them by now. Nevertheless Narunal continued to move as if the Ranyhyn had no purpose other than to conserve the stamina of the Giants. As if Linden and her companions had chosen to put their faith in an illusion.
As if the Ranyhyn intended to let her slip deeper into despair.
051
As the sun sank past the rim of Landsdrop, casting the abused terrain of the Lower Land into shadow, caesures began to appear. At first, they were sporadic and transient; frequent only in comparison to their occurrence on the Upper Land. They danced at intervals across ground that had been laid waste by ancient battles and rapine, storms of theurgy, bitter despoilage: danced and flickered and went out, posing no threat. But as night gathered over the extended litter of mounds, the Falls came more often, and lasted longer. They hit with the force of a concussion, stirred time and stone and air into turmoil. When they vanished, the sudden vacuum of their absence tugged at the breath in Linden’s lungs.
Somewhere Joan’s hysteria appeared to be approaching a crisis. Watching the horizons anxiously, Linden could only surmise that Covenant was headed in the right direction—and that Joan knew he was coming.
Joan, or turiya Herem: there was no useful distinction, apart from the fact that Joan was weaker than the Raver.
As far as Linden could see, Joan’s weakness was Covenant’s sole hope. The krill and the Humbled could not protect him from gyres of chaos more destructive than tornadoes. Even the Ranyhyn could not—and he was mounted only on the Harrow’s destrier.
Despite the erratic stutter and squall of caesures, however, Narunal, Hynyn, Hyn, and Khelen retained their ability to find forage and water. Somehow they discovered small rills in cracks among the rocks, stubborn clumps of grass in hollows that looked too dry to sustain vegetation. Without turning aside from Covenant’s trail, they located occasional clusters of aliantha.
In the aftermath of the Despiser’s wars and workings, treasure-berries grew too sparsely to meet the needs of the Giants. Still, a little of the viridian fruit, and a sparing use of the Ardent’s supplies, and a few opportunities to refill the waterskins kept the Swordmainnir on their feet.
Lit only by the stars, by the first faint suggestion of moonlight, and by the wild glare of caesures as uncounted centuries of day and night were flung together, the company kept moving. Apparently the Ranyhyn had decided that they could not afford rest.
Disturbed by the unpredictable eruption of Falls, Linden became less and less sure of her surroundings. Details of stone and terrain blurred into vagueness. In addition, she felt a storm coming. The nerves of her skin tasted confusion in the air, abraded winds rising, ambient pressures shifting in response to the violence of the caesures. But she made no attempt to estimate the severity of the storm. The effects of Joan’s madness demanded her attention. If a Fall came too close, she had to be ready.
Concentrating on dangers, she was taken by surprise when the horses stopped. They had entered a low vale between outcroppings of basalt so smooth and slick that they hinted at the distant abandonment of the stars. A tentative trickle of water ran down the vale-bottom, tending eastward; and tough grasses clung to life there, interspersed with more aliantha than the company had found elsewhere.
There the Manethrall and then Stave dismounted. As Narunal and Hynyn trotted away, Mahrtiir announced quietly, “Some rest we must have. The Ranyhyn will watch over us.”
In a chorus of soft groans and sighs, the Giants gathered around Linden and Hyn, Jeremiah and Khelen. Some of them loosened their cataphracts, dropped the shaped stones to the grass. While Stormpast Galesend lifted Jeremiah from his mount, Cabledarm and Onyx Stonemage began to unpack a meal. All of the Swordmainnir were uneasy, troubled by the possible burgeoning of caesures, the approach of bad weather. But they could not refuse a chance for food and sleep.
As Khelen cantered away after Narunal and Hynyn, Linden slipped down from Hyn’s back; let the mare go. Stave had already set out the bedroll for her, but she ignored it. Of Mahrtiir, she asked, “Did Covenant stop here?”
Like the Manethrall and the Giants, she spoke softly. She did not know the Lower Land; did not know what waited in the night. Loud sounds might attract notice—
“I gauge that he did,” Mahrtiir replied, almost whispering. “Hooves have preceded us. Treasure-berries have been plucked. But his pause was brief. Had he lingered here, more sign of his mount would be evident.”
“How far ahead is he?”
“Perhaps five leagues.” Now the Manethrall sounded less assured. “Certainly no more than ten. At greater speed, the marks of his passing would be more distinct, the strides longer.”
Linden tried to consider the implications of Covenant’s progress. But she could not imagine them: her scant experience of the Lower Land did not extend this far south.
Keeping her voice low, she asked Stave where she was.
Around her, the Giants gave no obvious sign that they were listening. Instead they prepared a meal, or gathered aliantha, or shed their armor and massaged each other’s sorest muscles. Yet Linden felt the weight of their oblique attention.
Only Jeremiah appeared to hear and understand nothing.
The shared memories of Stave’s people were precise. “At present,” he said without hesitation, “we travel the arid marge which separates the foothills of Landsdrop from the wetlands of Sarangrave Flat. This terrain is not wide. Its constriction may account for the fact that our path follows the Unbeliever’s.
“Where we now rest, Landsdrop continues to the southeast. If the Ranyhyn do not quicken their pace, we will remain much as we are for perhaps another day. Then, however, we will attain both the easternmost cliffs of Landsdrop and the southern reaches of the Sarangrave. In that place, the broken plinth of the Colossus will stand high above us, while beyond it the River Landrider plunges from the Plains of Ra to become the Ruinwash.”
“Aye,” Mahrtiir put in: a muffled growl. “And along the leagues of Landsdrop which demark the Plains of Ra are many ascents. There the armies of Fangthane breached the Upper Land in an age long past, bringing their savagery first to the Ranyhyn and their Ramen.”
Stave nodded. “Beyond the Sarangrave, the Spoiled Plains fill the Lower Land both eastward to the Sunbirth Sea and southward beyond the ken of the Haruchai. There the purpose of the Ranyhyn may diverge from the ur-Lord’s, if they do not first turn to essay Landsdrop. Our path and his will no longer be constrained by the perils of the Flat, and of the lurker.
“From the Colossus,” he continued, “the shattered site of Foul’s Creche lies somewhat south of east, torn from a promontory of cliffs which front the Sunbirth Sea. Between the Colossus and that rent habitation are arrayed the Spoiled Plains, still rife with the effects of Corruption’s malice, then the Shattered Hills, a maze and snare for the unwary, and last the long-cooled floes of lava which were once Hotash Slay. In the time of the Unbeliever’s first triumph over Corruption, Hotash Slay formed the final defense of Foul’s Creche, ancient Ridjeck Thome. After the destruction wrought by the ur-Lord’s victory, however, the lava spilled into the Sea until its sources were drained.
“The Masters seldom journey there, seeing no purpose in the visitation of sites where memories of Corruption’s cruelest evils linger. But upon occasion they have confirmed the lifelessness of his former abode.”
For a moment, Linden no longer heard what Stave was saying. He had triggered a memory that stopped her ears; that almost stopped her heart.
Joan.
A wasteland of shattered stone, the rubble of a riven cliff.
The unmistakable tumble and flow of surf crashing forever on rocks.
And turiya Herem.
Oh, Covenant! He was going—He was going there.
Then the abrupt glare and seethe of a caesure snatched at her. Instinctively her heart clenched: she scrambled for Earthpower.
An instant later, however, her senses snapped into focus, and she realized that the Fall was too far away to harm the company. If it came closer—
It did not. For a few heartbeats, it writhed eastward, increasing the distance. Then it vanished with the suddenness of a thunderclap.
Linden took a deep breath, loosened her grip on the Staff; tried to calm her hammering pulse.
God in Heaven! Covenant—
The storm brewed by so many temporal disruptions was growing stronger. But that threat was easier to ignore.
She had to force words between the mallet-strokes of her heart. “That’s where Covenant is going.”
Stave seemed to understand her. “Mayhap,” he said with a shrug. “Or mayhap his goal lies more to the south. Or—”
Linden cut him off. “He’s going to Foul’s Creche.”
“Are you certain, Ringthane?” Mahrtiir asked tensely. And Rime Coldspray added, “How have you derived this knowledge?”
“She’s Joan,” Linden replied as if that were answer enough. “Where else would she be?” But then she compelled herself to explain. A promontory jutting into the sea. Torn apart when Covenant destroyed the Illearth Stone. “I saw her. I was there.
“You weren’t,” she told Mahrtiir. He had said so when they had spoken of this in Revelstone. “I’m talking about that first caesure. The one that took us to the Staff. The Ranyhyn and the ur-viles protected you.” She turned to Stave. “And you didn’t let yourself get sucked in. You recognized the Raver. You were strong enough to stay away.
“But I couldn’t do that. I was caught in Joan’s mind. I saw what she saw, heard what she heard. That was part of what made the whole thing so terrible.” In the spaces between her heartbeats, the memory was more vivid to her than any of her companions, more immediate than the coming storm, or the night’s unfathomable implications. “I saw the remains of a broken cliff. I heard waves.
“Covenant is going to Foul’s Creche.”
The Giants studied her closely. But they said nothing: they had not shared her experiences within Falls.
Stave considered Linden’s assertion, then nodded. “I cannot gainsay you. If the Unbeliever must confront his doom at Ridjeck Thome, it is fitting that he should do so. Yet this insight does not elucidate our own path.
“Chosen”—abruptly his manner intensified, although he did not raise his voice—“the Ardent spoke of a need for death. Recalling his words, I must observe that no region of the Land has endured more carnage than the Spoiled Plains. The ravages inflicted upon the Upper Land pale beside the multiplicity of blights and bloodshed which the Spoiled Plains have endured. Their condition is the unredeemed outcome of Corruption’s malice.
“Is it not therefore plausible that the answer to your purported need lies there?”
Linden ignored him. Another caesure glared and crackled in the west. A league away? Less? It extinguished itself quickly; but it made her flinch nonetheless. God, Joan was driving herself crazy—
She knew Covenant was coming.
A storm of her own gathered in Linden. “Damn it!” she cried. “We have to stop him.” Letting him go, she had made another hideous mistake. “We have to catch up with him and stop him!”
The Ironhand stared at her. “With our strength as it is, and the Ranyhyn content walking? How shall we accomplish such a feat? And did the Timewarden not forbid our presence?”
“He said it was too dangerous,” Linden retorted. An excuse for leaving her. “But he got it backward. It’s too dangerous for him. He’s gambling that Joan’s need to hurt him is going to break her before she can destroy him.” What else could he do? Loric’s krill could not ward him from wild magic. “But he isn’t just gambling with his own life. He’s gambling with everything.” She hardly noticed that she was shouting. “And he’s doing it without me! I’m the only one who can protect him, and he couldn’t wait to get away!”
“Madness,” assented Coldspray equably. If Linden’s vehemence troubled her, she did not show it. “Utter and undoubted folly.” She may have been chuckling. “Indeed, were I not myself deranged, made so by the sad truth that I am a Giant withal, I might venture to suggest that his conduct is very nearly as demented as our own. He merely knows with whom he wagers, and how, and why. The same cannot be said of us. We have gone further, for we can name neither our foe nor our intent.”
Before Linden could respond, Frostheart Grueburn advised in an amiable grumble, “Do not heed her, Linden Giantfriend. The Ironhand jests lamely, like a Swordmain with one foot cleft. She means to aver only that in straits as extreme as ours, one gamble is much like another.
“Thomas Covenant wagers all things on his own strength and resource, and on the friable extravagance of a possessed white gold wielder. We have chosen to entrust our fate, and the Land’s, and the Earth’s to the Ranyhyn. Time—if it endures—will reveal who has been wiser.”
“And is it not also true,” Mahrtiir suggested, “that we are in greater peril from caesures and other evils than the Timewarden? We are many by comparison, and commensurately vulnerable. He and the Humbled are few. Surely their need for protection does not exceed ours.”
“It addition,” Stave stated flatly, “it is the word of the Unbeliever that you have a separate task to perform. If you strive to preserve him, you may thwart some greater purpose which we do not yet comprehend.”
Protests clamored in Linden. You don’t understand. She was running out of ways to fend off the darkness that filled her heart. I want to do something that makes sense. I can’t let Joan kill him.
But that was not what he desired of her. I expect you to do what you’ve always done. Something unexpected. And she had already missed her chance to help him: she knew that. When she had let him ride away, she had surrendered her right to share his fate—or to ask him to share hers. It was too late to change her mind. None of her mistakes could be undone. If Joan killed Covenant, Linden would have no one to blame except herself.
Trust was a bitter joke—and she had forgotten how to laugh.
Avoiding the concerned stares of her companions, she tried to pretend that she had recovered her emotional balance. “All right. I understand.” She did not want their misdirected reassurances. “I just wish I could be with him.
“Don’t worry about me. You should get some rest, all of you. Sleep if you can. I’m going to find someplace where I can see farther. The Ranyhyn can’t save us if a Fall gets too close.”
Then she turned away, hoping to forestall arguments. Unsure of her ability to climb the basalt in such darkness, she began to walk along the vale after the horses.
She heard the Giants murmuring anxiously to each other, felt Mahrtiir’s troubled regard and Stave’s blunt gaze. Jeremiah’s emptiness made it plain that he did not need her. Tightening her grasp on the Staff, she pushed herself to walk more quickly.
Her parents had taught her how to meet despair; but there were other answers. She had learned a few from her patients in Berenford Memorial.
Soon she found a southward slope beyond the basalt. But when she climbed to the hillcrest, she was not high enough to scan the dark horizons for more than a stone’s throw in any direction; so she moved toward the nearest obstruction and plodded upward again.
That rise afforded her a clear line of sight for perhaps a third of a league on all sides. Was it enough? She did not know. But the vantage suited her. Here she could no longer feel the emanations of her companions. And the ground was littered with loose stones, some of them sharp enough for her purpose.
She was as weary in her own way as any of the Swordmainnir, yet she needed to stay awake. Hunger and thirst might suffice to keep her from dozing for a time. Cold might help. But she needed more, and had other plans.
Somewhere in the night, one of the Ranyhyn nickered a query. Surely that was Hyn? But Linden did not know how to respond; and the soft call was not repeated.
She needed to be left alone. When she had seated herself on uncomfortable rocks exposed to the accumulating turbulence in the air, however, her nerves recognized Stave’s approach. He held a waterskin and a handful of treasure-berries. Over one shoulder, he carried the bedroll.
Sighing, she composed herself to endure his company, at least for a little while.
Fortunately he said nothing. Instead he gave her the waterskin, dropped the bedroll nearby. Then he stood motionless beside her, holding aliantha in his cupped fingers so that she could accept the fruit at her own pace.
He had lost his son so that hers could be saved. He may have understood more of her emotions than she cared to consider.
For his sake, she made an effort to drink and eat slowly; to convey gratitude by savoring the vitality of the berries. But the strain of his presence was too much for her. Soon she began to gulp from the waterskin. A moment later, she scooped the fruit from his hand so that he would have no excuse to stay with her.
He did not leave. He was Stave: he had declared his allegiance in spite of its extreme price.
After a moment, she begged him to go. “Let me do this by myself. Please.” Her voice was little more than a croak. “I’m lost. Too many of us have died, and I’ve done too much killing. I’m like Jeremiah. I need to find my own way out.”
She prayed that he would not speak. At first, he did not. Then he advised sternly, “Heed the Ranyhyn, Chosen. Their gifts are many. It may be that they are able to divine coming disturbances of Time, or to perceive Falls in the instant of their creation. If so, they will forewarn you.”
After that, he was gone. With her health-sense, Linden watched him until she was sure that he had returned to the Giants and Mahrtiir. Then she finished her small meal, drank more water, and turned her attention to other things.
She needed a response to despair that did not require her own death; and she could not think of a way to help Jeremiah.
Fumbling, she searched around her for a stone that she could use: one with a raw edge or a jagged point.
The sky overhead was a glittering loveliness of stars, profuse and forsaken. Covenant had gone to face Joan without her. She had no way of knowing what the Ranyhyn wanted from her—or for her. The Worm of the World’s End was coming to the Land. If the stars were sentient in any sense, their bereavement was too vast and irreducible for comprehension.
Finally her fingers found a stone that suited her. It seemed sharp enough. It had a good point.
She rolled up her left sleeve, studied the faint pallor of her skin. But her father had killed himself by cutting his wrists. After all these years, she still intended to refuse his legacy. Tugging at the fabric of her jeans, she worked one leg up to her knee.
An answer to darkness. A way to control her despair so that she did not sink deeper.
Hunched over herself, she gripped the stone and began scraping cuts into the sensitive flesh of her shin.
That hurt. Of course it did. But the pain would also help her. As Berenford Memorial’s physician, she had worked with a number of cutters, self-mutilators. Cutting was a common symptom because it was so effective. Voluntary physical hurts suppressed helpless emotional anguish. Cutters damaged themselves so that the pain would calm them. It galvanized their few residual strengths. For some, it provided a relief as exquisite as joy.
It might do the same for her.
Using an edge and point as raw as the teeth of a saw, she tried to cut from memory the inadvertent pattern of the grass stains on her jeans into the human skin of her shin and calf.
Perhaps she would have succeeded. She might have attained the whetted peace that she had witnessed in her patients. Given time, she might even have managed to replicate the mark of fecundity and long grass, the sign that she had paid the price of woe. But while she gasped at each kind, cruel gouge and tear, she realized suddenly that Hyn was standing over her.
The mare was little more than a silhouette against the blighted horizons. The faint gleam of the star on her forehead was barely visible: her eyes were only dim suggestions. Still her presence shamed Linden.
No cutter wanted to be watched. Being watched reversed the craved effects of the pain.
Linden needed those effects. Nevertheless Hyn denied them.
Groaning, Linden cast away her stone. Pulled down the leg of her jeans. Struggled to her feet. She wanted to swear at Hyn, but she had no curses left: none that were as bitter as her life.
Now she could only hope that she had hurt herself enough to stay awake as long as her last companions needed her.
As long as Joan lived and could hurl caesures—
052
When the sun rose at last, it came in a brief blare of crimson, as if the horizon were occluded with dust or ash; omens. Then storms came tumbling over the region, and the light was gone.
They seemed to arise from all directions at random, colliding with such force that their thunder made the ground tremble. Wind and rain slapped at Linden from one side and then the other, a turmoil of spats and downpours that changed more swiftly than she could gauge them. This was no natural battering boil of rains and gusts. Nor was it deliberate, driven by malice. Instead the conflict of squalls and deluges was the oblique consequence of too many Falls.
Its turmoil felt like a presage.
Now more than ever, she had to rely on the senses of the Ranyhyn. Wild modulations of violence confused her discernment. She would not be able to recognize a caesure until it was almost on top of her, if Hyn or the other horses did not give warning.
When the company set out again, Linden rode wrapped in the ground-cloth that had covered the last of the Ardent’s bedrolls. It gave her a measure of protection, slowed the seepage of cold into her bones. But it did not block the erratic flick and cut of rain that stung her exposed cheeks, her open eyes.
At her request, Stormpast Galesend had wrapped the blankets around Jeremiah. But the boy made no effort to hold them. He did not react to the smack of raindrops in thick gouts and thin spatters, the lash of shearing winds. Galesend was forced to walk at Khelen’s side so that she could replace Jeremiah’s coverings whenever they slipped from his shoulders.
Perhaps he did not need them. Perhaps his bestowed strength warded him from cold and wet and wind. It had done so for Anele. Still Linden was glad that Galesend did what she could to shield the boy.
Under the circumstances, Linden was not surprised to hear that Mahrtiir had lost Covenant’s trail. The Manethrall sounded angry at himself; but she wondered how even the most cunning and sighted of the Ramen could have identified hoof-marks on this sodden ground in this weather. In any case, she knew where Covenant was headed. And Clyme and Branl were with him: he would not lose his way.
Still the Ranyhyn refused to travel faster than the Giants could walk. As the storms closed around Linden, constricting her percipience, they inspired a kind of claustrophobia; and she could not resist asking Hyn for haste. But Hyn ignored her. Together the horses maintained a trot that felt as slow as plodding.
Yet they were not tired. Linden could feel the ready power of Hyn’s muscles. And the Ranyhyn did not lack for provender. At irregular intervals, they continued to find patches of sufficient grass for themselves, huddled clumps of aliantha for their riders. When they did so, they did not resume their battered trek until both they and their riders had eaten. Stubbornly they allowed Covenant and the Humbled to run farther and farther ahead.
Did they seek to diminish the likelihood that the company would be caught by a caesure? Linden did not know. Occasionally Narunal or Hynyn trumpeted a warning. At those times, however, she felt nothing except the moil and barrage of rain, the incessant to-and-fro of wind. Falls had apparently vanished from this region. Joan was concentrating her madness elsewhere, or she had exhausted her fury, or she was dead—or Linden was wrong. If the mounts were alert to some other peril, Linden could not detect it. Even when she used the Staff to extend her senses, she recognized no threat except the weather and her own frailty.
What could the great horses fear under these conditions, if they were not endangered by caesures?
Gradually the terrain changed. For a time, there were mounds, and eroded thrusts of rock like worn-out teeth, and drenched ridges. Then the ground became poured sheets of dark stone as smooth as recent lava. Later the stone gave way to a plain so featureless that it seemed to have been pounded flat. Later still, erosion gullies like cracks in the landscape’s flesh complicated the company’s path. Then came more hills arrayed in lines like barricades raised to force anyone advancing from the northwest to turn eastward.
Doubtless the mounts and the Giants could have held to their course. Long millennia had softened the contours of the hills. Shaking their heads, however, and snorting in apparent disgust, the Ranyhyn allowed themselves to be deflected. For the first time, they began to travel more east than southeast.
Toward Foul’s Creche? Linden had no idea.
Late in the afternoon, the storms finally resolved their contention. The winds became a rough blast out of the west: the rains dwindled. Soon the clouds broke open behind the company, letting sunlight touch them for the first time since dawn. Thunderheads scudded along. In a rush, the sky cleared.
But as Linden watched the clouds race away, she saw with a shudder that the revealed sky was not blue. Instead it had acquired a dun color tinged with grey like smoke as if the gales of an immense dust-storm had found untended flames somewhere on the Upper Land and fanned them into wildfires.
Like the storms, the hues staining the air did not feel wrong or malevolent. Nonetheless they were palpably unnatural. The Upper Land was not a desert, or barren: it could not be lashed to produce so much dust. And the season was still spring. Its rains had been too plentiful to permit a conflagration on that scale.
“Stave!” Linden cried. The wind tore his name from her mouth. “What is that?” Shivering, she gestured at the sky.
At a word from Stave, Hynyn came to Hyn’s side. The former Master leaned closer to Linden.
“Chosen, I know not. The Haruchai have no experience of such weather. In a distant age, the Bloodguard saw evils storm from the east, the handiwork of Corruption. But this is altogether unlike those blasts.”
“You will observe, however,” called Rime Coldspray, “that these strange taints do not ride the wind! They spread from the east. In Bhrathairealm, such skies prevail upon occasion. They arise among the nameless theurgies of the Great Desert. Elsewhere we have not witnessed their like!”
The Worm, Linden thought. Oh, God. Caesures had not filled the sky with dust and ash. Lethal forces of a different kind were starting to spread—
The refusal of the Ranyhyn to hurry baffled her completely.
Yet the horses were sensitive to the condition of their drenched riders and companions. Without warning, Narunal veered aside into a breach between the nearest hills, a gap like Bargas Slit or the crooked cut of a plow. When Hyn followed the others, Linden soon found herself in a scallop on one side of the breach; a hollow of comparative shelter formed by the wearing away of softer soil from the hill’s underlying rock. It resembled a scaur in miniature, barely wide and deep enough to hold Linden, Jeremiah, Stave, Mahrtiir, and eight Giants. Still it offered a degree of protection from the blast’s flail.
The Manethrall dismounted; and at once, Narunal cantered away. Khelen did the same after Galesend lifted Jeremiah to the ground. Wearily Linden slipped off Hyn’s back. As her legs took her weight, neglected pain stabbed her shin. Unable to hide her reaction, she flinched.
There was still too much wind, too much cold. Nevertheless she was reluctant to call fire from her Staff. She did not want to be reminded of flames as black and lamentable as the wood. And she did not want to announce the company’s location to any being capable of spotting her power. But she and Mahrtiir needed heat, even if their companions—and Jeremiah, perhaps—did not.
Gritting her teeth so that they would not chatter, Linden summoned flames.
They were as dark as she had feared: an impenetrable ebony like obsidian which had never seen the light of day. Apparently the change in her was permanent. She could do nothing clean.
Nevertheless her fire was warm. Its effects remained benign: a tangible relief. Her chills receded in waves like a withdrawing tide. Around her, the Giants opened their arms to her blackness and smiled. After a moment, Mahrtiir’s manner rediscovered its familiar edge, its implied craving for struggle. Only Stave and Jeremiah seemed to derive no comfort from her gentle efforts.
Ignoring her private revulsion, Linden sustained her exertion of Earthpower until every outward sign that her companions had suffered in the storms was eased. When she quenched her flames at last, she found that she, too, felt somewhat eased. Their benevolence was balm to her sore heart. The blackness was in her as it was in the wood, not in the magicks her Staff wielded. In spite of her sins and her despair, she had not tarnished the fundamental vitality of Earthpower and Law.
Not yet—
In any case, the armor of the Giants had absorbed a surprising amount of warmth. It radiated in the hollow, as affectionate as grins and jests. Disregarding the truncated winds, the sodden ground, the promise of a chilled night, Cabledarm and Onyx Stonemage began unpacking food and waterskins. Stormpast Galesend took Jeremiah’s steaming blankets, squeezed out as much water as she could, then draped them around him again.
While Stave set out Linden’s ground-cloth so that she and a few others would have a dry place to sit, she asked him, “So where are we? How far have we come?”
He appeared to consult his store of memories. “These hills have urged us away from Landsdrop toward Sarangrave Flat. I gauge that we rest some three leagues north of the promontory of the Colossus.”
“How close are we to the Sarangrave? Are we in danger?”
Why had Narunal and Hynyn whinnied so urgently during the day, when there were no caesures?
Without hesitation, Stave answered, “I estimate the distance at less than a league. However, the Flat’s proximity poses scant peril. In this region, the wetland is extensive but shallow, little more than a marsh sporadically snared with quagmires. The lurker prefers the deeper mire within the heart of the Sarangrave, and in Lifeswallower. Its vast bulk and ferocity require more noisome waters.
“It is conceivable,” he admitted impassively, “that the monstrous wight which the Ardent has named Horrim Carabal is cognizant of our presence. To the certain knowledge of the Haruchai, the lurker is avid to devour all Earthpower”—he paused to glance at Mahrtiir—“including that which the Ranyhyn possess. It may crave any form of theurgy. But its hungers do not respond swiftly. The lurker is fearsome and fatal, but first it is slow, suggesting that its attention must be drawn to Earthpower from a considerable distance or depth.
“Perhaps the lurker has noted your son’s passage. Perhaps it is able to discern the Ranyhyn. Perhaps it has sensed your use of the Staff. Nevertheless its reach is not known to extend beyond the bounds of the Sarangrave.”
“I am content,” the Manethrall announced when Linden did not speak again. “The appetite of the lurker for the Ranyhyn is familiar to us. It elicits a distress among the great horses which other hazards do not. Plainly some alarm troubled them during the day. Yet no caesure appeared. Therefore I am inclined to believe that they were disturbed by the scent of the lurker.
“Here, however, their spirits are resigned. For that reason, I likewise deem that there is no present peril.”
“Then we will eat and rest while we may,” said the Ironhand. “Linden Giantfriend’s benisons have renewed our hearts. And no Giant born is fool enough to refuse viands and ease. Nor do we scorn slumber. Many are the storms through which we have slept, at sea and elsewhere. Indeed, Frostheart Grueburn did so in the toils of the Soulbiter”—she nudged her comrade while Latebirth, Halewhole Bluntfist, and Cirrus Kindwind chuckled—“though others aboard Dire’s Vessel remained watchful, chary of horrors. Guarded by the valor and vigilance of the Ranyhyn, we fear nothing.”
Sighing, Coldspray sank down to sit in her warmed cataphract against the wall of the small space. Other Swordmainnir did the same. But Linden fretted over concerns that did not involve the lurker. The insistence of the Ranyhyn on taking the company farther into this region of wars and slaughter and evil appeared to confirm Stave’s guess that the horses were intent on satisfying her need for death. Hers, or Jeremiah’s.
For her son’s sake, she prayed that the need was hers. Nevertheless she feared it. She was sick of killing, morally nauseated, and had no cure. Her leg did not hurt enough.
God, she wished that Hyn had not interrupted her cutting. Shame was the wrong kind of pain.
053
As twilight and then darkness thickened like murk over the Lower Land, Linden and her friends ate as much of their dwindling supplies as they could spare. Chewing on her lip, Linden drew more ebon fire from her Staff and used it to heat the stone of the scant shelter. Then the Giants stretched out as best they could. Gradually they drifted to sleep.
Mahrtiir sat on the ground-cloth with Linden, apparently determined to wait with her until she allowed herself to rest. But she kept herself awake by galling her cuts with the damp fabric of her jeans, pretending to massage them; and after a time, the Manethrall began to doze. Then only Stave remained to share her watchfulness and her fears.
Soon the night grew so deep that she could not see the far wall of the breach. Lulled by the warmed stone, she felt her attention fraying. She had not slept the previous night, and her cut shin did not hurt enough to sustain her. Before Stormpast Galesend went to sleep herself, she had wrapped Jeremiah in his blankets—again—and laid him carefully on the ground-cloth between Linden and Mahrtiir. If the boy’s eyes had closed, Linden’s might have done the same. But he stared upward, gazing at nothing as though he had outlived his need for rest or dreams.
Linden watched him like a mother with a sick child. More and more, the stained tint of his eyes seemed to resemble the milky hue of Anele’s blindness. Jeremiah’s new Earthpower had done nothing to relieve his dissociation. Instead it appeared to emphasize the silt that defined his sight, as if the ramifications of Anele’s gift had driven him deeper into his graves.
For a time, anxiety kept Linden alert in spite of her weariness.
Eventually, however, her concentration faded. She was helpless to stop it. By degrees, her thoughts became so vague that she did not recognize Hynyn’s stentorian call until she felt Stave slip silently out of the hollow.
Inchoately alarmed, she jerked up her head, slapped at her cheeks. After an instant’s hesitation, she took up the Staff and ground one iron heel against the cuts in her shin and calf until she broke them open; drew fresh blood.
After a few moments, Stave returned. Touching Mahrtiir’s shoulder, he said softly, “Manethrall.” Then he nudged the Ironhand’s armor with one foot, spoke her name more loudly.
Linden struggled to her feet. “What is it?”
At the same time, Mahrtiir came instantly awake; surged upright. Coldspray shook her head as if she were scattering dreams, rubbed her face vigorously to dispel them.
Without preamble or inflection, Stave announced quietly, “We are approached. The Ranyhyn have departed.”
Simultaneously Linden said, “Approached?” the Manethrall demanded, “Departed?” and Coldspray asked, “What comes?”
Before Linden could insist on an answer, Mahrtiir stated harshly, “The Ranyhyn do not flee any peril.”
“They flee no peril,” Stave countered, “except that of the lurker.”
The lurker? Linden thought, scrambling to understand. Here? But you said—
The Manethrall’s whole body seemed to blaze with anger, but he did not contradict Stave.
“Swordmainnir!” Coldspray barked to her comrades. “We are needed!” Then she confronted Stave. “I await your explanation, Stave of the Haruchai.”
As the other Giants lurched awake and began to rise, Stave shrugged. “Whether we are threatened is beyond my discernment. I do not sense the lurker’s presence. I am certain only that the Ranyhyn no longer watch over us, and that a small throng of wights approaches from the direction of the Sarangrave.
“However,” he added, “these creatures are not entirely unknown. Upon occasion in more recent centuries, such wights have been observed by Masters who chanced to be scouting the boundaries of Sarangrave Flat.
“They appear to roam freely among the fens and quags, singly or in sparse groups. They are man-shaped, short of stature, and hairless, with large eyes well formed for vision in darkness. Within sight of the Masters, they have not heretofore wandered beyond the waters of the Flat. Observed, they have betrayed no awareness of their observers.
“And there is this—” Stave paused; almost seemed to hesitate. “To the Masters, they have evinced no theurgy or other puissance. Indeed, they have appeared altogether harmless. Yet those that now draw nigh hold in their hands a green flame like unto the emerald hue of the skest. In some fashion, this fire sustains their emergence from their wonted habitation.”
Linden scrambled—and could not catch up. She felt stupid with sleeplessness. What was Stave saying? He had not seen any indication of the lurker. But the Ranyhyn feared it: Mahrtiir had not denied that. And the horses were gone.
“My God,” she breathed, hardly aware that she spoke aloud. “Are those things minions? Servants of the lurker?”
Millennia ago, the skest had served the ancient monster. Horrim Carabal? Those creatures of living acid had tried to herd Covenant and Linden, Sunder and Hollian, and a small party of Haruchai into the lurker’s snare. Their quest for the One Tree would have died there, if Covenant had not risked his life to wound the lurker with Loric’s krill and wild magic. And if he, Linden, and their companions had not encountered Giants: the Giants of the Search. And if the skest had not been opposed by creatures called the sur-jheherrin.
Now the skest cared for Joan. They had tended Jeremiah.
How many of them were there?
They did not match Stave’s description.
Again the former Master shrugged. “Chosen, I know not. I cannot discern their intent, for good or ill. I am confident only that our presence has been marked. Now we are sought.”
The Ranyhyn had abandoned their riders.
Oh, hell! Without Hyn—Given room to move, the Giants could survive any force that resembled the skest. But without Hyn and Hynyn, Narunal and Khelen—
God, please. Not more killing.
While the Ironhand’s comrades chafed wakefulness into their cheeks, and donned their cataphracts, Coldspray commanded, “At once, Swordmainnir. We are too easily contained where we stand. Come boon or bane, we must meet it upon open ground.”
“Aye,” Stormpast Galesend agreed. “We hear you.” Scooping up Jeremiah, she cradled him in one arm; kept the other free to wield her sword.
“Hear, indeed,” growled Frostheart Grueburn, grinning. “When the Ironhand speaks in such dulcet tones, she is heard by the Lower Land entire.”
As if Coldspray had slapped at her, Grueburn ducked. Then she drew her longsword and ran from the hollow, heading toward the place where the company had first entered among the hills.
Halewhole Bluntfist and Cabledarm followed immediately. The other Swordmainnir arrayed themselves like an escort around their smaller companions. With the Ironhand in the lead, Linden and her friends went after Cabledarm.
Sheltered by the breach, Linden had forgotten the full force of the wind. In the lowland between this line of hills and the next, however, icy air struck her like the rush of a flood. She felt pummeled and tossed as if she had fallen into a torrent. Even in darkness, she would have seen or felt her breath steaming, condensed to frost, if the wind had not torn it away.
Dirt crunched under her boot heels as she walked among the Giants. The ground was freezing—
After High Lord Elena’s disastrous use of the Power of Command, when her spirit had been forced to serve Lord Foul, she had used Berek’s Staff of Law to inflict an unnatural winter upon the Land. Standing at the Colossus, she had scourged the Despiser’s foes with snow and ice.
In Andelain, Linden had unleashed something worse. This day’s deranged weather was only the leading edge of a far more savage storm.
Berek’s spectre had said of Lord Foul, He may be freed only by one who is compelled by rage, and contemptuous of consequence.
Had she done that? Truly? Had she already accomplished the Despiser’s release?
If so, she had earned the right to despair.
The cold made her leg ache as though the cuts had sunk into her bones.
The blast struck tears from her eyes: she could not see. Coldspray shouted demands or warnings that vanished along the wind. Cirrus Kindwind, Latebirth, and Onyx Stonemage joined Grueburn, Bluntfist, and Cabledarm to form a partial cordon. The Ironhand and Galesend stayed with Linden, Stave, and Mahrtiir.
Jeremiah still had not closed his eyes. He did not appear to blink. Perhaps he never blinked. If so, he would eventually go blind. As blind as Anele. It was inevitable.
Stave gripped Linden’s arm. “Attend, Chosen.”
She was already shivering.
She squeezed her eyes shut, scrubbed tears away, opened them again.
At first, she saw only small green flames bobbing like Wraiths in the distance. Their essential wrongness was palpable; but they were so little—Too minor to wield much force.
Then she realized that the fires were not affected by the wind. They danced and moved blithely, oblivious to the blast.
That should have been impossible.
Blinking fervidly, she made out the forms of the creatures. As Stave had said, they looked vaguely human. Naked, lacking either pelts or garments. No taller than her shoulders. Cupped in each of their hands, they carried quick flaws of emerald like recollections of the Illearth Stone. Green glints reflected auguries or promises in their large round eyes. Small as they were, they resembled eidolons reeking with malice.
They advanced steadily, but not in a group. Instead they spread out across the lower ground and partway up the hillsides: at least a score of them; perhaps thirty. Straining her senses, Linden saw no bonds of theurgy between them, no reinforced power. Yet she felt certain that they had come with a shared intent.
While the nearest creatures were still a dozen Giantish strides away, Rime Coldspray swept out her stone glaive. “Hold!” she shouted at the caper of fires, the green reflections. “Friend or foe, we require a parley! Name your purpose. Explain your wishes. We mean to defend ourselves if we must!”
The wind carried her voice away as if it would never be heard.
Yet the—eight? ten?—creatures most directly in front of her halted. For a few paces, the others did not. Then, beginning on the lowland and spreading incrementally up the slopes on both sides, those creatures also stopped.
Now the company stood half-enclosed in a shallow arc of handheld fires that defied the wind.
A creature spoke, Linden could not tell which one. Perhaps they all did, using a single voice. Without apparent effort, or any hint of emotion, it said, “We are the Feroce.”
Its sound was strangely squishy, damp and ill-defined, like mud squeezed between toes.
“We are Swordmainnir of the Giants,” answered Coldspray. Her blade did not waver. “Why have you come?”
The pain in Linden’s leg had begun to burn. Without the support of her Staff, she might not have been able to stand.
“There is among you,” replied the creature or creatures, “a stick of power.” They may all have been discrete instances of the same being. “The cruel metal we will not touch. It is abhorrent. But we claim the stick. Our High God hungers for it.”
Linden gasped; felt the breath snatched from her lungs. Christ, her leg—!
All of the Giants drew their swords. Stave shifted closer to Linden. With his garrote in his hands, the Manethrall positioned himself near Stormpast Galesend and Jeremiah.
The blast was becoming a gale, as gelid and heartless as the wasteland within a caesure.
Who were the Feroce? What were they?
Loudly the Ironhand replied, “You cannot have the Staff of Law!” Her tone was firm, but unthreatening. “Yet if you will speak with us concerning your High God’s hunger, perhaps we will discover some fashion in which we may be of service. We neither fear nor desire contention. Rather our preference is for amity in all things. Speak, therefore. Let us together consider the nature of your need.”
Linden heard a splash of water, an ooze of loam, as the creature responded, “We are the Feroce. We do not need.”
Did she see a multitude of verdant fires leap and flare, mounting like disease into the heavens? No: it was only imagination. Hallucination. Not magic.
There was nothing except darkness.
A subtle shift in the air. Realities swept aside; replaced.
A momentary sensation of falling, of vertigo, as if she had lost her balance.
But she caught herself. Her leg held. It did not hurt.
It had never hurt. That pain did not exist. She had already forgotten it. Only her palm stung where she had gouged it with her car keys.
She was in the farmhouse, Covenant’s house. It shook around her, battered by angry winds. Outside, lightning glared, an erratic succession of furies from a clear sky. Thunder groaned in the timbers of the building. Joists squalled at the force of the dry storm.
The detritus of Covenant’s former life littered the kitchen floor. Blood cooled in coagulating puddles. But she did not stop here. She did not turn and flee. Instead she entered the short passage leading to three doors. Covenant’s bedroom. The bathroom. The last room, where he had cared for Joan.
Following splashes of blood and the splayed illumination of her flashlight, Linden went down the hall to the last room. Where else could she go? Roger had Jeremiah.
The weight of her medical bag in her left hand steadied her. It was her anchor against the storm’s madness, and Roger’s. Her only weapon. Her grip on the flashlight abraded the small wound in her palm, but that beam was too frail to protect her. She had left her coat at home. Deliberately she had put on a clean red flannel shirt, clean jeans, sturdy boots. She had driven here, to Haven Farm, where she knew what she would find.
The door was open: the last room. She smelled ozone and blood. The house trembled. Roger had committed butchery here. But he had not killed some poor animal. Certainly not: not Covenant’s heartless son. He had shed the life of one of his hostages.
Linden felt as buffeted as Covenant’s abandoned home. A strange disorientation thwarted her. For some reason, she expected there to be crusted dirt on her shirt. Stains, grime, tatters: consequences. She expected a neat hole over her heart. But the flannel was still clean. It was practically new. Her jeans were innocent of Roger’s carnage.
Lightning struck nearby, lightning and thunder, a crash like a tall tree shattering. Roger had taken Jeremiah. Jeremiah had driven a splinter like a spike through the center of her hand. The last room was a ruin, wrecked and toxic. There the wan thrust of the flashlight revealed Sara Clint lying on the forlorn bed in the dark residue of her life. She had been cut dozens of times, dozens of times. Roger had lashed her wrists and ankles to the bed frame with duct tape. Then, over and over again, he had sliced through the white fabric of her uniform, drawing venous blood. Preparation for a ritual.
Static made a galvanic nimbus of Linden’s hair, a halo of desperation. Jeremiah! Roger had cut Sara with that knife, the large cleaver protruding from the pillow beside her desecrated head. When he was satisfied, he had stabbed the blade into her heart before leaving the knife in the pillow: a presentation for Linden’s benefit, demonstrating his seriousness.
He was gone now. He had taken Jeremiah and Joan and Sandy Eastwall. To the place where he meant to sacrifice Jeremiah. And probably Sandy as well. He might need her blood to open the way. He might need even his own mother’s life.
Linden should have spent a while grieving over Sara’s body. Absolutely she should have. No one could say that Sara Clint had not earned at least that much recognition. She was a good woman, and she had been murdered.
But Linden had no time. She knew where Roger was going; where he was taking his prisoners. She knew why. She had to catch up with him before—
Jeremiah!
There was something that she needed to remember.
—before he reached the sheet of rock in the woods where Thomas Covenant had been killed. The place where Lord Foul’s bonfire had claimed half and more of Jeremiah’s hand.
No, there was nothing to remember.
Yes. There was.
A face.
Whose face was it? Jeremiah’s? No. She had not forgotten his lost visage. It was as essential to her as the pathways of her brain. That was why she was here.
Liand’s, then? Anele’s? Stave’s?
Who in hell were Liand and Anele and Stave?
And why did she want to think about Giants? She had not seen them for ten years, and could not afford to be distracted by old love. Not now.
In spite of her haste, she tried to honor Sara briefly. A few heartbeats of sorrow. But she could no longer smell blood. Or ozone. Those scents were heavy enough to cling. Nevertheless the barrage of winds had torn them from the house, through the broken windows and gapped walls.
Instead she smelled smoke: smoke so thick and dire that it could have been the leaping fume of the Despiser’s blaze. She saw wisps in the beam of her flashlight. Pressure grew in her chest. Threats of suffocation filled her lungs.
She had to go. She had wasted too much time.
Wait! Her shirt—Her jeans—
Nothing. They might as well have been new. She did not know Liand, or Anele, or Stave, of course not, she had never heard those names before.
Roger had taken Jeremiah and Joan and Sandy into the woods. Linden knew where he was going.
Where had Liand’s name come from—or Anele’s and Stave’s—or Mahrtiir’s—if she had never met them?
Lightning had struck the house: it must have. All of this dry wood was going to burn like a pyre.
God, she was hallucinating! Her son needed her, and she was losing her mind. Stave spurned by the Masters. Covenant’s hands burning, ravaged by Joan and wild magic. Covenant was dead. Killed ten years ago. Nothing after this moment had happened. She had imagined it, all of it. Every struggle, every nightmare, every loss. Liand and Anele: Stave and Mahrtiir: Pahni and Bhapa: Giants. They were figments, chimeras sent to distract her. To paralyze her. Until the flames took her. So that she would not follow Roger.
So that she would not save her son.
Screams of rage or terror that she could not hear ripped at her throat as she wheeled away from Sara and murder, rushed from the bedroom back into the hall.
Covenant’s ring hung on its chain under her clean shirt; but white gold had no power to save her here.
Roger wanted it. He had said so. It belongs to me. Otherwise he could have created his portal here, in this house; doomed her where she stood. But he lacked his father’s ring.
Lurid flames chewed the edges of the boards, the walls of the passage. The whole house was kindling. A jolt like the impact of a hurricane staggered the entire structure. Swinging her bag, Linden beat at the fires; recovered her balance.
She needed to dash past them before they could catch her. Reach the kitchen, the living room, the front door. Escape into the night. Free Jeremiah.
But she was already too late. Ahead of her, the door to Covenant’s room burst outward, blasted from its hinges by a furnace-roar of flame. Conflagration howled into the hall. Smoke as black as midnight struck at her, demented fists of heat. They drove her backward. Soon the fire itself would be as black as—as black as—
She could not flee through the house.
She had nothing with which to fend off the heat except her medical bag. Holding it up like a shield, she returned in a stagger to the room where Sara lay. Sara’s cruel pyre.
Linden slapped the door shut behind her, but she knew that it would not protect her. Her bag was her only defense. In a rush, harried by Cavewights and killing, she reached the window.
The glass was broken and jagged: it would cut her to shreds. It would kill Galt.
Who was Galt?
Dear God! She had to stop this. Stop imagining. Roger had Jeremiah. He had Joan and Sandy. If Linden died here—if she let her delusions trap her—nothing would save her son.
With her bag, she swept daggers of glass from their frame. Her flashlight she tossed outside. She meant to throw her bag as well; but first she braced her right hand on the window-frame.
A shard of glass dug into her palm. Blood pulsed from the cut. She could not let go of her bag. She needed it—
—needed it to fight the flames.
Screaming like the storm and the blaze and the bane, she took the bag in her right hand, sealed her grip with blood. Awkward as a cripple, she began to crawl backward through the window.
Stave would have helped her, but he did not exist. None of her friends had ever existed.—dreaming, Covenant had once told her. We’re sharing a dream. If she could not stop imagining people and events and nightmares, Roger would butcher her son.
But going backward through the window required her to brace her shins on the window-frame. She felt half a dozen cuts in one leg, a dozen, more cuts than there were scraps of glass.
And when she dropped to the ground outside the house, she was still in the hallway. Smoke and flame boiled toward her, a tumult avid for the end of all things. But now the last room, Sara’s death-chamber, had become an inferno. It roared with ruin like the rest of the farmhouse.
She should have thrown her medical bag out the window with her flashlight. She had lost her chance to escape that way.
Long arms of fire reached out for her. Ebony smoke streaked with bitter orange and unbearable heat tumbled toward her.
Shrieking, she turned and fled; ran frantically as if the hall were the throat of She Who Must Not Be Named. She had to find the end before the bane’s mouth closed; before she became horror and torment forever.
Before Roger hurt Jeremiah.
Because she was still trying to save her son, she slapped fire and smoke away with her bag. Floundering and flailing, she ran with all her strength—
—and could not reach the end, the final wall—
Pain throbbed in her leg as if her shin and calf were gushing blood.
—because there was no end. She had been betrayed by her dreams. The hall stretched interminably ahead of her, and flames devoured the walls, growing faster than she could stamp them out, and the furnace squalling at her back had become the heart of a volcano: the savage core of the bane’s need, or the brimstone ferocity of Roger’s given hand.
Where had Roger obtained a hand that spouted lava and anguish? With such strength, he would not have needed a gun, or Sara Clint, or Sandy Eastwall. He could have claimed Joan and Jeremiah, done whatever he wished to obtain Covenant’s ring. No force on this earth could have stopped him.
He did not have that kind of power.
The bane did. She Who Must Not Be Named had seen into Linden’s heart and judged her. She was the bane’s rightful prey, trapped in a gullet that had not yet swallowed her because uncounted devoured women were screaming.
The bane did not exist. The women did not. Linden knew nothing about Elena except tales.
Only her bag of instruments and vials kept the flames from consuming her. Only the bleeding of her palm gave the bag meaning; kept her alive.
Her lower leg throbbed like an open sore. She had pierced it on the window-frame. She could not run or struggle much longer; but there was no end to the hall and the flames, the smoke, the terrible heat.
This was death. It was hell. It was the agony of all things ending, irredeemable calamity. And she had brought it on herself. She had earned it with anger and folly.
Wind flailed the flames. Smoke thick with sparks gyred upward amid lightnings that came from nowhere and never stopped.
A spasm of pain snatched her leg away. She sprawled along the burning floorboards.
In a frenzy, she flipped over onto her back. Frantically she swung her bag at the rush of the blaze.
Damn it. This was impossible. The hall had an end. It ended at the wall of the room where Sara had died. Linden had not left enough glass in the window-frame to hurt her this badly.
But she had lost her chance to save Jeremiah. Her reason to live.
Trust yourself.
Covenant was crazy. Dead and insane. There was nothing in her that she could trust. The only thing that mattered was power; and her defense was failing. By now, every necessary resource in her bag had been smashed.
Trust yourself.
Trust what, you bastard?
She might not have resurrected him and roused the Worm if he had only spoken to her. In Andelain. When any word from him would have been as precious as her son.
She can do this. No, she could not. No one could.
No one except Covenant, who had refused her.
Her hair sizzled and stank. Her eyelashes burned, scorching her eyes. Flame and smoke scoured her mouth, her throat, her lungs. Charred blots like deserved torments marked her shirt.
Now she needed to die. Anything was better than spending eternity trapped in the nightmare of She Who Must Not Be Named.
The world will not see her like again.
But there were also marks on her leg, on her jeans: a tracery of blood-stains below her knee. They formed a pattern.
She did not know what the pattern meant. Still she recognized it.
It could not have been caused by her struggle to crawl over the fanged frame of the window. Beneath the darker script of blood, she saw hints of green. Her eyes were scalded; nearly blind. Nevertheless the green looked as essential as grass.
The pattern—if it existed—was a map.
And there, on her shirt, surrounded by smoldering and blackness: a small round hole as precise as the passage of a bullet.
—her like again.
From somewhere beyond the flames, voices shouted her name. They had been shouting for a long time. Too long. Friends whom she had never met because they did not exist, imagined friends, pleaded for her in voices as loud as the conflagration and collapse of the farmhouse.
If she could not trust herself, she might be able to trust them.
Or the map.
It showed the way out.
Out of what? Into what? She had no idea. She could not read the map. She could only follow it.
She knew how. Do something they don’t expect. Everything else will take care of itself.
Because she had only one real weapon, one defense, and had failed to save herself, she hurled her medical bag straight into the teeth of the fire.
Everything is simpler than you make it sound.
Simpler, hell!
In that instant, a bolt of lightning struck through the blazing house into her chest. The concussion knocked her flat, expelled the anguish from her lungs, stunned every muscle. But the shock was brief. Night swallowed the flames, effaced fire from the world. Before her heart knew that it had died, it beat again. She lay on damp grass while realities wheeled around her, spinning too fast to be understood. When she gasped for breath, the air had become cool bliss.
At once, the shouting changed. Crying, “Linden Giantfriend!” Frostheart Grueburn scooped Linden into her arms. The Swordmain’s muscles strained with urgency.
“Is she harmed?” demanded Stormpast Galesend. Her voice was so loud that it covered Mahrtiir’s tense query.
Like a blaring horn, Rime Coldspray roared, “No! This I will not permit!
“Stave! The Staff!”
Vaguely Linden realized that she was no longer holding the Staff of Law. Her nerves remembered throwing it—Her medical bag: every drug, every instrument. The darkness held a greenish tinge, wan and frail, so faint that it scarcely dimmed the unregarded stars.
The muffled thud of a Giant’s strides receded. They became splashing, a rush into water: shallow water that grew deeper at every step.
Other feet sprinted in pursuit. Smaller splashes: a smaller body. Stave? Linden’s heart clenched again, and a clamor of water arose. Something greater than a Giant reared and thrashed.
In the distance, aghast children wailed in little voices that sounded like mud.
“Linden!” Grueburn insisted. She held Linden hard against her armor. “You must speak! Some horror has befallen you! Why did you cast away your Staff?”
Somehow the Manethrall made himself heard through the clamor of Giants, the turmoil of water, the gasp and pound of struggle. “She returns to herself! Ringthane, hear us! Why did you prevent our aid? What madness possessed you?”
Linden did not reply. She could not. She hardly had the strength to lift her head, focus her eyes. But she heard desperation, combat, fear. She should have died. Instead she tried to see.
At first, everything was a blur of darkness. Emerald flames shed no illumination: ordinary vision was useless. With her health-sense, however, her Land-given sight, she discerned sparse grass in damp sandy soil, an agitated boundary of water. Beyond that, details smeared into each other. Shapes bled until they became confusion, a flurry of writhing that flung water in all directions. The water smelled of rot, thick with muck and mold, like a marsh that did not drain.
Why had she discarded her Staff? She needed it now.
It was hers. Hers. She did not have to hold it in order to call up its strength. As long as she could sense its presence—
She could not. It was gone.
Or it was masked—
Christ!
—by a looming evil as thick as trees, as dense as a grove.
From the verge of the grass, a fen spread farther than her percipience could reach: a wetland clotted with mold and mud and swamp vegetation. Between small eyots of roots and muck, water lay dense and stagnant—and deeper as it stretched into the distance. It had been undisturbed for an age: it was not so now. Its ancient decay was in chaos, scourged and writhing, a welter of froth and spray. And from it came the stench of corpses, bodies by the thousands so long immersed that their putrefaction clogged the air.
The Sarangrave, Linden thought numbly. Sarangrave Flat. What was she doing here? Why had her companions brought her? They knew the danger—
Grueburn’s chest shuddered at each rank breath. From somewhere nearby, Mahrtiir made retching sounds. Galesend cupped her hand over Jeremiah’s mouth and nose as if she hoped to filter the reek with her fingers.
Gagging helplessly, Linden forced her perceptions farther.
Latebirth, Cirrus Kindwind, and Onyx Stonemage stood to the ankles in the edge of the marsh, poised to fling themselves into some fray. Yet they appeared to hesitate, uncertain of their enemy—or enemies. Latebirth faced the fen, aimed her sword toward the struggle that lashed the water; searched for an opportunity to attack. But Kindwind and Stonemage kept their backs to the Flat. Across a gap of a dozen or more paces, they confronted two clusters of the small, hairless creatures, the Feroce, one off to the left, the other on the right of Grueburn and Galesend, Linden, Jeremiah, and Mahrtiir.
Green flames gibbered in the hands of the creatures. Their muddy wailing rose through the stench and clash from the wetland, and was swallowed into silence.
Kindwind and Stonemage seemed to be waiting for the Feroce to attempt an assault.
Rank humidity clogged the air. It filled Linden’s lungs like stagnant muck. Her leg throbbed in response to the panicked theurgy of the creatures. But they paid no attention to her.
She had already thrown away her Staff. They had no further interest in her.
Out in the marsh, Coldspray, Cabledarm, Halewhole Bluntfist, and Stave fought the lurker of the Sarangrave.
Oh, God. Linden knew that evil, that fierce hunger. She remembered it. She could hardly breathe. Years or millennia ago, it had come close to killing her and everyone with her. In strength and savagery and sheer size, it dwarfed even Giants. Without Covenant and the krill and wild magic—
She counted three tentacles standing up from the water, no, four, each as thick as one of the Swordmainnir. Each could have stretched to three times the height of any Giant. To her, they tasted like the Illearth Stone and the shrieking bane; like the effluvium of the darkest deeds of the Viles and Demondim in their loreworks. They were reified corruption: long ages of seeping poisons, acrid and malign, accumulating until they became flesh swollen with craving.
Although the lurker had once commanded the skest, it wielded no magicks that Linden could perceive. Its physical bulk and muscle sufficed to feed it. Braced on its own immensity beneath the water, it struck at its opponents with enough force to shatter granite.
Cabledarm and Bluntfist stood against the tentacles, hacking with their swords, fending off blows; floundering through water that reached their thighs when they could not otherwise evade the lurker’s limbs. At first, Linden did not see Stave or the Ironhand. They had been driven underwater, were being held down—
No, they were not. The hard intransigence of Stave’s aura was there. Rime Coldspray’s courage shouted against the darkness.
When Linden concentrated on the former Master and the Ironhand, she caught a hint of her Staff.
Her leg hurt as if her cuts had become acid. As if the marks on her jeans were being etched into her bones.
Etched by an acid the hue of malign verdure.
Eruptions of water and violence bewildered her senses; thwarted her efforts to interpret what was happening. But she still had her map. She could still follow it.
Through the tumid obstruction of the air, the untrammeled logic of grass stains and pain led her to Coldspray, Stave, and the Staff of Law.
She had missed them in the rapid flurry of blows, the mad lash and slash of tentacles and swords, because they were not with Cabledarm and Bluntfist. They were not in the water at all.
Supple as snakes, the twisting arms of the lurker had caught them.
One had coiled around the Ironhand’s chest, heaved her into the air. Now it held her there, shaking her viciously and squeezing—Through the rancid fetor of corpses, the wet bellow of the swamp, Linden sensed the lurker’s tremendous might. If the monster could not snap Coldspray’s spine or neck, it meant to crush the life from her body.
Coldspray flailed with her glaive; but the tentacle’s thrashing kept her blade from its target.
The lurker was powerful enough to kill her. Its clench should already have collapsed her chest, driven ribs into her heart and lungs, sent blood spurting from her mouth and nose. Yet she was not crushed. She still lived and fought.
For the moment, at least, her armor withstood the hideous pressure of the monster’s arm.
Another tentacle had taken the Staff. Wrapped several times around the shaft, the arm drew back from the contest. The inner surface of the arm was thick with small fingers: it could grip. And Cabledarm and Bluntfist were not near enough to assail it. Other tentacles held the Swordmainnir at bay.
But Stave clung to the Staff. In spite of the lurker’s efforts to fling him off, he gripped the wood with both hands. Bracing his feet against the heavy coils, he strove to pull the Staff loose.
He could not out-muscle the tentacle: not directly. To the lurker, his strength was a child’s. And the arm had too many fingers. But the Staff was small in the monster’s clutch, a mere twig compared to the tentacle’s thickness. Stave fought, not to break the lurker’s hold outright, but rather to haul the Staff free from one end.
He was succeeding. By increments so small that Linden could barely discern them, he dragged the wood out of the coils.
If the monster tried to shift its grasp, it would lose the Staff altogether.
Nevertheless Stave could not win. Linden saw that. The lurker would change its tactics. Another tentacle would arise to toss the Haruchai aside. Or he would be punched down into the water and mud, forced under until he drowned.
He needed help.
The Swordmainnir understood his peril as clearly as Linden did. With a Giantish battle cry, Latebirth charged into the marsh. Three against two tentacles, she, Bluntfist, and Cabledarm fought to create an opening so that one of them could reach Stave. An instant later, Onyx Stonemage abandoned her watch against the Feroce and rushed to Coldspray’s assistance.
In response, a fifth tentacle joined the fray.
Linden could not bear it. Covenant had told her repeatedly to trust herself. She can do this. The pain in her leg demanded deeds that had no name.
She was too weak to shout. Her lungs held too much water. Stonemage, Latebirth, and the other were too embattled to hear her. Trusting herself meant trusting her friends. It meant trusting Frostheart Grueburn.
“Tell them,” she gasped. Her throat felt raw, scorched by flame, scraped by smoke. “Save Coldspray. I’ll help Stave.”
Grueburn must have heard her. Must have believed her. Clarion as a thunderclap, the Giant roared over the tumult, “To the Ironhand! Linden Giantfriend aids Stave!”
They all must have believed in Linden. Crashing like a berserker, Latebirth turned to head toward Rime Coldspray with Stonemage. An instant later, Halewhole Bluntfist did the same, leaving Cabledarm to engage three tentacles alone.
Without hesitation, Cabledarm dove beneath the fouled surface, the scourged spray. Then she surged to her feet near one of the arms. Streaming with muck and fronds, with gobbets of putrid flesh, she swung her sword two-handed; hacked into the thick muscle and sinew of the tentacle.
Her blow bit deep. The Feroce wailed as though they had been pierced. Acid pulsed in Linden’s leg.
Another tentacle struck Cabledarm down. But the arm that she had hurt toppled, loud as a scream, back into the fen.
It did not rise again. Instead it fled, plowing a writhen furrow in the water.
At the same time, Stonemage drove a headlong thrust into the heavy mass striving to crush Coldspray??and Latebirth threw her whole body into a horizontal slash—
—and Linden reached out with percipience and desperation for the Staff of Law.
It was hers. It was hers, Goddammit! She had fashioned it with wild magic from her own love and bereavement as much as from Vain and Findail. Only its iron heels had once belonged to Berek. And it had answered her call when she had needed Earthpower to heal a dying Waynhim. It would answer her now.
While one tentacle held Cabledarm underwater, and another swatted Bluntfist aside, knocking the Swordmain away as if she were weightless, Linden summoned fire from her Staff.
Panting the Seven Words, she did her best to spare Stave. But she could not afford to concentrate on his safety. To harm the lurker, she needed her fiercest flame. For reasons that she did not try to understand, the monster wanted the Staff. It would not let go unless she made it flinch.
From the Staff, she called one small tongue of fire, flame blacker than the tinged darkness. Then another. Another.
Every sign of Earthpower and Law made Linden stronger. The Seven Words filled her mouth. She could not recover the lost cleanliness of her theurgy; but she could make it hurtful. Between one heartbeat and the next, her little flames became ebon incandescence: a deflagration of condensed midnight.
The wails of the Feroce turned to bereft shrieks as power like a piece of an obsidian sun burned into the lurker’s flesh.
Floundering, the tentacle released its grip. Stave clung to the Staff as the monster dropped it and him into the marsh.
Instantly water quenched Linden’s fire. Her alarm for Stave extinguished it. A dark wind like an in-rush seemed to sweep every vestige of her power from the Sarangrave.
But she had done enough. A convulsion of pain clutched the lurker. Twisting in anguish, tentacles cudgeled the night. One blade-bitten arm released Rime Coldspray. As the Ironhand fell heavily between Latebirth and Stonemage, Cabledarm gained her feet; broke the surface and whooped for rank air. The tentacle that Linden had burned squirmed away beneath the whipped water.
In flailing pain, the monster withdrew. The suction of massive shapes moving away hit the fen like an eruption. Waves high enough to reach the chests of the Giants crashed in all directions: a thunder of water and rot. The pressure of moisture in Linden’s chest eased as if a thunderstorm had passed.
At the same time, the Feroce ran after the lurker. Wailing as one, they dashed for the refuge of the Sarangrave. And as they splashed into the Flat, their fires winked out. In water, they appeared to have no need or use for magicks.
Before the last flame vanished, however, Linden saw Stave stand up from the muck. Clots of mud and bits of corpses stuck to his skin. Rancid fronds and stems hung like vestments from his shoulders. But in his hands he held the Staff of Law as if it could not hurt him; as if even the black savagery with which Linden had wounded the lurker could not touch him.
When she saw him—when she discerned Coldspray upright with Latebirth and Stonemage, and Cabledarm apparently unscathed, and Bluntfist wading vehemently through the swamp—Linden felt relief rise in her like a tide.
Relaxing at last in Grueburn’s arms, she hardly noticed that the pain of her cut shin and calf was gone.