2.
Unfinished Needs
009
Linden Avery stood, staring and paralyzed, as if she had finally learned the true meaning of horror. Nothing in her life had prepared her for the outcome of her granite desperation. Long ago, she had been forced to watch her father’s suicide: in fear and pity, she had imposed her mother’s death: she had seen Thomas Covenant stabbed to death in his former world—and later slain again by the Despiser. A Raver had taught her to dread her own capacity for evil. Under Melenkurion Skyweir, she had been forced to do battle against her chosen son. But such things had become trivial. They were too small and human to inure her now.
Her mind was empty of words. She could not respond to Liand’s stricken empathy, or to the consternation and support of the Ramen, or to Stave’s rigid loyalty. The antagonism of the Humbled meant nothing to her. Neither Infelice nor the Harrow held any import. But she was not stunned or numb. She was not. She had not expended her remorse with weeping, or her rage with blows, or her revulsion—Nor had she been silenced by Covenant’s faltering attempts to explain himself, or by his inadequate affirmation. Instead she was crowded to bursting with dismay.
Dismay: not despair. Despair was darkness, the nailed lid of a coffin. Her dismay was a moral convulsion, the shock of seeing her whole reality distorted beyond recognition. She had left any ordinary loss of hope or faith behind as soon as she had realized that Covenant was not whole. Now she felt an appalled chagrin like the onset of concussion, simultaneously paralyzing and urgent. The cost of what she had done dwarfed thought. The only sentences remaining to her had been spoken by others; and they were tocsins.
She has roused the Worm of the World’s End.
She loved the Land. She loved Thomas Covenant and Jeremiah. The Ramen and the Ranyhyn and the Giants. Liand and Stave and poor Anele. Yet she had doomed them all. Resurrecting Covenant, she had given Lord Foul his heart’s desire.
Within her she holds the devastation of the Earth—
Through Anele, Sunder and Hollian had tried to warn her. He did not know of your intent. The Ranyhyn had tried: perhaps everyone had tried. There is strength in ire, Chosen. But it may also become a snare. Days ago, she had dreamed that she had become carrion: food for abhorrent things feasting on death. Confident and cruel, the Despiser himself had given her a vision of his intentions.
Nevertheless she had defied every caution. In fury at what had been done to her son, she had violated one of the essential Laws which made life possible, allowed the Earth to exist: the Laws which she should have served. In one flagrant act, she had broken every promise that she had ever made.
Good cannot be accomplished by evil means.
This was the result. Covenant sprawled facedown on the betrayed grass of Andelain. The old scar on his forehead, like the wound in his T-shirt, was hidden; but the strict silver of his hair was accusation enough. Long ago, Lord Foul’s efforts to kill him had burned him clean of venom and dross. The transformation of his hair was only one outcome of that savage caamora. Now the stark light of the krill appeared to concentrate there—and on his halfhand, emphasizing his lost fingers. They seemed to reach toward her in spite of his collapse, as if he were still pleading with her even though she had set in motion the world’s ruin.
He was only unconscious: the violence of what she had done to him had not burst his heart. She could be sure of that. Wielding catastrophic quantities of power, she had whetted her senses to an unbearable edge. Her nerves wailed with too much percipience. She saw clearly that Covenant had been felled by shock and strain, not by injury. Physically her extravagance had not harmed him.
But his mind—Oh, God, his mind. Webbed with cracks, it resembled a clay goblet in the instant before the vessel shattered. The imminent fragments of who he was remained individually intact. In some sense, they clung to each other. If time stopped here—if this instant did not move on to the next—the goblet might yet hold water. A cunning potter might have been able to make the clay whole again.
But Linden did not know how to stop time. She only knew how to destroy it.
Berek’s spectre had said, The making of worlds is not accomplished in an instant. It cannot be instantly undone. Nevertheless Linden Avery, Chosen, Ringthane, and Wildwielder, had made the end of all things inevitable.
In addition, Covenant was rife with renewed leprosy. His illness had deadened most of the nerves in his fingers and toes. There were insensate patches on the backs and palms of his hands, the soles of his feet. But that, at least, was not her doing. Rather it was an oblique effect of Kevin’s Dirt. The bitter truncation which hampered health-sense and Law, blunted every expression of Earthpower, had diminished Covenant more profoundly. He had become an outcast of Time; a pariah to his own nature, and to his long service against Despite: an icon of the Land’s immedicable peril.
In the life that she had lost, she could have treated his bodily illness, if not his riven mind. Her former world had discovered drugs to end the ravages of this disease. Here she felt helpless. She feared what might happen if she used Earthpower and Law to attempt healing either his illness or his consciousness without his consent.
She, too, had become an icon: an embodiment of loss and shame and unheeded warnings. She had made of her life a wasteland in which she did not know how to live.
And I trust you. I’ll do everything I can to help.
In her dismay, Covenant’s reassurances sounded like mockery.
At that moment, there was no part of her still capable of attending to the distress of her friends. Liand and Stave; Mahrtiir, Pahni, and Bhapa; the Ranyhyn: she had nothing left for them. If the Humbled or the Law-Breakers, Infelice or the Harrow, had spoken to her, she would not have been able to hear them.
Nevertheless there were powers abroad in the night that could reach her. When the great voice of Berek Halfhand announced, “The time has come to speak of the Ritual of Desecration,” she staggered as though she had been struck.
She believed that he meant to excoriate her.
While she flinched, however, Loric Vilesilencer turned to the first High Lord. Grim and gaunt, the spectre of the krill’s maker countered, “Is it not my place to do so?”
“It is,” Berek acknowledged. Lambent with his own ghostly silver, he appeared to gain definition from the unresolved illumination of the krill. The gem’s light still held a throb of eagerness and wild magic; but it did not pale his earned majesty. Instead it seemed to enhance his strength. “Yet you well know that there are words which cannot be heard by a son who deems that he has failed his father. The love which lies between them precludes heed.”
Liand stared with open wonder. Stave watched warily. The Ramen held themselves ready, taut with innominate expectations. Gradually Linden understood that the attention of the Dead was not directed toward her. Though they spoke to each other, their emanations were concentrated, not on her, but on Kevin Landwaster, who stood appalled and ghastly in the east as if he had witnessed the fruition of his worst fears—and now expected to be punished for Linden’s crimes as well as his own.
That recognition plucked at her; intruded on her dismay. Like her, Kevin had accomplished only evil by evil means. His anguish touched her when she had lost her ability to respond to anything else.
“Indeed, it is so,” Damelon added. Like Berek, he addressed Loric. The tranquility of his earlier smile had become sadness and affection. “Though you are the son of my heart, and entirely beloved, do you not believe that I question your deeds and courage, as you do? Do you not suffer gall, judging that you have not matched the standard which I have set for you? And if I avow that you merit my pride in each and all of your endeavors, will you hear me? Will you not believe that my words are inspired by love rather than by worth?”
With an air of reluctance, High Lord Loric nodded.
“Thus it falls to me to speak,” proclaimed Berek.
His steps did not mark the rich grass as he came slowly forward. “Kevin son of Loric, hear and give heed,” he demanded in a tone that was both stern and gentle. “We share no bond apart from the heritage of lore and High Lordship. The inheritance of blood is too distant to constrain me. Thus I am able to state freely that your sires are grieved by the harm which you have wrought, but they are not shamed.”
As he moved, he appeared to approach Linden and the krill and Covenant’s fallen form. If he had so much as glanced at her, she would have flinched again. But his gaze was fixed solely on the Landwaster: his strides would take him past her to Loric’s son.
At the same time, Damelon and Loric also moved, walking carefully toward Kevin as though they wished him to comprehend that he was not threatened.
Kevin stared wildly. A kind of terror poured from him, contradicting the benison of Andelain. He may have imagined that the words and attitudes of his ancestors were false; intended to exacerbate his torment. Or he may have feared that they would trivialize his sufferings, implying that his despair was devoid of significance to anyone but himself.
In his place, Linden would have felt those dreads.
Nevertheless Loric’s son did not withdraw. Perhaps he could not: perhaps the same commandment which had brought him here precluded any word or deed that might have eased his pain.
In spite of her own plight, or because of it, Linden mourned for him.
At once stentorian and kindly, Berek continued, “Only the great of heart may despair greatly.” His voice seemed to echo back from the lost stars. “You are loved and treasured, not for the outcome of your extremity, but rather for the open passion by which you were swayed to Desecration. That same quality warranted the Vow of the Haruchai. It was not false.”
In moments, the first High Lord had passed Linden as he and his descendants gathered before Kevin. “Doubtless such passion may cause immeasurable pain. But it has not released the Despiser. It cannot. Mistaken though it may be, no act of love and horror—or indeed of self-repudiation—is potent to grant the Despiser his desires.” Together, Berek, Damelon, and Loric drew near enough to touch the Landwaster. “He may be freed only by one who is compelled by rage, and contemptuous of consequence.”
Fervid with apprehension, Kevin faced his progenitors. The krill glared argent in his eyes.
“High Lord Kevin son of Loric,” concluded Berek. “Others may have fallen—or risen—to that extreme. You have not. You did not. None here can assert with certainty that they would not have done as you did in your place.”
“That is sooth, my son,” Loric murmured roughly, “a word of truth in this fate-ridden time. If I did not speak often or plainly enough of my own encounters with despair, or of the occasions on which I trembled at the very threshold of Desecration, then was I a poor father indeed, and your reproaches must be for me rather than for yourself.”
When he heard his father, something within Kevin broke. Linden saw the chains which had bound his spirit snap as he opened himself to Loric’s embrace.
At once, Loric threw his arms fiercely around his son. Kevin’s eyes bled reflected silver like astonishment as Damelon and then Berek enclosed father and son with their acceptance. Hugged and held by his forebears, Kevin wept as relief found its way at last into his wracked soul.
And as he wept, he appeared to be transformed by the theurgy of the krill; or by Andelain. Briefly he became a glode amid the surrounding night, lucent and exalted. Then he faded until he was only an outline of wisps that evaporated into nothingness.
At the same time, Loric and Damelon also faded, accompanying the last of their line toward his rest. Soon only Berek remained.
His own knowledge of despair and striving shone from him as he turned toward Linden.
However, the moment when she might have winced or hidden her head had passed. Nor did she meet the first Halfhand’s gaze. There was another spectre in the hollow as full of anguish as Kevin had been, and as sorely bereft. Berek should have directed the balm of his compassion elsewhere. Linden had no use for it.
But she was wrong about him: he did not mean to comfort her. His tone sharpened as he began to speak. His words seemed to fall on her like stones.
“Linden Avery, you are scantly known to me. Nonetheless I behold what you have become. You have exceeded the healer who once touched my heart, offering hope amid vast suffering and rue. Now you have made of yourself a Gallows Howe, its soil barren, drenched with fury and recrimination. Therefore you must exceed yourself yet again, while the world awaits its doom. If you do not, the woe of all who live will be both cruel and brief.
“Are you dismayed by the hurt of your deeds? Then make amends. Do not imagine that you have come to the end of service and healing. The woman who entered my camp to meet death and give battle would not have permitted herself that Desecration.”
Linden heard him, but she did not listen. Gallows Howe held truths unknown to Berek and his descendants. Ire was only one aspect of what she had learned in Caerroil Wildwood’s demesne—and in her ordeal under Melenkurion Skyweir. By their stature and potency, the ancient Lords had drawn her beyond herself. Now she felt called to the Law-Breakers.
To Elena, daughter of Lena and Covenant, who had pierced the Law of Death because she had trusted Kevin’s pain—and who, like Linden, had failed to heed the warning of the Ranyhyn.
Linden herself had become a Law-Breaker. And she could not lay claim to the redemptive mystery which had impelled Caer-Caveral to breach the Law of Life so that Covenant’s spirit would remain to ward the Arch of Time when his body had been slain—and so that Hollian and her unborn son could live again. The Dead Forestal of Andelain would not understand Linden.
Only Elena could comprehend her now that Linden also had ignored the Ranyhyn, and all of her choices had become calamities.
Moving around Covenant’s sprawled helplessness and the krill’s compulsory light—leaving her Staff and Covenant’s ring unregarded on the grass—Linden crossed the hollow to approach the last Forestal and the stricken High Lord.
On some level, she felt Berek’s shade watching her. She sensed his efforts to gauge the condition of her soul—or the direction of her thoughts. But she had no attention to spare for him; and after a moment, he seemed to sigh. Unreassured, he faded as well, following his descendants as if she had dismissed him.
In the absence of those towering spirits—and of the Wraiths, fled from Linden’s great wrong—her companions began to emerge from their entrancement and shock. Liand and the Ramen became restive, fretted by alarms. The Humbled and even Stave gazed after Linden as though they disapproved of her refusal to acknowledge or answer Berek Halfhand. The Harrow watched Linden avidly while Infelice shed distress like damaged jewels.
But Linden ignored them as well. A score of paces, or perhaps more, brought her face-to-face with the Law-Breakers, who had escorted Covenant out of Time to meet her uttermost need.
Elena seemed unable to meet her gaze. Regret and grief twisted the High Lord’s features as she studied the grass at Linden’s feet, the stains on Linden’s jeans. Lit by the krill, torn hair framed Elena’s galled face, her naked self-abhorrence.
At any other time, Linden might have been moved by empathy to remain silent. Elena was Covenant’s daughter. In simple kindness, if for no other reason, Linden might have tried to show the spectre as much consideration as she had given Joan.
But Roger also was Covenant’s child. Linden had no patience for Elena. She could not afford to treat Elena’s failings more gently than her own. Linden had committed an absolute crime. Only absolute responses would suffice.
Berek was right about her: she had become a kind of Gallows Howe. The sorrow that she had felt for Kevin Landwaster was like Caerroil Wildwood’s grief for his trees—and for his future. It remained with her; but its implied vulnerability had already bled away into soil made barren by death. Like the former Forestal of Garroting Deep, she was aghast at the scale of her own inadequacy. But she had none of his fury, and no one to blame. She was too full of dismay to consider Elena’s frailty.
Perhaps Elena understood the gift which Berek, Damelon, and Loric had given Kevin. Her spirit as she avoided Linden’s gaze seemed to yearn for some forgiving touch. In her, hope was commingled with a raw fear that she would be refused.
But Linden had gone too far beyond hope and despair to comfort Elena. Covenant’s daughter needed his consolation, not Linden’s.
In a low voice, taut and bitter, she demanded, “Stop feeling sorry for yourself.” She was speaking to herself as much as to Elena’s woe. “It doesn’t accomplish anything. You’ve suffered enough. Tell me what to do now.”
Tell me how to bear what I’ve done.
She needed an answer. But apparently she—like Elena herself—had misjudged the Dead. In a different form, Elena may once have aided Covenant: she had no aid to offer now. Instead an echo of Linden’s dismay twisted her features. Raising her face to the doomed stars, she uttered a wail of desolation: the stark cry of a woman whose wracked heart had been denied.
Then she flared briefly in the krill’s light and vanished, following the distant ancestors of her High Lordship out of the vale; out of the night.
From the bottom of the hollow, Linden’s friends gazed at her as if she had smitten their hearts. Infelice’s distress matched the outrage of the Humbled.
“Elena!” Linden cried urgently. “Come back! I need you!” But her appeal died, forlorn, among the benighted trees, and found no reply.
Instead Caer-Caveral faced her with severity and indignation in every line of his spectral form.
“You judge harshly, Wildwielder. The Landwaster himself has been granted solace. Does your heart hold no compassion for Elena daughter of Lena, whose daring and folly compelled her to spend herself in service to the Despiser?”
“Damnit,” Linden retorted without flinching, “that’s not the point. Compassion isn’t going to save any of us.” There was nothing left to save except Jeremiah. “Somebody has to tell me what to do.”
The Dead Forestal folded his arms across his chest, holding his scepter in the crook of his elbow; forbidding her. “Cease your protests.” He had set aside every impulse or emotion that might have resembled mercy. “They are bootless. We have no counsel for you.”
Linden beat her fists on her temples. She would have clutched at Caer-Caveral if he had been anything more than an eidolon. “Then tell me why you won’t help me. When Covenant was here before, you gave him everything,” advice and Vain as well as the location of the One Tree. The Forestal and Covenant’s Dead had prepared every step of his path to death and triumph. “Why didn’t you care about ‘the necessity of freedom’ then? He’s Thomas Covenant. He would have found a way without you. I’m just lost.
“Why have you forsaken me?”
Caer-Caveral glowered at her, shedding reminders of his slain song. “Much has been altered since the Unbeliever last walked among the living. You are indeed forsaken, by the Dead as by the Earth’s Creator. How could it be otherwise, when all of your deeds conduce to ruin?”
Then he said, “In pity, however,” although his tone held no pity, “I will observe that the Unbeliever entered Andelain alone, for no companion dared to stand at his side. He had neither health-sense nor the Staff of Law. The Ranyhyn had not cautioned him. He knew only love and compassion. Thus his need was greater than yours. For that reason, he was given gifts.
“Yet the Dead shaped none of his choices. He did not come seeking guidance. Nor did he request aid. In sooth, he did not tread any path which he did not determine for himself—or which you did not determine on his behalf.
“You have companions, Chosen, who have not faltered in your service. If you must have counsel, require it of them. They have no knowledge which you do not share, but their hearts are not consumed by darkness.”
Abruptly Caer-Caveral unclasped his arms; gripped his scepter in one fist. Whirling the gnarled wood about him as though he were invoking music, a melody which had been silent for millennia, he removed himself from the night, leaving Linden alone on the slope of the vale.
Beyond her, Andelain’s trees looked chthonic in the light of the krill. Behind her stood the charred stump of the Forestal’s former life, the krill itself, Thomas Covenant’s sprawled unconsciousness. The conflicting concerns and passions of her companions tugged at her nerves like accusations or pleading. And among them on the grass lay the Staff of Law and Covenant’s wild gold ring as if those instruments of power formed the pivot on which the fate of worlds turned.
For a moment, Linden yearned to simply walk away. She had done something like that once before in Andelain, when her fears for or of Covenant had raised a wall between them. She could stride into the darkness and try to lose herself among the kindly folds of the Hills. There copses and greenswards and beauty might appease her guilt with their lenitive beneficence; soothe her savaged heart. She could walk and walk until there was nothing left of her, and the burden of the Land’s unanswerable needs fell to someone else.
But to do so would be to forsake Jeremiah, as she herself had been forsaken. And her friends deserved more from her. After what she had done to him, Covenant deserved more.
Days ago, Manethrall Mahrtiir had told her, Therein lay Kevin Landwaster’s error—aye, and great Kelenbhrabanal’s also. When all hope was gone, they heeded the counsels of despair. Had they continued to strive, defying their doom, some unforeseen wonder might have occurred.
Linden no longer believed in unforeseen wonders. They were Covenant’s province—and she had crippled him. Nevertheless she turned her back on the surrounding darkness and walked slowly down to rejoin her friends and the Ranyhyn, the Humbled and Infelice and the Harrow.
None of them attended Covenant’s unconsciousness, although the Humbled stood guard over him. They were chary of him; restrained by awe, or by the fear that they might harm him inadvertently. Nevertheless everyone watching Linden understood too much: she could see that. For those who cared about her, what she had done was an ictus in their hearts. Liand and the Ramen lacked the Harrow’s provocative knowledge, Infelice’s Earth-spanning consciousness, the shared memories of the Haruchai. None of her friends—or her antagonists—could match the strange and singular insight of the Ranyhyn. But they all were gifted with health-sense; percipience. The Elohim’s announcement that Linden had invoked the destruction of the Earth may have sounded abstract to Liand and the Ramen; even to the Humbled and Stave. Still they knew that they had witnessed an irreversible catastrophe; that she had vindicated every warning, fulfilled every dire prophecy—
When your deeds have come to doom, as they must—
You have it within you to perform horrors.
How had the Harrow and even the Viles known how badly she would fail her loves?
But Linden did not allow herself to hide her head as she approached the krill and Covenant’s limp form. She did not intend to conceal her fatal heart behind a veil of shame. If she had indeed roused the Worm of the World’s End, she meant to bear as much of the cost as her flesh could endure.
Bhapa and Pahni did not meet her eyes. Apparently they could not. Pahni clung to Liand, hiding her shock and terror against his shoulder. Bhapa studied the grass at his feet as though he feared that Linden’s gaze would make him weep. But the bandage over Mahrtiir’s face was too mundane to conceal the ferocity of his glower.
Stave had regained his impassivity. Perhaps he had never lost it. His stance was a query, not a repudiation. But the Humbled were not so restrained. Behind their familiar ready poise, they seemed to tremble with the force of their eagerness to strike her down.
Covenant had told them to choose her. They did not appear inclined to heed him.
Around the Humbled, the Ranyhyn remained watchful, wary; prepared to defend Linden again. As Linden drew near, Hyn nickered softly. The mare’s call sounded sorrowful and resigned, as if she blamed herself. In spite of what Linden had done, the horses held fast to their fidelity. Perhaps they still trusted her. If they considered Infelice or the Harrow relevant to the fate of the Land—or to their own imperatives—they did not show it.
Of them all, however, all of Linden’s friends, only Liand looked at her and spoke.
Every hint of the young dignity which he had displayed upon other occasions was gone. The stature of his Stonedownor heritage had deserted him. He had replaced his Sunstone in its pouch: he did not reach for it now. Linden had never seen him look so small, or so lorn. The raven wings of his eyebrows articulated his uncertainty.
She expected him to plead for an explanation; a justification. Hell, she half expected him to castigate her. He and everyone else had earned that right. But he did not.
Instead he asked, hoarse with empathy, “Will you not heal him?” Helplessly he indicated Covenant. “Linden, the pain of his incarnation wracks him. He cannot contain the greatness of his spirit. There is also an illness which I do not comprehend, though it appears paltry by the measure of his rent mind.
“The Staff of Law lies there.” Liand pointed at the shaft of wood, iron-shod and ebony and runed. “Will you not grant him the benison of its flame? He has suffered beyond my power to imagine it.” His tone held no accusation. “Will you not ease his plight?”
Linden shook her head. She was too full of dismay to falter. And the first shock of horror had passed. She was beginning to regain her ability to consider what she did.
“Don’t you think,” she asked Liand precisely, “that I’ve done enough harm already?”
Covenant was not warded by any power which might repulse her touch. But she could not affect the state of his mind—his spirit—without entering into him with her health-sense. Without possessing him. Long ago, she had done such things: she knew now that they were violations as profound as any rape. In addition, she could not foresee the effects of any change that she might make in Covenant’s truncated transcendence. Years of experience had taught her that any sentience which did not heal itself might be forever flawed. And on this subject, the Ranyhyn had warned her clearly enough. They had shown her the likely outcome if she imposed her will on Covenant. Or on Jeremiah.
Some evils could not be twisted to serve any purpose but their own. Manipulating Covenant’s condition for her own benefit would make her no better than the vile succubus that feasted on Jeremiah’s neck. Perhaps some obdurate instinct for salvation would enable Covenant to find his way through the maze of his fissured consciousness. Linden would not.
Liand winced at her answer: at the words themselves, or at their acrid sound in the lush night. Pahni stifled a whimper against his shoulder. Mahrtiir’s fierce silence conveyed the impression that he was mustering arguments to persuade her.
But Linden moved past them as though she had been indurated to any simple or direct form of compassion. She made no effort to retrieve her Staff or Covenant’s ring. Jeremiah’s ruined toy in her pocket was enough for her: the bullet hole and the small tears in her shirt were enough. Ignoring the grim enmity of the Humbled, she went to confront Infelice.
Now that the crisis of Linden’s powers had passed, the echo of wild magic from Loric’s krill did not outshine the Elohim’s refulgence. Infelice stood before Linden like a cynosure of loveliness and aghast hauteur. Wreathed about her limbs, her bedizened garment resembled weeping woven of gemstones and recrimination.
The Mahdoubt had told Linden that There is hope in contradiction. Long ago, Covenant had said the same thing. Before that, High Lord Mhoram had said it.
But the Mahdoubt had fallen into madness and death for Linden’s sake; and Covenant lay shattered on the grass. Linden had never known Mhoram.
Without preamble, she said, “The Dead are gone.” She did not doubt that Sunder and Hollian had already bid farewell to their immeasurably bereft son; that Grimmand Honninscrave had left the Swordmainnir to consider all that they had lost. “And Covenant can’t help me. I’ve hurt him too badly.” Nor could the Harrow’s knowledge, the fruit of his long diligence and greed, be compared to the immortal awareness of the Elohim. “That only leaves you.
“Tell me how to find my son.”
The Harrow had averred that Infelice would not or could not do so.
“Wildwielder,” the Elohim retorted sharply: a reprimand. “You yourself have asked if the harm which you have wrought does not suffice. Will you compound ruin with delirancy? Your son is an abomination. His uses are abominable. Did not the first Halfhand say that you must exceed yourself yet again? He wished to convey that you must set aside this mad craving for your son.”
Linden shook her head again. Infelice’s words slipped past her like shadows, wasted and empty of affect. No objurgation could touch her while she remained deaf to despair.
And she did not choose to credit the Elohim’s interpretation of High Lord Berek’s insistence—
“Then tell me,” she said as though Infelice had not spoken, “how to stop the Worm.”
“Stop the Worm?” The woman’s voice nearly cracked. “Do you imagine that such a being may be hindered or halted in any manner? Your ignorance is as extreme as your transgressions.”
Behind Linden, the Harrow chuckled softly; but she heard no humor in the sound.
“So explain it to me,” she demanded. “Cure my ignorance. Why does such a being even exist? What’s it for? What made the Creator think that the Worm of the World’s End was a good idea? Did he want to kill his own creation? Was all of this,” all of life and time, “just some cruel experiment to see how long it would take us to do everything wrong?”
“Fool!” retorted Infelice. Impatiently she dismissed the worth of Linden’s question. “How otherwise might the Creator have devised a living world? You have named yourself a healer. How do you fail to grasp that life cannot exist without death?”
Her voice wove a skein of sorrow and repugnance among the trees. “From the smallest blade of grass to the most feral Sandgorgon or skurj, all that lives is able to do so only because it contains within itself the seeds of its own end. If living things did not decline and perish, they would soon crowd out all other life and time and hope. For this reason, every living thing ages and dies. And if its life is long, then its capacity for procreation is foreshortened.”
While the Elohim spoke, Linden’s friends came to stand at her back, leaving only Bhapa to watch over Covenant with the Humbled; but neither she nor Infelice regarded them.
“Without difficulty, the Creator could doubtless have placed as many earths and heavens as he desired within the Arch of Time. But he could not conceive a living world that did not contain the means of its own death.”
Abruptly Infelice looked toward the Harrow; and her wrath mounted. “There this flagrant Insequent reveals the folly of his greed. With Earthpower and wild magic, he imagines that he will be empowered to unmake the Worm, thereby ensuring the continuance of the Earth. But the unmaking of the Worm will unmake all life. Such power cannot be countered without unleashing absolute havoc. While the Earth endures, the Worm is needful. The Harrow dreams of glory, but he will accomplish only extinction.”
Now the Harrow laughed outright, rich and deep, and entirely devoid of mirth. “You mistake me, Elohim,” he replied. “Such has been your custom toward the Insequent for many an age. I am not your Wildwielder, steeped in ignorance and mislove. I have other desires, intentions which will transcend your self-regard.”
Linden had no interest in the hostility between the Insequent and the Elohim: it was of no use to her. Before she could intervene, however, Stave raised his voice to ask Infelice, “How, then, does it chance that the Elohim do not know death? Why have you been spared the hope and doom of all other life? I discern no merit in you to sanction your freedom from mortality.”
“Puerile wight!” Infelice snapped at once. “Do you dare? The Elohim do not suffer affront from such as you.”
Yet a glance at Linden caused Infelice to quell the chiming swirl of her wrath. Apparently Linden held a kind of sway over the suzerain Elohim; an influence or import which Linden did not understand.
With elaborate restraint, Infelice explained, “The Elohim do not participate in death because our purpose is deathless. We neither multiply nor change nor die because we were created to be the stewards of the Worm.
“Betimes we have intervened in perils which endanger life upon or within the Earth, but that is not our chief end. Rather our Würd requires of us that we preserve the Worm’s slumber. Understand, Wildwielder, that we have no virtu to impose sleep. Instead it is our task to pacify and soothe. Thus by our very nature we serve all lesser manifestations of life.
“When we have countered wrongs such as the skurj, or the decimation of the One Forest, we have done so that the Worm may not be made restive by harm. And when we have permitted powers such as Forestals, or the Colossus of the Fall, to be fashioned from our essence, we have done so to refresh the corresponding vitality of the One Tree, that we may be left in peace.” More and more as she spoke, her words seemed to weave the arching trees and the deep night and the light of the krill into an elegy, delicate as silver bells, and rich with grief. “Our purpose is peace, the means and outcome of our self-contemplation. The Forestals—and others—are our surrogates, just as we are the Creator’s surrogates. They serve as the Creator’s hold and bastion in our stead, preserving life which strives and dies while we preserve the Earth.”
Then the elegy became a dirge throbbing with bitterness.
“Yet even such sacrifices are not the full tale of our worth to the Earth. I have named the One Tree. Setting aside the irenic reverie of ourselves, we have sought to deflect every threat which endangers the Tree, for it nurtures life just as the Worm enacts death. Thus the Earth began its true decline toward woe when an Insequent became the Guardian of the One Tree. The Theomach’s cunning was great, but his vaunted knowledge did not suffice for such a burden. Still less has Brinn of the Haruchai’s prowess sufficed, though he achieved the Theomach’s demise. By such deeds was the sanctity of the One Tree diminished, and the depth of the Worm’s slumber was made less.
“Our tragedy is this, that the shadow upon our hearts has become an utter darkness. The harm has grown beyond our power to intervene. The Worm is roused and ravenous, and we cannot renew its slumber. By what this Insequent has rightly named mislove, Wildwielder, you have doomed us. Because of you, we will be the first to feed the hunger which you have called forth.”
While Infelice answered Stave’s challenge, Linden fretted. On some level, she recognized the pertinence of the Elohim’s revelations. But they did not shape or soften the extremity of her circumstances. Your remorse will surpass your strength to bear it. She needed facts, details; a concrete understanding of what she had released.
Earlier Berek Halfhand had said, The making of worlds is not accomplished in an instant. It cannot be instantly undone. Much must transpire before the deeds of the Chosen find their last outcome. Linden clung to that—and demanded more from Infelice.
“All right,” she muttered grimly. “I get it.
“So what happens now? The Worm is awake. Somewhere. What will it do? How is it going to destroy the Earth? How much time have we got?”
The world’s remaining days were her only concern. The Worm itself was Covenant’s problem, not hers. He or no one would rise to that crisis. In either case, she had her own task to perform before the end.
—you aren’t done. Covenant had recognized the truth. And he had professed that she might succeed. She’s the only one who can do this. She chose to believe that he had referred to her one remaining responsibility.
“The Worm’s slumbers have been long and long.” Infelice spoke softly, but acid and bile twisted her mien. “Rousing, it is galled by hunger. As any living thing, it must feed. And as we are its stewards, so are we also its sustenance. Such is our Würd. The Worm must feed upon us. Only when it is sated with Elohim will it turn to the accomplishment of its greater purpose. If any of our kind remain unconsumed, we will endure solely to witness the end of all things, and so pass into the last dark.”
—feed upon us. Perhaps Linden should have been shaken. Earlier Infelice had said that every Elohim will be devoured, but Linden had hardly heard her. Now Linden might have stopped to consider the cost of what she had done.
But Infelice had not given her what she needed. Linden tried again. “How long will it take? Hours? Days? Weeks?”
Like angry weeping, the Elohim replied, “We will seek to delay our passing because we must. We will flee and conceal ourselves at such distances as we are able to attain, requiring the Worm to scent us out singly, for we do not wish to perish. With sustenance, however, the Worm’s might will grow. Ere a handful of days have passed, its puissance will discover and consume us. Then there will be no force in all the Earth great enough to delay the Worm.”
Again the Harrow gave his humorless laugh; but no one heeded him.
“All right,” Linden repeated. “A handful of days.” But she was no longer looking at Infelice. Her attention had veered away. “That isn’t much.” Stave or the Humbled may have had further questions for the Elohim. Like Linden herself, the Haruchai did not forgive. There were many things of which they could have accused Infelice. And Mahrtiir may have wished to protest the implied fate of the Ranyhyn. Linden would have let them say whatever they wanted. She was not speaking to them as she muttered, “I need to face this. I can’t put it off any longer.”
She expected the Harrow to offer her a bargain. An exchange. Paralysis or urgency was the only choice left to her; and Jeremiah needed her.
Do it, she told herself. While you still can.
But when Linden turned away from Infelice, the Ramen and Liand joined her. A moment later, the Manethrall stepped in front of her, compelling her to consider his blinded visage.
“Ringthane,” he began gruffly. “Chosen. There is much here which transcends us. We are Ramen, servants of the great Ranyhyn. For millennia, we have been content to be who we are. We do not participate in the outcome of worlds.
“But there is one matter of which I must speak.”
Linden stared at him. Her face felt too stiff with emotion to hold any expression. She may have looked as ungiving as Stave’s kindred. But Mahrtiir was her friend. He had lost his eyes, and with them some measure of his self-worth, in her aid. With an effort, she said, “I’m listening.”
Carefully the Manethrall said, “Since we are assured that it must be so, I grant that the harm of the first Ringthane’s resurrection is vast and terrible. But it is done. It cannot be undone. And his need remains. It is present and immediate. To heal him now will not redeem that which is past, but may do much to relieve that which is to come.”
He was asking her to take a risk that she had already refused. For his sake, however, and for her other friends, she essayed an answer.
“I can’t really explain it. If you haven’t been possessed, you don’t know what it’s like to have someone else messing around inside you,” heart and soul. “Just doing that to him would be bad enough. But this is worse. A broken mind isn’t as simple as a cut, or a compound fracture, or an infection. Just one mistake—”
In the Verge of Wandering, she had tried to enter Anele in order to ease his madness, or his vulnerability. But she was grateful now that he had repulsed her. Her efforts would almost certainly have damaged him in some insidious fashion. She was neither wise nor unselfish enough to impose her wishes on him without transgressing his integrity.
She had spent years learning that lesson.
“If I interfere now, it won’t be any different than resurrecting him. I’ll take away his ability to make his own choices.” To save or damn himself. “After what I’ve done, I owe him at least a little respect.”
“Linden,” Liand murmured, not in protest, but in chagrin and concern, “is it truly so wrong that you have restored a man whom you once loved? To some extent, I grasp the peril of—”
“You do not,” Galt stated severely. “Had Linden Avery not roused the Worm of the World’s End, still would her deed be a Desecration as vile as any Fall, and as fatal. In her own name, and for no purpose other than to ease her own heart, she has violated Laws upon which the continuance of life depends. The result is an unraveling of necessity , of act and consequence.” His tone was pitiless. Through him, the Humbled passed judgment. “In the end, only evil can ensue.
“A woman who has committed such crimes will commit others. She must not be permitted to perform further atrocities.”
Clearly the Humbled did not intend to let Linden intervene in Covenant’s plight.
The Manethrall and his Cords stiffened. Mahrtiir twitched his garrote into his hands. But neither the Haruchai nor the Ranyhyn moved. Therefore the Ramen did not.
“Nevertheless,” Stave remarked without inflection, “you will not raise your hand against her. The Unbeliever has instructed your forbearance. The Ranyhyn have declared their devoir against you. And I will not stand aside. No friend of the Chosen will stand aside. Mayhap even the Giants, who have named her Giantfriend, will abide by their allegiance. If you intend to impose your will upon the Chosen, you must oppose all who have gathered here in her name. And you must defy the given command of the ur-Lord, Thomas Covenant.”
Linden ignored the denunciation of the Humbled. She did not listen to Stave’s affirmation. She meant to confront the Harrow. She had nowhere else to turn. She had already done everything else wrong. Lord Foul’s release had become inevitable. Nevertheless one task remained to her.
Did the Harrow covet her Staff and Covenant’s ring? Let him. If he accepted her instruments of power, the result would not be what he appeared to expect.
Before she could speak, however, Liand’s murmur and a shift in the attention of the Ramen caught her. Following their gaze, she saw the Giants emerge from the enfolding night. Spectral in the brightness of the krill, Rime Coldspray and her comrades strode into the vale, bringing Anele with them.
Anele, at least, seemed to be at peace. Linden saw at a glance that his protective madness remained. He was swaddled in incoherence. But he had found—or had been led to—a place of rest amid his private turmoil. She could almost believe that he had been given a sense of purpose by his parents; an insight into the needs which compelled his fractured striving.
When your deeds have come to doom, as they must, remember that he is the hope of the Land. Apparently Sunder and Hollian imagined that their son still had a vital role to play, despite the awakening of the Worm.
In contrast, the emanations of the Giants spoke of gritted teeth and grim resolve. The manner in which they advanced upon Linden and her companions, and the darkness of their scowling, announced that they knew what had transpired here. Drawing them away, the shade of Grimmand Honninscrave must have explained what their absence had permitted or prevented. Perhaps Honninscrave had told the Swordmainnir why the Dead had sought to ensure that the living did not participate in or disrupt Linden’s choices.
Apparently, however, the former Master of Starfare’s Gem had revealed other things as well. The Giants spared a moment of sorrow for Covenant’s unconsciousness. They acknowledged Linden with ambivalent nods and grimaces, as if they had not made up their minds about her: they glowered ominously at the Harrow and the Humbled. But they did not pause for Stave or the Ramen or Liand. Instead they strode toward Infelice with demands in their eyes and anger in their stalwart arms.
Hardly aware of what she did, Linden turned to learn what impelled the Giants.
As they confronted Infelice, her expression became imperious. Bitterly she drifted into the air until her face was level with the combative glaring of the Swordmainnir. Her lambent form demanded an obeisance which the Giants did not deign to grant.
“In a distant age,” Rime Coldspray said at once, “our ancestors were misled to accept a false bargain with the Elohim. That the bargain was false in all sooth has been made plain to us. And it has now been betrayed through no deed of ours. We require restitution.”
A bargain? Linden wondered. What bargain?
Infelice lifted her chin haughtily. “And do you conceive that restitution is mine to grant?”
“How could it be otherwise?” retorted the Ironhand. “The bargain was made at your behest. The falseness is yours. With oblique misstatement and bland prevarication, you offered a true benefit to obtain a vile payment which no Giant who has ever lived would have proffered knowingly. Now you have claimed payment for that gift purchased with lies—and the guerdon has been withdrawn. Therefore our payment must be returned to us.”
Dimly Linden remembered hearing the Giants of the Search mention a bargain. Ten years ago in her life. But something had reminded her of it recently.
The eyes of the Elohim flared like faceted fires. “You reason falsely, Giant. I concede that our bargain has been betrayed through no deed of yours. Indeed, I concede that your witless ancestors concealed from themselves the truth of their own profligate unwisdom. But we did not impose their misapprehension. We merely permitted it. Nor have we condoned the betrayal of our bargain. That the mere-son sees fit to serve mad Kastenessen does not occur by our choice, or with our consent. For both Kastenessen’s malice and Esmer’s treachery, we are blameless.”
Yes. Linden nodded to herself. Esmer. That was it.
“Nevertheless,” Coldspray insisted, “you have dealt falsely with Giants. The burden of restitution is yours.”
“That is illusion,” countered Infelice. “Of a certainty, I am able to restore your gift of tongues—a gift which the mere-son will revoke once more when I have fled, as I must. But I cannot release the geas which grips the kinsman whom you name Longwrath.”
Linden winced when she heard that name; and Liand caught his breath. But Infelice did not pause.
“Such restitution”—she sneered the word—“is not mine to grant. The bargain which you name false was freely made, without coercion or constraint. In return for your gift of tongues, we sought the life of one then-unborn Giant at a time and in a circumstance of our choosing. If we did not say as much in language unmistakable to Giants, the fault lies in you. Whether by misapprehension or by self-delusion, the word of your kind was given. That deed is done. The geas which we required was set in motion then to seek its fulfillment now. It cannot be released, other than by the unmaking of its origin.
“We will not alter our past. Doing so will hasten the destruction of the Arch—and while we live we will cling to life.”
“Yet it was a dishonest bargain, Elohim,” protested Frostheart Grueburn. “Do you equate the granting of a tale with the surrender of a life?”
“A tale is a life,” Infelice stated.
“Nonetheless,” Grueburn continued, “you concealed from our ancestors that you craved a weapon potent to procure Linden Giantfriend’s death. Had they known that you wished to claim the life of any Giant for any purpose, they would have turned their backs and departed in repugnance.”
Infelice snorted her disdain. “There was no dishonesty. Our purposes are our own. We do not choose to reveal them. I acknowledge that your ancestors altogether misunderstood us. Still they accepted our bargain. If you find wrong in this, find it in your own kind, whose desire to comprehend the many tongues of the Earth outweighed their desire to comprehend the Elohim. We cannot be held accountable for their willingness to bind their descendants to a bargain which you now execrate.”
God, Linden thought in wan surprise. The Elohim had planned for this. All those millennia ago. Longwrath’s madness was not Earth-Sight: it was manipulation. It was for this! To avert this present moment. By misleading his ancestors, the Elohim had acquired the power to compel him against her, hoping that he would slay her before she entered Andelain with her Staff and Covenant’s ring.
“That’s unconscionable,” she found herself saying, although she had not intended to speak. “Lord Foul would be proud of you. If you wanted me dead, you could have killed me yourselves. You’ve had plenty of chances. Tricking other people into doing your dirty work isn’t just shortsighted. It’s suicidal. You could have had allies. Now all you’ve got are people who won’t be sorry to see you die first.”
—are we not equal to all things?
We are the Elohim, the heart of the Earth. We stand at the center of all that lives and moves and is. No other being or need may judge us—
That, Esmer himself had proclaimed, that arrogance, that self-absorption, is shadow enough to darken the heart of any being.
“Well said, my lady!” The Harrow clapped his hands loudly. “I begin to believe that there is hope for the Earth, when every stratagem but mine has failed.”
The entire company ignored him.
“You denounce yourself, Linden Avery,” Galt asserted flatly. “The false dealings of the Elohim are yours as well.”
Linden accepted the charge. She, too, was guilty of self-absorption. Yes, and perhaps even of arrogance. I need you to doubt me. She had no other excuse for her actions.
No excuse except her yearning for Thomas Covenant and her compulsory love for Jeremiah.
But Rime Coldspray and then the rest of the Giants turned away from Infelice. Perhaps they had not truly expected to win any form of concession. Moving to stand among the Ranyhyn and the Humbled, they towered against the night sky; the lost stars and the fathomless dark.
“It may be, Haruchai,” the Ironhand replied to Galt, “that your certainty is apt. Yet Grimmand Honninscrave, whose valor and sacrifice were known to your ancestors, has assured us that the Dead do not pronounce judgment so readily. Mayhap Cail and others of your forefathers would have endeavored to sway you, had you consented to heed them.
“With honored Honninscrave, we have spoken of many things”—her tone was as hard as the stone of her glaive—“not neglecting the Worm of the World’s End. He described the necessity of freedom in terms too eloquent to be ignored. He did not call us away from Linden Giantfriend’s side so that we would be deprived of our own freedom of response, but rather so that we would not be provoked by events to determine our response in haste. And he said much concerning all that the Giants of the Search learned of Thomas Covenant and Linden Avery.”
Linden listened almost involuntarily. She meant to turn her attention to the Harrow. But her new understanding of Longwrath’s plight clung to her like Honninscrave’s death in possession and defiance.
At Linden’s side, Liand’s eyes shone as though he had already guessed what the Ironhand would reveal.
“That they are mortal,” the leader of the Swordmainnir went on, “and thus driven to error, cannot be denied. But the same must be said of Giants and Haruchai—and now also of Elohim. And Honninscrave reminded us of the First’s deep love, and of Pitchwife’s, and of his own, which both Thomas Covenant and Linden Avery earned by their courage and resolve, by their given friendship, and by their final refusal to honor the dictates of despair. If we doubt Linden Giantfriend, he acknowledged, we have just cause. But he also avowed that we have just cause to rely upon the lessons of past millennia, lessons of lealty and trust. Indeed, he assured us that his own dreads are preeminently for her rather than of her. Remain uncertain, as do the Dead, he urged us, and abide by the leanings of your hearts.
“Haruchai, our hearts incline to Linden Avery, and also to Thomas Covenant. The peril of his incarnation is plain, as is that of her obduracy and might. He has suffered great harm, and the darkness within her is vivid to all who gaze upon her. Yet he remains a man who has risen to the salvation of the Land. And she has repeatedly demonstrated her capacity for unforeseen healings.
“If you are compelled to pass judgment,” the Ironhand concluded as if she were closing her fist, “do so among yourselves. We will not hear you. In spite of our uncertainty, we have elected to keep faith with our own past—and with hers.”
Short days ago, Coldspray had declared, After our children, tales are our greatest treasures. But there can be no story without hazard and daring, fortitude and uncertainty. And joy is in the ears that hear, not in the mouth that speaks.
Galt held the Ironhand’s gaze without blinking. Clyme and Branl did the same. However, they shared their thoughts in silence rather than aloud. To that extent, at least, they respected the attitude of the Giants. Only Stave heard his kindred; and he said nothing.
“Do you know—?” Linden tried to ask. But her throat closed as if she were still capable of weeping. Dismay filled her mouth like ashes or sand, and she had to swallow hard before she could find her voice. “Do you know what happened to Anele? Did Honninscrave,” oh, God, Honninscrave, who had deliberately accepted a Raver so that Lord Foul’s servant could be torn apart, “say anything about him?”
Coldspray shook her head, and her manner softened. “Of the old man, we know only what your eyes have beheld. We see that he has found solance among his Dead. But his state does not affect the heading of our choices. For that reason, I deem, Honninscrave did not speak of him.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Linden murmured as if to herself. “His freedom is as necessary as anyone else’s. If we knew what was going on inside him, we might interfere somehow.”
Struggling against the Giants’ effect on her, she prepared herself to turn toward the Harrow again. You have companions, Chosen—She had an abundance of friends: the Swordmainnir had made that obvious.—who have not faltered in your service. Only the Humbled and Infelice wished to oppose her. But that changed nothing. She had set in motion the end of the world. She could not alter it. There was only one thing left for her to do.
Surely she should retrieve her Staff and Covenant’s ring? They remained on the grass, discarded as if they had betrayed her. They would have no value to her unless she claimed them again.
Perhaps, she thought, she should try to claim Loric’s krill as well. Its brightness defended Andelain; but now Andelain was doomed. Loric’s dagger may have been the highest achievement of the Old Lords—and it could not save the Hills. Nevertheless it might continue to draw power from Joan’s wedding band when Covenant’s was gone.
It might save Linden herself.
Or Jeremiah.
Briefly.
That was all she asked. She had gone too far, and done too much harm, to expect anything more.
Yet she hesitated without knowing why. The Staff of Law belonged to her. In some sense, Covenant had left his ring to her. But she had no claim on the krill. No right to it.
She wanted to ask the Harrow, Do you still believe that Infelice will stop you from taking me to Jeremiah? Even now?
But this decision was hers to make. It did not belong to either the Elohim or the Insequent.
Before she could make her last remaining choice, however, Manethrall Mahrtiir abruptly jerked up his head.
“Aliantha!” he barked as if he were astonished or ashamed that he had not thought of this earlier. “Cords, find aliantha.”
Bhapa and Pahni exchanged a baffled glance. In confusion, Pahni looked quickly at Liand. But they were Ramen: they obeyed their Manethrall at once. Dodging between the Ranyhyn, they sprinted up the slopes of the hollow until they passed beyond the reach of the krill’s argence.
“Manethrall?” asked Stave.
Perplexed, Coldspray, Grueburn, and their comrades frowned at Mahrtiir.
“The first Ringthane must have healing,” he replied harshly. “There is much here that lies beyond my comprehension—aye, beyond even my desire for comprehension. Yet it is plain to me, though I have no sight, that some portion of his suffering is mere human frailty. He has been given flesh which is too weak and flawed to contain his spirit.
“No balm known to the Ramen will ease the ardor and constriction of his reborn pain. But aliantha will supply the most urgent needs of his flesh. Mayhap it will grant him the strength to awaken—and perhaps to speak.”
Stave nodded; and some of the grimness lifted from the faces of the Giants. “Manethrall!” Liand exclaimed gladly. “The sight which you do not possess surpasses mine, which is whole. Aliantha, indeed! Why was this not our first thought rather than our last?”
Because, Linden answered to herself mordantly, you were distracted. As she had been. Like her companions, she had concentrated on other forms of healing.
Now she felt that she would never be able to meet Covenant’s gaze again. She could hardly bear to look into the faces of her friends, whom she had misled and misused.
She meant to leave them all behind. She did not want to expose them to the hazards of the Harrow’s dark intentions.
Covenant had professed his faith in her. She’s the only one who can do this. Linden would have found his sick and shattered condition easier to endure if he had spurned her utterly.
The idea that he still trusted her felt like a cruel joke.
Among Andelain’s wealth of gifts, the Cords did not have to search far for treasure-berries. Pahni had already re-entered the vale with a handful of the viridian fruit. And as she hastened fluidly down the slope, Bhapa caught the light at the rim of the hollow. At the same time, Mahrtiir walked around the Ranyhyn and the Giants and the krill to approach Covenant. Kneeling, the Manethrall gently, kindly, eased the Unbeliever around onto his back. Then Mahrtiir seated himself cross-legged at Covenant’s head and lifted it onto the support of his shins.
Linden could not watch. Deliberately she turned away from the group around Covenant as she stooped to grasp the carved black wood of her Staff. For an instant, she feared that she had burned away its readiness for Earthpower and Law. At once, however, she found that the Staff was whole, unharmed. Its strict warmth steadied her hand as she picked up Covenant’s ring, looped its chain over her head, and let the white gold dangle against her sternum.
Now, she commanded herself. Do it now.
Nevertheless she hesitated, gripped by a pang like a premonition of loss. Her own intentions frightened her. Even more than her Staff, Covenant’s wedding band symbolized the meaning of her life. When she surrendered such things, she would have nothing left.
Nothing apart from Jeremiah.
His need compelled her. If she kept nothing for herself except her son, she would find a way to be content.
Clutching the Staff until her knuckles ached, she crossed lush grass to bargain with the Harrow.
As ornately clad as a courtier, the Insequent sat his huge destrier a dozen or more paces away from everyone else. As Linden approached, the beast rolled its eyes in terror or fury: the muscles of its flanks quivered. Yet it stood stiffly under the Harrow’s steady hand. The bottomless gulfs of his eyes regarded her hungrily, but did not attempt to draw her into their depths. A smile like a smug obscenity twisted his mouth. In order to face him, she had to remind herself grimly that his power was like his apparel, acquired rather than innate. Behind his condescension and his greed and his complex magicks, he was a more ordinary man than Liand of Mithil Stonedown, who had inherited the ancient birthright of his people.
If Linden could have closed her senses to the company behind her, she would have done so. But her nerves were still too raw; too exposed. Involuntarily she felt the Ranyhyn move until they formed a wide circle around Covenant and Mahrtiir and the Cords, Liand and the Humbled. There the star-browed horses stood as if to bear witness. And among the Ranyhyn, the Giants assembled. Even the attention of the Elohim was fixed on Covenant rather than on Linden and the Harrow.
Only Stave walked away from the Manethrall’s efforts to care for the first Ringthane. Alone the outcast Haruchai came to stand with Linden.
She did not want to follow what Mahrtiir was doing, she did not. In spite of her efforts to seal her senses, however, she felt his tension and concern as he accepted a treasure-berry from Pahni and broke it open with his teeth to remove the seed. He could not know what would happen when he fed aliantha to Covenant. He could only remain true to himself—and put his trust in the Land’s largesse.
Carefully he parted Covenant’s lips to accept the fruit. Then he began to stroke Covenant’s throat, encouraging the unconscious man to swallow.
Linden glared into the Harrow’s eyes as if she were impervious to his assumed superiority. Hoarsely she rasped, “You said that you can take me to my son.”
There is a service which I am able to perform for you, and which you will not obtain from any other living being.
“Indeed.” The Insequent’s voice was deep and fertile; ripe with avarice. He met her gaze like a man who yearned to devour her. “My knowledge encompasses both his hiding place and the means by which he has remained hidden. And I am able to move at will from one place to another in this time, as the foolish Mahdoubt has informed you.”
For moments that felt long to Linden’s unwilling nerves, Covenant did not respond to the aliantha on his tongue. But Mahrtiir was patient. And even if Covenant did not swallow, his mouth itself would absorb some of the berry’s virtue.
“The Worm of the World’s End is coming,” she replied to the Harrow, speaking as distinctly as the quaver in her heart allowed. “There’s nothing you can do about it. Does that make you re-think anything? Anything at all? Do you still want what I have?”
Did he still covet the responsibility implied by the Staff of Law and Covenant’s ring?
Suspense gathered around Covenant and the Manethrall. The Giants and the Humbled, the Cords and Liand and even the Ranyhyn studied the fallen Timewarden for some sign that the fruit’s rich juice or Mahrtiir’s ministrations might unclose his throat.
Linden felt the collective sigh of the Swordmainnir as Covenant swallowed reflexively.
The Manethrall bowed his head over Covenant for a moment. Then he readied another treasure-berry.
“I do, lady,” answered the Harrow avidly. “And I am not as ignorant of the Worm as Infelice chooses to imagine. The Earth’s ruin need not transpire as she asserts that it must. With the powers that you will enable me to wield, and by means which the Elohim fear to contemplate, I will demonstrate that no doom is inevitable—apart from the destruction which falls upon those who dare to oppose me.”
“All right.” Linden took a moment to confirm that she was sure. But the possibility that Covenant might awaken did not affect her decision. She needed to take one more absolute risk. Nothing less would serve her now. And she knew the cost of trying to escape her burdens. “If you’re that arrogant—or that blind—or that clever—tell me what you’ll offer in exchange.”
Without visible transition, Infelice stood in the air near Linden and the Harrow, floating so that she could face him directly with her gleaming indignation—or so that she could fling her distress down at Linden.
An instant later, the whole vale was transformed as a host of Wraiths came streaming into the hollow from every direction. Warmly they lit the dark. In spite of herself, Linden turned her head, expecting to see scores or hundreds of dancing eldritch candle-flames rush toward her as if they had been summoned by the possibility of conflict between the Elohim and the Insequent.
But they did not appear to be aware of her; or of Infelice and the Harrow. Instead they gathered around Mahrtiir and Covenant.
Infelice demanded Linden’s attention. “Linden Avery,” she protested in anguish and ire, “Wildwielder, you must not. Does the harm of this night fail to content you? The Insequent speaks of forces which he cannot comprehend. He will hasten the reaving of the Elohim and accomplish no worthy purpose. He will merely gain for himself a scant, false glory while the world falls.”
Stave ignored the Elohim. He did not glance at the Wraiths or Covenant. As if Infelice had not spoken, he said inflexibly, “Be wary, Chosen. I mislike the word of this Insequent. And the exchange which you contemplate is unequal in his favor. It may be greatly so. With wild magic and Law, perhaps wielded through High Lord Loric’s krill, he will acquire an imponderable might—and you will receive only your son. He may prove powerless against the Worm, and still wreak untold havoc ere the end, leaving naught but despair to those who briefly retain their lives.”
Linden hardly heard either of them. Held by surprise at the return of the Wraiths, she watched them bob and flicker over Covenant’s unconsciousness. The precise yellow-and-orange of their fires countered the inhuman silver of the krill. Chiming like the highest bells of a distant carillon, nameless and ineffable, they alit in throngs on his arms and legs, his torso, his face. And each touch was an infusion of their arcane vitality. Together they wove health through him, repairing his over-burdened flesh.
In spite of their generosity, Linden discerned no indication that the Wraiths would or could affect the fissuring of his mind. Nor did they relieve his leprosy. It was inherent to him. It may have been necessary. Nevertheless they swarmed to expend themselves so that his body would be able to bear the strain of his incalculable spirit.
When each Wraith had given its gift, its answer to the animosity between the Elohim and the Insequent, it danced away so that its place could be taken by another small flame.
Reassured, Linden faced Infelice and the Harrow again. Fervently she replied to both Stave and the Elohim.
“I’m not worried about that. If he’s wrong—if he can’t stop the Worm—he’ll die like the rest of us. But he may not be wrong. He didn’t work so long and hard for this just so that he can enjoy a few days of empty superiority. And I am going to free my son. I can’t do anything else, but I can try to do that. I’m going to stop his suffering. I’m going to hold him in my arms at least one more time before the Worm gets us. If he and I have to die, his last memory is going to be that I love him.”
For the span of several heartbeats, Stave considered Linden. When he was confident of what he saw with his single eye, he said simply, “Then I am content.”
“I am not!” shouted Infelice: a raw blare of passion that reminded Linden of Esmer’s eerie power. “Wildwielder, you have become Desecration incarnate. Your folly is too vast to be called by any other name. Do you not grasp that the Harrow intends a fate far more malign than mere extinction for the Elohim?”
Before she could continue, the Harrow laughed contemptuously. “You are mistaken, Elohim, as is your wont. When I have gained that which I crave, you and your kind will be spared, left free to nurture your surquedry in any form that pleases you. I will either fail or succeed. If I fail, your plight remains unaltered. If I succeed, you will be restored to your rightful place in the life of the Earth. Therefore silence your plaint. It is naught but pettiness and self-pity.”
“Do you conceive,” countered Infelice, “that your word has worth in such matters? It does not. This is some elaborate chicane to gain your desires. You are mortal, Insequent. Your human mind cannot contain the scale of your doomed intent.”
Linden braced herself to tell Infelice and the Harrow to shut up. She had had enough of their antagonism: it shed no light on the darkness of her decisions. But before she could demand their silence, she heard Covenant.
The Wraiths had revived him. Still lying with his head propped on Mahrtiir’s shins, he spoke softly: a mere wisp of sound in the fretted night. Nevertheless his voice carried as though he had the authority to command the very air of the vale.
“Do any of you have a better idea?”
Linden wheeled toward him as if he had reached out and snatched at her arm; as if she had no choice.
The gathering around him had parted: she could see him clearly. He had not risen from the grass into the light of the krill. But Wraiths still danced about him, a penumbra of gentle fires. In spite of the distance between them, Linden saw him with frightening clarity.
The pallor of his features displayed his weakness. Neither aliantha nor the Wraiths had relieved his fundamental flaws or his illness. He still resembled an invalid, too weak to stand; perhaps too weak to think. With her health-sense, Linden could almost identify the fault-lines along which the bedrock of his mind had cracked.
Yet the galls of his face retained their compelling severity. He looked like a fallen prophet, brought low before he could proclaim the Land’s fate.
Beneath the shock of his white hair, the scar on his forehead gleamed like an accusation. See? it seemed to say. This is my mortality. My pain. It’s your doing.
While Linden studied him, he turned his gaze on everyone around him. But none of them answered him. Even the Humbled did not. Linden expected them to reiterate their denunciations of her; yet Branl, Galt, and Clyme said nothing. Covenant’s authority held them in the same way that it ruled the atmosphere of the hollow.
“In that case”—he sounded sure in spite of his frailty—“I think we should do this Linden’s way. She can make this kind of decision. The rest of us can’t.” After a moment, he found the strength to add, “Mhoram would approve.”
At once, Infelice fled like a wail from the hollow. She disappeared as though Covenant had banished her; as though her cause were lost without the Timewarden’s support.
In the wake of her departure, the Harrow’s air of smug triumph made Linden wish that she could strike him down.