White Gold Wielder Part 20

In the process, Covenant had caused the Giant's death.

Only the restraint he had learned in the cavern of the One Tree kept him from crying. Don't talk to me about despair!

I'm going to destroy the world and there's nothing I can do about it! I need something better from you! Only that restraint*and the tall dark shape of the Master as he stood against the stars, torn by loss and as dear as life.

But then Honninscrave turned as if he had heard the words Covenant had not uttered. His moon-gilt stance took on a curious kindness. Softly, he said, "You are the Giantfriend, and I thank you that there is yet room in your heart for me.

No just blame attaches to you for Seadreamer's death*nor for the refusal of caamora with which by necessity you sealed his end. But I do not desire hope. I desire to see. I covet the vision which taught my brother to accept d.a.m.nation in the name of what he witnessed."

Quietly, he walked down from the hilltop, leaving Covenant exposed to the emptiness of the night.

In the cold silence, Covenant tried to confront his plight, wrestled for an escape from the logic of Lord Foul's manipulations. Revelstone was perhaps only three days away. But the wild magic had been poisoned, and venom colored all his dreams. He contained no more hope than the black gulf of the heavens, where the Worm of the World's End had already (154 of 399) [1/19/03 11:38:42 PM]

189 fed. Honninscrave's difficult grace did not feel like forgiveness. It felt as arduous as a grindstone, whetting the dark to a new sharpness. And he was alone.

Not because he lacked friends. In spite of the Land's dest.i.tution, it had blessed him with more friends.h.i.+p than he had ever known. No, he was alone because of his ring. Because no one else possessed this extreme power to ruin the Earth.

And because he no longer had any right to it at all.

That was the crux, the conflict he could not resolve or avoid; and it seemed to cripple his sense of himself, taking his ident.i.ty away. What did he have to offer the Land except wild magic and his stubborn pa.s.sion? What else was he worth to his friends?*or to Linden, who would have to carry the burden as soon as he set it down? From the beginning, his life here had been one of folly and pain, sin and ill; and only wild magic had enabled him to make expiation. And now the Clave had reduced the village to relics. It had ensnared the Haruchai once more. The Sunbane had attained a period of two days. Seadreamer and Hergrom and Ceer and Hamako were dead. If he surrenderd his ring now, as Findail and doom urged, how would he ever again be able to bear the weight of his own actions?

We are foemen, you and I, enemies to the end. But the end will be yours. Unbeliever, not^ine. At the last there will be but one choice for you, and you will make it in all despair.

Of your own volition you will give the white gold into my hand.

Covenant had no answer. In Andelain among the Dead, Mhoram had warned, He has said to you that you are his Enemy. Remember that he seeks always to mislead you.

But Covenant had no idea what the former High Lord meant.

Around him, a dismay which no amount of moonlight could palliate gripped the hills. Unconsciously, he had sunk to the ground under the glinting accusation of the stars.

Findail had said like the Despiser, He must be persuaded to surrender his ring. If he does not, it is certain that he will destroy the Earth. Covenant huddled into himself. He needed desperately to cry out and could not*needed to hurl outrage and frenzy at the blind sky and was blocked from any release by the staggering peril of his power. He had fallen into the Despiser's trap, and there was no way out.

When he beard feet ascending the hill behind him, he 190 covered his face to keep himself from pleading abjectly for help.

He could not read the particular emanations of his corn-'

panions. He did not know who was approaching him. Vaguely, he expected Sunder or Pitchwife. But the voice which sighed his name like an ache of pity or appeal was Linden's.

He lurched erect to meet her, though he had no courage (155 of 399) [1/19/03 11:38:42 PM]

for her concern, which he had not earned.

The moon sheened her hair as if it were clean and lovely.

But her features were in shadow; only the tone of her voice revealed her mood. She spoke as if she knew how close he was to breaking.

As softly as a prayer, she breathed, "Let me try."

At that, something in him did break. "Let you?" he fumed suddenly. He had no other way to hold back his grief. "I can hardly prevent you. If you're so all-fired b.l.o.o.d.y eager to be responsible for the world, you don't need my permission. You don't even need the physical ring. You can use it from there.

All you have to do is possess me."

"Stop," she murmured like an echo of supplication, "stop."

But his love for her had become anguish, and he could not call it back.

"It won't even be a new experience for you. It'll be just like what you did to your mother. The only difference is that I'll still be alive when you're done."

Then he wrenched himself to a halt, gasping with the force of his desire to retract his jibe, silence it before it reached her, She raised her fists in the moonlight, and he thought she was going to start railing at him. But she did not. Her percipience must have made the nature of his distress painfully clear to her. For a long moment, she held up her arms as if she were measuring the distance a blow would have to travel to strike him. Then she lowered her bands. In a flat, impersonal tone that she had not used toward him for a long time, she said, "That isn't what I meant."

"I know." Her detachment hurt him more than rage. He was certain now that she would be able to make him weep if she wished. "I'm sorry." His contrition sounded paltry in the sharp night, but he had nothing else to offer her. 'Tve come all this way, but I might as well have stayed in the cavern of the One Tree. I don't know how to face it."

Then let somebody try to help you." She did not soften; 191 but she refrained from attacking him. "If not for yourself, do it for me. I'm right on the edge already. It is all I can do,"

^he articulated carefully, "to just look at the Sunbane and stay sane. When I see you suffering, I can't keep my grip.

"As long as I don't have any power, there's nothing I can do about Lord Foul. Or the Sunbane. So you're the only reason I've got. Like it or not. I'm here because of you. I'm fighting to stay in one piece because of you. I want to do something"*her fists rose again like a shout, but her voice remained fiat*"for this world*or against Foul*because of you. If you go on like this, I'll crack." Abruptly, her control frayed, and pain welled up in her words like blood in a wound. "I need you to at least stop looking so much like my G.o.dd.a.m.n father."

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Her father, Covenant thought mutely. A man of such self-pity that he had cut his wrists and blamed her for it. You never loved me anyway. And from that atrocity had come the darkness which had maimed her life*the black moods, the violence she had enacted against her mother, the susceptibility to evil. Her instances of paralysis. Her attempt on Ceer's life.

Her protest wrung Covenant's heart. It showed him with stunning vividness how little he could afford to fail her. Any other hurt or dread was preferable. Instinctively, he made a new promise*another commitmeat to match all the others he had broken or kept.

"I don't know the answer," he said, keeping himself quiet in fear that she would perceive how his life depended on what he was saying. "I don't know what I need. But I know what to do about the Clave." He did not tell her what his nightmares had taught him. He did not dare. "When we're done there, I'll know more. One way or the other."

She took him at his word. She had a severe need to trust him. If she did not, she would be forced to treat him as if he were as lost as her parents; and that alternative was plainly appalling to her. Nodding to herself, she folded her arms under her b.r.e.a.s.t.s and left the hilltop, went back to the shelter and scant warmth of the cave.

Covenant stayed out in the dark alone for a while longer.

But he did not break.

NINE: March to Crisis

BEFORE dawn, the new company ate breakfast, repacked their supplies, and climbed the nearest hillside to await the sun with stone underfoot. Covenant watched the east gauntly, half fearing that the Sunbane might already have accelerated to a cycle of only one day. But as the sun crested the horizon, the air set blue about it like a corona, giving the still sodden and gray landscape a touch of azure like a hint of glory*as if. Covenant thought dourly, the Sunbane in any hands but Foul's would have been a thing of beauty. But then blackness began to seethe westward; and the light on the hills dimmed. The first fingers of the wind teased at Covenant's beard, mocking him.

Sunder turned to him. The Graveler's eyes were as hard as pebbles as he took out the wrapped bundle of the krill. His voice carried harshly across the wind. "Unbeliever, what is your will? When first you gave the krill into my hand, you counseled that I make use of it as I would a rukh*that I attune myself to it and bend its power to my purpose. This I have done. It was my love who taught me"*he glanced at Hollian*"but I have learned the lesson with all my strength."

He had come a long way and was determined not to be found wanting. "Therefore I am able to ease our way*to hasten our journey. But in so doing I will restore us unquestionably to the Clave's knowledge, and Gibbon na-Mhoram will be forewarned against us." Stiffly, he repeated, "What is your will?"

Covenant debated momentarily with himself. If Gibbon were forewarned, he might kill more of his prisoners to (157 of 399) [1/19/03 11:38:42 PM]

stoke the Banefire. But it was possible that he was already 192.

aware of the danger. Sunder had suggested as much the previous day. If Covenant traveled cautiously, he might simply give the na-Mhoram more time for preparation.

Covenant's shoulders hunched to strangle his trepidation.

"Use the krill," he muttered. "I've already lost too much time."

The Graveler nodded as if he had expected no other reply.

From his jerkin, he took out his Sunstone.

It was a type of rock which the Land's former masters of stonelore had named orcrest. It was half the size of his fist, irregularly shaped but smooth; and its surface gave a strange impression of translucence without transparency, opening into a dimension where nothing but itself existed.

Deftly, Sunder nipped the cloth from the krUFs gem, letting bright argent blaze into the rain-thick gloom. Then he brought the Sunstone and that gem into contact with each other.

At once, a shaft of vermeil power from the orcrest shot straight toward the hidden heart of the sun. Sizzling furiously, the beam pierced the drizzle and the thunderheads to tap the force of the Sunbane directly. And the krill shone forth as if its light could cast back the rain.

In a snarl of torrents and heavy thunder, the storm swept over the hilltop. The strait red shaft of the orcrest seemed to call down lightning like an affront to the heavens. But Sunder stood without flinching, unscathed by any fire.

On the company, no rain fell. Wind slashed the region; thunder crashed; lightning ran like screams across the dark.

But Sunder's power formed a pocket in the storm, a zone free of violence.

He was doing what the Clave had always done, using the Sunbane to serve his own ends. But his exertion cost no blood.

No one had been shed to make him strong.

That difference sufficed for Covenant. With a grim gesture, he urged bis companions into motion.

Quickly, they ranged themselves around Sunder. With Hollian to guide him, the Graveler turned toward the southwest. Holding his orcrest and the krill clasped together so that they flamed like a challenge, he started in the direction of Revelstone. His protection moved with him, covering all the company.

By slow degrees, a crimson hue crept into the brightness of the krill, tinging the light as if the core of the gem had begun 194 (158 of 399) [1/19/03 11:38:42 PM]

to bleed; and long glints of silver streaked the shaft of Sunbane-fire. But Sunder s.h.i.+fted his hands, separated the two powers slightly to keep them pure. As he did so, his zone contracted somewhat, but not enough to hamper the company's progress.

They were scourged by wind. Mud clogged their strides, made every step treacherous. Streams frothing down the hillsides beat against their legs, joined each other to form small rivers and tried to sweep the travelers away. Time and again, Covenant would have fallen without Call's support. Linden clung severely to Pole's shoulder. All the world had been reduced to a thunderous wall of water*an impenetrable downpour lit by vermeil and argent, scored by lightning. No one tried to speak; only the Giants would have been able to make themselves heard. Yet Sunder's protection enabled the company to move faster than the Sunbane had ever permitted- Sometime during the day, two gray, blurred shapes appeared like incarnations of the storm and entered the rainless pocket, presented themselves to Covenant. They were Haruchai. When he had acknowledged them, they joined his companions without a word.

The intensity with which Linden regarded Sunder told Covenant something he already knew: the Graveler's mastery of two such disparate periapts was a horrendous strain on him. Yet he was a Stonedownor. The native toughness of his people had been conditioned by generations of survival under the ordeal of the Sunbane. And his sense of purpose was clear. When the day's journey finally ended, and he let his fires fall, he appeared so weary that he could hardly stand*

but he was no more defeated by fatigue than Covenant, who had done nothing except labor through nearly ten leagues of mire and water. Not for the first time. Covenant thought that the Graveler was more than he deserved.

As the wind whipped the clouds away to the west, the company made camp in an open plain which reminded Covenant of the strict terrain near Revelstone. In a bygone age, that region had been made fruitful by the diligence of its farmers and cattleherds*and by the beneficent power of the Lords. Now everything was painfully altered. He felt that he was on the verge of the Clave's immediate demesne *that the company was about to enter the ambit of the na-Mhoram's Keep.

195 Nervously, he asked Hollian what the next day's sun would be. In response, she took out her slim Uanar wand. Its polished surface gleamed like the ancient woods of the Land as she held it up in the light of the campfire.

Like Sunder's left forearm, her right palm was laced with old scars*the cuts from which she had drawn blood for her foretellings. But she no longer had any need of blood. Sunder smiled and handed her the wrapped krill. She uncovered it only enough to let one white beam into the night. Then, reverently, like a woman who had never learned anything but respect for her own abilities, she touched her Uanar to (159 of 399) [1/19/03 11:38:42 PM]

the light.

And flame grew like a plant from the wood. Delicate shoots waved into the air; buds of filigree fire bloomed; leaves curled and opened. Without harming her or the wood, flame spread around her like a growth of mystery, It was as green and tangy as springtime and new apples.

At the sight. Covenant's nerves tightened involuntarily.

Hollian did not need to explain to him and Linden what her fire meant. They had witnessed it several times in the past. But for the benefit of the watching, wide-eyed Giants, she said quietly, "The morrow will bring a fertile sun."

Covenant glanced at Linden. But she was studying the Haruchai, scrutinizing them for dny sign of peril. However, Sunder had said that Gibbon's grasp" extended only a day's journey beyond the gates of Revelstone; and when Linden at last met Covenant's gaze she shook her head mutely.

Two more days, he thought. One until that Raver can reach us. Unless he decides to try his Grim again. The ill that you deem most terrible. That night, nightmares stretched him until he believed he would surely snap. They had all become one virulent vision, and in it his fire was as black as venom.

In the pre-green gloom of dawn, another pair of Haruchai arrived to join the company. Their faces were as stony and magisterial as the mountains where they lived; and yet Covenant received the dismaying impression that they had come to him in fear. Not fear of death, but of what the Clave could make them do.

Their plight is an abomination. He accepted them. But that was not enough. Banner had commanded him to redeem them.196 When the sun rose, it tinged the stark bare landscape a sick hue that reminded him of the Illearth Stone.

Six days had pa.s.sed since the desert sun had melted every vestige of vegetation off the Upper Land. As a result, all the plain was a wilderness. But the ground was so water-soaked that it steamed wherever the sun touched it; and the steam seemed to raise fine sprouts of heather and bracken with the suddenness of panic. Where the dirt lay in shadow, it remained as barren as naked bones; but elsewhere the uncoiling green stems grew desperately, flogged by the Sunbane and fed by two days of rain. In moments, the brush had reached the height of Covenant's s.h.i.+ns. If he stood still much longer, he might not be able to move at all.

But ahead of him, the Westron Mountains thrust their ragged snowcaps above the horizon. And one promontory of the range lay in a direct line with Sunder's path. Perhaps Revelstone was already visible to the greater sight of the Giants.

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If it were, they said nothing about it. Pitcbwife watched the preternatural heath with a look of nausea. Mistweave's doubt had a.s.sumed an aspect of belligerence, as if he resented the way Pole -had supplanted him at Linden's side*and yet believed that he could not justify himself. The First hefted her longsword, estimating her strength against the vegetation.

Only Honninscrave studied the southwest eagerly; but his clenched visage revealed nothing except an echo of his earlier judgment: This is the world which my brother purchased with his soul. Do you consider such a world worthy of life?

However, the First was not required to cut the company's way. Sunder used his Sunstone and the krill as the Riders used their rukhs, employing the Sunbane to force open a path.

With vermeil fire and white light, the Graveler crushed flat the growth ahead of the company, plowed a way through it.

Unhindered by torrents and streams and mire, the travelers were able to increase the previous day's pace.

Before the heather and bracken grew so tall that they blocked Covenant's view of the mountains, he glimpsed a red beam like Sunder's standing from the promontory toward the sun. With an inward s.h.i.+ver, he recognized it. To be visible from that distance, it would have to be tremendous.

The shaft of the Banefire.

Mwc'h to Crisis 197 Then the writhing brush effaced all the southwest from sight. ^ For a time, the tight apprehension of that glimpse occupied all his attention. The Banefire. It seemed to dwarf him. He had seen it once. devouring blood with a staggering heat and ferocity that had filled the high cavity of the sacred enclosure.

Even at the level where the Readers had tended the master-rukh, that conflagration bad hit him with an incinerating force, burning his thoughts to ashes. The simple memory of it made him flinch. He could hardly believe that even rampant wild magic would be a match for it. The conflict between such powers would be fierce enough to shatter mountains. And the Arch of Time? He did not know the answer.

But by midmoming Sunder began to stumble; and Covenant's attention was wrenched outward. The Graveler used his periapts as if together they formed a special kind of rukh but they did not The rukhs of the Riders drew their true strength straight from the master-rukh and the Banefire, and so each Rider needed only enough personal exertion to keep open a channel of power to Revelstone; the Banefire did the rest.

But Sunder wielded the Sunbane and the krill directly.

The effort was exhausting him.

Linden read his condition at a glance. "Give him diamondraught" she muttered stiffly. Her rigid resistance to the ill of the vegetation made her sound distant, impersonal. "And carry him. He'll be all right. If we take care of him." After a moment, she added, "He's stubborn enough to stand it."

Sunder smiled at her wanly. Pallor lay beneath the shade (161 of 399) [1/19/03 11:38:42 PM]

of his skin; but as he sipped the Giantish liquor he grew markedly stronger. Yet he did not protest when Honninscrave hoisted him into the air. Sitting with his back against the Master's chest, his legs bent over the Giant's arms, he raised his powers again; and the company resumed its trek.