She seemed to meet him where they had met once before, when she had surrendered herself to save him from the silence of the Elohim—in a field of flowers, under an inviolate sky, a clean sun. But now she recognized that field as one of the rich leas of Andelain, bordered by hills and woods. And he was no longer young. He stood before her exactly as he stood before the Despiser—altogether untouchable, his face misshaped by bruises he did not deserve, his body nearly prostrate with exhaustion, the old knife-cut in the center of his shirt gaping. His eyes were fixed on her, and they flamed hot midnight, the final extremity of the heavens.
No smile in the world could have softened his gaze.
He stood there as if he were waiting for her to search him, catechize him, learn the truth. But she failed to close the gulf between them. She ran and ran toward him, aching to fling her arms around him at last; but the field lay as still as the sunlight, and his eyes shone darkness at her, and all her strength brought her no nearer. She knew that if she reached him she would understand—that the vision or despair which he had found in the Banefire would be communicated to her—that his certainty would become comprehensible. He was certain, as sure as white gold. But she could not approach him. He met her appeal with the indefeasible Don’t touch me of leprosy or ascension, apotheosis.
His refusal made grief well up in her like the wail of a lost child.
Then she wanted to turn and hurl all her newfound force at the Despiser, wanted to call up white fire and scourge him from the face of the Earth. Some infections have to be cut out. Why else do you have all that power? She could do it. He had hurt Covenant so deeply that she was no longer able to reach him. In her anguish she was greedy for fire. She possessed him heart and limb—and his left hand held the ring, gripped it on the brink of detonation. She was capable of that. If no other hope remained, and she could not touch her love, then let it be she who fought, she who ravaged, she who ruled. Let Lord Foul learn the nature of what he had forged!
Yet Covenant’s gaze held her as if she were sobbing, too weak to do anything except weep. He said nothing, offered her nothing. But the purity of his regard did not let her turn. How could he speak, do anything other than repudiate her? She had taken his will from him—had dehumanized him as thoroughly as if she were a Raver and relished his helplessness. And yet he remained human and desirable and stubborn, as dear as life to her. Perhaps he was mad. But was she not something worse?
Are you not evil?
Yes. Beyond question.
But the black flame in his eyes did not accuse her of evil. He did not despise her in any way. He only refused to be swayed.
You said you trusted me.
And who was she to believe him wrong? If doubt was necessary, why should it be doubt of him rather than of herself? Kevin Landwaster had warned her, and she had felt his honesty. But perhaps after all he did not understand, was blinded by the consequences of his own despair. And Covenant remained before her in sunshine and flowers as if the beauty of Andelain were the ground on which he took his stand. His darkness was as lonely as hers. But hers was like the lightless cunning and violence of the Wightwarrens: his resembled the heart of the true night, where the Sunbane never shone.
Yes, she said again. She had known all along that possession in every guise was evil; but she had tried to believe otherwise, both because she wanted power and because she wanted to save the Land. Destruction and healing: death and life. She could have argued that even evil was justified to keep the white ring out of Lord Foul’s grasp. But now she was truly weeping. Covenant had said, I’m going to find some other answer. That was the only promise which mattered.
Deliberately she let him go—let love and hope and power go as if they were all one, too pure to be possessed or desecrated. Locking her cries in her throat, she turned and walked away across the lea. Out of sunshine into attar and rocklight.
With her own eyes, she saw Covenant lift the ring once more as if his last fears were gone. With her own ears, she heard the savage relief of Lord Foul’s laughter as he claimed his triumph. Heat and despair seemed to close over her like the lid of a coffin.
Moksha Jehannum tried to enter her again, cast her down. But the Raver could not touch her now. Grief crowded upward in her, thronged for utterance. She was hardly aware of moksha’s failure.
The Despiser made Kiril Threndor shudder:
“Fool!”
He was crowing over Linden, not Covenant. His eyes bit a trail of venom through her mind.
“Have I not said that all your choices conduce to my ends? You serve me absolutely!” The stalactites threw shards of malice at her head. “It is you who have accorded the ring to me!”
He raised one hand like a smear across her sight In his grasp, the band began to blaze. His shout gathered force until she feared it would shatter the mountain.
“Here at last I hold possession of all life and Time forever! Let my Enemy look to his survival and be daunted! Freed of my gaol and torment, I will rule the cosmos!”
She could not remain upright under the weight of his exaltation. His voice split her hearing, hampered the rhythm of her heart. Kneeling on the tremorous stone, she gritted her teeth, swore to herself that even though she had failed at everything else she would at least breathe no more of this damnable attar. The walls threw argent in carillon from all their facets. The Despiser’s power scaled toward apocalypse.
Yet she heard Covenant. Somehow he kept his feet. He did not shout; but every word he said was as distinct as augury.
“Big deal. I could do the same thing—if I were as crazy as you.” His certainty was unmatched. “It doesn’t take power. Just delusion. You’re out of your mind.”
The Despiser swung toward Covenant. Wild magic effaced the rocklight, made Kiril Threndor scream white fire. “Groveler, I will teach you the meaning of my suzerainty!” His whole form rippled and blurred with ecstasy, violence. Only his carious eyes remained explicit, as cruel as fangs. They seemed to shred the substance from Covenant’s bones. “I am your Master!”
He towered over Covenant: his arms rose in transport or imprecation. In one fist, he held the prize for which he had craved and plotted. The searing light he drew from the ring should have blinded Linden entirely, scorched her eyes out of their sockets. But from moksha Jehannum she had learned how to protect her senses. She felt that she was peering into the furnace of the desecrated sun; but she was still able to see.
Able to see the blow which Lord Foul hammered down on Covenant as if the wild magic were a dagger.
It made Mount Thunder lurch, snapped stalactites from the ceiling like a rain of spears which narrowly missed Linden. It slapped Covenant to the floor as if all his limbs had been broken. For an instant, a convulsion of lightning writhed over him. Power and coruscation like the immaculate silver-white of the ring clamored through him, shrilled along the lines of his form. She tried to yell; but the air in her lungs had given out.
When the blow passed, it left white flame spouting from the center of his chest.
The wound bled argent: all his blood was ablaze. Fire fountained from his gaping hurt, spat gouts and plumes of numinous and incandescent deflagration, untainted by any darkness or venom. During that moment, he looked like he was still alive.
But it was transitory. The fire faded rapidly. Soon it flickered and failed. His blasted husk lay on the floor and did not move again.
Too stunned to cry out. Linden hugged her arms around herself and keened in the marrow of her bones.
But Lord Foul went on laughing.
Like a ghoul he laughed, a demon of torment and triumph. His lust riddled the mountain: more stalactites fell. From wall to wall, a crack sprang through the chamber; and shattered stones burst like cries from the fissure. Kiril Threndor shrieked argent. The Despiser became titanic with white fire.
“Ware of me, my Enemy!” His shout deafened Linden in spite of her instinctive self-protection. She heard him, not with her overwhelmed ears, but with the tissues and v
essels of her lungs. “I hold the keystone of Time, and I will reave it to rubble! Oppose me if you dare!”
Fire mounted around him, whipped higher and higher by his fierce arms. The ring raged like a growing sun in his fist. Already his power dwarfed the Banefire, outsized every puissance she had ever witnessed, surpassed even the haunted faces of her nightmares.
Yet she moved. Crawling across the agonized lurch and shudder of the stone, she wrestled her weak body toward Covenant. She could not help him. She could not help herself. But she wanted to hold him in her embrace one more time. To ask his forgiveness, though he would never be able to hear her. Lord Foul had become so tremendous that only the edges of his gathering cataclysm were still discernible. She crept past him as if she were ignoring him. Battered and aggrieved of body and soul, she reached Covenant, sat beside him, lifted his head into her lap, and let her hair fall around his face.
In death, his visage wore a strange grimace of relief and pain. He looked like a man who was about to laugh and weep at the same time.
At least I trusted you, she replied. Whatever else I did wrong. I trusted you in the end.
Then anguish seized her heart.
You didn’t even say good-bye.
None of the people who had died while she loved them had ever said good-bye.
She did not know how it was possible to continue breathing. Lord Foul’s attar had become as intense as the light. The destruction he purposed tore a howl through the stone. Kiril Threndor became the stretched mouth of the mountain’s hurt. Her mere flesh seemed to fray and dissolve in the proximity of such power. His blast was nearly ready.
Instinctively, almost involuntarily, she looked up from Covenant’s guilt and innocence, impelled by an inchoate belief that there should be at least one witness to the riving of Time. While her mind lasted, she could still watch what the Despiser did, still send her protest to hound him into the heavens.
A maelstrom swept around him and grew as if he meant to break the Earth by consuming it alive. His fire was so extreme that it pulsed through the mountain, made all of Mount Thunder pound. But gradually he pulled the flame into himself, focused it in the hand that held the ring. Too bright to be beheld, his fist throbbed like the absolute heart of the world.
With a terrible cry, he hurled his globe-splitting power upward.
An instant later, his exaltation changed to astonishment and rage.
Somewhere in the rock which enclosed Kiril Threndor, his blast shattered. Because it was aimed at the Arch of Time, it was not an essentially physical force, though the concussion of its delivery nearly reft Linden of consciousness. It did no physical damage. Instead it burst as if it had struck a midnight sky and snapped. In a fathomless abyss, ruptured fragments of fire shot and blazed.
And the hot lines of light spread like etchwork, merged and multiplied swiftly, took shape within the bulk of the mountain. From wild magic and nothingness, they created a sketch of a man.
A man who had placed himself between Lord Foul and the Arch of Time.
The outlines gained substance and feature as they absorbed the Despiser’s attack.
Thomas Covenant.
He stood there inside Mount Thunder’s gutrock, a specter altogether different than the ponderous stone. All which remained of his mortal being was the grimace of power and grief that marked his countenance.
“No!” the Despiser howled. “No!”
But Covenant replied, “Yes.” He had no earthly voice, made no human sound. Yet he could be heard through the clamor of tormented stone, the constant repercussions of Lord Foul’s fury. Linden listened to him as if he were as clear as a trumpet “Brinn showed me the way. He beat the Guardian of the One Tree by sacrificing himself, letting himself fall. And Mhoram told me to ‘Remember the paradox of white gold.’ But for a long time I didn’t understand. I’m the paradox. You can’t take the wild magic away from me.” Then he seemed to move forward, concentrating more intensely on the Despiser. His command was as pure as white fire. “Put down the ring.”
“Never!” Lord Foul shouted instantly. Might leaped in him, wild for use. “I know not what chicane or madness has brought you before me from the Dead—but it will not avail! You have once cast me down! I will not suffer a second debasement! Never! The white gold is mine, freely given! If you combat me. Death itself will not ward you from my wrath!”
Something like a smile sharpened the specter’s acute face. “I keep telling you you’re wrong. I wouldn’t dream of fighting you.”
Lord Foul’s retort was a bolt that sizzled the air like frying meat. Power fierce enough to blow off the crown of the peak sprang at Covenant, raging for his immolation.
He did not oppose it, made no effort to resist or evade the attack. He simply accepted it. The clench of pain between his brows showed that he was hurt; but he did not flinch. The blast raved and scourged into him until Linden feared that even a dead soul could not survive it. Yet when it ended he had taken it all upon himself. Bravely he stood forth from the fire.
“I’m not going to fight you.” Even now, he seemed to pity his slayer. “All you can do is hurt me. But pain doesn’t last. It just makes me stronger.” His voice held a note of sorrow for the Despiser. “Put down the ring.”
But Lord Foul was so far gone in fury and frustration that he might have been deaf. “No!” he roared again. No fear hampered him: he was transported to the verge of absolute violence.
“No!”
“NO!”
And with every cry he flung his utterest force against the Unbeliever.
Blast after blast, faster and faster. Enough white power to bring Mount Thunder down in rubble, cast it off Landsdrop into the ruinous embrace of Sarangrave Flat. Enough to leave the One Tree itself in ash and cinders. Enough to shatter the Arch of Time. All Lord Foul’s ancient puissance was multiplied and channeled by the argent ring. He struck and struck, the unanswerable knell of his hunger adumbrating through Kiril Threndor until Linden’s mind reeled and her life almost stopped, unable to support the magnitude of his rage. She clung to Covenant’s body as if it were her last anchor and fought to endure and stay sane while Lord Foul strove to rip down the essential definition of the Earth.
But each assault hit nothing except the specter, hurt nothing except Covenant. Blast after blast, he absorbed the power of Despite and fire and became stronger. Surrendering to their savagery, he transcended them. Every blow elevated him from the mere grieving spectation of the Dead in Andelain, the ritualized helplessness of the Unhomed in Coercri, to the stature of pure wild magic. He became an unbreakable bulwark raised like glory against destruction.
At the same time, each attack made Lord Foul weaker. Covenant was a barrier the Despiser could not pierce because it did not resist him; and he could not stop. After so many millennia of yearning, defeat was intolerable to him. In accelerating frenzy, he flung rage and defiance and immitigable hate at Covenant. Yet each failed blow cost him more of himself. His substance frayed and thinned, denatured moment by moment, as his attacks grew more reckless and extravagant. Soon he had reduced himself to such evanescence that he was barely visible.
And still he did not stop. Surrender was impossible for him. If he had not been limited and confined by the mortal Time of his prison, he would have gone on forever, seeking Covenant’s eradication. For a while, his form guttered and wailed as complete fury drove him to the threshold of banishment. Then he failed and went out.
Though she was stunned and stricken. Linden heard the faint metallic clink of the ring when it fell to the dais and rolled to a stop.
TWENTY: The Sun-Sage
Slowly silence settled like dust back into Kiril Threndor. Most of the rocklight had been extinguished, but pieces still flared along the facets of the walls, giving the chamber an obscure illumination. Without the cloying scent of attar, the brimstone atmosphere smelled almost clean. Holes gaped in the ceiling where many of the stalactites had hung. Long tremors still rumbled into the distance, but they
were no longer dangerous. They subsided like sighs as they passed beyond Linden’s percipience.
She sat cross-legged near the dais, with Covenant’s head in her lap. No breath stirred his chest. He was already growing cold. The capacity for peril which had made him so dear to her had gone out. But she did not let him go. His face wore a grimace of defeat and victory—a strange fusion of commandment and grace—that was as close as he would ever come to peace.
She did not look up to meet the argent gaze of his revenant. She did not need to see him bending over her as if his heart bled to comfort her. The simple sense of his presence was enough. In silence, she bowed over his body. Her eyes streamed at the beauty of what he had become.
For a long moment, his empathy breathed about her, clearing the last reek from the air, the taste of ruin from her lungs. Then he said her name softly. His voice was tender, almost human, as if he had not passed beyond the normal strictures of life and death. “I’m sorry.” He seemed to feel that it was he who needed her forgiveness, rather than she who ached for his. “I didn’t know what else to do. I had to stop him.”
I understand, she answered. You were right. Nobody else could’ve done it. If she had possessed half his comprehension, a fraction of his courage, she might have tried to help him. There had been no other way. But she would have failed. She was too tainted by her own darkness for such pure sacrifices.
Nobody else, she repeated. But any moment now she was going to begin sobbing. She had lost him at last. When the true grief started, it might never stop.
Yet he had already passed beyond compassion into necessity. Or perhaps he felt the hurt rising in her and sought to answer it. As gentle as love, he said, “Now it’s your turn. Pick up the ring.”
The ring. It lay at the edge of the dais perhaps ten feet from her. And it was empty—devoid of light or power—an endless silver-white band with no more meaning than an unused manacle. Without Covenant or Lord Foul to wield it, it had lost all significance.
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