The Last Dark

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  She certainly needed to know how much her son had inherited from Anele. She needed to know about Kastenessen.

  She cuffed him lightly. “That’s not an answer.”

  “I know. But I’m serious. He should tell his own story. He doesn’t want to, but he should. Maybe you’ll have better luck than I did.”

  Linden gnawed at her lower lip for a moment. “I’m not sure that I have the right to pry. He’s already pushed me away more than once. I might do more harm than good.”

  Covenant shrugged against her head on his shoulder. “I’m not sure anybody has the right. Maybe prying does more harm than good. But look at it this way. He’s too young for his years. He’s had experiences that could cripple an adult, and he’s never had a chance to grow into them. Parts of him are still a kid.” And parts of him remembered the croyel.

  “Sometimes kids need their parents to pry. Sometimes I think Roger wouldn’t be such a mess if his mother ever took an interest in him.”

  Covenant himself had never been given an opportunity with his son.

  Luminous in the warmth of Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir’s music, Linden rolled over to rest her hands on Covenant’s chest, prop her chin there and study his face.

  “Thomas, what happened to you? What did you do after you left? How did you do it? What healed your mind? How did you change how Branl thinks?”

  He winced reflexively. But he did not refuse to answer. Eased by her love, he was able to describe the days that he had spent away from her.

  When he was done, she hugged him hard and wordlessly. For a time, she seemed to take his anguish and dread from him; and he thought about nothing except her.

  Afterward they rested. But neither of them slept.

  In a more playful mood, she asked, “So why aren’t you growing a beard? You’re human now. All the way human. As far as I can tell, the Arch of Time has lost its hold on you. Why isn’t your beard growing?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “If I ever did, it’s gone. But if I had to guess—”

  Briefly he rubbed at his cheeks, pushed his fingers through his transformed hair. “You didn’t have access to my physical self. That part of me died so long ago there was nothing left. And yet here I am. You must have created me out of my self-image.” He spread his maimed hands. “Apparently that includes leprosy, but it doesn’t include whiskers.”

  Long ago, shaving had been a form of self-abnegation for him, a punitive discipline. He was glad to be rid of the necessity.

  Stroking her, he said, “Now it’s your turn. Linden, you’re a mystery to me. And I don’t just mean—” He gestured to indicate her adored body. “I don’t think I’ve ever been as surprised as I was when the Feroce offered me an alliance.” Surprised and dismayed. “Somehow you did that. Somehow you saved me.” He would not have reached Joan, or survived his attempt on turiya Herem, without the aid of Feroce. “But you did more than that. You also rescued Jeremiah.” When she shook her head, he amended, “I mean, you gave him what he needed to rescue himself.

  “That would have been enough for anybody else, but not for you.” Not for a woman who thought so little of herself. “After you brought Jeremiah here, you went to find the only possible source of forbidding.” The only hope for the Elohim, and perhaps for the Earth. “Then you did something even more miraculous. You came back. Without using a caesure.

  “Linden”—he kissed her eyelids, her nose, her mouth—“you amaze me. I want to know how you did it.”

  He saw her reluctance. It showed in the way she shifted to nestle against his shoulder so that he could not look into her eyes or watch her face. For a moment, he was afraid again. But then she began to answer, and his fear left him.

  Because he knew the outcome, he listened calmly as she described how the Feroce had tried to lure her into the grasp of the lurker, and how Infelice had striven to prevent Jeremiah from freeing himself in Muirwin Delenoth. Jeremiah’s desire to build a construct that might preserve the Elohim. The message of the Feroce. Her own decision to enter a caesure. Her arms tightened like grief around Covenant as she talked about her second meeting with Caerroil Wildwood, and about Manethrall Mahrtiir’s transformation.

  “But I still didn’t know how to get back. After what Caerroil Wildwood did for us, the idea of making another Fall horrified me. I would have had to ruin an unconscionable amount of Garroting Deep. But I was desperate to return, and I couldn’t wait until we left the forest. I didn’t know what to do.”

  Covenant heard the force of that emotional snare in her voice, the intolerable conundrum of being caught between mutually exclusive commitments. He recognized it.

  “Mahrtiir”—she corrected herself—“no, Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir helped me. You should have seen him, Thomas. He stood here like a king, as if he had earned the right, and he sang things that I couldn’t understand until Caerroil Wildwood nodded. Then Wildwood gave me another gift.”

  Like suppressed weeping, she said, “Oh, Thomas. Caerroil Wildwood said that he was tired of living. Tired of trying. Worn out by losing trees to people and wars. Law was getting weaker, and he knew that he was doomed. He’d faced too much evil. That was why he created Caer-Caveral, and why he made Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir. So that he could finally rest.

  “He told me”—her voice broke—“that he still had no answer for the deaths of trees.”

  Then she hurried to finish.

  “Every leaf and branch all around the Howe sounded like it was sobbing, but he had made up his mind. He brought Hyn and Narunal to us. He gave us time to mount. ‘By wild magic you came,’ he said. ‘Wild magic must guide your return.’ When we were ready, he did something like what the Mahdoubt did for me. He didn’t violate Time, he used everything he was to make an opening.” Covenant felt her tears on the soft skin of his shoulder. “Then he pushed us through so that Hyn and Narunal could find the way back.

  “It killed him, just like it killed Caer-Caveral. All of his music and glory and anger and effort seemed to wail. The whole Howe was like a shriek. When we rode away, there was nothing left except screaming.”

  Trying to comfort her, Covenant murmured, “I wish I could remember.” He did not care what he said: he only sought to acknowledge her distress. “While I was still part of the Arch, I probably knew why Caerroil Wildwood decided to let go. Now that’s gone. As far as I can tell, you found the only—I don’t know what to call it—the only clean way to do what we need. The only safe way. The only way that doesn’t change the Land’s history.”

  Linden wiped her eyes and nose. Under his caresses, her tension and remorse eased. “I’ve been so scared. I didn’t know what I was doing. Half of the time, I felt terrified. Otherwise I was just frantic. Jeremiah and the Land and even you needed more from me than I knew how to give. I only did what I did because I couldn’t think of anything else.”

  “Hellfire, Linden,” Covenant snorted. “Don’t sell yourself short. Miracles are becoming practically normal around here, and most of them are your doing.”

  When she felt less troubled in his arms, he asked a different question. “So how did you get rid of those stains on your jeans?”

  She lifted her head in surprise. After a moment, she sat up, snatched at her jeans, studied them. “Oh my God. They’re gone. I’ve had them for so long, I stopped seeing them. They must have faded when Caerroil Wildwood—”

  Eyes wide, she faced Covenant. “What does it mean?”

  He smiled crookedly. Still hungry for her, he said, “Maybe Caerroil Wildwood took away those stains because you don’t need them anymore. They were a map, and now you’ve found your way.” She had found him—or they had found each other. “Maybe it just means we should try to take advantage of every minute we have left.”

  For a moment, she appeared to struggle against her uncertainty—or against the particular intensity of his regard. But then she seemed to find that he had said enough. That his response sufficed. Dropping her clothes, she moved to put her arms around his neck.


  That response sufficed for him as well.

  ventually Linden asked a more difficult question. “After Lord Foul killed you, you left your ring for me. You wanted me to have it, didn’t you? So why haven’t I been a ‘rightful white gold wielder’ all along?”

  “I’m not entirely sure,” Covenant admitted. “Sure, I wanted you to have my ring. But I didn’t give it to you. Lord Foul just dropped it. And I was in the same situation with Joan. I only got her ring”—he stifled a wince—“because she couldn’t hold it any longer. That didn’t make me a rightful wielder either.”

  He had experienced rightfulness. He knew what it meant.

  “Now that’s changed.” With a gesture that felt effortless, he drew a brief streak of argent through the air, instantly ready, instantly quenched. “So here’s what I think. It isn’t the getting that makes the difference. It’s the giving. The choice. And the kind of choice matters. Surrender is one kind. A vow is another. I didn’t just give you a white gold ring. I gave you me. That’s something the almighty Despiser is never going to understand. He’s clever as all hell, but he’s too self-obsessed or frustrated or maybe too damn miserable to figure out why he keeps losing.”

  Then Covenant thought that he ought to warn Linden. “But we still have to be careful. I don’t have enough health-sense to feel the effects of what I’m doing. And you have the Staff of Law.” It lay on the greensward beyond their clothes, its black shaft runed with auguries. “I don’t want to say wild magic and Law are antithetical. That’s too simplistic. But the energies are incompatible. Wild magic refuses boundaries, and Law is all about boundaries. If you hadn’t used the krill when you resurrected me, you would have torn yourself apart. That’s the krill’s real power. It mediates contradictions.”

  For a moment, he thought that he heard the wind outside the bower blustering bitterly against the willow. But the blast did not trouble Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir’s irenic singing, or ruffle his healing lumination.

  Still Covenant did not relax, in spite of his satiation. He sensed something unresolved in Linden—or he knew that in her place he would not be at peace.

  At last, she said, “Thomas, I love you. I love you. But I did a terrible thing when I forced you back to life. Waking up the Worm was bad enough. The Humbled were right about me. That was a Desecration. But I’m afraid that I did something worse at the same time. Do you remember what Berek said? I’ve made it impossible to stop Lord Foul.”

  Covenant tightened his embrace as if he imagined that he could protect her. He remembered Berek’s assertion perfectly. He may be freed only by one who is compelled by rage, and contemptuous of consequence. He recognized her fear.

  “Now we can’t save the world. We can’t stop the Worm. We can only try to slow it down. Before long, Lord Foul will get his chance to escape.

  “Thomas,” she insisted, “I did that.” In spite of all that she had done, she still found cause to accuse herself. “I did it.” Then she admitted, “But it didn’t feel that way. Oh, I didn’t care about the consequences. I can’t deny that. But was I ‘compelled by rage’? I don’t think so. I was just desperate. Desperate for you. Desperate for Jeremiah. Desperate for help. I didn’t know where else to get it.

  “Is that all it takes to ruin everything? Is Lord Foul going to get free because of me? Is the whole Earth going to die because of me?”

  At that moment, Covenant would have given the remains of his fingers to reassure her. But he did not respond immediately. He had good reason to be cautious. During his early visits to the Land, he had justified himself falsely too often, and the cost of his obfuscations had been too high. And her needs were not his. Her desperation was not the same as his. It was more intimate, or more personal, or simply more consequential. He had only raped Lena and betrayed Elena and destroyed the first Staff of Law. He had not awakened the Worm. In an earlier age, Linden herself had prevented him—

  Now he suspected that Jeremiah was more likely to be compelled by rage.

  He wanted to say, Maybe you’re right. Any one of us can destroy the whole world—if it’s our world. All we have to do is destroy ourselves. But he demanded more of himself.

  “Sometimes ‘desperate,’” he began, “is just a convenient name for being so angry you can’t stand it. After everything you went through—after Roger and the croyel and Esmer and Kastenessen and the Harrow and even Longwrath—you finally got to Andelain”—he winced at the memory—“and I refused to talk to you. Hellfire, Linden! Only a dead woman wouldn’t have been sick with fury.”

  She hid her face as if she were cowering; as if he had poured acid on her heart. “Then I’ve done it. I’ve doomed—”

  If she had pulled away from him, he might have cried out. He had hurt her enough to maim the bond which they had only begun to renew. But she still clung to him as if he were all that she had left. She still thought that he had a better answer—or that he was a better answer.

  As gently as he could, he said, “It’s tempting to think that way. It lets us off the hook. If we’ve already made the only mistakes that matter—or if somehow we just are the only mistakes that matter—we can’t be expected to do anything else. But it’s not that simple.

  “For one thing, we aren’t alone. We’re all in this mess together. We’re all making decisions and trying to justify the consequences. Whatever you’ve done, good or bad, you didn’t do it in a vacuum. You’ve been reacting to people with their own agendas and situations you didn’t cause. From the start, the Despiser has been pushing you where he wants you to go. And you’ve had help along the way.

  “And for another—” Goaded by his own necessary passions, Covenant’s voice rose. “Linden, I just don’t believe it. I don’t believe Lord Foul can’t be stopped. I don’t even believe the world can’t be saved. Freeing Lord Foul wasn’t the only thing Berek talked about. He also said there’s another truth on the far side of despair and doom. All we have to do is find it.”

  She did not react. He could not be sure that she was listening. He might have been speaking to the leaves and boughs, the harmony of gleams, rather than to the woman in his arms.

  Nevertheless she continued to hold on to him.

  You will not fail, however he may assail you. There is also love in the world.

  Because she did not let go, he said more.

  “And for another—Oh, hell. I’ve written entire novels about this. ‘Guilt is power. Only the damned can be saved.’ Maybe that sounds cynical. Maybe it is. But who else needs to be saved? Who else can be? Not the innocent. They have their own problems.” He was thinking of the Masters, who thought that rigid purity of service would relieve their ancient humiliation. “They don’t need anything as gracious or just plain kind as forgiveness.

  “So maybe blaming ourselves is a waste of time. Maybe we should just admit that everybody goes wrong. Everybody does damage. That’s what being human enough to make mistakes means. And if that’s what being human means, then there’s really only one question we have to answer. Is making mistakes all it means?

  “If it isn’t, then everything counts. Resurrecting me and waking up the Worm. Making love together and killing Cavewights. Hell and blood, Linden! I let my own daughter be sacrificed against She Who Must Not Be Named. And I didn’t stop there. I went right up to the most pitiful woman I’ve ever known and stuck a knife in her chest. If you think I don’t feel bad about things like that, you haven’t been paying attention. But if everything counts, then guilt is no reason to stop trying for something better.”

  Somewhere among the music of his lights, Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir sang, “It is my heart I give to you—”

  Finally Linden stirred. With small movements, she shifted the position of her arms, adjusted her head on Covenant’s shoulder. For a time, she conveyed the impression that she was listening to the Forestal, or to the rebuffed thrash of the winds beyond the bower, or to the restless concern of Covenant’s pulse. Then she brushed a delicate kiss across his chest.

  “
Here’s the funny part,” she murmured. “I tried to say practically the same thing to Jeremiah. I used different words, but the point was the same. Maybe I should listen to myself every once in a while. You shouldn’t have to make a speech whenever I think that I’ve done something wrong.”

  Suddenly she yawned. “If I weren’t so sleepy, I would ask you to make love again.”

  Entirely to himself, Covenant released a deep sigh of relief. There were any number of questions for which he had no answer; but for the time being, he was content with the one that she had given him.

  You do not forgive.

  Perhaps she did.

  1.

  A Tale Which Will Remain

  Weary to the core, and yet eased in more ways than she knew how to name, Linden Avery dozed in Covenant’s arms, Thomas of my heart. But she did not sleep deeply or long. After a time, a rustle among the willow branches plucked at her attention. She felt the pressure of hooves on the sumptuous grass, followed by the sounds of feeding. Casting a bleary glance over her shoulder, she found horses in the bower.

  Hyn and Hynyn. Khelen. Rallyn. And the Ardent’s mulish steed, Mishio Massima. In this lifeless region, their need for fodder had become imperative.

  Linden closed her eyes again, nestled against the anodyne of Covenant’s shoulder. Her only true lover—He had never stopped loving her: she believed that now. To some extent, she understood why he had seemed to spurn her days ago. And those aspects of his singular straits that still baffled her did not mar her gratitude. The sensation that he had vindicated her, body and soul, was more profound than her fatigue. It felt numinous and ineffable: a homecoming of the spirit. Every part of him had become as precious to her as a sunrise.

  The ring on her finger resembled certainty. She could have spent days with her husband in the balm of Caerwood ur-Mahrtiir’s bower, and done so gladly.