The Last Dark

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  For that reason, any Giant above her who happened to find secure footing paused to anchor the line. The result was progress in arduous surges as sailors and Swordmainnir pulled themselves or each other from one patch of solid ground to another.

  How the Haruchai managed to ascend, Linden could not imagine. Glancing behind her, she sensed an uncharacteristic frown of vexation on Stave’s visage. The strain in his muscles was as palpable as Grueburn’s. At intervals, he clutched at the lifeline, obviously reluctant to require its aid.

  How long could he continue? How long could the Giants? Linden had often been amazed by their endurance, but still—The crevice was too narrow for the companions to assist each other side by side, and the silt was deep. Each new step seemed to demand more effort than the one before.

  A call from above warned the company that Stoutgirth had floundered into a pit where the mire seemed bottomless. His sailors dragged him back; but then everyone else was forced to wait while the Giants in the lead probed for a way past the pit.

  Linden felt a flutter of panic. The walls seemed to be leaning in. Surely the crevice was becoming narrower? The current boiling past Grueburn’s legs carried glints of She Who Must Not Be Named like flakes of shed malice: lightless, invisible, yet distinct to Linden’s nerves.

  If Frostheart Grueburn lost her balance—If Linden plunged into the water—

  Apparently Stoutgirth’s fall and rescue had released gases trapped in the pit. Heavy as fog, sulfur and putrefaction rode the stream. They burned Linden’s eyes, stung her nose, bit into her chest, until the tug of running water took them away.

  She could hear Covenant swearing at his helplessness. Jeremiah jerked his head from side to side, flung black fire along the river. Spray stood like sweat on his skin.

  Then the Anchormaster reported success. The line began to lurch forward again.

  In their turn, Kindwind and Grueburn reached the pit. Now Linden understood Stoutgirth’s mistake. Her health-sense could not measure the varying depths of the silt. It was all so old, so laden with refuse and minerals, so full of the aftereffects of dire theurgies, that it refused percipience.

  Helped by Bluntfist and Furledsail, Cirrus Kindwind bore Jeremiah around the rim of the pit: a narrow path. Linden shifted until she hung from Grueburn’s shoulder; dangled over the pit as Grueburn forced her way around it. Stave crossed by floating on his back and pulling himself along the rope. Grueburn and Kindwind waited while Blustergale ensured Scatterwit’s safety. Then Blustergale sent Scatterwit ahead. He stayed behind to assist Onyx Stonemage.

  In heaves and sags, the company struggled upward. Aching for Grueburn, and for Jeremiah, Linden concentrated on clinging to Grueburn’s armor—and on holding still so that she would not disturb Grueburn’s balance.

  Here the air was definitely better. It became cleaner, demanded less from Jeremiah, as the river dragged its atmosphere with it. Hints of the bane persisted, but they were diminished.

  On into darkness, interminably. The fissure became wider. It narrowed again. At intervals, indurated juts of stone interrupted the silt. For long stretches, the muck seemed deeper. The Giants fought for breath to feed their straining muscles, their accumulating exhaustion. Their gasps filled the crevice above the rush of water. Linden could not remember when they had last rested.

  Then the rope was drawn tighter. Grueburn gripped it with both hands. She began to move a bit more easily. Behind her, Scatterwit chortled, a sound as forlorn as a groan. The light of the krill reached farther down the cleft. It touched Kindwind’s head, flared like fire in Jeremiah’s hair. The wall on the left had begun to lean away from the river. The darkness overhead felt more open.

  The leading Giants must have found a place where they could stand; where they could gather on firm rock and brace their feet.

  “Soon, Giantfriend,” Grueburn panted. “Soon.”

  “It better be.” Jeremiah coughed the words. “I can’t hold on much longer.”

  Linden watched the silver on the walls grow brighter as more and more of the company moved past the krill. In moments, she caught sight of Branl. Where he stood, the left wall appeared to fall away. But then she saw that the fissure simply became wider. Beyond a rough edge like a doorpost, that wall curved back, continuing the crevice. The river ran there, tumbling more slowly between sheer sides now farther apart. Past the turning, rough stone formed a floor like a platform above the water, vaguely level, and perhaps ten or fifteen paces across.

  Bluff Stoutgirth and his immediate companions waited there, chests heaving. Coldspray had put Covenant on his feet. He stood squinting past the glare of Loric’s gem, impatient for Jeremiah and Linden. With Setrock and Furledsail, Bluntfist had taken the rope. Together they hauled as if they hoped to raise their comrades from a crypt. Silt caked their legs, but they ignored that discomfort.

  On the platform, some of the sailors began unpacking waterskins and bundles of food.

  Eager to slip down from Grueburn’s back—eager to put her arms around Covenant—Linden did not look around. Her legs stung as she dropped to the stone. Moving toward Covenant, she stumbled, had to catch herself. Then he was holding her tight. The urgency of his hug matched hers.

  “Hellfire, Linden,” he murmured near her ear. “I thought that was never going to end.”

  It was not ended now. The companions had merely found a respite.

  From the downward fissure, Stonemage herded Blustergale and Scatterwit out of the river: the last of the Giants. As similar as brothers, Stave and Branl came toward Linden and Covenant.

  Linden felt Jeremiah quench the power of the Staff. Instinctively she flinched. But the atmosphere here was kinder to her lungs. Although it was thick with dust and disuse, stale, acrid, the river carried most of its wastes and poisons with it. She could breathe without choking.

  When she had held Covenant long enough to ease her heart, she turned to her son.

  Jeremiah was sitting on the stone, hugging his knees against his chest in an effort to control the tremors in his limbs. He had dropped the Staff beside him. Dully he stared across the water, a gaze as expressionless as the far wall. Saliva collected on his drooping lower lip: a sight which Linden had not seen since he had emerged from his dissociation.

  She knelt at his side, put her arm over his shoulders. “Jeremiah, honey? Are you all right? It’s no wonder you’re tired. You’ve been keeping us all alive.”

  His eyes did not shift. He hardly seemed to blink or swallow. His voice was a low rasp, a scraping like the sound of a creature crawling on its belly.

  “It isn’t fair, Mom. It’s not. I’m so tired. I can’t go on. I can’t. But I have to have Earthpower. Without it—” Abruptly he released his legs, slapped at his face as if his weariness revolted him. “It protects me.

  “You don’t know what it’s like. That mountain is huge. And the Worm is in the river. It’s drinking every bit of Earthpower it can find, but it wants more. It wants it all.”

  Oh, Jeremiah—

  Uselessly Linden told her son, “You’ll get stronger. You’re already stronger. We’ll eat something, rest for a while. You’ll feel better. Then we’ll need you again. We’ll have to go back into the river. You’ll be able to protect yourself.”

  Leaden with depletion or despair, his head turned toward her. “What are you talking about?” He peered at her as if he were going blind. “The river? Why?” With one hand, he pointed up the wall. “That’s the way. It has to be. The air’s better there. You won’t need me anymore.”

  She frowned, momentarily confused. Then she stood to look around.

  Giants cast grotesque shadows, shapes that appeared to caper across the walls. Between them, however, the krill lit this section of the crevice clearly.

  Under tremendous pressure long ago, layers of stone on this side had shifted. Diagonally beginning half a dozen paces beyond the Giants and angling erratically into the darkness overhead, ancient forces had pulled the higher reaches of the wall back from
the lower. The result was a crude ledge or shelf: a natural formation that lurched upward, lying level in some places, jutting like a titan’s stairs in others; obstructed here and there by piles of rubble. For short distances, it looked wide enough to accommodate horses. Other stretches were too narrow to let more than one Giant pass at a time.

  It ascended beyond the krill’s illumination, beyond the range of Linden’s senses, climbing into the secrets of the crevice. She had no way of knowing where it led. But the air drifting down was unmistakably cleaner.

  Surely even stone-dwelling Cavewights required unfouled air?

  In any case, the ledge went higher. It might go far enough to reach the catacombs.

  “You’re right,” she murmured to Jeremiah. “We have to go up.” Then she added quickly, “But that doesn’t mean we don’t need you. It just means that you can stop wearing yourself out for a while. Maybe you can learn other ways to use the Staff.”

  “Like what?” he asked as if she had suggested something unimaginable. He had already failed to affect the hue of the wood. He could not undo its effect on him.

  Instead of giving him a direct answer, Linden said, “You’re here for a reason, honey. It’s no accident.” For his sake, she spun a web of inferences that made her tremble. “Of course, you’re here because Roger took you. He wanted a way to make me give him Thomas’ ring. And Lord Foul wants revenge. He thinks that you can help him trap the Creator. He’s trying to fill your head with despair so that you won’t fight him.

  “But it isn’t that simple. Lord Foul isn’t the only one who chooses who comes to the Land. He picks us because he thinks that he can manipulate us, or because he thinks that we’re already his. But the Creator chooses us, too. They both picked us.” Covenant had taught her this. Now she pushed it further. “The only difference is, the Creator doesn’t manipulate us. He lets us make our own decisions.”

  Ignoring the rest of the company, Linden hurried to make her point before her courage failed.

  “The Creator sees hope in you, honey. He sees things that you might choose for yourself, things that might make a difference. That’s why—” Oh, God. Did she have to say this? Did she have to face it? “That’s why he didn’t warn me before Roger got to you. If he had given me any hint that you might be in danger, I would have stopped Roger somehow. I would have taken you away so that he couldn’t find you.”

  She had almost done so when she had seen images of Revelstone and Mount Thunder in her living room.

  “The Creator didn’t warn me because he needs you.”

  Her claim seemed to strike a spark into the tinder of Jeremiah’s aggrieved spirit. Unsteadily he stood to face her. The murk of his gaze clung to her.

  “Needs me how? What am I supposed to do?”

  For that, Linden had no answer.

  “What you’ve always done,” Covenant put in roughly. He had come to stand behind Linden. She felt the tension in his muscles, heard the clench in his voice. “Something damn Foul doesn’t expect.”

  Jeremiah’s head snapped toward Covenant. His mouth hung open.

  “Maybe,” Covenant went on, “you think he marked you. Maybe you think being a halfhand means he has some kind of claim on you, some kind of special power over you. But that’s backward. He didn’t cut off those two fingers. Your mother did. And she did it so she could save the rest of your hand. Being a halfhand doesn’t make you a victim. It makes you free.

  “The Despiser doesn’t know you as well as he thinks he does. He can’t. Filling your head with visions is just a trick to keep you off-balance. He doesn’t want you to see the truth. You’re only his if you choose him.”

  Jeremiah gaped at Covenant. Linden watched turmoil seethe like Lifeswallower’s mire in her son’s eyes. The whole company seemed to pause while he struggled to understand: even the river seemed to hold its breath. The krill cast light and shadows in all directions.

  As if he were choking, Jeremiah protested, “But what I see is real. The Worm is real.”

  He may have meant, We’re all going to die.

  “Well, sure.” Covenant’s tone conveyed a shrug. The Despiser did not lie. “But that’s not the point. The Worm isn’t more real than you are. It’s just more dramatic.”

  “I don’t get it,” Jeremiah groaned. “I can’t—Lord Foul is too strong.”

  His confusion and need twisted Linden’s heart; but Covenant did not relent. “Then let him be too strong. You don’t need to beat him. Just do something he doesn’t expect. Be yourself.”

  A young man with the Staff of Law and his own Earthpower: a young man with a talent for making. Even the Despiser in his fury and frustration could not satisfy all of his desires without the ability to create. Linden understood what Covenant was saying. She knew why Lord Foul needed her son.

  But she could see as clearly as if she had entered him with her health-sense that Jeremiah did not understand. He was too young to know how much he did not know about himself. When he ducked his head to mutter as if he were ashamed, “Maybe Roger had the right idea. Maybe we should all try to become gods,” she seemed to hear the croyel in him: the legacy of being possessed.

  Yet she did not hear scorn. Bitterness, yes. Fear. Self-pity. But not contempt. He had other birthrights as well.

  Surely she could try to believe that they would come to his aid when he needed them? Surely she should trust him, no matter how much his distress hurt her, or how much she feared for him? She would not be there for him when his plight came to its crisis. Trusting him now might be the last gift that she would ever be able to give him.

  hen the companions had eaten another meal, shared their waterskins, and refreshed themselves as much as they could on the better air drifting into the crevice, they started upward. Once again, the Ironhand and the Anchormaster took the lead; but this time Covenant walked behind them with Branl and Halewhole Bluntfist. After Hurl, Keenreef, and several other sailors, Linden and Jeremiah essayed the terraced ledge accompanied by Stave, Frostheart Grueburn, and Cirrus Kindwind. Onyx Stonemage and more of Stoutgirth’s crew came next. As before, Blustergale and Baf Scatterwit brought up the rear.

  In places, the surface they trod resembled sheets of slate, and there the going was easy. Some of the stairs where the rock had crumbled were minor obstacles. But occasionally the sheared steps reached to Linden’s waist. A few were taller than she was: they cast shadows as threatening as chasms. Like Covenant and Jeremiah, she had to be lifted to the next level.

  The walls leaned toward and away from each other, tracing the variations of Mount Thunder’s flaws and stubbornness. By increments, the river fell below the reach of the company’s illumination. The rush of water became distant, as if it were fading out of the world; and with it the spilth or detritus of She Who Must Not Be Named also receded. In gusts and eddies, the air improved.

  Like the crevice, the width of the ledge undulated. At intervals, Linden was able to walk at Jeremiah’s shoulder as if she could still shield him. More often, the company was forced to go in single file. When the ledge became dangerously narrow, Cirrus Kindwind kept her hand on Jeremiah’s shoulder, and Frostheart Grueburn did the same for Linden.

  After some distance, Rime Coldspray and Bluff Stoutgirth came to a break in the ledge. Linden could not see how they crossed it. Giants blocked her view. Her every step was obscured by shadows. But when she and Jeremiah reached the gap, she found that the sailors had stretched a rope over it, held taut by Hurl on one end and Wiver Setrock on the other. Using the line for support, Kindwind and Grueburn helped Jeremiah and Linden to the far side.

  When the last of the Giants were safe, the company continued to climb.

  Linden lost her sense of duration. Nothing in the mountain’s perpetual midnight marked the passage of time. Gradually the river passed out of hearing. After that, there were no sounds apart from the efforts and breathing of the companions. The krill’s light shifted as Branl moved, but it revealed only rock and more rock, enduring and unrelieved
. Beyond it, darkness crowded thick as obsidian or basalt.

  Still the river pulled air downward with it: a guttering breeze on Linden’s face. For a while, she derived a sense of progress from the declining pressure of taints in her lungs. Soon, however, the changes became too subtle to be distinguished. Then weariness and strain became her only measure for the meaning of her steps.

  At intervals, Jeremiah extended tentative flicks of theurgy from the Staff, but their purpose eluded Linden.

  In the distance ahead, the crevice bent sharply to the left. Beyond a blind corner, another high step or shelf interrupted the ledge. This one reached the chests of the Giants. Some of the sailors were able to gain the next level unassisted; but the Swordmainnir were more heavily burdened, and their weariness was more profound: like their smaller companions, they needed help.

  When Grueburn had lifted her past the shelf, Linden paused to scan her surroundings.

  Within the ambit of the krill’s illumination, the ledge looked wide as a road, comparatively level. But the crevice was narrowing. After its sweep to the left, it curved gradually back to the right; and as it did so, the opposite side restricted her view ahead. Overhead the walls leaned together: she supposed that they met somewhere in the darkness, closing the fissure. Above her at the farthest extent of the light, a line across the near wall suggested the possibility of another ledge.

  The far wall was pocked with holes like the mouths of tunnels, open maws where the gem’s radiance did not penetrate. They looked big enough for Giants. A few were level with the company’s path, but most were scattered higher around the curve.

  Linden peered at those holes, frowning, until she felt Covenant’s tension. It poured from him like the heat of a fever. He was glaring along the ledge ahead with his fists clenched and his shoulders tight, as if he were expecting a blow.

  When she followed his gaze, she saw bones.

  They littered the ledge as far as she could see: thighs and ribs, arms, hands and feet, skulls. Small heaps like crushed children. Whole skeletons piled atop each other. Femurs and ulnas randomly discarded. Smashed skulls grinning at their own ruin. Hundreds, no, thousands of them. Most of them suggested Cavewights, but some made Linden think of ur-viles—or stranger monsters.