Against All Things Ending

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “First, you lack my knowledge of such theurgies. Regardless of your own desires and extremity, you do not comprehend the precise form of aid which your son will require. You cannot be guided by insights which you have not earned. Through your intervention, your son’s failure will be assured.

  “Second, he alone is not adequately lorewise to fashion the gaol I envision. He has not been granted centuries of study in which to perfect his gifts. Therefore I must rely upon the connivance of the croyel.”

  Linden understood him immediately; involuntarily. The croyel: the dire succubus which she had last seen feeding on Jeremiah’s neck, draining his life and mind while it gave him power. Swift as instinct, she grasped that the Harrow meant to leave her son under that vicious being’s control. The dark Insequent needed more than Earthpower and wild magic and Jeremiah’s talent for constructs: he needed the croyel’s specific powers and knowledge.

  The mere idea filled her with fury. For Jeremiah’s sake, she wanted to strike the Harrow down, stamp out his life. And for Jeremiah’s sake, she restrained herself. She believed the Harrow’s claim that he alone could take her to her son.

  “Will you permit this?” Liand flung his own anger and dismay at the Ardent. “Is this the measure of your kind, that you are careless of a child’s pain? Was the Mahdoubt alone in her compassion?”

  The Ardent twisted his features into an expression of distress. His ribbands spun ambiguously about him, signaling emotions that meant nothing to Linden. But he did not answer.

  She alone will determine—Nor will we deem your oath fulfilled—

  “You still aren’t telling the truth,” she insisted. “You’ve wanted my power ever since we first met. You wanted Jeremiah and the croyel. But you didn’t know that I was going to wake up the Worm. You couldn’t. How am I supposed to trust you now?”

  The Harrow gave her a glare like an abyss. “Lady, I repeat that the Insequent do not utter falsehood. The awakening of the Worm was not necessary to my desires. For one with the knowledge which I possess, and with the powers which I will hold, the Worm sleeping would have been as readily ensnared as the Worm roused. Indeed, it was my first intent to deprive the Elohim of all purpose and worth forever, as well as to preserve the Earth from ruin, by ensuring that the Worm could not be roused.

  “That is no longer possible. Therefore I have adjusted my intent to accommodate the extravagance of your folly.”

  “All right.” Linden did not waste herself arguing with him. “Go on,” she repeated bitterly. “Finish this.”

  The Harrow sighed; but he did not refuse.

  “The croyel’s noisome magicks and cunning are essential to the achievement of my aim. This you will not permit while you remain able to prevent it. Thus it is necessary to the salvation of the Earth that I possess your Staff and the white gold ring, and that you do not.”

  Linden looked to the Ardent. “And if that wasn’t my original understanding of our agreement? What happens then?”

  Bands of color wafted up and down the Ardent’s form, signing certainty, masking alarm. “Then your will prevails, lady. The Harrow must abandon his purpose for your son, or he must set aside his craving for your instruments of power. The Insequent as a people will countenance no other outcome.”

  Stave glanced at the group around Covenant and the krill. Then he turned his gaze on the Harrow.

  “There is another matter to consider also. If Infelice has spoken sooth in aught, we must recognize that life cannot endure without death. The Worm of the World’s End is necessary to the Earth’s continuance. If your vaunt succeeds, and the Worm is imprisoned, will not this habitation cease to sustain life? Will not the whole of this creation become barrenness?”

  “Well said, Haruchai,” muttered Mahrtiir. “The Harrow is derangement made flesh. His greed will hasten every destruction.”

  Linden heard Stave; but her attention was fixed on the Harrow. Her heart thudded in her chest as though it had reached the limit of its endurance. If he called her bluff by recanting his claims—if he mastered his cupidity—Jeremiah would be lost to her. He would die alone in torment when the Earth perished.

  “I’m waiting.” Her every word trembled. The Harrow had not acknowledged Stave’s query. “What’s it going to be?”

  If he dared her to find Jeremiah without his help, she would surely crumble.

  For a moment, he addressed the Ardent rather than Linden. “You demand much,” he said: the deep snarl of a beast. “Three things I sought from the lady. One I have already eschewed. It was denied to me by the Mahdoubt’s unconscionable obstruction. Do you truly dream that I will surrender still more of my desires?”

  Then he replied to Linden. Harsh as acid, he said, “The conjoined resolve of the Insequent suffices to command me. Lady, I will honor your reading of my oath. My purpose for your son I set aside—for the present.

  “Yet yours,” he promised fiercely, “will be an empty triumph. You evade my intent to no avail. When we have retrieved your son, the only powers which offer hope to the Earth will remain in my possession. You will strive as you may to free your son from the croyel. In that endeavor, I did not vow my aid. And when you have failed, as you must—when you stand powerless before the world’s doom—I will inquire if by chance you have reconsidered the terms of your ‘contentment.’”

  A moment later, he added with less anger, “The doom-saying of the Elohim does not merit credence. They care only for their own lives. If the Worm is imprisoned, they may indeed cease to exist. But the Earth and all other life continued while the Worm slumbered. If it is imprisoned, they will endure. I do not propose to slay it.”

  Linden might have asked the Ardent, Is that true? But she was trembling too hard to speak. Now, she told herself. Do it now. Before he changes his mind.

  The time had come for absolute answers. She was going to give Covenant’s wedding band and the Staff of Law to the Harrow. As soon as she could make her muscles obey her—

  Infelice had told her, Your remorse will surpass your strength to bear it. She did not doubt the Elohim. Nevertheless she was prepared to bear any burden in order to save her son. Long ago, she had recognized that even the Land and Thomas Covenant did not mean as much to her as Jeremiah.

  And Covenant had said, I think we should do this Linden’s way. He may have understood the implications of his support.

  “All right.” She could not yet control her voice, but she did not let her weakness stop her. “I’m not ready to leave. There are still a few things that I have to do. But I want to make this bargain,” bind the Harrow to his word, “while the Ardent is here to keep you honest.”

  Nothing relieved the darkness of the Harrow’s gaze. Perhaps nothing could. But his attention sharpened suddenly: every line of his elegant form became vivid. His aura was a blaze of vindicated avarice.

  “Linden?” Liand murmured in alarm. “Ringthane,” asked the Manethrall, “are you certain?” But they were not trying to dissuade her. They were only cautioning her. In spite of everything, they believed in her—

  Stave was Haruchai: she could not sense the character of his emotions. Nevertheless she trusted that he would not interfere—and that he would warn her if the Humbled came to stop her.

  They must have been aware of her. Yet somehow Covenant’s concentration on the krill held them back.

  With unwonted anxiety, Rime Coldspray said, “I mislike this course. Linden Avery, I have named you Giantfriend. We will not oppose you. But I fear that you sail seas as hurtful and chartless as the Soulbiter, where every heading brings despair.”

  Linden ached for her friends. But there was nothing that she could say to reassure them. She feared as many things as they did, and with more reason. She knew her own inadequacy better than they could.

  Deliberately she took a last step toward the Harrow.

  Unable to quash the tremors that undermined her strength, she tried to lift both of her arms at the same time; tried and failed. Covenant’s ring was closed
in her left hand: from her fist dangled the chain which for ten years had carried her only reminder of his love. Her right gripped desperation around the Staff of Law. For one more moment, she hesitated, torn between self-imposed bereavements.

  Mere days or entire lifetimes ago, she had refused the ring to Roger Covenant even though she had believed that he was his father. Now, shivering as if she were feverish, she offered Covenant’s wedding band to the Harrow.

  He snatched at the chain; took the ring from her like a man who feared that she would change her mind.

  Releasing the Staff required a greater effort, not because Covenant’s ring had less emotional weight, but because the Staff was hers. With it, she had effaced caesures; mended wounds; unmade the Sunbane. She had transformed the pure wood to blackness in battle. Caerroil Wildwood himself had given her his gift of runes.

  In dreams, Covenant had told her that she needed her Staff.

  Unclosing her fingers was a fundamental abnegation. She felt that she was selling her soul; defying the necessity of freedom. Voluntarily giving up her right to choose. She could not have abandoned so much of herself for any cause except Jeremiah.

  That boy doesn’t deserve what’s happened to him.

  Then she had to avert her eyes. The Harrow’s glee as he grasped the Staff and held it high, brandishing it and Covenant’s ring like trophies, was too savage to be borne.

  “Behold, my people!” he shouted at the stars. “Witness and tremble! Soon I will show myself the greatest of all Insequent, the greatest who has ever lived!”

  If she had watched him, she might have lost heart altogether.

  Her companions seemed unable to speak. They had not shared her visions. To them, the idea that she had roused the Worm must have felt vaguely unreal; impossible to imagine. But even Liand, the least experienced and least informed of her friends, understood the magnitude of her surrender to the Harrow.

  A short distance away, the Ardent’s ribbands wavered aimlessly, as if he sought to conceal a private terror.

  Perhaps the thought that without power she could no longer be held responsible for the world’s doom should have allowed her a measure of relief; but it did not. Instead she felt fatally weakened, as if she had dealt herself a wound too grievous to survive.

  4.

  After Unwisdom

  Linden Avery wanted to sit down on the benign grass and cover her face. She was full of shame, and had no right to it. In giving the Harrow what he wanted, if not in wrenching Thomas Covenant out of the Arch of Time, she had known what she was doing. She had made her choice deliberately. She could not excuse herself with blame.

  Help me? she wanted to ask, although she hardly knew who might remain able or willing to aid her. Please?

  You have companions, Chosen, who have not faltered in your service. If you must have counsel, require it of them.

  Among them, only Liand retained any theurgy—and she had ignored his advice. She had not heeded any of her friends.

  Too diminished to continue standing in front of the Harrow, Linden walked hesitantly toward Covenant. For the moment, at least, he had become a lesser pain, in spite of his uncontrollable lapses and his leprosy.

  And he would be safe in Andelain—all of her companions would be safe—when the Harrow took her away. While Loric’s krill reflected wild magic from Joan’s ring, the Wraiths could refuse any evil. Even Kastenessen and the skurj, even Roger and Esmer, were precluded from bearing their malice among the Hills.

  Nevertheless such things did not comfort her. The emptiness of her hands left her vulnerable in more ways than she could count. She was acutely conscious of the floundering dismay with which her friends followed her away from the Harrow. The bullet hole in her shirt had no significance now that the red flannel did not cover Covenant’s wedding band. Instead the wound of her death, like the strip that she had torn from the fabric for the Mahdoubt’s gown, and the small rents plucked by twigs and branches, merely made her look as tattered as her spirit.

  In contrast, the grass stains on her jeans had never felt so fatal. They dragged at her steps like omens or arcane stigmata.

  She had nothing to hold on to except Jeremiah’s crumpled racecar deep in her pocket. It was her only defense. Her son needed her. She did not know another way to save him.

  In the bottom of the hollow, Covenant still paced slowly around the radiance of the krill, studying it as if it had the capacity to anchor him somewhere in time, if only he could discover how to use it. As he moved, he spoke in a low voice; delivered a steady monologue that seemed to serve no purpose except to occupy his companions.

  He may have been striving to retain as many of his splintered memories as he could.

  The Humbled, Pahni and Bhapa, and three or four Giants stood in a loose circle that encompassed Covenant and the charred stump of Caer-Caveral’s corpse. The attitudes of the Giants and the Cords conveyed the impression that they had given up trying to find a coherent—or pertinent—narrative in Covenant’s musings. The blank stoicism of the Humbled concealed the character of their attention; but they appeared to be waiting for the ur-Lord, the Unbeliever, to become the man he had once been.

  Belatedly Linden realized that the Humbled had no reason to assail her now. If they wished to prevent any further misuse of Earthpower and wild magic, they would have to battle the Harrow, who had already demonstrated that he was proof against them. And against Branl, Galt, and Clyme, the Ardent might side with his fellow Insequent. Linden could not imagine what use the Ardent might make of his ribbands, or his other magicks; but she did not doubt that it would be effective. In spite of his lisp and his corpulence, he had convinced her that he did indeed wield enhanced powers, for good or ill. The Harrow would not have acceded to the Ardent’s conditions otherwise.

  Yearning wordlessly for some further reassurance from the man whom she had most harmed, Linden studied Covenant closely. She would need his attention soon, before she exhausted the Harrow’s patience—or the Ardent’s. She wanted to believe that she was still capable of a few undestructive decisions; that she could at least ensure the immediate safety of her friends before she went with the Harrow to watch the croyel swallow blood from Jeremiah’s neck. But she feared that her bargain with the Harrow had cost her the last of her credibility. Even Liand, Stave, and Mahrtiir might not heed her now, if Covenant did not take her part.

  He would not be able to help her if he could not find his way out of the faults that riddled his mind. But he was still lost in the ramifications of time. He seemed to drift, rudderless, through a Sargasso of memories which were of no use to him.

  And his leprosy—Ah, God. His leprosy was growing worse, exacerbated by the pall of Kevin’s Dirt. Here in Andelain, the effects of that dire fug were muted. Perhaps the Wraiths blunted the evil which Kastenessen, Esmer, and moksha Raver had inflicted upon the Upper Land. Nevertheless Kevin’s Dirt remained: Linden tasted it when she peered up at the stars and the night sky. Already Covenant’s hands and feet were almost entirely numb. If his condition continued to deteriorate, it was only a matter of time until his sight began to fail.

  He moved awkwardly, as though he had lost or forgotten precise control over his muscles. Yet he seemed unaware of his ailment. Instead his attention was focused on the krill—or on the unpredictable slippage of his thoughts.

  “Someone,” he remarked as if this idea followed from what he had been saying. “I forget who. I want to think it was Mhoram, but it may have been Berek. When he was rallying the scraps of his army after he came back from Mount Thunder.

  “He said—” Covenant paused; closed his eyes for a moment. Frowning at the effort of coherent recall, he recited, “ ‘There is no doom so black or deep that courage and clear sight may not find another truth beyond it.’” Then he looked at Clyme, Galt, and Branl in turn. “Does that make sense to you? It should. But if it doesn’t—”

  Stiffly he started walking again, pacing his circle around Loric’s krill as if he sought to circumscr
ibe his own confusion; contain it somehow. “It’s my fault, really. I asked you to protect Revelstone, but I wasn’t clear. No one can blame you if they don’t like how you kept your promise. I didn’t tell you I wanted you to protect what Revelstone means.”

  He seemed to think that the Masters—like Linden—might crave his absolution. Against every obstacle, he struggled to keep faith with the deeds and necessities which had brought the Land to its last crisis.

  While Covenant talked, Liand approached Mahrtiir. Softly the Stonedownor asked, “Manethrall, would it not be well to send Bhapa and Pahni in search of hurtloam? Surely some may be found among Andelain’s riches of health and wonder. I know not whether Thomas Covenant’s mind may be healed—or whether, as Linden has averred, the attempt would be unwise. Yet the strange corruption which gnaws at his flesh—”

  “No!” With an almost audible jolt, Covenant’s awareness recovered its focus. Suddenly he was present, as vivid as a seer. Wheeling, he faced Liand and Mahrtiir. “No hurtloam,” he said sharply. “I don’t expect you to understand. But I need this.” He brandished his hands. “I need to be numb. It doesn’t just make me who I am. It makes me who I can be.”

  Before the Manethrall or the Stonedownor could respond, Covenant strode around the dead stump toward Linden. But he did not advance on her. As soon as he stood between her and the shining dagger, he stopped.

  She, too, stopped—helplessly, as if he had commanded a distance between them. With Stave at her shoulder and the troubled bulk of the Giants at her back, she waited to hear what he would say. She did not know how to speak first; to ask for his succor. Her needs were a crowding throng, so many that she could hardly name them.

  The light of the krill cast his features into shadow. She could not distinguish his expression. The scar on his forehead was a pale crease across his thoughts.