“In that case,” he said hoarsely, “we should go now. The sooner the better. I don’t know what’s happening to her in there, but it scares me.”
Stave’s nod seemed to imply an unbegrudged bow.
The Manethrall cleared his throat. “Cord Pahni, when the first Ringthane has found a place which satisfies his purpose, you will do as he instructs. Until then, you will watch over his weakness. No harm can befall Linden Avery in Stave’s arms, but Thomas Covenant is vulnerable to misstep. Your first task is to ward him.”
Pahni cast a troubled glance at Liand; but she did not hesitate. “As you command, Manethrall.”
At last, Covenant remembered that he was no longer holding Linden’s Staff. Awkwardly he reclaimed it from the sand. “In case she needs it,” he explained to no one in particular. Then he told Stave and Pahni, “Let’s go. I’m not getting any stronger.”
He would need a certain kind of weakness: the kind that inspired desperation.
Turning downstream, he started toward the hillside bulging with rocks which blocked the eastward watercourse from view.
As both Pahni and Stave joined him, the Giants parted to let them pass. Stave bore Linden with familiar ease. Some dark emotion cast a shadow across Pahni’s features, but she did not allow it to interfere with her attentiveness.
As Covenant neared the first rise, he heard Anele’s voice. Instinctively he turned his head; saw Anele sitting in the basin of Stormpast Galesend’s breastplate. With one hand, the old man stroked the inner surface of the armor. The other he brushed back and forth through the sand, making trails like glyphs or sigils.
Pronouncing each word distinctly, Anele said, “This stone does not recall Linden Avery, Chosen Earthfriend. Yet Anele does. The world will not see her like again.”
The old man’s words followed Covenant like a prediction of failure as he began clambering along the hillside.—not see her like again. If he failed to rouse Linden, he would make a prophet of Anele.
Distracted, he stumbled; might have fallen. But Pahni caught his arm. After a moment like imminent panic, he remembered the importance of paying attention to where he was and what he did; of watching where he set his feet, being ready to use his hands. As he worked his way among the rocks, he reverted to the neglected disciplines of his disease, the care required by leprosy.
His eyes told him that some of the stones had been weathered smooth while others remained rough and jagged; hazardous. His hands did not. He could not be confident of his grip when he tried to secure his balance on a rock, or on Linden’s Staff. Among the obstacles of the slope, he saw patches of dirt parched to the hue of straw; slides of shale so old that they had forgotten their original colors. Gradually his life contracted until it contained little except places to put his feet and hands. He hardly noticed Stave’s progress above him on the hillside, Pahni’s watchfulness, the gentle twisting of the breeze, or the vexed mutter of the stream.
For a time, he did not think about Linden or fear.
Laboring, he crested the first rise. As he started down the far side, the rest of the company fell out of sight behind him. Beyond this slope, the next hill looked easier. Already he felt weak enough for any amount of desperation. Nonetheless he was not ready.
Perhaps he would never be ready: not for this. Beyond the shallower climb of the second hillside, past the second writhe of the watercourse, he found what he sought. Below him, the stream curved into and then away from a narrow scallop of sand at the foot of an empty arroyo. And as the current ran onward, it was constricted between bluff facets of granite. There, where the flow tumbled against stone, it had spent long ages of runoff gnawing at its bed until it had formed a pool of deeper water.
From his position above the stream, the pool’s depth made the water look dark; almost bottomless. It might have been a well that reached into the heart of the Lower Land.
Ah, hell, he thought. Bloody damnation. But he did not stop. Supported by Pahni and the Staff of Law, he accompanied Stave down to the sand at the stream’s edge.
Golden boy with feet of clay.
Chary of hesitation, he dropped the Staff unceremoniously and turned to scan the northern ridgeline. After a moment, he spotted a squat boulder the size of a hut propped against the horizon.
“That big rock,” he told Pahni. His voice rasped in his throat. “You can watch from there.” For her sake, he added, “Trust your instincts. If you think we need help, call Stave.”
She was Ramen; but Stave was Haruchai. He would respond more swiftly.
Doubt and determination flitted like spectres across the background of the Cord’s gaze. “I will abide by your desires,” she replied, “as my Manethrall has commanded.” Then her expression sharpened. “And I will heed the counsels of my heart.”
At once, she spun away and began to ascend the hillside. Lithe and graceful, she appeared to glide upward in spite of her weariness.
Now, Covenant ordered himself. Now or never. Do it.
If he became any weaker, he would fall on his face.
Extending his arms, he faced Stave. “Out of sight,” he said like a man who could hardly stand. “Behind Pahni’s boulder, if you want. With your senses, you’ll probably know what happens as soon as she does. But I want you to wait until she warns you. Trust me as long as you can. Or trust her.
“You can’t care about Linden any more than I do. And you don’t need her as badly.”
Stave regarded him. “You believe that the Cord will call out. You are certain that I will sense peril.”
Covenant met Stave’s gaze, and held out his arms, and said nothing further.
After a moment, Stave surrendered Linden to Covenant’s unsteady clasp. Without pausing, the former Master turned and strode after Pahni. Like her, he seemed to move more effortlessly than Covenant could imagine.
Apparently he trusted Covenant that far. At least as far as the boulder. Perhaps his Haruchai intransigence would unbend enough to let Covenant succeed or fail.
Trembling with strain, Covenant watched Stave and Pahni mount the slope. Ignoring his frailty, he stood where he was until the Cord reached the boulder he had indicated; until Stave disappeared behind it. Then, one small wrenched step at a time, Covenant started toward the stream.
His feet were numb: he could not feel his way. Instead he simply assumed that the sand shelved down gradually. Relying on blind luck or the Land’s providence, he lurched into the current.
As directly as he could, he headed toward the pool of deeper water. The well—
Fortune blessed him. His boots did not begin to strike unseen rocks until the stream had accepted a portion of Linden’s weight. With that assistance, he was able to keep his balance when he stumbled.
He did not look at her face. If he allowed himself to gaze upon her helplessness now, to regard the loved lines of her nose and mouth, the fraught tension of her brow, he feared that his resolve would crumble. The taut dance of her eyes behind their lids would unman him. He would lock his knees, stop moving, call for help, and weep.
Clenching his teeth until his jaws ached, he kept his eyes straight ahead and walked deeper.
As soon as the water reached his biceps, and he guessed that the streambed was about to drop away, he released Linden’s legs. Clamped his hand over her mouth. Pinched her nose with his truncated fingers.
Took a deep breath and dropped with her into the darkness.
When she finally began to struggle for air, he did not let her go.
2.
Trying to Start Again
Linden Avery was drowning in She Who Must Not Be Named. She knew the truth, and her terror was absolute. She had released a flood among the roots of Mount Thunder. Because of her, ancient poisons and the accumulated weight of millennia had thundered into the cavern. They had swept her companions out of existence, carried Jeremiah and Covenant like flotsam to the bottom of the world. Everything that she had ever loved was gone.
But mere water could not harm her now. Sh
e had not accompanied her son and her only true lover to their deaths. Instead she had been swallowed by shrieking and hunger. She Who Must Not Be Named had claimed her. Simultaneously preserved and excruciated by betrayed desire and rage, Emereau Vrai and Diassomer Mininderain and the Auriference and Elena and a host of lost women had taken Linden. She had been consumed by the reified outcome of her actions in Jeremiah’s name, and in Covenant’s. Her own name had become agony.
She did not understand Elena’s presence. Nor did she question it.
While the Arch endured, her name would always be agony. And even then—Ah, then! Voices like her own wailed of torments that could never end. When all of creation had been unmade, She Who Must Not Be Named would remain. Her anguish would remain. She was an eternal being: a concept as essential and illimitable as Creation or Despite. Tortures would expand beyond the swallowed stars, beyond the salvific definitions of Time, beyond comprehension, until they filled the reaches of infinity. They could not die, and so they could not stop. The treachery which had formed the bane could not be healed.
Linden knew those women, those victims, in their damnation. They were one with She Who Must Not Be Named; but they were also themselves, as distinct as their spiritual wounds. Helplessly Linden participated in their goaded horror, their compelled craving for food and slaughter. But she knew Elena best because Linden, too, had betrayed Covenant’s daughter. With the example of Berek and Damelon and Loric to guide her, she had nevertheless denied Elena Law-Breaker, child of Lena and rape. Linden had withheld compassion where it was most desperately wanted. A Law-Breaker herself, she was intimately familiar with the exigencies and passions which had driven Elena. And yet Linden had refused or failed—
Now she deserved her fate. She could not pretend otherwise. Nevertheless she screamed like all the others, multitudes of them: screamed with her whole being, and raged to cause more pain, and was lost.
On Gallows Howe, she had become the woman who had resurrected Thomas Covenant. But she had also become a woman who had no pity to give Elena.
Soon she would be Emereau Vrai as well: the woman forcibly bereft of her Elohim lover; the woman who had conceived the merewives in fury and mourning. She would be the Auriference, whose greed had made her as daring as the Harrow, and as foolish. Eventually she would be Diassomer Mininderain and know the truth.
It was that Covenant had not betrayed her. Never. That was Roger’s doing. But since then, she had betrayed herself. And her friends. And the Land.
And her son.
She had brought her doom upon herself.
When her body first began to strive for breath, she did not understand. She had been consumed. How was it possible, then, that she could starve for any sustenance except ruin and release? Yet her need gripped her: an autonomic struggle which recognized no relief except air. Spasms clenched her muscles; fought against constraint, blockage, weight. The tissues of her lungs seemed to burst and bleed. Instinctively she tugged at the arm that hugged her chest, the hand that sealed her mouth and nose. Failing to break free, she dragged her nails across skin that must not have been hers because she felt nothing.
There may have been a head pressed to hers, a cheek tight against the side of her face. She tried to reach eyes and gouge them out so that she would be given a chance to breathe—
Then hands lifted her. They were stronger than She Who Must Not Be Named. Strong enough to be the foundation-stones of reality: strong enough to draw her out of despair. Through a fading chorus of screams, they released her from the killing embrace, the smothering clasp.
While she tried to gulp water into her lungs, the hands raised her into air and light.
The air and light of the living.
Frantically she gasped to fill her chest with survival.
Now she was upheld by a single hand that gripped the back of her shirt. Amid the receding cacophony of torrents, she seemed to hear an urgent voice pant, “Ringthane! Linden Avery!”
A voice that she may have known restored her name.
Was that possible? It was not. She Who Must Not Be Named would never tolerate it.
Nevertheless the voice was Pahni’s. The light on Linden’s face was sunshine: she was breathing air. The fluid in which she floated was water instead of anguish.
Clean water. Fresh water.
“Ringthane, hear me!”
Beyond question, that voice belonged to Pahni.
Streaming hair covered Linden’s eyes. Water splashed inadvertently into her mouth. While she coughed, nightmares endeavored to pierce the daylight, breach the presence of her saviors. They tried to drag her back into the depths. But their grasp on her had frayed. It grew weaker with every won breath.
She was in water somewhere, saved and sustained.
“Ringthane! Here is the Staff!”
The bane could not reach her.
At her side, Stave said, “When Linden accepts the Staff, Cord, will you be able to preserve the ur-Lord? Does your strength suffice? He has fallen within himself once more, and cannot swim. Your aid will ease my task.
“We must escape this current. It hastens, and we may tumble upon rapids beyond those stones.”
Linden felt no current. It was gentle—or she had not entirely returned to her body. But she recognized Covenant’s ring on its chain around her neck.
“Aye.” Pahni’s voice was clear over the complex plaints of running water. “The Staff is indeed wondrous. I have held it for moments only, yet already I have become more than I was.”
“Then assist me,” Stave instructed, “while she regains her senses. We must swim in their stead.”
Linden heard them plainly enough. Now she began to understand what they were saying. The Staff. Her Staff. The current. Swim.
And Covenant.
They were alive. God, they were alive!
Quivering at the exertion, she forced her chin upward, took a long breath free of spattered water. Then she managed to lift her hands long enough to push the hair out of her eyes.
Sunlight. Not the fatal blackness of caverns: sunlight. The pale shapes of hills. A blue sky like a gift, untainted by violation.
Somewhere among the secrets of her spirit, the bane’s wailing still echoed. But it was only a memory.
When she blinked her eyes clear, she saw Pahni swimming near her. With one hand, the young Cord offered the Staff of Law, black as a shaft of ebony, and written in runes. With the other, she held Covenant’s shoulder, helping Stave keep his head above water.
Opposite Pahni, Stave kicked strongly to support both Linden and Covenant.
Covenant hung limp in the water, drifting. His head lolled back. He looked unconscious; abandoned.
Beneath the surface, faint flowers of blood bloomed from his forearms; blossomed and dissipated. Linden must have scratched him. Like Joan—Long ago, when Linden had first met Covenant, Joan had dragged her nails across the back of his hand, tasted his blood, and become briefly sane.
Feebly Linden began trying to move her legs. She needed Covenant. She wanted to reach out.
But she was too weak. Too full of shared screams. Floundering, she clutched at her Staff.
It was the Staff of Law, articulate with Earthpower. Under Melenkurion Skyweir, she had used it to channel more power than she could imagine. She had transformed it to blackness. She had never been able to read its runes. Nevertheless she could interpret its fundamental rightness. It was hers. In its own way, it was as natural to her as the blood in her veins. When she closed her fingers on it, it seemed to call her back from a terrible absence.
The sky became brighter: the water, colder. As the Staff’s vitality ran along her hands and arms into her chest, Stave and Pahni gained substance until they were as definite as promises. Gradually the sounds of torment sank back into their abyss. The sunshine on her face felt like the light of resurrection.
Holding the Staff after her immersion in the bane, she could almost believe in hope.
Instinctively she began kicking a
gainst the water. Then she reached out to grip one of Covenant’s arms. Perhaps she helped Pahni and Stave prevent him from sinking.
She did not know how his ring had been restored to her, and did not care. She did not want to think about anything, remember anything, except Covenant and sunlight, Pahni and Stave.
Then Pahni accepted Covenant’s slack weight from Stave. While Stave impelled Linden across the current, the young Cord swam away from the rocks, drawing Covenant after her on his back.
With Stave’s aid, Linden rose higher in the water; high enough to see that Pahni was headed toward a swath of sand like a beach in a bend in the stream. Moment by moment, her health-sense absorbed strength from the Staff. Vaguely she understood that she had been plunged into a pool deeper than the rest of the flow. Covenant must have done that. Why else were his forearms bleeding? He must have submerged her and held her down because every other effort to retrieve her from her nightmares had failed.
He had found a way to save her when she had been unable to save herself.
She would have clung to him if she could have done so without hindering Pahni. Her rescued heart ached to throw her arms around him. Hugging him would not fill Jeremiah’s place in her clasp, or in her love. But she was a woman who needed to touch and embrace. She yearned for the comfort of contact. And Covenant had saved her: she believed that. In his arms, she might begin to recover from her participation in She Who Must Not Be Named.
He was Thomas Covenant: he would forgive her. In spite of what she had done to him. And to Elena.
Like her, he might not forgive himself.
Then she saw Pahni’s feet find the streambed. The Cord’s shoulders broke the surface: she was able to pull Covenant along more easily. A moment later, Stave began to propel himself and Linden step by step. Linden’s boots scraped clusters of stones.
As soon as she gained purchase on the bottom, she tugged away from Stave and surged after Covenant. In a flurry of water, she thrashed forward, leaning against the current.
Ahead of her, Pahni paused.
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