Against All Things Ending
Page 59
The bright silver of Caerroil Wildwood’s runes had vanished. They were inert again, as inarticulate as sigils. But the shaft retained the stark blackness of her fire. She could not imagine that any blaze would ever burn it clean. Still it was the Staff of Law, an instrument of Earthpower and health. When she asked it for a little strength, it replied with its familiar gifts.
Trembling, she braced herself on ambiguous commandments until she gained her feet.
Everywhere she looked, the ground had been desecrated by blood and offal, mangled limbs and bodies. Weapons and shattered armor littered the ridge. In the vicinity of the battle, the friable gypsum had been fouled until only a few random patches of whiteness remained to punctuate the carnage.
Above her, the voiceless sky seemed to retain echoes like memories of screaming and slaughter.
For a moment or two, she thought that she ought to cleanse the ridge. That should have been her next responsibility. A pyre for the dead: some form of sanctification for the betrayed hills. But then she sensed Thomas Covenant striding fiercely from the south as if he meant to deliver a burden of wrath and repudiation. At the same time, she felt Anele slip closer to his life’s last precipice. When he fell, others would follow him soon—and they, too, were her friends. Like Liand, they had given her more than she had ever given them.
Squaring her shoulders against the recrimination of the dead, Linden Avery left the cairn to resume the pretense that she was a healer.
Because she needed to do so, she went first to Jeremiah. With one hand, she stroked his flaccid cheek, confirming that he remained lost inside himself. That fact hurt her. Nevertheless it was true that he had been released from the croyel. Freed—To that extent, at least, the promise of his mended racecar had been kept. Received Earthpower enriched him with vitality. He gave no sign that he could use his new strength. Yet the grisly sores of the monster’s feeding had already begun to heal themselves.
Briefly Linden hugged him. She had been too long denied the simple comfort of touching him. Then, while Covenant was still too far away to judge her, she turned to acknowledge the sufferings of her friends.
Among the Giants, only Rime Coldspray and Frostheart Grueburn met the rue in Linden’s eyes. Stormpast Galesend knelt with her hands clamped on Cabledarm’s thigh, trying to slow the bleeding. In spite of her injuries and maiming, Cirrus Kindwind pressed repeatedly on Onyx Stonemage’s chest as if she feared that Stonemage would stop breathing. Stonemage’s breastplate hampered her efforts; but Kindwind clearly did not have the strength to remove it. Laboriously, like a woman with fractured ribs, Latebirth struggled to tie a tourniquet above the spear in Grueburn’s upper leg. After a glance at Linden, Coldspray continued working on Halewhole Bluntfist’s right arm, trying to reset dislocated bones.
The ur-viles and Waynhim gave vitrim to all who could or would accept it. Nourished by their weird lore, Manethrall Mahrtiir had recovered enough to stand facing Covenant’s approach. And Bhapa stood with him. They kept their backs to Linden. But she saw in the stiffness of their spines, the clench of their shoulders, that they were readying themselves to confront the Unbeliever’s ire on her behalf.
She might have said something, although every word that she knew how to utter had been burned away. The sight of Stave stopped her.
He sat spread-legged in the dirt and clotting blood, so motionless that he hardly seemed to breathe. With both arms, he held Galt against his chest. The last slow drops of Galt’s life joined the stains that stigmatized Stave’s tunic. Pain had curled Galt’s hands into claws. But Stave did not look at the body in his arms. Instead he regarded Landsdrop as though in his heart he gazed past the high cliff and Salva Gildenbourne and the plains and Revelstone toward the Westron Mountains. Tears spilled from his eye. They ran down his cheek into the cuts that marred his visage.
He did not glance at Linden. In a low voice as taut as choking, he said to her, or to the distant home of the Haruchai, “He is my son. To the last, he remained himself.”
As if that were Galt’s epitaph.
—it is their birthright—
Ah, Stave. Linden wanted to weep with him, and could not. Your son? I didn’t know. Neither he nor Galt had allowed any hint of their kinship to pass between them. Yet it was Galt who had chosen to protect Jeremiah’s life with his own, so that Anele might expunge the croyel.
In the end, Galt must have heeded his father.
The rest of the Masters, or all of the Haruchai, may have suppressed their vulnerability to sorrow. Stave had not.
While his tears ran, Linden yearned to stay with him. She owed him that much. To her percipience, however, the injuries of her other companions were as audible as cries. She could taste the onset of infection and fatality, the fiery gnash of pain. Even in gratitude for Jeremiah’s life, she could not pause to share Stave’s grief.
Fortunately none of the Giants were as close to death as Anele. Even Clyme and Branl were not, although they rejected the aid of the Demondim-spawn. Stonemage’s heart beat on its own under Kindwind’s steady pressure. The shreds of Esmer’s raiment fluttered as though impalpable winds tugged through him, but his old wounds did not appear to trouble him. When Linden had studied the company, she decided that the Swordmainnir could wait for her a little longer. If she felt compelled to walk away from Stave, she could nonetheless afford to spend a few moments with the old man who had sacrificed himself for Jeremiah.
Anele lay on the churned ground a few paces from his companions. Somehow he had crawled that short distance, or someone had dragged him, seeking safety during Linden’s cataclysm of wild magic. Now he sprawled on his back with his arms outstretched, gazing sightlessly at the sun, and straining for breath as if he had inhaled a pool of blood. The orcrest-light was gone from his eyes: his eyes themselves were gone. Yet he was not afraid.
Kneeling beside him, Linden tried to say his name. But her throat closed against her.
“Linden Avery,” he gasped wetly. He must have felt her presence. “Chosen and Sun-Sage. Accept my gratitude—and my farewell.”
Gripping the Staff, Linden fumbled for Earthpower. But Anele panted, “Do not. Do not heal. Make no lament. My time is past. I was the hope of the Land. Now I have given that gift to another. I have kept faith with my inheritance.” Small spasms of suffocation wracked his chest, but he fought to speak. “Now I may stand with Sunder my father and Hollian my mother, and feel no shame. If you slow my end, you will delay my spirit from their embrace.”
In sorrow, Linden acceded. It was intolerable that she had no good farewell to give the old man. After a moment, she forced herself to reply.
“I don’t know anything about hope.” Her heart was full of darkness. “But I’m sure that Sunder and Hollian have always been proud of you. As proud as I am.” Her voice caught. She had to struggle to finish. “You could have just let Jeremiah suffer, but you didn’t. You didn’t.”
“Thus I am made whole,” Anele sighed. The words were a hoarse rattle of fluids. “I am content.”
Then his eyelids closed on all that he had lost or surrendered. Slowly his body settled until it seemed to belong to the Earth.
There is no death that is not deeply felt,
No pain that does not bite through flesh and bone.
Now Linden understood the necessity of his madness. Without it—without that form of concealment—Kastenessen or Lord Foul might have realized that Anele was far more dangerous to their intentions for Jeremiah than Liand or orcrest. More dangerous than Linden herself. Kastenessen might have killed the old man at his first opportunity, in the Verge of Wandering.
All hurt is like the endless surge of seas,
The wear and tumbling that leaves no welt
But only sand instead of granite ease.
As she had with Stave, Linden wanted to stay with Anele awhile. Her debt to him was boundless: he deserved more than her paltry sentences. But there was nothing left that she could do for him, and other needs demanded her care.
&n
bsp; Feeling as blood-stained and barren as the hills, she climbed upright, secured her grasp on the Staff, and turned to the Giants.
Some of them were close to joining Anele and Galt. And Liand.
One of the Waynhim stood in front of her, snuffling damply to ascertain her scent. The creature lifted a small iron cup of vitrim. She took it gratefully, drained it in three unsteady swallows.
While the piercing tonic of the Demondim-spawn raced along her nerves, she raised fire from the heartwood of her Staff: fire that should never have been used to deliver death. Though her flame was black, it was still Earthpower. It still articulated Law. Setting aside her despair, she faced the Swordmainnir and reassumed the forsaken task of healing.
As she did so, she heard or felt Covenant’s ascent on the ridgeside. He came wreathed in an air of ferocity that she had seen before, long ago—although she had never seen it expressed in bloodshed like hers. Behind him, Pahni trailed numbly, still preoccupied by Liand’s passing and her own woe.
Linden ignored him; left Mahrtiir and Bhapa to greet or forestall him. She had already kept the Giants waiting too long.
With a quick sweep of her health-sense, she assessed the urgent clamor of wounds, some more immediately cruel than others, all potentially fatal. Then she wrapped a cocoon of Earthpower and Law around Onyx Stonemage to stabilize the Giant’s heartbeat while flames as poignant as lamentation massaged healing into cuts and deep gashes, severed thews, bitter contusions.
But Linden could not tend Stonemage thoroughly: not yet. There were too many other hurts. As soon as she had eased the most dangerous of Stonemage’s injuries, she gave Cirrus Kindwind a quick burst of kindness, then turned to spin fire around Cabledarm’s mangled leg.
Before Covenant was halfway to the ridgecrest, Esmer called softly, “Wildwielder. I must pass soon. To do so, I crave your consent. Will you not pause to acknowledge that I am justified at last? Good has been accomplished by evil means.”
Linden did not glance at him. When she had burned away the worst effects of Cabledarm’s wound, she coiled black flames around Latebirth’s chest so that none of the Swordmain’s shattered ribs would shift to puncture her lungs or her heart. Earthpower was still Earthpower. Linden’s health-sense enabled her to mend and cleanse in spite of her essential bitterness.
Through her teeth, she told Esmer, “You finally picked a side. You chose betrayal.” If the ur-viles and Waynhim had not come—“How does that justify you?”
In her soiled state, each new effort of healing felt more like an act of violence.
As Latebirth began to breathe more easily, Linden moved to Frostheart Grueburn. Carefully she sealed rent vessels and ligaments so that Rime Coldspray could draw out the spear without too much loss of blood.
“I did not choose here,” Esmer replied like the soughing of winds that touched only him. “At Kastenessen’s behest, I endeavored to preserve the croyel. For your sake, I also strove to preserve your son. By imprisoning the boy’s gifts, I would betray you. By leaving him alive in your care, I would thwart Kastenessen. Thus I endeavored to perfect my excruciation.”
And Jeremiah’s torment in the croyel’s possession would have continued. Bitterly Linden began to lash out, flailing at Rime Coldspray’s hurts, and at Halewhole Bluntfist’s, as if she sought to punish them.
The Giants bore her vehemence in silence. Her harsh succor they endured as if it were a caamora.
“Yet on one occasion I did choose,” Esmer continued. “When I brought the ur-viles and their manacles to this time, I repudiated my grandsire. Will you deny that I have suffered for my deeds?”
He may have been asking Linden’s forgiveness. Helpless, he knelt with pleading like rain in his eyes. The fetters on his wrists bound every expression of his power.
Incensed and shaken, she tried to restrain herself. The Swordmainnir had hazarded their lives for her. For Jeremiah. For Covenant. They needed to be caressed with healing, not whipped. While she struggled to bind her heart to its task, she bathed Stormpast Galesend in swift flames. Then she returned to her starting place with Onyx Stonemage and began to work more meticulously, striving now for completeness.
Will you deny that I have suffered—?
Together Mahrtiir and Bhapa left the ridge to meet Covenant, followed by Clyme and Branl. The two Humbled were too sorely injured to walk without limping. In spite of their great strength, they looked like they might pitch forward onto their faces. Yet the Manethrall—badly hurt himself, and sustained only by vitrim—did not refuse their company.
They accosted Covenant a dozen paces below the crest; but Linden could not hear what they said. Whatever it was, it caused him to pause and listen.
In spite of her concentration on Stonemage, she wanted to ask Esmer, How did the ur-viles know what was going to happen? How did you? But another question leapt into her mouth.
“Why does Lord Foul care about Jeremiah? With or without the croyel, he’s just a boy,” ensepulchered and inaccessible. “What difference does he make to the Despiser?”
Like a dying breeze, Esmer breathed, “A-Jeroth’s designs are hidden from me. I know only that his hunger concerning the boy’s gifts festers within him. Perhaps he perceives an obscure peril. Or perhaps those gifts are necessary to his intent. In either case, he craves possession of your son.
“Such concerns matter naught to Kastenessen. Though moksha Raver hints of them, Kastenessen does not heed him.”
Roger wanted A portal to eternity. But Linden was too weary to pursue the idea. The next injury, and the next, required too much of her attention. A certain amount of Stonemage’s recovery could be entrusted to her native toughness. The rest, however—
Abruptly Covenant’s voice carried up the slope: a bark of outrage or dismay. “Bloody hell! Why didn’t one of you hit me? Break my arm? Do something? I might have been able to help!”
“How?” retorted Mahrtiir. Linden heard him clearly. “You are no warrior. You hold no implements of power.”
“I know that,” Covenant almost shouted. “But I would have been one hell of a distraction.” More quietly, he added, “If nothing else, I could have held the krill for Galt. He might still be alive.”
Grinding her teeth, Linden finished her work with Stonemage. She closed her eyes for a moment, wrestled for self-control. Then she turned Earthpower and Law on Cirrus Kindwind.
Kindwind was not in more danger than her comrades. She was simply closer to Linden.
“Wildwielder.” Esmer’s appeal sank as if he had lost hope. Nevertheless he continued to insist. “I cannot endure as I am. Nor do I wish to do so. An end I must have, if you will grant it. Still I beseech your acknowledgment that I am justified. If you cannot hear Cail’s voice in any other deed of mine, will you not concede worth to the presence of the ur-viles in this time? By their hands, I am undone. And your son’s release betrays both Kastenessen and a-Jeroth.”
Crushed nerves. Shredded veins and arteries. Muscles and tendons and ligaments torn or severed. Infection everywhere. Raw contusions. Bruises as brutal as knife-thrusts. The profligate reek of blood and dirt and too much killing.
Linden wanted more vitrim. Without it, she feared that the needs of the Giants would outlast her. And she had not yet done anything for Stave or Mahrtiir. Or for the Humbled.
An end I must have—
Ragged with strain, Branl answered Covenant, “We deemed the preservation of your life paramount, ur-Lord. In this, we concur with Linden Avery. You are necessary. We saw no cause to endanger your life in combat.”
“Then why,” demanded Covenant, “didn’t you at least take Jeremiah somewhere safe?” But before the Masters could reply, he snapped, “No, don’t tell me. I already know. You were waiting for an excuse to kill the croyel. So you or Linden or somebody could use the krill.”
A weapon which had enabled her to rouse the Worm.
Like an act of self-flagellation, Branl said, “Yet Galt was swayed by Stave, as he was by Linden Avery.”
Now Clyme spoke. His voice sounded weaker than Branl’s; closer to prostration. Bitter with blood loss and old indignation, the outcome of a humiliation which his people had never forgotten, he asked, “When have the Haruchai ever declined the cost of their deeds?”
“I’m not talking about your damn deeds,” Covenant snarled. “I’m talking about being mortal. About not being equal to all things. This is what you get. You’re both too badly hurt. Now you’re going to let Linden heal you. That’s the consequence you have to accept. If you don’t, I am going to by God leave you behind.”
The Humbled or the Manethrall may have offered an objection too soft to reach the crest. In a harsh growl, Covenant responded, “It won’t be as hard as you think. I’ll just tell the Ranyhyn not to let you ride. You can’t possibly believe they won’t do it. They reared to me, for God’s sake!”
Linden drew strength from his misplaced wrath. In another time and place, she had learned to love his anger. She knew what it meant. It was recognition and compassion disguised as accusation. And he had come back, for the Land if not for her and Jeremiah. If he fell again, he would find a way to return.
She owed her life to the Haruchai. Because Covenant insisted upon it, Clyme and Branl would swallow enough of their pride to let her repay a portion of her long debt.
When she had staunched Kindwind’s bleeding, and had extinguished the last taint of infection, she did not take the time to seek sustenance from the Demondim-spawn. Turning to Cabledarm’s injuries, and Latebirth’s, she found that she could answer Esmer.
“All right.” She spoke without interrupting her ministrations. “I accept that. Bringing the ur-viles here wasn’t just a way to balance the scales. They were a gift. You saved Jeremiah, even if you didn’t do it yourself. You made it possible.”