Against All Things Ending

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Linden saw at a glance that the Swordmainnir had bathed and eaten. Their washed armor lay drying in the sun, and they were visibly stronger. Among them, Jeremiah chewed reflexively on some morsel of food. Pahni or Bhapa had cared for him in his mother’s absence. Nonetheless the silt of his stare remained unreactive, empty, like a wall against the hurts of the world.

  “Linden—” Covenant began, then stopped. Conflicting emotions seemed to close his throat. The muscles of his jaw bunched as he fought what he was feeling, but he did not say anything more than her name.

  Avoiding his congested gaze, Linden nodded to the concerned faces of the Giants, Bhapa’s more troubled expression, Pahni’s numbed mien. Hoarse with weariness and too many needs, she explained, “Coldspray is building a cairn for Anele and Galt. Mahrtiir and Stave are helping her. They’ll be here soon.”

  Even their strength and determination would not last much longer.

  Then she strode past her companions. At the edge of the water, she dropped her Staff as though it entailed more responsibilities than she could bear. Empty-handed, she walked out into the stream until it filled her boots, reached her knees, rose to her waist. When it was deep enough, she plunged beneath the surface.

  Like a small child, irrationally, she prayed that the water would feel as clean and cleansing as Glimmermere.

  But it could not wash away what she had seen and done and felt. The darkness in her was immiscible. No mere spring runoff could dilute it. Like the healing that she had given to her companions, the stream had no power to expunge her sins.

  In Andelain, Berek’s spectre had said of Lord Foul, He may be freed only by one who is compelled by rage, and contemptuous of consequence. Since then, she had proven herself an apt instrument. If Jeremiah had not been rescued from the croyel—

  But her son had been set free. If the current’s gentle urging did not ease her heart, she had other answers. For years, she had made a study of despair: as a physician, she knew it intimately. In addition, she could still hope that Jeremiah would emerge from his graves, if he were given time. And the imponderable implications of Covenant’s instinct for redemption might somehow counteract the lessons that she had absorbed from Gallows Howe; the horror that she had shared within She Who Must Not Be Named.

  Underwater she scrubbed at her hair, tried to claw the disgust and lamentation off of her arms and face. Gradually she grew calmer. When she broke the surface and wiped the water from her eyes, she was able to meet the anxious glances of her companions without flinching.

  Sodden, and glad of it, she left the stream to reclaim her Staff and the rest of her burdens.

  As she approached, Bhapa held out food for her: bread that had not had time to grow stale, grapes and a little cheese, some cured beef. He offered her a bulging waterskin. She accepted his care and thanked him. Then she began to eat.

  She was hungrier than she would have thought possible. In spite of everything that had sickened or appalled her, her body had not forgotten its own needs.

  Covenant stopped his pacing to watch her. She sensed the pressure rising in him like a fever, but she did not know how to interpret it. After a moment, he began again, “Linden—We’re running out of time. I know you’ve been through hell. You’ve lost too much. You all have. But we should—”

  He seemed eager to get as far away from her as he could.

  Chewing, Linden held up a hand to interrupt him. When she had swallowed, she asked, “Have you remembered something that makes a difference? Something that we can understand?”

  He shook his head. Shadows like thunderheads complicated his gaze.

  “Then we should wait for Stave, Mahrtiir, and Coldspray.” She rebuffed him because she felt rebuffed herself. “They need food and a chance to wash. And they have a right to hear whatever you want to say.”

  She expected him to overrule her. He had that authority: he was Thomas Covenant. But he did not. Briefly he scowled at her as if he wished that he could read her heart. Then he resumed his pacing.

  The ur-viles and Waynhim had spread out around the Giants, enclosing Linden and her companions in a half-circle. Now they began growling like creatures who wished to be heeded.

  Frostheart Grueburn jerked up her head. Surprise lit the features of the Giants: surprise and sudden gladness. While Onyx Stonemage and her comrades whispered excitedly to each other, Grueburn turned to the loremaster and bowed with the formality due to a sovereign among invaluable allies.

  “Our ears have been opened,” she said with as much gravity as her eagerness and relief allowed. “We hear you and attend, honoring your great valor and service.”

  The loremaster replied in a guttural snarl that conveyed nothing to Linden—or to Covenant and the Cords. But Grueburn bowed again, grinning as if something within her had been set free. Latebirth and Stormpast Galesend laughed softly, full of pleasure. Other Giants beamed, smiling with their whole bodies.

  “Linden Giantfriend,” Grueburn said, “do not misapprehend our joy. It is the restoration of our gift of tongues which lifts our hearts, not the words of these brave creatures. Yet there is no hurt or harm in those words. The loremaster merely desires us to comprehend that the ur-viles and Waynhim must depart. For the present, they have fulfilled the dictates of their Weird.” The Swordmain broke off. Aside, she explained, “Among them, ‘Weird’ has several meanings, none of which are plain to me.” Then she resumed. “Now they wish to seek out a deeper understanding, for their deeds here do not content them.

  “Ere they depart, however, they will answer any questions that you may choose to ask, if the answers lie within their ken.”

  Linden stared. Now? When she and her companions had barely survived Roger’s attack? The list of things that she wanted to know seemed endless. But she was close to exhaustion: she could not think clearly enough to remember them all.

  Nevertheless the loremaster’s offer was a precious opportunity. It might not come again.

  Covenant’s eyes seemed to catch fire in the sunlight. He turned sharply; strode toward the loremaster as though he meant to hurl a volley of queries. When the black creature sniffed in his direction, however, and proffered an awkward mimicry of a human bow, he did not speak. Instead he bowed in return, then looked at Linden.

  Not for the first time, he appeared reluctant to take command in her presence.

  All of the Demondim-spawn had fallen silent. The Giants gathered more closely around Linden, Covenant, and the loremaster. Torn between diffidence and a desire for comprehension, Bhapa joined them. But Pahni stayed with Jeremiah. As if she had no interest or purpose in life except to carry out assigned tasks, she busied herself feeding the boy as long as he was willing to chew and swallow.

  Pressed by Covenant’s gaze, Linden asked the first question that came to her.

  “How did they know?”

  Grueburn cocked her head quizzically. “It may be, Linden Giantfriend, that the creatures comprehend you. Alas, I do not.”

  Linden dragged a hand through her hair. She wanted to slap herself, sting a measure of acuity into her thoughts.

  “Esmer said that they forged their manacles in the Lost Deep. They must have done it thousands of years ago. He saved the last of them—but they were ready for him. How did they know that they were going to need those manacles? How did they know that he would even exist?” If she understood what Esmer had told her, he had urged the creatures to accompany him before the time of his own birth. “How did they know what he would be like, or what he would do, or how he could be stopped?”

  At once, the loremaster began to bark a lengthy response. Scrambling to keep up, Grueburn attempted a simultaneous translation.

  “These are matters of lore. They cannot be contained by your speech. We labored in the Lost Deep, where the Snared One could not discover us, for our presence was masked by the hunger and somnolence of the nameless bane. Thus we were not taken by the purge which destroyed all others of our kind. In our fashion, we witnessed the Snared One�
�s defeat, and the union of the Haruchai with those beings whom you name merewives, and the first stirrings of the mad Elohim’s struggle to escape his Durance. From these gravid portents, we inferred what must follow. We could not be certain of it, just as we could not be certain when we created Vain to serve against the Snared One. But we saw—”

  Abruptly Grueburn winced in frustration. “Loremaster, I cry your pardon. You speak in concepts beyond my grasp.”

  The Waynhim replied with low growls and snarls as if they were making suggestions. But the Giants shook their heads in bewilderment, and the grey Demondim-spawn fell silent.

  Abandoning literal translation, Frostheart Grueburn endeavored to paraphrase instead.

  “Linden Giantfriend, the ur-viles saw possibilities. I have no better language. They saw possibilities and prepared themselves.

  “However, the loremaster states plainly that they did not foreknow Esmer’s coming to bear them across the millennia. But they do not age and die as we do, and they conceived themselves secure in the Lost Deep. It was their intent to simply wait out the centuries until possibilities became certainties, or proved to be chimeras. In the forgotten caverns beneath Gravin Threndor, and in their loreworks, they had much to occupy them.

  “Yet when Esmer appeared, they knew him. Again the word is not adequate to their meaning. They saw possibilities made flesh. Therefore they consented to accompany him, perceiving that his nature might one day require the constraint of their manacles.”

  Increasingly stymied by unfamiliar rationales, Grueburn betrayed a surge of agitation. “Here also,” she continued, hurrying, “the loremaster states plainly that the ur-viles did not foreknow events. They merely—”

  She stopped short. As if to herself, she protested, “Stone and Sea! I am a Giant, am I not? How does it transpire that I have no sufficient speech?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Covenant murmured gruffly. “You’re doing fine.” And Halewhole Bluntfist added, “We are not Elohim, Grueburn. That we are not more than Giants does not imply that we are therefore less.”

  Clenching her fists, Grueburn swallowed her vexation. Uncomfortably she finished, “They merely followed the path of possibilities, and awaited culmination.”

  The loremaster may have been satisfied. It made no effort to explain further.

  Possibilities? Linden thought. That’s all? Her own mind and experiences were alien to those of the ur-viles and Waynhim; too alien. Their thoughts were like Caerroil Wildwood’s runes: they surpassed her ability to interpret them.

  Covenant watched her with a complex intensity in his eyes; but he did not interject his own questions.

  All right, she told herself. All right. It is what it is. One step at a time.

  Studying the stark ebony and eyelessness of the loremaster’s visage, she asked, “So what changed? For a long time, they served Lord Foul. Then they didn’t. They started working against him instead.” Something had inspired them to redefine their Weird. “Why did they do that?”

  The loremaster responded with a string of sounds like harsh choking. But this time Grueburn seemed more at ease with the creature’s reply.

  “Two—insights? recognitions?—caused them to reexamine the import of their Weird. The first is this.

  “They were drawn to the Snared One’s service by promises of fulfillment. When his designs were accomplished, he assured them, they would achieve every aspiration, and the strictures of their Weird would be appeased. Like him, they would perceive themselves as gods, far greater in form and substance and lore and worth than the Demondim, their makers. For this, they strove in his name.”

  Through the low mutter of barking and growls from the Waynhim and several of the ur-viles, Frostheart Grueburn’s voice carried more strongly. The creatures may have been encouraging her.

  “By increments, however, they became acquainted—how could they not?—with his insatiable contempt for all beings other than himself. They deemed themselves the foremost of his servants, mightier and more necessary than even the Ravers, for the Ravers required stolen forms and did not honor the vast lore of the Demondim. Still less did the Ravers esteem the spanning knowledge and theurgies of the siring Viles. Also the enslavement of the Ravers was such that they had lost themselves. They had grown incapable of any clear aspiration not commanded by their lord. And the ur-viles were many, the Ravers few. Surely, therefore, the ur-viles were the most prized of the Snared One’s adherents.

  “Yet they were not. Rather they were despised. Indeed, his contempt for them seemed as unfathomable as the deepest secrets of the Earth. And no promises were kept. At last, they saw that his contempt exceeded their self-loathing. Thus they became disposed to turn aside from their service.”

  Urged by soft calls and snarls, Grueburn added, “Yet to turn aside is also to turn toward, and they lacked any new purpose, any new vision of their Weird, toward which they might turn.”

  There she paused, apparently trying to follow the strands of the loremaster’s involuted speech.

  As if to prompt her, Covenant remarked, “That’s where the Waynhim came in. That was their real gift to the Land. A different interpretation.”

  “Aye,” Grueburn assented as the loremaster barked. “You speak of the second insight or recognition which guided the ur-viles to their present course.

  “In the unyielding opposition of their smaller, weaker, and fewer kindred, they discerned strength of a kind which lay beyond their emulation. It was neither lore nor puissance. But it may have been wisdom, and it surpassed them.”

  Sadly Grueburn admitted, “Mere wisdom is too small to suggest the scale of the loremaster’s meaning. The creature implies a discernment of the underlying nature of existence. However, the pith of the matter is this. The Waynhim no longer loathed their own forms. They had surrendered that self-disgust, or they had transcended it. They were impelled to the Land’s service by—I have no more fitting word—by love. They were driven, not by abhorrence, but by affirmation.”

  Again the Swordmain paused, wrestling with ramifications. Several of her comrades seemed to want to help her, but they kept their ideas to themselves.

  After a moment, Grueburn sighed like an admission of defeat. “This,” she resumed, “the ur-viles did not comprehend. They could not. Yet they saw that there was no ire in the opposition of the Waynhim. Again I lack needful language. The Waynhim fought, and were overwhelmed, and perished—and felt neither rage nor protest. Rather they comported themselves as though their service alone sufficed to vindicate their interpretation of their Weird. To both vindicate and achieve it.

  “Though the ur-viles did not comprehend, they recognized that their own service to the Snared One offered no such reward. They were given promises, and they were sacrificed, but they were denied the calm certainty of the Waynhim. Thus they were led to the arcane study of possibilities. And when those possibilities were confirmed in Vain—in Linden Giantfriend’s Staff of Law, and in Covenant Timewarden’s transubstantiation—these ur-viles now among us pursued their study further.”

  As the loremaster’s answer ended, Linden saw Covenant watching her sidelong. He appeared to be biding his time, as if he hoped that she would eventually ask a different question.

  Perhaps he wished her to seek guidance. If so, he was going to be disappointed. At that moment, she did not want advice. She wanted an effective way to thank the ur-viles for stopping Esmer.

  “Then tell me what their Weird is,” she said. “What does it mean?” A moment later, however, she shook her head. “No. That isn’t what I’m trying to ask.”

  Weird, Wyrd, Würd, Word, Worm: she had heard too many explanations. More would not improve her comprehension.

  “Before we left Revelstone, I made a promise. I told them that if they ever figured out how to tell me what they need from me, I would do it. I want to keep that promise.” She yearned to keep at least one of her promises, and she had already failed Anele. In truth, she had doomed everyone who had ever trusted her
. Facing the loremaster, she concluded, “You’ve done so much for me. For all of us. Tell me how I can repay you.”

  Dozens of voices replied simultaneously, as insistent as the clamor of hounds on the scent of their quarry.

  Frostheart Grueburn tried to follow them all. Then she punched her fists against each other: a gesture of protest. “I implore you,” she groaned. “I cannot encompass so much. When I am given more than I am able to heed, I receive none of it.”

  At once, the tumult of the creatures was cut off. Testing the air with its wide nostrils, the loremaster fell silent.

  Abashed, Grueburn turned to Linden. “I am unequal to this task. The Waynhim in particular strive to account for their Weird, but I hear little that I am able to convey. Some cite worth and otherness. Some make reference to transfiguration or rebirth. But their true meaning eludes me.”

  She looked around at the Swordmainnir, mutely asking for aid. But they shook their heads, admitting their own confusion.

  Glumly Grueburn told Linden, “They appear to conflate concepts in a manner baffling to me. Do they equate their own worthiness with that of the wide Earth, or do they attempt some obscure distinction? Do they crave an alteration of themselves, that they may be condign in the world, or do they desire the world’s transformation in their own image? They appear to set their course by many headings. I cannot follow them.”

  Now the loremaster spoke again. When it was done, Grueburn squared her shoulders; gazed at Linden more sharply. “To one aspect of your question, however, their response is plain. The nature of the Staff of Law is inimical to them, though they possess a limited virtu to ward themselves. In this circumstance, Linden Giantfriend, they require naught that you may provide.”

  To herself, Linden groaned. She needed a different answer. Something tangible, attainable: something that she could actually do to balance the scales of her long debt.