Against All Things Ending

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “In addition”—Clyme appeared to hesitate momentarily—“we believe that we have felt the exertion of wild magic. Of this we are uncertain. The sensation is too distant for clarity. Nonetheless it suggests that we draw nigh to your former mate. For this reason, we conclude that turiya Herem and his victim are indeed aware of us”—the Humbled inclined his head toward Covenant—“or of High Lord Loric’s krill.

  “Therefore, ur-Lord, we surmise that the Ranyhyn fear an ambush. Among the Shattered Hills, we will be exposed at every moment to an onset of skest.”

  “But we’re trapped here,” protested Covenant. If skest came pouring from that cleft into the Hills, he and the Humbled and the horses would be caught against the slate barricade. They would have nowhere to run—and no room to defend themselves.

  “Ur-Lord,” Clyme stated, “I repeat that we speculate. We are not Ramen. Yet we conceive that perhaps the Ranyhyn await the Feroce, the fulfillment of your alliance.”

  His lack of inflection seemed to imply that he considered the word of the lurker’s creatures worthless.

  “Hellfire!” Covenant made no effort to mask his frustration. “What’re we supposed to do in the meantime? Just stand here? My horse is going to collapse. I’m surprised it isn’t already dead.

  “I’m useless against skest.”

  Even with Loric’s dagger, he could only face one creature at a time. And if any drop or splash of acid touched him—

  “You deemed the Feroce honest, ur-Lord,” remarked Branl. “You were not compelled to their alliance. You elected to grant your trust, disregarding the lurker’s enduring malevolence.”

  I know that, Covenant thought. I knew it was a risk.

  But before he could muster a response, Branl stiffened: a subtle intensification.

  “Skest advance upon us,” the Master announced. “They are nigh.” A moment later, he added, “They appear to have no direct path. They follow the dictates of the maze. Its intricacy delays them. Nonetheless they come.”

  Damnation! Twisting in his seat, Covenant looked past Clyme for some sign of the Feroce. But of course the senses of the Humbled would recognize the lurker’s creatures before Covenant spotted them. Briefly he studied the hill-wall beside him; but he saw no hope there. Its outward face was too steep, too smooth. Given time, Branl and Clyme might contrive to scale it. Covenant could not.

  Wincing, he glanced over the cliff; tried to imagine a descent. If he abandoned the Ranyhyn, they might have time to escape.

  Then vertigo hit him, a blow to the stomach. He jerked his eyes away.

  “Say something,” he panted at his companions. “Tell me what to do. Tell me what we’re going to do.”

  They were Haruchai. As far as he was concerned, no Haruchai had ever failed him. Not even when Bannor had refused to accompany him to Foul’s Creche.

  Rigid as rock, Clyme began, “We will trust—”

  He may have meant the Ranyhyn, or the Feroce, or Covenant himself; but Covenant no longer heard anything. Through the cloth covering the krill, he felt a sudden throb of heat.

  Joan! Instinctively he flinched. His whole body tried to squirm away from the dagger.

  An instant passed before he realized that the rush of heat was not as fierce as he had expected. He could bear it.

  Ah, hell. Was she simply unsure of her target? Was she too badly broken to focus her force when she could not sense his touch on the krill? Or was she getting weaker—?

  His own questions distracted him. A moment passed before he felt crawling on the sensitive parts of his skin; hiving insects; fornication. Things that could bite and sting were on his scalp, under his clothes, in his boots.

  With no more warning than that, a caesure erupted above and beyond the slate barrier.

  The Fall was comparatively minor, a mere flick of wild magic and chaos no more than five paces wide. And it had missed Covenant and his companions. At once, it began to lurch away, chewing westward through stone and time into the confusions of the Shattered Hills. Nevertheless it was as destructive as a hurricane in the substance of the world. Centuries or millennia were superimposed and shredded until the rock exploded, torn apart by the instantaneous migraine of its own slow life. Shards and splinters were flung in all directions like shrapnel, cutting as knives, fatal as bullets.

  They may have struck Covenant, pierced him, ripped through him. They may have killed the Humbled and the Ranyhyn and the destrier. But he did not feel them. As soon as he glanced into the savage kaleidoscope of the caesure, he lost his inward footing and slipped—

  Oh, God! Not now! Not now!

  —into the broken residue of his memories.

  After that, he stood where Ridjeck Thome had once held the apex of the promontory and watched time run backward, incrementally unmaking seven thousand years of ruin.

  Ages were erased in instants. Instants were ages. At first, he saw only the ponderous accumulation as a mountain of rubble undid its own erosion beneath the unremitting pressures of the sea. Sand gathered into stones. Stones lost their smoothness, whetted their edges. Reefs melted away around them. But memories were also quick, as swift as thought: they could become more rapid than his ability to comprehend them. The wreckage grew in bulk. At the same time, its area contracted as boulders as big as houses, mansions, temples piled themselves on top of each other. A vast weight of seawater collapsed like an eruption in reverse while riven stones thrust their heads and shoulders above the surface of the waves.

  First one at a time, then in a mighty rush, the stones sprang upward to resume their ancient places in the promontory.

  In a reality which he no longer inhabited, Covenant observed his mount’s panic. Terror summoned its final vestiges of strength. He felt it lunge for the edge of the cliff, bearing him with it. But he could not react. He was hardly able to care. His spirit lived elsewhere.

  Instead of fearing for his life, or hauling on the destrier’s reins, or shouting for help, he watched the torn tip of the promontory and then Foul’s Creche rebuild themselves around him.

  Within moments, the Despiser’s delved dwelling was complete, immense and immaculate and empty, flawless and useless in every detail except for the jagged jaws which formed Lord Foul’s throne.

  Covenant stood in the thronehall of Ridjeck Thome. The Despiser was there. Before him squatted the dire mass of the Illearth Stone. Beside the Stone, Covenant’s slain self cowered on its knees, craven and powerless. Nearby Foamfollower endured his own helplessness, his final agony.

  Lord Foul was nothing more than a bitter shape in the air, a shadow reeking of attar. But his eyes were as eager as fangs, carious and yellow. They seemed to grip the kneeling Covenant’s soul, avid for despair.

  Begone, spectre, the Despiser said in Covenant’s mind. You have no place here. You do not exist. Your time will never come.

  That voice violated time and memory. It came from a different version of existence, a brief disruption enabled by the caesure. Lord Foul then had not known that Covenant’s spirit was watching now from its remembered place within the Arch of Time. The Despiser had believed himself triumphant.

  Nevertheless the intruded command banished Covenant. The thronehall and Ridjeck Thome vanished. Instead he found himself far down in the Lost Deep, far down in the Earth’s past, looking sadly at the first spasms of the bane’s horror and bereavement as She realized that She had been tricked; snared.

  Eventually that horror and bereavement would produce the tectonic upheaval which sheared the Upper Land away from the Lower. It would cause the faults in Gravin Threndor which allowed the Soulsease to pour into the bowels of the mountain. But not yet. At this moment, Covenant could only watch and grieve as She Who Must Not Be Named howled rage at Her betrayer.

  It was a hurtful memory in every particular, crowded with pain and foreknowledge. But it was also a relief. Lord Foul did not disturb the integrity of this remembered fragment. Perhaps he could not.

  As the destrier plunged over the cliff, Covena
nt saw every cruel span of the fall below him; felt crushing death in all of its vertiginous seduction. He wanted to close his eyes; but his body had no will of its own, and his mind was absent.

  Nevertheless a part of him recognized the impact as Branl landed on the charger’s haunches. Branl’s hands gripped Covenant’s shoulders like fetters, manacles. In the same motion, the Master heaved himself backward, hauling Covenant with him.

  For a while, Covenant flickered like a chiaroscuro through fractured scenes, forgotten events. He saw Brinn give battle to the Guardian of the One Tree. He watched Kasreyn of the Gyre forge an eldritch sword to use against the Sandgorgons until he acquired the lore and found the materials to perfect Sandgorgons Doom. Impotent and proud, Covenant studied Linden’s fight for her life, and for Jeremiah’s, under Melenkurion Skyweir.

  His mount’s plunge had become a plummet. They had fallen too far. Even Branl’s supreme strength did not suffice to regain the rim of the precipice.

  But Clyme was ready. Outstretched on the stone, he reached down, snatched a handhold in the back of Branl’s tunic.

  The vellum should have torn. It did not.

  An instant later, Branl released one hand from Covenant to catch at Clyme’s forearm. Together the Humbled wrenched Covenant back to the cliffedge; pulled him to safety. There he sprawled limp on level stone as if nothing had happened.

  Too much was happening. Blundering along flaws and crevices, he tried to find a fragment of memory that would save him. Skest emerged from the cleft, gleaming vilely in the shrouded gloom. He saw the Theomach divert Roger’s efforts to take Linden and the croyel to the time of Damelon Giantfriend’s arrival on Rivenrock. He heard the Elohim pride themselves on their uninvolvement. At least a score of skest thronged out of the maze. More were coming. He saw Joan appear, charred by lightning, on the promontory of Foul’s Creche. He watched turiya Raver pounce on her, into her; watched the Raver compel her to summon Roger, Jeremiah, and Linden. Because they were dead in their former lives, they would never escape this reality.

  Without hesitation, Clyme left Branl and Covenant. He flung himself at the corner where the blockade of slate joined the sheer hill. Somehow he wedged or clawed his way upward. When he reached the top of the slate, he straddled it.

  Branl lifted Covenant; threw him upward. Clyme snagged one of Covenant’s slack arms, nearly jerked it from its socket. While Clyme settled Covenant beside him, Branl climbed to join them.

  Undefended, Mhornym and Naybahn faced the corrosive skest.

  Blood pulsed from a cut on Covenant’s forehead. He recalled striking his head on the edge of a table. Blood formed trails around his eyes, ran down his cheeks, dripped from his jaw. A gash along his ribs throbbed. The side of Branl’s neck had been torn: a shallow cut. Clyme wore several minor hurts. The barricade must have shielded them from the caesure’s worst violence.

  Alone within himself, Covenant strove to locate a recollection that might affect his plight.

  Instead he stumbled into Joan’s recent past, perhaps moments before his resurrection. She looked worse than he had ever seen her in life: a madwoman unkempt and tattered, gap-toothed with malnutrition, no longer capable of focusing her eyes; so utterly frail that she required a throng of acid-creatures and much of turiya’s savagery to keep her alive. For some reason, she was clambering, friable as glass, down the granitic wreckage where Foul’s Creche had once stood. By weak increments painful to behold, she descended toward the Sunbirth Sea. Was she afraid? Trying to escape her own future? Did she think that turiya Herem would allow her to drown among the waves? Or was she seeking older stone, more fundamental rocks and boulders which she could then destroy to unleash greater caesures?

  The skest massed at the opening of the maze. But they did not move to assail the Ranyhyn. Perhaps they were content to prevent escape. Perhaps their master, the Raver, had assured them that Joan would strike again soon.

  Remembering her, Covenant tried to call out. Stop this! Please stop! You’ve already suffered too much! But of course she could not hear him. He was a wraith, a figment of memory, no longer a participant in the Arch: too insubstantial to intrude on her derangement and turiya’s possession.

  Grimacing in dismay, he turned aside, staggered into another fissure, and found himself in Andelain.

  Not in Andelain itself: not among the tangible Hills. Instead he stood beside the krill, beside the withered stump of Caer-Caveral’s passing, within an image of Andelain, a semblance composed of recollection and symbolism. And he was not alone.

  Berek Halfhand was with him, Heartthew and Lord-Fatherer. Loric Vilesilencer, creator of the krill. Saltheart Foamfollower, who had laughed, and Cable Seadreamer, who could not. Mhoram Variol-son, representing the later generation of Lords. Cail of the Haruchai. Jerrick of Vidik Amar, wrapped in shadows, who had shared his magicks with a-Jeroth, and had watched in shattering consternation as a-Jeroth had brought forth quellvisks. The Theomach, alone of the Insequent, clad in cerements after his defeat by Brinn.

  Covenant remembered this. He and these spirits had gathered together in an effort to imagine or devise some form of salvation.

  They all deferred to him. His was the only soul unconstrained by the strictures of Time.

  But he could only recall pieces of their counsel.

  He did not know why the skest waited. He did not care.

  Branl shook him. “Ur-Lord. You must return. There will be another Fall. We cannot ward you. And we must not abandon the Ranyhyn to this death.”

  The injuries of the Humbled were trivial. They would heal. The wound of Covenant’s mind would not.

  It is hazardous, Berek said. Hazardous beyond measure. There is the breaking of Laws to consider. There is the Worm.

  I know, Covenant said. And Kevin’s Dirt. And Kastenessen. And Cail’s son.

  A litany more heinous than any number of skest.

  The lealty of my people, Cail added. They are obdurate and mistaken. Also there are skurj. There are Sandgorgons. Kastenessen rules the one. Samadhi Sheol entices the other.

  Dull-eyed and unblinking, Covenant saw small fires shine greenly in the twilight cast by the Shattered Hills. The Feroce had come at last. With emerald lambent in their hands, they approached from the northwest, beyond the skest.

  The skest seemed to be waiting for them. For an alliance of one kind or another to be revealed. But did they believe that promises would be kept between Covenant and the lurker of the Sarangrave? Or did they expect the sundered descendants of the jheherrin to reunite, skest with Feroce? Did they believe that the lurker would betray Covenant?

  I include the Giant named Lostson and Longwrath, Foamfollower said. He is ruled by a geas born of a dire bargain and cannot free himself.

  Terrible banes are immured among the bones of Gravin Threndor, Loric said. Even the Illearth Stone must be considered.

  Branl or Clyme should have taken the krill. They could use it. But perhaps they suspected that the grasp of any hand on Loric’s dagger might catch Joan’s attention; draw another caesure.

  A white gold wielder is possessed by a Raver, the Theomach said. That alone suffices to unloose a world of woe.

  I know, Covenant said again.

  This whole discussion had taken place years ago. It was only a memory. But it had more power over him than any facet of his physical present. He needed to remember it. Parts of it might rescue him.

  Parts were already irretrievable.

  My friend of old, Mhoram said. It falls to me to speak of your own son. He lacks Esmer’s unfathomable powers, but also Esmer’s self-torment. His is an unrelieved darkness, born of abandonment and nurtured by Despite. He will do much which Esmer would not.

  Also, as the Theomach has said, there is the woman who turned from you, your son’s mother. She trusts to him, though she has given him naught. She is a rightful wielder of white gold, yes—and possessed by turiya Herem, yes. She will oppose you. Yet she is broken beyond sufferance. Her need for mercy is absolute.r />
  Also there is Linden Avery. There is her child freely chosen. None here can declare which of them bears the greater burden of pain. None here possess the wisdom to estimate the outcome of his loss, or the worth of his recovery. We can be certain only that the Despiser craves him urgently.

  Like the surge of the departing sea, the Feroce came upon the skest. Hand-held fires like reminders of the Illearth Stone met living green vitriol, another echo of the Stone’s evil.

  Without sounds or battle cries, without any sign of clashing, they began to obliterate each other. Feroce flared and were consumed. Skest slumped into puddles that gnawed like infections at the stone. Gouts and flames slashed the premature dusk.

  Foamfollower looked at Seadreamer. When Seadreamer nodded, Foamfollower said, You ask that we repose faith in Linden Avery the Chosen. We are content to do so. We are Giants. We cannot do otherwise.

  I have received the gift of her acquaintance, said the Theomach. I also am content.

  She will sacrifice the Earth entire for her son, Loric said. And for you, Timewarden. I am not content. We must seek another path.

  I know, Covenant said a third time. She’ll do anything for Jeremiah. She’ll do anything for me. That’s the risk we have to take. You were never in her situation. Are you sure you wouldn’t have done as much for Kevin, if you ever had the chance?

  Thereafter Loric was silent.

  An eerie battle burned and spat among the descendants of the jheherrin. It was as soundless as a charade. Nevertheless the lurker’s creatures and turiya Raver’s died in each encounter.

  The lurker was keeping its promise. Sacrificing its worshippers. For Covenant.

  He did not know how many Feroce had come. He did not know how many skest waited in the passages of the maze. But he knew the acid of turiya Herem’s servants. Before long, the entire expanse of stone between his perch and the advancing Feroce would begin to crumble. If the cliff’s rim did not fall away at once, it would collapse under any weight.

  The Ranyhyn may have already lost their only escape. Clyme and Branl might never be able to reach the cleft into the Shattered Hills.