White Gold Wielder t2cotc-3

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Linden had once redeemed him from that fate. But now he was beaten. He made decisions, not because he believed in them, but because they were expected of him. He did not have the heart to face the Soulbiter.

  In the days that followed, he went through the ordinary motions of being alive. He drank enough diamondraught to account for his mute distance to the people who watched him. He slept in the galley, took brief walks, acknowledged greetings and conversations like a living man. But inwardly he was becoming untouchable. After years of discipline and defiance, of stubborn argument against the seduction of his illness, he gave the effort up.

  And still Starfare's Gem ploughed a straight furrow across the grey and gravid sea while the wind blew arctic outrage. Except for a few worn paths here and there, the decks were now clenched with ice, overgrown like an old ruin. Its sheer weight was enough to make the Giants nervous; but they could not spare time or strength to clear the crust away. There was too much water in the wind: the blow sheared too much spray off the battered waves. And that damp collected in the sails faster than it could be beaten clear. At intervals, one stretch of canvas or another became too heavy to hold. The wind rent it out of its shrouds. A hail of ice-slivers swept the decks; tattered scraps of sail were left flapping like broken hands from the spars. Then the Giants were forced to clew new canvas up the yards. Bereft of its midmast, the granite dromond needed all its sails or none.

  Day after day, the shrill whine of the rigging and the groans of the stone became louder, more distressed. The sea looked like fluid ice, and Starfare's Gem was dragged forward against ever-increasing resistance. Yet the Giantship was stubborn. Its masts flexed and shivered, but did not shatter. Grinding its teeth against the gale, Starfare's Gem endured.

  When the change came, it took everyone by surprise. Rest had restored the combative smoulder to Linden's eyes, and she had been fretting for days against the maddening pressure of the blast and the constriction of the galley; but even she did not see what was coming. And the Giants had no warning at all.

  At one moment, Starfare's Gem was riding the howl of the wind through the embittered heart of a cloud-dark night. At the next, the dromond pitched forward like a destrier with locked forelegs; and the gale was gone. The suddenness of the silence staggered the vessel like a detonation. There was no sound except the faint clink and crash of ice falling from the slack sails. Linden Jerked her percipience from side to side, probing the ship. In astonishment, she muttered, “We've stopped. Just like that”

  For an instant, no one moved. Then Mistweave strode to me forward door, kicked it out of its frost. Cold as pure as absolute winter came flowing inward; but it had no wind behind it. The air across the Giantship was still.

  Shouts sprang along the decks. In spite of his inward silence, Covenant followed Mistweave and Linden out into the night.

  The clouds were gone: the dark was as clear and sharp as a knife-edge. Spots of light marked out the Giantship as the crew lit more lanterns. Near the eastern horizon stood the moon, yellow and doleful. It was nearly full, but appeared to shed no illumination, cast no reflection onto the black and secret face of the water. The stars littered the sky in every direction, all their portents lost. Linden muttered to herself, “What in hell-?” But she seemed unable to complete the question.

  Honninscrave and Pitchwife approached from opposite ends of the ship. When the First joined them, Pitchwife said with unconvincing nonchalance, “It appears that we are here.”

  Covenant felt too numb to be cold. But Linden was shivering violently beside him. In a bitten voice, she asked, “What do we do now?”

  “Do?” replied Honninscrave distantly. His visage was benighted, devoid of content. “This is the Soulbiter. We must await its will.” Plumes of steam came from his mouth as if his spirit escaped him at every word.

  Its will Covenant thought dumbly. My will. Foul's will. Nothing made any difference. Silence was safety. If he could not have hope, he would accept numbness. Returning to the galley, he curled up on his pallet and fell immediately asleep.

  But the next morning he was awakened by the cold and the quiet. The stoves put out no heat. Except for Cail, the galley was deserted. Abandoned. Starfare's Gem lay as still as if he and the Haruchai were the only people left aboard.

  A pang went through him, threatening his defences. Stiff with sleep and chill, he fumbled erect. “Where-?” he asked weakly. “Where did they go?”

  Cail's reply was flat and pitiless. “They have gone to behold the Soulbiter.”

  Covenant winced. He did not want to leave the confines of the galley. He feared the return of sensation and pain and responsibility. But Cail's expressionless stare was insistent. Cail was one of the Haruchai. kindred to Brinn and Banner. His comrades Ceer and Hergrom had given their lives. He had the right to make demands. And his gaze was as plain as words:

  It is enough. Now you must resume yourself.

  Covenant did not want to go. But he adjusted his rumpled attire, made an effort to secure the silence closely about him. When Cail opened the door for him, he took a step over the storm sill and walked blinking into the bright, frigid morning.

  After so many days hidden behind the glower of the clouds, the sun alone would have been enough to blind him. But it was not alone. White cold glared around the ship. Light sprang at him from all sides; dazzles as piercing as spears volleyed about his head. His tears froze on his cheeks. When he raised his hands to rub the beads away, small patches of skin were torn from his face.

  But slowly his sight cleared. He saw Giants lining the rails, their backs to him. Everyone on board stood at the forward railings somewhere, facing outward.

  They were still, as quiet as the sea and the sails hanging empty in then gear. But no hush could silence their expectant suspense. They were watching the Soulbiter. Waiting for it.

  Then he recovered enough vision to discern the source of all the dazzling.

  Motionless in the water, Starfare's Gem lay surrounded by a flotilla of icebergs.

  Hundreds of them in every size and configuration. Some were mere small humps on the flat sea. Others raised jagged crests to the level of the dromond's spars. And they were all formed of the same impeccable ice: ice as translucent and complete as glass, as bard faced as diamonds; ice on which the morning broke, shattering light in all directions.

  They were moving. Singly or in squadrons, they bore slowly down on the ship as they floated southward. A few came so close that a Giant could have reached them in one leap. Yet none of them struck the dromond.

  Along the deep the flotilla drifted with a wonderous majesty, as bewitching as me cold. Most of the Giants stood as if they had been carved from a muddier ice. They scarcely breathed while their hands froze to the rails and the gleaming burned into their eyes Covenant joined Linden near the First, Pitchwife, and Mistweave. Behind the raw red of cold in her face lay a blue pallor as if her blood had become as milky as frost; but she had stopped shivering, paid no heed to the drops of ice which formed on her parted lips. Pitchwife's constant murmur did not interrupt the trance. Like everyone else, he watched the ice pass stately by as if he were waiting for someone to speak. As if the sun-sharp wonder of this passage were merely a prelude.

  Covenant found that he, too, could not look away. Commanded by so much eye piercing glister and beauty, he braced his hands on one of the crossbeams of the railing and at once lost the power of movement. He was calm now, prepared to wait forever if necessary to hear what the cold was going to utter.

  Cail's voice reached him distantly. The Haruchai was saying, “Ur-Lord, this is not well. Chosen, hear me. It is not well. You must come away.” But his protest slowly ran out of strength. He moved to stand beside Covenant and did not speak again.

  Covenant had no sense of time. Eventually the waiting ended. A berg drifted past the line of spectators, showing everyone a flat space like a platform in its side. And from that space rose cries.

  “A ship at last!”

  �
�Help us!”

  “In the name of pity!”

  “We have been marooned!”

  He seemed to hear the same shouts behind him also, from the other side of the Giantship. But that strange detail made no impression on him.

  His eyes were the only part of him mat moved. As the iceberg floated southward amid the slow procession, its flat side passed directly below the watchers. And he saw figures emerge from the pellucid ice-human figures. Three or four of them, he could not be sure. The number was oddly imprecise. But numbers did not matter. They were men, and their destitution made his heart twist against its shackles.

  They were hollow-eyed, gaunt, and piteous. Their hands, maimed by frostbite, were wrapped in shreds torn from their ragged clothing. Emaciation and hopelessness lined their faces. Their cracked and splintered voices were hoarse with despair.

  “Marooned!” they cried like a memory of the wind.

  “Mercy!”

  But no one on the dromond moved.

  “Help them.” Linden's voice issued like a moan between her beaded lips. “Throw them a line. Somebody.”

  No one responded. Gripped by cold, volitionless, the watchers only stared as the iceberg drifted slowly by, bearing its frantic victims away. Gradually, the current took the marooned men out of hearing.

  “In the name of God.” Her tears formed a gleaming fan of ice under each eye.

  Again Covenant's heart twisted. But he could not break free. His silence covered the sea.

  Then another berg drew near. It lay like a plate on the unwavering face of the water. Beneath the surface, its bulk lightly touched the ship, scraped a groan from the hushed hull For a moment, the plate caught the sun squarely, and its reflection rang like a knell. Yet Covenant was able to see through the glare.

  Poised in the sun's image were people that he knew.

  Hergrom. Ceer.

  They stood braced as if they had their backs to the Sandwall. At first, they were unaware of the Giantship. But then they saw it. Ceer shouted a hail which fell without echo onto the decks of the dromond. Leaving Hergrom, he sprinted to the edge of the ice, waved his arms for assistance.

  Then out of the light came a Sandgorgon. White against the untrammelled background of the ice, the beast charged toward Hergrom with murder outstretched in its mighty arms.

  Tremors shook Cail. Strain made steam puff between his teeth. But the cold held him.

  For an instant, the implacable structure of Ceer's face registered the fact that the Giantship was not going to help him. His gaze shivered in Covenant's chest like an accusation that could never be answered. Then he sped to Hergrom's defence.

  The Sandgorgon struck with the force of a juggernaut. Cracks sprang through the ice. A flurry of blows scattered Hergrom's blood across the floe. Ceer's strength meant nothing to the beast.

  And still no one moved. The Giants were ice themselves now, as frigid and brittle as the wilderland of the sea. Linden's weeping gasped in her throat. Droplets of blood ran from Covenant's palms as he tried to rip his bands from the railing. But the grasp of the cold could not be broken.

  Ceer. Hergrom.

  But the plate of ice slowly drifted away, and no one moved.

  After that, the waiting seemed long for the first time since Covenant had fallen under the spell of the Soulbiter.

  At last another hunk of ice floated near the Giantship. It was small, hardly a yard wide, its face barely above the water. It seemed too small to be the bringer of so much fear.

  For a moment, his vision was smeared with light. He could see nothing past the bright assault of the sun's reflections. But then his eyes cleared.

  On that little floe stood Cable Seadreamer. He faced the dromond, stared up at the watchers. His posture was erect; his arms were folded sternly over the gaping wound in the centre of his chest Above his scar, his eyes were full of terrible knowledge.

  Stiffly, he nodded a greeting. “My people,” he said in a voice as quiet and extreme as me cold. “you must succour me. This is the Soulbiter. Here suffer all the damned who have died in a false cause, unaided by those they sought to serve. If you will not reach out to me, I must stand here forever in my anguish, and the ice will not release me. Hear me you whom I have loved to this cost Is there no love left in you for me?”

  “Seadreamer,” Linden groaned. Honninscrave gave a cry that tore frozen flesh around his mouth, sent brief drops of blood into his beard. The First panted faintly, “No. I am the First of the Search. I will not endure it.” But none of them moved. The cold had become irrefragable. Its victory was accomplished. Already Seadreamer was almost directly opposite Covenant's position. Soon he would pass amidships, and then he would be gone, and the people of Starfare's Gem would be left with nothing except abomination and rue and cold.

  It was intolerable. Seadreamer had given his life to save Covenant from destroying the Earth. Prevented by muteness from sharing the Earth-Sight, he had placed his own flesh in the path of the world's doom. purchasing a reprieve for the people he loved. And Covenant had refused to grant him the simple decency of a caamora. It was too much.

  In pain and dismay Covenant moved. With a curse that splintered the silence, he burned his hands off the rail. Wild magic pulsed through him like the hot ichor of grief: white fire burst out of his ring like rage. “We're going to lose him!” he howled at the Giants. “Get a rope!”

  An instant later, the First wrenched herself free. Her iron voice rang across the Giantship: “No!”

  Jerking toward the mooring of a nearby ratline, she snatched up one of the belaying pins. “Avaunt, demon!” she yelled. “We will not hear you”

  Fierce with fury and revulsion, she hurled the pin straight at Seadreamer.

  The Giants gaped as her projectile flashed through him.

  It struck a chip from the edge of the ice and skipped away into the sea, splashing distinctly. At once, his form wavered. He tried to speak again; but already he had dissolved into mirage. The floe drifted emptily away toward the south.

  While Covenant stared, the fire rushed out of him, quenched again by the cold.

  But an instant later the spell broke with an audible crackle and shatter of ice. Linden lifted raw hands to her face, blinked her cold gouged eyes. Coughing and cursing, Honninscrave reeled back from the rail. “Move, sluggards!” His shout scattered flecks of blood. “Ware the wind!” Relief and dismay were etched in frost on different parts of Pitchwife's face.

  Numbly, the other Giants turned from the vista of the sea. Some seemed unable to understand what had happened; others struggled in mounting haste toward their stations. Seasauce and Hearthcoal bustled back to the galley as if they were ashamed of their prolonged absence. The First and Galewrath moved among the slower crewmembers, shaking or manhandling them into a semblance of alertness. Honninscrave strode grimly in the direction of the wheeldeck.

  A moment later, one of the sails rattled in its gear, sending down a shower of frozen dust; and the first Giant to ascend the ratlines gave a hoarse call:

  “The south!”

  A dark moil of clouds was already visible above the dromond’s taffrail. The gale was coming back.

  Covenant wondered momentarily how Starfare's Gem would be able to navigate through the flotilla of icebergs in such a wind-or how the ice-laden sails would survive if the blast hit White Cold Wielder too suddenly, too hard. But then he forgot everything else because Linden was fainting and he was too far away to reach her. Mistweave barely caught her in time to keep her from cracking her head open on the stone deck.

  Four: Sea of Ice

  THE first gusts hit the Giantship at an angle, heeling it heavily to port. But then the main force of the wind came up against the stern, and Starfare's Gem righted with a wrench as the sails snapped and bellied and the blast tried to claw them away. The dromond lay so massively in the viscid sea that for a moment it seemed unable to move. The upper spars screamed. Abruptly, Dawngreeter split from top to bottom, and wind tore shrilling through the
rent.

  But then Starfare's Gem gathered its legs under it, thrust forward, and the pressure eased. As the clouds came boiling overhead, the Giantship took hold of itself and began to run.

  In the first moments, Honninscrave and the steerswoman. were tested to their limits by the need to avoid collision with the nearest bergs. Under these frigid conditions, any contact might have burst the granite of the dromond's flanks like dry wood. But soon the flotilla began to thin ahead of the ship. Starfare's Gem was coming to the end of the Soulbiter. The wind continued to scale upward; but now the immediate danger receded. The dromond had been fashioned to withstand such blasts.

  But Covenant was oblivious to the ship and the wind: he was fighting for Linden's life. Mistweave had carried her into the galley, where the cooks laboured to bring back the heat of their stoves; but once the Giant had laid her down on her pallet Covenant shouldered him aside. Pitchwife followed Cail into the galley and offered his help Covenant ignored him. Cursing with methodical vehemence under his breath, he chaffed her wrists, rubbed her cheeks, and waited for the cooks to warm some water.

  She was too pale-The movement of her chest was so slight that he could hardly believe it. Her skin had the texture of wax. It looked like it would peel away if he rubbed it too hard. He slapped and massaged her forearms, her shoulders, the sides of her neck with giddy desperation pounding in his temples. Between curses, he reiterated his demand for water.

  “It will come,” muttered Seasauce. His own impatience made him sound irate. “The stoves are cold. I have no theurgy to hasten fire.”

  “She isn't a Giant,” Covenant responded without looking away from Linden. “It doesn't have to boil.”

  Pitchwife squatted at Linden's head, thrust a leather flask into Covenant's view. “Here is diamondraught.”

  Covenant did not pause; but he shifted his efforts down to her hips and legs, making room for Pitchwife.

  Cupping one huge palm under her head, the Giant lifted her into a half-sitting posture. Carefully, he raised the mouth of his flask to her lips.