White Gold Wielder t2cotc-3

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  But when he awakened at last, the idea was gone.

  The way Seasauce and Hearthcoal bustled about their work suggested that a new day had dawned. Abashed by sleep, he fumbled himself into a sitting position, looked across at Linden's pallet and saw that it was empty. She and Mistweave were not in the galley. But Cail stood nearby, as impassive as if impatience were unknown to him.

  When Covenant looked at him, the Haruchai said, “You are timely roused, ur-Lord. The night is past Those who will sojourn with you ready themselves for departure.”

  A pang went through Covenant Ready, he thought. The people around him did everything possible on his behalf; but he was never ready. Struggling to his feet, he accepted the bowl of porridge Hearthcoal offered him, ate as much as his haste could stomach. Then he went to the door Cail held open for him and stepped out into the sharp morning.

  Again, ice-glare and sunlight stung his eyes, but he fought them into focus. After a glance at the new foremast, he picked his way across the frozen afterdeck toward the Giants thronging near the port rail Hails greeted him. The crew parted, admitting him to their midst In a moment, he found himself at the edge of the deck with Linden and Mistweave, the First and Pitchwife, and Honninscrave.

  Both Linden and Pitchwife looked stronger than they had the previous day, although she avoided Covenant's gaze as if she did not trust him. The First eyed the west with the keenness of a hawk. But Honninscrave appeared painfully unsolaced, as though he had spent the long night haunted by his conflicting duties.

  A glance past the railing showed Covenant that Galewrath’s sleds had already been set down on the ice. Both were heavily laden; but the sacks and bundles of supplies had been arranged to accommodate at least one passenger in each sled, When she had acknowledged Covenant, the First turned to Sevinhand, Galewrath, and the rest of the Giants. “Now has the time of parting come upon us once more.” Her voice rang crisply across the frigid air. “The hazard is great, for no longer stands Cable Seadreamer's Earth-Sight at the helm of the Search. Yet do we pursue our sworn purpose-and for that reason I do not fear. We are mortal, and the visage of failure is heinous to us. But we are not required to succeed. It is required of us only that we hold fast in every gale and let come what may. On all the seas of the world, there are none better for this work than you who remain with Starfare's Gem. How then should I be afraid?

  This only do I charge you: when the ice uncloses, come after us. Sail to that littoral which you know, to Seareach and brave Coercri, The Grieve. If there we fail to meet you or send word, then the Search falls to you. Do what you must-and do not fear. While one valiant heart yet defends the Earth, evil can never triumph utterly.”

  Then she stopped, looked down at Pitchwife as if she were surprised by her own words. For answer, he gave her a gleam of pure pleasure. Sevinhand's eyes reflected hints of the cunning skill which had saved Starfare's Gem from the warships of the Bhrathair. Galewrath glowered stolidly at the future as though it had no power to daunt her. Weary and imperilled though they were, the crewmembers held up their heads and let their pride shine Covenant suddenly did not know how he could bear to leave them.

  But he had to. The First started down the ladder with Pitchwife behind her; and Covenant had no choice. They were not responsible for the Earth's peril; but their lives were at stake as much as his. When Cail offered him the ladder, he gestured the Haruchai ahead to catch him if he fell. Then he stooped through the railing, set his numb feet into the rungs, and fought his vertigo and his cold bones downward.

  The ice felt as dead as the nerves of his soles, and in the shadow of the Giantship the breeze was as sharp as the sea; but he strode and slipped across the treacherous surface to one of the sleds. Linden followed him, her hair fluttering like the banner of her determination. Then came Mistweave, still stubborn in his resolve to serve the Chosen.

  Honninscrave was last. He seemed hardly able to refrain from giving Galewrath and Sevinhand a host of unnecessary final instructions. But after a moment of silence like a mute cry he wrenched himself away from his ship and joined the company.

  Abruptly, several Giants shifted out of Vain's way as he approached the rail He vaulted over the side, landed lightly on the ice, and at once resumed his characteristic immobility, his black orbs gazing at nothing.

  A shadow glided out of the air: Findail melted back into his human form near Vain as if he and the Demondim-spawn belonged to each other.

  Obeying the First's murmured instructions Covenant climbed into one of the sleds, sat down among the supplies. Linden settled herself in the other sled. Honninscrave and Mistweave picked up the leads, harnessed themselves into the lines. The First and Pitchwife went to the fore. Cail stood between the sleds; Vain and Findail brought up the rear.

  Runners crunched against the ice as Covenant and his companions left the Giantship in search of hope.

  Sixty-three days had passed since they had said farewell to Sunder and Hollian and Seareach. They were at least eighteen-score leagues from Revelstone.

  Five: Landward

  THE First set a rapid pace. Steam panted from Honninscrave's and Mistweave's lungs as they hauled the sleds along; but they did not hang back. All the Giants were eager to get out of sight of the dromond, to put behind them their crippled vessel and imperilled people. The runners of the sleds pounded through hollows in the ice, bit and slewed across pressure-ridges Covenant and Linden were tossed urgently from side to side among the supplies. But Linden clung to the rails, made no protest. And Covenant wanted every stride of speed the Giants could attain. The Land and Lord Foul had taught him many things; but he had never learned how to leave behind friends who needed him. Hunching down into the heavy robes and blankets he had been given, he kept his face turned "blear-eyed and cold bitten toward the west and let Honninscrave draw him at a hungry trot into the white wilderland.

  Yet at last the thought of what he was doing impelled him to look back toward the dromond. Stark in the distance beyond Vain and Findail, the vessel shrank as if it were being slowly swallowed by the bleak floe; and the sight of its abandonment stuck in his throat. But then he descried the pennon flying from the aftermast. Sevinhand must have raised it as a salute to the departing company. Vivid with colour and jaunty in the wind, it captured for a moment the spirit of Starfare's Gem like a promise of valour and endurance. When Covenant's vision became too blurred to make out the Giantship any longer, he was able to face forward again and let the stone vessel go.

  Linden studied him across the gap between their sleds; but he had nothing to say to her which would support being shouted over the hard scrunching of the runners, the rhythmic thud of the Giants’ feet and the gasp of their breathing. Once again he was being borne toward his goal and his fear, not by any effort of his own, but by the exertions of people who cared about him. At every crisis along his way, it was the same: for all his passion and power, he would have come to nothing without help. And what recompense did he make for that help? Only pain and peril and at least one lie; nothing more. But that was not something which his sore heart could cry out under these conditions, under the bitter blue of the sky and the gazes of his companions.

  They were travelling due west. When they had left the vantage of Starfare's Gem, a strip of open water had still been visible against the southern horizon; and they could be certain that the closer they went to the sea the less reliable the floe would become. Under the circumstances Covenant only hoped that they would not be forced northward to find a safe passage.

  The First had pushed several paces ahead of her companions to watch for flaws and fissures in the frozen expanse. Behind her trotted Pitchwife. Though he bore no burden except his own deformation, his gait betrayed that he was already being pressed to his limits. By comparison, Mistweave and Honninscrave appeared able to sustain this speed for days, dragging the heavy sleds behind them and never faltering. And Cail was one of the Haruchai, born to ice and arduous survival. Only the vapour that plumed from his nostrils and th
e white crystals which formed along his cheeks showed that he was breathing more deeply than usual.

  As for Vain and Findail, they moved as though the long trek ahead meant nothing to them. Vain's wooden forearm dangled uselessly from his elbow, but in every other way he remained the structurally immaculate enigma which the ur-viles had created for their own secret reasons. And the Appointed had long since demonstrated his conclusive immunity to any physical peril or stress.

  Around them, the plain of ice seemed featureless and devoid of any content except cold to the edges of the world. The sun came down hard on the white floe, making the ice glare, forcing Covenant to squint until his temples throbbed. And the cold soaked into him through every fold and clasp of his coverings. The beat of the Giants’ feet and the expulsion of their breath marked out the frigid silence. The sled jostled him incessantly against a bundle of firewood packed beside him. Grimly, he hugged his blankets and huddled into himself.

  The First's fall took him by surprise. She was nothing more than a grey blur across his disfocused stare as she stepped into a fissure.

  Scattering snow, she plunged heavily forward. Her chest struck the rim of the break. For an instant, she scrabbled frantically at the edge, then dropped out of sight Pitchwife was four or five strides behind her; but immediately be dove after her, skidding headlong to snatch at her disappearing arms.

  He was too late. And he could not stop himself. In a flurry of limbs and snow, he toppled after his wife.

  Slewing over the slick surface, Honninscrave and Mistweave wheeled the sleds to a halt The one bearing Linden was nearly overturned; but Cail caught it, slammed it back onto its runners.

  Covenant pitched out of his sled, landed on the ice, lurched to his feet. Ahead of him, the Master and Mistweave wrestled at the bindings which harnessed them to then burdens. Findail and Vain had stopped; but Cail was already halfway to the fissure.

  Covenant and the Giants reached the rim together, with Linden a scant step behind them. Cail stood there gazing downward as if he had forgotten urgency.

  The First and Pitchwife hung a few feet below the edge. The fissure was only a little wider than her shoulders, and she had clamped herself between the walls, holding her position by main strength. Pitchwife's arms clasped her hips; he dangled awkwardly between her thighs.

  Below his feet, the snow which had fallen into the fissure became grey slush as the sea absorbed it.

  He jerked a glance upward. “Stone and Sea!” he gasped. "Make haste!”

  But the Master and Mistweave were not slow. Honninscrave threw himself flat on the ice with his head and shoulders over the rim. Mistweave braced the Master's legs; and Honninscrave reached down to take hold of the First.

  In a moment, she scrambled out of the fissure, towing Pitchwife after her.

  Her stem visage showed no reaction; but Pitchwife was breathing hard, and his gnarled hands trembled. “Stone and Seal” he panted again. “I am a Giant and love an eventful journey. But such happenings are not altogether to my taste.” Then a chuckle of relief came steaming between his bared teeth. “Also I am somewhat abashed. I sought to rescue my wife, yet it was she who caught my own fall.”

  The First rested a hand lightly on his shoulder. “Mayhap if you were less impetuous in your rescuing- ” But as she turned to Honninscrave, her voice stiffened. “Master, it is my thought that we must bend our way somewhat northward. This ice is not safe.”

  “Aye,” he growled. Ever since he had been forced to the realization that the company would have to leave Starfare's Gem, he had not been able to stifle the undertone of bitterness in his voice. "But that way is longer, and we are in haste. Northward me ice will be not so easily travelled. And this north is perilous, as you know.”

  The First nodded reluctantly. After a moment, she let out a long sigh and straightened her back. “Very well,” she said. “Let us attempt the west again.”

  When no one moved, she gestured Covenant and Linden back to the sleds.

  Linden turned to walk beside Covenant. Her face was red with cold and severe with concentration. In a flat, quiet voice, she asked. “Why is this north perilous?”

  He shook his head. “I don't know.” The scars on his right forearm itched in reaction to the First's fall and the suggestion of other hazards. “I’ve never been north of Revelstone and Coercri.” He did not want to think about nameless dangers. The cold was already too much for him. And he could not figure out how the company was going to get across the fissure.

  But that problem was simply solved. While he and Linden climbed into their sleds, the First and Pitchwife leaped the gap. Then Honninscrave and Mistweave drew the sleds to the rim of the crack. There Covenant saw that the sleds were long enough to span the fissure. Honninscrave and Mistweave pushed them out over the gap: the First and Pitchwife pulled them across. When the rest of the company had passed the crack, Honninscrave and Mistweave slipped their arms into the harnesses again, and the First went on her way westward.

  Now she set a slower pace, in part for caution and in part to accommodate Pitchwife's weariness. Still her speed was greater than any Covenant could have matched afoot. The ice seemed to rush jolting and skidding under the runners of the sled. But whenever she saw something she distrusted, she dropped to a walk and probed ahead with her longsword until she was sure that the ground was safe.

  For the rest of the morning, her care proved unnecessary. But shortly after the company had paused for a brief meal and a few warming swallows of diamondraught, the point of her sword bit into the crust, and several hundred feet of packed snow along a thin line to the north and south fell from sight. This fissure also was easily crossed; but when the companions gained the far side, the First faced Honninscrave again and said, “It is too much. This ice grows fragile beneath us.”

  The Master breathed a curse through ha frosted beard. Yet he did not demur when the leader of the Search turned toward the northwest and thicker ice.

  For most of the afternoon, the floe remained fiat, snow-brushed, and unreliable. From time to time Covenant sensed that the surface was sloping upward; but the brightness of the sun on the white landscape made him unsure of what he saw. Although he sipped diamondraught at intervals, the cold sank deeper into his bones. His face felt like beaten metal. Gradually, he drifted into reveries of conflagration. Whenever he became drowsy with liquor and chill, he found himself half dreaming wild magic as if it were lovely and desirable-flame sufficient to tear down Kemper's Pitch; passion powerful enough to contend with the Worm of the World's End; venom capable of subsuming everything in its delirium. That fire was vital and seductive-and as necessary as blood. He would never be able to give it up.

  But such dreams led him to places where he did not want to go. To the scream which had nearly torn out his heart when Linden had told him the truth of the venom and the Worm. And to that other fire which lay hidden at the roots of his need-to the caamora which he had always failed to find, though his soul depended on it.

  Urgent with alarm, he repeatedly fought his way back from the brink of true sleep. And the last time he did so, he was surprised to see that the north was no longer blank. The First's path angled toward a ridge of tremendous ice-chunks: Piled into the sky, they reached out for the horizons, east and west. Although the sun was near setting, it was far down in the south and did not blind him, but rather shone full and faintly pink on the ridge, making the ice appear as unbreachable as a glacier.

  Here the First turned toward the west again, keeping as close to the base of the ridge as possible without sacrificing a clear route for the sleds. But in her way boulders and monoliths lay like menhirs where they had rolled or fallen from the violence which had riven the ice. She was forced to slow her pace again as the difficulty of the terrain increased. Nevertheless her goal had been achieved. The surface which supported that ridge was unlikely to crack or crumble under the pressure of the company's passage.

  As the sun sank, vermilion and fatal, into the west, the travell
ers halted for the night Pitchwife slumped to the ice and sat there with his head in his hands, too tired even to talk Covenant and Linden climbed stiffly from their sleds and walked back and forth, rubbing their arms and stamping their feet, while Mistweave and Honninscrave made camp. Honninscrave unpacked sections of heavily-tarred canvas to use as ground-sheets, then laid more blankets. Mistweave unloaded Linden's sled until he had uncovered a large flat rectangle of stone. This he set out as a base on which to build a fire, so that melting ice would not wet the wood. To no one in particular, the First announced her estimate that the company had come more than twenty leagues. Then she fell silent.

  When Mistweave had a crisp blaze going, Pitchwife struggled to his feet, rubbed the frost from his face, and went to do the cooking. As he worked, he muttered indistinctly to himself as if the sound of some voice-his own if no one else's-were necessary to his courage. Shortly, he had produced a thick stew for his companions. But still the pall of the waste hung over them, and no one spoke.

  After supper, Pitchwife went to sleep almost at once, hugging his ground-sheet about him. The First sat sternly beside the fire and toyed with the fagots as though she did not want to reconsider her decisions. As determined as ever to emulate the devotion of the Haruchai, Mistweave joined Cail standing watch over the company. And Honninscrave stared at nothing, met no one's eyes. His orbs were hidden under the weight of his brows, and his face looked drawn and gaunt.