White Gold Wielder t2cotc-3

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  The First nodded. “Master!” she barked. “We must halt!”

  At once, Honninscrave and Mistweave shortened their strides, let the sleds drag themselves to a standstill.

  Pitchwife managed a few more steps, then stumbled to his knees in a low bowl of snow. The wind whipped flurries around him. His breathing rattled hoarsely as he hunched over Cail, hugging the Haruchai as if he sought to warm Cail with his own life.

  Linden leaped from her sled before it stopped moving, caught her balance and hastened to Pitchwife's side. But Covenant remained frozen while Honninscrave and Mistweave drew the sleds around to Pitchwife, Cail, Linden, and the First.

  Vain stood there as well Covenant had not seen the Demondim-spawn arrive, did not know how he had escaped. Bits of ice clung to his tattered apparel, but his black form was unscathed. He did not breathe, and his midnight eyes were focused on nothing.

  Pitchwife set Cail down. Linden knelt beside the Haruchai, searched him with her eyes, then touched her fingers to his case. At once, pain hissed between her teeth. When she snatched back her hands, her fingertips left small patches of skin on the ice. Bright in the sunlight, red droplets oozed from her torn flesh. “Damn it!” she rasped, more frightened and angry than hurt, “that's cold.” Raising her head to the First, she shivered, "You obviously know something about these arghuleh. Do you know how to treat this?”

  In reply, the First drew her falchion. Gripping it above her head, she brought its hilt down hard on the crust which locked her left arm. The ice broke and fell away, leaving her limb free, the skin undamaged. Stiffly, she flexed her hand and wrist A wince touched her face, but she changed it to a scowl.

  “See you? We are Giants-proof against cold as against fire. Requiring no other unction, we have learned none.” Her glare suggested that she deemed this ignorance to be a kind of failure.

  But Linden had no time for failure. “We can't do that to him,” she muttered, thinking aloud. “We'd break half his bones.” She peered closely at Cail to confirm her perceptions. “He's still alive-but he won't last long.” Red-tipped, her fingers moved as if she had already forgotten their hurt "We need fire.”

  Then she looked toward Covenant At the sight of him, her eyes went wide with shock and fear. She had not realized that he had been hit by the cold of the arghuleh.

  It felt like a numb nail driven through the side of his head, impaling his mind painlessly. And it was slowly working its way deeper. His left eye had gone blind. Most of the nerves of his left side were as dead as leprosy. He wanted to cry out for help, but no longer knew how.

  From out of nowhere, Findail appeared. Regaining his abused human shape, he placed himself at the fringes of the company and fixed his attention on Linden.

  Ice muffled whatever she was saying Covenant could not bear it: he did not want to die like this. Mad protests surged through him. All winter was his enemy; every league and ridge of the floe was an attack against him. From the pit of his dismay, he brought up name and venom as if he meant to rid the Earth of all cold forever, tear Time from its foundations in order to shear away the gelid death which locked his brain.

  But then there was another presence in him. It was alien and severe, desperate with alarm-and yet he found it strangely comforting. He struggled instinctively when it took his flame from him; but the cold and his impercipience made his strivings pointless. And the intrusion-an external identity which somehow inhabited his mind as if he had let down all his defences-gave him warmth in return: the warmth of its own strict desire for him and the heat of his fire combined. For a moment, he thought he knew that other presence, recognized it intimately. Then the world turned into white magic and passion; and the cold fled.

  A few heart-beats later, his eyes squeezed back into focus, and he found himself on his hands and knees. Linden had withdrawn from him, leaving behind an ache of absence as if she had opened a door which enabled him to see how empty his heart was without her. Dull bereavement throbbed in his right forearm; but his ring still hung on the last finger of his half-hand. The wind sent chills ruffling through his clothes. The sun shone as if the desecration of the Sunbane would never be healed. He had failed again. And proved once more that she—

  This time she had simply reached into him and taken possession.

  There was no difference between that and what Lord Foul had done to Joan. What he was doing to the Land. No difference except the difference between Linden herself and the Despiser. And Gibbon-Raver had promised that she would destroy the Earth.

  She had the power to fulfil that prophecy now. She could take it whenever she wanted it.

  Urgent grief came over him-grief for both of them, for himself in his doomed inefficacy, for her in her dire plight. He feared he would weep aloud. But then the wind's flat rush was punctuated by hoarse, hard breathing; and that sound restored his awareness of his companions.

  The ice which had held the Haruchai was gone, and Cail was coming back to life the hard way-fighting for every breath, wresting each inhalation with bared teeth from the near-death of cold. Even the merewives had not so nearly slain him. But Linden had restored him to the verge of survival. As Covenant watched, Cail carried himself the rest of the distance.

  Honninscrave, Mistweave, and the First studied Cail and Linden and Covenant with concern and appreciation mixed together in their faces. Pitchwife had mastered his own gasping enough to grin like a grimace. But Linden had eyes only for Covenant She was wan with dismay at what she had done. From the first, her loathing for possession had been even greater than his; yet the necessity of it was thrust upon her time and again. She was forced to evil by the fundamental commitments which had made her a physician. And how was she forced? he asked himself. By her lack of power. If she were given his ring, as the Elohim desired, she would be saved the peril of this damnation.

  He could not do it. Anything else; he would do anything else. But not this. More than once, she had challenged his protective instincts, protested his desire to spare her. But how could he have explained that everything else-every other attempt at protection or preservation-was nothing more than an effort to pay for this one refusal? To give her something in compensation for what he would not give.

  Now he did it again. Ice-gnawed and frost-burned though he was-leprous, poisoned, and beaten-be wrenched his courage to its feet and faced her squarely. Swallowing grief, he said thickly, “I hope I didn't hurt anybody.”

  It was not much. But for the time being it was enough. Her distress softened as if he had made a gesture of forgiveness. A crooked smile took the severity from her lips. Blinking at sudden tears, she murmured, “You're hard to handle. The first time I saw you-” he remembered the moment as well as she did: he had slammed his door in her face- “I knew you were going to give me trouble.”

  The love in her voice made him groan because he could not go to her and put his arms around her. Not as long as he refused to make the one sacrifice she truly needed.

  At her back, Mistweave had unpacked a pouch of diamondraught. When he handed it to her, she forced her attention away from Covenant and knelt to Can. Between heaving respirations, the Haruchai took several sips of the tonic liquor.

  After that his condition improved rapidly. While his companions shared the pouch, he recovered enough strength to sit up, then to regain his feet. In spite of its flatness, his expression seemed oddly abashed. His pride did not know how to sustain the fact of defeat But after his experience with the seduction of the merewives, he appeared to place less importance on his self-esteem. Or perhaps Brinn's promise-that Cail would eventually be free to follow his heart-had somehow altered the characteristic Haruchai determination to succeed or die. In a moment, Cail's visage was as devoid of inflection as ever. When he indicated that he was ready to travel again, his word carried conviction.

  No one demurred. At a wry glance from Pitchwife, however, the First announced that the company would eat a meal before going on. Cail appeared to think that such a delay was unnecessary; y
et he accepted the opportunity for more rest While the companions ate. Linden remained tense. She consumed her rations as if she were chewing fears and speculations, trying to find her way through them. But when she spoke, her question showed that she had found, not an answer, but a distraction. She asked the First, “How much do you know about those arghuleh?”

  “Our knowledge is scant,” replied the Swordmain. She seemed unsure of the direction of Linden's inquiry. “Upon rare occasion. Giants have encountered arghuleh. And there are tales which concern them. But together such stories and encounters yield little.”

  “Then why did you risk it?” Linden pursued. “Why did we come this far north?”

  Now the First understood. “Mayhap I erred,” she said in an uncompromising tone. “The southern ice was uncertain, and I sought safer passage. The hazard of the arghuleh I accepted because we are Giants, not readily slain or harmed by cold. It was my thought that four Giants would suffice to ward you.

  “Moreover,” she went on more harshly. “I was misled in my knowledge.

  “Folly,” she muttered to herself. “Knowledge is chimera, for beyond it ever lies other knowledge, and the incompleteness of what is known renders the knowing false. It was our knowledge that arghuleh do not act thus, They are savage creatures, as dire of hate as the winter in which they thrive. And their hate is not solely for the beasts and beings of blood and warmth which form their prey. It is also for their own kind. In the tales we have heard and the experience of our people, it is plain that the surest defence against the assault of one arghule is the assault of a second. for they will prefer each other's deaths above any other.

  “Therefore,” the First growled, “did I believe this north to be the lesser peril. Against any arghule four Giants must surely be counted a sufficient company. I did not know,” she concluded, “that despite all likelihood and nature they had set aside their confirmed animosity to act in concert.”

  Linden stared across the waste. Honninscrave watched the knot of his hands as if he feared it would not hold. After a moment Covenant cleared his throat and asked, “Why?” In the Land, the Law of nature was being steadily corrupted by the Sunbane. Had Lord Foul's influence reached this far? “Why would they change?”

  “I know not,” the First said sourly. “I would have believed the substance of Stone and Sea to be more easily altered than the hate of the arghuleh.”

  Covenant groaned inwardly. He was still hundreds of leagues from Revelstone; and yet his fears were harrying him forward as if he and his companions had already entered the ambit of the Despiser's malice.

  Abruptly, Linden leapt to her feet, faced the east. She gauged the distance, then rasped, “They're coming. I thought they'd give up. Apparently co-operation isn't the only new trick they've learned.”

  Honninscrave spat a Giantish obscenity. The First gestured him and Mistweave toward the sleds, then helped Pitchwife upright. Quickly, the Master and Mistweave packed and reloaded the supplies Covenant was cursing to himself. He wanted a chance to talk to Linden privately. But he followed her tense example and climbed back into his sled.

  The First took the lead. In an effort to outdistance the pursuit, she set the best pace Pitchwife could maintain, pushing him to his already-worn limits. Yet Cail trotted between Covenant and Linden as if he were fully recovered.

  Vain and Findail brought up the rear together, shadowing each other across the wind-cut wilderness.

  That night, the company obtained little rest, though Pitchwife needed it urgently. Shortly after moonrise. Cail's native caution impelled him to rouse Linden; and when she had tasted the air, she sent the company scrambling for the sleds.

  The moon was only three days past its full, and the sky remained clear. The First was able to find a path with relative ease. But she was held back by Pitchwife's exhaustion. He could not move faster than a walk without her support. And in an effort to shore up his strength, he had consumed so much diamondraught that he was not entirely sober. At intervals, he began to sing lugubriously under his breath, as though he were lunatic with fatigue. Somehow, the companions kept a safe distance between themselves and the arghuleh. But they were unable to increase their lead.

  And when the sun rose over the wasted ice, they found themselves in worse trouble. They were coming to the end of the floe. During the night, they had entered a region where the ice to the south became progressively more broken as hunks snapped off and drifted away. Ahead of the First, the west became impassable. And beyond a wide area where icebergs were being spawned lay open water. She had no choice but to force her way up into the ragged ridge which separated the arctic glacier from the crumbling sheet of the floe.

  There Covenant thought that she would abandon the sleds. He and Linden climbed out to make their way on foot; but that did not sufficiently lighten the loads Honninscrave and Mistweave were pulling. Yet none of the Giants faltered. Forging into a narrow valley which breached the ridge, they began to struggle toward the north and west, as if in spite of the exhaustion they now shared with Pitchwife they had not begun to be daunted Covenant marvelled at their hardiness; but he could do nothing to help them except strive to follow without needing help himself.

  That task threatened to surpass him. Cold and lack of sleep sapped his strength. His numb feet were as clumsy as cripples. Several times, he had to catch himself on a sled so that he would not fall back down the valley. But Honninscrave or Mistweave bore the added burden without complaint until Covenant could regain his footing.

  For some distance, the First's route seemed inspired or fortuitous. As the valley rose into the glacier, bending crookedly back and forth between north and west, its bottom remained passable. The companions were able to keep moving.

  Then they gained the upper face of the glacier and their path grew easier. Here the ice was as rugged as a battleground-pressure-splintered and wind-tooled into high fantastic shapes, riddled with fissures, marked by strange channels and hollows of erosion-and the company had to wend still farther north to find a path. Yet with care the First was able to pick a passage which did not require much strength. And as the companions left the area of the glacier's run, they were able to head once again almost directly westward.

  Giddy with weariness and cold and the ice-glare of the sun, Covenant stumbled on after the sleds. A pace or two to his side. Linden was in little better condition. Diamondraught and exertion could not keep the faint, fatal hint of blue from her lips; and her face looked as pallid as bone. But her clenched alertness and the stubborn thrust of her strides showed that she was not yet ready to fall.

  For more than a league, with the air rasping his lungs and fear at his back Covenant followed the lead of the Giants. Somehow, he did not collapse.

  But then everything changed. The First's route was neither inspired nor fortuitous: it was impossible. Balanced unsteadily on locked knees, his heart trembling Covenant looked out from the edge of the cliff where the company had stopped. There was nothing below him but the bare, black sea.

  Without forewarning, the company had reached the western edge of the glacier.

  Off to the left was the jagged ridge which separated the main ice-mass from the lower floe. But elsewhere lay nothing but the endless north and the cliff and the grue-bitten sea.

  Covenant did not know how to bear it. Vertigo blew up at him like a wind from the precipice, and his knees folded.

  Pitchwife caught him. “No,” the deformed Giant coughed. His voice seemed to snag and strangle deep in his throat “Do not despair. Has this winter made you blind?” Rough with fatigue, he jerked Covenant upright. "Look before you. It needs not the eyes of a Giant to behold this hope.”

  Hope, Covenant sighed into the silence of his whirling head. Ah, God. I'd hope if I knew how.

  But Pitchwife's stiff grasp compelled him. Groping for balance, he opened his eyes to the cold.

  For a moment, they would not focus. But then he found the will to force his gaze clear.

  There he saw it: di
stinct and unattainable across half a league of the fatal sea, a thin strip of land.

  It stretched out of sight to north and south.

  “As I have said,” Honninscrave muttered, “our charts hold no certain knowledge of this region. But mayhap it is the coast of the Land which lies before us.”

  Something like a madman's laughter rose in Covenant's chest “Well, good for us.” The Despiser would certainly be laughing. “At least now we can look at where we want to go while we're freezing to death or being eaten by arghuleh.” He held the mirth back because he feared it would turn to weeping.

  “Covenant!” Linden said sharply-a protest of empathy or apprehension.

  He did not look at her. He did not look at any of them. He hardly listened to himself. “Do you call this hope?”

  “We are Giants,” the First responded. Her voice held an odd note of brisk purpose. "Dire though this strait appears, we will wrest life from it.”

  Mutely, Honninscrave stripped off his sark, packed it into one of the bundles on his sled. Mistweave dug out a long coil of heavy rope, then followed the Master's example.

  Covenant stared at them. Linden panted, “Do you mean-?” Her eyes flared wildly. “We won't last eight seconds in water that cold!”

  The First cast a gauging look down the cliff. As she studied the drop, she responded, “Then our care must suffice to ward you.”

  Abruptly, she turned back to the company. Indicating Honninscrave's sled, she asked Cail, “Does this weight and the Giantfriend's surpass your strength?”

  Cail's flat mien suggested disdain for the question as he shook his head.

  “The ice affords scant footing,” she warned.

  He regarded her expressionlessly. “I will be secure.”

  She gave him a firm nod. She had learned to trust the Haruchai. Returning to the rim, she said, “Then let us not delay. The arghuleh must not come upon us here.”

  A prescient nausea knotting his guts Covenant watched Honninscrave tie one end of the rope to the rear of his sled. The Giant's bare back and shoulders steamed in the sharp air, but he did not appear to feel the cold.