White Gold Wielder t2cotc-3

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Before Covenant could try to stop her, the First sat down on the edge, braced herself, and dropped out of sight Linden's gasp followed her away.

  Fighting dizziness, he crouched to the ice and crept forward until he could look downward.

  He arrived in time to see the First hit heavily into the sea. For an instant, white froth marked the water as if she were gone for good. Then she splashed back to the surface, waved B salute up at the company.

  Now he noticed that the cliff was not sheer. Though it was too smooth to be climbed, it angled slightly outward from rim to base. And it was no more than two hundred feet high. Honninscrave's rope looked long enough to reach the water.

  From the edge, Pitchwife grimaced down at his wife. “Desire me good fortune.” he murmured. Weariness ached in his tone. “I am ill made for such valours.” Yet he did not falter. In a moment, he was at the First's side, and she held him strongly above the surface.

  No one spoke Covenant locked his teeth as if any word might unleash the panic crowding through him. Linden hugged herself and stared at nothing. Honninscrave and Mistweave were busy lashing their supplies more securely to the sleds. When they were done. the Master went straight to the cliff; but Mistweave paused beside Linden to reassure her. Gently, he touched her shoulder, smiled like a reminder of the way she had saved his life. Then he followed Honninscrave.

  Covenant and Linden were left on the glacier with Cail, Vain, and the Appointed.

  Gripping the rope, Cail nodded Covenant toward the sled.

  Oh, hell! Covenant groaned. Vertigo squirmed through him. What if his hold failed? And what made the Giants think these sleds would float? But he had no choice. The arghuleh must be drawing nearer. And he had to reach the Land somehow, had to get to Revelstone. There was no other way.

  The Giants had already committed themselves. For a moment, he turned toward Linden. But she had drawn down into herself, was striving to master her own trepidation.

  Woodenly, he climbed into the sled.

  As Covenant settled himself, tried to seal his numb fingers to the rails, brace his legs among the bundles. Cail looped his rope around Vain's ankles. Then he knotted the heavy line in both fists and set his back to the sled, began pushing it toward the cliff.

  When the sled nosed over the edge. Linden panted, “Hold tight,” as though she had just noticed what was happening. Covenant bit down on the inside of his cheek so hard that blood smeared his lips, stained the frost in his beard.

  Slowly, Cail let the weight at the end of the rope pull him toward Vain again.

  Vain had not moved a muscle: he seemed oblivious to the line hauling across the backs of his ankles. Reaching the Demondim-spawn, Cail stopped himself against Vain's black shins.

  Without a tremor, the Haruchai lowered Covenant and the sled hand over hand down the face of the cliff.

  Covenant chewed blood for a moment to control his fear; but soon the worst was over. His dizziness receded. Wedged among the supplies, he was in no danger of falling. Cail paid out the line with steady care. The rope cut small chunks out of the lip of the cliff; but Covenant hardly felt them bit. A shout of encouragement rose from Pitchwife. The dark sea looked as viscid as a malign chrism, but the four Giants swam in it as if it were only water. Pitchwife needed the First's support, but Honninscrave and Mistweave sculled themselves easily.

  Honninscrave had placed himself in the path of the sled.

  As its tip entered the water, he dodged below it and took the runners onto his shoulders. Rocking while he groped for a point of balance, the sled gradually became level. Then he steadied the runners, and Covenant found that the Master was carrying him.

  Mistweave untied the rope so that Cail could draw it back up. Then Honninscrave started away from the wall of ice. The First said something to Covenant, but the lapping of the low waves muffled her voice.

  Covenant hardly dared turn his head for fear of upsetting Honninscrave's balance; but peripherally he watched Linden's descent. The thought that Vain might move hurt his chest He felt faint with relief as the second sled came safely onto Mistweave's shoulders.

  At a shout from the First, Cail dropped the rope, then slid down the ice-face to join the company.

  Instinctively, Covenant fixed his attention like yearning on the low line of shore half a league away. The distance seemed too great. He did not know where Honninscrave and Mistweave would get the strength to bear the sleds so far. At any moment, the frigid hunger of the sea would surely drag them down.

  Yet they struggled onward, though that crossing appeared cruel and interminable beyond endurance. The First upheld Pitchwife and did not weaken. Cail swam between the sleds, steadied them whenever Honninscrave or Mistweave wavered. If the seas had risen against them, they would have died. But the water and the current remained indifferent, too cold to notice such stark effrontery. In the name of the Search and Covenant Giantfriend and Linden Avery the Chosen, the Giants endured.

  And they prevailed.

  That night, the company camped on the hard shingle of the shore as if it were a haven.

  Six: Winter in Combat

  FOR the first time since he had left the galley of Starfare's Gem, Covenant thought his bones might thaw. On this coast, the warmer currents which kept the sea free of ice moderated the winter's severity. The shingle was hard but not glacial. Clouds muffled the heavens, obscuring the lonely chill of the stars. Mistweave's fire-tended by Cail because all the Giants were too weary to fend off sleep-spread a benison around the camp. Wrapped in his blankets Covenant slept as if he were at peace. And when he began to awaken in the stiff gloom of the northern dawn, he would have been content to simply eat a meal and then go back to sleep. The company deserved at least one day of rest The Giants had a right to it.

  But as the dawn brightened, he forgot about rest The sunrise was hidden behind ranks of clouds, but it gave enough light to reveal the broad mass of the glacier the company had left behind. For a moment, me grey air made him uncertain of what he was seeing. Then he became sure.

  In the water, a spit of ice was growing out from the cliff-from the same point at which the quest had left the glacier. It was wide enough to be solid. And it was aimed like a spear at me company's camp.

  With an inward groan, he called me First. She joined him, stood staring out at the ice for a long moment. Uselessly, he hoped that her Giantish sight would contradict his unspoken explanation. But it did not. “It appears,” she said slowly, “that the arghuleh remain intent upon us.”

  Damnation! Splinters of ice stuck in Covenant's memory. Harshly, he asked, “How much time have we got?”

  “I know not when they commenced this span,” she replied. “To gauge their speed is difficult But I will be surprised to behold them gain this shore ere the morrow.”

  He went on cursing for a while. But anger was as pointless as hope. None of the companions objected as they repacked the sleds for departure; the necessity was obvious. Linden looked worn by the continuing strain of the journey, uncertain of her courage. But the Giants had shed me worst of their exhaustion. The light of attention and humour in Pitchwife's eyes showed that he had begun to recover his essential spirit. In spite of his repeated failures to match Cail, Mistweave bore himself with an air of pride, as if he were looking forward to the songs his people would sing about the feats of the company. And the Master appeared to welcome the prospect of the trek ahead as an anodyne for the immedicable gall of his thoughts.

  Covenant did not know how Vain and Findail had crossed the water. But Vain's black blankness and the Elohim's Appointed pain remained unaltered, dismissing the need for any explanation.

  The company was still intact as it left the shore, started south-westward up the low sloping shingle to the uneven line of hills which edged the coast While the ground remained bare, Covenant and Linden walked beside Cail and the sleds. Though he was not in good shape, Covenant was glad for the chance to carry his own weight without having to fight the terrain. And he wanted to t
alk to Linden. He hoped she would tell him how she was doing. He had no ability to evaluate her condition for himself.

  But beyond the hills lay a long, low plain; and there heavy snow began to fall. In moments, it obscured the horizons, wrapped isolation around the travellers, collected quickly at their feet. Soon it was thick enough to bear the sleds. The First urged Covenant and Linden to ride so that she would be free to amend her pace. Aided by her keen eyesight and her instinctive sense of terrain, she led her companions through the thick snowfall as if the way were familiar to her.

  Toward mid-afternoon, the snow stopped, leaving the travellers alone in a featureless white expanse. Again, the First increased her pace, thrusting herself through the drifts at a speed which no other people could have matched afoot. Only the Ranyhyn-, Covenant mused. Only Ranyhyn could have borne him with comparable alacrity to meet his doom. But the thought of the great horses gave him a pang. He remembered them as beasts of beautiful fidelity, one of the treasures of the Land. But they had been forced to flee the malison of the Sunbane. Perhaps they would never return. They might never get the chance, That possibility brought him back to anger, reminded him mat he was on his way to put an end to the Clave and the Banefire which served the Sunbane. He began to think about his purpose more clearly. He could not hope to take Revelstone by surprise. Lord Foul surely knew that the Unbeliever would come back to the Land, counted on Covenant's return for the fulfilment of his designs. But it was possible that neither the Despiser nor his Ravers understood how much damage Covenant intended to do along the way.

  That had been Linden's idea. Stop the Clave. Put out the Banefire. Some infections have to be cut out. But he accepted it now, accepted it deep in the venom and marrow of his power. It gave him a use for his anger. And it offered him a chance to make the arduous and unfaltering service of the Giants mean something.

  When he thought about such things, his right forearm itched avidly, and darkness rose in his gorge. For the first time since he had agreed to make the attempt, he was eager to reach Revelstone.

  Two days later, the company still had not come to the end of the snow-cloaked plain.

  Neither Linden's health-sense nor the Giants' sight had caught any glimpse of the arghuleh. Yet none of the companions doubted that they were being hunted. A nameless foreboding seemed to harry the sleds. Perhaps it arose from the sheer wide desolation of the plain, empty and barren. Or perhaps the whole company was infected by the rawness of Linden's nerves. She studied the winter-scented the air, scrutinized the clouds, tasted the snow-as though it had been given birth by strange forces, some of them unnatural; and yet she could not put words to the uneasiness of what she perceived. Somewhere in this wasteland, an obscure disaster foregathered. But she had no idea what it was.

  The next day, however, mountains became visible to the east and south. And the day after that, the company rose up out of the plain, winding through low, rumpled foothills and valleys toward the ice-gnawed heights above them.

  This range was not especially tall or harsh. Its peaks were old, and millennia of winter had worn them down. By sunset, the companions had gained a thousand feet of elevation, and the foothills and the plain were hidden behind them.

  The following day, they were slowed to a crawl. While Covenant and Linden struggled through the snow on foot, the company worked from side to side up a rough, steep slope which disappeared into the gravid clouds and seemed to go on without end. But that ascent gave them another two thousand feet of altitude; and when it was over, they found themselves in a region that resembled rolling hills rather than true mountains. Time and cold had crumbled the crests which had once dominated this land; erosion had filled in the valleys. The First let the company camp early that night; but the next morning she was brisk with hope for good progress.

  “Unless we're completely lost,” Covenant announced, “this should be the Northron Climbs,” The simple familiarity of that name lifted his heart. He hardly dared believe he was right. “If it is, then eventually we're going to hit Landsdrop.” Running generally northwestward through the Northron Climbs, the great cliff of Landsdrop formed the boundary between the Lower Land and the Upper.

  But it also marked the border of the Sunbane; for the Sunbane arose and went west across the Upper Land from Lord Foul's covert in the depths of Mount Thunder, which straddled the mid-point of Landsdrop. When the company reached the cliff, they would cross back into the Despiser's power. Unless the Sunbane had not yet spread so far north.

  However, Linden was not listening to Covenant. Her eyes studied the west as if she were obsessed with thoughts of disaster. Her voice conveyed an odd echo of memory as she murmured, "It's getting colder.”

  He felt a pang of fear. “It's the elevation,” he argued. “We're a lot higher up than we were.”

  “Maybe.” She seemed deaf to his apprehension. “I can't tell.” She ran her fingers through her hair, tried to shake her perceptions into some semblance of clarity. “We're too far south for so much winter.”

  Remembering the way Lord Foul had once imposed winter on the Land in defiance of all natural Law, Covenant gritted his teeth and thought about fire.

  For Linden was right: even his truncated senses could not mistake the deepening chill. Though there was no wind, the temperature seemed to plummet around him. During the course of the day, the snow became crusted and glazed. The air had a whetted edge that cut at his lungs. Whenever snow fell, it came down like thrown sand.

  Once the surface had hardened enough to bear the Giants, their work became easier. They no longer needed to force a path through the thigh-deep freeze. As a consequence, their pace improved markedly. Yet the cold was bitter and penetrating Covenant felt brittle with frost and incapacity, caught between ice and fire. When the company stopped for the night, he found that his blankets had frozen about him like cerements. He had to squirm out of them as if he were emerging from a cocoon in which nothing had been transformed.

  Pitchwife gave him a wry grin. “You are well protected, Giantfriend.” The words came in gouts of steam as if the very sound of his voice had begun to freeze. "Ice itself is also a ward from the cold.”

  But Covenant was looking at Linden. Her visage was raw, and her lips trembled. “It's not possible,” she said faintly. “There can't be that many of them in the whole world.”

  No one had to ask her what she meant. After a moment, the First breathed, “Is your perception of them certain, Chosen?”

  Linden nodded. The comers of her eyes were marked with frost. “They're bringing this winter down with them.”

  In spite of the fire Mistweave built Covenant felt that his heart itself was freezing.

  After that, the weather became too cold for snow. For a day and a night, heavily-laden clouds glowered overhead, clogging the sky and the horizons. And then the sky turned clear. The sleds bounced and slewed over the frozen surface as if it were a new form of granite.

  The First and Pitchwife no longer led the company. Instead, they ranged away to the north to watch for arghuleh. The previous night, she had suggested that they turn southward in order to flee the peril. But Covenant had refused. His imprecise knowledge of the Land's geography indicated that if the company went south they might not be able to avoid Sarangrave Flat. So the travellers continued toward Revelstone; and the First and Pitchwife kept what watch they could.

  Shortly after noon, with the sun glaring hatefully off the packed white landscape and the still air as keen as a scourge, the company entered a region where ragged heads and splintered torsos of rock thrust thickly through the snow pack, raising their white-crowned caps and bitter sides like menhirs in all directions. Honninscrave and Mistweave had to pick a twisting way between the cromlechs, some of which stood within a Giant's arm-span of each other; and the First and Pitchwife were forced to draw closer to the company so that they would not lose sight of the sleds.

  Among the companions. Linden sat as tense as a scream and muttered over and over again, “They're her
e. Jesus God. They're here.”

  But when the attack came, they had no warning of it Linden's senses were foundering, overwhelmed by the sheer numbers and intensity of the cold. She was unable to pick specific dangers out of the general peril. And Pitchwife and the First were watching the north. The assault came from the south.

  The company had entered a region which the arghuleh already controlled.

  Honninscrave and Mistweave were striding through the centre of a rude ring of tall stones, Mistweave on the Master's left, when two low hillocks across the circle rose to their feet. Maws clacking hungrily, the creatures shot forward a short distance, then stopped. One spun an instant web of ice which sprang at Mistweave's head; the other waited to give pursuit when the companions broke and ran.

  Covenant's shout and Honninscrave's call rang out together. Impossibly sure-footed on the iced snow, Mistweave and the Master leaped into a sprint The jerk threw Covenant back in the sled. He grappled for the left railing, fought to pull himself upright The First's answer echoed back; but she and Pitchwife were out of reach beyond the menhirs.

  Then Linden's sled crashed against Covenant's. The impact almost pitched him out onto the snow.

  Mistweave's burst of speed had taken him out from under the ice-web. But Linden was directly in its path. Heaving on the ropes, he tried to swing her aside. But Covenant's sled was in the way.

  The next instant, the net came down on the lines and front of Linden's sled. Immediately, it froze. The lines became ice. When Mistweave hauled on them again, they snapped like icicles. Linden's head cracked forward, and she crumpled.

  Cail had been between the sleds in his accustomed position. As the Giants had started into a run, he had run also, keeping himself between Covenant and the arghuleh. So even his Haruchai reflexes had not been enough to protect him as Mistweave had slewed Linden's sled to the side. Leaping to avoid the collision, he had come down squarely under the web.