White Gold Wielder t2cotc-3

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  But the eyesight of the Giants had already discovered an answer. They towed the sleds southward; and in less than a league they reached a place where the rim of the precipice had collapsed, sending a wide scallop of earth down fan-like across its base. This slope was manageable, though Covenant and Linden had to ascend on foot while the Giants carried the sleds. Before the morning was half gone, the company stood among the snows of the Upper Land.

  Covenant scanned the terrain apprehensively, expecting at any moment to hear Linden announce that she could see the Sunbane rising before them. But beyond Landsdrop lay only more winter and a high ridge of mountains which blocked the west and south.

  These appeared to be as tall and arduous as the Westron Mountains. However, the Giants were undaunted, wise in the ways of peaks and valleys. Though the rest of the day was spent winding up into the thin air of the heights Covenant and Linden were able to remain in their sleds, and the company made good progress.

  But the next day the way was harder, steeper, cramped with boulders and old ice; and wind came slashing off the crags to blind the eyes, confuse the path Covenant clung to the back of the sled and trudged after Honninscrave. His right arm throbbed as if the cold were gnawing at it; his numb hands had no strength. Yet vitrim and diamondraught were healing him faster than he would have believed possible; and the desire not to burden his companions kept him on his feet.

  He lost all sense of progress; the ridge seemed to tower above him. Whenever he tried to breathe deeply, the air sawed at his lungs. He felt frail and useless-and immeasurably far from Revelstone. Still he endured. The specific disciplines of his leprosy had been lost long ago; but their spirit remained to him-the dogged and meticulous insistence on survival which took no account of the distance ahead or the pain already suffered. When the onset of evening finally forced the company to halt, he was still on his feet.

  The following day was worse. The air became as cold as the malice of the arghuleh. Wind flayed like outrage down the narrow coombs which gave the company passage. Time and again, Cail had to help either Covenant or Linden, or was needed to assist the sleds. But he seemed to flourish in this thin air. The Giants fought and hauled their way upward as if they were prepared to measure themselves against any terrain. And Linden stayed with them somehow-as stubborn as Covenant, and in an odd way tougher. Her face was as pale as the snow among the protruding rocks; cold glazed her eyes like frost Yet she persevered.

  And that night the company camped in the lower end of a pass between peaks ranging dramatically toward the heavens. Beyond the far mouth of the pass were no more mountains high enough to catch the sunset The companions had to struggle to keep their fire alight long enough to prepare a meal: the wind keening through the pass tore at the brands. Without a makeshift windbreak of blankets, no fire would have been possible at all. But the Giants did their best, contrived both to warm some food and to heat the water Linden needed for Covenant's arm. When she unwrapped his bandages, he was surprised to see that his self-inflicted wounds were nearly well. After she had washed the slight infection which remained, she applied another light bandage to protect his arm from being chafed.

  Grateful for her touch, her concern, her endurance for more things than he could name in that wind-he tried to thank her with his eyes. But she kept her gaze averted, and her movements were abrupt and troubled. When she spoke, she sounded as forlorn as the peaks.

  “We're getting close to it. This- ” She made a gesture that seemed to indicate the wind. “It's unnatural. A reaction to something on the other side.” The lines of her face stiffened into a scowl.” If you want my guess, I'd say there's been a desert sun for two days now.”

  She stopped. Tensely, Covenant waited for her to go on. From the first, the Sunbane had been a torment to her. The added dimension of her senses exposed her unmercifully to the outrage of that evil, to the alternating drought and suppuration of the world, the burning of the deserts and the screaming of the trees. Gibbon had prophesied that the true destruction of the Earth would be on her head rather than Covenant's-that she would be driven by her very health-sense to commit every desecration the Despiser required. And then the Raver had touched her, poured his malice like distilled corruption into her vulnerable flesh; and the horror of that violation had reduced her to a paralysis as deep as catatonia for two days.

  When she had come out of it, after Covenant had rescued her from the hold of Revelstone, she had turned her back entirely on the resource of her percipience. She had begged him to spare her, as he had tried to spare Joan. And she had not begun to recover until she had been taught that her health-sense was also open to beauty, that when it exposed her to ill it also empowered her to heat She was a different woman now; he was humbled by the thought of how far she had come. But the test of the Sunbane remained before her. He did not know what was in her heart; but he knew as well as she did that she would soon be compelled to carry a burden which had already proved too heavy for her once.

  A burden which would never have befallen her a second time if he had not allowed her to believe the lie that they had a future together.

  Firelight and the day's exertions made her face ruddy against the background of the night. Her long untended hair fluttered on either side of her head. In her eyes, the reflection of the wind whipped flames capered. She looked like a woman whose features would not obey her, refused to resume the particular severity which had marked her life. She was returning to the place and the peril that had taught her to think of herself as evil.

  Evil and doomed.

  “I never told you,” she murmured at last, “I just wanted to forget about it. We got so far away from the Land-even Gibbon's threats started to seem unreal. But now- ” For a moment, her gaze followed the wind. “I can't stop thinking about it.”

  After the extremity of the things she had already related to him Covenant was dismayed that more remained to be told. But he held himself as steady as he could, did not let his regard for her waver.

  “That night.” An ache crept into her voice. “The first night we were on Starfare's Gem. Before I finally figured out we had a Raver aboard. And that rat bit you.” He remembered: that bite had triggered a venom-relapse which had nearly destroyed the quest and the Search and the dromond before she found a way to penetrate it and treat him. "I had the most terrible nightmare.”

  Softly, she described the dream. They had been in the woods behind Haven Farm; and he had taken Joan's place at the mercy of Lord Foul's misled band of fanatics; and she, Linden, had gone running down the hillside to save him. But never in all her life had she been able to stop the violence which had driven the knife into his chest. And from the wound had gushed more blood than she had ever seen. It had welled out of him as if a world had been slain with that one blow. As if the thrust of the knife had stabbed the very heart of the Land.

  She had been altogether unable to stanch it. She had nearly drowned in the attempt.

  The memory left her aghast in the unsteady light; but now she did not stop. She had been gnawing her questions for a long time and knew with frightening precision what she wanted to ask. Looking straight into Covenant's consternation, she said, "On Kevin's Watch, you told me there were two different explanations. External and internal. Like the difference between surgery and medicine. The internal one was that we're sharing a dream. Tied into the same unconscious process,' you said.

  “That fits. If we're dreaming, then naturally any healing that happens here is just an illusion. It couldn't have any effect on the bodies we left behind-on our physical continuity back where we came from.”

  “But what does it mean when you have a nightmare in a dream? Isn't that some kind of prophecy?”

  Her directness surprised him. She had surpassed him; he could not follow without groping. His own dreams-Quickly, he scrambled to protest, “Nothing's that simple.” But then he had to pause. An awkward moment passed before he found a countering argument.

  “You had that dream under the influenc
e of a Raver. You dreamed what it made you feel. Lord Foul's prophecy-not yours. It doesn't change anything.”

  Linden was no longer looking at him. She had bowed her head, braced her forehead in her palms; but her hands did not hide the silent tears streaming down her cheeks. “That was before I knew anything about power.” With an honesty that dismayed him, she exposed the root of her distress. “I could've saved Bamako. I could've saved them all. You were so close to erupting-I could've taken your wild magic and torn out that croyel’s heart. I'm no danger to the Arch of Time. None of them had to die.”

  Dread burned like shame across his face. He knew she spoke the truth. Her health-sense was still growing. Soon she would become capable of anything. He swallowed a groan. “Why didn't you?”

  “I was watching you!” she flung back at him in sudden anguish. “Watching you tear your arm apart. I couldn't think:.

  about anything else.”

  The sight of her pain enabled him to take hold of himself, fight down his instinctive panic. He could not afford to be afraid. She needed something better from him.

  “I'm glad you didn't,” he said. “Never mind what it would've done to me. I'm glad you didn't for his sake. “Thinking of her mother, he added deliberately, “You let him achieve the meaning of his own life.”

  At that, her head jerked up; her gaze knifed at him. “He died! she hissed like an imprecation too fierce and personal to be shouted. ”He saved your life at least twice, and he spent his own life serving the Land you claim to care so much about, and the people that adopted him were nearly wiped off the face of the Earth, and he died!”

  Covenant did not flinch. He was ready now for anything she might hurl at him His own nightmares were worse than this. And he would have given his soul for the ability to match Hamako. “I'm not glad he died. I'm glad he found an answer.”

  For a long moment, her glare held. But then slowly the anger frayed out of her face. At last, her eyes fell. Thickly, she murmured, “I'm sorry. I just don't understand. Killing people is wrong.” The memory of her mother was present to her as it was to Covenant. “But dear Christ! Saving them has got to be better than letting them die.”

  “Linden.” She clearly did not want him to say anything else. She had raised the fundamental question of her life and needed to answer it herself. But he could not let the matter drop. With all the gentleness he had in him, he said, "Hamako didn't want to be saved. For the opposite reason that your father didn't want to be saved. And he won.”

  “I know,” she muttered. “I know. I just don't understand it.” As if to keep him from speaking again, she left the fire, went to get her blankets.

  He looked around at the mute, attentive faces of the Giants. But they had no other wisdom to offer him. He wanted intensely to be saved himself; but no one would be able to do that for him unless he surrendered his ring. He was beginning to think that his death would be welcome when it came.

  A short time later, the fire blew out. Mistweave tried to light it again and failed. But when Covenant finally went to sleep, he dreamed that the blaze had become violent enough to consume him.

  During the night, the wind died. The dawn was as clear as crystal; and the crags shone in the high, thin air as if no taint could reach them. A mood of impossible hope came over the companions as they laboured toward the far end of the pass.

  Under other circumstances, the view from that eminence would have delighted them. Sunlight flashed through the pass to illumine the range as it tumbled downward in a dramatic succession of snow-bright crests and saw-backed aretes, mighty heads fronting the heavens and spines sprawling toward lower ground. And beyond the bare foothills all the way to the south-western horizon lay the high North Plains which led to Revelstone.

  But where the sun hit the Plains they looked as brown and battered as a desert.

  That in itself would not have wrenched the Giants to silence, raised Linden's hands to her mouth, stifled Covenant's breathing; for at this time of year the region below them might be naturally dry. But as soon as the sun touched the denuded waste, a green fur began to spread across it. Distance made teeming shoots and sprouts look like an unconscionably rapid pelt.

  With a curse, Covenant wheeled to scan the sun. But he could see no sign of the corona which should have accompanied the sudden verdure.

  “We're under the fringe,” said Linden tonelessly. “I told you about that-the last time we crossed Landsdrop. We won't see the aura until later.”

  Covenant had not forgotten her explanation. The Sunbane was a corruption of Earthpower, and it arose from the ground, from the deep roots of Mount Thunder where Lord Foul now made his home. But it was focused or triggered by the sun and manifested itself visibly there, in the characteristic penumbra of its phases and the power for perversion of its initial contact.

  Thickly, he grated to his companions, “We'll need stone for protection. It's the first touch that does the damage.” He and Linden had been preserved by the alien leather of their footwear. The Haruchai and Vain had already shown that they were immune. Findail needed no advice on how to care for himself. But the Giants-Covenant could not bear that they might be at risk. "From now on-every day. We've got to have stone under us when the sun comes up.”

  The First nodded mutely. She and her people were still staring at the green mantle which thickened at every moment across the distant plains.

  That sight made Covenant long for Sunder and Hollian. The Graveler of Mithil Stonedown had left his home and people to serve as Covenant's guide through the perils of the Sunbane; and his obdurate skill and providence, his self-doubting courage, had kept Covenant and Linden alive. And Hollian's eh-brand ability to foretell the phases of the Sunbane had been invaluable. Though he had Giants with him now, and Linden's strength Covenant felt entirely unready to face the Sunbane without the support of his former companions.

  And he wanted to know what had happened to them. He had sent them from Seareach because they had believed that they had no clear role in the quest for the One Tree, no place among such mighty beings as Giants-and because he had loathed to leave the Clave uncontested during the unpredictable period of his absence. So he had given them the krill of Loric, the powerful blade which he had raised from Glimmermere. And he had laid upon them the charge of mustering resistance among the villages against the bloody requirements of the Clave. Accompanied only by SteII and Harn, armed with nothing more than their own knives, the krill, Sunder's orcrest stone and Hollian's Iianar wand, and encouraged by the thin hope that they might eventually gain the aid of more Haruchai, the two lone Stonedownors had gone in sunlight and poignant valour to hazard their lives against the forces which ruled the Land.

  That memory outweighed any amount of unreadiness. The distant preternatural green swelling below him brought back the past with renewed vividness. Sunder and Hollian were his friends. He had come this far in the name of Revelstone and the Clave; but now he wanted keenly to rejoin the two Stonedownors.

  Rejoin or avenge.

  “Come on,” he rasped to his companions. "Let's get down there.”

  The First gave him a measuring glance, as though she half distrusted the constant hardening of his attitude. But she was not a woman who hung back. With a stern nod, she sent him and Linden to the sleds. Then she turned and started down the steep, snowbound slope as if she, too, could not wait to confront the ill that had brought the Search here.

  Heaving Covenant's sled into motion, Honninscrave let out a cry like a challenge and went plunging after the Swordmain.

  In the course of that one day, the company passed down out of the mountains, came to the foothills and the end of the snow. Careening at a mad pace which could only have been controlled by Giants, they sped from slope to slope, pausing only when the First needed to consider her best route. She seemed determined to regain the time lost by the arduous ascent of the range. Before noon, a band of green-the colour of chrysoprase and Daphin's eyes-closed around the sun like a garrotte. But Covenant cou
ld not look at it He was nearly blind with vertigo. He was barely able to cling to the rails of the sled and hold the contents of his stomach down.

  Then the ice and snow of the heights failed on the verge of a moiling chaos of vegetation which had already grown high enough to appear impenetrable. His head still reeling, Covenant considered himself fortunate that dusk prevented the First from tackling the verdure immediately But the Swordmain was not insensitive to the nausea in his face-or the aggravated ache in Linden's. While Mistweave and Honninscrave prepared a camp, she passed a flask of diamondraught to the two humans, then left them alone to try to recover themselves.

  The liquor settled Covenant's guts, but could not soften the wide, white outrage and dread of Linden's stare. At intervals during the evening, Pitchwife and the First addressed comments to her; but her replies were monosyllabic and distant The crouching vegetation spoke a language that only she could hear, consuming her attention. Unconscious of being watched, she chewed her lips as if she had lost her old severity and did not know how to recapture it.

  Her huddled posture-thighs pressed against her chest, arms hugged around her shins, chin braced on her knees-reminded him of a time many days ago, a time when they had begun travelling together, and she had nearly broken under the pressure of her first fertile sun. She had quailed into herself, protesting, I can't shut it out. It's too personal. I don't believe in evil.

  She believed in evil now; but that only made the sensory assault of the Sunbane more intimate and unanswerable-as heinous as murder and as immedicable as leprosy.

  He tried to stay awake with her, offering her the support of his silent companionship. But she was still taut and unslumberous when the mortal pull of his dreams took him away. He went to sleep thinking that if he had possessed anything akin to her percipience the Land would not be in such danger-and she would not be so alone.