White Gold Wielder t2cotc-3

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Now the rapid chattering torchlight-spangled current drew her in the direction of the Banefire.

  Durris remained beside her; but she was hardly aware of him. She sensed all the Haruchai as if they were simply a part of Revelstone, a manifestation of the Keep's old granite. With the little strength she still possessed, she focused her percipience forward, toward the fierce moil of steam where the Bane fire fought against extinction. For a time, the elemental passion of that conflict was so intense that she could not see the outcome. But then she heard more clearly the chuckling eagerness with which Glimmermere's stream sped along its stone route; and she knew the Banefire would eventually fail.

  In that way, the upland tarn proved itself a thing of hope.

  But hope seemed to have no meaning anymore. Linden had never deluded herself with the belief that the quenching of the Banefire would alter or weaken the Sunbane. Ages of bloodshed had only fed the Sunbane, only accelerated its possession of the Land, not caused it or controlled it.

  When Covenant had fallen into despair after the loss of the One Tree, she had virtually coerced him to accept the end of the Clave's power as an important and necessary goal. She had demanded commitments from him, ignoring the foreknowledge of his death as if it signified nothing and could be set aside, crying at him, If you're going to die, do something to make it count! But even then she had known that the Sunbane would still go on gnawing its way inexorably into the heart of the Earth. Yet she had required this decision of him because she needed a concrete purpose, a discipline as tangible as surgery on which she could anchor herself against the dark. And because anything had been preferable to his despair.

  But when she had wrested that promise from him, he had asked, What're you going to do? And she had replied, I'm going to wait, as if she had known what she was saying. My turn's coming. But she had not known how truly she spoke-not until Gibbon had said to her. You have not yet tasted the depths of your Desecration, and she had reacted by trying to possess the one decent love of her life.

  Her turn was coming, all right. She could see it before her as vividly as the savage red steam venting like shrieks from all the doors of the sacred enclosure. Driven to commit all destruction. The desert sun lay within her as it lay upon the Land; soon the Sunbane would have its way with her altogether. Then she would indeed be a kind of Sun-Sage, as the Elohim avowed-but not in the way they meant.

  An old habit which might once have been a form of self respect caused her to thrust her hands into her hair to straighten it. But its uncleanness made her wince. Randomly, she thought that she should have gone to Glimmermere for a bath, made at least that much effort to cleanse-or perhaps merely disguise-the grime of her sins. But the idea was foolish, and she dismissed it. Her sins were not ones which could be washed away, even by water as quintessentially pure as Glimmermere's. And while the Banefire still burned, and the company still needed care, she could not waste time on herself.

  Then she reached the wet fringes of the steam. The Banefire's heat seemed to condense on her face, muffling her perceptions; but after a moment she located the First and Pitchwife. They were not far away. Soon they emerged from the crimson vapour as if Glimmermere's effect upon the Banefire restored them to life.

  Pitchwife bore the marks of battle and killing. His grotesque face was twisted with weariness and remembered hurt. It looked like the visage of a man who had forgotten the possibility of mirth. Yet he stood at his wife's side; and the sight tightened Linden's throat. Weeps as no Haruchai has ever wept. Oh, Pitchwife, she breathed to him mutely. I'm sorry.

  The First was in better shape. The grief of Honninscrave's end remained in her eyes; but with Pitchwife beside her she knew how to bear it. And she was a Swordmain, trained for combat. The company had achieved a significant victory. To that extent, the Search she led had already been vindicated.

  Somehow, they managed to greet Linden with smiles. They were Giants, and she was important to them. But a dry desert wind blew through her because she could not match them. She did not deserve such friends.

  Without preamble, the First gestured toward the sacred enclosure. “It is a bold conception, Chosen, and worthy of pride. With mounting swiftness it accomplishes that which even the Earthfriend in his power- ” But then she stopped, looked more closely at Linden. Abruptly, her own rue rose up in her, and her eyes welled tears. “Ah, Chosen,” she breathed. “The fault is not yours. You are mortal, as I am-and our foe is malign beyond endurance. You must not- ”

  Linden interrupted the First bitterly. "I tried to possess him. Like a Raver. I almost destroyed both of us.”

  At that, the Giant hardened. “No.” Her tone became incisive. “It skills nothing to impugn yourself. There is need of you. The wounded are gathered in the forehall. They must be tended.” She swallowed a memory of pain, then went on, “Mistweave labours among them, though he is no less hurt.

  He will not rest.” Facing Linden squarely, the First concluded, “It is your work he does.”

  I know. Linden sighed. I know. Her eyes blurred and ran as if they had no connection to the arid loss in her heart.

  With that for recognition and thanks, she let Durris guide her toward the forehall The sheer carnage there smote her as she entered the great hall. The Grim had done severe damage to the floor, tearing chunks from it like lumps of flesh. Dead Coursers sprawled in pools of their own blood. A number of the Haruchai had been hurt as badly as Mistweave; one of them was dead. Riders lay here and there across the floor, scarlet robed and contorted, frantic with death. But worse than anything else were the hacked and broken bodies of those who should never have been sent into battle: cooks and cleaners, herders and gatherers, the innocent servants of the Clave. Among the litter of their inadequate weapons, their cleavers, pitchforks, scythes, clubs, they were scattered like the wreckage which their masters had already wrought upon the villages of the Land.

  Now Linden could not stanch her tears-and did not try. Through the blur, she spoke to Durris, sent him and several other Haruchai in search of splints, bindings, a sharp knife, hot water, and all the metheglin they could find to augment the company's scant vitrim and dwindling diamondraught. Then, using percipience instead of sight to direct her, she went looking for Mistweave.

  He was at work among the fallen of the Clave as if he were a physician-or could become one by simply refusing to let so much hurt and need lie untended. First he separated the dead from those who might yet be saved Then he made the living as comfortable as possible, covered their wounds with bandages torn from the raiment of the dead. His aura reached out to her as though he, too, were weeping; and she seemed to hear his very thoughts: This one also I slew. Her I broke. Him I crippled. These I took from life in the name of service.

  She felt his distress keenly. Self-distrust had driven him to a kind of hunger for violence, for any exertion or blow which might earn back his own esteem. Now he found himself in the place to which such logic led-a place that stank like an abattoir.

  In response, something fierce came unexpectedly out of the wilderness of Linden's heart. He had not halted his labour to greet her. She caught him by the arm, by the sark, pulled at him until he bent over her and she was able to clinch her frail strength around his neck. Instinctively, he lifted her from the floor in spite of his broken arm; and she whispered at him as if she were gasping, “You saved my life. When I couldn't save myself. And no Haruchai could save me. You're not responsible for this. The Clave made them attack you. You didn't have any choice.” Mistweave. “You couldn't just let them kill you.” Mistweave, help me. All you did was fight. I tried to possess him.

  He's gone, and I'll never get him back. For a moment, Mistweave's muscles knotted with grief. But then slowly his grip loosened, and he lowered her gently to her feet. “Chosen,” he said as if he had understood her, “it will be a benison to me if you will tend my arm. The pain is considerable.”

  Considerable, Linden thought. Sweet Christ, have mercy, Mistweave's admission was an ap
palling understatement. His right elbow had been crushed, and whenever he moved the splinters ground against each other. Yet he had spent the entire day in motion, first fighting for the company, then doing everything he could to help the injured. And the only claim he made for himself was that the pain was considerable. He gave her more help than she deserved.

  When Durris and his people brought her the things she had requested, she told him to build a fire to clean the knife and keep the water hot. Then while the sun set outside and night grew deep over the city, she opened up Mistweave's elbow and put the bones back together.

  That intricate and demanding task made her feel frayed to the snapping point, worn thin by shared pain. But she did not stop when it was finished. Her work was just beginning. After she had splinted and strapped Mistweave's arm, she turned to the injuries of the Haruchai, to Fole's leg and Harn's hip and all the other wounds dealt out by the Grim and the Coursers, the Riders and the people of Revelstone. Fole's hurt reminded her of Ceer's-the leg crushed by a Sandgorgon and never decently treated-and so she immersed herself in the damage as if restitution could be made in that way, by taking the cost of broken bones and torn flesh upon herself. And after that she began to tend as best she could the Riders and servants of the Clave.

  Later, through the riven gates at the end of the forehall, she felt midnight rise like the moon above the Keep. The reek of spilled and drying blood filled the air. Men and women cried out as if they expected retribution when she touched them But still she went weary and unappeased about her chosen work. It was the only answer she had ever found for herself until she had met Covenant. Now it was the only answer she had left.

  Yes. It was specific and clean. It had meaning, value; the pain of it was worth bearing. Yes. And it held her in one piece.

  As if for the first time: Yes.

  She had never faced so many wounds at once, so much bloodshed. But after all, the number of men and women, old and young, who had been able to survive their hurts this long was finite. The consequences of the battle were not like the Sunbane, endless and immedicable. She had nearly finished everything she knew how to ask of herself when Cail came to her and announced that the ur-Lord wished to see her.

  She was too tired to feel the true shock of the summons. Even now she could see Covenant standing in the Banefire until his blackness burned away as if he had taken hold of that evil blaze and somehow made it holy. His image filled all the back of her mind. But she was exhausted and had no more fear.

  Carefully, she completed what she was doing. As she worked, she spoke to Durris. “When the Banefire goes out, tell Nom to turn the stream back where it belongs. Then I want the dead cleaned out of here. Tell Nom to bury them outside the gates.” They deserved at least that decency. “You and your people take care of these-” She gestured toward the people arrayed around her in their sufferings and bandages. “The Land's going to need them.” She understood poignantly Covenant's assertion that Sunder and Hollian were the Land's future. Freed from the rule of the Clave, these wounded men and women might help serve the same purpose.

  Durris and Cail blinked at her, their faces flat in the incomplete torchlight. They were Haruchai, disdainful of injury and failure-not healers. And what reason did they have to obey her? Their commitment was to Covenant, not to her. With Brinn, Cail had once denounced her as a minion of Corruption.

  But the Haruchai were not unaffected by their part in the Land's plight. The merewives and the Clave had taught them their limitations. And Brinn's victory over the Guardian of the One Tree had done much to open the way for Cable Seadreamer's death and the Despiser's manipulations. In a strange way, the Haruchai had been humbled. When Linden looked up at Cail, he said as if he were still unmoved, "It will be done. You are Linden Avery the Chosen. It will be done.”

  Sighing to herself, she did what she could for the last of the wounded-watched him die because she was only one woman and had not reached him in time. Then she straightened her stiff knees and went with Can out of the forehall!

  As she turned, she glimpsed a perfect ebony figure standing at the verge of the light near the gates. Vain had returned. Somehow, he had recognized the end of the Clave and known that he could safely rejoin the company. But Linden was past questioning anything the Demondim-spawn did. She lost sight of him as she entered the passages beyond the forehall; and at once she forgot him.

  Cail guided her deep into a part of Revelstone which was new to her. The movement and confusion of the past day had left her sense of direction so bewildered that she had no idea where she was in relation to the Hall of Gifts; and she could barely discern the sacred enclosure in the distance as the Banefire declined toward extinction. But when she and Cail reached a hall that led like a tunnel toward the source of a weird silver illumination, she guessed their destination.

  The hall ended in a wide, round court. Around the walls were doorways at intervals, most of them shut. Above the doors up to the high ceiling of the cavity were coigns which allowed other levels of the Keep to communicate with this place. But she recognized the court because the polished granite of its floor was split from wall to wall with one sharp crack, and the floor itself shone with an essential argence like Covenant's ring. He had damaged and lit that stone in the excess of his power when he had emerged from the soothtell of the Clave. Here had been revealed to him enough of the truth to send him on his quest for the One Tree-but only enough to ensure the outcome Lord Foul intended. In spite of her exhaustion. Linden shivered, wondering how much more had been revealed to him now.

  But then she saw him standing in one of the doorways; and all other questions vanished. Her eyes were full of silver; she felt she could hardly see him as he dismissed Cail, came out into the light to meet her.

  Mute with shame and longing, she fought the inadequacy of her vision and strove to anele her sore heart with the simple sight of him.

  Luminous in silver and tears, he stood before her. All the details were gone, blinded by the pure glow of the floor, his pure presence. She saw only that he carried himself as if he had not come to berate her. She wanted to say in a rush before she lost her sight altogether. Oh, Covenant, I'm so sorry, I was wrong, I didn't understand, forgive me, hold me, Covenant. But the words would not come. Even now, she read him with the nerves of her body; her percipience tasted the timbre of his emanations. And the astonishment of what she perceived stopped her throat.

  He was there before her, clean in every limb and line, and strong with the same stubborn will and affirmation which had made him irrefusable to her from the beginning. Alive in spite of the Banefire; gentle toward her regardless of what she had tried to do to him. But something was gone from him. Something was changed. For a moment while she tried to comprehend the difference, she believed that he was no longer a leper.

  Blinking furiously, she cleared her vision.

  His cheeks and neck were bare, free of the unruly beard which had made him look as hieratic and driven as a prophet. The particular scraped hue of his skin told her that he had not used wild magic to burn his whiskers away: he had shaved himself with some kind of blade. With a blade instead of fire, as if the gesture had a special meaning for him. An act of preparation or acquiescence. But physically that change was only superficial.

  The fundamental alteration was internal. Her first guess had been wrong; she saw now that his leprosy persisted. His fingers and palms and the soles of his feet were numb. The disease still rested, quiescent, in his tissues. Yet something was gone from him. Something important had been transformed or eradicated.

  “Linden.” He spoke as if her name sufficed for him-as if he had called her here simply so that he could say her name to her.

  But he was not simple in any way. His contradictions remained, defining him beneath the surface. Yet he had become new and pure and clean. It was as if his doubt were gone-as if the self-judgments and repudiation which had tormented him had been reborn as certainty, clarity, acceptance in the Banefire.

  It w
as as if he had managed to rid himself of the Despiser's venom.

  “Is it-?” she began amazedly. “How did you-?” But the light around him seemed to throng with staggering implications, and she could not complete the question.

  In response, he smiled at her-and for one stunned instant his smile seemed to be the same one he had given Joan when he had exchanged his life for hers, giving himself up to Lord Foul's malice so that she would be free. A smile of such valour and rue that Linden had nearly cried out at the sight of it.

  But then the angles of his face shifted, and his expression became bearable again. Quietly, he said, “Do you mind if we get out of this light? I'm not exactly proud of it.” With his half-hand, he gestured toward the doorway from which he had emerged.

  The cuts on his fingers had been healed.

  And there were no scars on his forearm. The marks of Marid's fangs and of the injuries he had inflicted on himself had become whole flesh.

  Dumbly, she went where he pointed. She did not know what had happened to him.

  Beyond the door, she found herself in a small suite of rooms clearly designed to be someone's private living quarters. They were illuminated on a more human scale by several oil lamps and furnished with stone chairs and a table in the forechamber, a bare bed in one back room and empty pantry-shelves in another. The suite had been unused for an inestimably long time, but the ventilation and granite of Revelstone had kept it clean Covenant must have set the lamps himself-or asked the Haruchai to provide them.

  The centre of the table had been strangely gouged, as though a knife had been driven into it like a sharp stick into clay.

  “Mhoram lived here,” Covenant explained. “This is where I talked to him when I finally started to believe that he was my friend that he was capable of being my friend-after everything I'd done.” He spoke without gall, as if he had reconciled himself to the memory. "He told me about the necessity of freedom.”