White Gold Wielder t2cotc-3

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “Linden?” Covenant asked urgently. “What-?” He lacked her percipience, had no knowledge of the tree's agony.

  But he did not have to wait for an answer. A sundering pain like the blow of an axe split Linden's nerves; and the trunk of the oak sprang apart in a flail of splinters.

  From the core of the wood. Vain stepped free. Unscathed, he left the still quivering tree in ruins. He did not glance at Findail or anyone else. His black eyes held nothing but darkness.

  Linden stumbled to her knees in the grass and wrapped her arms around the hurt.

  For a stunned moment, grief held the Hills. Then Covenant rasped, “That's terrific.” He sounded as shaken as the dying boughs. “I hope you're proud of yourself.”

  Findail's reply seemed to come from a great distance. “Do you value him so highly? Then I am indeed lost”

  “I don't give a good goddamn!” Covenant was at Linden's side. His hands gripped her shoulders, supporting her against the empathic force of the rupture. “I don't trust either of you. Don't you ever try anything like that again!”

  The Elohim hardened, “I will do what I must. From the first, I have avowed that I will not suffer his purpose. The curse of Kastenessen will not impel me to that doom.”

  Swirling into the form of a hawk, he flapped away through the treetops. Linden and Covenant were left amid the wreckage.

  Vain stood before them as if nothing had happened.

  For a moment longer, the ache of the tree kept Linden motionless. But by degrees Andelain closed around the destruction, pouring health back into the air she breathed, spreading green vitality up from the grass, loosening the knotted echo of pain. Slowly, her head cleared. Sweet Christ, she mumbled to herself. I wasn't ready for that.

  Covenant repeated her name; his concern reached her through his numb fingers. She steadied herself on the undergirding bones of the Hills and nodded to him. “I'm all right.” She sounded wan; but Andelain continued to lave her in its balm. Drawing a deep breath, she pulled herself back to her feet.

  Across the greensward, the sunshine lay like sorrow among the trees and shrubs, aliantha and flowers. But the shock of violence was over. Already, the distant hillsides had begun to smile again. The brook resumed its damp chuckle as though the interruption had been forgotten. Only the riven trunk went on weeping while the tree died, too sorely hurt to keep itself alive.

  “The old Lords- ” Covenant murmured, more to himself than to her. “Some of them could've healed this.”

  So could I, Linden nearly replied aloud. If I had your ring. I could save it all. But she bit down the thought, hoped it did not show in her face. She did not trust her intense desire for power. The power to put a stop to evil.

  However, he lacked the sight to read her emotions. His own grief and outrage blinded him. When he touched her arm and gestured onward, she leaped the brook with him; and together they continued among the Hills.

  Unmarred except by the dead wood of his right forearm, Vain followed them. His midnight countenance held no expression other than the habitual ambiguity of his slight grin.

  The day would have been one of untrammelled loveliness for Linden if she could have forgotten Findail and the Demondim-spawn. As she and Covenant left the vicinity of the shattered oak, Andelain reasserted all its beneficent mansuetude, the gay opulence of its verdure, the tuneful sweep and soar and flash of its birds, the endearing caution and abundance of its wildlife. Nourished by treasure-berries and rill-water, and blandished from stride to stride by the springy surf, she felt crowded with life, as piquant as the scents of the flowers, and keen for each new vista of the Andelainian Hills. After a time, the First and Pitchwife rejoined Linden and Covenant, appearing from the covert of an antique willow with leaves in their hair and secrets in their eyes. For greeting, Pitchwife gave a roistering laugh that sounded like his old humour; and it was seconded by one of his wife's rare, beautiful smiles.

  “Look at you,” Linden replied in mock censure, leasing the Giants. “For shame. If you keep that up, you're going to become parents whether you're ready for it or not.”

  A shade like a blush touched the First's mien; but Pitchwife responded with a crow. Then he assumed an air of dismay. “Stone and Sea forfend! The child of this woman would surely emerge bladed and bucklered from the very womb. Such a prodigy must not be blithely conceived,”

  The First frowned to conceal her mirth. “Hush, husband,” she murmured. “Provoke me not. Does it not suffice you that one of us is entirely mad?”

  “Suffice me?” he riposted. “How should it suffice me? I have no wish for loneliness.”

  “Aye, and none for wisdom or decorum,” she growled in feigned vexation. “You are indeed shameful.”

  When Covenant grinned at the jesting of the Giants, Linden nearly laughed aloud for pleasure.

  Yet she did not know where Findail had gone or what he would do next. And the death of the oak remained aching in the back of her mind. Ballasted by such things, her mood did not altogether lose itself in the analystic atmosphere. There was a price yet to be paid for the passing of the Forestal, and the destination of the company had not changed. In addition, she had no clear sense of what Covenant hoped to achieve by confronting the Despiser. Caer-Caveral had once said of her. The woman of your world would raise grim shades here. She relished Pitchwife's return to glee, enjoyed the new lightness which the badinage of the Giants produced in Covenant. But she did not forget.

  As evening settled around Andelain, she experienced a faint shiver of trepidation. At night the Dead walked the Hills. All of Covenant's olden friends, lambent with meanings and memories she could not share. The woman he had raped. And the daughter of that rape, who had loved him-and had broken the Law of Death in his name, trying as madly as hate to spare him from his harsh doom. She was loath to meet those potent revenants. They were the men and women who had shaped the past, and she had no place among them.

  Under a stately Gilden, the company halted. A nearby stream with a bed of fine sand provided water for washing. Aliantha were plentiful. The deep grass cushioned the ground comfortably. And Pitchwife was a wellspring of good cheer, of diamondraught and tales. While the satin gloaming slowly folded itself away, leaving Linden and her companions uncovered to the darkness and the hushed stars, he described the long Giantclave and testing by which the Giants of Home had determined to send out the Search and had selected his wife to lead it. He related her feats as if they were stupendous, teasing her with her prowess. But now his voice held a hidden touch of fever, a suggestion of effort which hinted at his more fundamental distress. Andelain restored his heart; but it could not heal his recollection of Revelstone and gratuitous bloodshed, could not cure his need for a better outcome. After a time, he lapsed into silence; and Linden felt the air of the camp growing tense with anticipation.

  Across the turf, fireflies winked and wandered uncertainly, as if they were searching for the Forestal's music. But eventually they went away. The company settled into a vigil. The mood Covenant emitted was raw with fatigue and hunger. He, too, appeared to fear his Dead as much as he desired them.

  Then the First broke the silence. “These Dead,” she began thoughtfully. “I comprehend that they are held apart from their deserved rest by the breaking of the Law of Death. But why do they gather here, where all other Law endures? And what impels them to accost the living?”

  “Companionship,” murmured Covenant, his thoughts elsewhere. “Or maybe the health of Andelain gives them something as good as rest.” His voice carried a distant pang; he also had been left forlorn by the loss of Caer-Caveral's song. “Maybe they just haven't been able to stop loving.”

  Linden roused herself to ask, "Then why are they so cryptic? They haven't given you anything except hints and mystification. Why don't they come right out and tell you what you need to know?”

  “Ah, that is plain to me,” Pitchwife replied on Covenant's behalf. “Unearned knowledge is perilous. Only by the seeking and gaining of it may
its uses be understood, its true worth measured. Had Gossamer Glowlimn my wife been mystically granted the skill and power of her blade without training or test or experience, by what means could she then choose where to strike her blows, how extremely to put forth her strength? Unearned knowledge rules its wielder, to the cost of both.”

  But Covenant had his own answer. When Pitchwife finished. the Unbeliever said quietly, “They can't tell us what they know. We'd be terrified.” He was sitting with his back to the Gilden; and his fused resolve gave him no peace. “That's the worst part. They know how much we're going to be hurt. But if they tell us, where will we ever get the courage to face it? Sometimes ignorance is the only kind of bravery or at least willingness that does any good.”

  He spoke as if he believed what he was saying. But the hardness of his tone seemed to imply that he had no ignorance left to relieve the prospect of his intent.

  The Giants fell still, unable to deny his assertion or respond to it. The stars shone bleak rue around the scant sliver of the moon. The night grew intense among the Hills. Behind the comforting glow of its health and wholeness, Andelain grieved for the Forestal.

  Terrified? Linden asked herself. Was Covenant's purpose as bad as that?

  Yet she found it impossible to question him. Not here, with the Giants listening. His need for privacy was palpable to her.

  And she was too restless to concentrate. She remained charged with the energy and abundance of the Hills; and the night seemed to breathe her name, urging her to walk off her nervous anticipation Covenant's Dead were nowhere in evidence. Within the range of her percipience lay only the fine slumber and beauty of the region.

  A strange glee rose in her: she wanted to run and caracole under the slight moon, tumble and roll and tumble again down the lush hillsides, immerse herself in Andelain's immaculate dark. Perhaps a solitary gambol would act as an anodyne for the other blackness which the Sunbane had nourished in her veins.

  Abruptly, she sprang to her feet. “I'll be back,” she said without meeting the eyes of her companions. “Andelain is too exciting. I need to see more of it.”

  The Hills murmured to her, and she answered, sprinting away from the Gilden southward with all the gay speed of her legs.

  Behind her, Pitchwife had taken up his flute. At once broken, piercing, and sweet, its awkward tones followed her as she ran. They carried around her like the ghost limbs of the trees, the crouching midnight of the bushes, the unmoonlit loom and pause of the shadows. He was trying to play the song which had streamed so richly from Caer-Caveral.

  For a moment, he caught it-or almost caught it-and it went through her like loss and exaltation. Then she seemed to outrun it as she passed over a rise and sped downward again, deeper into the occult night of the Andelainian Hills.

  The Forestal had said that she would raise grim shades here; and she thought of her father and mother. Unintentionally, without knowing what they were doing, they had bred her for suicide or murder. But now she defied them. Come on! she panted up at the stars. I dare you! For good or ill, healing or destruction, she had become stronger than her parents. The passion surging in her could not be named or confined by the harsh terms of her inheritance. She taunted her memories, challenging them to appear before her. But they did not.

  And because they did not, she ran on, as heedless as a child-altogether unready for the door of might which opened suddenly against her, slapping her to the ground as if she were not strong or real enough to be noticed by the old puissance emerging from it.

  A door like a gap in the first substance of the night, as abrupt and stunning as a detonation, and as tall as the heavens. It opened so that the man could stride through it. Then it closed behind him.

  Her face was thrust into the grass. She fought for breath, strove to raise her head. But the sheer force of the presence towering over her crushed her prostrate. His bitter outrage seemed to fall on her like the wreckage of a mountain. Beneath his ire, he was so poignant with ruin, so extreme in the ancient and undiminished apotheosis of his despair, that she would have wept for him if she had been able. But his tremendous wrath daunted her, turned her vulnerability against herself. She could not lever her face out of the turf to look at him.

  He felt transcendently tall and powerful. For an instant, she believed that he could not be aware of her, that she was too small for his notice. Surely he would pass by her and go about his fell business. But almost immediately her hope failed. His regard lit between her shoulder-blades like the point of a spear.

  Then he spoke. His voice was as desolate as the Land under a desert sun, as twisted and torn as the ravages of a sun of pestilence. But anger gave it strength.

  “Slayer of your own Dead, do you know me?”

  No, she panted. No. Her fingers gouged into the loam as she struggled to shift her abject posture. He had no right to do this to her. Yet his glare impaled her, and she could not move.

  He replied as if her resistance had no meaning:.

  “I am Kevin. Son of Loric. High Lord of the Council. Founder of the Seven Wards. And enactor of the Land's Desecration by my own hand. I am Kevin Landwaster.”

  In response, she was able to do nothing except groan. Dear God. Oh, dear God.

  Kevin.

  She knew who he was.

  He had been the last High Lord of Berek's lineage, the last direct inheritor of the Staff of Law. The wonder and munificence of his reign in Revelstone had won the service of the Bloodguard, confirmed the friendship of the Giants, advanced the Council's dedication to the Earthpower, given beauty and purpose to all the Land. And he had failed. Tricked and defeated by the Despiser, he had proved himself unequal to the Land's defence. By his own mistakes, the object of his love and service had been doomed. And because he had understood that doom, be had fallen into despair.

  Madly, he had conceived the ploy of the Ritual of Desecration, believing that Lord Foul would thereby be undone-that the price of centuries of devastation for the Land would purchase the Despiser's downfall. Therefore they had met in Kiril Threndor within the heart of Mount Thunder, mad Lord and malign foe. Together, they had set in motion the dire Ritual.

  But in the end it was Kevin who fell while Lord Foul laughed. Desecration had no power to rid the world of Despite.

  Yet that was not the whole tale of his woe. Misled by the confusion of her love and hate, the later High Lord, Elena, daughter of Lena and Covenant, had thought that the Landwaster's despair would be a source of irrefusable might; and so she had selected him for her breaking of the Law of Death, had rent him from his natural grave to hurl him in combat against the Despiser. But Lord Foul had turned the attempt against her. Both she and the Staff of Law had been lost; and Dead Kevin had been forced to serve his foe.

  The only taste of relief he had been granted had come when Thomas Covenant and Saltheart Foamfollower had defeated the Despiser.

  But that victory was now three millennia past. The Sunbane was rampant upon the Land, and Lord Foul had found the path to triumph. Kevin's dismay and wrath poured from him in floods. His voice was as hard as a cable under terrific stress.

  “We are kindred in our way-the victims and enactors of Despite. You must heed me. Do not credit that you may exercise choice here. The Land's need admits no choice. You must heed me. Must!”

  The word hammered and echoed and pleaded through her. Must. He had not come to appal her, meant her no harm. Rather, he approached her because he had no other way to reach out among the living, exert himself against the Despiser's machinations.

  Must.

  She understood that. Her fingers relaxed their grasp on the grass; her senses submitted to his vehemence. Tell me what it is, she said as if she had no more need to choose. Tell me what I should do.

  "You will not wish to heed me. The truth is harsh. You will seek to deny it. But it will not be denied. I have borne horror upon my head and am not blinded by the hope which refuses truth. You must heed me.”

  Must.

 
Yes.

  Tell me.

  “Linden Avery, you must halt the Unbeliever's mad intent. His purpose is the work of Despite. As I have done before him, he seeks to destroy that which he loves. He must not be permitted.

  “If no other means suffice, you must slay him.”

  No! In a rush of trepidation, she strove against his power-and still she had no strength to raise her head. Slay him? Goaded by his gaze, her heart laboured. No! You don't understand. He wouldn't do that.

  But his voice came down on her back like a fall of stone.

  “No. It is you who do not understand. You have not yet learned to comprehend the cunning of despair. Can you think that I allowed my fellow Lords to guess my purpose when I had set my heart to the Ritual? Have you been granted the gift of such sight, and are you yet unable to see? When evil rises in its full power, it surpasses truth and may wear the guise of good without fear of discovery. In that way was I brought to my own doom.

  “He walks the path which his friends among the Dead have conceived for him. But they also do not comprehend despair. They were redeemed from it by his brave mastery of the Despiser-and so they see hope where there is only Desecration. Their vision of evil is incomplete and false.”

  He gathered force in the night, became as shattering as a shout of disaster.

  “It is his intent to place the white ring into Lord Foul's hand.

  “If you suffer him to succeed, the term of our grief will be slight, for all Earth and Time will be lost.

  “You must halt him.”

  Repeating until all the Hills replied, Must. Must.

  After a moment, he left her. The door of his power closed behind him. But she did not notice his departure. For a long time, she went on staring blindly into the grass.

  Sixteen: “Andelain! forgive!”