Against All Things Ending

by Donaldson, Stephen R.

No one followed him.

  Jeremiah’s plight nagged at Linden like an untreated wound. She should have rushed past the Harrow; should have fled from interminable days of anguish and inadequacy toward her son. But she had spent too much of her frayed spirit against the wards: she felt unable to go on without Covenant and her friends; and none of them moved. Even Liand and Stave did not. Instead they all stood as if in attendance, watching the Ardent’s approach: the Swordmainnir with laughter in their eyes, the Masters impassively, Bhapa and Pahni in daunted wonder.

  Only Covenant, Anele, and Mahrtiir did not regard the heavy Insequent in the air. And only Covenant spoke.

  Peering past the rim of the abyss, he muttered, “She’s going to get bigger. Every time She eats. Every time somebody who doesn’t know or care how dangerous She is comes down here.”

  He showed no sign of vertigo. He must have been reliving a conversation which had taken place long ago.

  Limned in pink and ecru and subtle viridian, the Harrow paused to wait again, cursing.

  Past the Hazard’s apex, the Ardent began his descent. And as he drifted forward, he gradually contracted his apparel so that he sank toward the bridge. Nearing the span’s base, his bound feet were a mere arm’s length from its surface. Softly as a bubble, he touched down as he reached the ledge.

  His round face was flushed as though he had outrun the limits of his stamina. Sweat streamed from his forehead and cheeks, staining the neckbands of his garments. His eyes glared starkly, reflecting the pale illumination.

  With his feet on the stone, he took two unsteady steps toward Linden. Then he stopped. Though he faced her, his gaze avoided hers.

  “The will of the Insequent is a geas,” he panted. “I cannot refuse it, though it appalls my heart.” He may have been offering her an apology. “I must overcome myself. If I do not, I will fail you and my people as well as the living Earth.”

  The Ironhand nodded. “Geas or bravery,” she replied, “it has sufficed. And perchance you will not be asked to dare such perils again. The way has been opened. When we have accomplished our purpose, you and the Harrow will be able remove us from these depths without confronting a second passage over that dire chasm.”

  To Linden, she added, “Shall we go now in search of your son? Remaining here, we achieve naught.”

  Linden did not respond. She felt hypnotized by the sweat on the Ardent’s face, the raw fright in his eyes. The sensation that she had come to the end clung to her. Some stunned part of her was still immersed in the toils of the wards. She did not know how to shake free of them.

  But Stave took her by the arm. With Liand at her other shoulder, the former Master turned her toward the portal.

  Seeing the Harrow outlined against the moonstone glow, with her Staff and Covenant’s ring clenched in his fists, Linden roused herself as if from a stupor. Though she felt emptied, like a broken cistern that could no longer hold water, she had surrendered too much to stop now. Not when the brown-clad Insequent was impatient to fulfill his promises.

  Urged by the Giants, Stave and Liand encouraged her into the Lost Deep.

  8.

  Caverns Ornate and Majestic

  At once, Coldspray and several of the Swordmainnir arrayed themselves around Linden, Stave, Liand, and the Cords. Their eagerness for adventure was bright on their faces, and they held their heads high. Behind them, Galesend and Latebirth carried Anele and Mahrtiir. And at the rear of the company, the Humbled escorted Covenant to meet the outcome of Linden’s long quest.

  The Harrow was too sure that he had beaten his enemies: the only foes that mattered. He would not be ready—

  Linden was counting on that.

  With her companions assembled around her like a cortege, Linden Avery the Chosen entered the abandoned habitation and loreworks of the Viles.

  At first, she concentrated her ragged attention on the figure of the Harrow. Clad like the Mahdoubt, and the Ardent, and presumably even the Theomach, in the means and symbols of his arcane knowledge, he still waited for her. Even now, his oaths bound him. In frustration, he tapped one iron heel of the Staff on the polished floor within the portal. But the slight impact of metal on stone made no sound that she could hear. Instead his tapping gave off evanescent puffs of moonshine and pearl like wisps of incandescence.

  When she drew near enough to release him from his impatience, he turned to lead the way again.

  Focusing on him, she did not notice her surroundings until she heard or felt Liand’s sharp intake of breath, sensed the whispered exclamations of the Giants. Involuntarily, as if she had no will or strength that was not provided by her companions, she lifted her head to look at the high chamber which formed the entrance hall to the Lost Deep.

  The sight shocked her like a tectonic shift; a grinding of the Earth’s bones so deeply buried that its tremors might take hours or even days to be felt on the surface.

  She could not think of the chamber as a cavern, although it seemed as huge as the enclosure of the Banefire in Revelstone long ago. It stretched past the limits of her senses ahead and above her. And every handspan of its walls and vaulted ceiling and floor had been burnished to a lambent sheen, flawless and glowing. Indeed, the shaped rock was the source of the Deep’s illumination. Every line and curve, plane and arc of the chamber emitted an eerie lucence composed of commingled and constantly shifting hues. With each beat of her heart, Linden encountered a different blend of the most pastel vermillion, the palest azure; the merest suggestions of charlock and viridian and lime.

  In itself, the chamber was immense and wondrous. Yet it did not cause her sense of shock.

  Apparently the entire space had been shaped for no other purpose than to house something that must have been a work of art; the making of beauty and wonder—Beyond question, the chamber was filled with loveliness.

  Entering here, Linden and her companions had already walked partway into the ramified outlines of an elaborate castle rich in beauty and imaginative largesse. The structure was not solid. Instead it was composed only of outlines like strokes drawn on blank air; sweeps and delineations of—of bone? opaque crystal? smooth travertine shafts? If it had not looked entirely complete as it was, it might have been a model for an edifice which the Viles had once intended to build; a sketch done in three dimensions and mother-of-pearl. Yet no detail had been neglected. Flying buttresses radiated outward from the shape of a central keep, linking the keep to an elegant circle of turrets. Balconies and ramparts articulated what would have been the rounded walls of the keep, the supernal circles of the turrets. Bartizans and crenellations expressed the crowns of the turrets. Low walls explained the ramparts and balconies, the airy buttresses. In the base of the keep, a lowered drawbridge implied an entrance into a space filled with rooms and curving stairways: a faery dwelling without walls, barriers, substance.

  And it was familiar. Linden had seen it before. During the last days of her former life, its exact duplicate had occupied the hallway inside the front door of her home: hers and Jeremiah’s. Amid the mundane surroundings of the house, it had seemed so magical and dream-like that she had not asked him to take it down. She had loved it, and him, too much to wish it dismantled.

  Nevertheless it had endured only until Roger Covenant had crashed through it like a wrecking ball, seeking her son—and his father’s ring.

  Now she understood that Jeremiah had seen this place. He had seen it. He had not drawn his castle from the raw stuff of his sealed imagination: he had copied it from this.

  It told her that she was on the right path.

  And it was further evidence that Jeremiah’s spirit had indeed visited the Land years before Roger had stolen him from her. His racetrack construct in his bedroom had been a door. Roger and the croyel had told her the truth about that, if about little else.

  Instinctively she stopped, halted by wonder and memory and nameless apprehensions. She did not recollect herself until Liand urged softly, “Linden! Your son is surely nigh. And the Harrow’s
impatience mounts. We must not linger.”

  With an effort, she looked at the Stonedownor as though she no longer knew who he was.

  “Lady!” snapped the Harrow. “Despite his many follies, the youth speaks sooth. The Lost Deep matches the scope of its makers’ dreams. The halls and loreworks are vast, extending for leagues. We need not lose our path among them, but our efforts will prove bootless if you cannot contain your wonder. This realm remains hazardous, as does the bane of the abyss.”

  His voice expanded to a shout. “We must have haste!”

  You’re right, Linden thought. You’re. Right. But still she did not move. Scattered and broken Tinkertoys held her: the ruin of Roger’s passage as he violated her home. She saw omens in the castle. Every line of the ramparts prefigured bereavement.

  “Cease your reproaches, Insequent.” The Ironhand sounded bemused by delight. “If you require haste, it will be vouchsafed to you. But briefly, briefly, we must honor our astonishment.” She gazed around as if the sheer size of her pleasure amazed her. “We are Giants, lovers of stone in every guise, yet never have we beheld such glory. This untrammeled perfection—” She stretched out her arms as if she wished to embrace the whole castle. “It is immaculate to the point of melody. In sooth, Insequent, its song is almost audible—”

  Some of the Swordmainnir nodded. Others simply stared, entranced and mute.

  “We will hasten to your heart’s content,” Rime Coldspray finished: a sigh of reverence or reverie. “But in a moment. In a moment—”

  Her voice faded as she studied the lofty edifice.

  “Linden,” Liand insisted. “Linden, hear me. This place is indeed perilous, though I cannot name our jeopardy.” He was a Stonedownor: he should have felt as enthralled as the Giants. “I know only that foreboding fills my heart. We must heed the Harrow or fail.”

  Oh, my son.

  Deliberately Linden remembered the croyel clinging like a malnourished infant on Jeremiah’s back; the claws and toes gouged into his flesh; the fangs chewing on the side of his neck to drink his blood. Then she was moving again. Liand and Stave held her arms while the Harrow strode ahead of her.

  As if he were fearless, the man led her straight into the heart of the outlined keep.

  Somewhere behind her, the Ardent murmured, “Fear nothing. Here the Harrow’s knowledge is sure.” Anxiety filled his voice with hues like moaning. “No wards threaten us while we abide his guidance. Doubtless I will revel in memories of this demesne’s manifold wonders when—” He faltered and fell silent.

  For a moment, Linden feared that only she, Stave, and Liand trailed after the Harrow. Glancing over her shoulder, however, she saw the Humbled behind her, escorting Covenant among them. Covenant’s attention was everywhere at once, as though he strove to encompass every ageless memory implied by the castle and the cavern; but he took no notice of Linden.

  Briefly she caught a whiff of Mahrtiir’s voice. “Have our companions departed? Why do you not guard the Ringthane?” The words smelled querulous; vexed by helplessness.

  Straining her neck, Linden finally felt the Giants shake off their enchantment and start forward. Latebirth still carried the Manethrall: Galesend cradled Anele. At the rear, Cirrus Kindwind herded the Cords ahead of her.

  The Harrow passed through the central keep as though it did not exist; but Linden was loath to leave it. Here in some metaphysical fashion, Jeremiah had found an image of his secret heart. She wanted to pore over every line of the castle until she understood what had been hidden from her; until she knew how to reach past Jeremiah’s torment and lift him free. An impossible hope. Like the stains on her jeans, the text of the castle was indecipherable. She might examine it for years, and it would tell her nothing.

  She did not have years. The time left to her could be measured in days at most.

  Grimly she tried to quicken her pace.

  Now that they were in motion, the Giants caught up with her easily, drawing the Ardent after them. With her companions, she passed among the outer turrets toward the far wall of the chamber.

  A number of openings awaited her, all filled with modulating radiance. Some were narrow corridors that soon curved out of sight. Others were almost as high as the forehall of Revelstone, and seemed to extend indefinitely through the lucent rock. But the Harrow selected a passage without hesitation. Eagerly, urgently, he led the way into one of the narrower tunnels.

  At every step, the Staff of Law touched the stone, invoking momentary exhalations of vapor. Linden felt rather than heard her friends’ respiration. They breathed scents and colors instead of air.

  Beyond the passage, they entered another chamber, smaller than the first, but still wide and round enough to accommodate a copse of wattle or a stand of jacaranda—and high enough to accept cedars. Indeed, the space dwarfed the jut of crude dark rock in its center. Supported by a low mound of unfinished basalt, bitter rock reared upward, gnarled and somehow grisly. It formed two sides that resembled jaws filled with ragged teeth. And between the jaws, there appeared to be a seat: the entire outcropping may have been a throne.

  Within the perfection of the chamber’s walls, the upraised stone was a maimed thing, deformed by malice or indifference.

  Linden could not imagine why the Viles had chosen to create such a shape. But she did not ask the Harrow to explain it. She felt repulsed by it. It seemed to emit an odor like ordure. If it were a sculpture, it was an exercise in derision.

  Fortunately the Harrow strode past the jaws and the seat without glancing at them. Still certain, he selected a hallway beyond the throne and entered it swiftly, as if he wished to distance himself from the dire rock.

  Trembling for no reason that she could name, and glad that Stave and Liand still held her arms, Linden followed the Insequent with the rest of her company close around her.

  This hall was straight, featureless, and long: long enough for Linden to realize that her perceptions were suffering a kind of delinition. The glow of the stone became less a matter of sight and more a flowing series of sensations on her skin: brief caresses as loving as kisses; small scrapes that caused no pain; the tickling of feathers; warm breaths. The colors were the multitudinous susurrus of her companions. Like the Harrow’s, her steps were little clouds, and every touch of the Staff on the stone trailed streamers like rills of mist.

  She was falling into paresthesia again, the neural confusion caused by the intangible essence of the Viles. Remnants of their lore lingered where they had once flourished. Soon she would have to follow the Harrow by smell and taste as much as by small pennons of illumined fog. Insidiously she was being led astray, guided out of contact with mundane existence.

  Without percipience, she could not gauge how the residual theurgy of the Viles affected her companions. She had told them little about her arranged confrontation with the makers of the Demondim: words were impotent to convey the disorientation that the Viles engendered. Yet the pitch and timbre of Stave’s hand, and of Liand’s, held steady. Somehow they contrived to manage their delirant senses.

  If the Giants or Linden’s other companions felt any distress, she did not discern it. The shades of their breathing baffled interpretation.

  She had experienced similar dislocations before. Nevertheless she was not ready when the hall opened.

  As though she had crossed a threshold into an altogether different definition of reality, she entered a space as open, ornate, and majestic as a palace.

  Here her perceptions resumed their normal dimensions; or they seemed to do so. In this place, the complex puissance of the Viles was gone, utterly banished—or else their lore had devised an illusion more oblique and bewildering than paresthesia. Only a vague squirming, an almost subliminal discomfort, warned Linden that her senses were confused; that the substance of what she saw had been fundamentally altered.

  To all appearances, she stood in the ballroom of a vast palace or mansion, the dwelling of some supreme sovereign surrounded by incarnate wealth. On a burnis
hed marmoreal floor, rugs overlapped each other in every direction. They were as sumptuous as cushions, and as richly woven as tapestries; yet they were also transparent, as clear as light; simultaneously solid and impalpable. Against the far walls, wide stairways with treads and banisters of flawless crystal arced upward like wings. At precise intervals among the rugs, shafts of glass spun in delicate filigree rose to five or six times the height of the Giants; and from elaborate arms atop the shafts hung chandeliers in profusion, each bedizened with scores or hundreds of lights as pure and white as stars, and as clinquant as precious metals. Along the walls, golden braziers gave off flames that suffused the air with tranquility. And in the center of the space, a fountain of ice—translucent and perfectly frozen—spouted toward the distant ceiling. It reached as high as the chandeliers, where it spread outward in a ceaseless spray, droplets as fine and faceted as jewels. Yet no current flowed. No bead fell. The ice was so motionless that it seemed sealed in time rather than in cold.

  Above it, on the ceiling itself, mosaics as magnificent as choirs displayed their voices from wall to wall. The magic of their creation made them simultaneously as articulate as glory and as colorless as water.

  Helpless to resist her amazement, Linden gazed around the palace like a woman bespelled. As she did so, some indistinct part of her observed that her companions appeared to feel the same dazzlement. Even the Humbled and Stave were lost in wonder. They wandered away from her, away from Covenant, in a kind of rapture, studying avidly every gleaming crystalline miracle. Liand drifted apart. The Giants separated to peer in awe and delight at the filigree shafts, or at the fountain held ineffably in abeyance. Some of them stooped to trail their fingers along the patterns that elaborated the rugs. Like the ecstatic figures in dreams, the Cords and Liand craned their necks to watch the dance of the chandeliers, hear the music of the mosaics. In spite of his blindness, Manethrall Mahrtiir was dazed by munificence.

  Anele had awakened. Squirming in Galesend’s arms, he asked her to put him down. When he stood on the glowing floor, however, he did not move. Instead he remained where Galesend had placed him, jerking his head from side to side with an air of rapt attention, saying nothing.