Against All Things Ending

by Donaldson, Stephen R.

  But she could not. She had butchered thousands of living creatures. He was the only one who actually needed death.

  “Linden Giantfriend—” the Ironhand began like a groan. Then she stopped, unable to find words.

  Suddenly Stave lifted Galt’s body aside. When he had settled his son gently on the stained ground, he rose to his feet and picked up Loric’s krill. Then he strode toward Esmer.

  Without a flicker of hesitation or doubt, he drove the dagger into Esmer’s back.

  Stave!

  For an instant, joy broke across Esmer’s tormented features. He had time to lift his eyes to the heavens in gratitude. A heartbeat later, he vanished like dispelled smoke, leaving no sign that he had ever existed except manacles: the symbol and resolution of his compelled nature. If any hint of his spirit lingered in the air, Linden could not sense it.

  As one, the ur-viles and Waynhim raised a tumult of barking. As one, they fell silent again.

  With an air of scorn or disgust, Stave dropped the knife. His gaze met Linden’s consternation squarely.

  “It is not murder,” he pronounced, as rigid as any of his kindred. “It is mercy.”

  When he had shown her that he was prepared to accept her reaction, whatever it might be, he turned away.

  For a moment, the manacles lay where they had fallen in the mire of drying blood and gypsum. Then they began to corrode. The purpose for which they had been forged was done. Now the effects of millennia seemed to dissolve the black iron. While Linden watched, the last makings of the ur-viles slumped into rust and crumbled. Soon they were just one more blot on the ruined whiteness of the ridge.

  She wished that she, too, could sag into flakes of rust. She yearned to be done—But she was supposed to be a healer, and she had already permitted Liand’s death. She had failed her son. In Andelain, she had refused simple kindness to Covenant’s woe-ridden daughter. On this ridge, she had torn apart more Cavewights than she knew how to count. The legacies of her parents were wrapped like cerements around her soul.

  She could not pretend that she was done.

  And Stave had spared her a burden. His mercy was for her as much as for Esmer.

  She understood his disgust.

  Scornful of herself, and grieving, Linden Avery recalled black flames from her Staff and resumed her tasks.

  Stave would need her soon. So would Mahrtiir, if to a lesser extent. But the Swordmainnir came first for the sufficient reason that they were closer.

  She had treated all but the most superficial of Frostheart Grueburn’s wounds, and was working deep within Halewhole Bluntfist’s hacked frame, when Covenant arrived on the ridgecrest, trailing the Humbled and the Ramen behind him like a cortege.

  The force of his appearance jolted her to a halt. Her mouth was suddenly dry: the air felt too thick with carnage to breathe. Struggling to remember that she had once been a physician, she had forgotten how much he meant to her—and how much she feared his repudiation.

  Apart from the Cords, she was the only member of the company who did not wear the stains of her actions. Even Jeremiah had been splashed by Galt’s blood, and by Liand’s. How could Covenant look at her without feeling sickened?

  Yet her relief that he was unharmed pushed that concern aside. And when he met her gaze, she saw that his wrath was gone. He had expended it on the Humbled. Now he looked ashamed, as though he had failed her and everyone with her. His eyes held a kind of moral nausea, but it was not directed at her. Emphasized by the pure silver of his hair, the scar on his forehead suggested an instinct for self-blame that had grown pale with time, but had never entirely healed.

  In that, he resembled her. The difference between them was Gallows Howe. It was She Who Must Not Be Named and limitless killing. With the Earth at stake, Thomas Covenant would not have done what she had done. He would have found some other answer.

  “I’m sorry,” he said thickly, as if he rather than Linden had cause to expect recrimination. “I spent too long in the Arch. I don’t have any defenses against wild magic.” With one hand, he gestured at the krill. “It’s like Joan has me on a string. This time, she brought me back. She wants me where I can be hurt. But before that—” He winced. “Maybe she was holding me down. Or maybe I just don’t know how to climb out of what I remember.”

  The Swordmainnir studied him gravely. Mahrtiir regarded Covenant through a drying crust of blood. Bhapa considered the killing ground with chagrin. Pahni looked around as if she had become a wasteland; as if the life in her eyes had been slain. For a moment, no one spoke. The Demondim-spawn stood motionless, as attentive as a salute.

  Then Rime Coldspray found her voice. “Yet you live, Timewarden.” She sounded precise in spite of her hurts, like a woman stroking a whetstone along the edges of her glaive. “Nothing more was needed. Linden Giantfriend sufficed.”

  Covenant scanned the company. Gruffly he replied, “I can see that. I would have thought all this”—with a jerk of his head, he indicated the battleground—“was impossible. Kastenessen and Roger and poor Joan and even Lord Foul must be tearing their hair right now.”

  With that simple statement, he seemed to honor a victory that appalled Linden.

  Then he shook himself, ran the stubs of his fingers through his hair, frowned ruefully. “Unfortunately we can’t afford to wait here for another attack.” To the loremaster, he said, “I hope you’ll stick around, at least for a while. You’ve already saved”—he spread his hands—“practically everything. As much as it could be saved. But Linden needs more vitrim. We all do. And we have questions you might at least try to answer.”

  The loremaster merely nodded. After a moment, Waynhim began to move through the company again, offering their iron cups.

  Hoping that she would someday be able to draw at least one clean breath, Linden accepted a cup. Instead of drinking, however, she continued to watch Covenant’s every movement, clutch at every word. He was right: she required sustenance. She felt so weak that she could barely stand. But she needed something more from him as well. Something more personal than his willingness to accept the crime of carnage.

  After a moment, he told her directly, “You have to keep working, Linden. You’re still the only one who can do this. When you’re done with the Giants, Stave needs you. Mahrtiir needs you. And the Humbled are going to let you treat them.” His tone sharpened. “They won’t like what happens if they don’t.”

  Sighing, he added, “We’re the last. We can’t afford to lose anybody else.”

  Now he avoided Linden’s gaze. Scowling, he moved to stand over the krill. “I’ve been waiting for this.”

  He bent to retrieve the dagger, then stopped. The gem no longer pulsed. Instead it shone with a steady radiance made pale by sunshine. Joan’s concentration had broken: she was too frail to sustain any intent. Clearly, however, she—or turiya Herem—could sense his touch on Loric’s weapon. She might strike again.

  He had already been severely damaged.

  Hesitating, he searched for some form of protection. But he seemed reluctant to take any scrap of cloth or leather from the corpses of the Cavewights. At last, he forced himself to approach Anele’s body.

  Awkward with self-coercion and inadequate fingers, he rent strips from Anele’s aged tunic. The fabric was tattered and filthy, soiled by unrelieved decades of privation and neglect; but it was cleaner than anything worn by the Cavewights. As if he were violating the old man’s sacrifice, Covenant tore enough cloth to cover the krill; shield his hands: Anele’s last gift, taken without his volition. Then Covenant went to reclaim Loric Vilesilencer’s supreme achievement.

  Shaken, Linden abruptly lifted vitrim to her lips and drank. She needed—Oh, she had too many needs. Covenant’s actions shocked her. They seemed uncharacteristically callous. And yet she had no idea what else he could have done.

  He had shown that he could be callous when he had told her not to touch him.

  As soon as her depleted body began to absorb vitality from the dust
-scented liquid, she returned the cup to the Waynhim and called fresh fire from her Staff.

  While Linden finished caring for Bluntfist, Rime Coldspray spoke to her comrades. The Ironhand was profoundly weary; but her voice was clear, founded on granite.

  “Recover our supplies,” she told those Swordmainnir who were able to comply. “Return to the stream. Covenant Timewarden descries a need for haste. Yet some food and cleansing we must have. By the stream we will gather to drink and bathe, and to reconsider our course. And if these valiant ur-viles and Waynhim accompany us, mayhap they will consent to answer or advise us.”

  “Aye,” assented Frostheart Grueburn and Onyx Stonemage together. Stiff with exhaustion and newly mended tissues, they limped down the ridge to collect the company’s bundles.

  Weakened more by bleeding than by any single wound, Manethrall Mahrtiir could barely stand. Nevertheless he retained his authority. Leaning on Bhapa, he instructed Pahni to take Jeremiah and follow the Giants. “Ready viands for them,” he added, “and for us, while they drink and wash and rest.”

  The girl obeyed without hesitation; without any sign of emotion whatsoever. Clasping Jeremiah’s hand in hers, she drew him away, passive and unaware. At once, Covenant joined her, tucking the wrapped krill into the waist of his jeans as he went.

  Branl and Clyme started after him; but he snapped, “I warned you,” and they halted.

  Linden approved the Manethrall’s instructions and Pahni’s compliance. She wished that her son had never been forced to witness such slaughter. She would breathe more easily herself when he was no longer forced to inhale the stink of what she had done. But she also felt a pang at Covenant’s manner. He was still keeping his distance from her—

  Striving for thoroughness, she continued to work.

  Fortunately the Cavewights had not damaged any of Rime Coldspray’s vital organs or arteries, or of Stormpast Galesend’s. They had not caught the force of Roger’s wild blasts. Their worst dangers came from infection and the sheer multiplicity of their hurts. Linden could afford to spend less time with them than she had with the other Giants.

  As soon as their condition satisfied her, she turned to Mahrtiir. Stave, Branl, and Clyme she postponed simply because they were Haruchai, inherently hardier than any Raman.

  As Linden tended Mahrtiir’s many cuts and the poisons which dirty weapons had left in his wounds, Coldspray’s comrades headed for the stream until only the Ironhand remained. Briefly she scanned the area for something with which she could clean her glaive. Then, growling Giantish epithets under her breath, she dropped the stone sword at her feet.

  In spite of her long exertions, and the strain of imposed healing, she went to the litter of boulders bestrewn from Liand’s cairn and began shifting them.

  Alone Rime Coldspray labored to raise a smaller grave mound for Anele.

  It was for this. I have kept faith with my inheritance. In his madness, Anele had endured more than Linden could imagine.

  She was losing her ability to distinguish between grief and failure.

  “It is enough, Ringthane.” Mahrtiir’s tone contradicted his words. Blood still seeped from some of his cuts. Nevertheless he took a step backward, plainly asking her to leave him as he was. “Stave has lost a son so that yours might live. And my fear for the Humbled is greater than my distrust. Were I sighted and whole, I could perform no service to equal theirs.” At the edges, his voice frayed into sorrow. “Humbled myself, if in another fashion, I implore your succor for them.”

  Linden let her fire fall away. She could not refuse his plea. Just for a moment, she caught him in a tight hug; gave him an embrace which she could not share with Covenant; accepted the responsibility of his blood on her clothes and skin. Then she went to face Stave’s more intimate wounds.

  The ur-viles and Waynhim stayed where they were. Having put away their cups, they appeared to study Linden by scent and sound as if they were waiting for her.

  Quietly but firmly, Mahrtiir sent Bhapa after Pahni and the rest of the company. But the Manethrall himself did not depart.

  Linden was not brave enough for this. Like Anele and Liand, Stave had sacrificed too much in her name. She might have guessed that the passions of fatherhood ran strongly in him.—a fire in us, and deep. But nothing in her experience of any Haruchai had prepared her to see tears in his eye—

  He had slain Esmer without hesitation.

  Yet his life was ebbing from him in spite of his preternatural toughness. If she did not intervene, he would eventually perish.

  Bracing her Staff on the dirt’s burden of bloodshed, Linden stood in front of him. With her health-sense, she studied his gashed face and blade-bitten shoulders, his arms and torso brutally cut. But when he met her gaze, she bowed her head.

  “Does it help,” she asked in a small voice, “if I say that I’m sorry? Stave, I am so sorry. I didn’t see that axe coming. If I had—” With an effort, she caught herself. She had been about to say, I would have tried to stop it. But he deserved better honesty. Wincing, she admitted, “I would have prayed for Galt to do what he did. But I’m still sorry. I didn’t want him to die. I regret everything that’s happened to you.”

  For her sake, he had been spurned by the Masters.

  “I wouldn’t change anything,” she insisted to the unspoken protest of his injuries. “For the first time since Roger took him, Jeremiah isn’t being tortured. He might even have a chance to come out of himself.” And Covenant was alive, although he no longer wanted her love. “But I wish—”

  Stave interrupted her. “Do not, Linden.” His voice was little more than a sigh; yet it silenced her. “Wish for nothing. Regret nothing. Has your long acquaintance with Haruchai not taught you that my pride in my son is as great as my bereavement?”

  Linden had no answer except the power of the Staff. She had stood on Gallows Howe; had become an incarnation of that benighted mound, barren and bitter. She had refused Elena in Andelain, and had succumbed to the irremediable savagery and suffering of She Who Must Not Be Named. Her only reply was fire.

  She scrutinized how his wounds closed as she cared for them, seeking to ensure that she missed no hidden damage, no site of infection. At the same time, she burned blood and grime from his skin, and tried to believe that she was doing enough.

  When she was done, she turned away as if she were weeping, although her eyes were parched, as tearless as the landscape.

  Now she saw why Mahrtiir had not left. Defying his weakened condition, he was trying to help the Ironhand. His residue of strength was an infant’s beside hers. Yet he moved smaller stones to clear her way; steadied boulders while she lifted them; settled Anele’s limbs to receive the weight of his makeshift tomb.

  Rime Coldspray was no longer alone.

  While Linden watched, helpless to intervene, Stave raised Galt in his arms. Saying nothing, he moved toward Coldspray and Mahrtiir; placed his son’s body beside Anele’s. Then he, too, joined the Ironhand’s efforts. Stubborn as any of his people, he contributed his own homage to the new cairn.

  Damn it, Linden thought. Damn them. They deserved better. The Worm of the World’s End was coming. It would destroy them all. Yet they persisted in being true to their own natures.

  Aching for her friends, Linden Avery forced herself to meet the challenge of the Humbled.

  Both Clyme and Branl stood like crumbling monuments. When she faced them, Clyme said like the voice of his injuries, “We do not require your aid.” He was close to collapse, to death and the world’s ruin, but there was no fear in his eyes, or in Branl’s.

  Their unrequited pain brought back Linden’s anger. “I know,” she retorted. “You would rather just die. That way, you won’t have to resolve any more contradictions. But Covenant needs you, so shut up about it. Either stop me or let me work.”

  Neither of them raised a hand against her as she filled them with flame as if Earthpower and Law were her only outlet for ire and shame, the essential components of her despair.


  When Linden finally descended to the stream, the ur-viles and Waynhim followed her, a ragged procession better suited to running on all fours than walking upright. In the Lost Deep, nearly a third of them had died. But among the survivors, most of their wounds had already been healed, mended by their uncanny lore.

  Ahead of Linden strode Clyme and Branl as though they had never been hurt, never questioned themselves. The shreds of their tunics and the latticework of new scars belied their assurance; yet they held their heads high and gazed about them like men who did not relent. Nearing the stretch of sand where Covenant paced back and forth with storms brewing in his gaze, the Humbled bowed to him as though he had not tarnished their Haruchai estimations of rectitude. Then they separated to climb the nearby hills in order to stand watch over the company once more.

  Linden saw at a glance that the Swordmainnir had bathed and eaten. Their washed armor lay drying in the sun, and they were visibly stronger. Among them, Jeremiah chewed reflexively on some morsel of food. Pahni or Bhapa had cared for him in his mother’s absence. Nonetheless the silt of his stare remained unreactive, empty, like a wall against the hurts of the world.

  “Linden—” Covenant began, then stopped. Conflicting emotions seemed to close his throat. The muscles of his jaw bunched as he fought what he was feeling, but he did not say anything more than her name.

  Avoiding his congested gaze, Linden nodded to the concerned faces of the Giants, Bhapa’s more troubled expression, Pahni’s numbed mien. Hoarse with weariness and too many needs, she explained, “Coldspray is building a cairn for Anele and Galt. Mahrtiir and Stave are helping her. They’ll be here soon.”

  Even their strength and determination would not last much longer.

  Then she strode past her companions. At the edge of the water, she dropped her Staff as though it entailed more responsibilities than she could bear. Empty-handed, she walked out into the stream until it filled her boots, reached her knees, rose to her waist. When it was deep enough, she plunged beneath the surface.