Against All Things Ending

by Donaldson, Stephen R.

  And Berek said, The Theomach has been my guide and teacher. His counsel is mine as well.

  There, Covenant thought. That was the answer.

  He lost it immediately. Eager to understand, he tripped into another fissure. Instead of standing in Andelain, he wandered uselessly through the rich twilight beneath the canopy of the One Forest. He remembered the lazy hum of insects, the mellifluous evensong of birds; the fecund scents of loam and moss and ferns, natural decay, ripe growth.

  But he did not lose everything.

  Joan had her wedding band. She was using wild magic against the Land. It could be used against her.

  Without warning, Clyme struck Covenant, an open-handed blow that snapped his head to the side, sent shocks down his spine.

  Around him, the One Forest seemed to ripple as though every tree and leaf and breeze had become water. Monarchs which had held their ground for hundreds of years shimmered like mirages.

  The Feroce may have been winning. They appeared to outnumber the skest.

  Turiya could send more. No doubt he had already done so.

  With an effort like a rush of vertigo, Covenant moaned, “Again.”

  Clyme did not hesitate. A second jolt caught Covenant’s head from the opposite side. Repercussions rattled his vertebrae.

  It was too late. Covenant could not fight the skest. He could not touch the krill. Not yet.

  He had to try something else.

  “Hit me again.”

  This time, Clyme punched the cut in the center of Covenant’s forehead.

  Hellfire! That one hurt!

  While new blood streamed into Covenant’s eyes, he found his way back to himself.

  Scrubbing at his face with both hands, he panted, “That’s enough. I can’t take any more. Next time, try the krill.”

  It might sever him from the past.

  But he did not pause to thank the Humbled. As soon as he could see, he yelled at the Feroce, “A path! We need a path!”

  If the clifftop could still hold anything heavier than the turmoil of small creatures—

  The lurker’s servants must have heard him. Mute as martyrs in the apotheosis of their devotion, they adjusted their approach. Instead of pressing themselves and dying against all of the skest at once, they shifted to form a wedge.

  Arranged like ur-viles or Waynhim, they began to kill and perish their way into the mass of acid-creatures.

  “Now!” Covenant told Clyme and Branl. “I have an idea!”

  He was closed to the senses of the Haruchai. They could not hear his thoughts; could hardly recognize his emotions. Nevertheless Branl responded as though he understood. Quick as intuition, he dropped from the slate; landed between Naybahn and Mhornym, where the stone was still solid. A heartbeat later, Clyme lifted Covenant, tossed him into Branl’s arms. While Branl set Covenant on his feet, Clyme jumped down to join them.

  Already most of the Feroce were gone, consumed in fire and vitriol. Many of the skest had fallen, reeking as their spent lives dissolved stone, ate chunks out of the clifftop. Wherever they died, they left deep pits and gouges.

  “All right,” Covenant muttered as if he were Linden. “Let’s see if this works.”

  He took the krill from his waist. Careful not to touch any part of the dagger, he flipped its covering aside until he had exposed the gem.

  A blare of radiance stung his sight. It swept back the gloom. The jewel was a cynosure of argence. In that narrow place, it effaced imminent night.

  Blinking as if his eyes were still full of blood, he saw skest wheel away from the few remaining Feroce. Turiya’s creatures knew the krill; or they remembered it. They or their distant ancestors had encountered it in the Sarangrave. Now they mewled like frightened young. They flinched and cowered. Then they began to retreat.

  As if they shared one mind, a dozen skest all crowded toward the cleft and the maze at the same time.

  Yes.

  The Feroce let them go. Only five of the lurker’s worshippers still lived. They clung desperately to the green fires in their hands and trembled, shaken by atavistic dread.

  When the skest were gone, the Feroce came a step or two nearer. Standing on gutted granite, they stopped. Their small forms seemed to ache with fatigue and defeat.

  “We are weak,” they said, timorous as if they deserved punishment. “We have come too far from our waters. Distance frays the majesty of our High God. The skest are too many. We cannot quell them.”

  Impassively Branl stated, “The skest will await us among the passages of the Shattered Hills.” With both hands, he stroked Naybahn’s neck. He may have been apologizing.

  Or grieving.

  Covenant’s jaws knotted. “And they’ll still be afraid.” Flanked by the Humbled and the Ranyhyn, he studied his straits. “They aren’t the real problem.” He knew how to reach Joan. “First we have to get there.” With his free hand, he indicated the eaten stone between him and the cleft; the only available entrance to the maze. The rock still steamed and stank as lingering acid bit deeper into its substance. “And we have to think of a way to save the Ranyhyn.”

  The clifftop looked too badly gnawed to support him. It would never hold Naybahn or Mhornym.

  Nevertheless Branl left Covenant’s side at once. Pressing himself to the hill-wall opposite the precipice, he side-stepped carefully toward the cleft.

  Now Covenant saw that a narrow span of stone at the base of the hill had been left undamaged. It was too slim for the Ranyhyn, but it accommodated Branl.

  When the Master reached the cleft, he glanced inward, nodded his satisfaction at the retreat of the skest. Then he told Covenant, “Our path is secure.” Frowning, he added, “It will not serve the Ranyhyn.”

  Pale in the krill’s vividness, the flames of the Feroce guttered, timid and apprehensive. After a moment, they sighed, “Stone lives. Its life is slow. Its pain is slow. But it lives. It remembers.

  “We have failed our High God. We must attempt amends. We will ask the stone to remember its strength. It has been ravaged. It has felt havoc. But if its life is slow, its awareness of harm is also slow. Its memory of strength persists.”

  Covenant stared at the creatures. What, remember its strength? After it was broken? The damage to the stone was severe. And he could discern no power capable of mending rock from the Feroce; no power of any kind apart from the frantic dance of their flames.

  But the creatures did not wait for a response. Trembling, they moved closer to each other, formed a tight circle. As they had done once before, they joined their hands, clasped their fires together. They may have been praying—

  Gradually their strange energies found new force. The nauseating hue of the Illearth Stone grew brighter. It etched itself against the hot silver of the krill.

  By some means, they had caused Covenant’s lost mount to recall its own nature earlier. They had restored the destrier’s contentious spirit.

  Maybe—

  Covenant saw nothing change. His senses were too dull to identify the effect wrought by the Feroce—if they achieved any effect at all. Clyme and Branl watched in silence.

  But the Ranyhyn reacted as if they understood the Feroce. They jerked up their heads, shook their manes, snorted fiercely. Emerald and argent contradicted each other in the wide glare of their eyes. Trumpeting defiance, they flung themselves forward; burst into a gallop.

  They managed one long stride on undamaged stone—and another, foreshortened. Then they sprang as far as they could stretch out across the wrecked rock.

  Both of them, when one would have been too heavy.

  Covenant forgot to breathe; forgot to blink at the blood still oozing from his forehead.

  At the limit of their leap, their forelegs struck the surface. It crumbled instantly. Of course it did. Much of it had been corroded to the consistency of rotten wood. The rest had lost its foundations. Nevertheless Naybahn and Mhornym snatched their hind legs under them and tried to spring again.

  They almost succe
eded.

  Almost.

  But the stone had been too badly chewed. A section of the clifftop collapsed beneath the horses. Chunks of rock fell like jagged gobbets of the Earth’s flesh.

  Frantically Naybahn and Mhornym scrambled at the failing slope. Somehow their hooves found purchase. Straining, they lunged forward onto stone as ruined and ruinous as the rock that they had crumbled.

  Beyond them, the flames of the Feroce rose like screams into the air.

  More of the surface broke. More of it fell away. Yet the Ranyhyn were faster—or the invocation of the Feroce had taken hold. Together Naybahn and Mhornym outran the collapse.

  Granite wreckage plummeted. A hungry plunge snapped at their heels as they neared the lurker’s creatures. But there, impossibly, the surface became stronger. The Feroce stood where the greatest number of skest had died, yet the clifftop clung to its former endurance. When the Ranyhyn surged past the creatures, they were able to truly gallop.

  “Damnation!” Covenant gasped. “Hell and blood! I would not have believed—”

  A moment later, the horses reached solid ground. At once, they skidded to a halt, neighing triumph.

  The Feroce unclosed their hands; let their peculiar magicks subside. Their small forms slumped as if they were exhausted.

  While he caught his breath, Covenant repeated to himself, Damnation! I would not have believed it. But he did not pause for astonishment. Relief only whetted his vulnerability. A large portion of the clifftop was gone. Against the foot of the Shattered Hills lay a gap as inviting and murderous as open jaws. And the drop called to him.

  Vertigo squirmed through him. Ruling himself with curses, he shouted to the Feroce, “Tell your High God! If it can be done, I’ll save him. I’ll save the Land. And thank him for me. He keeps his promises!”

  The Feroce looked too weary to respond; and he did not wait for them. Aiming his voice past the creatures, he ordered the Ranyhyn, “Don’t try to follow us! Find some other path. I’m counting on you! We’re going to need you.”

  Under his breath, he added, “If I don’t get us killed first.”

  Hurrying, he turned to Clyme. “We have to reach Branl, and I can’t do it. No way in hell.” His voice shook as if he were feverish. “I can’t keep my damn balance.” At one time, he had found calm in the eye of a whirling confluence of possibility and impossibility: he could not do so here. “But it’s worse than that. There’s something in me that wants to fall.” His inner Despiser? His yearning to surrender his burdens? “If the two of you can’t hold me, we might as well just jump.”

  In the light of Loric’s dagger, Clyme’s expression looked subtly scornful. “Secure the krill, ur-Lord,” he said as if Covenant’s alarm did not merit reassurance. “We will require both of your arms.”

  “Right.” Covenant tightened his grip on himself. “Of course you can hold me. What was I thinking?”

  In a rush, he swung the dagger so that Anele’s cloth wrapped itself around the metal, masked the bright gem.

  At once, darkness enclosed him. Its suddenness sealed him away from everything except the avid gulf. He could not even see Clyme. The Master was only a sensation of rigidity at his side. Nevertheless Covenant tucked the krill into his jeans.

  Then his eyes began to adjust. The precipice grew wider, darker; more compulsory. The faint flames of the Feroce did not shed enough light to protect him. Clyme became a more substantial avatar of night.

  While Covenant’s head reeled, Clyme grasped his left arm and pushed him firmly toward the hard wall of the hill.

  Instinctively he wanted to resist. Vertigo sang to him, as siren and alluring as the music of merewives. Seductions spun in his head, his stomach, his muscles. Did he trust the Haruchai? He had always said that he did. Put up or shut up.

  When his shoulder touched stone, he jammed his face and chest against it; clung to it. Not this time, he swore at his spinning mind; or at the Despiser. You can’t have me now. Wait your damn turn.

  Out of the dark, Branl said, “Extend your arm, ur-Lord. We will support you. You will not fall.”

  The appalled voice of Covenant’s alarm sneered, Oh, sure. Extend my arm. Like that’s going to happen. But he was already reaching for Branl. He had come too far and learned too much: his fears did not rule him.

  A hand as trustworthy as granite gripped his wrist, rock that defied corrosion. Between them, Branl and Clyme urged him along the base of the hill.

  The cleft was millennia away. Creeping on the verge of panic, Covenant would need an age of the Earth to cross the distance. But the Humbled were oblivious to the impossibility of their task. Ignoring the frenetic stutter of Covenant’s heart, they impelled him toward the crack in the hill; the entrance to the maze.

  When he stood at last between solid walls with gutrock under his boots, he staggered in relief; nearly stumbled to his knees. Still his companions upheld him.

  Here there was no light at all. The drained flames of the Feroce did not reach into the cleft.

  Gasping for balance, Covenant panted, “Remind the Ranyhyn. Insist, if you have to. They can’t follow us. We need them.” Then he managed to add, “Thank you.”

  “We are the Humbled,” Branl answered impassively, “Masters and Haruchai. We do not require gratitude.

  “On the Plains of Ra, the Ranyhyn reared to you. They will heed your wishes.”

  “In that case—” Gradually the gyre in Covenant’s head eased. By increments, his nerves released their terror and yearning. The Haruchai feared grief. It was their one maiming weakness. Naturally they did not want gratitude. “We should keep moving. I need a clearing of some kind. A little open ground. Maybe we can find it before the skest come at us again.”

  Storms of impatience and dread brewed in the background of his thoughts. But he did not protest when Clyme and Branl remained still. He was not steady enough to walk yet.

  They waited until he was able to stand without their support; until he took a couple of steps into the cleft and turned to face them. Then Clyme asked, “Ur-Lord, what is your intent? The skest await us. A Fall may strike at any moment. Your former mate remains beyond our discernment. We will be better able to serve you if we comprehend your purpose.”

  Covenant cursed to himself. Summoning as much honesty as he could bear, he admitted, “I’m afraid to say it out loud. You told me you don’t know how far turiya’s senses reach. If he hears me—if he even guesses—” Involuntarily Covenant shuddered. He could be so easily foiled. “I’m going to do something almost as crazy as Joan. And I need you with me. You just saved my life, but you aren’t done.” In darkness, he spread his hands to show the Humbled that he was helpless. “If you don’t want to do it, that’s your right. I won’t blame you. But I need you with me.”

  He had always needed companions. Friends. People who cared about him and loved the Land.

  For a long moment, the Humbled did not move. They may have been arguing with each other; debating the exigencies of their chosen role. Then they appeared to nod: without light, Covenant could not be sure.

  Clyme came forward. “I will lead while Branl wards your back. The Haruchai have no knowledge of this snare. Those Bloodguard who ventured here did not return, apart from Korik, Sill, and Doar, who revealed naught. But our perceptions exceed yours. We will search out a clearing or open place, according to your desires.”

  Instead of thanking the Humbled again, Covenant rested his halfhand in acknowledgment on Clyme’s shoulder. After that, he simply followed.

  Joan would try to kill him. She had no choice. Long ago, she had betrayed herself as well as him by turning her back. The same future could not hold them both.

  The cleft seemed to wander aimlessly, as if it had lost its way. Night had settled over the Shattered Hills. In the dark, Covenant could barely discern Clyme’s shape ahead of him. He stumbled on the rough ground, caught the toes of his boots on loose rocks. But he had unforgiving surfaces to guide him on either side, the Humbled to shepherd
him. And overhead the first dim hint of stars blinked in a narrow slit of sky like a path. When he missed his footing, he recovered his balance and went on.

  At intervals, he passed black holes in the bases of the walls, gaps that may have been small caves leading to tunnels. Each opening increased his tension: he expected skest. But he felt no hint of the creatures; smelled nothing except age and emptiness, the stagnant musk of departed immiseration. For some reason, turiya Herem was holding back. The Raver had some other ambush in mind.

  Ahead of Covenant, Clyme came to a fracture that bisected the cleft at a sharp angle. Off to the left, Covenant detected a vague impression of skest; a residual fetor. Instead of continuing along the cleft, Clyme turned to the right, almost doubling back on his course. Trailed by Covenant and then Branl, he strode into the dark, steadfast in his certainty.

  Here the way was cluttered with impediments: piles of rock fallen from the sheered rims of the Hills; occasional boulders; heaps of innominate debris. Covenant had to go more slowly, probing for obstacles. Damp blood like fire marked the place on his rib cage where he had been cut. His forehead seemed to burn. Fortunately Clyme soon found another intersection where a wider split like a corridor extended in both directions. The Master appeared to consider turning to the right again. Then he shook his head slightly and went left.

  Darkness and the height of the walls confused Covenant’s tenuous sense of direction. He could not remember patterns among the stars; and cold stone growing colder filled his scant health-sense. He had no idea whether he was moving toward or away from the promontory where he had remembered or imagined Joan.

  Impatience beat in the background of his awareness, an accumulating thunder. He did not question Clyme’s choices or instincts; but he felt sure that he was running out of time. How much longer would the Raver withhold his next attack? During the afternoon, the Humbled had sensed caesures. Had Joan exhausted herself? Was she tired enough to wait for Covenant?

  If she struck now, or the skest did, he might miss his only chance to surprise her and turiya—