Against All Things Ending

by Donaldson, Stephen R.

  In torment and frailty, she was still fighting for salvation. Everything else—rage and the Raver, wild magic, self-abuse, carnage—was just confusion.

  Because of course eventually she had realized that she had been betrayed again. Eyes like fangs had not spared her that knowledge. Turiya Herem had not spared her. Covenant was the source of her horror. Her agony and degradation could not end while he lived. But her efforts on Haven Farm had led only to the death of his body. His spirit flourished in the Arch of Time. While she grew weaker, he acquired new strength. He was loved. He was even revered. Retribution was her only conceivable release, and he blocked it. Worse, he negated it. Simply by standing against her, he made her less than nothing. His treachery transformed every single moment and slash of her unceasing anguish into a cruel joke.

  Turiya did not let her forget that. Contemptuously he ruled her thoughts. He guided her use of her ring. And he reminded her that her son hated her. Her own son. Who could have spared her; could have made it stop.

  Roger had refused to do so because he scorned her pain. He had come for her only to inflict more brutality. Like his father, he had betrayed her utterly.

  If she could have found anything within herself except pain and turiya Herem, she would have torn down entire worlds to punish him.

  Behold! the Raver chortled to Covenant. His glee was the purest sting, the most perfect ice. Witness the outcome of your long strife! She is yours. You have made her to be what she is. Are you not therefore culpable for her deeds?

  If Joan’s caesures had not damaged the Law of Time, Linden could not have resurrected Covenant. She could not have roused the Worm of the World’s End. She was not a rightful wielder of wild magic. She did not have enough power. No, the original wounds to the structure of Life and Death had been delivered by Elena, Sunder, and Caer-Caveral. But Falls kept those hurts fresh. Without them, Linden would have failed.

  By the inexorable logic of guilt, the fault was Covenant’s.

  Involuntarily he nodded. He did not have it in him to contradict turiya. Like Joan, he had been shattered. The fact that she had fallen too far to be retrieved altered nothing. Indeed, he had not merely made her what she was. By permitting himself to be withdrawn from the Arch, when he could have refused the summons to Andelain, he had removed a vital barrier against her madness and wild magic. To that extent, he had enabled the barren future within which he was trapped.

  At one time, perhaps, she had been responsible for herself. Now the burden was his.

  Cold and scalding as congealed fire, the flat wilderland ached toward its illimitable horizons. An infinitude of disarticulated instants burrowed like screaming into Covenant’s helpless flesh. Within Joan’s mind, he returned to Haven Farm and horses in sunlight. He lived through what had become of her over and over again, as she did. Endlessly they repeated the cycle of her terrible dismay.

  Such things held him. They had always held him, and always would. This moment would never lead to another, and so he could neither escape nor die. Nothing would ever change.

  Nevertheless Branl and Clyme stood on either side of him. They remained exactly where they had been ever since this specific instant had been ripped out of its natural continuum.

  They did not look at him. They had never looked at him. They were unaware of his presence—or they, too, no longer existed.

  “Ur-Lord,” Branl said: a gust of vapor as gelid and unbearable as stark ice. “You must return to yourself.”

  “You must,” Clyme said. Plumes of frost issued from his mouth. “We cannot ward you.”

  “We are Haruchai,” Branl said. “We cannot share our minds with you.”

  “We are Haruchai,” Clyme echoed. “We do only what we can. Nothing more. As we have ever done.”

  They stood beside Covenant. Companions. He was not alone.

  Nothing changed. Here there was no possibility of change.

  Nonetheless Branl put his hand on Covenant’s left elbow. Clyme grasped the right.

  Together they lifted Covenant’s arms until he could see Loric’s krill clenched in both of his numbed hands.

  Oh, they were Haruchai! They lived in each other’s thoughts. They could carry the burden of too much time without faltering. And they stayed away from Joan. They had that power; that salvific intransigence. Stave had done the same. Even when he could have witnessed the private writhing of Linden’s spirit, he had held himself apart.

  The dagger’s shining did not pierce Covenant’s sight. His eyes were frozen. They had been chewed out of their orbits. Mere radiance could not blind him to what he saw; what he had seen; what he would always see. It was only wild magic. It was not redemption.

  But it was wild magic, an inherent and inextricable aspect of the Arch of Time. It added a new dimension to the overlapping realities of his helplessness.

  While Clyme and Branl supported him—while they upheld the krill’s transcendence—he saw more than the flat plain; more than swarming hornets; more than Joan’s reiterated suffering.

  He also saw her as if from the outside. As if he were present in her present.

  She stood ankle-deep in muck and water surrounded by jagged rocks and cruel reefs. Somehow she had crept or clambered several hundred paces across the seabed. Now she faced the blasted cliff where Foul’s Creche had fallen. Under the sealed doom of the night sky, she faced Covenant and the Humbled.

  In her trembling fist, she clutched her wedding band with its chain wrapped around it.

  Her knuckles were raw. Blood pulsed from the sore on her temple where she had punched and punched herself. In its own way, her self-abuse matched Covenant’s bleeding forehead. Blood made streaks of anguish down her sunken cheek. It stained the filth and tatters of her hospital gown. Rage blazed like the krill in her eyes. A rictus bared her few remaining teeth. The gaps in her gums oozed more blood. It marked her mouth as though she fed on living flesh.

  From his prison inside her mind, Covenant saw that she also saw him. She saw the Humbled and Loric’s bright weapon as if they had all stepped out of her madness to confront her.

  Watching himself and his companions while he also watched her, Covenant saw that he and Branl and Clyme were making their way toward her. Awash in silver, they traversed the unfathomable dark. Together they passed around boulders sharp enough to shred their flesh, avoided fingers of coral that reached for them like blades, splashed through puddles and pools left behind by the indrawn ocean.

  On all sides as far as the light of the krill extended, waters and gasping fish and sea-plants quivered in the shocks of distant convulsions. But such things did not trouble Joan. She wanted the tsunami. It could not come soon enough.

  Staring through her appalled eyes, Covenant saw himself and the krill and the Humbled advance toward her like the approach of horror: the ultimate apotheosis of her despair.

  None of this was real: he understood that. It was a mirage of movement and sequence made possible by Loric’s lore and Joan’s wild magic, nothing more; a mere figment. Nothing had changed. Nothing could change. He remained lost in his last Fall. His own abyss would never release him.

  But that did not matter. It was irrelevant. Meaningless. Because Joan believed what she saw. Participating in her thoughts, Covenant knew that she believed he had come for her.

  She believed that he meant to finish what he had started when he had married and betrayed her; when he had afflicted her with a cruel son. The man whom she most loathed and feared: the man who haunted her worst terrors. The man who had made her what she was.

  And she had no skest to defend her. The Raver had sent them all to oppose Covenant among the Shattered Hills.

  With a shriek that seemed to split the world, she raised her fist. Striking at her forehead, she unleashed a blast savage enough to incinerate an entire legion of Thomas Covenants and Haruchai.

  The krill accepted her attack. Its jewel became a sun in Covenant’s grasp. Some of her force the dagger simply dissipated. Some it absorbed until i
ts edges became sharp enough to cut through the boundaries between realities.

  Nevertheless a portion of her fury hit him.

  It did not kill him outright because he was not real. He had no physical existence, and so he could not be extirpated from her nightmares. But he was still vulnerable. She created caesures with wild magic. She could affect what happened within them.

  She could hurt him.

  In the multiplied simultaneous instants of impact, Covenant finally understood why Lord Foul had not forbidden turiya Raver to endanger Jeremiah with Falls. Yes, the Despiser burned to possess Jeremiah’s gifts; to control them. And Linden’s son would be forever unattainable if he were lost within a caesure. Eventually the destruction of the Arch of Time would destroy him also. But if wild magic enabled Joan to take action inside her temporal maelstroms, turiya could do the same through her. In effect, therefore, turiya Herem had the power to snatch Jeremiah back from chaos. Lord Foul could recapture the boy and use him.

  But no foe of the Land would choose to recapture Covenant. Joan’s force hurled him away. It pounded him against rocks and shoals.

  The Humbled did not move to catch him. They did not react at all. Instead they stood rigid as death, frozen in timeless ice and hornets.

  Their passivity was turiya’s doing. The Raver lived within Joan. He ruled her. As much as her madness permitted, he guided her rage. Riding her fire, he had reached into the Fall and mastered Clyme and Branl.

  They were done. They did not exist. They had never existed.

  But—

  Hellfire!

  But—

  Hell and blood!

  —Joan’s blow had other effects as well: effects which Herem had not intended, and could not prevent. It increased the implicit puissance of the krill, yes. That was important. It was necessary. But her violence also cast Covenant out of her mind. It externalized him. She could not end his life while he was absent in chaos, and so her hunger for retribution began to make him real. Physically present.

  Inadvertently her despair resurrected him in front of her.

  And the complex lore galvanized in Loric’s blade reinforced Covenant’s manifestation. It enhanced his substance. His grip on it quickened his translation out of the caesure.

  Already the gelid wilderness was fraying; evaporating. The firestorm of severed instants lost some of its ferocity. He was no longer trapped inside Joan.

  If she struck him again, she would make him fully present.

  But the same blow would also incinerate him. With one more bolt of silver lightning, she would finally rid herself of the ghoul which had haunted her suffering.

  Until then, however—until she punched herself once more, transformed her intimate agony into coruscation—

  Try it, Covenant panted. Try it. Try to survive it yourself. You’ve been making too many caesures. You exhausted yourself getting here. You’re so weak you can hardly stand. So go on. Try to kill me without burning out your own heart.

  While she groped for her last strength, he had things to do.

  Shaking in pain, he struggled to his feet.

  She had hit him hard. He had landed hard. His chest felt like a jumble of fractured ribs. Rocks and coral had torn strips from his jeans and T-shirt. They had shredded his arms and torso, parts of his legs. Blood ran from his forehead and a score of other wounds. Every beat of his pulse spilled more of his humanity. He was scarcely able to swallow or draw breath or hold himself upright.

  Nevertheless he stumbled toward Joan with the krill clenched in his fists and his own storm glaring in his eyes.

  I’m sorry you’ve been through so much. I really am. But this is the wrong answer. It’s possible to be in pain without hating yourself and the whole world. You don’t have the right to make everybody else feel the same way you do.

  She blinked at his staggering approach. Her wild eyes were empty of comprehension. She was not alarmed to see him coming closer with his incandescent dagger. Here the power was hers, not his. She would hit herself again. Hurl another bolt of wild magic. Flay the skin from his bones; burn out his soul. As soon as he came close enough. As soon as she was able to lift her arm.

  In her own way, she was no longer afraid.

  And the Humbled could not help him. They were still caught in the caesure. They did not exist in any defined time.

  But turiya saw more than Joan did; understood more. He knew what was happening to Covenant. He knew what the krill could do.

  In spite of his eager rapture, the Raver lived within Joan’s weakness. With torment and coercion, he could direct her outbursts; but he also shared her physical frailty, her prolonged emotional inanition. That was the price he paid for possessing her. He could not exceed her limitations through her.

  Nonetheless turiya Herem retained his own powers. He could exert them. He delivered his separate assault while Covenant was still ten ravaged paces away.

  He did not try to enter Covenant. He was unwilling to relinquish Joan. And he had reason to believe that Covenant knew how to defy him. Covenant had twice defeated the Despiser—

  Unlike Joan, however, turiya recognized that Covenant had other vulnerabilities. Instead of striving to rule Covenant, the Raver turned Covenant’s reincarnation against him.

  Reaching out, turiya tripped Covenant’s mind. A dark hand of thought sent Covenant sprawling into one of the fissures that flawed his ability to stand in his own present.

  Instantly Joan and wild magic and turiya Herem and the Humbled and the krill and the emptied seabed lost their immediacy; their importance. In one form or another, they all still occupied the living moments before Joan summoned the will to complete Covenant’s death. Stubbornly Branl and Clyme strained to alter what had happened to them. But Covenant did not. He could not. A wall like leprosy stood between him and his mortality. It was transparent. He could see what lay beyond it. But it was also incurable. It enclosed him until nothing mattered except memory.

  For a time, he remembered the stasis which the Elohim had once imposed on him. They had rendered him utterly helpless—and perfectly aware of it. By that means, they had sought to prevent him from endangering the Arch while they manipulated Linden; while they tried to make of her their chosen instrument. He remembered Bhrathairealm, and Kasreyn of the Gyre, and the Sandgorgon Nom.

  Fortunately that recollection was brief. He fell again, or slipped aside, and was set free.

  From stasis, he walked with the ease of youth and vigor back into the comfortable shade of a remnant of the One Forest.

  He knew this region. After centuries of killing and bitter loss, the Forest here had dwindled until it became Morinmoss between the borders of Andelain and the Plains of Ra. Still this portion of the woodland, like others elsewhere, retained its intended grandeur. These were trees that knew abundant sunshine and rain, enjoyed deep loam. Most of them were hoary monarchs bestrewn with creepers and draped in moss, trees like oak and sycamore and cypress that spread their roots and their boughs wide, crowding out lesser vegetation. There were saplings, certainly. There were deadfalls, and trunks blasted by lightning, and vast kings perishing of old age. But such things were natural to forests. And few of them obstructed the ground. Covenant could walk where he willed without hindrance. Blessed by fecundity and shade, he could have run if he had felt any desire or need to do so.

  He was in no hurry. He remembered where he was going, and the way was not far.

  Guided by the gentle contours of hills, he came to a rich glade like a coronal display of wildflowers and long grass. Reveling in sunlight, he walked out from among the trees to watch with wonder as Forestals came together in conclave.

  All of them. Together. Here. For the first time—and for the last. Some who would soon pass away. Others who endured for centuries or millennia, faithful to their tasks among the trees, and to their growing wrath, and to their woe. All of them.

  They were singing a song that Covenant knew by heart.

  Branches spread and tree trunks growr />
  Through rain and heat and snow and cold;

  Though wide world’s winds untimely blow,

  And earthquakes rock and cliff unseal,

  My leaves grow green and seedlings bloom.

  Since days before the Earth was old

  And Time began its walk to doom,

  The Forests world’s bare rock anneal,

  Forbidding dusty waste and death.

  I am the Land’s Creator’s hold:

  I inhale all expiring breath,

  And breathe out life to bind and heal.

  Unseen within the Arch, unknown to the Forestals, Covenant had often stood witness to this scene. He loved it with his whole heart.

  Caerroil Wildwood was here, and Cav-Morin Fernhold. Dhorehold of the Dark. One who was called the Magister of Andelain; and another who named himself Syr Embattled, doing what he could to defend Giant Woods. Others. All of them. In their times, they had been the exigent guardians of everything precious in the Land: precious and doomed. Here they were wreathed in music and magic, the poignant, potent sorrow of their striving to slow the ineluctable murder of trees.

  Yet something about the scene troubled Covenant: something that was not woe or regret or ire. He was surely entranced; but he was also disturbed. In some fashion that he did not know how to identify, the conclave of the Forestals was not as he remembered it. It had become flat: too superficial to be true. It resembled a masque performed by smaller beings, accurate in every detail, yet somehow less than it should have been.

  If the trees and the glade and the Forestals had been anything other than a memory, Covenant might have concluded that he had lost his health-sense. He could not see in, and so he could not truly see at all.

  Joan was too strong for him. Turiya Herem was too strong. If they did not kill him, he would never survive the tsunami.

  Linden might hang on for a few more days. Then she, too, would perish.

  He had abandoned her as though he had never loved her.