Against All Things Ending (105 page)

On their foreheads, their stars shone like echoes of Loric’s eldritch gem; instances of salvation.

Covenant did not hesitate. He would not be able to stay on his feet much longer. He had to act—

In spite of his peril, he sacrificed a moment for the Humbled. Swinging the
krill
, he slapped at Clyme’s chest with the flat of the blade. He did the same to Branl. Needy as a supplicant, he touched both of them with the inferred possibilities of wild magic.

A heartbeat later, he lurched into motion, stumbling toward Joan.

The Raver tried to warn her. He howled for her attention; roared to break the enchantment of horses. But in her that magic was older than his mastery: much older. It endured like bedrock beneath the rubble of her madness. Rapt in the face of her one remaining love, she waited with her arms wide while Covenant struggled to reach her.

Five wracked steps. Six.

God help me. Be merciful to me, for I have sinned.

Moments before the Ranyhyn came near enough to take his burden from him, Thomas Covenant gave Joan the only gift that he had left. Nearly falling, he slid his blade into the center of her chest.

With High Lord Loric’s
krill
, he accepted her guilt and set her free. Then he plunged to his knees.

As she died, he heard Mhornym and Naybahn cry lamentation into the night.

L
ater Covenant realized that Branl and Clyme were still with him. Wild magic and Joan’s death had removed them from the
caesure
before the Arch healed itself, locking them out of their proper time forever.

And the Ranyhyn were still with him. Killing Joan, he had spared them the necessity of striking down a woman who loved them. Because he was capable of such things, they feared him—and would remain faithful to the end.

Turiya
Herem was gone. Covenant did not imagine that he had slain the Raver. Doubtless the
krill
could have killed Lord Foul’s servant, if
turiya
had continued to possess Joan. However, the Raver had not done so. He had discarded her like a useless husk, seeking some new being or creature to inhabit.

But Covenant did not think about
turiya
, or about the Ranyhyn, or about the improbable survival of the Humbled. He hardly thought at all. Stunned in the aftermath of delivering death, he was not aware that he had dropped the
krill
; or that Branl had retrieved it; or that the dagger’s gem was dark, deprived of wild magic and light. Covenant was only grateful that he was not alone.

He had never been able to bear his crimes in isolation. Without friends and companions and love steadfast beyond his worth, he would have failed long ago.

When Clyme or Branl spoke, he did not hear. He had no room for words. Instead he crawled forward, seeping blood, until he reached Joan. Her arms were still outstretched; still waiting for horses. Her right fist still held her wedding band.

With as much gentleness as he could summon, he peeled back her fingers until he was able to claim her ring.

For a long moment, he peered at it as if it were a mere trinket; something to be tossed aside when it had served its purpose. But finally he accepted it as well. Looping the chain over his head, he hung her ring against his sternum: one of the few bones in his chest that did not feel cracked or broken.

Only then did he begin to listen.

“Ur-Lord,” Clyme or Branl was saying, “we must flee. The tsunami comes.” One of them added, “We cannot bear you to safety. We are not swift enough. You must consent to ride.”

After a while, Covenant found that he had room for one word.

“Never.”

If he accomplished nothing else that would serve as restitution, he was going to by God keep his promise to the Ranyhyn.

The Humbled did not object or argue. They did not waste time. Quickly they mounted their Ranyhyn. Then they leaned down to Covenant, one on each side of him, grasped him by his arms near his shoulders, and lifted him into the air between them.

Mhornym and Naybahn needed no urging to run. In perfect step an exact distance apart, they wheeled away and sprang into a gallop, racing toward their only conceivable salvation: the riven cliffs where Foul’s Creche had once stood high above the sea.

Hanging helpless while his arms wept with pain, and fragments of bone ground against each other in his chest, Covenant heard it now, the unfathomable rumble of the tidal-wave. He felt tremors like incipient spasms in the seafloor, even though the horses were sure of their footing, and the hands of the Humbled were as reliable as iron. If he could have looked behind him, he might have seen havoc looming against the bleak stars, the fragile heavens—

He did not try to look. He paid no attention to the littleness of the Ranyhyn against the imponderable force of a tsunami. He trusted them absolutely, and had no strength left for fear.

The rumble became thunder, an upheaval as vast as the Worm’s movement through the sea. It blotted out the world at his back, making every mortal effort vain. To strive against all things ending was simple vanity, valiant and futile. Like the Worm, the tsunami exceeded living comprehension. It could be neither accepted nor opposed. It required a different answer.

Nevertheless the Ranyhyn ran like figures in dreams, swift as yearning, slow as hopelessness. Their febrile rush tore at Covenant’s arms, but they would never reach the cliffs.

Then they had already done so. At the verge of a great fan of rubble that piled massively toward the heights of the promontory, Naybahn and Mhornym pounded to a halt.

Somehow Clyme and Branl dismounted without dropping Covenant; without dislocating his shoulders. At once, Clyme swept Covenant into his arms. As he sprang at the rising wreckage, he told Covenant, “Here we are quicker than Ranyhyn. There is no path. They must ascend with care. If fortune smiles upon them, they may yet survive the onslaught of waters. But we require greater haste.”

Covenant did not hear him. The roar of the tidal-wave smothered sound. It smothered thought. The tsunami was a mountain-range of water mounting against the Land. It would hit like the earthquake which had riven
Melenkurion
Skyweir. Its violence might resemble the convulsion which had severed the whole of the Lower Land from the Upper. The Ranyhyn would be smashed to pulp in an instant. Covenant and the Humbled would die in the first impact of the wave.

During the past few days, many regions of the Earth must have suffered similar catastrophes: shocks brutal enough to crush islands, maim continents. Now the Worm was feeding its way toward the Land at last.

Useless in Clyme’s arms, Covenant tried to say, “Thank you.” Just in case. But his voice made no sound that could be heard through the onset of mountains.

Supernally fleet, the Humbled bounded upward. Covenant tried to sense the progress of the struggling Ranyhyn, but the tsunami filled every nerve, every perception. It felt higher than the cliffs; higher than the unattainable obstruction of the Shattered Hills. It might flood the Lower Land as far as Landsdrop. Unable to discern the horses, he simply prayed that Linden and her companions would receive enough warning—

Then the Humbled were not leaping up rocks, not hurling themselves at unassailable boulders. Instead they ran from crest to crest across the foundation-stones of Foul’s Creche. The rubble still climbed toward the comparative flat of the promontory, but more gradually here, allowing them to increase their speed.

Covenant should have been able to remember this place. He should have known how far he and the Humbled were from cooled Hotash Slay and the Shattered Hills. He had not cut himself off from the memories which belonged to his former mortal life. But he was too weak now. He had lost too much blood; had too many broken bones. He had killed Joan. Even his most human recollections were effaced by the impending mass of the tidal-wave.

When the Humbled stopped—when they turned to watch the wavefront—he did not understand why. A moment passed before he realized that they stood on old lava at the western boundary of the promontory. He gaped at the dark bulk of the Shattered Hills only a few dozen paces away, and could not comprehend what he saw.

How had Clyme carried him so far?

Why were they still alive?

Why were they no longer fleeing?

At last, he forced himself to look toward the east; and as he did so, the tsunami struck the cliff. In that instant, his entire reality became thunder and tumult as savage as the destruction of Ridjeck Thome.

Time seemed to pause as though the Arch itself recoiled in dismay. He felt stubborn rock shaken to shards and scattered. He heard cliffs scream as they clung to their moorings. He saw an immeasurable mass of water rise and rise, its surge crowned with froth and luminescence as if it were full of stars. Concussions shook the world. But he could not separate one detail from another. They were all one, all too much for his mind to contain; and they appeared to take no time. No time forever.

Water broke over the promontory; inundated it; plunged from its sides; swept forward. It spouted like a tremendous geyser from the rent where Foul’s Creche had once stood. Spray stung Covenant’s eyes until he could not see. It soaked his clothes, drenched his many wounds. Yet Clyme and Branl stood where they were, rigid as defiance. Apparently they believed that they had estimated the tsunami’s reach exactly; that it would not take them.

Too weak to protest, Covenant lay in Clyme’s arms and awaited the fate that the Humbled had chosen.

In front of him, the wave’s force was split by the wedge of the promontory, deflected by the shape and bulk of the stone. Higher turmoil crashed against the cliffs on either side. Sweeping over granite toward Hotash Slay, the tsunami parted; recoiled against itself; poured away. At the end of its rush, it climbed to the knees of the Masters. It slapped against the first bluffs of the Hills. Then it began to spill backward. Its sweep would have dragged anyone weaker than the
Haruchai
with it.

When time resumed its inexorable beat, Covenant understood that he was going to live.

After a while, he was able to think again. Eventually he was able to look away from the receding waters. But when he regarded his companions, their flat stoicism made him flinch. It reminded him that they had left the Ranyhyn behind.

Sighing to himself, he wondered whether he would ever again draw a breath that did not taste of salt and death. If the Humbled whistled, other Ranyhyn would come. And they would know how to find their way through the maze. But their fidelity would not make the loss of Mhornym and Naybahn less grievous. It would not relieve the necessity of Joan’s end.

By degrees, Covenant regained the sensation of passing moments. Through the star-pricked darkness, he watched the seas subside, thrashing against the cliffs. On either side, sections of stone had calved like glaciers. Slabs the size of Revelstone’s prow, or of Kevin’s Watch, continued to topple, unregarded by the lashing ocean. And as the waves shrank to the scale of a more ordinary storm, he saw that the end of the promontory was gone, broken by the brunt of the tidal-wave. Every hint or relic of the Despiser’s former habitation had collapsed, leaving no sign that it had ever existed.

Still Clyme and Branl stood where they were, as unmoved as icons. For a time, Covenant wondered why they remained, expressionless and dour. Then he realized that they were waiting for the Ranyhyn.

Waiting for Mhornym and Naybahn, and refusing to mourn, until hope became impossible.

Even then, they might not permit themselves sorrow. They were
Haruchai
: they had done what they could. To their way of thinking, grief was a form of disrespect. Any admission of loss would dishonor the sacrifice of the Ranyhyn.

Vexed by the self-inflicted wound that was the
Haruchai
version of rectitude, Covenant twisted against Clyme’s arms; asked to be put down. When the Master set him on his feet, he feared that he would prove too weak to stand. But he splayed his legs, braced himself on Clyme’s shoulder, and refused to crumble. Then he withdrew his hand, kept himself upright.

He needed at least that much distance from the intransigence of the Humbled. His own mute lament demanded it.

Gradually he became aware that dawn was near. The pallor in the east was faint: he could not be sure of it. Nonetheless his wan health-sense interpreted the darkness. His surviving nerves assured him that this night was nearly done.

Perhaps when the sun rose, the Humbled would consent to leave Hotash Slay so that he could at least try to return to Linden and Jeremiah and Stave; to Mahrtiir and the Swordmainnir.

Linden would recognize his sadness and his sins. Her companions would understand them.

But the sun did not rise.

By tentative increments, the east paled. Slowly a preternatural gloaming spread across the Sunbirth Sea until it diluted the dark over Hotash Slay and the Shattered Hills. In contrast, the stars overhead grew strangely distinct, eerie and fragile. They seemed closer, drawing near to bewail their plight. The Humbled became vaguely visible, as if they stood in dusk or shadow. At their backs, the Hills crouched like megalithic beasts. But there was no sun.