Against All Things Ending (23 page)

“Subsequent events—” began Clyme.

“—are not foreknown to you,
Haruchai
,” put in the Ardent unexpectedly. “The lady seeks the recovery of her son. What further justification of her deeds do you require?”

“Subsequent events,” Clyme repeated, “may reveal that the lady, as you name her, is not done with Desecration. Did not the Mahdoubt give battle and so perish to prevent the surrender which Linden Avery now contemplates?”

“Oh, stop.” Linden wrapped her arms around her to contain her shivering. “I’m not going to
surrender
. If I do that, I’ll never see Jeremiah again. There won’t be anything left of me.”

She had already given up everything else.

“Silence your pride,” Stave advised the Humbled. He sounded distant; uninterested. But the play of reflections in his eye gave the impression that he was laughing to himself. “No deed or dare of the Chosen’s will lessen the import of the Unbeliever’s presence, or of your service to him. Come good or ill, boon or bane, he remains the Unbeliever, ur-Lord Thomas Covenant. And has he not urged you to accept her path? When you have no other guidance, it is poor fidelity to speak against his wishes.”

If the Humbled debated Stave’s counsel, or their own commitments, they did so in silence. None of them voiced any further objection.

“All right.” Linden gave herself no chance to hesitate. She did not share Covenant’s vertigo; but the depths of the cavern were crowded with terrors nonetheless. If she paused to think about them—“Stay here,” she told her friends. “Don’t try to cross until you can see that I’ve succeeded—or the Harrow has. There’s no sense in risking yourselves yet. And I don’t think that
orcrest
or the
krill
is likely to be of much use.”

“Do not fear for us,” Coldspray replied, still grinning sharply. “We have no wish to meet our deaths in this dire chasm.”

“Good.” More to encourage herself than to express approval, Linden nodded. “As long as Liand can hold off the worst of Kevin’s Dirt, you’ll probably know what happens as soon as I do.”

While her companions watched and waited, Linden gripped herself tightly and started toward the span. When Stave moved to join her, she did not refuse his company.

From her perspective of trepidation, the bridge—the Hazard—looked more delicate and fragile than it had seemed earlier.
Making it, they risked everything
.
Who they were
.
What they meant to themselves
. As she did. And the ceiling of the immense cavern loomed, louring like thunderheads. Hints of chiaroscuro reflected back and forth among the stalactites, implying lightning. Any one of those wet and straining shapes was heavy enough to break the span if it fell.

Stave walked at her side, so close that his shoulder brushed hers. In spite of her fears for him—for all of her companions—she welcomed the support of his inhuman strength, his argute senses. His dedication might serve as valor if or when her dreads threatened to paralyze her.

Together, Linden Avery and the former Master left safer rock and began to ascend the shallow arc of the Hazard.

Really, she insisted to herself, this ought to be easy. It was a short walk, perhaps two hundred paces. If she kept her gaze fixed on the far wall, did not look down—Yet the black abyss seemed to reach up as though it meant to snatch her off the bridge. The darkness itself may have been alive.

Covenant gave no sign that he had noticed what she was doing.

She could still feel the taut attention of her friends behind her. But every step took her farther from Liand and light. As the radiance of the Sunstone dimmed, her health-sense faded with it. Soon she would not be able to discern her companions at all. Unless she turned to look—

Feeling like a coward, she murmured to Stave, “Don’t let me fall. That chasm—” She shuddered. “It pulls at me.”

Stave touched his solid shoulder to hers. “Even here, Chosen, the sight of the
Haruchai
is merely diminished. It has not failed. This stone is sure. The weight of the Giants together may endanger it. We do not.”

He considered for a moment, then added, “Yet we must not tarry. There is evil here. Its malice lacks the distinct malevolence of Corruption, but it is malice nonetheless.”

Linden believed him. She felt only the seduction of the plunge below her; but she trusted his perceptions.

The light continued to weaken as the span rose. The dead air became an ache in her lungs. With every step, she moved deeper into memories of winter; of killing cold fraught with manipulation and treachery, and full of Jeremiah’s enslavement.

As her percipience waned, she lost her ability to locate the Harrow. His dun raiment had become indistinguishable from the dark portal. If he had found his way inward and gone ahead without her, she would not have known the difference. But Stave would have told her—And the Insequent had given his oath. The same strictures which had doomed the Mahdoubt ruled him as well.

On both sides of the Hazard, water trickled incessantly down the sides of the stalactites and fell like omens; promises of plummeting.

Then she and Stave passed the crest of the bridge and descended into shadow.

She was effectively blinded. An irrational certainty that she had begun to drift toward the unguarded rim of the span clutched at her. Fingers of ice reached through her clothes to torment her flesh. A whimper that she was barely able to contain clogged her throat.

But Stave took hold of her arm to steady her. “Calm your heart, Chosen,” he said as though he feared neither echoes nor banes. “The Harrow awaits you. It appears that he has ceased his own efforts, whatever they may have been. Now he regards you with suspicion and hope. I deem that he dreads the consequences of error, and that his dread has defeated him. He will accept your aid, for his alternative is humiliation and death.”

Linden trusted his reading of the Harrow. She had no choice. His firm grasp was all that kept her from hastening toward the relative sanctuary of broad granite at the foot of the bridge. She wanted to
get off
the Hazard. As her steps descended from darkness to darkness, her visceral conviction that the span would crack and collapse increased until it affected her more than bad air or cold or stifled percipience.

Through the drumming of her pulse, she hardly heard Stave announce, “The Chosen comes to proffer her assistance, Insequent. A courteous man would welcome her with light to ease her way.”

“And do you now consider yourself an arbiter of courtesies,
Haruchai
?” the deep loam of the Harrow’s voice replied. “You who only give battle or show disdain, disregarding the stature of those whom you encounter?

“My knowledge of courtesy exceeds yours, as does my prowess. Thus!”

Directly ahead of Linden, and no more than a dozen paces away, an umber illumination appeared as all of the beads on the Harrow’s doublet began to glow simultaneously.

They cast a dull light that revealed little more than the Insequent and his immediate surroundings. But that was enough to let Linden see where she placed her feet.

The bridge ended in a buttressed shelf of gutrock just outside the high archway of the entrance to the Lost Deep. The Harrow’s brown lumination did not extend beyond the plane of the portal: there it met sheer blackness as blunt and impermeable as burnished ebony. But Linden could see him and the foot of the span clearly enough.

Through the dusk crouching above her, she saw that the curve of the door was marked with strange symbols which she did not recognize.

The shelf extended for several long strides on either side of the sealed entrance. It was wide enough to accommodate the Giants. And in the center of the unobstructed stone, the Insequent still knelt as Rime Coldspray had described him: bent on one knee; gripping Covenant’s ring near his forehead; holding Linden’s Staff planted squarely on the stone. The chain on which she had worn the ring dangled from his fingers, swaying slightly. His posture suggested that her approach had interrupted his concentration. His fathomless eyes regarded her like smaller instances of the cavern’s depths: more human than the abyss, but no less fatal.

“The
Haruchai
speaks of assistance, lady,” the Harrow remarked, affecting scorn. But his contempt sounded hollow. “Do you conceive that I require any aid of yours?”

“Of course you do.” An inward rush carried Linden off the bridge. Then she stopped, shivering with relief. In spite of the cold, the enduring granite under her boots affected her like certainty. “You knew that when we first met. You’ve been trying to open that door on your own, but you can’t. And you can’t afford to make a mistake.”

When Stave released her arm, she grasped his to anchor her. “Those symbols,” she asked the Insequent, glancing upward. “Can you read them? What do they say?”

The Harrow studied her, loathing the oath which the Mahdoubt had wrested from him. “Their import is no mystery. They proclaim merely that beyond this portal lies the demesne and habitation of the sovereign Viles, monarchs of this realm, great in lore and peril, and unforgiving of intrusion. Further, the symbols counsel all with the wit to read them to turn aside. Here any who enter unwelcomed will discover only doom.”

Then he shrugged. “Sovereign or no, the Viles are long extinguished. Of their spawn, only those few ur-viles and Waynhim which betimes endeavor to serve you endure. I do not fear the doom of this place. When I have unbound its restrictions, no harm will remain to daunt me.”

“In other words,” Linden retorted, “you still don’t have a clue.” Her scorn was as hollow as his: she was too cold and truncated to feel disdain; had to fight too hard for breath. “I think that I can help you. If you let me.”

“ ‘Let you, lady?” mused the Harrow as though the idea held little interest. “I do not oppose you. In what form do you crave my permit?”

Gallows Howe, she might have answered. Rage. Slaughter. That’s what you think the Viles were like. You think that’s how they would have answered intrusion. You think that I can unlock blackness with blackness.

But she did not waste her flagging energy on a useless attempt to correct his misapprehensions. Already she was light-headed with hypoxia. The glow of the Harrow’s beads did nothing to cleanse the air. Soon she would be too weak to stand.

Panting, she explained, “If you let me use my Staff.” Before he could object, she added, “I’m not asking you to give it back. But somehow your hold on it blocks me.” Once she could have drawn Earthpower from it without grasping it; but he had erected a barrier against her. “Just let me touch it.” Let me be myself again, at least for a little while. “Let me borrow what it can do. Then I may be able to feel my way through the wards. If I
see
them, maybe I can open the door.”

While the Harrow considered her, perhaps searching for some indication of trickery, Stave asked flatly, “Is this hesitation, Insequent? If the doom of the Lost Deep does not inspire dread, how does it chance that you fear the Chosen’s aid?”

The Harrow scowled darkly, but did not respond to Stave’s challenge. Instead he continued to scrutinize Linden until he found something that satisfied him. Then he nodded.

Swinging the chain of Covenant’s ring as if that small movement were an arcane gesture, he said brusquely, “Make the attempt, lady.”

In simple weakness, Linden wanted to lie down. Prone, she could take hold of her Staff by its end: all she needed was its touch. But pride or stubbornness kept her on her feet as she moved to stand, trembling, in front of the Insequent. Striving for steadiness, she reached out with both hands and closed her fingers around the Staff of Law.

Contact with the warm wood was like a rebirth.

She had no measure for the extent to which Kevin’s Dirt had diminished her until her nerves felt the healing current of Earthpower and Law, the precise elucidation of Caerroil Wildwood’s runes. Then she became able to recognize how wan and superficial her sight had been without percipience. God, how had she borne it? How did the people of the Land who had never known health-sense endure their lives? Her existence in her natural world, the world which she had lost, had been fundamentally transformed by her previous hours or months with Covenant. During that time, she had grown familiar with seeing and hearing and touching and tasting the spiritual essence of all things: the underlying life-pulse of vitality and wonder. She did not know who she would have been if she had never experienced the Land; but she believed that she would have remained emotionally crippled, as damaged and despairing as her parents. The legacy of her father’s suicide and her mother’s death would have continued to define her.

Now everything around her seemed to unfold, to blossom, as though she had stepped into a new dimension of reality. She felt the obdurate antiquity of the rock under her; the sheer age and indifference of the air; the specific stability and limitations of the Hazard; the ponderous downward yearning of the stalactites; the commingled eagerness and submission of water as it gathered and trickled down the gnarled surfaces of the stalactites to fall like streams of time into the extinction of the abyss. She perceived the Harrow’s anxieties and hungers, and Stave’s stubborn strength, as if they impinged directly on her skin. She became aware of her own body—of its inherent inadequacies, and of its bedrock desire to live—as if her veins and nerves, muscles and sinews, were limned in light. And in the distance far below her, she sensed the restless lurk of something evil—

But those were the Staff’s passive effects. As soon as she began to draw on its power, the stagnation was banished from her lungs: she could breathe cleanly again. New energy ran like the effects of hurtloam through her veins. She recognized Liand’s brave and tiring efforts to keep his
orcrest
alight; identified each of the Giants and the Ramen, each of the Humbled. She felt Anele’s slumber and Covenant’s trackless wandering. She could have pointed to the exact spot where Loric’s
krill
, wrapped in vellum and lambent with possibilities, was tucked into the waist of Covenant’s jeans.