Against All Things Ending (24 page)

Nevertheless more immediate sensations demanded her attention. While the Harrow regarded her avidly, and Stave watched as if nothing had changed, she tasted the presence of complex theurgies.

The blackness that filled the portal of the Lost Deep was not blank: it was a seething mass of magicks, twisted and insidiously recursive. And its implications were not contained within the archway. Instead they extended in long looping tendrils, and in clusters like knot work, to form a web or skein of utter fuligin around the entire length of the Hazard. In some respects, the portal’s dark strands resembled Jeremiah’s racetrack construct: if she tried to follow their flow from one place to another, she would find herself in a maze from which there was no egress. But Jeremiah’s construct had been a door: one through which only he could pass, but a door nonetheless. The tangle that enclosed the bridge was formed for destruction. If even one of its strings were plucked, it would convulse, taking the granite substance of the span with it. In an instant, the bridge would become rubble falling endlessly into the depths.

In the initial wash of Earthpower, Linden saw that the wards defending the Hazard were like the Demondim.
Having no tangible forms, they would be lost to will and deed without some containing ensorcelment to preserve them from dissolution
.
Imagine that they were bound to themselves by threads of lore and purpose
. And the Harrow had told her that he had
learned the trick of unbinding them
. But apparently his knowledge did not extend to undoing the magicks here—or he was unable to discern the similarity between the way in which the Viles had given shape to the Demondim and the manner in which they had guarded their hidden realm.

He did not know how to use the Staff—

To an extent, however, the web threatening the bridge was chaff; distraction. Anyone who did not try to enter the Lost Deep could cross the span repeatedly without harm. The real danger, the crucial tangle, was
here
, concealed inside the portal’s cryptic moiling. One touch to the wrong strand would release ruin. But plucking the correct thread would open the Lost Deep. Severing that thread would unravel the wards completely, erasing their power from the span.

Sighing to herself, Linden thought, Well, sure. If only it were that easy. Tugging or cutting the proper strand with Law and Earthpower might not be difficult. However,
identifying
that tendril within the sensory confusion of the Viles’ lore would be as arduous as finding the
caesure
through which the Demondim horde had invoked the Illearth Stone. And here she did not have the horde’s evanescent hints of emerald and migraine to guide her. She did not have the ichor of the ur-viles and Waynhim to augment her health-sense.

But that was not her only problem.

As she extended her discernment, the sensations of a malignant presence seething in the chasm suddenly increased. For a moment, a swift flurry of frightened heartbeats, she thought that the evil was rising—

It was not. Now Linden saw the truth. The bane only appeared to surge upward because it, or she, was so enormous; so potent. Worse, she was
sentient
—Oh, God in Heaven, the malevolence was not merely alive: it was a conscious being. Asleep, yes—Linden could feel that—but restive, and capable of intention. In its—her—virulence, she exceeded the Illearth Stone as a sea exceeded a lake. She did less harm only because she was so much more deeply entombed. Nonetheless to Linden she looked more terrible than a host of
skurj
and Sandgorgons.

Only wild magic could oppose such a being. The Staff of Law would be useless against her. Staring downward, Linden realized with horror that this evil was the source of Kevin’s Dirt. Unconsciously, perhaps, but unmistakably, the bane supplied the raw force which Kastenessen and Esmer and
moksha
Raver had shaped to form their heinous brume.

If Linden’s company failed to rescue Jeremiah and escape before that entity came fully awake—

A cry for Covenant’s help caught in Linden’s throat. Surely it was for this that she had compelled him to resume his life? So that he would spare her the burden of confronting abominations? She lacked his instinct for impossible solutions. Without him, she and Jeremiah and all of her friends were lost.

But he also was lost.

While she floundered, the Harrow commanded abruptly, “Speak, lady.” He made a palpable attempt to sound severe, but flashes of alarm marred his tone. “How fare your efforts to demonstrate that I must have your aid?” In a smaller voice, he added, “We dare not linger here.”

He was lorewise enough to recognize the peril dozing restlessly in the depths.

Stung by her own fears, Linden jerked her head to face him. Still gripping the Staff with both hands, she snapped, “You don’t
know
, do you. You talk and talk, you like to tell us how you’re going to save the world, but you have no idea what to do if that thing
wakes up
.”

The Insequent flinched. Something in the gulfs of his eyes suggested fear. Yet he did not unclose his fingers from either the Staff of Law or the white gold ring. In his dreams of glory, he had found
the trick of unbinding
the wards before his presence disturbed the cavern’s bane.

“Then I will concede, lady,” he whispered softly, fiercely, “that in all sooth I require your assistance. The secret of unmaking the Demondim does not avail here. For that reason, I craved the wordless knowledge within the blackness of your heart. Your encounter with the ancient theurgy of Garroting Deep—the theurgy which scripted these runes—unveiled a mystery to you, though its meaning is beyond your comprehension.
I
would have known its use, but the Mahdoubt precluded me from acquiring it. Therefore the task is yours. Lady, we will perish here one and all if you do not immerse yourself in your darkest and most insatiable rage. You must become hate and vengeance or die.”

Linden glared back as though all of her darkest passions were directed at him.

“This bane is unknown to the
Haruchai
,” Stave observed, “and too distant for true discernment. Yet we perceive that it slumbers still. Mayhap there is no imminent need for haste.”

The former Master was wrong. Linden had to get away from the cavern and the Hazard before the proximity of so much malevolence shredded her nerves.

She would never reach Jeremiah if she did not find and cut exactly the right strand of magic. The tendrils of the Viles did not only extend along the span: they also reached inward. Havoc would be wrought in the Lost Deep if she made any mistake. The damage might isolate Jeremiah permanently. It might kill him.

“Then give me my Staff,” she demanded in a voice as low and grim as the Harrow’s. “Let it go. I’ll return it when I’ve found the way in. If I don’t keep my promises, you don’t have to keep yours. I’m not likely to forget that. But I can’t face you
and
those wards while that monstrosity might wake up.”

The Insequent bared his teeth in a feral grimace, wild and threatened. For a moment, Linden thought that he would refuse; that he might take the fatal risk of trying to open the portal himself. His greed—

But behind his mask of superiority, his fear was as strong as hers, and growing stronger. He needed her as badly as she needed her Staff. After a moment, he made an effort to swallow his pride. Without a word, he relinquished the written wood.

“Chosen,” Stave said like an affirmation. “Linden.”

At once, Linden accepted the Staff of Law,
her
Staff, and moved closer to the black seethe of magicks which blocked her from Jeremiah.

With the intensity of an absolute need, she ached for Covenant’s presence. Even if he could not help or guide her, he would at least understand that the Harrow was wrong. Thomas Covenant had known the ancient inhabitants of this place from the perspective of the Arch of Time. He had witnessed every manifestation of their dangerous lore; seen into the heart of their most abstruse secrets. He would comprehend that the Harrow had been misled by his avarice.

The Harrow’s knowledge of the Viles was too recent: he had gleaned it millennia after their self-loathing had faded from the Land. But Linden had faced them while they were poised on the cusp of Despite. And Covenant had known them when they had been justly considered
lofty and admirable
. According to Esmer, they had lived in
caverns as ornate and majestic as castles
.
There they devoted their vast power and knowledge to the making of beauty and wonder, and all of their works were filled with loveliness
.
For an age of the Earth, they spurned the heinous evils buried among the roots of Gravin Threndor
—

Covenant would understand. He had turned his back on scorn and punishment long before Lord Foul had slain him. The defenses of the Viles could not be opened by any power inspired by wrath and the hunger for retribution. Beings that had
risked everything
by forming the Hazard would not have done so out of rage. They would have been unacquainted with the desire for revenge.

Unless—, Linden thought suddenly. Unless the Viles had shaped their wards
after
the Ravers had taught them to loathe themselves. In that case, she rather than the Harrow might be wrong; and she was about to make her final mistake.

Far below her, one of the
heinous evils
stirred. Its sleep was troubled. Soon, inevitably, it would awaken.

Its emanations clawed at Linden until her assurance hung in tatters.

While she hesitated, caught by her old paralysis, Stave came closer. Apparently he could sense her turmoil. With one hand, he rested his strength firmly on her trembling shoulder.

“In your company,” he remarked, “and not without difficulty, I have learned that there is merit in doubt.” He sounded uncharacteristically casual, as if he were making a conscious effort to dispel trepidation. “Yet it is the nature of evil to feast upon fear, breeding distrust and inaction from doubt. And even in sleep, evil seduces. Chosen, you must close your heart to its lure. If the tales of the Lords are sooth, the Viles did not do so. Thus they persuaded themselves to their doom.”

Linden had no choice: she had to trust her first impressions; trust that the convoluted, self-complicating blackness of the wards expressed the caution of majesty rather than the louring bitterness of disdain. If she did not, she would remain frozen in indecision.

With an effort, she straightened her back, squared her shoulders. Deliberately she unclosed one hand from the Staff to comb her hair back from her face. Then she touched Stave’s fingers briefly—a small gesture of thanks—and resumed her grip on the graven ebony of the wood.

—close your heart—

Easily said. Deafening her senses to the somnolent ferocity of the bane was hard. But she had been an emergency room surgeon, trained to regard only the wound directly in front of her. With a kind of concentration that allowed no intrusion, she had once cut into Jeremiah’s burned hand. Thinking of nothing else, she had amputated two of his fingers—and had saved the others as well as the thumb. Because of what she had done, he could use his remaining digits as deftly as a wizard.

Gradually the bane’s aura lost its power to rend and shred. One strand and implication at a time, Linden tuned her percipience to the squirming moil of the entrance to the Lost Deep.

It was there, she was sure of it. The crucial tangle which formed the crux or keystone of the Viles’ wards lay among the entwined permutations of the portal, not elsewhere. Otherwise the creatures could not have left or re-entered their realm. Somewhere within that midnight mass writhing like a nest of snakes—dark as vipers, swift as adders—was the one thread of theurgy which could render all the rest harmless.

As a perceptual challenge, Linden’s task daunted her. It seemed impossible. Apart from the barrier’s seething, it betrayed no features of any kind: no definitions or demarcations; no shapes apart from the tendrils themselves in constant motion. All of its implications led to confusion.

When she had detached herself from her fears, however, she found that she did not lack resources. Her encounter with the Viles informed her health-sense. She had experienced their eldritch paresthesia. She could not see the meaning of the strands; but she could hear that they
had
meaning. She could smell the austere suzerainty which had suffused their creation. As she opened her senses, she could almost taste the negligent skill with which the Viles had fashioned defenses that they considered a trivial and largely unnecessary precaution.

Now at last she could be certain that the Harrow was wrong. The scent and taste of the barrier expressed no ire, no desire for harm. The Viles had formed it out of wariness, not from fear or hatred.

Slowly, using the Staff only to whet her percipience, Linden reached out with one hand and brushed it lightly over the surface of the blackness. By touch, she listened to the lore which had written the wards.

It spoke no language that she knew. She would never grasp the ineffable knowledge of the Viles. Nevertheless it was as precise and sequacious as Caerroil Wildwood’s runes. Although she could not decipher its meaning, the simple fact that it had meaning guided her. Its logic flowed past her fingers with both direction and purpose.

In one shape or another, every strand and implication, every uninterpretable sound and scent, ran toward or away from the essential conundrum of the Viles’ intentions.

At its core, therefore, her task was one of comprehension: not of the wards, but of the Viles themselves. The tangle of their defenses was a manifestation of their skeined hearts. Millennia in the Land’s past, she had heard and felt and tasted their insistent self-referential debates, their multifarious conflicted questing for the significance of who and what they were. And long days ago, Esmer had done what he could to explain
the sovereign and isolate Viles
.