Against All Things Ending (27 page)

To all appearances, she stood in the ballroom of a vast palace or mansion, the dwelling of some supreme sovereign surrounded by incarnate wealth. On a burnished marmoreal floor, rugs overlapped each other in every direction. They were as sumptuous as cushions, and as richly woven as tapestries; yet they were also transparent, as clear as light; simultaneously solid and impalpable. Against the far walls, wide stairways with treads and banisters of flawless crystal arced upward like wings. At precise intervals among the rugs, shafts of glass spun in delicate filigree rose to five or six times the height of the Giants; and from elaborate arms atop the shafts hung chandeliers in profusion, each bedizened with scores or hundreds of lights as pure and white as stars, and as clinquant as precious metals. Along the walls, golden braziers gave off flames that suffused the air with tranquility. And in the center of the space, a fountain of ice—translucent and perfectly frozen—spouted toward the distant ceiling. It reached as high as the chandeliers, where it spread outward in a ceaseless spray, droplets as fine and faceted as jewels. Yet no current flowed. No bead fell. The ice was so motionless that it seemed sealed in time rather than in cold.

Above it, on the ceiling itself, mosaics as magnificent as choirs displayed their voices from wall to wall. The magic of their creation made them simultaneously as articulate as glory and as colorless as water.

Helpless to resist her amazement, Linden gazed around the palace like a woman bespelled. As she did so, some indistinct part of her observed that her companions appeared to feel the same dazzlement. Even the Humbled and Stave were lost in wonder. They wandered away from her, away from Covenant, in a kind of rapture, studying avidly every gleaming crystalline miracle. Liand drifted apart. The Giants separated to peer in awe and delight at the filigree shafts, or at the fountain held ineffably in abeyance. Some of them stooped to trail their fingers along the patterns that elaborated the rugs. Like the ecstatic figures in dreams, the Cords and Liand craned their necks to watch the dance of the chandeliers, hear the music of the mosaics. In spite of his blindness, Manethrall Mahrtiir was dazed by munificence.

Anele had awakened. Squirming in Galesend’s arms, he asked her to put him down. When he stood on the glowing floor, however, he did not move. Instead he remained where Galesend had placed him, jerking his head from side to side with an air of rapt attention, saying nothing.

For some reason, the Ardent had wrapped his raiment tightly around himself again. Then he sank to the floor in a mound of garish and incondign hues. There he rocked himself from side to side like a child in need of comfort.

And Covenant—He, too, had drifted away. Standing before one of the braziers, he stared into the evanescent mansuetude of the flames as if they had ravished him.

In her tranced state, Linden saw no sign of the Harrow. But she did not care what had become of him. She could not: the palace ruled her as though her mind or her spirit had been consumed by astonishment.

Here she might find it possible to know and feel nothing except glad peace until she became as translucent as the fountain and the stairs, the rugs and the chandeliers.

Some time seemed to pass before she found the heart of her amazement and recognized the truth, the defining mystery of what the Viles had accomplished in the prime of their power. Inspired by her previous encounter with their theurgy, she saw that the entire palace and everything in it, the walls and rugs, the shafts of glass, the frozen fountain, the hanging anadems of the chandeliers, the voiced and melodious mosaics, even the golden luxury of the braziers and flames: all of it was made of water. Of
water
, pure and irreproachable. The magic enchanting her was the magic that had formed the edifice; the magic that sustained it millennia after its makers had perished from the Earth. Somehow the Viles had woven water into these multifarious shapes, these myriad details, and then had caused the water to remain—

The palace was a sculpture, a work of the most sublime art: an eldritch and enduring triumph of ability and will over the fluid inconstancy of time.

Esmer had hardly done the Viles justice when he had called them
lofty and admirable
. Their lore was indeed
terrible and matchless
.—
and all of their works were filled with loveliness
.

That such creatures had been lured into self-loathing was an abomination.

One of many. The history of the Land, and of the Earth, was littered with the rubble of atrocities for which Lord Foul deserved to be held accountable.

Yet Linden felt no umbrage, no desire to take action. Only the subtle nagging of discomfort along the length of her nerves marred her tranquility. In this place, this supernal masterpiece, the Despiser’s many hurts warranted no concern. She could relax into a measureless contentment that explained more eloquently than any language why the Viles had taken so long to venture out of the Lost Deep. They, too, had been eased by their dreams and their labors; their transcendental achievements. Like them, she would have been reluctant to risk the meaning of her life elsewhere.

Now that she knew the secret of the palace, she saw it displayed everywhere. Tumbling freshets had supplied the substance of the shafts which upheld the chandeliers. Lakes as calm as Glimmermere had made the walls. Brooks giggling over their rocks in springtime had become the rugs; the vociferous mosaics. The fountain was a captured geyser.

A hint of anxiety still twisted in the private channels of her body, but she had forgotten what it meant. If Anele had not placed himself directly in front of her, interrupting her contemplation of miracles, she might not have noticed that he had set aside his passivity.

“Anele,” he said with exaggerated precision, as if he found words difficult to utter. “Hears bells. Chiming. They disturb—He craves. Needs. Seeks.” For a moment, he appeared to lose track of his thoughts. Then he gathered up their broken strands and offered them to Linden. “Redemption.”

His hands trembled as he reached out to clasp her shoulders.

His touch was insistent, but gentle; so soft that she barely felt it. Nevertheless a small jolt ran through her as though he had reached past the obstacles of her shirt and her eased spirit to awaken her flesh with Earthpower.

Water, she thought indirectly. That was the secret. Its snared fluidity expressed to perfection the flowing bafflement that the Viles imposed on ordinary forms of discernment; mortal modes of understanding. In the Land’s past, she had experienced a trammeled manifestation of that confusion. Here she would have seen smells, felt colors, tasted voices—if the Viles had not frozen water and theurgy into permanence.

While Anele held her shoulders, she found that she, too, heard a muffled ringing.

Before he could release her, she grasped one of his hands in both of hers, held it to her heart. Then she looked around, trying to locate the source of the sounds.

She found it between Liand and one of the spun shafts. While the Stonedownor studied the glitter of the chandelier in calm and enraptured delirium, the Harrow struck one heel of the Staff repeatedly on the rug where he stood. From that soft impact arose a silvery tintinnabulation like the urging of distant chimes.

Without Anele’s hand clutched in hers, Linden might have lost sight of the Insequent again; or forgotten him. But the effect of the old man’s skin against hers, the almost impalpable emanations of his inherited strength, elucidated her perceptions. Earthpower explained the Harrow. He was striving to invoke the fire of the Staff so that he could break free of the palace’s ensorcelment.

Linden watched him with nothing more than the surface of her mind; felt only a detached curiosity. After a few moments, she might have lost interest and looked away, in spite of Anele’s indirect adjuration. But as she considered the Harrow, he appeared to burst into flame. He and the Staff and his determination to claim Jeremiah became a pillar of conflagration as he began to move, striding toward an ornate stairway beyond the fountain.

Bewildered by magicks, he had forgotten his oath to take Linden with him; or perhaps his need to escape the seductions of water compelled him to neglect her.

As he left her behind, something buried within Linden stirred. Still clinging to Anele’s hand, she also began to move.

Earthpower. That was it. She needed Earthpower: more than she could glean from the old man. His legacy was too deeply hidden within him, defended by layers of madness. She required a more direct source—

She needed her health-sense.

Walking as Anele had spoken, as if each step demanded an arduous and precise effort, she stepped toward Liand, drawing the old man with her.

None of her companions gave any sign that they could see her; that they knew who she was. No one else could help her.

In the same way that Anele had confronted her, she intruded on the Stonedownor’s gaze.

He was her first real friend since she had lost her son. He had enabled her flight from Mithil Stonedown and the Masters with Anele when she had no other aid or guide. He trusted her in spite of all that she had done: he believed in her. Surely he would recognize her now? Surely he would hear her and respond?

He greeted her with a brief frown. Then he stared past or through her as though she had grown too spectral to disturb him.

“Liand.” Only her grip on Anele’s hand enabled her to speak. “Listen.” The Harrow was ascending the stairs. He rose as if he were borne by flame. “I need
orcrest
.”

The young man did not react. The palace held him in thrall. His slight awareness of her presence had faded.

Linden wanted to slap him, and could not. She wanted to reach into the pouch at his waist and take his Sunstone; but she lacked the strength, or the will. She had surrendered too much, and knew the cost. He did not deserve to have his heritage taken from him.

Fighting her own entrancement, her own weakness, she tugged Anele closer to Liand. Then, interlacing her fingers with Anele’s so that the old man would not pull free, she guided his free hand to Liand’s shoulder. Mutely she willed Anele to jolt the Stonedownor as he had jolted her.

Through his madness, Anele must have understood what she was doing; or he had his own reasons for desperation, his own fragmented needs. Still trembling, he stroked Liand’s shoulder—

—and Liand twitched. His black eyebrows arched. His eyes veered into focus on Linden. He peered at her as if she were veiled by water.

At the top of the stair, the Harrow passed between hanging curtains and disappeared.

“Liand,” Linden said again, “listen.”

“Li—” Liand tried to say her name. “Lin—”

“Listen to me,” she urged: a small sound, too distant and uncertain to compel attention. “I can’t explain. I don’t understand. But we need Earthpower. To remember who we are.

“We need
orcrest
.”

Even the Giants: even the
Haruchai
were beyond her. The palace had turned their inherent strengths against them. And none of them carried any instruments of power. Covenant retained Loric’s
krill
; but he had stumbled into his past before Linden’s company had crossed the Hazard. Nothing that she could say or do would pierce his memories.

She had to follow the Harrow. If Liand did not rouse himself a little more; just a little—

Anele tightened his grip.

This time Liand succeeded at saying her name. “Linden?”

“Orcrest,”
she repeated. Her voice shook like Anele’s arms. The old man had saved her more than once. He had drawn her out of her paralysis when she had first entered a
caesure
, seeking the Staff of Law. “We need it.”

For a moment, Liand turned his bewilderment toward Anele. Then he appeared to shudder.
“Orcrest?”
he murmured distantly. “I had forgotten—”

Fumbling as if Anele had touched him with age and caducity as well as Earthpower, the Stonedownor opened his pouch and brought out the Sunstone.

For a time that seemed long to Linden, Liand frowned at the rock in his palm. He was relapsing into the magic of the palace; or she was. Dully she thought that his
orcrest
was not a stone at all. It was water impossibly piled onto itself when it should have poured away between his fingers. Soon he would hold nothing more than a few pellucid drops.

In spite of Anele’s clasp, Linden was drifting. Like Liand, she would dissolve into wonder and forget that she was lost.

But Liand did not dissolve. Instead he closed his hand on the
orcrest
; and Linden remembered that the Harrow was gone.

At first, the Sunstone only glowed like the lambence of the Lost Deep, nacreous and commingled, indistinguishable from the illumination of the Viles. Yet even that distortion of the Sunstone’s nature must have given Liand strength. He gripped the
orcrest
more firmly. By gentle increments, its radiance regained its more familiar white purity.

At the same time, Linden’s sense of herself came back into focus. The Harrow, she thought distinctly. Jeremiah!

The Ardent lay swaddled as if he clad himself for burial. No one remained to insist on the sanctity of the Harrow’s oath.

Liand brought forth brighter Earthpower. Linden’s heart pounded as if she were suffocating; drowning—

“All right,” she gasped. “Keep doing that.” Echoes scattered from the chandeliers like cascades of gemstones. “Don’t let go of Anele. We have to catch up with the Harrow.”

Liand shook his head, struggled to clear his thoughts. “What of the Giants?” The muscles of his neck corded. “Pahni and the Ramen? Stave? If we forsake them—”

Linden started toward the stair, pulling Anele after her; hoping that Anele would pull Liand. “We don’t have time.” Water seemed to fill her lungs. “We’ll come back when we know what the Harrow is doing.” She was becoming water. “We have to find Jeremiah.”

She was already ashamed that she had forgotten her son.

Anele tightened his grasp. Mad or sane, he followed her willingly. And he did not release Liand. After a moment, the Stonedownor set aside his reluctance. Together Linden and Anele encouraged Liand toward the wide arc of the stairway.