Against All Things Ending (57 page)

In a small voice, she answered, “I can’t tell any of you what to do. I’ve made too many mistakes, and you didn’t deserve any of them. I can only tell you what
I’m
going to do.”

She took a shuddering breath, held it until she thought that she might be able to speak steadily. Then she said, “Sometimes I think that I learned everything I know in emergency rooms. I’ve been taught to take one problem at a time. And to start with the one that’s right in front of me.

“We have Jeremiah now. He’s right here. And it’s obvious that he’s important. I’m going to start with him.”

Did the Staff of Law wield the wrong kind of power to extinguish the
croyel
without killing her son? Fine. She still had her health-sense, unfettered now by Kevin’s Dirt. And if it did not suffice, it might nonetheless enable her to make some use of Covenant’s ring.

Kasreyn of the Gyre had believed of white gold that
Its imperfection is the very paradox of which the Earth is made, and with it a master may form perfect works and fear nothing
. She had no reason to think that he was wrong.

“First,” she murmured, “I’m going to get more sleep. Then I’m going to do everything I can think for Jeremiah.” Knowing that the
croyel
could hear her, she added more sharply, “If I’m strong enough to rouse the Worm of the World’s End, I ought to be able to at least
scare
that damn monster.”

“There!” Covenant’s tone seemed to express satisfaction and alarm simultaneously. “One of us has a plan. First things first. That makes sense to me. The Ironhand is right. It’s time for some trust.

“You heard the Ardent. Somehow she’s changed everything. Even Lord almighty Foul doesn’t know what’s going to happen now. And maybe she actually can save Jeremiah. Maybe he’s the only one of us who
has
to be saved.

“In any case—” He spread his hands. “She’s the only one who could have brought us this far.”

Because she had friends—

Linden recognized an undercurrent in his voice; a hint of complex intentions or desires. An ulterior motive? A specific hope or need which he kept to himself? She did not know—or other implications had more significance for her.

He had given her his approval. Again. Nevertheless she bit into her lip as if he had just pronounced sentence on her.

3.

—Whatever the Cost

After a while, the Giants stirred from the circle. Rime Coldspray was the first to rise; but Grueburn, Cabledarm, and the others soon followed her example. Their frustration was obvious. Nevertheless they conveyed a clear unwillingness to demand more from Linden—or from Covenant. Instead, at a word from the Ironhand, they drew apart. When they had walked a short way up the shallow canyon, they seated themselves again, facing each other. In low voices, little more than a susurrus carried by the twilight breeze, they spoke together, holding their own less condensed Giantclave.

Linden could not make out what they were saying, and did not try. They were Giants: she trusted their hearts more than she trusted her own.

She still sat against her chosen rock, facing Covenant without looking at him. Liand and Pahni remained near her: a show of solidarity that she valued, but did not want. And Stave stood at her back as if his devotion had indurated him against uncertainty. Such deliberate faith relied too heavily on strengths which she did not possess.

Farther away, Galt controlled the
croyel
and Jeremiah. Barely visible against the purpling sky—as remote and uninflected as outcroppings—Clyme and Branl watched for threats in all directions.

Around the sand where the Swordmainnir had been sitting, Manethrall Mahrtiir paced, unable to contain his tension. Linden caught flashes of vexation from him, a gnashing ire at his own uselessness. His tight strides resembled an iteration of protest. He seemed to want more than he had received from the Unbeliever.

Squatting near Linden, Bhapa made a studious effort to mask his anxiety from Mahrtiir. He kept his head down, tried to cast no shadow on Mahrtiir’s attention. Yet whenever Bhapa’s eyes caught the glow of the
krill
, Linden saw them flick toward the Manethrall and away again.

Mahrtiir ached for a sense of purpose: Bhapa did not. He wanted his Manethrall to make his decisions for him.

Anele had fallen asleep, apparently oblivious to impatience. Mouth hanging open, he snored and snorted at intervals; twitched occasionally; shifted his limbs as if in dreams he sought to become one with Stormpast Galesend’s armor. Nevertheless his slumber was deep: the long collapse into unconsciousness of the aged, the overwrought, and the appalled. Studying him, Linden suspected that he would not hear her if she called his name.

Let him sleep, then, she thought. He had endured enough to earn any amount of rest.

In that, she knew, he was not alone.

She meant to sleep soon herself. But unresolved concerns still crawled along her nerves. After a while, she realized that some part of her was waiting for Covenant to speak. Covenant or Mahrtiir. Irrationally she hoped to hear something that would shed illumination into the gloom. But the only light came from the
krill
, and from the dwindling glow of dusk.

Sighing to herself, she rose to her feet. When Liand moved to join her, she rested a hand on his shoulder to stop him. With a glance, she asked Stave to accompany her as she crossed the sand toward the stream.

At the water’s edge, she picked out a flat stone and sat down. Gazing out over the current, she settled the Staff in her lap and tried to find names for a few of her many needs.

The Staff was an ebon shaft across her legs, as stark in its blackness as the Earth’s deepest caverns. Caerroil Wildwood had given her runes like commandments, but she did not know how to obey them.

Standing beside her, Stave waited in silence.

After a moment, she murmured like the low voice of the stream, “Escape has a price. I learned that a long time ago. There’s always a price. Getting out of the Lost Deep”—she did not want to remember the bane—“was hard, and I think we’re still paying for it. Maybe that’s why everything looks so murky right now. We haven’t finished paying.”

“Chosen,” replied Stave quietly, as if her title were a commentary on what she had said.

Linden gave him a chance to say more. When he did not, she resumed.

“You told me that Covenant convinced Esmer to leave. But you didn’t tell me how he did it.”
By cunning and desperation
—“Or how he had time. The last thing I remember”—she clenched herself against nightmares—“we were all about to die.”

Stave’s tone became harder as he answered, “The Unbeliever’s efforts were made possible by Anele.”

Linden turned her head to study the former Master. Anele—?

“First,” Stave explained, “the Unbeliever endeavored to sway the bane directly. Then he sought aid from the old man. Perhaps because Anele stood upon stone, or perhaps because our peril clarified his madness, he met the Unbeliever’s appeal by claiming the sunstone. Then he reached out to his parents among the Dead. In response, Sunder Graveler and Hollian eh-Brand appeared before us as the bane prepared to strike. At once, however, they withdrew. In their stead, the spectre of High Lord Elena came or was compelled to our succor.

“Such was her anguish, Chosen, that she drew the heed of the bane. While the bane sought to consume her, the Unbeliever gained an opportunity to dissuade Esmer from our immediate ruin.”

Within herself, Linden staggered.
Anele
did that? He did
that
? At Covenant’s urging? How had the old man managed it? And how had Covenant known that Anele was capable of such things?

At least now she knew why she had encountered Elena in her nightmares. God in Heaven! Covenant had sacrificed his own daughter. Indirectly, perhaps: he may not have foreseen exactly what Anele would do, or what the outcome might be. Nevertheless—

But Linden could hardly blame him. In Andelain among the Dead, she had refused Elena’s tormented shade any form of absolution. Inadvertently she had ensured that Elena’s spirit would be the precise sustenance that the bane craved most.

Linden was as much responsible as Covenant—or as Anele and his parents—for the lost High Lord’s terrible doom.

Profoundly shaken, she could not find words for the questions which followed from what Stave had told her. And in his own fashion, he was surely aware of her distress. Nevertheless his voice did not soften as he added, “The arguments by which the ur-Lord banished Esmer ensured that Cail’s son will strike again.”

Ah, God. Trying to understand, Linden asked, “Do you know how Covenant did it? What did he say that convinced Esmer to leave?”

Stave hesitated momentarily. “I am uncertain, Chosen,” he admitted. “The Unbeliever spoke of the peril to Kastenessen if the bane obtained possession of white gold. Yet the degree to which Esmer heeded him was unclear. Rather Esmer appeared to expect that some other powers or beings would balance the scales of aid and betrayal on his behalf. He averred, ‘I cannot comprehend why you have not been redeemed. I have given those who wish to serve you ample opportunity. Yet I am spurned.’ Also he said in protest, ‘You are indeed betrayed, but not by me.’ The import of his words, however—” The
Haruchai
shrugged.

—those who wish to serve you—Linden groped for meaning, and found none. Surely every possible friend and ally had been present while the bane loomed? She did not count the Ranyhyn. They could not have accompanied her into the Lost Deep.

Then who—? “Oh, hell,” she muttered. Not the
Elohim
: that was out of the question. “I don’t get it. And I am tired to death of people who seem to think that being cryptic is their life’s work.” Even Covenant on occasion. “Just once, I want to meet someone who calls a spade a damn shovel.”

Stave could have made a claim for the
Haruchai
; but he surprised her by saying, “The Demondim-spawn do so. That we cannot comprehend their speech is a lack in us, not in them. It is not their intent to thwart understanding.”

Slowly Linden nodded. He was right, of course. The shared resolve of the ur-viles and Waynhim may have been inexplicable in human terms, but they had done everything in their power to make their purposes clear. If not for Esmer—

Damn
Esmer.

After a moment, she said unsteadily, “All right. I wasn’t being fair.” Then she added, “And the Humbled aren’t cryptic. They’re just reticent. And suspicious.” They stood on ground that shifted under them like quicksand. Everything that they had done in her company had taken them farther from their essential commitments. “What do they think about all this?” She waved an aimless gesture as if she meant the stream and the dusk-clad hills. “They’ve been putting up with me for days—presumably because they don’t expect me to survive. But they sure as hell don’t
approve
.

“What are they going to do?”

They had been maimed to resemble Covenant. In a sense, he was all that they had left.

Stave considered briefly. When he answered, his tone hinted at vehemence in spite of his native stoicism.

“To say that they mislike all that has transpired does them scant justice. At the heart of their Mastery lies a desire”—he corrected himself—“nay, a compulsion to forestall Desecration. The deeds of Kevin Landwaster, following as they did upon the humiliation inflicted by the Vizard, have hardened the hearts of my kinsmen in ways which they do not discern. Indeed, I did not perceive the hardness of my own heart until my thoughts were transformed in the horserite. I was not conscious of this truth, that for us shame and grief have become more terrible than any other fate.

“If the Land is crushed under the heel of Corruption, the Masters will not fault themselves. They will give of their utmost, and will bear the cost without shame or sorrow. But if they permit some new Desecration when prevention lies within their power, their loss will efface all meaning from their lives. From this seed grows the Mastery of my kin in every guise.”

In different ways, Stave had told Linden such things before. However, his perspective on his tale had shifted.

“They weren’t always that way?” she asked carefully. Like the Humbled, the
Haruchai
that she had known long ago had seemed as intransigent as basalt.

“They were not,” Stave stated. “When our ancestors first entered the Land, seeking some anodyne in combat for the lessons learned from the Vizard, they remained susceptible to gratitude. There the generosity of High Lord Kevin and his Council gave them cause to believe that the wound of their humiliation might be healed by service. Therefore they swore the Vow of the Bloodguard. And therefore they complied when Kevin Landwaster commanded their absence. They did not grasp that he did so in order to preserve them from the dictates of his despair.

“Even in the time of new Lords, some”—the former Master appeared to search for a word—“some softness endured within them, though it was concealed. But their perception of service, and of themselves, had been slain when Korik, Sill, and Doar became the minions of Corruption. And their hearts were further hardened by the abhorrent use made of them by the Clave.

“Now they are the Masters. Those with us are the Humbled. Their greatest desire is to bereave you of your powers so that you will not haunt them with images of some new Desecration.”

Oh, God. Linden wanted to defend herself, to argue on her own behalf, and could not. Long ago,
turiya
Raver had told her much the same thing. As if the final truth about her were beyond question, he had said,
You are being forged as iron is forged to achieve the ruin of the Earth
.
Descrying destruction, you will be driven to commit all destruction
.

And the Despiser had already succeeded with her. She had awakened the Worm—

But Stave was not done. Stiffly he continued, “Yet you have brought the Unbeliever among us. The ur-Lord Thomas Covenant. For the Masters, as for all
Haruchai
, he is the true Halfhand, Illender, Prover of Life. We have no experience of High Lord Berek Heartthew. We have merely heard his tale. But Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever is another matter altogether.

“He has forbidden the Humbled to oppose you. Indeed, he has demanded their fidelity to you. And his deeds in your name—his very manner toward you—confirm his desires.

“Thus the Humbled are caught in a contradiction for which they have no answer. They execrate those actions which they perceive as Desecration. Yet the Unbeliever himself stands before them, he whom they have been maimed to emulate. By his mere presence, he falsifies their understanding of Desecration.

“Now they must refuse him and grieve, or they must accept you and be shamed. Either choice is intolerable. Nevertheless they remain
Haruchai
. Therefore they must choose. Yet they cannot—and must—and cannot—and must.”

Finally the undercurrent of ire in Stave’s tone left him. He sounded almost gentle as he said, “For this reason, Linden, if for no other, they will withhold their opposition from you. Rather they will serve the Unbeliever. He is the ur-Lord, the Halfhand. They will trust in him to answer their contradiction.”

His assertion was like a promise of hope. Yet it did not comfort her. She was not one of the Land’s true heroes. Her loves were too small, too specific; too human. And she carried a burden of anger and darkness too heavy to be set down. Covenant had rejected her love. How could she trust any hope that depended on his support?