Against All Things Ending (78 page)

But her reasoning or her calm seemed to infuriate Covenant. “God in Heaven!” he retorted. “Are
none
of you paying attention? You can’t go with me because it’s
too dangerous
. Joan makes
caesures
. Just one of those things in the wrong place at the wrong instant, and there won’t be anybody left who can even
try
to defend the Land.

“Besides—” With a visible effort, he caught himself; swallowed his extremity. Squaring his shoulders, he faced Linden. “You have other things to do.”

“Like what?” Light-headedness had become a roaring in Linden’s ears. Black spots danced across her vision like inverted Wraiths. She had no argument except her own weakness. “What do you expect us to do without you? We barely survived Roger and the Cavewights.” And Esmer. “We don’t even know how to help Jeremiah. What do you think that we can accomplish against Kastenessen and
skurj
and Sandgorgons and
moksha
Jehannum? Against Lord Foul and the damn Worm of the World’s End?”

Why do you want to get away from me so badly?

“Linden, stop,” Covenant urged. His quiet restraint resembled a kind of flagellation. “You’re just intimidating yourself. Everything is simpler than you make it sound. I expect you to do what you’ve always done. Something
unexpected
. Which you are by God good at. You’ve surprised me more times than I can count. There’s no one else like you.

“Just trust yourself. That’s all. That’s
all
. Everything else will take care of itself.

“If it doesn’t—” Sighing, he shrugged again. “There was nothing you could have done anyway.”

Linden found a deep breath, and another. Stave was still holding her.“It’s not that easy.” Slowly the spots faded from her eyes. “Do you even know where to look for Joan?”

Covenant did not look away. “I can guess. The Ardent brought us this far for a reason. I figure all I have to do now is go farther. If I don’t find her, she’ll find me.”

Before Linden could manage another protest, Manethrall Mahrtiir demanded without preamble, “Will you journey afoot?”

“Hell, no.” Now Covenant shifted his attention from Linden. In his mind, apparently, he had already turned away. “We don’t have time. Clyme or Branl can summon the Ranyhyn.”

In a burst of indignation, the Manethrall asked, “What then becomes of your vow that you will not ride? Must I name you an oath breaker? Did you not once aver to the great horses rearing that you would not ask them to bear you?”

“I did,” Covenant admitted. Ignoring the dismay and uncertainty of the company—ignoring Linden—he walked stiffly across the sand, heading along the floor of the ravine. “How often do I have to talk about trust? They’re
Ranyhyn
, for God’s sake. They’ll think of something.”

Linden watched him go as if he were forsaking her.

After a few tense strides, he shouted up at the hilltops, “It’s time! Call the Ranyhyn!”

But he did not pause for a response from Branl or Clyme. Quickening his pace, he passed between boulders and ragged slopes on either side as if he were eager to confront Joan.

Eager to be done with life.

The Humbled must have heard him. A lone whistle smote Linden’s heart. Among the barren hills, it sounded as forlorn as a wail in a lightless cavern.

Clyme or Branl whistled a second time. A third.

In the distance beyond Covenant, three horses came trotting down the shallow canyon.

Two of them were Ranyhyn, Naybahn and Mhornym. The stars on their foreheads gleamed in the thick sunlight.

The third was the Harrow’s destrier. Tossing its head in vexation or alarm, the tall brown stallion trotted between Naybahn and Mhornym with a glare of resentment in its eyes, as if the Ranyhyn had compelled it against its will.

As the horses neared Covenant, Clyme and Branl appeared, sprinting down the treacherous hillsides to join him as if nothing could undermine their steps. They reached him moments before the Ranyhyn and the destrier stamped to a halt.

With an air of ceremony, the Humbled greeted their mounts. They may have been speaking welcomes or rituals which had been ancient when Covenant had first visited the Land; but Linden refused to hear them.

Until she saw Covenant heave himself into the Harrow’s saddle, she did not realize that he had not taken any of the company’s supplies. He had no food, no water, no blankets.

He had said that he would come back; but he behaved like a man who did not expect to return.

He was doing it again; sacrificing himself to spare the people he cared about most.

Was there no one like her? Truly? She did not believe it. But beyond question there was no one like him.

Perhaps that was why he had turned away from her. She had never been his equal.

7.

Implications of Trust

Among eight Giants who towered over her, and Stave and Mahrtiir, who had never wavered, and Jeremiah, who remained as abandoned as a derelict, Linden Avery stood alone, staring hopelessly at the writhe of the ravine where Thomas Covenant, Branl, and Clyme had ridden out of sight.

If she had been able to look at herself, she would have seen a bedraggled figure, worn and unkempt. Her hair had not known the touch of soap or brush for more days than she could count. After her attempts to wash it, it had dried into matted, impossible tangles. Her features had been eroded by care and loss until they resembled Covenant’s flensed countenance, but without his indomitable strictures. And the red of her shirt had lost much of its vividness, its clarity. The flannel was a mess of plucked threads and little rents dominated by the bullet hole over her heart. The swatch of fabric which she had torn from the hem for the Mahdoubt no longer seemed to have any significance: it merely made her look even more like a refugee from a better life. The grass stains on her jeans below the knees were as indecipherable as Caerroil Wildwood’s runes.

And the Staff of Law, stained to fuligin when its shaft should have been as clean as the One Tree’s heartwood—
Its import lies beyond my ken
. Even her use of its flame had become darkness, echoing the condition of her soul: stark and irredeemable.

Covenant’s departure was an open wound. Without his ring, he had no defense against
caesures
and chaos. He could not even control the seduction of his broken memories. And Joan
knew
him: she—or
turiya
Raver—could sense his touch on Loric’s
krill
. Linden urgently wished to believe that he was not riding to his death; but that hope eluded her.

His abandonment left her with nothing to shield her. In spite of his vulnerabilities, she had counted on him in ways that were too profound for language. Yet he considered his ex-wife more important, or more urgent.
It’s like Joan has me on a string
.
I can’t do anything else until I deal with her
.

He had told Linden,
You have other things to do
, but she could not imagine what they might be.

Because Jeremiah was all that endured of the loves which had shaped her life, she dropped the Staff and went to him. With both arms, she hugged him hard, trying to anchor herself on the form that she had nurtured and tended for so many years. He was only a husk of the young man he should have been; an empty hull. But he had always been like this: his vacancy did not diminish his hold on her. And now she knew how he had concealed himself. She had stood in the graveyard of his mind. In some sense, she understood how he had resisted the
croyel
’s torments, and the Despiser’s.

But she did
not
understand why Anele’s gift of Earthpower had failed to rouse her son. That mystery surpassed her. The vigor of his new theurgies was clear to every dimension of her health-sense. It should have sufficed—yet it was not enough.

While Linden clung to her son, Rime Coldspray cleared her throat. “Linden Giantfriend.” Her voice was husky with weariness. A little food and a sufficiency of water could not replenish her spent strength. Nevertheless she sounded grimly determined. “The day flees from us. Soon the sun will near the rim of Landsdrop, and still we stand in this harm-ridden region. We must not delay longer. The Worm of the World’s End will not await our readiness to meet it.”

Linden tightened her grip on Jeremiah for a moment. Then she let him go. The Ironhand was right. The sunlight slanted from the west, casting shadows like omens after Covenant. The fact that the Worm seemed like an abstraction, a mere word rather than an imminent threat, did not lessen its significance. Turning away from her son, Linden faced the leader of the Swordmainnir.

As if for the first time, she saw how deeply exertion had chiseled Coldspray’s visage. The Ironhand bore the marks of strain and imponderable effort like galls on her forehead, around her eyes, along the sides of her mouth. Faint tremors shook her muscles whenever she moved.

Apart from his bandage, Manethrall Mahrtiir’s features reflected Coldspray’s. His posture slumped uncharacteristically: he carried himself like a man who had cut off his hands by sending his Cords away. Of the three who had labored to honor Anele and Galt, only Stave showed no sign that he had paid a price. His hurts were internal, masked by his
Haruchai
mien and his stoicism.

Fortunately the other Giants had recovered more fully. They had fought as hard as Rime Coldspray; had suffered as much from their wounds. And the healing which Linden had provided for them had been as swift as cruelty: it had its own cost. Latebirth still moved gingerly, protecting her ribs. Both Cabledarm and Frostheart Grueburn were limping, and Onyx Stonemage looked unsure of her balance. Nevertheless they had rested longer, and eaten more, than their Ironhand. They looked ready to wear their armor and carry supplies and travel, at least for a while.

For that Linden could be grateful.

“All right,” she sighed to Coldspray. “I’m sick of this place anyway. But there’s still the question of where we’re going, or what we think that we can do when we get there.” Bitterly she added, “Assuming that no one attacks us on the way.

“Covenant—” She swallowed bile and grief. “Abandoning us like that. It changes things.” It changed everything. “Maybe we should rethink this whole situation.”

Rime Coldspray opened her mouth to reply; but Mahrtiir spoke first. “Ringthane.” Fatigue thickened his voice until he seemed to be groaning. “Ere we consider such matters, will you not make some new attempt to bestir your son?” Without his Cords, he was a different man: smaller in some way; perhaps more fragile. Time and again, he had relied on Bhapa and Pahni to compensate for his blindness. “As he is, he remains helpless. And much has been altered since you last strove to retrieve his mind. Can you not now discover some means to restore him to himself?”

Linden shook her head; but she did not respond at once. She had to search for words to describe perceptions which had become plain to her.
How often do I have to talk about trust?
She had made too many mistakes. Worse, she had made the same ones too often. She needed to believe that better solutions existed; but she did not know how.

With an effort of will, she forced herself to say, “He isn’t helpless in there. Not really. He’s like Anele. He
chose
this. It’s his only defense. Or it was. That deserves some respect. I can’t think of any other way that he could have protected himself.

“So maybe he’s stuck there now,” she conceded to forestall protests. “He’s been like this for a long time. Maybe he wants to come out and just can’t find the way. But I can’t help him unless I go deeper than I did before.” Much deeper: deep enough to drag him from his graves. “I’ll have to
possess
him. And that’s just wrong. The Ranyhyn warned me. They showed me how bad things can get if I insist on violating people who have the right to make their own decisions.”

More than once, in differing ways, Anele had opposed her impulse to heal him. Before the horserite, Stave had done the same in spite of the injuries that he had received from Esmer.

“I used to be a doctor. A healer for people with broken minds. And the one thing I learned is that I
couldn’t
heal them.” God, this was hard to admit! She had learned to accept the truth where her patients were concerned. But to say the same about her own son—“They had to heal themselves. My only real job was to help them feel safe so that maybe they would believe that they could risk healing themselves.

“I’m not much of a healer anymore.” She had committed such slaughter—“But
possession
is still wrong. I know because it’s been done to me.” By
moksha
Jehannum. “And I’ve done it myself.” To Covenant. “Covenant keeps telling me to trust myself, but that doesn’t make much sense.” She meant that it was impossible. “Not after what I’ve accomplished so far. What does make sense to me is trusting the Ranyhyn.

“They went to a lot of trouble to warn me.” She did not want to remember the images with which they had filled her thoughts. “I think it’s time that I stopped ignoring them.”

Attempts must be made
, Mahrtiir had told her days ago,
even when there can be no hope
. But he had also said,
And betimes some wonder is wrought to redeem us
.

She anticipated objections. How could her companions grasp what she was trying to say? None of them had been taken by Ravers, or had participated in Joan’s lurid agony, or had become carrion. But Coldspray’s only reply was a frown of consideration. None of the other Giants offered an argument. Stave regarded Linden impassively; accepted her. And Mahrtiir—

The Manethrall relaxed visibly. She had eased some unspoken doubt or burden for him. His shoulders lifted as he announced, “Then I see no cause to alter our intent. Earlier we resolved to entrust our course to the will of the Ranyhyn. That choice I have approved. I do so again. Few as we are, we can select no better path. Let Stave of the
Haruchai
summon the great horses. Let us renew our intent to abide by their guidance.”

His counsel was a gift. Linden did not want to make more decisions. And in one respect, she was like the Ramen. The prospect of the Ranyhyn eased her spirits. She could find a kind of solace, comfort as visceral as a caress, in the kindness of Hyn’s eyes, the security of the mare’s strong strides.

Briefly the Ironhand considered Mahrtiir’s advice. For a moment, she scanned the reactions of her comrades. When she returned her attention to the Manethrall, and to Linden, her countenance opened into a broad grin.

“Manethrall, your words are folly. By some measure, they are madness. For that reason, they are a delight to us. Are we not Giants? Fools all? And do we not desire to cast our strength against the utter ravage of the Earth? What fate, therefore, can be more condign for us, than that we must commit every passion and every life to the will of beasts that cannot reveal their purposes? Earlier we assented to this course because we saw no other. Now we do so because it gladdens our hearts.

“If it should chance that the Earth and Time endure, tales will one day be told of Giants who dared the destruction of all things at the behest—I mean no offense, Manethrall—at the behest of mere horses.”

Mahrtiir also was grinning. Unlike Coldspray’s, however, and those of the other Giants, his expression had a whetted edge, fierce and eager, like a promise of vindication.

If Roger or Kastenessen, Linden thought, or even Lord Foul had seen the Manethrall at that moment, they might have felt apprehension writhing in their guts.

“All right,” she said again. She tried to sound stronger, and may have succeeded. “Let’s see how much ground we can cover without getting into trouble.” She meant, Without running into another attack. But she also meant, Without asking too much of the Giants. “I’ll never be any readier than this.”

Nodding to Linden, Mahrtiir, and the Swordmainnir in turn, Stave raised his hand to his mouth and began the ritual summoning which his ancestors had used during the time of the Bloodguard, and of the Council of Lords.

Three whistles, each as piercing as cries; each separated by half a dozen heartbeats. Linden scarcely had time to shake her head in wonder at the inexplicable magic which enabled the horses of Ra to know hours or days or seasons in advance when and where they would be called, and to arrive when they were needed. Then she heard the muted impact of hooves cantering on packed sand.

She should not have been able to hear it at that distance. Perhaps the sound carried simply because the horses were Ranyhyn, majestic and ineffable, as vital as the Land’s pulse of Earthpower, and as numinous as the Hills of Andelain. Soon, however, she saw them. Constrained by the litter of boulders and the quirks of the slopes, they came in single-file: first proud Hynyn, roan and magisterial, then Hyn dappled grey with her star like heraldry on her forehead, then Narunal, palomino and eager—as eager as Mahrtiir, with the same air of fierceness. Just for an instant, Linden thought that there would be no more. But another Ranyhyn followed behind Narunal, another roan, as like to Hynyn as a son, but less heavily muscled, less broad in the chest, and somewhat smaller.

Hynyn, Hyn, and Narunal: Stave, Linden, and Mahrtiir. The last of the ten that had set out from Revelstone with the begrudged permission of the Masters.

And a mount for Jeremiah.

A mount for Jeremiah, who had never ridden and would not throw himself off balance, and could therefore sit his Ranyhyn as safely as if the beast were made of stone.

Linden had watched Naybahn and Mhornym carry Branl and Clyme away. She believed that she would never see Rhohm, Hrama, and Bhanoryl again: their riders were dead. As for Rohnhyn and Naharahn, Bhapa and Pahni, she did not know what to think. She could hardly believe that they would be able to sway the Masters.