Against All Things Ending (95 page)

Clyme dropped to the turf at the destrier’s head. Firmly he untied the bridle, tugged the reins out of Covenant’s hands, slipped the snaffle from the beast’s mouth. Holding the horse by its mane, he lifted one cupped hand full of fruit to its mouth.

At first, the destrier only gasped at the berries, too drained to blow froth; too empty of life to scent anything, want anything. But both Naybahn and Mhornym gazed at Covenant’s mount with instructions in their stern eyes; and after a moment, a small spasm ran through the beast’s muscles as if it had been goaded. Weakly the horse lipped a few treasure-berries from Clyme’s hand.

Covenant should have dismounted, but he did not think to move. With as much concentration as he could muster, he focused his senses on the destrier’s condition: on the limping struggle of its heart, the shredded straining of its lungs.

Relief left him briefly light-headed when the horse took more
aliantha
. His health-sense was too blunt for precise discernment, but he seemed to feel a faint touch of vitality flow into the beast’s veins.

Then he remembered to slip down from the destrier. His own legs throbbed at the unaccustomed effects of two days on horseback; and he felt battered, as if he had fallen from a great height. Standing would do him good: walking would be better.

While Clyme stroked the destrier’s neck, encouraging it, Branl rode away. When he came back, he brought another handful of berries. These the horse ate more willingly.

The Humbled both nodded in satisfaction. “Ur-Lord,” Clyme announced, “with your consent we will walk to the cliff. Gentle movement will quicken the benison of
aliantha
. Mayhap the beast’s awareness of hunger will awaken. If we then discover water—” He shrugged; did not finish the thought.

Covenant knew what he meant. Maybe the horse would live. Maybe it would be strong enough to carry him after a night’s rest.

If.

“Sure,” he answered. “We can at least hope.”

Leaving Clyme and Mhornym with the destrier, Covenant headed up the long rise, accompanied by Branl on Naybahn. At first, he walked stiffly, forcing each stride against the protest of his muscles. But gradually his limbs loosened. And the grass softened his steps. Soon he began to move more briskly, aiming to reach the rim of the slope before twilight.

H
alf a league from the horizon-line where the ground dropped away, Naybahn adjusted his course slightly to the south.

As Covenant drew closer, he saw that the precipice was scored with cracks. Some of them looked like the results of erosion, the claw-marks of weather and old time. Others appeared to be deeper faults in the fundamental substance of the cliff. But he still did not smell salt or hear surf. The harsh wind from the west blew away any indication that he was approaching the sea.

Naybahn angled farther south. Instinctively Covenant quickened his strides. Vulnerable in his damp clothes, he was already chilled: he wanted to believe that Naybahn or Branl would lead him to some kind of shelter from the wind.

Tossing his head, the Ranyhyn gave a snort that sounded disdainful. For his own reasons, if not for Branl’s, the stallion nudged Covenant with his shoulder. Have you forgotten who I am? Are you foolish enough to doubt us? You who spoke of
trust
? That gentle bump directed Covenant toward a crack or crevice extending perhaps a hundred paces inland.

At the tip of the crack, he found that it was shallow enough for a horse to enter, wide enough to admit a mounted rider. Its floor as it dropped toward the precipice was not dangerously steep. And it ended, not in a plunge, but on a ledge as broad as a road.

There Covenant saw the Sunbirth Sea.

Under a leaden sky at the onset of evening, it looked misnamed. Lashed waves taller than Giants, and as dark as thunderheads, seethed heavily toward the cliff and out of sight. Tumbling winds ripped the crests of the waves to spume, tore them in all directions. Nonetheless the seas heaved closer with the massive inevitability of avalanches or calving glaciers. In spite of his numbness, Covenant seemed to feel a faint tremor as each breaker crashed against the granite coast. Somewhere far beyond the range of his perceptions, storms which had fled eastward earlier hammered the ocean; or some new atmospheric violence was gathering against the Land.

Without hesitation, Naybahn entered the split and bore Branl downward. Cautiously Covenant followed.

As he worked his way toward the ledge, he glimpsed more and more of the sea. Atavistic vertigo began to squirm through him: the waves were a
long
way down—A man who fell from that ledge would have time to repent every misdeed of his life before he died. Reflexively he hugged the stone of the crevice-wall; but its ancient endurance refused to steady him.

Don’t, he commanded himself. Don’t look. But the plunge was already calling to him. It insinuated itself among the pathways of his brain, urging him to stagger and reel and drop; to pitch the disease of his existence over the precipice. He was in a crevice, and his mind was a maze of fissures. Memories summoned him from all sides. Soon they would become a gyre, a
geas
, and the cliff or the past would take him.

In some other life, Lena would have come to his aid. Foamfollower and Triock would have helped him. Or Linden’s presence would have given him the will to suppress this spinning. But in
this
life—

Branl clasped his arm in a grip like a manacle. Beyond the Master, Naybahn waited on the ledge, unconcerned by the fall. But Branl had come back for Covenant.

The
Haruchai
forgot nothing. They had a strength that Covenant lacked, one supreme gift: within themselves, they were not alone. As well as he could, Branl contradicted Covenant’s impulse toward isolation and dizziness.

Anchored by the grasp of the Humbled, Covenant moved toward Naybahn without losing his way.

On the ledge, the Ranyhyn stood between him and the precipice. Branl held his arm. Protected in that fashion, Covenant went warily southward.

Now he could hear the waves: an iterated crash-and-roar among the rocks far below him. The turmoil of winds sawing against granite edges everywhere complicated the rush and smash of the breakers, emphasized their timeless hunger. For a few moments, the surf seemed to have a voice, singing of mortality—

All hurt is like the endless surge of seas,
The wear and tumbling that leaves no welt
But only sand instead of granite ease

—until he almost stumbled into his fragmented past. But then the ledge rounded a bulge and became the floor of another split in the battered cliff.

The sun was setting quickly now: he could barely see. This crack led downward without visible limit or end into the heart of the gutrock. After a dozen steps, however, Naybahn and Branl brought him to a break in the left-hand wall of the split, a gap just wide enough to admit the Ranyhyn. Drawn through the break into complete darkness, Covenant sensed that he was entering an open space like a chamber in the stone. Just for a moment, he thought that the chamber was a closed cavity. But almost at once, he discerned a slit of gloom in the direction of the sea; heard the faint plash and susurrus of water.

He could not smell salt. Air-currents flowing into and out of the cave carried away the ocean’s scent.

“Here is shelter, ur-Lord,” Branl stated flatly. “Thus shielded, you will suffer little of the wind’s chill, though doubtless the stone is cold. And beyond us arises a goodly spring, flowing past our feet to drain from the cliff.”

Covenant nodded, trusting the Humbled to see what he could not. “What about the Harrow’s horse?”

“Clyme and Mhornym will guide the beast to water here.” Branl spoke like the darkness. “Thereafter the Ranyhyn and your mount will surely depart to feed above the cliff. When they have cropped their fill, however, I anticipate that they will return to this covert, to share warmth and rest. In that event, the Humbled will stand guard at the rims of the precipice.”

Covenant nodded again. He felt perfectly capable of freezing to death if three horses did not suffice to warm the chamber. Nevertheless he was content with his sanctuary. It was better than any covert that he had expected to find. “If you’ll guide me to a place where I can sit down—preferably someplace dry—I’ll get us some light.”

And some heat? He hoped so.

Holding Covenant’s arm, Branl steered him to a level surface where he was able to step over the stream. Beyond the spill of water, the chamber’s floor rose toward its far wall in stages like steps. There Covenant sat down and carefully untucked the bundled
krill
from his waist.

He had reason to believe that Loric’s dagger could cut anything. Long ago, he had stabbed it into the top of a stone table. With as much care as his deadened and foreshortened fingers could manage, he unwound fabric from the blade without touching the metal. The haft and the gem he kept covered. After a moment’s hesitation, he raised his arms and drove the
krill
’s point at the rock between his boots.

He expected a hard jolt, a skitter of metal as the blade skidded across stone. But the knife pierced rock as if it were flesh; bit deep and held fast, standing like an icon in the floor.

“Well, damn,” he breathed unsteadily. “At least
that
worked.”

With the nub-ends of his fingers, he unwrapped the rest of the cloth; let the gem’s bright silver shine out.

It resembled a beacon, but he chose to believe that it would not draw Joan’s attention if he did not touch it.

The sudden blaze of light filled the cave: it seemed to efface even the possibility of shadows. Branl stood etched in the air beside a brisk stream that caught the radiance and glittered flowing argent as it ran toward a narrow slit like an embrasure in the fortification of the cliff. As Naybahn drank from the stream, the stallion’s coat glowed as if it had been touched with transcendence, and the star on his forehead gleamed.

Apart from the window to the outer world on one side, and the tapering hollow opposite it from which the spring emerged, the chamber was shaped like a dome. Even at its tallest point, the ceiling was too low to let a Giant stand fully upright; but the dome was high enough, and more than wide enough, to admit several horses. Its walls and ceiling were oddly smooth: the eldritch gem’s echo of wild magic made them look burnished, almost holy, as if at some point in the distant past they had formed a primitive fane. In contrast, however, the floor was rough and scalloped, composed of a different stone which seemed to insist that it was made for darkness rather than for light.

As Branl had predicted, the rock was cold. Covenant already felt its chill seeping into him through his damp jeans. Fortunately he also felt steady heat emanating from Loric’s dagger. White gold in the hands of its rightful wielder made the whole knife too hot for his unprotected flesh. By that sign, he knew that Joan was still alive. Inadvertently her reflected desperation might warm the entire chamber.

“Thank you,” he murmured to Naybahn. He needed to express his gratitude, whether or not the Ranyhyn understood him. “I forgot about this place—if I ever knew it existed. You came back to the Land at the right time. None of us would have gotten this far without you.” Especially Linden. “And we sure as hell wouldn’t get any farther.”

Naybahn whickered softly, tossed his head. The silver shining in his eyes looked like pride.

Covenant wanted to ask Branl how Clyme and Mhornym fared with the Harrow’s mount. But an answer to that question would not quicken their arrival, or restore the destrier’s stamina, or relieve Covenant’s underlying fears. Instead he inquired abruptly, “How far are we from Foul’s Creche?”

Branl appeared to consult a map of his memories. “In a direct line, ur-Lord, the ruins of Corruption’s former abode lie no more than fifteen leagues distant. However, these cliffs are rugged, forbidding clear passage. I gauge that we must traverse a score of leagues—if,” he added, “the riven promontory of Ridjeck Thome is indeed our destination.” Then he shrugged. “If our goal lies elsewhere, the Ranyhyn know it. The Humbled do not.”

With a wave of one hand, Covenant dismissed Branl’s proviso. “Assume we’re going to Foul’s Creche. Where else is Joan likely to be? That place is too damn
fitting
.” A wilderness of broken granite between the Sunbirth Sea and the Shattered Hills: enough rubble to symbolize dozens of millennia. Joan’s attacks on Time required a physical manifestation. She tore instants into chaos by destroying stones. The Earth was the incarnation of the Laws which enabled it to live: she struck at one by harming the other. And Covenant did not doubt that the Despiser’s malice still permeated the wreckage of Foul’s Creche. The evil of the Illearth Stone lingered there as well. Such things would enhance
turiya
Herem’s possession. “So how long will it take us to get there?”

Branl studied Covenant flatly. “Since you choose to rely upon assumptions, ur-Lord, I will do the same. If your mount regains strength sufficient to bear you, I gauge that we will sight the remains of Ridjeck Thome at nightfall on the morrow.”