The Last Dark (34 page)

The right materials in the right amounts with the right shapes. If he succeeded, the
Elohim
would come. They would have no choice. But if he failed to locate enough malachite—or to build his temple before every
Elohim
perished, or before the Worm came—then everything would be wasted. His own life would have no meaning. Mom would have saved him and then left him for nothing.

While he fretted, however, other facets of who he was made their preparations with a confidence that seemed almost autonomic. Hardly thinking about his choices, he set the stones he carried where they would be readily accessible. As Grueburn and Latebirth struggled down the slope, supporting between them a massive boulder, and gasping stertorously, he estimated its shape in relation to its freight of malachite, then directed them to place it like a cornerstone where two of his lines met. When they dropped it where he indicated, and leaned on it to ease their trembling, he instructed them to turn it slightly. And as soon as they complied to his satisfaction, he followed flurries of wind back onto the rockfall to retrieve more fragments of his intent.

In moments, he found a chunk of a size that threatened to exceed him. But before he could pry the rock out of the slope, he felt Stave coming toward him.

“Permit me,” the former Master offered. “There is little else that I can do to aid you. I lack the stonelore of Giants. Nor, it appears, do my senses equal yours. Yet strength I have.

“Also I am not needed to stand guard. In the absence of such glamour as the Unbeliever’s son has wielded, any force potent to endanger Swordmainnir will be perceived at some distance.” With a gesture, he indicated the open plain. “So far from the foes gathered in the region of Mount Thunder, I deem that we are in no imminent peril of attack. And I do not doubt that Hynyn and Khelen watch over us in their fashion.

“Therefore permit me, Chosen-son. Carry lesser stones as you have need of them. Provide guidance to the Giants. Permit me to make use of my strength.”

Stave’s voice conveyed an oblique impression of appeal. He seemed to want more than he asked. Apparently being separated from Linden was hard on him. He needed distractions while he waited for her return.

Nodding, Jeremiah stepped aside. When he had remembered to say, “Thanks,” he added, “I’ll show you more as soon as you’re ready.” Then he turned away to check on the Giants.

Latebirth had a lump in her arms that she could barely lift alone. Tortuous with caution, she picked her way downward. At the same time, Grueburn strained to loosen a boulder which was too heavy for her—and which might let the rockfall above her slip. Sure of himself in at least this one respect, Jeremiah told her to leave it. “I’ll need it”—it was veined with too much green to ignore—“but we can move it later. For now, we should look higher up.”

Grueburn gasped a sigh as she straightened her back. For a moment, she raised her face to the stars, groaned unfamiliar curses. “Even among Giants,” she admitted, “I am proven foolish. Clearly movement here will weaken the slope. This I should have discerned without your counsel.”

Jeremiah felt her weariness. It slapped at him like the wind. But he could think of nothing reassuring to say except, “We still have plenty to choose from.”

Unsteady as an invalid, she accompanied him upward.

He studied her sidelong for a moment, remembering his mother and the Staff of Law. Then he slapped his hands together, lifted fire into the night. His flames were more than light and warmth. They were Earthpower. He wanted to believe that their uses were not limited to fusing marrowmeld structures and cooking sour tubers; but he had no one to teach him. He could only learn by trying.

“When Mom does this,” he said more to himself than to the Swordmain, “it helps.” Reaching out, he grasped Grueburn’s forearm.

While he concentrated, trying to send his inherited magic into her, she watched him with a glint of hope in her eyes. After a few heartbeats, however, she murmured, “A worthy attempt, young Jeremiah. Alas, it is not the Staff of Law. It warms and soothes. It does not restore.”

As if he were flinching, he let her go. His failure was obvious. He did not need to hear it named.

Failure isn’t something you
are. His mother had told him that.
It’s something you
do. She had said it as if she believed it. But it did not feel like the truth. His inability to help Grueburn felt like just another demonstration that he was not
good enough
to deserve success.

Without warning, he saw Lord Foul’s eyes in the bonfire that had maimed him. Unbidden and compulsory, the memory cut him like the flick of a lash. It cut deep enough to draw blood.

In that instant, he wanted to hit back. He needed a lash of his own. He saw the
croyel
’s neck gripped in his strangling hands; saw himself pounding the Despiser’s head to pulp with a stone. His eagerness to
hurt them
was so swift and unexpected that he was unable to control it. It snatched a snarl past his teeth before he could restrain himself.

At once, he slapped his halfhand over his mouth. But he was too late. Frostheart Grueburn had heard him.

She studied him anxiously. For a while, she seemed to flounder, uncertain of her course. But then she summoned her frayed strength. With elaborate care, softly, she said, “Heed me, young Jeremiah. Linden Giantfriend fears for you. She fears that both the
croyel
and the Despiser have wrought untold harm. Now I discern that she has good cause. But I do not perceive the form or substance of your distress.

“Will you not reveal yourself to me? There is much to be gained by the setting aside of such concealments. And I remind you that I am a Giant. The burden of joy is mine. It belongs to the ears that hear, not to the mouth that speaks.”

I don’t believe you, Jeremiah retorted in silence. Hear joy? That’s not even possible. People judge. The
croyel
taught me that.
Mom
taught me that. She judges herself all the time.

But his secrets were too dark for him. They implied too much vulnerability, too much helplessness. They would reduce him to a whimpering child. They might send him back to the safety of graves.

Seething, he filled his hands with fire again. Then he scrubbed it across his rough cheeks, ran flames through his tangled hair. While light like dishonesty shone in his eyes, he avoided Grueburn’s gaze.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Deliberately he tried to sound callous. “Look for malachite higher up.” He waved a dismissal. “Find a piece you can lift. I see a few rocks I can manage.”

Bitterly he turned away. He told himself that he was angry at Frostheart Grueburn because she had tainted the pure excitement of his talents and his task, but that was not the truth.

Like the wind, the truth thronged with omens.

t intervals, Grueburn and Latebirth asked for Jeremiah’s opinion of one ponderous fragment or another. Most of the time, they labored without him. And before long, Latebirth limped away to rejoin her resting comrades. After rolling one more boulder down the slope, Grueburn followed her. Eventually the Ironhand and Halewhole Bluntfist came to toil in their turn.

Stave needed more of Jeremiah’s guidance, but he gave no sign that he required any respite. He worked steadily, moving chunks and slabs that would have tested the thick muscles of Giants.

And Jeremiah also did not tire. He considered that he had already spent ten years effectively asleep. That was enough. In addition, Anele’s gift of Earthpower provided reserves that seemed boundless. Occasionally he paused to measure his growing collection of fragments against his temple’s requirements. From time to time, he asked Rime Coldspray and Bluntfist—or, later, Cabledarm and Onyx Stonemage—to position their burdens on one of his structure’s boundary-lines. But those interruptions were brief. Between them, he moved up and down the rockfall with the assurance of inspiration. Hidden deposits and delicate veins held his attention as if they made him complete.

Displayed against the fathomless velvet of the heavens, the stars continued their gradual dance of death. And with every loss, the lights that remained seemed to shine more brightly, like beacons pleading for rescue. Only their vast profusion, and the immeasurable distances between them, suggested that the Earth’s demise was not imminent.

For a while, Cirrus Kindwind with one maimed arm and Stormpast Galesend relieved Cabledarm and Stonemage. But soon, too soon, they wore themselves to the fringes of prostration. Then only Jeremiah and Stave were left to carry on the task.

Midnight had come. It had not passed. Dawn and more help seemed impossibly distant.

The wind gathered force through the darkness, rushing from nowhere to nowhere, and contradicting its own impulses incessantly. Dust and grit driven away in one direction flailed the ridge from another. Sudden blasts strong enough to stagger Jeremiah righted him in an instant. Nevertheless the gusts did him one service: they scoured away the dirt between the stones. As a result, he was able to locate portions of malachite more quickly. Chunks no bigger than his head and ragged menhirs the size of Giants revealed their secrets as if they were etched in possibilities.

Still there was too little that he and Stave could accomplish alone. Long before dawn, they had gathered all of the lesser shards that the edifice required. Some pieces they put in place: others they could not. For the heavier labor, only Giants working together would suffice. And even when Jeremiah had identified every fragment that he would ask the Swordmainnir to move, he lacked one crucial element.

Eventually he would need a capstone, a culminating lump of malachite. Not a large one: nothing bigger than his two fists together, or perhaps his goaded heart. And its precise contours were not critical. Any approximation would serve his purpose. But it had to be pure—

Well, not absolutely pure. He could tolerate some slight admixture of other substances. But not much. Not much at all.

Where in or under this rubble was he going to find enough unadulterated green? So far, everything had been veins, tracery, small nodes; threads deposited in trickles across centuries or millennia. Otherwise he would have needed rocks of lesser bulk.

Without its capstone, his edifice would have no power over the
Elohim
.

While the Giants rested, there was nothing more that Jeremiah could do to prepare or build. He could only search. And dawn was still three hours away.

Increasingly alarmed, he scrambled up and down the rockfall, moving with less assurance and more haste; gripped by a fever of trepidation. Over and over again, he told himself to slow down. He could not probe the slope deeply or accurately while he was hurrying. But he seemed to feel jaws snapping at his back, fangs wet with venom and malice, rabid agony. Memories—At any moment, they might catch him.

If he failed now, he would not deserve anything that Linden had done for him.

A slap of wind caught him rushing from one boulder to another. His foot missed its step as if the solidity of the world had faded. Without warning, the entire rockfall seemed to stand on its side. Then he plunged.

In an instant, realities transposed their definitions. Through the darkness, he saw as clearly as prescience that all of his conflicts and confusions would be resolved when his head smashed itself open on that looming jut of granite,
that
one. He was falling too hard to twist aside. But now he understood that being overtaken by his fears was not the worst possible outcome. Even a retreat to his graves was not the worst. Anything could be destroyed, anything at all, by a senseless, childish accident.

Then Stave caught his arm, swung him out of danger so suddenly that Jeremiah did not recognize Stave’s grasp until Stave had settled him on a canting shelf of basalt. He did not feel the tight hurt of Stave’s fingers until the first wildness of his heartbeat began to subside.

He was panting as though he had lost a race.

“Chosen-son,” Stave said like a man who had seen nothing, done nothing, “you appear troubled to my sight. Do not take it amiss that I say so. I am
Haruchai
. Your silence I deem condign. I gauge that you have concealed naught which may alter the choices of your companions. What purpose, then, is served by speech? Nonetheless you are mortal, as I am. And at the side of the Chosen your mother, I have learned that it is not shameful to request or receive aid. Therefore I will hear if you wish to speak.”