The Last Dark (59 page)

Branl stood there, gazing at her with only argent in his flat eyes. He might have said something if she had given him a chance, but she forced herself to hasten past him; downward.

She felt Stave only a few strides behind her. Covenant followed more slowly, accompanied by Rime Coldspray and Frostheart Grueburn. But Linden ignored them. Her attention was fixed on Jeremiah.

He stood in a hollow between hills too old and worn to glower down at him. And he had indeed found grass: a patch of saw-edged grey-green blades growing stubbornly where a cluster of rocks had collected soil from the erosion of the surrounding slopes. In the ghost-light of Loric’s gem, those blades looked sharp enough to cut. Everything around Jeremiah was blades: the etched hillsides, the ragged edges of the rocks, the black lift and slice of the stream. To Linden, he resembled a child in the midst of shattered glass, heedless of the danger, about to take a step which would shred his soles.

He did not see her. She had come from the south, and he was facing the northward crease where the hills slumped to close the hollow. His head was bowed in concentration. Waves of tension made his shoulders twitch: the muscles of his back bunched and released. Between his teeth, he muttered words which did not reach Linden.

She forced herself to slow down. Yet naught transpires. Stave was right. Branl had seen no reason to take action because there was no reason. Jeremiah was only himself: taut with anger and dread, desperate to prove his worth, but untouched.

She stopped a few steps away. “Jeremiah,” she panted. “Honey.” God, she felt so
weak
—Unmade. As if her refusal to name her greatest fear had been her only source of strength. “That’s enough. You tried. You can stop now.”

Stave arrived at her side. Covenant, the Ironhand, and Grueburn crossed the rise toward her. Coming to bear witness—

Branl trailed behind them, spreading the
krill
’s light as far as possible.

Jeremiah lifted his head. Keeping his back to his mother, he made a scything gesture with his halfhand.

Without warning, a silent shock jolted the hills. For one small splinter of time, the world’s Laws seemed to pause. Linden’s heart did not beat. Her lungs did not stretch for air. The stream hesitated in its course, poised and motionless. Stave became one more stone in the hollow. Covenant hung between one downward step and the next. Coldspray and Grueburn froze.

Then a second shock released the hollow. Linden’s pulse hit like a blow on an anvil. Covenant lurched for balance. Stave readied himself.

Instantly the air became attar, thick as the smoke of burning flesh, cloying as an inferno of incense. The heavens leaned down on Linden as if they had become lead. Even Stave flinched. Coldspray or Grueburn stumbled. One of them caught Covenant. Branl started downward with the
krill
raised.

In Lord Foul’s voice, Jeremiah announced like a grinding millstone, “It may interest you to know, fools and servants, that your ploy has achieved its purpose. Your edifice stands, a worthy emblem of your wish to oppose me. Yet even there, your deeds work against you. Deprived of
Elohim
, the Worm hastens onward. It
hastens
, fools! The hour of my many triumphs approaches. You cannot thwart it.”

“Branl!” Covenant gasped. “The
krill
. Give me the
krill
!”

The Despiser and Jeremiah ignored him. They spoke only to Linden.

“Nonetheless,” the crushing voice continued, “this callow whelp thinks to challenge me.
Me!
As guerdon for his puerile valor, I have given him a gift which will make him wise in the subtleties of despair. When I have need of him, I will claim him, and no endeavor of yours will suffice to redeem him.”

If your son serves me, he will do so in your presence.

“And you, frail woman—” Lord Foul’s mirth filled the vale. “You have become the daughter of my heart. In you, I am well pleased. Ere the end, you also will serve me.

“Thus all things conduce to my desires.”

Covenant snatched the dagger from Branl. “Is that what you think, Foul? Have you forgotten what we can do to you? Have you forgotten we’re
coming
for you?”

“Forgotten, wretch?” retorted the Despiser, bitter and gleeful. “I rely upon it. I forget nothing. I am prepared for you. If you think to confront me, you will discover that your efforts harm only yourself.”

Covenant did not reply. With the
krill
gripped in both fists, he advanced like an incarnation of wrath.

Instinctively Linden barred his way. She had no idea what his intentions might be. If she had taken time to think, she would have realized that he would not hurt Jeremiah. He was bluffing again. But she did not think. Jeremiah was her
son
. And she was capable of responses which Covenant could not match.

Whatever you do to my son
, she had promised the Despiser long ago,
I’m going to tear your heart out
. Now she knew that she would not. She was not the woman she had once been. Events since her arrival in the Land had taught her expensive lessons. Covenant was still teaching her.

Like Gallows Howe, the world had more important needs than retribution.

Nevertheless she did not hesitate. She had made other promises as well, ones that she knew how to keep. With a sweep of her Staff, she unveiled Earthpower and Law.

Her health-sense was precise. Her fire could be equally precise: as refined as a scalpel in spite of its blackness. Just for an instant, she sent it gyring skyward while she prepared it for her purpose; confirmed that it was exact. Then she swung it like the crack of a whip at her son.

It poured through Jeremiah without touching him. She had tuned her theurgy to the pitch and timbre of Lord Foul’s malice rather than of Jeremiah’s body, Jeremiah’s appalled mind. Her dark flame struck only the Despiser.

She could do so because Lord Foul’s mastery was of an entirely different kind than the
croyel
’s. That monster had merely reached into Jeremiah; fed on him; used him: it had not existed within him. And his defenses—his dissociation—had protected him. But now he had arisen from his graves. He inhabited himself. That change enabled Linden to distinguish between his reclaimed self and the force which ruled him.

She may have been as frail as Lord Foul believed. She may indeed have become his daughter in despair. Still she was Linden Avery the Chosen, Jeremiah’s mother and Covenant’s wife.

In a burst of conflagration, she banished the Despiser. His malevolence burst and vanished like a punctured bubble. Intangible gales swept away the stench of attar. The laughter of broken rocks dissipated until it was entirely gone.

Like a discarded puppet, Jeremiah collapsed to his hands and knees.

Linden reached him a heartbeat later, dropped her Staff, flung her arms around him. Through his skin, she felt his warmth and dismay, his wholeness, his horror. He strained to breathe as if his lungs were clogged with the sweet, sick odor of a body arrayed for burial.

“Mom,” he croaked. “Oh, Mom. I can feel the Worm. I can
feel
it. It’s going up a cliff. A cliff! And it’s going fast. Like the cliff was nothing.”

The Despiser’s gift.

Shivers that began in the marrow of Jeremiah’s bones spread through him. Linden hugged him tightly, but could not still his trembling.

Lord Foul had taught her son to fear him.

Summoned to Oppose

Another race through the interstices between instants and leagues brought the company to a twisted heave of hills that Linden had never seen before.

She had no idea how far Covenant’s eldritch circle had carried the riders and the Giants. She could be sure only that she and her companions were still on the Lower Land. As Hyn slowed her wild gallop, following Rallyn’s lead with Hynyn and Khelen, Linden saw Landsdrop massive on her left, thrusting its crooked rims thousands of feet above its foothills. And in the distance on her right, she caught troubled glimpses of water, grey and dim as tarnished silver: Sarangrave Flat between the barricade of the cliffs and deeper mire of Lifeswallower, the Great Swamp.

Overhead the stars were no longer visible. Thunderheads like clenched fists battered each other back and forth between the cramped horizons, occluding the sky. The weather tumbled in confusion, affronted by the Worm’s passing far away. With every sunless hour, the air grew cooler.

Abruptly the company plunged down a steep hillside. Skidding on loose shale, the Giants floundered to keep their balance. Hyn locked her knees for a moment and slid. Then she lifted into a light-footed prance that carried Linden safely.

Jeremiah reeled on Khelen, but not because the young stallion had jostled him. Ever since he had regained his feet after his encounter with Lord Foul, the boy had wobbled as if some of his sinews had been cut. His eyes, always changeable, had acquired a nauseated hue. If they reflected his mind, his thoughts were a spew of vomit.

Covenant also reeled. As Mishio Massima lurched to a halt, he pitched from the saddle. But that was an effect of vertigo. Every exertion of wild magic seemed to cast him into a whirlwind.

On more level ground at the foot of the slope, the company gathered among a few patches of scrub oak clinging to the thin soil between stubborn tufts of grass and weeds. A more gentle hillside lay ahead; yet no one proposed to hurry onward. Covenant had already returned the
krill
to Branl. Now he folded cross-legged to the dirt, holding his head like a man trying to remember who he was. As before, the Swordmainnir labored for air as if they had been carrying monoliths on their backs.

Almost at once, heavy raindrops struck Linden’s face. Spatters hit randomly around the area, raising small bursts of dust where they found dirt. Soon there would be more. Torrents were coming, a monsoon downpour entirely out of place in this season of the Lower Land.

Wincing in anticipation, she nudged Hyn closer to Khelen.

At the same time, Covenant heaved himself upright. Unsteady on his numb feet, he made his way among the Giants toward Linden and Jeremiah. Droplets ran down his cheeks like sweat.

Carefully he asked, “How are you doing, Jeremiah?”

The boy glared past Covenant. He avoided Linden’s concern. “Stop worrying about me,” he muttered. “I’m fine. You can’t do anything about it.”

His hands still trembled as if he were feverish.

Covenant looked questions at Linden.

She studied her son. Superficially he was undamaged: that was plain. The distress that appeared to disarticulate him was emotional, not physical. Only his spirit had been harmed.

He had spent too much of his life hidden: a powerful defense which had both shielded and hampered him. Crouching in his graves had preserved him in some ways, but had not taught him how to weather the Despiser’s virulence. Possession and vicious scorn had withered his attempt at defiance.

From Hyn’s back, Linden reached out to touch Jeremiah’s arm, get his attention. “Is it that bad, honey? Can you talk about it?”

She wanted to ask what had impelled him to risk exposing himself to the Despiser, but she suspected that she already knew the answer. He felt useless: he needed to do something that would help him believe in himself again. And Covenant had given him an oblique form of permission or encouragement.

Eventually we all have to face the things that scare us most.

Jeremiah glared at her for a moment, then turned his head away. To the coming storm, he muttered, “You don’t understand. You don’t see it. I can’t stop. All that power—It isn’t just terrible. It’s more
real
than we are. We’re all going to die, and I get to watch.”

Scattered raindrops struck at Linden like pebbles. Fiercely she wiped her face.

“You’re right, Jeremiah. I
don’t
understand. But I still know how it feels. I’m not any braver than you are, or stronger, or better. My
God
, Jeremiah. I let a crazy man stick a knife in Thomas because I couldn’t make myself try to stop him.
Turiya
Raver touched me, just
touched
me, and I got so scared that I was gone for days. And
moksha
actually possessed me. I know what that
feels
like.”

How much of her life had she spent ashamed? Despising herself?

“But I’m still here for the same reason you are. We aren’t alone. We are not alone.”

“Indeed,” Cirrus Kindwind confirmed softly. “We have spoken of this, Chosen-son. Giants affirm that joy is in the ears that hear because the telling of our tales binds us one to another. Speaking and hearing, we share our efforts to give our lives meaning.”

The rain was falling harder. Soon it would be falling too hard to hear anything; say anything.

Through a slash of water, Jeremiah whispered, “But you don’t
see
it. I don’t mean anything.”

His misery closed Linden’s throat. She had no answer for him. She believed in Covenant, but she was afraid to believe in herself. Her greatest fear—

While she stumbled inwardly, Covenant put his hand on her thigh. “We should get out of here.” Slapping raindrops obscured the severity of his mien, the lines of his willing compassion. “Maybe we can escape the worst of this storm.”

As if he had triggered it, lightning shrieked overhead. Thunder made the air shudder.

“To my sight,” Rime Coldspray remarked, pitching her voice to carry, “the coming downpour does not appear extensive. Nonetheless it will be extreme. The Timewarden counsels wisely.”

“Branl!” Covenant barked over his shoulder. “How far have we come?”

The Humbled sat Rallyn with the
krill
raised in one hand and Longwrath’s sword leaning on his shoulder. “Our translations have increased, ur-Lord,” he replied. “We have traversed nigh unto thirty leagues, and have lost but a portion of the afternoon.”

Stave nodded in confirmation.

Linden tried to remember how much ground the Ardent had covered when he had conveyed the company out of the Lost Deep. Another glare and shout among the clouds distracted her. The rain was becoming a deluge.

Cursing, Covenant started back toward the head of the company. Incipient torrents belabored his head and shoulders.

At once, Branl dismounted. The flamberge he handed to Onyx Stonemage. With Covenant and Loric’s dagger, he strode beyond the company.

Rain hammered the ground. It beat the dirt to mud. Clotted rills squirmed past the feet of the Giants. Linden felt herself sinking under the weight of the downpour, hunching over her heart. Her son needed help, and she had nothing to give him.

The Giants braced themselves for a sprint which would have no perceptible beginning: it would simply come over them somewhere within the blank space created by wild magic and Loric’s blade. Hyn tossed her head, repositioned her hooves. Khelen snorted a warning at Jeremiah. Lightning ripped through the gloom. Thunder roared against the cliff like the wrath of mountains.

Branl moved swiftly, carrying Covenant. Covenant’s line of fire defied the torrents as if dirt and rain were fuel. Flames danced like Wraiths on Linden’s wedding band. Reflexively she held the Staff as far away from her ring as she could.

When the world vanished, her heart plunged into darkness. She and her companions were taking Jeremiah to Mount Thunder.

To the Despiser.

He would relish her son.

ithout transition, the horses and the Giants were running as if their lungs would burst. They strained at a steep slope, labored forward against the obstructions of their mortality. Then they pitched down a hillside, plummeting like a landslide.

There was no rain. The dusk of late afternoon held the world under a sparse sprinkle of stars. Every breath sucked at a humid miasma of putrefaction and worse poisons.

On the left some distance away rose a high cliff sheer as a cut slab. And water lay
there
, on the right: the rank wetland of the Sarangrave, brandishing its tortured trees and twisted scrub and fetor. Branches writhed like the beckoning limbs of demons. The companions hurtled toward the Flat as if they aimed to cast themselves headlong into its reek.

Then Covenant heaved on Mishio Massima’s reins, yelled at the beast to stop. Rallyn braced his legs against the descent: the Ironhand and her comrades dug in their heels. Stride by stride, the company slowed.

A tree flashed past, and another. Ironwood? Hyn splashed through a stream. A glowering cluster of cypress reached out from the edge of the marsh. Following Rallyn and Covenant’s mount, the companions veered away, angling closer to the cliff.

As Hyn mastered her momentum, Linden realized where she was. Although she had never seen the mountain from this perspective before, she recognized Mount Thunder. In profile, it resembled a titan kneeling against or within Landsdrop with its forearms and torso braced on the Upper Land, facing west. The nearby cliff was a side of the mountain rather than an extension of the great precipice which divided the Land. The hillside down which Hyn moved, trotting now, was one of the titan’s calves. The other formed the far side of a valley leading from the base of the cliff into the Sarangrave.

The valley was wide enough to hold a large herd of Ranyhyn, long enough to accommodate several hundred Masters fighting Cavewights or
kresh
. On the lower slopes and in the bottom grew scattered ironwood trees nourished by streams of fresh water tumbling downward on both sides, north and south. Marsh grasses climbing out of the Flat wrestled for room to grow with bindweed and more noxious plants.

But the spine of the valley bottom was a riverbed that stank like a sewer.

Black water viscid as oil, putrid as excrement, ran from a gaping wound in the cliff between the mountain’s knees. At one time, the river had thundered from that wound, flushing the bowels of Mount Thunder with the combined waters of the Upper Land, emptying the effluvium of banes and charnels, of disused Wightwarrens and discarded corpses and lakes of acid, into the welcome of the Great Swamp. But now the level had fallen far below the bed’s rims. Even augmented by the streams, the Defiles Course barely carried enough water to cover the slimed rocks of its bottom. The wound in the cliff gaped like a waiting maw.

Insects hummed with hunger past Linden’s head. Some of them stung. Swarms of midges swirled here and there as if they fed on the odor of excreted toxins. As she rode downward, the cypresses appeared to rise up until they towered above her, avid and polluted. The ironwoods looked mighty, although they would surely have grown taller and broader in a kinder setting. Above them, the cliff extended itself to giddy heights.