The Last Dark (61 page)

“No.” Simply because her son’s distress hurt her, Linden wanted to raise her voice. She had to force herself to speak quietly. “Listen to me, honey. There’s always something we can do, even if it’s just changing the way we look at what’s happening, or the way we look at ourselves.

“I think I know how you can defend yourself.”

With her fingers, she felt his shock. “How?”

“Linden Giantfriend.” The fog muted Rime Coldspray’s tension. “My heart misgives me. The Timewarden’s hopes fail. The Feroce do not come. And this fog—” She made a spitting sound. “Stone and Sea! I cannot persuade myself that it is natural. Some evil summons it.”

Linden closed her ears to the Ironhand. “Try this.” She pulled Jeremiah closer. “Fill your hands with fire. You can do that. I know you can.”

“Why?” He tried to draw back. He had failed earlier. “What good will that do? You just said—”

She cut him off. “Just
do
it. Then touch my Staff.”

“Mom!” he protested. “I can’t use your Staff!”

“We don’t know that yet.” She strove to sound calm, but she trembled in spite of her efforts. “We haven’t tried it.

“First your Earthpower. Then my Staff. After that, I’ll help you figure out what comes next.”

Through her teeth, Coldspray muttered warnings which her comrades did not require.

“Hellfire,” Covenant raged in the distance. The
krill
’s shining throbbed ineffectually. “I saved you from
turiya
by God Raver. And I told you not to sacrifice yourself against the Worm. If you got hurt, it wasn’t my doing. I kept my part of the deal. I’ve been keeping it. Now it’s your turn.”

Linden felt his vehemence, but she did not hear an answer. Fog eddied around her head. She could barely make out Jeremiah’s features.

He floundered in her grasp as if he wanted to resist and comply simultaneously. “Mom—?” His distress came in bursts. “I don’t—How can—? Don’t make me. I—”

Just for a moment, she feared that she had pushed him too far. He was only a boy. And he had spent most of his life hiding. In effect, he had only known himself for a few days.

But then he stopped trying to pull away. Flames appeared in his palms as if his skin had caught fire.

They danced and fluttered, leaned raggedly from side to side like fires in a harsh wind. But they grew stronger as he gained confidence in them. By the measure of his needs, they were little things, no bigger than his hands. The sun-yellow of Earthpower did not push back the fog. Still these flames were
his
. They had been given freely.

Yes, Linden thought. If he could do that, he could do more. She would teach him somehow. His own health-sense would guide him if hers did not suffice.

“Giantfriend,” the Ironhand insisted. “Linden Avery.”

“Now the Staff,” Linden instructed Jeremiah, whispering again. “It’s full of possibilities.” The runes. The iron heels as old as Berek Halfhand. The combined essences of Vain and Findail. Her own love. “Try to feel them. Maybe they’ll answer,” Earthpower to Earthpower.

She had her wedding band. Covenant had made her a rightful white gold wielder. Surely she could fend for herself without the Staff of Law?

“It might not respond right away,” she admitted. “It isn’t yours. I made it. I have a kind of symbiotic relationship with it. But if you keep trying, you should—”

“
Attend
, Giantfriend!”

The Ironhand’s shout snatched at Linden. Involuntarily she wheeled away from her son’s guttering hands.

At once, the distinctive reek of gangrene stung her nose. Impressions of necrosis seemed to hit all of her nerves, her whole body. She recognized that smell, those emanations; but for a confused instant, she could not identify them.

Then she saw a lurid swelling of brimstone, a fierce gnash of lava. It was some distance away on the far side of the Defiles Course. Nevertheless it was hot enough to pierce the fog. She remembered roaring ferocity, fangs like scimitars in long rows, terrible jaws.

Oh, God—

Beyond her, the Swordmainnir strode down the slope to intercept the attack, spreading out so that they would each have room to strike and dodge. Stave stood a few paces in front of Linden as if he imagined that he could counter one of the
skurj
.

Covenant may have been unaware of the threat behind him. He continued hurling his demands into the shrouded Sarangrave. The
krill
slashed back and forth: cuts that had no effect. But now he was alone. Apparently Branl trusted that the lurker would not assail the Pure One, even if the monster had withdrawn its aid. With calm haste, the Humbled came back up the valley, gripping Longwrath’s flamberge in both hands.

“Mom?” Jeremiah called: a small sound like a whimper. “Mom? What’s happening?”

Abruptly a monster surged up from the eaten ground.

Now Linden saw it clearly. The unthinking creature had devoured its way through the earth to emerge among the roots of an ironwood. Almost immediately, the tree exploded into flames. Bright as a bonfire, and hot as the ravaging of Covenant’s home on Haven Farm, it heralded hunger and scoria.

Tall and thick as a Giant, the
skurj
stood in conflagration with half of its full length braced underground. Roaring like an eruption, it twisted from side to side, apparently seeking the scent of its prey. Then it began its rush toward the company, drawing its whole body out of the dirt as it snaked into the valley bottom.

Under other circumstances, the river might have forced the monster to pause; perhaps to chew its way beneath the watercourse. But the Defiles Course was much diminished. The
skurj
did not hesitate. Coiling its strength, it launched itself in a brimstone arc above the waters.

Its fury dismissed the fog around it. Even at that distance, Linden felt waves of heat beat against her face.

Covenant’s shouting was hoarse and doomed. Still he persisted.

Linden did not think. She had no time. Raising her Staff, she left Jeremiah’s side. Black flames like the tails of a scourge pulled free of the wood and whipped around her as she hurried toward the Giants.

Stave accompanied her without question. He seemed to have no questions left.

“Don’t move,” she urged as she passed between Coldspray and Frostheart Grueburn. “I can do this.” She hardly heard herself. “Take care of Jeremiah.” In the back of her mind, she had already begun to pronounce the Seven Words. “Lord Foul doesn’t want him dead, but that monster probably doesn’t care.”

The
skurj
was only one.

In Salva Gildenbourne, one alone had overwhelmed her in spite of her Staff. And during the company’s flight toward Andelain, Kastenessen’s monsters had been too strong for her. She could not have fought them in the Lost Deep.

Since then, everything had changed. Kevin’s Dirt was gone. Kastenessen’s passing into the fane of the
Elohim
had struck manacles from her wrists. While Covenant still believed that the lurker might heed him, she meant to guard his back.

“
Melenkurion abatha
,” she promised softly while the
skurj
arose from the riverbank and swept toward her. “
Duroc minas mill
.
Harad khabaal
.”

Down the valley from her, Branl did not quicken his pace. He advanced with the remorseless inevitability of a breaking wave.

“Help her!” Jeremiah panted at the Swordmainnir. “That thing is going to
eat
her!”

If the Ironhand or any of her comrades replied, Linden did not hear them.

Now! she told herself. Do it
now
.

Get away from me, you overgrown slug. You cannot have my son! Or my friends. Or my
husband
.

With the Staff of Law alive and lurid in her grasp, she flung an ebon torrent of Earthpower and Law between the jaws of the
skurj
.

The creature’s body radiated heat, but it did not emit light. All of the monster’s radiance came from the cruelty of its fangs. They were lambent and infernal, curved for ripping: they blazed with havoc. Looking into that wide maw was like staring down the gullet of a living cremation.

But Linden was as ready as she would ever be. Her power was ready. And she was sick of frustration and fear, more profoundly infuriated that she had allowed herself to realize. She felt that she had not struck an effective blow since the day of horror when she had slaughtered uncounted Cavewights with wild magic: sentient creatures whose massacre at her hands still filled her with revulsion. She was by God
ready
to oppose a monster which sought destruction merely to feed its own worst appetites—and to satisfy a Raver’s commands.

Moksha
Jehannum had once possessed her. She remembered him vividly. Like Covenant, if only with her Staff, she was done with restraint.

Her dark torrent tore a howl from the throat of the
skurj
. The monster reared back, balancing like a cobra on its length. For a moment or two, long enough for her to shout the Seven Words, it tried to swallow her power; gulp it down as if it were the natural drink of
skurj
. But it could not. Her power shredded its gullet, sent agony inward. Thrashing its head, it clamped shut its mouth, closed its jaws on its horrid lumination. Then it whirled away before she could inflict more pain.

Branl intercepted the
skurj
smoothly, as if he had foreseen the timing of his strike as soon as he had left Covenant’s side. The flamberge was a streak of theurgy in his hands. One stroke cut halfway through the monster’s neck.

Then he sprang aside as the
skurj
became a flailing fountain of blood as bitter as acid. Convulsions writhed through the monster: it seemed to snarl itself in knots. But it could not survive its wounds. While it gaped and snapped at the air, the light of its fangs faded into the fog.

Still Linden did not stop. She had endured too much, and yearned to repay it. Branl had killed the
skurj
for her: she turned her fire to quench the virulence of the monster’s blood.

Even when she had eradicated every spot and spatter from the dirt, she wanted to continue until she had reduced the corpse to ash. But she felt Stave’s hand on her shoulder, heard him say, “Enough, Linden. The monster is slain. Now you must conserve your magicks. Where one
skurj
arrives, others will surely come.”

“No,” Jeremiah breathed, apparently to himself. “Not more of those things. I can’t stand it. How did it find us?”

If he sought reassurance, no one offered it.

“Aye, Linden Giantfriend,” rumbled the Ironhand. “Your prowess raises a paean in our hearts. Yet Stave Rockbrother counsels wisely. In Kastenessen’s absence, the
skurj
are doubtless ruled by
moksha
Raver. We must believe that a greater force follows this lone creature. We must spare our strength while we may.”

Someone should have said that to Covenant. He was still trying to coerce a response from the Sarangrave, hacking at the fog with Loric’s
krill
, and yelling intermittently. The gem’s argent spread out until the wetland smothered it. His voice made no sound that Linden could hear.

“In that case,” she said as if she had only now begun to understand Rime Coldspray’s warning, “we need to
see
. We can’t let whatever comes take us by surprise.

“Watch for me. I’m going to get rid of this damn fog.”

The vapors baffled percipience. Like the Ironhand, Linden did not know whether they were natural or invoked. But she did not care. The fog itself was just suspended moisture. Earthpower and Law would dispel it.

“That would be a benison in all sooth,” answered Coldspray. “Make the attempt, Giantfriend. The Swordmainnir will ward your son.”

Linden nodded, but she had stopped listening. Again she prepared the Seven Words in her mind. Instinctively she moved away from her companions so that she would have space to work. With only Stave nearby, she tuned her senses to the pitch and timbre of mist. Then she lifted new flames from the Staff and sent them skirling upward.

She regretted the blackness of her fire. She would always regret it. But she had no idea how to relieve it. The fog was a simpler problem. And her stained theurgy was still Earthpower.

With her eyes closed, she summoned more and more of her Staff’s potential. Her health-sense recognized and measured the vapors: their specific dampness on her skin; their distinctive currents and flavors. As if she were musing to herself, she murmured the Seven Words.

The only substantial obstacle to her intent was the extent of the fug. It arose continuously from the Flat, curled up into the valley without ceasing. To be rid of it, she had to dismiss it faster than it came.

Melenkurion abatha.

Obliquely she wondered whether it had been invoked by the lurker, perhaps so that the High God of the Feroce would have an excuse for ignoring Covenant’s appeal. On a deeper level, she chewed the gristle of Jeremiah’s question. She feared that she knew the answer.

Duroc minas mill.

But she had work to do and could not afford to distract herself. If more
skurj
were coming—

Harad khabaal.

Behind her, the Giants muttered their approval. Stalwart as any of his kinsmen, Stave guarded her back.

When she had cleared the air directly overhead, unveiled the stars and the onset of evening, she sent her fire toward the cliff above the Defiles Course; toward the steep slopes on either side of the exposed gutrock.

“How did it find us?” Jeremiah repeated. He raised his voice, tried to make his question a demand. “We can’t get away if we don’t know how it found us.”

The
skurj
were able to sense exertions of Earthpower; but Linden did not know how far their perceptions reached. Could they detect her power while they were ravaging in Salva Gildenbourne? Detect it past the bulk of Mount Thunder? And arrive so quickly? No: she did not believe it.

She no longer felt Covenant’s irate, tattered summons; no longer sensed the
krill
’s shining imprecation. Grimly she focused her attention on the Staff of Law and fog.