White Gold Wielder (54 page)

While the words measured out their sorrow and determination, the singer appeared on a rise ahead of the company—became visible like a translation of song.

He was tall and strong, wrapped in a robe as fine and white as the music which streamed from the lines of his form. In his right hand, he gripped a long, gnarled tree-limb as though it were the staff of his might. For he was mighty—oh, he was mighty! The sheer potency of him shouted to Linden’s senses as he approached, stunning her not with fear but with awe. A long moment passed before she was able to see him clearly.

“Caer-Caveral,” whispered Covenant. “Hile Troy.” Linden felt his legs tremble as if he ached to kneel, wanted to stretch himself prostrate in front of the eldritch puissance of the Forestal. “Dear God, I’m glad to see you.” Memories poured from him, pain and rescue and bittersweet meeting.

Then at last Linden discerned through the phosphorescence and the music that the tall man had no eyes. The skin of his face spread straight and smooth from forehead to cheek over the sockets in which orbs should have been.

Yet he did not appear to need sight. His music was the only sense he required. It lit the Giants, entrancing them where they stood, leaving them with a glamour in their faces and a cessation of all hurt in their hearts. It trilled and swirled through Linden, carrying her care away, humbling her to silence. And it met Covenant as squarely as any gaze.

“You have come,” the man sang, drawing glimmers of melody from the greensward, spangled wreaths of accompaniment from the trees. “And the woman of your world with you. That is well.” Then his singing concentrated more personally on Covenant; and Covenant’s eyes burned with grief. Hile Troy had once commanded the armies of the Land against Lord Foul. But he had sold himself to the Forestal of Garroting Deep to purchase a vital victory—and the price had been more than three millennia of service.

“Thomas Covenant, you have become that which I may no longer command. But I ask this of you, that you must grant it.” Melody flowed from him down the hillside, curling about Covenant’s feet and passing on. The music tuned itself to a pitch of authority. “Ur-Lord and Illender, Unbeliever and Earthfriend. You have earned the valor of those names. Stand aside.”

Covenant stared at the Forestal, his whole stance pleading for comprehension.

“You must not intervene. The Land’s need is harsh, and its rigor falls upon other heads as well as yours. No taking of life is gentle, but in this there is a necessity upon me, which you are craved to honor. This Law also must be broken.” The moon was poised above the Hills, as acute as a sickle; but its light was only a pale echo of the music that gleamed like droplets of bright dew up and down the slope. Within the trunks of the trees rose the same song which glittered on their leaves. “Thomas Covenant,” the Forestal repeated, “stand aside.”

Now the rue of the melody could not be mistaken. And behind it shimmered a note of fear.

“Covenant, please,” Caer-Caveral concluded in a completely different voice—the voice of the man he had once been. “Do this for me. No matter what happens. Don’t interfere.”

Covenant’s throat worked. “I don’t—” he started to say. I don’t understand. Then, with a wrench of will, he stepped out of the Forestal’s way.

Stately and grave, Caer-Caveral went down the hillside toward Sunder.

The Graveler stood as if he did not see the tall, white figure, heard no song. Hollian he held upright against his heart, her face pressed to his chest. But his head was up: his eyes watched the slope down which Caer-Caveral had come. A cry that had no voice stretched his visage.

Slowly like an action in a dream, Linden turned to look in the direction of Sunder’s gaze.

As Covenant did the same, a sharp pang sprang from him.

Above the company, moonshine and Forestal-fire condensed to form a human shape. Pale silver, momentarily transparent, then more solid, like an incarnation of evanescence and yearning, a woman walked toward the onlookers. A smile curved her delicate mouth; and her hair swept a suggestion of dark wings and destiny past her shoulders; and she shone like loss and hope.

Hollian eh-Brand. Sunder’s Dead, come to greet him.

The sight of her made him breathe in fierce, shuddering gasps, as if she had set a goad to his heart.

She passed by Covenant, Linden, and the Giants without acknowledging them. Perhaps for her they did not exist. Erect with the dignity of her calling, the importance of her purpose, she moved to the Forestal’s side and stopped, facing Sunder and her own dead body.

“Ah, Sunder, my dear one,” she murmured. “Forgive my death. It was my flesh that failed you, not my love.”

Helpless to reply, Sunder went on gasping as if his life were being ripped out of him.

Hollian started to speak again; but the Forestal raised his staff, silencing her. He did not appear to move, to take any action. Yet music leaped around Sunder like a swirl of moon-sparks, and the Graveler staggered. Somehow Hollian was taken from him. She was enfolded tenderly in the crook of the Forestal’s left arm. Caer-Caveral claimed her stiff death for himself. The song became keener, whetted by loss and trepidation.

Wildly Sunder snatched the
krill
from its resting place against his burned belly. Its argent passion pierced the music. All reason was gone from him. Wracked for air, he brandished Loric’s blade at the Forestal, mutely demanding that Hollian be given back to him.

The restraint Hile Troy had asked of Covenant made him shudder.

“Now it ends,” fluted Caer-Caveral. The singing which conveyed his words was at once exquisitely beautiful and unbearable. “Do not fear for me. Though it is severe, this must be done. I am weary, eager of release and called to rest. Your love supplies the power, and none other may take the burden from you. Son of Nassic”—the music contained no command now, but only sorrow—“you must strike me.”

Covenant flinched as if he expected Sunder to obey. The Graveler was desperate enough for anything. But Linden watched him with all her senses and saw his inchoate violence founder in dismay. He lowered the
krill
. His eyes were wide with supplication. Behind the mad obsession which had ruled him since Hollian’s death still lived a man who loathed killing—who had shed too much blood and never forgiven himself for it. His soul seemed to collapse inward. After days of endurance, he was dying.

The Forestal struck the turf with his staff, and the Hills rang. “Strike!”

His demand was so potent that Linden raised her hands involuntarily, though it was not directed at her. Yet some part of Sunder remained unbroken, clear. The corners of his jaw knotted with the old obduracy which had once enabled him to defy Gibbon. Deliberately he unbent his elbow, let the
krill
dangle from his weak hand. His head slumped forward until his chin rested on his chest. He no longer made any effort to breathe.

Caer-Caveral sent a glare of phosphorescence at the Graveler. “Very well,” he trilled angrily. “Withhold—and be lost. The Land is ill-served by those who will not pay the price of love.” Turning sharply away, he strode back through the company in the direction from which he had come. He still bore Hollian’s physical form clasped in his left arm.

And the Dead eh-Brand went with him as if she approved. Her eyes were silver and grieving.

It was too much. A strangled cry tore Sunder’s refusal. He could not let Hollian go: his desire for her was too strong. Raising the
krill
above his head in both fists, he ran at the Forestal’s back.

Too late, Covenant shouted, “No!” and leaped after Sunder.

The Giants could not move. The music held them fascinated and motionless. Linden was not certain that they were truly able to see what was happening.

She could have moved. She felt the same stasis which enclosed the First and Pitchwife; but it was not strong enough to stop her. Her percipience could grasp the melody and make it serve her. With the slow instantaneousness of visions or nightmares, she knew she was able to do it. The music would carry her after Sunder so swiftly that he might never reach the Forestal.

Yet she did not. She had no way to measure the implications of this crisis. But she had seen the pain shining in Hollian’s eyes, the eh-Brand’s recognition of necessity. And she trusted the slim, brave woman. She made no effort to stop Sunder as he hammered the point of the
krill
between Caer-Caveral’s shoulder blades with the last force of his life.

From the blow burst a deflagration of pearl flame which rent away immobility, sent Linden and the Giants sprawling, hurled Covenant to the grass. At once, all the music became fire and raced toward the Forestal, sweeping around him—and Sunder and Hollian with him—so that they were effaced from sight, consumed in an incandescent whirlwind that spouted into the heavens, reached like the ruin of every song toward the bereft stars. A cacophony of fear clashed and wept around the flame; but the flame did not hear it. In a rush of ascension, the blaze burned its hot, mute agony against the night as if it fed on the pure heart of Andelain, bore that spirit writhing and appalled through the high dark.

And as it rose, Linden seemed to hear the fundamental fabric of the world tearing.

Then, before the sight became unendurable, the fire began to subside. By slow stages, the conflagration changed to an ordinary fire, yellow with heat and eaten wood, and she saw it burning from the black and blasted stump of a tree trunk which had not been there when Caer-Caveral was struck.

Stabbed deep into the charred wood beyond any hope of removal was the
krill
. Only the flames that licked the stump made it visible: the light of its gem was gone.

Now the fire failed swiftly, falling away from the stricken trunk. Soon the blaze was extinguished altogether. Smoke curled upward to mark the place where the Forestal had been slain.

Yet the night was not dark. Other illuminations gathered around the stunned companions.

From beyond the stump, Sunder and Hollian came walking hand-in-hand. They were limned with silver like the Dead; but they were alive in the flesh—human and whole. Caer-Caveral’s mysterious purpose had been accomplished. Empowered and catalyzed by the Forestal’s spirit, Sunder’s passion had found its object; and the
krill
had severed the boundary which separated him from Hollian. In that way, the Graveler, who was trained for bloodshed and whose work was killing, had brought his love back into life.

Around the two of them bobbed a circle of Wraiths, dancing a bright cavort of welcome. Their warm loveliness seemed to promise the end of all pain.

But in Andelain there was no more music.

In the lush, untrammeled dawn of the Hills, Sunder and Hollian came to say farewell to Covenant and Linden.

Linden greeted them as if the past night had been one of the best of her life. She could not have named the reasons for this; it defied expectation. With Caer-Caveral’s passing, important things had come to an end. She should have lamented instead of rejoicing. Yet on a level too deep for language she had recognized the necessity of which the Forestal had spoken.
This Law also
. Andelain had been bereft of music, but not of beauty or consolation. And the restoration of the Stonedownors made her too glad for sorrow. In a paradoxical way, Caer-Caveral’s self-sacrifice felt like a promise of hope.

But Covenant’s mien was clouded by conflicting emotions. With his companions, he had spent the night watching Sunder and Hollian revel among the Wraiths of Andelain—and Linden sensed that the sight gave him both joy and rue. The healing of his friends lightened his heart: the price of that healing did not. And surely he was hurt by his lack of any health-sense which would have enabled him to evaluate what the loss of the Forestal meant to Andelain.

However, there were no clouds upon the Graveler and the eh-Brand. They walked buoyantly to the place where Linden and Covenant sat; and Linden thought that some of the night’s silver still clung to them, giving them a numinous cast even in daylight, like a new dimension added to their existence. Smiles gleamed from Sunder’s eyes. And Hollian bore herself with an air of poised loveliness. Linden was not surprised to perceive that the child in the eh-Brand’s womb shared her elusive, mystical glow.

For a moment, the Stonedownors gazed at Covenant and Linden and smiled and did not speak. Then Sunder cleared his throat. “I crave your pardon that we will no longer accompany you.” His voice held a special resonance that Linden had never heard before in him, a suggestion of fire. “You have said that we are the future of the Land. It has become our wish to discover that future here. And to bear our son in Andelain.

“I know you will not gainsay us. But we pray that you find no rue in this parting. We do not—though you are precious to us. The outcome of the Earth is in your hands. Therefore we are unafraid.”

He might have gone on; but Covenant stopped him with a brusque gesture, a scowl of gruff affection. “Are you kidding?” he muttered. “I’m the one who wanted you to stay behind. I was going to ask you—” He sighed, and his gaze wandered the hillside. “Spend as much time here as you can,” he breathed. “Stay as long as possible. That’s something I’ve always wanted to do.”

His voice trailed away; but Linden was not listening to its resigned sadness. She was staring at Sunder. The faint silver quality of his aura was clear—and yet undefinable. It ran out of her grasp like water. Intuition tingled along her nerves, and she started speaking before she knew what she would say. “The last time Covenant was here, Caer-Caveral gave him the location of the One Tree.” Each word surprised her like a hint of revelation. “But he hid it so Covenant couldn’t reach it himself. That’s why he had to expose himself to the
Elohim
, let them work their plots.” The bare memory brought a tremor of anger into her voice. “We should never have had to go there in the first place. Why did Caer-Caveral give him that gift—and then make it such a secret?”