White Gold Wielder (63 page)

Fatal as a bludgeon, he crashed headlong against the Demondim-spawn.

Vain made no effort to evade the impact. Yet he could not withstand it. Findail was Earthpower incarnate. The shock of collision made the road lurch, sent tremors like wailing through the stone. Vain had proved himself stronger than Giants or storms, impervious to spears and the na-Mhoram’s
Grim
. He had felt the power of the Worm of the World’s End and had survived, though that touch had cost him the use of one arm. He had escaped alone from
Elemesnedene
and all the
Elohim
. But Findail hit him with such concentrated might that he was driven backward.

Two steps. Three. To the last edge of the rim.

“Vain!” Covenant thrashed in Linden’s grasp. Frenzy almost made him strong enough to break away from her. “
Vain!
”

Instinctively Linden fought him, held him.

Impelled by Covenant’s fear, the First charged past Pitchwife after the Appointed.

Vain caught his balance on the Up of the abyss. His black eyes were vivid with intensity. A grin of relish sharpened his immaculate features. The iron heels of the Staff of Law gleamed dully in the hot rocklight.

He did not glance away from Findail. But his good arm made a warding gesture that knocked the First backward, stretched her at her husband’s feet, out of danger.

“Fall!” the Appointed raged. His fists hammered the air. The rock under Vain’s feet ruptured in splinters. “Fall and die!”

The Demondim-spawn fell. With the slowness of nightmare, he dropped straight into the abyss.

At the same instant, his dead arm lashed out, struck like a snake. His right hand closed on Findail’s forearm. The Appointed was pulled after him over the edge.

Rebounding from the wall, they tumbled together toward the center of the lake. Covenants cry echoed after them, inarticulate and wild.

Findail could not break Vain’s grip.

He was
Elohim
, capable of taking any form of the living Earth. He dissolved himself and became an eagle, pounded the air with his wings to escape the spouting magma. But Vain clung to one of his legs and was borne upward.

Instantly Findail transformed himself to water. The heat threw him in vapor and agony toward the ceiling. But Vain clutched a handful of essential moisture and drew the Appointed back to him.

Swifter than panic, Findail became a Giant with a greatsword in both fists. He hacked savagely at Vain’s wrist. But Vain only clenched his grip and let the blade glance off his iron band.

They were so close to the lava that Linden could barely see them through the blaze. In desperation, Findail took the shape of a sail and rode the heat upward again. But Vain still held him in an unbreakable grasp.

And before he rose high enough, a spout climbed like a tower toward him. He tried to evade it by veering; but he was too late. Magma took both
Elohim
and Demondim-spawn and snatched them down into the lake.

Linden hugged Covenant as if she shared his cries.

He was no longer struggling. “You don’t understand!” he gasped. All the strength had gone out of him. “That’s the place. Where the ur-viles got rid of their failures. When something they made didn’t work, they threw it down there. That’s why Findail—” The words seized in his throat.

Why Findail had made his final attempt upon the Demondim-spawn here. Even Vain could not hope to come back from that fall.

Dear Christ! She did not understand how the Elohim saw such an extravagant threat in one lone creation of the ur-viles. Vain had bowed to her once—and had never acknowledged her again. He had saved her life—and had refused to save it. And after all this time and distance and peril, he was lost before he found what he sought. Before she understood—

He had gripped Findail with the hand that hung from his wooden forearm.

Other perceptions demanded her attention, but she was slow to notice them. She had not heeded the Appointed’s warning. Too late, she sensed movement in the passage which had led the company to this abyss.

Along the rim of the pit, a party of Cavewights charged into the rocklight.

At least a score of them. Upright on their long limbs, they were almost as tall as Pitchwife. They ran with an exaggerated, jerky awkwardness, like stick-figures; but their strength was unmistakable: they were the delvers of the Wightwarrens. The red heat of lava burned in their eyes. Most of them were armed with truncheons: the rest carried battle-axes with wicked blades.

Still half stunned by the force of Vain’s blow, the First reeled to her feet. For an instant, she wavered. But the company’s need galvanized her. Her longsword flashed in readiness. Roaring, “Flee!” she faced the onset of the Cavewights.

Covenant made no effort to move. The people he loved were in danger, and he had the power to protect them—power he dared not use. Linden read his plight immediately. The exertion of will which held back the wild magic took all his strength.

She fought herself into motion. Summoning her resolve, she began to wrestle him down the tunnel.

He seemed weightless, almost abject Yet his very slackness hampered her. Her progress was fatally slow.

Then Pitchwife caught up with her. He started to take Covenant from her.

The clangor of battle echoed along the passage. Linden spun and saw the First fighting for her life.

She was a Swordmain, an artist of combat. Her glaive flayed about her, at once feral and precise: rocklight flared in splinters off the swift iron. Blood spattered from her attackers as if by incantation rather than violence, her blade the wand or scepter by which she wrought her theurgy.

But the roadway was too wide to constrict the Cavewights. Their reach was as great as hers. And they were born to contend with stone: their blows had the force of granite. Most of her effort went to parry clubs which would have shattered her arms. Step by step, she was driven backward.

She stumbled slightly on the uneven surface, and a truncheon flicked past her. On her left temple, a bloody welt seemed to appear without transition. The Cavewight that hit her pitched into the abyss, clutching his slashed chest. But more creatures crowded after her.

Linden looked at Pitchwife. He was being torn apart by conflicting needs. His eyes ached whitely, desperate and suppliant. He had offered her his life. Like Mistweave.

She could not bear it. He deserved better. “Help the First!” she barked at him. “I’ll take care of Covenant!”

Pitchwife was too frantic to hesitate. Releasing the Unbeliever, he sped to the aid of his wife.

Linden grabbed Covenant by the shoulders, shook him fiercely. “Come on!” she raged into his raw visage. “For God’s sake!”

His struggle was terrible to behold. He could have effaced the Cavewights with a simple thought—and brought down the Arch of Time, or desecrated it with venom. He was willing to sacrifice himself. But his friends! Their peril rent at him. For the space of one heartbeat, she thought he would destroy everything to save the First and Pitchwife. So that they would not die like Foamfollower for him.

Yet he withheld—clamped his ripped and wailing spirit in a restraint as inhuman as his purpose. His features hardened: his gaze became bleak and desolate, like the Land under the scourge of the Sunbane. “You’re right,” he muttered softly. “This is pathetic.”

Straightening his back, he started down the tunnel.

She clinched his numb halfhand and fled with him into darkness. Cries and blows shouted after them, echoed and were swallowed by the Wightwarrens.

As the reflected rocklight faded, they reached an intersection. Covenant veered instinctively to the right; but she took the leftward turning because it felt less traveled. Almost at once, she regretted her choice. It did not lead away from the light. Instead it opened into a wide chamber with fissures along one side that admitted the shining of the molten lake. Sulfur and heat clogged the air. Two more tunnels gave access to the chamber; but they did not draw off the accumulated reek.

The roadway along the rim of the abyss was visible through the fissures. This chamber had probably been intended to allow Mount Thunder’s denizens to watch the road without being seen.

The First and Pitchwife were no longer upon the rim. They had retreated into the tunnel after Linden and Covenant. Or they had fallen.

Linden’s senses shrilled an alarm. Too late: always too late. Bitterly she wheeled to face the Cavewights that thronged into the chamber from all three entrances.

She and her companions must have been spotted from this covert when they first made their way past the abyss. And the brief time they had spent watching Vain and Findail had given the Cavewights opportunity to spring this trap.

In the tunnel Linden and Covenant had used, the First and Pitchwife appeared, battling tremendously to reach their friends. But most of the Cavewights hurried to block the Giants’ way. The Swordmain and her husband were beaten back.

Pitchwife’s inchoate cry wrung Linden’s heart. Then he and the First were forced out of sight. Cavewights rushed in pursuit.

Brandishing cudgels and axes, the rest of the creatures advanced on Covenant and Linden.

He thrust her behind him. took a step forward. Rocklight limned his desperate shoulders. “I’m the one you want.” His voice was taut with suppression and wild magic. “I’ll go with you. Leave her alone.”

Rapt and grim, the Cavewights gave no sign that they heard him. Their eyes smoldered.

“If you hurt her,” he gritted, “I’ll tear you apart.”

One of them grabbed him, manacled both his wrists in a huge fist. Another raised his club and leveled a crushing blow at Linden’s head.

She ducked. The truncheon whipped through her hair, almost touched her skull. Launching herself from the wall, she dodged toward Covenant.

The Cavewights seemed slow. awkward. For a moment, they did not catch her.

Somehow Covenant twisted his wrists free. He snatched his knife from his belt, began slashing frenetically about him. A Cavewight howled, hopped back. But the blade was deep in the creature’s ribs, and Covenant’s halfhand failed of its grip: the knife was ripped from him.

Weaponless, he spun toward Linden. His face stretched as if he wanted to cry out,
Forgive
—
!

The Cavewights surrounded him. They did not use their cudgels or axes: apparently they wanted him alive. With their fists, they beat him until he fell.

Linden tried to reach him. She was avid for power, futile without it. Her arms and legs were useless against the Cavewights. They laughed coarsely at her struggles. Wildly she groped for Covenant’s ring with her health-sense, tried to take hold of it. The infernal air choked her lungs. Bottomless and hungry through the fissures came the boiling of the molten lake. Vain and Findail had fallen. The First and Pitchwife were lost. Covenant lay like a sacrifice on the stone. She had nothing left.

She was still groping when a blow came down gleefully on the bone behind her left ear. At once, the world turned over and sprawled into darkness.

Thomas Covenant lay face down on the floor. It pressed like flat stone against his battered cheek. Bruises malformed the bones of his visage. Though he wanted nothing but peace and salvation, he had become what he was by violence—the consequences of his own acts. From somewhere in the distance arose a throaty murmuring, incessant and dire, like a litany of invocation, dozens of voices repeating the same word or name softly, but with different cadences, at varying speeds. They were still around him, the people who had come to bereave him. They were taunting his failure.

Joan was gone.

Perhaps he should have moved, rolled over, done something to soften the pain. But the effort was beyond him. All his strength was sand and ashes. And he had never been physically strong. They had taken her from him without any trouble at all. It was strange, he reflected abstractly, that someone who had as little to brag of as he did spent so much time trying to pretend he was immortal. He should have known better. God knew he had been given every conceivable opportunity to outgrow his arrogance.

Real heroes were not arrogant. Who could have called Berek arrogant? Or Mhoram? Foamfollower? The list went on and on, all of them humble. Even Hile Troy had finally given up his pride. Only people like Covenant himself were arrogant enough to believe that the outcome of the Earth depended on their purblind and fallible choices. Only people like himself. And Lord Foul. Those who were capable of Despite and chose to refuse it And those who did not. Linden had told him any number of times that he was arrogant.

That was why he had to defeat Lord Foul—why the task devolved on him alone.

Any minute now, he told himself. Any minute now he was going to get up from the floor of his house and go exchange himself for Joan. He had put it off long enough.
She
was not arrogant—not really. She did not deserve what had happened to her. She had simply never been able to forgive herself for her weaknesses, her limitations.

Then he wanted to laugh. It would have done him a world of good to laugh. He was not so different from Joan after all. The only real difference was that he had been summoned to the Land while it was still able to heal him—and while he was still able to know what that meant. He was sane—if he
was
sane—by grace, not by virtue.

In a sense, she actually was arrogant. She placed too much importance on her own faults and failures. She had never learned to let them go.

He had never learned that lesson either. But he was trying. Dear God, he was trying. Any minute now, he was going to take her place in Lord Foul’s fire. He was going to let everything go.

But somehow the floor did not feel right. The murmurous invocation that filled his ears and his lungs and his bones called on a name that did not sound like the Despiser’s. It perplexed him, seemed to make breathing difficult. He had forgotten something.

Wearily he opened his eyes, blinked at the blurring of his vision, and remembered where he was.

Then he thought that surely his heart would fail. His bruises throbbed in his skull. He had received them from Cavewights, not from Joan’s captors. He did not have long to live.