White Gold Wielder

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  With a stiff shrug, Findail turned away. But before he could depart. Covenant interposed, “Just a minute.” He felt half mad with fear and impossible decisions; but a fragment of lucidity had come to him, and he thought he saw another way in which he had been betrayed. Lena had told him that he was Berek Halfhand reborn. And the Lords he had known had believed that. What had gone wrong? “We couldn’t get a branch of the One Tree. There was no way. But it’s been done before. How did Berek do it?”

  Findail paused at the wall, answered over his shoulder. “The Worm was not made restive by his approach, for he did not win his way with combat. In that age, the One Tree had no Guardian. It was he himself who gave the Tree its ward, setting the Guardian in place so that the vital wood of the world’s life would not again be touched or broken.”

  Berek? Covenant was too astonished to watch the Elohim melt out of the cabin. Berek had set the Guardian? Why? The Lord-Fatherer had been described as both seer and prophet. Had he been shortsighted enough to believe that no one else would ever need to touch the One Tree? Or had he had some reason to ensure that there would never be a second Staff of Law?

  Dizzy with implications, Covenant was momentarily unaware of the way Linden regarded him. But gradually he felt her eyes on him. Her face was sharp with the demand she had brought with her into his cabin—the demand of her need. When he met her gaze, she said distinctly, “Your friends in Andelain didn’t think you were doomed. They gave you Vain for a reason. What else did they do?”

  “They talked to me,” he replied as if she had invoked the words out of him. “Mhoram said, ‘When you have understood the Land’s need, you must depart the Land, for the thing you seek is not within it. The one word of truth cannot be found otherwise. But I give you this caution: do not be deceived by the Land’s need. The thing you seek is not what it appears to be. In the end, you must return to the Land.’ ”

  He had also said, When you have come to the crux, and have no other recourse, remember the paradox of white gold. There is hope in contradiction. But that Covenant did not comprehend.

  Linden nodded severely. “So what’s it going to be? Are you just going to lie here until your heart breaks? Or are you going to fight?”

  Distraught by fear and despair, he could not find his way. Perhaps an answer was possible, but he did not have it. Yet what she wanted of him was certain; and because he loved her he gave it to her as well as he was able.

  “I don’t know. But anything is better than this. Tell the First well give it a try.”

  She nodded again. For a moment, her mouth moved as if she wished to thank him in some way. But then the pressure of her own bare grasp on resolution impelled her toward the door.

  “What about you?” he asked after her. He had sent her away and did not know how to recall her. He had no right. “What’re you going to do?”

  At the door, she looked back at him, and her eyes were openly full of tears, “I’m going to wait.” Her voice sounded as forlorn as the cry of a kestrel—and as determined as an act of valor. “My turn’s coming.”

  As she left, her words seemed to remain in the sunlit cabin like a verdict. Or a prophecy.

  After she was gone, Covenant got out of the hammock and dressed himself completely in his old clothes.

  THREE: The Path to Pain

  When he went up on deck, the sun was setting beyond the western sea, and its light turned the water crimson—the color of disaster. Honninscrave had raised every span of canvas the spars could hold; and every sail was belly-full of wind as Starfare’s Gem pounded forward a few points west of north. It should have been a brave sight. But the specific red of that sunset covered the canvas with fatality, gilded the lines until they looked like they were slick with blood. And the wind carried a precursive chill, hinting at the bitter cold of winter.

  Yet Honninscrave strode the wheeldeck as if he could no longer be daunted by anything the sea brought to him. The air rimed his beard, and his eyes reflected occasional glints of fire from the west; but his commands were as precise as his mastery of the Giantship, and the rawness of his voice might have been caused by the strain of shouting over the wind rather than by the stress of the past two days. He was not Foamfollower after all. He had not been granted the caamora his spirit craved. But he was a Giant still, the Master of Starfare’s Gem; and he had risen to his responsibilities.

  With Cail beside him. Covenant went up to the wheeldeck. He wanted to find some way to apologize for having proven himself inadequate to the Master’s need. But when he approached Honninscrave and the other two Giants with him, Sevinhand Anchormaster and a steersman holding Shipsheartthew, the caution in their eyes stopped Covenant. At first, he thought that they had become wary of him—that the danger he represented made them fearful in his presence. But then Sevinhand said simply, “Giantfriend,” and it was plain even to Covenant’s superficial hearing that the Anchormaster’s tone was one of shared sorrow rather than misgiving. Instead of apologizing, Covenant bowed his head in tacit recognition of his own unworth.

  He wanted to stand there in silence until he had shored up enough self-respect to take another step back into the life of the Giantship. But after a moment Cail spoke. In spite of his characteristic Haruchai dispassion, his manner suggested that what he meant to say made him uncomfortable. Involuntarily Covenant reflected that none of the Haruchai who had left the Land with him had come this far unscathed. Covenant did not know how the uncompromising extravagance of the Haruchai endured the role Brinn had assigned to Cail. What promise lay hidden in Brinn’s statement that Cail would eventually be permitted to follow his heart?

  But Cail did not speak of that. He did not address Covenant. Without preamble, he said, “Grimmand Honninscrave, in the name of my people I desire your pardon. When Brinn assayed himself against ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol—he who is the sovereign legend and dream of all the Haruchai among the mountains—it was not his intent to bring about the death of Cable Seadreamer your brother.”

  The Master winced: his cavernous eyes shot splinters of red at Cail. But almost at once he regained his deliberate poise. He glanced around the Giantship as if to assure himself that all was still well with it. Then he turned over his command to Sevinhand, drew Cail and Covenant with him to the port rail.

  The setting sun gave his visage a tinge of sacrificial glory. Watching him, Covenant thought obscurely that the sun always set in the west—that a man who faced west would never see anything except decline, things going down, the last beauty before light and life went out.

  After a moment, Honninscrave lifted his voice over the wet splashing of the shipside. “The Earth-Sight is not a thing which any Giant selects for himself. No choice is given. But we do not therefore seek to gainsay or eschew it. We believe—or have believed,” he said with a touch of bitterness, “—that there is life as well as death in such mysteries. How then should there be any blame in what has happened?” Honninscrave spoke more to himself than to Covenant or Cail. “The Earth-Sight came upon Cable Seadreamer my brother, and the hurt of his vision was plain to all. But the content of that hurt he could not tell. Mayhap his muteness was made necessary by the vision itself. Mayhap for him no denial of death was possible which would not also have been a denial of life. I know nothing of that. I know only that he could not speak his plight—and so he could not be saved. There is no blame for us in this.” He spoke as though he believed what he was saying; but the loss knotted around his eyes contradicted him.

  “His death places no burden upon us but the burden of hope.” The sunset was fading from the west and from his face, translating his mien from crimson to the pallor of ashes. “We must hope that in the end we will find means to vindicate his passing. To vindicate,” he repeated faintly, “and to comprehend.” He did not look at his auditors. The dying of the light echoed out of his eyes. “I am grieved that I can conceive no hope.”

  He had earned the right to be left alone. But Covenant needed an answer. He and Foamfollower had talke
d about hope. Striving to keep his voice gentle in spite of his own stiff hurt, he asked, “Then why do you go on?”

  For a long moment, Honninscrave remained still against the mounting dark as if he had not heard, could not be reached. But at last he said simply, “I am a Giant. The Master of Starfare’s Gem, and sworn to the service of the First of the Search. That is preferable.”

  Preferable, Covenant thought with a mute pang. Mhoram might have said something like that. But Findail obviously did not believe it.

  Yet Cail nodded as if Honninscrave’s words were ones which even the extravagant Haruchai could accept. After all, Cail’s people did not put much faith in hope. They staked themselves on success or failure—and accepted the outcome.

  Covenant turned from the darkling sea, left the rail. He had no place among such people. He did not know what was preferable—and could not see enough success anywhere to make failure endurable. The decision he had made in Linden’s name was just another kind of lie. Well, she had earned that pretense of conviction from him. But at some point any leper needed something more than discipline or even stubbornness to keep him alive. And he had too sorely falsified his relationship with her. He did not know what to do.

  Around Starfare’s Gem, the Giants had begun to light lanterns against the night. They illuminated the great wheel, the stairs down from the wheeldeck, the doorways to the underdecks and the galley. They hung from the fore- and aftermasts like instances of bravado, both emphasizing and disregarding the gap where the midmast should have been. They were nothing more than small oil lamps under the vast heavens, and yet they made the Giantship beautiful on the face of the deep. After a moment, Covenant found that he could bear to go looking for Linden.

  But when he started forward from the wheeldeck, his attention was caught by Vain. The Demondim-spawn stood beyond the direct reach of the lanterns, on the precise spot where his feet had first touched stone after he had come aboard from the Isle of the One Tree; but his black silhouette was distinct against the fading horizon. As always, he remained blank to scrutiny, as though he knew that nothing could touch him.

  Yet he had been touched. One iron heel of the old Staff of Law still clamped him where his wrist had been; but that hand dangled useless from the wooden limb which grew like a branch from his elbow. Covenant had no idea why Foamfollower had given him this product of the dark and historically malefic ur-viles. But now he was sure that Linden had been right—that no explanation which did not include the secret of the Demondim-spawn was complete enough to be trusted. When he moved on past Vain, he knew more clearly why he wanted to find her.

  He came upon her near the foremast, some distance down the deck from the prow where Findail stood confronting the future like a figurehead. With her were the First, Pitchwife, and another Giant. As Covenant neared them, he recognized Mistweave, whose life Linden had saved at the risk of his own during his most recent venom-relapse. The three Giants greeted him with the same gentle caution Honninscrave and Sevinhand had evinced—the wariness of people who believed they were in the presence of a pain which transcended their own. But Linden seemed almost unconscious of his appearance. In the wan lantern-light, her face looked pallid, nearly haggard; and Covenant thought suddenly that she had not rested at all since before the quest had arrived at the Isle of the One Tree. The energy which had sustained her earlier had eroded away; her manner was febrile with exhaustion. For a moment, he was so conscious of her nearness to collapse that he failed to notice the fact that she, too, was wearing her old clothes—the checked flannel shirt, tough jeans, and sturdy shoes in which she had first entered the Land,

  Though her choice was no different than his, the sight of it gave him an unexpected pang. Once again, he had been betrayed by his preterite instinct for hope. Unconsciously he had dreamed that all the shocks and revelations of the past days would not alter her, not impel her to resume their former distance from each other. Fool! he snarled at himself. He could not escape her percipience. Down in his cabin, she had read what he was going to do before he had known it himself.

  The First greeted him in a tone made brusque by the sternness of her own emotions; but her words showed that she also was sensitive to his plight. “Thomas Covenant, I believe that you have chosen well.” If anything, the losses of the past days and the darkness of the evening seemed to augment her iron beauty. She was a Swordmain, trained to give battle to the peril of the world. As she spoke, one hand gripped her sword’s hilt as if the blade were a vital part of what she was saying. “I have named you Giantfriend, and I am proud that I did so. Pitchwife my husband is wont to say that it is the meaning of our lives to hope. But I know not how to measure such things. I know only that battle is better than surrender. It is not for me to judge your paths in this matter—yet am I gladdened that you have chosen a path of combat.” In the way of a warrior, she was trying to comfort him.

  Her attempt touched him—and frightened him as well, for it suggested that once again he had committed himself to more than he could gauge. But he was given no chance to reply. For once, Pitchwife seemed impatient with what his wife was saying. As soon as she finished, he interposed, “Aye, and Linden Avery also is well Chosen, as I have said. But in this she does not choose well. Giantfriend, she will not rest.” His exasperation was plain in his voice.

  Linden grimaced. Covenant started to say, “Linden, you need—” But when she looked at him he stopped. Her gaze gathered up the darkness and held it against him.

  “I don’t have anywhere to go.”

  The stark bereavement of her answer went through him like a cry. It meant too much: that her former world had been ruined for her by what she had learned; that like him she could not bear to return to her cabin—the cabin they had shared.

  Somewhere in the distance, Pitchwife was saying, “To her have been offered the chambers of the Haruchai. But she replies that she fears to dream in such places. And Starfare’s Gem holds no other private quarters.”

  Covenant understood that also without heeding it. Brinn had blamed her for Hergrom’s death. And she had tried to kill Ceer. “Leave her alone,” he said dully, as deaf to himself as to Pitchwife. “She’ll rest when she’s ready.”

  That was not what he wanted to say. He wanted to say, Forgive me. I don’t know how to forgive myself. But the words were locked in his chest. They were impossible.

  Because he had nothing else to offer her, he swallowed thickly and said, “You’re right. My friends didn’t expect me to be doomed. Foamfollower gave me Vain for a reason.” Even that affirmation was difficult for him; but he forced it out. “What happened to his arm?”

  She went on staring darkness at him as if he were the linch-pin of her exhaustion. She sounded as misled as a sleepwalker as she responded, “Mistweave won’t go away. He says he wants to take Cail’s place.”

  Covenant peered at her, momentarily unable to comprehend. But then he remembered his own dismay when Brinn had insisted on serving him; and his heart twisted. “Linden,” he demanded, forlorn and harsh in his inability to help her, “tell me about Vain’s arm.” If he had dared, he would have taken hold of her. If he had had the right.

  She shook her head; and lantern-light glanced like supplication out of her dry eyes. “I can’t.” She might have protested like a child, It hurts. “His arm’s empty. When I close my eyes, it isn’t even there. If you took all the life out of the One Tree—took it away so completely that the Tree never had any—never had any meaning at all—it would look like that. If he was actually alive—if he wasn’t just a thing the ur-viles made—he’d be in terrible pain.”

  Slowly she turned away as though she could no longer support his presence. When she moved off down the deck with Mistweave walking, deferential and stubborn, behind her, he understood that she also did not know how to forgive.

  He thought then that surely his loss and need had become too much for him, that surely he was about to break down. But the First and Pitchwife were watching him with their concern p
oignant in their faces. They were his friends. And they needed him. Somehow, he held himself together.

  Later Mistweave sent word that Linden had found a place to sleep at last, huddled in a corner of the galley near the warmth of one of the great stoves. With that Covenant had to be content. Moving stiffly, he went back to his hammock and took the risk of nightmares. Dreams seemed to be the lesser danger.

  But the next morning the wind was stronger.

  It might have been a true sailors’ wind—enough to shake the dromond out of its normal routine and make it stretch, not enough to pose any threat to the sea-craft of the crew. It kicked the crests of the waves into spume and spray, sent water crashing off the Giantship’s granite prow, made the lines hum and the sails strain. The sides of the vessel moved so swiftly that their moire markings looked like flames crackling from the sea. In the rigging, some of the Giants laughed as they fisted the canvas from position to position, seeking the dromond’s best stance for speed. If its midmast had not been lost, Starfare’s Gem would have flown like exuberance before the blow.

  However, the day was dull with clouds and felt unnaturally cold. A south wind should have been warmer than this. It came straight from the place where the Isle had gone down, and it was as chill as the cavern of the One Tree. Without the sun to light it, the sea had a gray and viscid hue. Though he wore a robe over his clothes, Covenant hunched his shoulders and could not stop shivering.

  Seeking reassurance, he went up to the wheeldeck, where Heft Galewrath commanded the dromond. But she greeted him with only a blunt nod. Her normally stolid demeanor held a kind of watchfulness that he had not seen in her before. For the first time since they had met, she seemed accessible to misgiving. Rather than trouble her with his trepidations, he returned to the afterdeck and moved forward, looking for someone who could be more easily questioned.