“I don’t know how many. Enough.”
Then the entrance loomed ahead. Now the air blew keenly into Covenant’s face, tugging at his beard, drawing tears from his eyes. A dark pressure gathered in his veins. But he ducked his head and went on. With his companions, he strode through the opening onto the rocky ground at the foot of the escarpment.
The plain was sharp with sunlight. From a fathomless sky, the midafternoon sun burned across the white waste. The air felt strangely brittle, as if it were about to break under its own weight. Stiff snow crunched beneath Covenant’s boots. For a moment, the cold seemed as bright as fire. He had to fight to keep wild magic from leaking past his restraint.
When his sight cleared, he saw that the whirling snow-devils which had marked and guarded the rhyshyshim were gone. The Waynhim had no more need of them.
Barking softly to each other, the creatures surged together into the compact and characteristic wedge which both they and the ur-viles used to concentrate and wield their combined force. Hamako stood at the apex of the formation. When it was complete and the invocations had been made, he would hold the lore and power of five rhysh in the blade of his scimitar. As long as they did not break ranks, the Waynhim along the sides of the wedge would be able to strike individual blows; but Hamako’s might would be two hundred strong.
Every moment, the battle drew closer. Looking northward, Covenant found that he could barely see the region of monoliths beyond the massed advance of the arghuleh.
Ponderous and fatal, they came forward—a slow rush of white gleaming over the snow and ice. Already their feral clatter was audible above the voices of the Waynhim. It echoed like shattering off the face of the escarpment. The horde did not appear to greatly outnumber the Waynhim; but the far larger bulk and savagery of the arghuleh made their force seem overwhelming.
The company still had time to flee. But no one suggested flight. The First stood, stem and ready, with one hand resting on the hilt of her longsword. Glints reflected out of Honninscrave’s eyes as if he were eager to strike any blow which might make his grief useful. Pitchwife’s expression was more wary and uncertain; he was no warrior. But Mistweave bore himself as though he saw his chance for restitution coming and had been commanded to ignore it. Only Cail watched the advancing horde with dispassion, unmoved alike by the valor of the Waynhim and the peril of the company. Perhaps he saw nothing especially courageous in what the rhysh were doing. Perhaps to his Haruchai mind such extravagant risk was simply reasonable.
Covenant struggled to speak. The cold seemed to freeze the words in his throat. “I want to help them. If they need it. But I don’t know how.” To the First, he said, “Don’t go out there unless the wedge starts to break. I’ve seen this kind of fighting before.” He had seen ur-viles slash into the Celebration of Spring to devour the Wraiths of Andelain—and had been powerless against that black wedge. “As long as their formation holds, they aren’t beaten.” Then he turned to Linden.
Her expression stopped him. Her face was fixed, pale with cold, toward the arghuleh, and her eyes looked as livid as injuries. For one dire moment, he feared she had fallen again into her particular panic. But then her gaze snapped toward him. It was battered but not cowed. “I don’t know,” she said tightly. “He’s right. There’s some force out there. Something that keeps them together. But I can’t tell what it is.”
Covenant swallowed a knot of dread. “Keep trying,” he murmured. “I don’t want these Waynhim to end up like the Unhomed.” Damned as well as doomed.
She did not reply; but her nod conveyed a fierce resolve as she turned back to the arghuleh.
They were dangerously close now. A score of them led the advance, and their mass was nearly that many deep. Though they were beasts of hate that preyed on everything, they had become as organized as a conscious army. Steadily they gathered speed to hurl themselves upon the Waynhim.
In response, the Waynhim raised a chant into the chill. Together they barked a raw, irrhythmic invocation which sprang back at them from the escarpment and resounded across the flat. And a moment later a black light shone from the apex of the wedge. Hamako flourished his scimitar. Its blade had become as ebon as Demondim vitriol. It emitted midnight as if it were ablaze with death.
At the same time, all the smaller blades of the Waynhim turned black and began to drip a hot fluid which steamed and sizzled in the snow.
Without knowing what he was doing, Covenant retreated. The frigid air had become a thrumming shout of power, soundless in spite of the chant which summoned it; and that puissance called out to him. His yearning for fire battered at the walls he had built around it; the scars on his forearm burned poisonously. He took a few steps backward. But he could not put any distance between himself and his desire to strike. Instinctively he fumbled his way to the only protection he could find: a jagged rock that stood half his height near the entrance to the rhyshyshim. Yet be did not crouch or cower there. His numb hands gripped the argute stone in the same way that his eyes clung to the Waynhim and the arghuleh; and within himself he pleaded, No. Not again.
He had not been required to watch the actual destruction of the Unhomed.
Then Hamako gave a shout like a huzzah; and the wedge started forward. Moving as one, the Waynhim went out to the foe they had chosen for their last service.
Hushed amid the vicious advance of the ice-beasts, the long hoarse chant of the Waynhim, the echoes breaking up and down the escarpment. Covenant and his companions watched as the wedge drove in among the arghuleh.
For a moment, its thrust was so successful that the outcome appeared foregone. The rhysh poured their power into Hamako: he cut an irresistible swath for the wedge to follow. And as individuals the Waynhim slashed their ice-corroding fluid in all directions. Arghuleh snapped apart, fell back, blundered against each other.
Screaming from their many maws, they swarmed around the wedge, trying to engulf it, crush it among them. But that only brought the third side of the wedge into the fray. And Hamako’s scimitar rang like a hammer on the ice, sent shards and limbs flying from side to side with every blow. He had aimed the wedge toward an especially large beast at the rear of the mass, an arghule that seemed to have been formed by one creature crouching atop another; and with each step he drew closer to that target.
The arghuleh were savage, impervious to fear. Webs and snares were flung across the wedge. Booming cracks riddled the snow-pack. But black liquid burned the nets to tatters. Falling chunks bruised the Waynhim, but did not weaken their formation. And the hard ground under the snow rendered the cracks ineffective.
Covenant leaned against his braced bands, half frozen there, hardly daring to credit what he saw. Low shouts of encouragement broke from the First; and her sword was in her hands. Avid with hope, Pitchwife peered into the fray as if he expected victory at any moment, expected the very winter to break and flee.
Then, without warning, everything changed.
The arghuleh were virtually mindless, but the force which ruled them was not. It was sentient and cunning. And it had learned a lesson from the way the Waynhim had rescued the company earlier.
Abruptly the horde altered its tactics. In a sudden flurry like an explosion of white which almost obscured the battle, all the beasts raised their ice at once. But now that ice was not directed at the wedge. Instead, it covered every arghule that had been hurt, broken, or even killed by the Waynhim.
Ice slapped against every gout of vitriol, smothered the black fluid, effaced it, healed the wounds.
Ice bandaged every limb and body that Hamako had hacked or shattered, restoring crippled creatures to wholeness with terrible celerity.
Ice gathered together the fragments of the slain, fused them anew, poured life back into them.
The Waynhim had not stopped fighting for an instant. But already half their work had been undone. The arghuleh revitalized each other faster than they were damaged.
More and more of them were freed to attack in other ways.
Unable to rend the wedge with their webs, they began to form a wall of ice around it as if they meant to encyst it until its power gave out through sheer weariness.
Covenant stared in horror. The Waynhim were clearly unprepared for this counterattack. Hamako whirled his blade, flaring desperation around him. Three times he pounded an arghule into pieces no larger than his fist; and each time a web snatched the pieces together, restored them, sent the beast at him again. Wildly he sprang forward to assail the web itself. But in so doing he broke contact with the wedge. Instantly his scimitar relapsed to bone: it splintered when he struck. He would have fallen himself; but hands reached out from the wedge and jerked him back into position.
And there was nothing Covenant could do. The Giants were calling to him, beseeching him for some command. The First shouted imprecations he did not hear. But there was nothing he could do.
Except unleash the wild magic.
Venom thudded in his temples. The wild magic, unquenchable and argent. Every thought of it, every memory, every ache of hunger and yearning was as shrill and frantic as Linden’s fervid cry: You’re going to break the Arch of Time! This is what Foul wants! Desecration filled each pulse and wail of his heart. He could not call up that much power and still pretend to control it.
But Hamako would be killed. It was as distinct as the declining sunlight on the white plain. The Waynhim would be slaughtered like the people of the Land to feed the lust of evil. That same man and those Waynhim had brought Covenant back from delirium once—and had shown him that there was still beauty in the world. The winter of their destruction would never end.
Because of the venom. Its scars still burned, as bright as Lord Foul’s eyes, in the flesh of his right forearm, impelling him to power. The Sunbane warped Law, birthed abominations; but Covenant might bring Time itself to chaos.
At no great distance from him, the wedge no longer battled offensively. It struggled simply to stay alive. Several Waynhim had fallen in bonds of ice they could not break. More would die soon as the arghuleh raised their wall. Hamako remained on his feet, but had no weapon, no way to wield the might of the wedge. He was thrust into the center of the formation, and a Waynhim took his place, fighting with all the fluid force its small blade could channel.
“Giantfriend!” the First yelled. “Covenant!”
The wedge was dying; and the Giants dared not act, for fear that they would place themselves in the way of Covenant’s fire.
Because of the venom—sick fury pounding like desire between the bones of his forearm. He had been made so powerful that he was powerless. His desperation demanded blood.
Slipping back his sleeve, he gripped his right wrist with his left hand to increase his leverage, then hacked his scarred forearm at the sharpest edges of the rock. His flesh ground against the jagged projections. Red slicked the stone, spattered the snow, froze in the cold. He ignored it. The Clave had cut his wrists to gain power for the soothtell which had guided and misled him. Deliberately he mangled his forearm, striving by pain to conceive an alternative to venom, struggling to cut the fang-marks out of his soul.
Then Linden hit him. The blow knocked him back. Flagrant with urgency and concern, she caught her fists in his robe, shook him like a child, raged at him.
“Listen to me!” she flamed as if she knew he could hardly hear her, could not see anything except the blood he had left on the rock. “It’s like the Kemper! Like Kasreyn!” Back and forth she heaved him, trying to wrestle him into focus on her. “Like his son! The arghuleh have something like his son!”
At that, clarity struck Covenant so hard that he nearly fell.
The Kemper’s son. Oh my God.
The croyel.
Before the thought was finished, he had broken Linden’s grasp and was running toward the Giants.
The croyel—the succubus from the dark places of the Earth which Kasreyn had borne on his back, and with which he had bargained for his arts and his preternaturally prolonged life. And out there was an arghule which looked like one ice-beast crouched on another. That creature had contracted with the croyel for the power to unite its kind and wage winter wherever it willed.
Findail must have known. He must have understood what force opposed the Waynhim. Yet he had said nothing.
But Covenant had no time to spend on the mendacity of the Elohim. Reaching the First, he shouted, “Call them back! Make them retreat! They can’t win this way!” His arm scattered blood. “We’ve got to tell them about the croyel!”
She reacted as if he had unleashed her. Whirling she gave one command that snatched the Giants to her side; and together they charged into the fray.
Covenant watched them go in fear and hope. Still furious for him, Linden came to his side. Taking rough hold of his right wrist, she forced him to bend his elbow and clamp it tightly to slow the bleeding. Then she watched with him in silence.
With momentum, weight, and muscle, the four Giants crashed in among the arghuleh. The First swung her longsword like a bludgeon, risking its metal against the gelid beasts. Honninscrave and Mistweave fought as hugely as titans. Pitchwife scrambled after them, doing everything he could to guard their backs. And as they battled, they shouted Covenant’s call in the roynish tongue of the Waynhim.
The reaction of the wedge was almost immediate. Suddenly all the Waynhim pivoted to the left; and that corner of the formation became their apex. Sweeping Hamako along, they drove for the breach the Giants had made in the attack.
The arghuleh were slow to understand what was happening. The wedge was half free of the fray before the ice-beasts turned to try to prevent the retreat.
Pitchwife went down under two arghuleh. Honninscrave and Mistweave sprang to his aid like sledgehammers, yanked him out of the wreckage. A net took hold of the First. The leader of the wedge scored it to shreds. Frenetically the Waynhim and the Giants struggled toward Covenant.
They were not swift enough to outrun the arghuleh. In moments, they would be engulfed again.
But the Waynhim had understood the Giants. Abruptly the wedge parted, spilling Hamako and a score of companions in Covenant’s direction. Then the rhysh reclosed their formation and attacked again.
With the help of the Giants, the wedge held back the arghuleh while Hamako and his comrades sped toward Covenant and Linden.
Covenant started shouting at Hamako before the Stonedownor neared him; but Hamako stopped a short distance away, silenced Covenant with a gesture. “You have done your part, ring-wielder,” he panted as his people gathered about him. “The name of the croyel is known among the Waynhim.” He had to raise his voice: the creatures were chanting a new invocation. “We lacked only the knowledge that the force confronting us was indeed croyel.” An invocation Covenant had heard before. “What must be done is clear. Come no closer.”
As if to enforce his warning, Hamako drew a stone dirk from his belt.
Recognition stung through Covenant. He was familiar with that knife. Or one just like it. It went with the invocation. He tried to call out, Don’t! But the protest failed in his mouth. Perhaps Hamako was right. Perhaps only such desperate measures could hope to save the embattled rhysh.
With one swift movement, the Stonedownor drew a long incision across the veins on the back of his hand.
The cut did not bleed. At once, he handed the dirk to a Waynhim. Quickly it sliced the length of its palm, then passed the knife to its neighbor. Taking hold of Hamako’s hand, the Waynhim pressed its cut to his. While the invocation swelled, the two of them stood there, joined by blood.
When the Waynbim stepped back, Hamako’s eyes were acute with power.
In this same way, his rhysh had given Covenant the strength to run without rest across the whole expanse of the Center Plains in pursuit of Linden, Sunder, and Hollian. But that great feat had been accomplished with the vitality of only eight Waynhim; and Covenant had barely been able to contain so much might. There were twenty creatures ranged around Hamako.
The second had already completed its gift.
One by one, his adopted people cut themselves for him, pressed their blood into him. And each infusion gave him a surge of energy which threatened to burst his mortal bounds.
It was too much. How could one human being hope to hold that much power within the vessel of ordinary thew and tissue? Watching, Covenant feared that Hamako would not survive.
Then he remembered the annealed grief and determination he had seen in Hamako’s eyes; and he knew the Stonedownor did not mean to survive.
Ten Waynhim had given their gift. Hamako’s skin had begun to burn like tinder in the freezing air. But he did not pull back, and his companions did not stop.
At his back, the battle was going badly. Covenant’s attention had been fixed on Hamako: he had not seen how the arghuleh had contrived to split the wedge. But the formation was in two pieces now, each struggling to focus its halved strength, each unable to break through the ice to rejoin the other. More Waynhim had fallen; more were falling. Ice crusted the Giants so heavily that they seemed hardly able to move. They fought heroically; but they were no match for beasts which could be brought back from death. Soon sheer fatigue would overcome them, and they would be lost for good and all.
“Go!” Covenant panted to Cail. Icicles of blood splintered from his elbow when he moved his arm. “Help them!”
But the Haruchai did not obey. In spite of the ancient friendship between the Giants and his people, his face betrayed no nicker of concern. His promise of service had been made to Covenant rather than to the First; and Brinn had commanded him to his place.
Hellfire! Covenant raged. But his ire was directed at himself. He could tear his flesh until it fell from the bones; but he could not find his way out of the snare Lord Foul had set for him.
Fifteen Waynhim had given blood to Hamako. Sixteen. Now the Stonedownor’s radiance was so bright that it seemed to tug involuntary fire from Covenant’s ring. The effort of withholding it reft him of balance and vision. Pieces of midnight wheeled through him. He did not see the end of the Waynhim gift, could not witness the manner in which Hamako bore it.
White Gold Wielder Page 17
