White Gold Wielder

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  She felt helpless to reach him; but she could not stop trying. She heard the truth as he described it; he had named the change in himself for her. In the Banefire he had made himself as impotent as innocence. The power to resist Despite, the reason of his life, had been burned out of him. Aching for him, she asked, “Then what? What will you do?”

  His lips drew taut, baring his teeth; for an instant, he appeared starkly afraid. But no fear marked his voice. “When I saw Elena in Andelain, she told me where to find Foul. In Mount Thunder—a place inside the Wightwarrens called Kiril Threndor. I’m going to pay him a little visit.”

  “He’ll kill you!” Linden cried, immediately aghast. “If you can’t defend yourself, he’ll just kill you and it’ll all be wasted,” everything he had suffered, venom-relapses, the loss of Seadreamer and Honninscrave, of Ceer, Hergrom, and Brinn, the silence of the Elohim, his caamora for the Unhomed of Seareach, the tearing agony and fusion of the Banefire, “wasted! What kind of answer is that?”

  But his certainty was unshaken. To her horror, he smiled at her again. Until it softened, his expression wrung her out of herself, made her want to scream at him as if he had become a Raver. Yet it did soften. When he spoke, he sounded neither desperate nor doomed, but only gentle and indefeasibly resigned.

  “There are a few things Foul doesn’t understand. I’m going to explain them to him.”

  Gentle, yes, and resigned; but also annealed, fused to the hard metal of his purpose. Explain them to him? she thought wildly. But in his mouth the words did not sound like folly. They sounded as settled and necessary as the fundament of the Earth.

  However, he was not untouched by her consternation. More urgently, as if he also wanted to bridge the gulf between them, he said, “Linden, think about it. Foul can’t break the Arch without breaking me first. Do you really think he can do that? After what I’ve been through?”

  She could not reply. She was sinking in a vision of his death—of his body back in the woods behind Haven Farm pulsing its last weak life onto the indifferent stone. The old man whose life she had saved before she had ever met Covenant had said to her like a promise. You will not fail, however he may assail you. There is also love in the world. But she had already failed when she had let Covenant be struck by that knife, let him go on dying. All love was gone.

  But he was not done with her. He was leaning on the table now, supporting himself with his locked arms to look at her more closely; and the silver glow of the floor behind him limned his intent posture, made him luminous. Yet the yellow lamplight seemed human and needy as it shone on his face, features she must have loved from the beginning—the mouth as strict as a commandment, the cheeks lined with difficulties, the hair graying as if its color were the ash left by his hot mind. The kindness he conveyed was the conflicted empathy and desire of a man who was never gentle with himself. And he still wanted something from her. In spite of what she had tried to do to him. Before he spoke, she knew that he had come to his reason for summoning her here—and for selecting this particular place, the room of a compassionate, dangerous, and perhaps wise man who had once been his friend.

  In a husky voice, he asked, “What about you? What’re you going to do?”

  He had asked her that once before. But her previous response now seemed hopelessly inadequate. She raised her hands to her hair, then pushed them back down to her side. The touch of her unclean tresses felt so unlovely, impossible to love, that it brought her close to tears. “I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what my choices are.”

  For a moment, his certitude faded. He faced her, not because he was sure, but because he was afraid. “You could stay here,” he said as if the words hurt him. “The lore of the old Lords is still here. Most of it, anyway. Maybe the Giants could translate it for you. You might find a way out of this mess for yourself. A way back.” He swallowed at an emotion that leaked like panic past his resolve. Almost whispering, he added, “Or you could come with me.”

  Come with—? Her percipience flared toward him, trying to read the spirit behind what he said. What was he afraid of? Did he dread her companionship, fear the responsibility and grief of having her with him? Or was he dismayed to go on without her?

  Her legs were weak with exhaustion and desire, but she did not let herself sit down. A helpless tremor ran through her. “What do you want me to do?”

  He looked like he would have given anything to be able to turn his head away; yet his gaze held. Even now, he did not quail from what he feared.

  “I want what you want. I want you to find something that gives you hope. I want you to come into your power. I want you to stop believing that you’re evil—that your mother and father are the whole truth about you. I want you to understand why you were chosen to be here.” His visage pleaded at her through the lamplight. “I want you to have reasons.”

  She still did not comprehend his apprehension. But he had given her an opportunity she coveted fervidly, and she was determined to take it at any cost. Her voice was thick with a kind of weeping she had suppressed for most of her life; but she no longer cared how much frailty or need she exposed. All the severity and detachment to which she had trained herself had fled, and she did not try to hail them back. Trembling fiercely to herself, she uttered her avowal.

  “I don’t want hope. I don’t want power. I don’t care if I never go back. Let Foul do his worst—and to hell with him.

  I don’t even care if you’re going to die.” That was true.

  Death was later: he was now. “I’m a doctor, not a magician.

  I can’t save you unless you go back with me—and if you offered me that, I wouldn’t take it. What’s happening here is too important. It’s too important to me.” And that also was true; she had learned it among the wounded in the forehall of the Keep. “All I want is a living love. For as long as I can get it.” Defying her weakness, she stood erect before him in the lamplight as if she were ablaze. “I want you.”

  At that, he bowed his head at last; and the relief which flooded from him was so palpable that she could practically embrace it. When he looked up again, he was smiling with love—a smile which belonged to her and no one else. Tears streaked his face as he went to the door and closed it, shutting out the consequences of wild magic and venom. Then from the doorway he said thickly, “I wish I could’ve believed you were going to say that. I would’ve told Cail to bring us some blankets.”

  But the safe gutrock of Revelstone enclosed them with solace, and they did not need blankets.

  TWELVE: Those Who Part

  They did not sleep at all that night. Linden knew that Covenant had not slept the previous night, on the verge of the jungle outside Revelstone; she had been awake herself, watching the stretched desperation of his aura with her percipience because Cail had refused to let her approach the ur-Lord. But the memory no longer troubled her; in Covenant’s place, she might have done the same thing. Yet that exigent loneliness only made this night more precious—too precious to be spent in sleep. She had not been in his arms since the crisis of the One Tree; and now she sought to impress every touch and line of him onto her hungry nerves.

  If he had wanted sleep himself, she would have been loath to let him go. But he had resumed his certainty as if it could take the place of rest; and his desire for her was as poignant as an act of grace. From time to time, she felt him smiling the smile that belonged solely to her; and once he wept as if his tears were the same as hers. But they did not sleep.

  At the fringes of her health-sense, she was aware of the great Keep around her. She felt Cail’s protective presence outside the door. She knew when the Banefire went out at last, quenched by the sovereign waters of Glimmermere. And as the abused stone of the sacred enclosure cooled, the entire city let out a long granite sigh which seemed to breathe like relief through every wall and floor. Finally she felt the distant flow of the lake stop as Nom restored the stream to its original channel. For the remainder of this one night, at least, Revelsto
ne had become a place of peace.

  Before dawn, however, Covenant arose from Mhoram’s intimate bed. As he dressed, he urged Linden to do the same. She complied without question. The communion between them was more important than questions. And she read him clearly, knew that what he had in mind pleased him. That was enough for her. Shrugging her limbs back into the vague discomfort of her grimy clothes, she accepted the clasp of his numb hand and climbed with him through the quiet Keep to the upland plateau.

  At Revelstone’s egress, they left Cail behind to watch over their privacy. Then, with a happy haste in his strides, Covenant led her west and north around the curve of the plateau toward the eldritch tarn which she had used against the Banefire without ever having seen it.

  Toward Glimmermere, where Mhoram had hidden the krill of Loric for the Land’s future. Where sprang the only water outside Andelain Earthpowerful enough to resist the Sunbane. And where, Linden now remembered, Covenant had once gone to be told that his dreams were true.

  She felt he was taking her to the source of his most personal hope.

  From the east, a wash of gray spread out to veil the stars, harbingering dawn. A league or two away in the west, the Mountains strode off toward the heavens; but the hills of the upland were not rugged. In ages past, their grasses and fields had been rich enough to feed all the city at need. “Now, however, the ground was barren under Linden’s sensitive feet; and some of her weariness, a hint of her wastelanded mood, returned to her, leeching through her soles. The sound of the water, running unseen past her toward Furl Falls, seemed to have a hushed and uncertain note, as if in some way the outcome of the Earth were precariously balanced and fragile about her. While the Sunbane stalked the Land, she remembered that Covenant’s explanation of his new purpose made no sense.

  There are a few things Foul doesn’t understand. I’m going to explain them to him.

  No one but a man who had survived an immersion in the Banefire could have said those words as if they were not insane.

  But the dry coolness of the night still lingered on the plateau; and his plain anticipation made doubt seem irrelevant, at least for the present. Northward among the hills he led her, angling away from the cliffs and toward the stream. Moments before the sun broached the horizon, he took her past the crest of a high hill; and she found herself looking down at the pure tarn of Glimmermere.

  It lay as if it were polished with its face open to the wide sky. In spite of the current flowing from it, its surface was unruffled, as flat and smooth as burnished metal. It was fed by deep springs which did not stir or disturb it. Most of the water reflected the fading gray of the heavens; but around the rims of the tam were imaged the hills which held it, and to the west could be seen the Westron Mountains, blurred by dusk and yet somehow precise, as faithfully displayed as in a mirror. She felt that if she watched those waters long enough she would see all the world rendered in them.

  All the world except herself. To her surprise, the lake held no echo of her. It reflected Covenant at her side; but her it did not heed. The sky showed through her as if she were too mortal or insignificant to attract Glimmermere’s attention.

  “Covenant—?” she began in vague dismay. “What—?” But he gestured her to silence, smiled at her as if the imminent morning made her beautiful. Half running, he went down the slope to the tarn’s edge. There he pulled off his T-shirt, removed his boots and pants. For an instant, he looked back up at her, waved his arm to call her after him. Then he dove out into Glimmermere. His pale flesh pierced the water like a flash of joy as he swam toward the center of the lake.

  She followed half involuntarily, both moved and frightened by what she saw. But then her heart lifted, and she began to hurry. The ripples of his dive spread across the surface like promises. The lake took hold of her senses as if it were potent enough to transform her. Her whole body ached with a sudden longing for cleanliness. Out in the lake, Covenant broke water and gave a holla of pleasure that carried back from the hills. Quickly she unbuttoned her shirt, kicked her shoes away, stripped off her pants, and went after him.

  Instantly a cold shock flamed across her skin as if the water meant to burn the grime and pain from her. She burst back to the surface, gasping with a hurt that felt like ecstasy. Glimmermere’s chill purity lit all her nerves.

  Her hair straggled across her face. She thrust the tresses aside and saw Covenant swimming underwater toward her. The clarity of the lake made him appear at once close enough to touch and too far away to ever be equaled.

  The sight burned her like the water’s chill. She could see him—but not herself. Looking down at her body, she saw only the reflection of the sky and the hills. Her physical substance seemed to terminate at the waterline. When she raised her hand, it was plainly visible—yet her forearm and elbow beneath the surface were invisible. She saw only Covenant as he took hold of her legs and tugged her down to him.

  Yet when her head was underwater and she opened her eyes, her limbs and torso reappeared as if she had crossed a plane of translation into another kind of existence.

  His face rose before her. He kissed her happily, then swung around behind her as they bobbed back upward. Breaking water, he took a deep breath before he bore her down again. But this time as they sank he gripped her head in his hands, began to scrub her scalp and hair. And the keen cold water washed the dirt and oil away like an atonement.

  She twisted in his grasp, returned his kiss. Then she pushed him away and regained the surface to gulp air as if it were the concentrated elixir of pleasure.

  At once, he appeared before her, cleared his face with a jerk of his head, and gazed at her with a light like laughter in his eyes.

  “You—!” she panted, almost laughing herself. “You’ve got to tell me.” She wanted to put her arms around him; but then she would not be able to speak. “It’s wonderful!” Above her, the tops of the western hills were lit by the desert sun, and that shining danced across the tarn, “How come I disappear and you don’t?”

  “I already told you!” he replied, splashing water at her. “Wild magic and venom. The keystone of the Arch.” Swimming in this lake, he could say even those words without diminishing her gladness. “The first time I was here, I couldn’t see myself either. You’re normal!” His voice rose exuberantly. “Glimmermere recognizes me!”

  Then she did fling her arms about his neck; and they sank together into the embrace of the tarn. Intuitively for the first time she understood his hope. She did not know what it meant, had no way to estimate its implications. But she felt it shining in him like the fiery water; and she saw that his certainty was not the confidence of despair. Or not entirely.

  Venom and wild magic: despair and hope. The Banefire had fused them together in him and made them clean.

  No, it was not true to say that she understood it. But she recognized it, as Glimmermere did. And she hugged and kissed him fervently—splashed water at him and giggled like a girl—shared the eldritch lake with him until at last the cold required her to climb out onto a sheet of rock along one edge and accept the warmth of the desert sun.

  That heat sobered her rapidly. As Glimmermere evaporated from her sensitive skin, she felt the Sunbane again. Its touch sank into her like Gibbon’s, drawing trails of desecration along her bones. After all, the quenching of the Banefire had not significantly weakened or even hampered Lord Foul’s corruption. The Land’s plight remained, unaltered by Covenant’s certitude or her own grateful cleansing. Viscerally unwilling to lie naked under the desert sun, she retrieved her clothes and Covenant’s, dressed herself while he watched as if he were still hungry for her. But slowly his own high spirits faded. When he had resumed his clothing, she saw that he was ready for the questions he must have known she would ask.

  “Covenant,” she said softly, striving for a tone that would make him sure of her, “I don’t understand. After what I tried to do to you, I don’t exactly have the right to make demands.” But he dismissed her attempted possession wit
h a shrug and a grimace; so she let it go. “And anyway I trust you. But I just don’t understand why you want to go face Foul. Even if he can’t break you, he’ll hurt you terribly. If you can’t use your power, how can you possibly fight him?”

  He did not flinch. But she saw him take a few mental steps backward as if his answer required an inordinate amount of care. His emanations became studied, complex. He might have been searching for the best way to tell her a lie. Yet when he began to speak, she heard no falsehood in him; her percipience would have screamed at the sound of falsehood. His care was the caution of a man who did not want to cause any more pain.

  “I’m not sure. I don’t think I can fight him at all. But I keep asking myself, how can he fight me?

  “You remember Kasreyn.” A wry quirk twisted the corner of his mouth. “How could you forget? Well, he talked quite a bit while he was trying to break me out of that silence. He told me that he used pure materials and pure arts, but he couldn’t create anything pure. ‘In a flawed world purity cannot endure. Thus within each of my works I must perforce place one small flaw, else there would be no work at all.’ That was why he wanted my ring. He said, ‘It’s imperfection is the very paradox of which the Earth is made, and with it a master may form perfect works and fear nothing.’ If you look at it that way, an alloy is an imperfect metal.”

  As he spoke, he turned from her slowly, not to avoid her gaze, but to look at the fundamental reassurance of his reflection in the tarn. “Well, I’m a kind of alloy. Foul has made me exactly what he wants—what he needs. A tool he can use to perfect his freedom. And destroy the Earth in the process.

  “But the question is my freedom, not his. We’ve talked about the necessity of freedom. I’ve said over and over again that he can’t use a tool to get what he wants. If he’s going to win, he has to do it through the choices of his victims. I’ve said that.” He glanced at her as if he feared how she might react. “I believed it. But I’m not sure it’s true anymore. I think alloys transcend the normal strictures. If I really am nothing more than a tool now, Foul can use me any way he wants, and there won’t be anything we can do about it.”