Then Pitchwife groaned far back in his throat. “Ah, Earthfriend.” His voice shuddered. “You have forewarned us of the consequences of this Sunbane—but now I perceive that I did not altogether credit your words. It is heinous beyond speech.”
The First gripped her sword as an anchor for her emotions. “We are blocked from our way,” she said, articulating the words like chewed metal. “Perchance we have come blindly upon an army of another purpose—but I do not believe it. I believe that the Despiser has reached out his hand against us.”
Trepidation beat the haze from Linden’s mind. Her mouth shaped a question. But she did not ask it aloud. The Giants stood, rigid, before her; and she could see as clearly as language that they had no answer.
“Beyond that ridge?” asked Covenant. “How far?”
“A stone’s throw for a Giant,” the First replied grimly. “No more. And they advance toward us.”
He glanced at Linden to gauge her condition, then said to the First, “Let’s go take a look.”
She nodded, turned on her heel and strode away. He hurried after her. Linden, Sunder, and Hollian followed. Pitchwife placed himself protectively at Linden’s side. Vain and Findail quickened their steps to keep up with the company.
At the ridgecrest, Covenant squatted behind a boulder and peered down the southward slope. Linden joined him. The Giants crouched below the line-of-sight of what lay ahead. Findail also stopped. Careful to avoid exposing themselves, Sunder and Hollian crept forward. But Vain moved up to the rim as if he wanted a clear view and feared nothing.
Covenant spat a low curse under his breath; but it was not directed at the Demondim-spawn. It was aimed at the black seethe of bodies moving toward the ridge on both sides of the watercourse.
As black as Vain himself.
The sight of them sucked the strength from Linden’s limbs.
She knew what they were because Covenant had described them to her—and because she had met the Waynhim of Hamako’s rhysh. But they had been changed. Their emanations rose to her like a shout, telling her precisely what had happened to them. They had fallen victim to the desecration of the Sunbane.
“Ur-viles,” Covenant whispered fiercely. “Hell and blood!”
Warped ur-viles.
Hundreds of them.
Once they had resembled the Waynhim: larger, black instead of gray; but with the same hairless bodies, the same limbs formed for running on all fours as well as for walking erect, the same eyeless faces and wide, questing nostrils. But no longer. The Sunbane had made them monstrous.
Over the sickness in her stomach, Linden thought bleakly that Lord Foul must have done this to them. Like the Waynhim, the ur-viles were too lore-wise to have exposed themselves accidentally to the sun’s first touch. They had been corrupted deliberately and sent here to block the company’s way.
“Why?” she breathed, aghast. “Why?”
“Same reason as always,” Covenant growled without looking away from the grotesque horde. “Force me to use too much power.” Then suddenly his gaze flashed toward her. “Or to keep us out of Andelain. Exposed to the Sunbane. He knows how much it hurts you. Maybe he thinks it’ll make you do what he wants.”
Linden felt the truth of his words. She knew she could not stay sane forever under the pressure of the Sunbane. But a bifurcated part of her replied, Or maybe he did it to punish them. For doing something he didn’t like.
Her heart skipped a beat.
For making Vain?
The Demondim-spawn stood atop the ridge as if he sought to attract the notice of the horde.
“Damnation!” Covenant muttered. Creeping back a short way from the rim, he turned to the Giants. “What’re we going to do?”
The First did not hesitate. She gestured eastward along the valley below the ridge. “There lies our way. Passing their flank unseen, we may hope to outrun them toward Andelain.”
Covenant shook his head. “That won’t work. This isn’t exactly the direct route to Andelain—or Mount Thunder, for that matter—but Foul still knew where to find us. He has some way of locating us. It’s been done before.” He glared at his memories, then thrust the past side. “If we try to get around them, they’ll know it.”
The First scowled and said nothing, momentarily at a loss for alternatives. Linden put her back to the boulder, braced her dread on the hard stone. “We can retreat,” she said. “Back the way we came.” Covenant started to protest; but she overrode him. “Until tomorrow. When the rain starts. I don’t care how well they know where we are. They’re going to have trouble finding us in the rain.” She was sure of that. She knew from experience that the Sunbane’s torrents were as effective as a wall. “Once the rain starts, we can ride the river right through the middle of them.”
Covenant frowned. His jaws chewed a lump of bitterness. After a moment, he asked, “Can you do it? Those ur-viles aren’t likely to rest at night. We’ll have to keep going until dawn. And we’ll have to stay right in front of them. So they won’t have time to react when we try to get past them.” He faltered out of consideration for her, then forced himself to say, “You’re already having trouble just staying on your feet.”
She gave him a glare of vexation, started to say, What choice have we got? I can do whatever I have to. But a black movement caught the edge of her sight. She turned her head in time to see Vain go striding down the slope to meet the ur-viles.
Covenant snapped the Demondim-spawn’s name. Pitchwife started after Vain: the First snatched him back. Sunder hurried to the rim to see what would happen, leaving Hollian with taut concentration on her face.
Linden ignored them. For the first time, she felt an emotion radiating from Vain’s impenetrable form.
It was anger.
The horde reacted as if it could smell his presence even from this range. Perhaps that was how they knew where to find the company. A spatter of barking burst from the ur-viles: they quickened their pace. Their wide mass converged toward him.
At the foot of the slope, he halted. The ur-viles were no great distance from him now. In a few moments, they would reach him. As they moved, their barking resolved into one word:
“Nekhrimah!”
The word of command, by which Covenant had once compelled Vain to save his life. But Foamfollower had said that the Demondim-spawn would not obey it a second time.
For a moment, he remained still, as if he had forgotten motion. His right hand dangled, useless, from his wooden forearm. Nothing else marred his passive perfection. The scraps of his raiment only emphasized how beautifully he had been made.
“Nekhrimah!”
Then he raised his left hand. His fingers curved into claws. His hand made a feral clutching gesture.
The leading ur-vile was snatched to the ground as if Vain had taken hold of its heart and ripped the organ apart.
Snarling furiously, the horde broke into a run.
Vain did not hurry. His good arm struck a sideward blow through the air: two ur-viles went down with crushed skulls. His fingers knotted and twisted: one of the approaching faces turned to pulp. Another was split open by a punching movement that did not touch his assailant.
Then they were on him, a tide of black, monstrous flesh breaking against his ebon hardness. They seemed to have no interest in the company. Perhaps Vain had always been their target. All of them tried to hurl themselves at him. Even the ur-viles on the far bank of the river surged toward him.
“Now!” breathed the First eagerly. “Now is our opportunity! While they are thus engaged, we may pass them by.”
Linden swung toward the Giant. The fury she had felt from Vain whipped through her. “We can do that,” she grated. “As long as we leave him to die. Those are ur-viles. They know how he was made. As soon as he kills enough of them to get their attention, they’re going to remember how to un-make him.” She rose to her feet, knotted her fists at her sides. “We’ve got to make him stop.”
Behind her, she felt the violence of Vain’s st
ruggle, sensed the blood of ur-viles spurting and flowing. They would never kill him by physical force. He would reduce them one at a time to crushed, raw meat. All that butchery—! Even the abominable products of the Sunbane did not deserve to be slaughtered. But she knew she was right. Before long, the frenzy of the horde would pass: the ur-viles would begin to think. They had shown that they were still capable of recognition and thought when they had used the word of command. Then Vain would die.
Covenant appeared to accept her assertion. But he responded bitterly, “You stop him. He doesn’t listen to me.”
“Earthfriend!” the First snapped. “Chosen! Will you remain here and be slain because you can neither redeem nor command this Vain? We must flee!”
That’s right. Linden was thinking something different; but it led to the same conclusion. Findail had moved to the ridgecrest. He stood watching the bloody fray with a particular hunger or hope in his eyes. In Elemesnedene, the Elohim had imprisoned Vain to prevent him from the purpose for which he had been designed. But they had been thwarted because Linden had insisted on leaving the area—and Vain’s instinct to follow her or Covenant had proved stronger than his bonds.
Now Findail seemed to see before him another means by which the Demondim-spawn could be stopped. And the answer was unchanged: flee so that Vain would follow.
But how? The company could not hope to outrun the ur-viles now.
“Perhaps it may be done,” said Hollian, speaking so quietly that she could barely be heard over the savage din. “Assuredly it is conceivable. The way of it is plain. Is it not possible?”
Sunder turned back from the rim to gape at her. Inchoate protests tumbled together in him, fell voiceless.
“Conceivable?” Covenant demanded. “What’re you talking about?”
Hollian’s pale face was intense with exaltation or vision. Her meaning was so clear to her that she seemed beyond question.
“Sunder and I have spoken of it. In Crystal Stonedown Sivit na-Mhoram-wist titled me Sun-Sage—and that naming was false. But does not his very fear argue that such work is possible?”
Linden flinched. She had never done anything to earn the epithet the Elohim had given her. She feared even to consider its implications. Did Hollian think that she, Linden, could change the Sunbane?
But Sunder strode toward Hollian urgently, then stopped and stood trembling a few steps away. “No,” he murmured. “We are mortal, you and I. The attempt would reave us to the marrow. Such power must not be touched.”
She shook her head. “The need is absolute. Do you wish to lose the lives of the ur-Lord and the Chosen—the hope of the Land—because we dare not hazard our own?” He started to expostulate. Suddenly her voice rose like flame. “Sunder, I have not been tested! I am unknown to myself. No measure has been taken of that which I may accomplish.” Then she grew gentle again. “But your strength is known to me. I have no doubt of it. I have given my heart into your hands, and I say to you, it is possible. It may be done.”
From beyond the ridge came harsh screams as Vain ripped and mangled the ur-viles. But the pace of their cries had diminished: he was killing fewer of them. Linden’s senses registered a rippling of power in the horde. Some of the clamor had taken on a chanting cadence. The monsters were summoning their lore against the Demondim-spawn.
“Hellfire!” Covenant ejaculated. “Make sense! We’ve got to do something!”
Hollian looked toward him. “I speak of the alteration of the Sunbane.”
Surprise leaped in his face. At once, she went on, “Not of its power or its ill. But of its course, in the way that the shifting of a stone may alter the course of a river.”
His incomprehension was plain. Patiently she added, “The morrow’s sun will be a sun of rain. And the pace of the Sunbane increases as its power grows, ever shortening the space of days between the suns. It is my thought that perhaps the morrow’s sun may be brought forward, so that its rain will fall upon us now.”
At that, Linden’s apprehension jerked into clarity, and she understood Sunder’s protest. The strength required would be enormous! And Hollian was pregnant, doubly vulnerable. If the attempt ran out of control, she might rip the life out of more than one heart.
The idea appalled Linden. And yet she could think of no other way to save the company.
Covenant was already speaking. His eyes were gaunt with the helplessness of his alloyed puissance. Thoughts of warped black flesh and bloodshed tormented him. “Try it,” he whispered. “Please.”
His appeal was directed at Sunder.
For a long moment, the Graveler’s eyes went dull, and his stature seemed to shrink. He looked like the man who had faced Linden and Covenant in the prison-hut of Mithil Stonedown and told them that he would be required to kill his own mother. If she had been able to think of any alternative at all—any alternative other than the one which horrified her—Linden would have cried out, You don’t have to do this!
But then the passion that Covenant had inspired in Sunder’s life came back to him. The muscles at the corners of his jaw bunched whitely, straining for courage. He was the same man who had once lied to Gibbon-Raver under extreme pain and coercion in an effort to protect the Unbeliever. Through his teeth, he gritted, “We will do it. If it can be done.”
“Praise the Earth!” the First exhaled sharply. Her sword leaped into her hands. “Be swift. I must do what I may to aid the Demondim-spawn.” Swinging into motion, she passed the rim and vanished in the direction of Vain’s struggle.
Almost immediately, a roynish, guttural chorus greeted her. Linden felt the mounting power of the ur-viles fragment as they were thrown into frenzy and confusion by the First’s onset.
But Sunder and Hollian had room in their concentration for nothing else. Slowly, woodenly, he placed himself before her. She gave him a smile of secret eagerness, trying to reassure him: he scowled in reply. Fear and determination stretched the skin of his forehead across the bones. He and Hollian did not touch each other. As formally as strangers, they sat down cross-legged, facing each other with their knees aligned.
Covenant came to Linden’s side. “Watch them,” he breathed. “Watch them hard. If they get into trouble, we’ve got to stop them. I can’t stand—” He muttered a curse at himself. “Can’t afford to lose them.”
She nodded mutely. The clangor of battle frayed her attention, urged it away from the Stonedownors. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself into focus on Sunder and Hollian. Around her, the edges of the landscape throbbed with the sun’s lambency, the hue of blood.
Sunder bowed his head for a moment, then reached into his jerkin and drew out his Sunstone and the wrapped krill. The orcrest he set down squarely between himself and Hollian. It lay like a hollow space in the dead dirt: its strange translucence revealed nothing.
Hollian produced her lianar, placed it across her ankles. A soft invocation began to sough between her lips as she raised her palms to Sunder. She was the eh-Brand: she would have to guide the power to its purpose.
Dread twisted Sunder’s visage. His hands shook as he exposed the krill, let its light shine into his eyes. Using the cloth to protect his grip from the krill’s heat, he directed its tip at Hollian’s palms.
Covenant winced as the Graveler drew a cut down the center of each of her hands.
Blood streaked her wrists. Her face was pale with pain, but she did not flinch. Lowering her arms, she let thick drops fall onto the orcrest until all its surface was wet. Then she took up her wand.
Sunder sat before her as if he wanted to scream; but somehow he forced his passion to serve him. With both fists, he gripped the handle of the krill, its tip aimed upward in front of his chest. The eh-Brand held her lianar likewise, echoing his posture.
The sun was almost directly above them.
Faintly Linden heard the First cursing, felt an emanation of Giantish pain. Pieces of the ur-viles’ power gathered together, became more effective. With a groan like a sob, Pitchwife tore himself fr
om the Stonedownors and ran past the ridge to help his wife.
Sweating under the sun of pestilence, Linden watched as Sunder and the eh-Brand reached krill and lianar toward each other.
His arms shook slightly: hers were precise. Her knuckles touched his, wand rested against krill-gem, along a line between the bloodied orcrest and the sun.
And hot force stung through Linden as a vermeil shaft sprang from the Sunstone. It encompassed the hands of the Stonedownors, the blade and the wand, and shot away into the heart of the sun.
Power as savage as lightning: the keen might of the Sunbane. Sunder’s lips pulled back from his teeth. Hollian’s eyes widened as if the sheer size of what she was attempting suddenly appalled her. But neither she nor the Graveler withdrew.
Covenant’s halfhand had taken hold of Linden’s arm. Three points of pain dug into her flesh. On the Sandwall, for entirely different reasons, Cail had gripped her in that same way. She thought she could hear the First’s sword hacking against distorted limbs, hideous torsos. Vain’s anger did not relent. The strain of Pitchwife’s breathing came clearly through the blood-fury of the ur-viles.
Their lore grew sharper.
But the scalding shaft of Sunbane-force had a white core. Argent blazed within the beam, reaching like the will of the Stonedownors to pierce the sun. It came from the gem of the krill and the clenched strength of Sunder’s determination.
It pulled him so far out of himself that Linden feared he was already lost.
She started forward, wildly intending to hurl herself upon him, call him back. But then the eh-Brand put forth her purpose; and Linden froze in astonishment.
In the heart of the gem appeared a frail blue glimmer.
Sensations of power howled silently against Linden’s nerves, scaled upward out of comprehension, as the blue gleam steadied, became stronger. Flickers of it bled into the beam and flashed toward the sun. Still it became stronger, fed by the eh-Brand’s resolve. At first, it appeared molten and limited, torn from itself drop after drop by a force more compelling than gravity. But Hollian renewed it faster than it bled. Soon it was running up the beam in bursts so rapid that the shaft seemed to flicker.
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