White Gold Wielder

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Yet the aura around the sun showed no sign of alteration.

  The Stonedownors chanted desperately, driving their exertion higher; but their voices made no sound. The incandescent beam absorbed their invocations directly into itself. Soundless force screamed across Linden’s hearing. Something inside her gibbered, Stop them stop they’ll kill themselves stop! But she could not. She could not tell the difference between their agony and the wailing in her mind.

  The krill’s jewel shone blue. Constant azure filled the core of the shaft, hurled itself upward. Still the aura around the sun did not change.

  The next instant, the power became too great.

  The lianar caught fire. It burst in Hollian’s hands, shedding a bright vehemence that nearly blinded Linden. The wood flared to cinders, burned the eh-Brand’s palms to the bone. A cry ripped through her. The shaft wavered, faltered.

  But she did not fall back. Leaning into the power, she closed her naked hands around the blade of the krill.

  At her touch, the shaft erupted, shattering the Sunstone, shattering the heavens. The ground wrenched itself aside in a convulsion of pain, sent Linden and Covenant sprawling. She landed on him while the hills reeled. The air was driven from his lungs. She rolled off him, fought to get her feet under her. The earth quivered like outraged flesh.

  Another concussion seemed to wipe everything else out of the world. It rent the sky as if the sun had exploded. Linden fell again, writhed on the heaving dirt. Before her face, the dust danced like shocked water, leaving fine whorls in the wake of the blast. The light faded as if the fist of the heavens had begun to close.

  When she raised her head, she saw tremendous thunderheads teeming toward her from all the horizons, rushing to seal themselves over the sun’s blue corona.

  For an instant, she could not think, had forgotten how to move. There was no sound at all except the oncoming passion of the rain. Perhaps the battle beyond the ridge was over. But then awareness recoiled through her like a thunderclap. Surging in panic to her hands and knees, she flung her percipience toward the Stonedownors.

  Sunder sat as if the detonation of earth and sky had not touched him. His head was bowed. The krill lay on the ground in front of him, its handle still partially covered. The fringes of the cloth were charred. His breathing was shallow, almost indiscernible. In his chest, his heart limped like a mauled thing from beat to beat. To Linden’s first alarm, his life looked like the fading smoke of a snuffed wick. Then her health-sense reached deeper, and she saw that he would live.

  But Hollian lay twisted on her back, her cut and heat-mangled palms open to the mounting dark. Her black hair framed the pale vulnerability of her face, pillowed her head like the cupped hand of death. Between her lost lips trickled a delicate trail of blood.

  Scrambling wildly across the dirt, Linden dove for the eh-Brand, plunged her touch into Hollian and tried to call back her spirit before it fled altogether. But it was going fast: Linden could not hold it. Hollian had been damaged too severely. Linden’s fingers clutched at the slack shoulders, tried to shake breath back into the lungs; but there was nothing she could do. Her hands were useless. She was just an ordinary woman, incapable of miracles—able to see nothing clearly except the extent of her failure.

  As she watched, the life ran out of the eh-Brand. The red rivulet from her mouth slowed and stopped.

  Power: Linden had to have power. But grief closed her off from everything. She could not reach the sun. The Earth was desecrated and dying. And Covenant had changed. At times in the past, she had tapped wild magic from him without his volition; but that was no longer possible. He was a new being, an alloy of fire and person. His might was inaccessible without possession. And if she had been capable of doing that to him, it would have taken time—time which Hollian had already lost.

  The eh-Brand looked pitifully small in death, valiant and fragile beyond endurance. And her son also, gone without so much as a single chance at life. Linden stared blindly at the failure of her hands. The krill-gem glared into her face.

  From all directions at once, the rain ran forward, hissing like flame across the dirt.

  Drops of water splashed around her as Covenant took hold of her, yanked her toward him. Unwillingly she felt the feral thrust of his pain. “I told you to watch!” he raged, yelling at her because he had asked the Stonedownors to take this risk in spite of his inability to protect them from the consequences. “I told you to watch!”

  Through the approaching clamor of the rain, she heard Sunder groan.

  He took an unsteady breath, raised his head. His eyes were glazed, unseeing, empty of mind. For an instant, she thought he was lost as well. But then his hands opened, stretching the cramps from his fingers and forearms, and he blinked several times. His eyes focused on the krill. He reached out to it stiffly, wrapped it back in its cloth, tucked it away under his jerkin.

  Then the drizzle caught his attention. He looked toward Hollian.

  At once, he lurched to his feet. Fighting the knots in his muscles, the ravages of power, he started toward her.

  Linden shoved herself in front of him. Sunder! she tried to say. It’s my fault. I’m so sorry. From the beginning, failure had dogged her steps as if it could never be redeemed.

  He did not heed her. With one arm, he swept her out of his way so forcefully that she stumbled. A blood-ridden intensity glared from his orbs. He had lost one wife and son before he had met Linden and Covenant. Now they had cost him another. He bent over Hollian for a moment as if he feared to touch her. His arms hugged the anguish in his chest. Then, fiercely, he stooped to her and rose again, lifting her out of the new mud, cradling her like a child. His howl rang through the rain, transforming the downpour to grief:

  “Hollian!”

  Abruptly the First hove out of the thickening dark with Pitchwife behind her. She was panting hugely. Blood squeezed from the wide wound in her side where the lore of the ur-viles had burned her. Pitchwife’s face was aghast at the things he had done.

  Neither of them seemed to see Hollian. “Come!” called the First. “We must make our way now! Vain yet withholds the ur-viles from us. If we flee, we may hope that he will follow and be saved!”

  No one moved. The rain belabored Linden’s head and shoulders. Covenant had covered his face with his hands. He stood immobile in the storm as if he could no longer bear the cost of what he had become. Sunder breathed in great, raw hunks of hurt, but did not weep. He remained hunched over Hollian, concentrating on her as if the sheer strength of his desire might bring her back.

  The First gave a snarl of exasperation. Still she appeared unaware of what had happened. Aggravated by her injury, she brooked no refusal. “Come, I say!” Roughly she took hold of Covenant and Linden, dragged them toward the watercourse.

  Pitchwife followed, tugging Sunder.

  They scrambled down into the riverbed. The water racing there frothed against the thick limbs of the Giants. Linden could hardly keep her feet. She clung to the First. Soon the river rose high enough to carry the company away.

  Rain hammered at them as if it were outraged by its untimely birth. The riverbanks were invisible. Linden saw no sign of the ur-viles or Vain. She did not know whether she and her friends had escaped.

  But the lightning that tore the heavens gave her sudden glimpses around her. One of them revealed Sunder. He swam ahead of Pitchwife. The Giant braced him with one hand from behind.

  He still bore Hollian in his arms. Carefully he kept her head above water as if she were alive.

  At intervals through the loud rain and the thunder, Linden heard him keening.

  FOURTEEN: The Last Bourne

  At first, the water was so muddy that it sickened Linden. Every involuntary mouthful left sand in her throat, grit on her teeth. Rain and thunder fragmented her hearing. At one moment, she felt totally deaf; the next, sound went through her like a slap. Dragged down by her clothes and heavy shoes, she would have been exhausted in a short time without the Firs
t’s support. The Swordmain’s wound was a throbbing pain that reached Linden in spite of the chaos of water, the exertion of swimming. Yet the Giant bore both Covenant and the Chosen through the turmoil.

  But as the water rose it became clearer, less conflicted—and colder. Linden had forgotten how cold a fast river could be with no sunlight on it anywhere. The chill leeched into her, sucking at her bones. It whispered to her sore nerves that she would be warmer if she lowered herself beneath the surface, out of the air and the battering rain. Only for a moment, it suggested kindly. Until you feel warmer. You’ve already failed. It doesn’t matter anymore. You deserve to feel warmer.

  She knew what she deserved. But she ignored the seduction, clung instead to the First—concentrated on the hurt in the Giant’s side. The cleaner water washed most of the sand and blood from the burn; and the First was hardy. Linden was not worried about infection. Yet she poured her percipience toward that wound, put herself into it until her own side wailed as if she had been gored. Then, deliberately, she numbed the sensation, reducing the First’s pain to a dull ache.

  The cold frayed her senses, sapped her courage. Lightning and thunder blared above her, and she was too small to endure them. Rain nailed the face of the river. But she clinched herself to her chosen use and did not let go while the current bore the company hurtling down the length of the long afternoon.

  At last the day ended. The torrents thinned: the clouds rolled back. Legs scissoring, the First labored across to the west bank, then struggled out of the water and stood trembling on the sodden ground. In a moment, Pitchwife joined her. Linden seemed to feel his bones rattling in an ague of weariness.

  Covenant looked as pale as a weathered tombstone, his lips blue with cold, gall heavy on his features. “We need a fire,” he said as if that, too, were his fault.

  Sunder walked up the wet slope without a glance at his companions. He was hunched over Hollian as though his chest were full of broken glass. Beyond the reach of the river, he stumbled to his knees, lowered Hollian gently to the ground. He settled her limbs to make her comfortable. His blunt fingers caressed the black strands of hair from her face, tenderly combed her tresses out around her head. Then he seated himself beside her and wrapped his arms over his heart, huddling there as if his sanity had snapped.

  Pitchwife unshouldered his pack, took out a Giantish firepot which had somehow remained sealed against the water. Next he produced a few fagots from his scant supply of firewood. They were soaked, and he was exhausted; but he bent over them and blew raggedly until they took flame from the firepot. Nursing the blaze, he made it hot enough to sustain itself. Though it was small and pitiable, it gave enough heat to soften the chill in Linden’s joints, the gaunt misery in Covenant’s eyes.

  Then Pitchwife offered them diamondraught. But they refused it until he and the First had each swallowed a quantity of the potent liquor. Because of his cramped lungs and her injury, the Giants were in sore need of sustenance. After that, however, Linden took a few sips which ran true warmth at last into her stomach.

  Bitterly, as if he were punishing himself, Covenant accepted the pouch of diamondraught from her; but he did not drink. Instead he forced his stiff muscles and brittle bones toward Sunder.

  His offer produced no reaction from the Graveler. In a burned and gutted voice. Covenant urged, pleaded. Sunder did not raise his head. He remained focused on Hollian as if his world had shrunk to that frail compass and his companions no longer impinged upon him. After a while, Covenant shambled back to the fire, sat down, and covered his face with his hands.

  A moment later, Vain appeared.

  He emerged from the night into the campfire’s small illumination and resumed at once his familiar blank stance. An ambiguous smile curved his mouth. The passion Linden had felt from him was gone. He appeared as insentient and unreachable as ever. His wooden forearm had been darkened and charred, but the damage was only superficial.

  His left arm was withered and useless, like a congenital deformity. Pain oozed from several deep sores. Mottled streaks the color of ash marred his ebony flesh.

  Instinctively Linden started toward him, though she knew that she could not help him, that his wounds were as imponderable as his essential nature. She sensed that he had attacked the ur-viles for his own reasons, not to aid or even acknowledge the company; yet she felt viscerally that the wrong his sculptured perfection had suffered was intolerable. Once he had bowed to her. And more than once he had saved her life. Someone had to at least try to help him.

  But before she reached him, a wide, winged shape came out of the stars like the plunge of a condor. Changing shapes as it descended, it landed lightly beside the Demondim-spawn in human form.

  Findail.

  He did not look at Covenant or Linden, ignored Sunder’s hunched and single-minded grief. Instead, he addressed Vain.

  “Do not believe that you will win my heart with bravery.” His voice was congested with old dismay, covert and unmistakable fear. His eyes seemed to search the Demondim-spawn’s inscrutable soul. “I desire your death. If it lay within the permit of my Würd, I would slay you. But these comrades for whom you care nothing have again contrived to redeem you.” He paused as if he were groping for courage, then concluded softly, “Though I abhor your purpose, the Earth must not suffer the cost of your pain.”

  Suddenly lambent, his right hand reached out to Vain’s left shoulder. An instant of fire blazed from the touch, cast startling implications which only Linden could hear into the fathomless night. Then it was gone. Findail left Vain, went to stand like a sentinel confronting the moonlit prospect of the east.

  The First breathed a soft oath of surprise. Pitchwife gaped in wonder. Covenant murmured curses as if he could not believe what he had seen.

  Vain’s left arm was whole, completely restored to its original beauty and function.

  Linden thought she caught a gleam of relief from the Demondim-spawn’s black eyes.

  Astonishment stunned her. Findail’s demonstration gave her a reason to understand for the first time why the Elohim believed that the healing of the Earth should be left to them, that the best choice she or Covenant could make would be to give Findail the ring and simply step aside from the doom Lord Foul was preparing for them. The restoration of Vain’s arm seemed almost miraculous to her. With all the medical resources she could imagine, she would not have been able to match Findail’s feat.

  Drawn by the power he represented, she turned toward him with Sunder’s name on his lips. Help him. He doesn’t know how to bear it.

  But the silhouette of the Appointed against the moon refused her before she spoke. In some unexplained way, he had aggravated his own plight by healing Vain. Like Sunder, he was in need of solace. His stance told her that he would deny any other appeal.

  Pitchwife sighed. Muttering aimlessly to himself, he began to prepare a meal while the fire lasted.

  Later that night, Linden huddled near Covenant and the fading embers of the fire with a damp blanket hugged around her in an effort to ward off the sky-deep cold and tried to explain her failure. “It was too sudden. I didn’t see the danger in time.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” he replied gruffly. “I had no right to blame you.” His voice seemed to issue from an injury hidden within the clenched mound of his blanket—hidden and fatal. “I should’ve made them stay in Revelstone.”

  She wanted to protest his arrogation of responsibility. Without them, we would all be dead. How else were we going to get away from those ur-viles? But he went on, “I used to be afraid of power. I thought it made me what I hate—another Landwaster. A source of Despite for the people I care about. But I don’t need power. I can do the same thing by just standing there.”

  She sat up and peered at him through the moon-edged night. He lay with his back to her, the blanket shivering slightly on his shoulders. She ached to put her arms around him, find some safe warmth in the contact of their bodies. But that was not what he needed. Softly, hars
hly, she said, “That’s wonderful. You’re to blame for everything. Next I suppose you’re going to tell me you bit yourself with that venom, just to prove you deserve it.”

  He jerked over onto his back as if she had hit him between the shoulder blades. His face came, pale and wincing, out of the blanket. For a moment, he appeared to glare at her. But then his emanations lost their fierce edge. “I know,” he breathed to the wide sky. “Atiaran tried to tell me the same thing. After all I did to her.” Quietly he quoted, “ ‘Castigation is a doom which achieves itself. In punishing yourself, you come to merit punishment.’ All Foul has to do is laugh.” His dark features concentrated toward her. “The same thing’s true for you. You tried to save her. It wasn’t your fault.”

  Linden nodded. Mutely she leaned toward him until he took her into his embrace.

  When she awoke in the early gray of dawn, she looked toward Sunder and saw that he had not moved during the night.

  Hollian was rigid with death now, her delicate face pallid and aggrieved in the gloom; but he appeared unaware of any change, uncognizant of night or day—numb to anything except the shards of pain in his chest and her supine form. He was chilled to the bone, but the cold had no power to make him shiver.

  Covenant roused with a flinch, yanked himself roughly out of his dreams. For no apparent reason, he said distinctly, “Those ur-viles should’ve caught up with us by now.” Then he, too, saw Sunder. Softly he groaned.

  The First and Pitchwife were both awake. Her injury was still sore; but diamondraught had quickened her native toughness, and the damage was no longer serious. She glanced at the Graveler, then faced Covenant and Linden and shook her head. Her training had not prepared her to deal with Sunder’s stricken condition.