White Gold Wielder

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Her husband levered himself off the ground with his elbow and crawled toward the sacks of supplies. Taking up a pouch of diamondraught, he forced his cramped muscles to lift him upright, carry him to the Graveler’s side. Without a word, he opened the pouch and held it under Sunder’s nose.

  Its scent drew a sound like a muffled sob from the Stonedownor. But he did not raise his head.

  Helpless with pity, Pitchwife withdrew.

  No one spoke. Linden, Covenant, and the Giants ate a cheerless meal before the sun rose. Then the First and Pitchwife went to find stone on which to meet the day. In shared apprehension, Linden and Covenant started toward Sunder. But, by chance or design, he had seated himself upon an exposed face of rock. He needed no protection.

  Gleaming azure, the sun crested the horizon, then disappeared as black clouds began to host westward.

  Spasms of wind kicked across the gravid surface of the White River. Pitchwife hastened to secure the supplies. By the time he was finished, the first drizzle had begun to fall. It mounted toward downpour with a sound like frying meat.

  Linden eyed the quick current of the White and shuddered. Its cold ran past her senses like the edge of a rasp. But she had already survived similar immersions without diamondraught or metheglin to sustain her. She was determined to endure as long as necessary. Grimly she turned back to the problem of Sunder.

  He had risen to his feet. Head bowed, eyes focused on nothing, he faced his companions and the River.

  He held Hollian upright in his arms, hugging her to his sore breast so that her soles did not touch the ground.

  Covenant met Linden’s gaze. Then he moved to stand in front of Sunder. The muscles of his shoulders bunched and throttled; but his voice was gentle, husky with rue. “Sunder,” he said, “put her down.” His hands clenched at his sides. “You’ll drown yourself if you try to take her with you. I can’t lose you too.” In the background of his words blew a wind of grief like the rising of the rain. “We’ll help you bury her.”

  Sunder gave no response, did not look at Covenant. He appeared to be waiting for the Unbeliever to get out of his way.

  Covenant’s tone hardened. “Don’t make us take her away from you.”

  In reply, Sunder lowered Hollian’s feet to the ground. Linden felt no shift in his emanations, no warning. With his right hand, he drew the krill from his jerkin.

  The covering of the blade fell away, flapped out of reach along the wind. He gripped the hot handle in his bare fingers. Pain crossed his face like a snarl, but he did not flinch. White light shone from the gem, as clear as a threat.

  Lifting Hollian with his left arm, he started down toward the River.

  Covenant let him pass. Linden and the Giants let him pass. Then the First sent Pitchwife after him, so that he would not be alone in the swift, cold hazard of the current.

  “He’s going to Andelain,” Covenant grated. “He’s going to carry her all the way to Andelain. Who do you think he wants to find?”

  Without waiting for an answer, he followed Pitchwife and the Graveler.

  Linden stared after them and groaned, His Dead! The Dead in Andelain. Nassic his father. Kalina his mother. The wife and son he had shed in the name of Mithil Stonedown.

  Or Hollian herself?

  Sweet Christ! How will he stand it? He’ll go mad and never come back.

  Diving into the current. Linden went downriver in a wild rush with the First swimming strongly at her side.

  She was not prepared for the acute power of the cold. As her health-sense grew in range and discernment, it made her more and more vulnerable to what she felt. The days she had spent in the Mithil River with Covenant and Sunder had not been this bad. The chill cudgeled her flesh, pounded her raw nerves. Time and again, she believed that surely now she would begin to wail, that at last the Sunbane would master her. Yet the undaunted muscle of the First’s shoulder supported her. And Covenant stayed with her. Through the bludgeoning rain, the thunder that shattered the air, the lightning that ripped the heavens, his stubborn sense of purpose remained within reach of her percipience. In spite of numbing misery and desperation, she wanted to live—wanted to survive every ill Lord Foul hurled against her. Until her chance came to put a stop to it.

  Visible by lightning burst, Pitchwife rode the River a stroke or two ahead of the First. With one hand, he held up the Graveler. And Sunder bore Hollian as if she were merely sleeping.

  Sometime during the middle of the day, the White dashed frothing and tumbling into a confluence that tore the travelers down the new channel like dead leaves in the wind. Joined by the Grey, the White River had become the Soulsease; and for the rest of that day—and all the next—it carried the company along. The rains blinded Linden’s sense of direction. But at night, when the skies were clear and the waning moon rose over the pummeled wasteland, she was able to see that the river’s course had turned toward the east.

  The second evening after the confluence, the First asked Covenant when they would reach Andelain. He and Linden sat as close as possible to the small heat of their campfire; and Pitchwife and the First crouched there also as if even they needed something more than diamondraught to restore their courage. But Sunder remained a short distance away in the same posture he had assumed the two previous nights, hunched over his pain on the sheetrock of the campsite with Hollian outstretched rigidly in front of him as if at any moment she might begin to breathe again.

  Side by side, Vain and Findail stood at the fringes of the light. Linden had not seen them enter the River, did not know how they traveled the rain-scoured waste. But each evening they appeared together shortly after sunset and waited without speaking for the night to pass.

  Covenant mused into the flames for a moment, then replied, “I’m a bad judge of distance. I don’t know how far we’ve come.” His face appeared waxen with the consequences of cold. “But this is the Soulsease. It goes almost straight to Mount Thunder from here. We ought—” He extended his hands toward the fire, put them too close to the flames, as if he had forgotten the reason for their numbness. But then his leper’s instincts caused him to draw back. “It depends on the sun. It’s due to change. Unless we get a desert sun, the River will keep running. We ought to reach Andelain sometime tomorrow.”

  The First nodded and went back to her private thoughts. Behind her Giantish strength and the healing of her injury, she was deeply tired. After a moment, she drew her longsword, began to clean and dry it with the slow, methodical movements of a woman who did not know what else to do.

  As if to emulate her, Pitchwife took his flute from his pack, shook the water out of it, and tried to play. But his hands or his lips were too weary to hold any music. Soon he gave up the attempt.

  For a while, Linden thought about the sun and let herself feel a touch of relief. A fertile sun or a sun of pestilence would warm the water. They would allow her to see the sky, open up the world around her. And a desert sun would certainly not be cold.

  But gradually she became aware that Covenant was still shivering. A quick glance showed her he was not ill. After his passage through the Banefire, she doubted that he would ever be ill again. But he was clenched around himself, knotted so tightly that he seemed feverish.

  She put her hand over his right forearm, drew his attention toward her. With her eyes, she asked what troubled him.

  He looked at her gauntly, then returned his gaze to the fire as if among the coals he might find the words he needed. When he spoke, he surprised her by inquiring, “Are you sure you want to go to Andelain? The last time you had the chance, you turned it down.”

  That was true. Poised at the southwest verge of the Hills with Sunder and Hollian, she had refused to go with Covenant, even though the radiance of health from across the Mithil River had been vivid to her bruised nerves. She had feared the sheer power of that region. Some of her fear she had learned from Hollian’s dread, Hollian’s belief that Andelain was a place where people lost their minds. But most of it had ari
sen from an encompassing distrust of everything to which her percipience made her vulnerable. The Sunbane had bored into her like a sickness, as acute and anguished as any disease; but as a disease she had understood it. And it had suited her: it had been appropriate to the structure of her life. But for that very reason Andelain had threatened her more intimately. It had endangered her difficult self-possession. She had not believed that any good could come of anything which had such strength over her.

  And later Covenant had relayed to her the words of Elena among the Dead. The former High Lord had said, I rue that the woman your companion lacked heart to accompany you, for you have much to bear. But she must come to meet herself in her own time. Care for her, beloved, so that in the end she may heal us all. In addition, the Forestal had said, It is well that your companions did not accompany you. The woman of your world would raise grim shades here. The simple recollection of such things brought back Linden’s fear.

  A fear which had made its meaning clear in lust and darkness when Gibbon-Raver had touched her and affirmed that she was evil.

  But she was another woman now. She had found the curative use of her health-sense, the access to beauty. She had told Covenant the stories of her parents, drawn some of their sting from her heart. She had learned to call her hunger for power by its true name. And she knew what she wanted. Covenant’s love. And the end of the Sunbane.

  Smiling grimly, she replied, “Try to stop me.”

  She expected her answer to relieve him. But he only nodded, and she saw that he still had not said what was in him. Several false starts passed like shadows across the back ground of his expression. In an effort to reach him, she added, “I need the relief. The sooner I get out of the Sunbane, the saner I’ll be.”

  “Linden—” He said her name as if she were not making his way easier. “When we were in Mithil Stonedown—and Sunder told us he might have to kill his mother—” He swallowed roughly. “You said he should be allowed to put her out of her misery. If that was what he wanted.” He looked at her now with the death of her mother written plainly in his gaze. “Do you still believe that?”

  She winced involuntarily. She would have preferred to put his question aside until she knew why he asked it. But his frank need was insistent. Carefully she said, “She was in terrible pain. I think people who’re suffering like that have the right to die. But mercy killing isn’t exactly merciful to the people who have to do it. I don’t like what it does to them.” She strove to sound detached, impersonal; but the hurt of the question was too acute. “I don’t like what it did to me. If you can call what I did mercy instead of murder.”

  He made a gesture that faltered and fell like a failed assuagement. His voice was soft; but it betrayed a strange ague. “What’re you going to do if something’s happened to Andelain? If you can’t get out of the Sunbane? Caer-Caveral knew he wasn’t going to last. Foul’s corrupted everything else. What’ll we do?” His larynx jerked up and down like a presage of panic. “I can stand whatever I have to. But not that. Not that.”

  He looked so belorn and defenseless that she could not bear it. Tears welled in her eyes. “Maybe it’ll be all right,” she breathed. “You can hope. It’s held out this long. It can last a little longer.”

  But down in the cold, dark roots of her mind she was thinking. If it doesn’t, I don’t care what happens. I’ll tear that bastard’s heart out. I’ll get the power somewhere, and I’ll tear his heart out.

  She kept her thoughts to herself. Yet Covenant seemed to sense the violence inside her. Instead of reaching out to her for comfort, he withdrew into his certainty. Wrapped in decisions and perceptions she did not understand and could not share, he remained apart from her throughout the night.

  A long time passed before she grasped that he did not mean to reject her. He was trying to prepare himself for the day ahead.

  But the truth was plain in the sharp, gray dawn, when he rolled, bleak and tense, out of his blankets to kiss her. He was standing on an inner precipice, and his balance was fragile. The part of him which had been fused in the Banefire did not waver; but the vessel bearing that sure alloy looked as brittle as an old bone. Yet in spite of his trepidation he made the effort to smile at her.

  She replied with a grimace because she did not know how to protect him.

  While Pitchwife prepared a meal for the company, Covenant went over to Sunder. Kneeling behind the Graveler, he massaged Sunder’s locked shoulders and neck with his numb fingers.

  Sunder did not react to the gesture. He was aware of nothing except Hollian’s pallid form and his own fixed purpose. To Linden’s health-sense, his body ached with the weakness of inanition. And she felt the hot blade of the krill scalding his unshielded belly under his jerkin. But he seemed to draw strength from that pain as if it were the promise that kept him alive.

  After a while, Covenant rejoined the two Giants and Linden. “Maybe he’ll meet her in Andelain,” he sighed. “Maybe she’ll be able to get through to him.”

  “Let us pray for that outcome,” muttered the First. “His endurance must fail soon.”

  Covenant nodded. As he chewed bread and dried fruit for breakfast, he went on nodding to himself like a man who had no other hope.

  A short time later, the sun rose beyond the rim of the world; and the companions stood on the rainswept sheetrock to meet the daybreak.

  It crested the horizon in a flaring of emerald, cast green spangles up the swift, broken surface of the River.

  At the sight, Linden went momentarily weak with relief. She had not realized how much she had feared another sun of rain.

  Warmth: the fertile sun gave warmth. It eased the vehemence of the current, softened the chill of the water. And it shone on her nerves like the solace of dry, fire-warmed blankets. Supported by the First, with Covenant beside her and Pitchwife and Sunder only a few short strokes away, she rode the Soulsease and thought for the first time that perhaps the River had not been gratuitously named.

  Yet relief did not blind her to what was happening to the earth on either side of the watercourse. The kindness of the fertile sun was an illusion, a trick performed by the River’s protection. On the banks, vegetation squirmed out of the ground like a ghoul-ridden host. Flailed up from their roots, vines and grasses sprawled over the rims of the channel. Shrubs raised their branches as if they were on fire: trees clawed their way into the air, as frantic as the damned. And she found that her own relative safety only accentuated the sensations pouring at her from the wild, unwilling growth. She was floating through a wilderness of voiceless anguish: the torment around her was as loud as shrieks. Tortured out of all Law, the trees and plants had no defense, could do nothing for themselves except grow and grow—and hurl their dumb hurt into the sky.

  Perhaps after all the Forestal of Andelain was gone. How long could he bear to hear these cries and be helpless?

  Between rising walls of agony, the River ran on toward the east and Mount Thunder after a long southeastward stretch. Slowly Linden fell into a strange, bifurcated musing. She held to the First’s shoulder, kept her head above water, watched the riverbanks pass, the verdure teem. But on another level she was not aware of such things. Within her, the darkness which had germinated at Gibbon’s touch also grew. Fed by the Sunbane, it twined through her and yearned. She remembered now as if she had never forgotten that behind the superficial grief and pain and abhorrence had lurked a secret glee at the act of strangling her mother—a wild joy at the taste of power.

  In a detached way, she knew what was happening to her. She had been too long exposed to Lord Foul’s corruption. Her command over herself, her sense of who she wanted to be, was fraying.

  She giggled harshly to herself—a snapping of mirth like the sound of a Raver. The idea was bitterly amusing. Until now it had been the sheer difficulty and pain of traveling under the Sunbane which had enabled her to remember who she was. The Despiser could have mastered her long ago by simply allowing her to relax.

  Fierce
humor rose in her throat. Fertility seemed to caper along her blood, frothing and chuckling luridly. Her percipience sent out sneaky fingers to touch Covenant’s latent fire as if at any moment she would muster the courage to take hold of it for herself.

  With an effort of will, she pulled at the First’s shoulder. The Giant turned her head, murmured over the wet mutter of the River, “Chosen?”

  So that Covenant would not hear her, Linden whispered, “If I start to laugh, hit me. Hold me under until I stop.”

  The First returned a glance of piercing incomprehension. Then she nodded.

  Somehow Linden locked her teeth against the madness and did not let it out.

  Noon rose above her and passed by. From the truncated perspective of the waterline, she could see only a short distance ahead. The Soulsease appeared to have no future. The world contained nothing except tortured vegetation and despair. She should have been able to heal that. She was a doctor. But she could not. She had no power.

  But then without transition the terrain toward which the company was borne changed. Beyond an interdict as precise as a line drawn in the Earth, the wild fertility ended; and a natural woodland began on both sides of the Soulsease.

  The shock of it against her senses told her what it was. She had seen it once before, when she had not been ready for it. It rushed into her even from this distance like a distillation of all vitrim and diamondraught, a cure for all darkness.

  The First nudged Covenant, nodded ahead. Thrashing his legs, he surged up in the water; and his crow split the air:

  “Andelain!”

  As he fell back, he pounded at the current like a boy, sent sun-glistened streams of spray arcing across the Soulsease.

  In silence, Linden breathed, Andelain, Andelain, as if by repeating that name she might cleanse herself enough to enter among the Hills. Hope washed through her in spite of everything she had to fear. Andelain.