White Gold Wielder

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  But she had no time to consider his contradictions. The sun was rising above the ridge. “The Sunbane!” she cried. “It’s here! Find stone!”

  Covenant did not react. He appeared too weary to grasp anything except that he had found her again. Pitchwife stared dismay at the ridgecrest. But the First immediately began to scan the valley for any kind of rock.

  Linden pointed, and the First saw it: a small, hoary out-cropping of boulders near the base of the slope some distance away. At once, she grabbed her husband by the arm and pulled him at a run in that direction.

  Linden glanced toward the sun, saw that the Giants would reach the stones with a few moments to spare.

  In reaction, all her strength seemed to wash out of her. Covenant was coming toward her, and she did not know how to face him. Wearily she slumped to the grass. Everything she had tried to define for herself during the night had been lost. Now she would have to bear his company again, would have to live in the constant presence of his wild purpose. The Sunbane was rising in Andelain for the first time. She covered her face to conceal her tears.

  He halted in front of her. For a moment, she feared that he would be foolish enough to sit down. But he remained standing so that his boots would ward him against the sun. He radiated fatigue, lamentation, and obduracy.

  Stiffly he said, “Kevin doesn’t understand. I have no intention of doing what he did. He raised his own hand against the Land. Foul didn’t enact the Ritual of Desecration alone. He only shared it. I’ve already told you I’m never going to use power again. Whatever happens, I’m not going to be the one who destroys what I love.”

  “What difference does that make?” Her bitterness was of no use to her. All the severity with which she had once endured the world was gone and refused to be conjured back. “You’re giving up. Never mind the Land. There’re still three of us left who want to save it. We’ll think of something. But you’re abandoning yourself.” Do you expect me to forgive you for that?

  “No.” Protest made his tone ragged. “I’m not. There’s just nothing left I can do for you anymore. And I can’t help the Land. Foul took care of that long before I ever got here.” His gall was something she could understand. But the conclusion he drew from it made no sense. “I’m doing this for myself. He thinks the ring will give him what he wants. I know better. After what I’ve been through, I know better. He’s wrong.”

  His certainty made him impossible to refute. The only arguments she knew were the ones she had once used to her father, and they had always failed. They had been swallowed in darkness—in self-pity grown to malice and hosting forth to devour her spirit. No argument would suffice.

  Vaguely she wondered what account of her flight he had given the Giants.

  But to herself she swore, I’m going to stop you. Somehow. No evil was as great as the ill of his surrender. The Sunbane had risen into Andelain. It could never be forgiven.

  Somehow.

  Later that day, as the company wended eastward among the Hills, Linden took an opportunity to drift away from Covenant and the First with Pitchwife. The malformed Giant was deeply troubled. His grotesque features appeared aggrieved, as if he had lost the essential cheer which preserved his visage from ugliness. Yet he was plainly reluctant to speak of his distress. At first, she thought that this reluctance arose from a new distrust of her. But as she studied him, she saw that his mood was not so simple.

  She did not want to aggravate his unhappiness. But he had often shown himself willing to be pained on behalf of his friends. And her need was exigent. Covenant meant to give the Despiser his ring.

  Softly, so that she would not be overheard, she breathed, “Pitchwife, help me. Please.”

  She was prepared for the dismal tone of his reply, but not for its import. “There is no help,” he answered. “She will not question him.”

  “She—?” Linden began, then caught herself. Carefully, she asked, “What did he say to you?”

  For an aching moment, Pitchwife was still. Linden forced herself to give him time. He would not look at her. His gaze wandered the Hills morosely, as if already they had lost their luster. Without her senses, he could not see that Andelain had not yet been damaged by the Sunbane. Then, sighing, he mustered words out of his gloom.

  “Rousing us from sleep to hasten in your pursuit, he announced your belief that it is now his intent to destroy the Land. And Gossamer Glowlimn my wife will not question him.

  “I acknowledge that he is the Earthfriend—worthy of all trust. But have you not again and again proven yourself alike deserving? You are the Chosen, and for the mystery of your place among us we have been accorded no insight. Yet the Elohim have named you Sun-Sage. You alone possess the sight which proffers hope of healing. Repeatedly the burdens of our Search have fallen to you—and you have borne them well. I will not believe that you who have wrought so much restoration among the Giants and the victims of the Clave have become in the space of one night mad or cruel. And you have withdrawn trust from him. This is grave in all sooth. It must be questioned. But she is the First of the Search. She forbids.

  “Chosen—” His voice was full of innominate pleading, as if he wanted something from her and did not know what it was. “It is her word that we have no other hope than him. If he has become untrue, then all is lost. Does he not hold the white ring? Therefore we must preserve our faith in him—and be still. Should he find himself poised on the blade-edge of his doom, we must not overpush him with our doubt.

  “But if he must not be called to an accounting, what decency or justice will permit you to be questioned? I will not do it, though the lack of this story is grievous. If you are not to be equally trusted, you must at least be equally left in silence.”

  Linden did not know how to respond. She was distressed by his troubled condition, gratified by his fairness, and incensed by the First’s attitude. Yet would she not have taken the same position in the Swordmain’s place? If Kevin Landwaster had spoken to someone else, would she not have been proud to repose her confidence in the Unbeliever? But that recognition only left her all the more alone. She had no right to try to persuade Pitchwife to her cause. Both he and his wife deserved’ better than that she should attempt to turn them against each other—or against Covenant. And yet she had no way to test or affirm her own sanity except by direct opposition to him.

  Even in his fixed weariness and determination, he was so dear to her that she could hardly endure the acuity of her desire for him.

  A fatigue and defeat of her own made her stumble over the uneven turf. But she refused the solace of Pitchwife’s support. Wanly, she asked him, “What are you going to do?”

  “Naught,” he replied. “I am capable of naught.” His empathy for her made him acidulous. “I have no sight to equal yours. Before the truth becomes plain to me, the time for all necessary doing will have come and gone. That which requires to be done, you must do.” He paused; and she thought that he was finished, that their comradeship had come to an end. But then he gritted softly through his teeth, “Yet I say this. Chosen. You it was who obtained Vain Demondim-spawn’s escape from the snares of Elemesnedene. You it was who made possible our deliverance from the Sandhold. You it was who procured safety for all but Cable Seadreamer from the Worm of the World’s End, when the Earthfriend himself had fallen nigh to ruin. And you it was who found means to extinguish the Banefire. Your worth is manifold and certain.

  “The First will choose as she wishes. I will give you my life, if you ask it of me.”

  Linden heard him. After a while, she said simply, “Thanks.” No words were adequate. In spite of his own baffled distress, he had given her what she needed.

  They walked on together in silence.

  The next morning, the sun’s red aura was distinct enough for all the company to see.

  Linden’s open nerves searched the Hills, probing Andelain’s reaction to the Sunbane. At first, she found none. The air had its same piquant savor, commingled of flowers and dew and trees
ap. Aliantha abounded on the hillsides. No discernible ill gnawed at the wood of the nearby Gildens and willows. And the birds and animals that flitted or scurried into view and away again were not suffering from any wrong. The Earthpower treasured in the heart of the region still withstood the pressure of corruption.

  But by noon that was no longer true. Pangs of pain began to run up the tree trunks, aching in the veins of the leaves. The birds seemed to become frantic as the numbers of insects increased; but the woodland creatures had grown frightened and gone into hiding. The tips of the grass-blades turned brown: some of the shrubs showed signs of blight. A distant fetor came slowly along the breeze. And the ground began to give off faint, emotional tremors—an intangible quivering which no one but Linden felt. It made the soles of her feet hurt in her shoes.

  Muttering curses. Covenant stalked on angrily eastward. In spite of her distrust. Linden saw that his rage for Andelain was genuine. He pushed himself past the limits of his strength to hasten his traversal of the Hills, his progress toward the crisis of the Despiser. The Sunbane welded him to his purpose.

  Linden kept up with him doggedly, determined not to let him get ahead of her. She understood his fury, shared it: in this place, the red sun was atrocious, intolerable. But his ire made him appear capable of any madness which might put an end to Andelain’s hurt, for good or ill.

  Dourly, the Giants accompanied their friends. Covenant’s best pace was not arduous for Pitchwife: the First could have traveled much faster. And her features were sharp with desire for more speed, for a termination to the Search, so that the question which had come between her and her husband would be answered and finished. The difficulty of restraining herself to Covenant’s short strides was obvious in her. While the company paced through the day, she held herself grimly silent Her mother had died in childbirth; her father, in the Soulbiter. She bore herself as if she did not want to admit how important Pitchwife’s warmth had become to her.

  For that reason. Linden felt a strange, unspoken kinship toward the First. She found it impossible to resent the Swordmain’s attitude. And she swore to herself that she would never ask Pitchwife to keep his promise.

  Vain strode blankly behind the companions. But of Findail there was no sign. She watched for him at intervals, but he did not reappear.

  That evening. Covenant slept for barely half the night: then he went on his way again as if he were trying to steal ahead of his friends. But somehow through her weary slumber Linden felt him leave. She roused herself, called the Giants up from the faintly throbbing turf, and went after him.

  Sunrise brought an aura of fertility to the dawn and a soughing rustle like a whisper of dread to the trees and brush. Linden felt the leaves whimpering on their boughs, the greensward aching plaintively. Soon the Hills would be reduced to the victimized helplessness of the rest of the Land. They would be scourged to wild growth, desiccated to ruin, afflicted with rot, pommeled by torrents. And that thought made her as fierce as Covenant, enabled her to keep up with him while he exhausted himself. Yet the mute pain of green and tree was not the worst effect of the Sunbane. Her senses had been scoured to raw sensitivity: she knew that beneath the sod, under the roots of the woods, the fever of Andelain’s bones had become so argute that it was almost physical. A nausea of revulsion was rising into the Earthpower of the Hills. It made her guts tremble as if she were walking across an open wound.

  By degrees. Covenant’s pace became labored. Andelain no longer sustained him. More and more of its waning strength went to ward off the corruption of the Sunbane. As a result, the fertile sun had little superficial effect. A few trees groaned taller, grew twisted with hurt: some of the shrubs raised their branches like limbs of desecration. All the birds and animals seemed to have fled. But most of the woods and grass were preserved by the power of the soil in which they grew. Aliantha clung stubbornly to themselves, as they had for centuries. Only the analystic refulgence of the Hills was gone—only the emanation of superb and concentrated health—only the exquisite vitality.

  However, the sickness in the underlying rock and dirt mounted without cessation. That night, Covenant slept the sleep of exhaustion and diamondraught. But for a long time Linden could not rest, despite her own fatigue. Whenever she laid her head to the grass, she heard the ground grinding its teeth against a backdrop of slow moans and futile outrage.

  Well before dawn, she and her companions arose and went on. She felt now that they were racing the dissolution of the Hills.

  That morning, they caught their first glimpse of Mount Thunder.

  It was still at least a day away. But it stood stark and fearsome above Andelain, with the sun leering past its shoulder and a furze of unnatural vegetation darkening its slopes. From this distance, it looked like a titan that had been beaten to its knees.

  Somewhere inside that mountain, Covenant intended to find Lord Foul.

  He turned to Linden and the Giants, his eyes red-rimmed and flagrant. Words yearned in him, but he seemed unable to utter them. She had thought him uncognizant of the Giants’ disconsolation, offended by her own intransigent refusal; but she saw now that he was not. He understood her only too well. A fierce and recalcitrant part of him felt as she did, fought like loathing against his annealed purpose. He did not want to die, did not want to lose her or the Land. And he had withheld any explanation of himself from the Giants so that they would not side with him against her. So that she would not be altogether alone.

  He wished to say all those things. They were plain to her aggrieved senses. But his throat closed on them like a fist, would not let them out.

  She might have reached out to him then. Without altering any of her promises, she could have put her love around him. But horror swelled in the ground on which they stood, and it snatched her attention away from him.

  Abhorrence. Execration. Sunbane and Earthpower locked in mortal combat beneath her feet. And the Earthpower could not win. No Law defended it. Corruption was going to tear the heart out of the Hills. The ground had become so unstable that the Giants and Covenant felt its tremors.

  “Dear Christ!” Linden gasped. She grabbed at Covenant’s arm. “Come on!” With all her strength, she pulled him away from the focus of Andelain’s horror.

  The Giants were aghast with incomprehension; but they followed her. Together the companions began to run.

  A moment later, the grass where they had been standing erupted.

  Buried boulders shattered. A large section of the greensward was shredded; stone-shards and dirt slashed into the sky. The violence which broke the Earthpower in that place sent a shock throughout the region, gouged a pit in the body of the ground. Remnants of ruined beauty rained everywhere.

  And from the naked walls of the pit came squirming and clawing the sick, wild verdure of the fertile sun. Monstrous as murder, a throng of ivy teemed upward to spread its pall over the ravaged turf.

  In the distance, another eruption boomed. Linden felt it like a wail through the ground. Piece by piece, the life of Andelain was being torn up by the roots.

  “Bastard!” Covenant raged. “Oh, you bastard! You’ve crippled everything else. Aren’t you content?”

  Turning, he plunged eastward as if he meant to launch himself at the Despiser’s throat.

  Linden kept up with him. Pain belabored her senses. She could not speak because she was weeping.

  SEVENTEEN: Into the Wightwarrens

  Early the next morning, the company climbed into the foothills of Mount Thunder near the constricted rush of the Soulsease River. Covenant was gaunt with fatigue, his gaze as gray as ash. Linden’s eyes burned like fever in their sockets: strain throbbed through the bones of her skull. Even the Giants were tired. They had only stopped to rest in snatches during the night. The First’s lips were the color of her fingers clinching the hilt of her sword. Pitchwife’s visage looked like it was being torn apart. Yet the four of them were united by their urgency. They attacked the lower slopes as if they were racing the sun whi
ch rose behind the fatal bulk of the mountain.

  A desert sun.

  Parts of Andelain had already become as blasted and ruinous as a battlefield.

  The Hills still clung to the life which had made them lovely. While it lasted, Caer-Caveral’s nurture had been complete and fundamental. The Sunbane could not simply flush all health from the ground in so few days. But the dusty sunlight reaching past the shoulders of Mount Thunder revealed that around the fringes of Andelain—and in places across its heart—the damage was already severe.

  The vegetation of those regions had been ripped up, riven, effaced by hideous eruptions. Their ground was cratered and pitted like the ravages of an immedicable disease. The previous day, the remnants of those woods had been overgrown and strangled by the Sunbane’s feral fecundity. But now, as the sun advanced on that verdure, every green and living thing slumped into viscid sludge which the desert drank away.

  Linden gazed toward the Hills as if she, too, were dying. Nothing would ever remove the sting of that devastation from her heart. The sickness of the world soaked into her from the landscape outstretched and tormented before her. Andelain still fought for its life and survived. Much of it had not yet been hurt. Leagues of soft slopes and natural growth separated the craters, stood against the sun’s arid rapine. But where the Sunbane had done its work the harm was as keen as anguish. If she had been granted the chance to save Andelain’s health with her own life, she would have taken it as promptly as Covenant. Perhaps she, too, would have smiled.

  She sat on a rock in a field of boulders that cluttered the slope too thickly to admit vegetation. Panting as if his lungs were raw with ineffective outrage. Covenant had stopped there to catch his breath. The Giants stood nearby. The First studied the west as if that scene of destruction would give her strength when the time came to wield her blade. But Pitchwife could not bear it He perched himself on a boulder with his back to the Andelainian Hills. His hands toyed with his flute, but he made no attempt to play it.