Sensing their opportunity, the creatures became less wild. Their mountain-delving strength dealt out blows which forced the First and Pitchwife back-to-back, drove them to fight defensively, for bare survival.
Covenant’s captor faced him again. The Cavewight’s laval eyes burned flame and fury. Rocklight gleamed on his spike as he cocked his arm to stab out Covenant’s life.
Hoarse with panic and insight. Linden yelled, “The bones! Get the bones!”
At once, one of the creatures hit her so hard that she sprawled into the basin at Covenant’s feet. She lay there, stunned and twisted. He feared her back had been broken.
But the Cavewights understood her if he did not. A sound like a wail shrilled across the combat. They fought with redoubled fever. The spike aimed at Covenant wavered as the Cavewight looked fearfully toward the fray.
Covenant could not see the First or Pitchwife through the fierce press. But suddenly her shout sprang at the ceiling—the tantara of a Swordmain summoning her last resources:
“Stone and Sea!”
And the throng of Cavewights seemed to rupture as if she had become a detonation. Abandoning Pitchwife, she crashed past the creatures, shed them from her arms and shoulders like rubble. In a spray of blood, she hacked her way toward the Wightbarrow.
Pitchwife could have been slain then. But he was not. His assailants hurled themselves after the First. His axes bit into their backs as he followed her.
The wailing scaled into a shriek when she reached the mound.
Snatching up a bone, she whirled to face her attackers. The bone shed flame like a fagot; but her Giantish fingers bore the pain and did not flinch.
Instantly all the creatures froze. Silence seized their cries: horror locked their limbs.
Pitchwife wrenched one axe out of the spine of a Cavewight, raised his weapons to parry blows. But none came. He was ignored. Retching for air, he thrust through the crowd toward the First. No one moved.
He limped to her side, dropped one axe, and grasped another burning bone. The paralysis of the Cavewights tightened involuntarily. Their eyes pleaded. Some of them began to shiver in chill panic.
By threatening the mound, the First and Pitchwife endangered the only thing which had given these creatures the courage to defy Lord Foul.
Covenant struggled against his captor, tried to reach Linden. But the Cavewight did not release him, seemed oblivious to his efforts—entranced by fear.
Stooping, the First wiped the blood from her glaive on the nearest body. Then she sheathed the longsword and took up a second bone. Fire spilled over her hands, but she paid it no heed. “Now,” she panted through her teeth. “Now you will release the Earthfriend.”
The Cavewight locked his fingers around Covenant’s arm and did not move. A few creatures at the fringes of the press shifted slightly, moaned in protest.
Abruptly Linden twitched. With a jerk, she thrust herself out of the basin. When she got her feet under her, she staggered and stumbled as if the floor were tilting. Yet somehow she kept her balance. Her eyes were glazed with anger and extremity. She had been pushed too far. Half lurching, she passed behind Covenant.
Among the Cavewights crouching there, she found a loose truncheon. It was almost too heavy for her to lift. Gripping its handle in both hands, she heaved it from the floor, raised it above her head, and brought it down on the wrist of the creature holding Covenant.
He heard a dull snapping noise. The Cavewight’s fingers were torn from his arm.
The creature yowled. Madly he cocked the spike to stab it down at Linden’s face.
“Hold!” The First’s command rang through the cave. She thrust one foot into the mound, braced herself to kick dust and fragments across the floor.
The Cavewight froze in renewed terror.
Slowly she withdrew her foot. A faint sigh of relief soughed around the walls of the cave.
Pain lanced through Covenant’s elbow, knifed into his shoulder. For a moment, he feared that he would not be able to stand. The clutch of the Cavewight had damaged his arm: the blood pounding back into it felt like acid. The cave seemed to roar in his ears. He heard no other sound except Pitchwife’s harsh respiration.
But he had to stand, had to move. The Giants deserved better than this from him. Linden and the Land deserved better. He could not afford such weakness. It was only pain and vertigo, as familiar to him as an old friend. It had no power over him unless he was afraid—unless he let himself be afraid. If he held up his heart, even despair was as good as courage or strength.
That was the center, the point of stillness and certainty. Briefly he rested. Then he let the excruciation in his arm lift him out of the basin.
Linden came to him. Her touch made his body totter; but inwardly he did not lose his balance. She would stop him if he proved himself wrong. But he was not wrong. Together, they moved toward the Giants.
Pitchwife did not look up from his gasping. His lips were flecked with red spittle: his exertions had torn something in his chest. But the First gave Covenant and Linden a nod of greeting. Her gaze was as grim as a hawk’s. “You gladden me!” she muttered. “I had not thought to behold you again alive. It is well that these simple creatures do not glance often behind them. Thus we were able to follow when we had foiled our pursuers. What dire rite do they seek to practice against you?”
Linden answered for Covenant, “They’re trying to bring an old leader back from the dead. He’s buried under there somewhere.” She grimaced at the Wightbarrow. “They want Covenant’s blood and the ring. They think this dead leader will free them from Foul. We’ve got to get out of here.”
“Aye,” growled the First. Her eyes assayed the Cavewights. “But they are too many. We cannot win free by combat. We must entrust ourselves to the sanctity of these bones.”
Covenant thought he smelled the faint reek of charring flesh. But he had no health-sense, could not tell how seriously the Giants’ hands were being hurt.
“My husband,” the First gritted, “will you lead us?”
Pitchwife nodded. A moment of coughing brought more blood to his lips. Yet he rallied. When he raised his head, the look in his eyes was as fierce as hers.
With a bone flaming like a brand in one hand, an axe in the other, he started toward the nearer mouth of the cave.
At once, a snarl sharpened the air, throbbing from many throats. A shiver ran through the Cavewights. The ones farthest from the Wightbarrow advanced slightly, placed themselves to block Pitchwife’s path. Others tightened their hands on their weapons.
“No!” Linden snapped at Pitchwife. “Come back!”
He retreated. When he reached the mound, the Cavewights froze again.
Covenant blinked at Linden. He felt too dizzy to think. He knew he ought to understand what was happening. But it did not make sense.
“What means this, Chosen?” the First asked like iron. “Are we snared in this place for good and all?”
Linden replied with a look toward Covenant as if she were begging him for courage. Then, abruptly, she wrapped her arms around her chest and strode away from the mound.
The First breathed a sharp warning. Linden’s head flinched from side to side. But she did not stop. Deliberately she moved among the Cavewights.
She was alone and small and vulnerable in their midst. Her difficult bravery was no defense: any one of them could have felled her with one blow. But none of them reacted. She squeezed between two of them, passed behind a poised cluster, walked halfway to the cavemouth. Their eyes remained fixed on the First and Pitchwife—on the bones and the Wightbarrow.
As she moved, she raised her head, grew bolder. The vindication of her percipience fortified her. Less timorously, she made her way back to her companions.
Rocklight burned in Covenant’s eyes. The First and Pitchwife stared at Linden. Grimly she explained, “They won’t move while you threaten the mound. They need it. It’s their reason—the only answer they’ve got.” Then she faltered; and her
gaze darkened at the implications of what she was saying. “That’s why they won’t let us take any of the bones out of here.”
For one moment—a piece of time as acute as anguish—the First looked beaten, overcome by everything she had already lost and would still be required to lose. Honninscrave and Seadreamer had been dear to her. Pitchwife was her husband. Covenant and Linden and life were precious. Her sternness broke down, exposing a naked hurt. Both her parents had. given their lives for her, and she had become what she was by grief.
Yet she was the First of the Search, chosen for her ability to bear hard decisions. Almost at once, her visage closed around itself. Her hands knotted as if they were hungry for the fire of the bones.
“Then,” she responded stiffly, “I must remain to menace this mould, so that you may depart.” She swallowed a lump of sorrow. “Pitchwife, you must accompany them. They will have need of your strength. And I must believe that you live.”
At that, Pitchwife burst into a spasm of coughing. A moment passed before Covenant realized that the malformed Giant was trying to laugh.
“My wife, you jest,” he said at last. “I have found my own reply to doubt. The Chosen has assigned me to your side. Do not credit that the song which the Giants will sing of this day will be sung of you alone.”
“I am the First of the Search!” she retorted. “I command—”
“You are Gossamer Glowlimn, the spouse of my heart.” His mouth was bloody; but his eyes gleamed. “I am proud of you beyond all endurance. Demean not your high courage with foolishness. Neither Earthfriend nor Chosen has any need of my accompaniment. They are who they are—and will not fail. I am sworn to you in love and fealty, and I will remain.”
She glared at him as if she were in danger of weeping openly. “You will die. I have borne all else until my heart breaks. Must I bear that also?”
“No.” Around Covenant, the rock seemed to spin and fade as if Mount Thunder itself were on the verge of dissolution; but he clung to the center of his mortality and stood certain, an alloy in human flesh and bone of wild magic and venom, life and death. “No,” he repeated when the First and Pitchwife met his gaze. “There’s no reason for either of you to die. It won’t take long. Kiril Threndor can’t be very far from here. All I have to do is get there. Then it’ll be over, one way or the other. All you have to do is hang on until I get there.”
Then Pitchwife did laugh, and his face lifted with gladness. There, my wife!” he chortled. “Have I not said that they are who they are? Accept that I am with you, and be content.” Abruptly he dropped his axe; drew out his last fagot and lit it from the Wightbarrow, handed the sputtering wood to Linden. “Begone!” he gleamed, “ere I become maudlin at the witnessing of such valor. Fear nothing for us. We will hold and hold until the mountain itself is astonished, and still we will hold. Begone, I say!”
“Aye, begone,” growled the First as if she were angry; but her tears belied her tone. “I must have opportunity to instruct this Pitchwife in the obedience which is his debt to the First of the Search.”
Covenant wanted words, but none came to hum. What could he have said? He had made his promises long ago, and they covered everything. He rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes to clear his sight Then he turned toward Linden.
If he had spoken, he would have asked her to stay with the Giants. He had never forgotten the shock of her intervention in the woods behind Haven Farm. And he had not loved her then. Now everything was multiplied to the acuteness of panic. He did not know how he might preserve the bare shreds and tatters of dignity—not to mention clear courage or conviction—if she accompanied him.
But the look of her silenced him. She was baffled and perceptive, frightened and brave; terrified of Cavewights and Lord Foul, and yet avid for a chance to stand against them; mortal, precious, and irrefusable. Her face had lost its imposed severity, had become in spite of wear and strain as soft as her mouth and eyes. Yet its underlying structure remained precise, indomitable. The sad legacy of her parents had led her to what she was—but the saddest thing about her was that she did not understand how completely she had transformed that legacy, had made of herself something necessary and admirable. She deserved a better outcome than this. But he had nothing else to offer her.
She held his gaze as if she wanted to match him—and feared she could not. Then she tightened her grip on her torch and stepped out among the clenched Cavewights.
She had read them accurately: any threat to the Wightbarrow outweighed all other considerations. When Covenant left the First and Pitchwife, a raw muttering aggravated the rocklight. Several Cavewights shifted their positions, raised their weapons. But the First poised one foot to begin scattering the mound; and the creatures went rigid again. Covenant let weakness and fear and pain carry him like hope toward the mouth of the cave.
“Go well, Earthfriend,” the First breathed after them, “hold faith. Chosen,” as if she had become impervious to doubt. Pitchwife’s faint chuckling was torn and frayed; but it followed Covenant and Linden like an affirmation of contentment.
Barely upright on his feet. Covenant made his way past the Cavewights. Their eyes flamed outrage and loss at him; but they did not take the risk of striking out. The cave narrowed to a tunnel at its end, and Linden began to hurry. He did his best to keep up with her. The vulnerable place between his shoulder blades seemed to feel the Cavewights turning to hurl their truncheons; but he entrusted himself to the Giants, did not look back. In a moment, he left the rocklight behind. Linden’s torch led him back into the darkness of the catacombs.
At the first intersection, she turned as if she knew where she was going. Covenant caught up with her, put his hand on her arm to slow her somewhat. She acceded, but continued to bear herself as though she were being harried by unseen wings in Mount Thunder’s immeasurable midnight. As her senses hunted the way ahead for peril or guidance, she began to mutter—to herself or to him, he could not tell which.
“They’re wrong. They don’t know enough. Whatever they brought back from the dead, it wasn’t going to be Drool Rockworm. Not just another Cavewight. Something monstrous.
“Blood brings power. They had to kill someone. But what Caer-Caveral did for Hollian can’t be done here. It only worked because they were in Andelain. And Andelain was intact. All that concentrated Earthpower. Concentrated and clean. Whatever those Cavewights resurrected, it was going to be abominable.”
When he understood that she was not talking about the Cavewights and Drool—that she was trying to say something rise entirely—Covenant stumbled. His throbbing arm struck the wall of the passage, and he nearly lost his balance. Pain made his arm dangle as if it were being dragged down by the inconceivable weight of his ring. She was talking about the hope which he had never admitted to himself—the hope that if he died he, too, might be brought back.
“Linden—” He did not wish to speak, to argue with her. They had so little time left. Fire gnawed up and down his arm. He needed to husband his determination. But she had already gone too far in his name. Swallowing his weakness, he said, “I don’t want to be resurrected.”
She did not look at him. Roughly he went on, “You’re going to go back to your own life. Sometime soon. And I won’t get to go with you. You know it’s too late to save me. Not back there. Where we come from, that kind of thing doesn’t happen. Even if I’m resurrected, I won’t get to go with you.
“If I can’t go with you”—he told her the truth as well as he could—“I’d rather stay with my friends. Mhoram and Foamfollower.” Elena and Bannor. Honninscrave. And the wait for Sunder and Hollian would not seem long to him.
She refused to hear him. “Maybe not,” she rasped. “Maybe we can still get back in time. I couldn’t save you before because your spirit wasn’t there—your will to live. If you would just stop giving up, we might still have a chance.” Her voice was husky with thwarted yearning. “You’re bruised and exhausted. I don’t know how you stay on your feet. But you hav
en’t been stabbed yet.” Her gaze flashed toward the faint scar in the center of his chest. “You don’t have to die.”
But he saw the grief in her eyes and knew that she did not believe her own protestation.
He drew her to a halt. With his good hand, he wrested his wedding band from its finger. His touch was cold and numb, as if he had no idea what he was doing. Fervent and silent as a prayer, he extended the ring toward her. Its unmarred argent cast glints of the wavering torchlight.
At once, tears welled in her eyes. Streaks of reflected fire flowed down the lines which severity and loss had left on either side of her mouth. But she gave the ring no more than a glance. Her gaze clung to his countenance. “No,” she whispered. “Not while I can still hope.”
Abruptly she moved on down the passage.
Sighing rue and relief like a man who had been reprieved or damned and did not know the difference—did not care if there were no difference—he thrust the ring back into place and followed her.
The tunnel became as narrow as a mere crack in the rock, then widened into a complex of junctions and chambers. The torch barely lit the walls and ceiling: it revealed nothing of what lay ahead. But from one passage came a breeze like a scent of evil that made Linden wince; and she turned that way. Covenant’s hearing ached as he struggled to discern the sounds of pursuit or danger. But he lacked her percipience: he had to trust her.
The tunnel she had chosen angled downward until he thought that even vertigo would not be strong enough to keep him upright. Darkness and stone piled tremendously around him. The torch continued to burn down. It was half consumed already. Somewhere beyond the mountain, the Land lay in day or night; but he had lost all conception of time. Time had no meaning here, in the lightless unpity of Lord Foul’s demesne. Only the torch mattered—and Linden’s pale-knuckled grasp on the brand—and the fact that he was not alone. For good or ill, redemption or ruin, he was not alone. There was no other way.
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