White Gold Wielder

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  She had so little time left. She needed time, needed peace and rest and solace in which to muster courage. But the pressure of her dismissal continued to build. And the Staff of Law multiplied that force. Summons and return acted by rules which the Staff affirmed. Only her fist on the ring and her grip on the dean wood—only her clenched will—held her where she was.

  She knew what she would have to do.

  The prospect appalled her.

  But she had already borne so much, and it would all be rendered meaningless if she faltered now. She did not have to fail. This was why she had been chosen. Because she was fit to fulfill Covenant’s last appeal. It was too much—and yet it was hardly enough to repay her debts. Why should she fail? The mere thought that she would have to let the Sunbane touch her and touch her made her guts writhe, sent nausea beating down her veins. Horror raised mute cries of protest. In a sense, she would have to become the Land—to expose herself as fully as the Land to the Sunbane’s desecration. It would be like being locked again in the attic with her dying father while dark glee came hosting against her—like enduring again her mother’s abject blame until she was driven to the point of murder. But she had survived those things. She had found her way through them to a life worthy of more respect than she had ever given it. And the old man whose life she had saved on Haven Farm had given her a promise to sustain her.

  Ah, my daughter, do not fear. You will not fail, however he may assail you. There is also love in the world.

  Because she needed at least one small comfort for herself, she turned to the Giants.

  They had not moved. They had no eyes to see what was happening. But indomitability still shone in the First’s face. No grime or bloodshed could mar her iron beauty. She looked as acute as an eagle. And when he met Linden’s gaze. Pitchwife grinned as if she were the last benison he would ever need.

  With the Staff of Law and the white ring. Linden caressed the fatigue out of the First’s limbs, restored her Giantish strength. The rupture in Pitchwife’s lungs Linden effaced, healing his respiration. Then, so that she would be able to trust herself later, she unbent his spine, restructured the bones in a way that allowed him to stand straight, breathe normally.

  But after that she had no more time. The wind between the worlds keened constantly across the background of her thoughts, calling her away. She could not refuse it much longer.

  Be true.

  Deliberately she opened her senses and went by her own choice back out into the Sunbane.

  Its power was atrocious beyond belief; and the Land lay broken under it—broken and dying, a helpless body slain like Covenant in her worst nightmare, the knife driven by an astonishing violence which had brought up more blood than she had ever seen in her life. And from that wound corruption welled upward.

  Nothing could stop it. It ate at the ground like venom. The wound grew wider with every sunrise. The Land had been stabbed to its vitals. Murder spewed across the sodden hillsides, clogged the dry riverbeds, gathered and reeked in every hollow and valley. Only the heart of Andelain remained unruined; but even there the sway of slaughter grew. The very Earth was bleeding to death. Linden had no way to save herself from drowning.

  That was the truth of the Sunbane. It could never be stanched. She was a fool to make the attempt.

  But she held wild magic clenched like bright passion in her right fist; and her left hand gripped the living Staff. Both were hers to wield. Guided by her health-sense—by the same vulnerability which let the Sunbane run through her like a riptide, desecrating every thew of her body, every ligament of her will—she stood within her mind on the high slopes of Mount Thunder and set herself to do battle with perversion.

  It was a strange battle, weird and terrible. She had no opponent. Her foe was the rot Lord Foul had afflicted upon the Earthpower; and without him the Sunbane had neither mind nor purpose. It was simply a hunger which fed on every form of nature and health and life. She could have fired her huge forces blast after blast and struck nothing except the ravaged ground, done no hurt to anything not already lost. Only scant moments after dawn, green sprouts of vegetation stretched like screams from the soil.

  And beyond this fertility lurked rain and pestilence and desert in erratic sequence, waiting to repeat themselves over and over again, always harder and faster, until the foundations of the Land crumbled. Then the Sunbane would be free to spread.

  Out to the rest of the Earth.

  But she had learned from Covenant—and from the Raver’s possession. She did not attempt to attack the Sunbane. Instead she called it to herself, accepted it into her personal flesh.

  With white fire, she absorbed the Land’s corruption.

  At first, the sheer pain and horror of it excruciated her hideously. One shrill cry as hoarse as terror ripped her throat, rang like Kevin’s despair over the wide landscape below her, echoed and echoed in Kiril Threndor until the Giants were frantic, unable to help her. But then her own need drove her to more power.

  The Staff flamed so intensely that her body should have been burned away. Yet she was not hurt. Rather, the pain she had taken upon herself was swept from her—cured and cleansed, and sent spilling outward as pure Earthpower. With Law, she healed herself.

  She hardly understood what she was doing: it was an act of exaltation, chosen by intuition rather than conscious thought. But she saw her way now with the reasonless clarity of joy. It could be done: the Land could be redeemed. With all the passion of her thwarted heart, all the love she had learned and been given, she plunged into her chosen work.

  She was a storm upon the mountain, a barrage of determination and fire which no eyes but hers could have witnessed. From every league and hill and gully and plain of the Land, every slope of Andelain and cliff of the peaks, every southern escarpment and northern rise, she drew ruin into herself and restored it to wholeness, then sent it back like silent rain, analystic and invisible.

  Her spirit became the medicament that cured. She was the Sun-Sage, the Healer, Linden Avery the Chosen, altering the Sunbane with her own life.

  It fired green at her like the sickness of emeralds. But she understood intimately the natural growth and decay of plants. They found their Law in her, their lush or hardy order, their native abundance or rarity; and then the green was gone.

  Blue volleyed thunderously at her head, then lost the Land as she accepted every drop of water and flash of violence.

  The brown of deserts came blistering around her, scorched her skin. But she knew the necessity of heat—and the restriction of climate. She felt in her bones the rhythm of rise and fall, the strict and vital alternation of seasons, summer and winter. The desert fire was cooled to a caress by the Staff and emitted gently outward again.

  And last, the red of pestilence, as scarlet as disease, as stark as adders. It swarmed against her like a world full of bees, shot streaks of blood across her vision. In spite of herself, she was fading, could not keep from being hurt. But even pestilence was only a distortion of the truth. It had its clear place and purpose. When it was reduced, it fit within the new Law which she set forth.

  Sun-Sage and ring-wielder, she restored the Earthpower and released it upon the wracked body of the Land.

  She could not do everything. Already she had made herself faint with self-expenditure, and the ground sprawling below her to the horizons reeled. She had nothing left with which she might bring back the Land’s trees and meadows and crops, its creatures and birds. But she had done enough. She knew without questioning the knowledge that seeds remained in the soil—that even among the wrecked treasures of the Waynhim were things which might yet produce fruit and young—that the weather would be able to find its own patterns again. She saw birds and animals still flourishing in the mountains to the west and south, where the Sunbane had not reached: they would eventually return. The people who stayed alive in their small villages would be able to endure.

  And she saw one more reason for hope, one more fact that made the future
possible. Much of Andelain had been preserved. Around its heart, it had mustered its resistance—and had prevailed.

  Because Sunder and Hollian were there.

  In their human way, they contained as much Earthpower as the Hills; and they had fought. Linden saw how they had fought. The loveliness of what they were—and of what they served—was lambent about them. Already it had begun to regain the lost region.

  Yes, she breathed to herself. Yes.

  Across the wide leagues, she spoke a word to them that they would understand. Then she withdrew.

  She feared the dismissal would take her while she was still too far from her body to bear the strain. As keen as a gale, the wind reached toward her. Too weary even to smile at what she had accomplished, she went wanly back through the rock toward Kiril Threndor and dissolution.

  When she gained the cave, she saw in the faces of the Giants that she had already faded beyond their perceptions. Grief twisted Pitchwife’s visage: the First’s eyes streamed. They had no way of knowing what had happened—and would not know it until they found their way out of the Wightwarrens to gaze upon the free Land. But Linden could not bear to leave them hurt. They had given her too much. With her last power, she reached out and placed a silent touch of victory in their minds. It was the only gift she had left.

  But it, too, was enough. The First started in wonder: unexpected gladness softened her face. And Pitchwife threw back his head to crow like a clean dawn, “Linden Avery! Have I not said that you are well Chosen?”

  The long wind pulled through Linden. In moments, she would lose the Giants forever. Yet she clung to them. Somehow she lasted long enough to see the First pick up the Staff of Law.

  Linden still held the ring; but at the last moment she must have dropped the Staff beside the dais. The First lifted it like a promise. “This must not fall to ill hands,” she murmured. Her voice was as solid as granite: it nearly surpassed Linden’s hearing. “I will ward it in the name of the future which Earthfriend and Chosen have procured with their lives. If Sunder or Hollian yet live, they will have need of it.”

  Pitchwife laughed and cried and kissed her. Then he bent, lifted Covenant into his arms. His back. was strong and straight. Together he and the First left Kiril Threndor. She strode like a Swordmain, ready for the world. But he moved at her side with a gay hop and caper, as if he were dancing.

  There Linden let go. The mountain towered over her, as imponderable as the gaps between the stars. It was heavier than sorrow, greater than loss. Nothing would ever heal what it had endured. She was only mortal; but Mount Thunder’s grief would go on without let or surcease, unambergrised for all time.

  Then the wind took her, and she felt herself go out.

  Out into the dark.

  EPILOGUE

  Restoration

  TWENTY-ONE: “To Say Farewell”

  But when she was fully in the grip of the wind, she no longer felt its force. It reft her from the Land as if she were mist; but like mist she could not be hurt now. She had been battered numb. When the numbness passed, her pain would find its voice again and cry out. But that prospect had lost its power to frighten her. Pain was only the other side of love; and she did not regret it.

  Yet for the present she was quiet, and the wind bore her gently across the illimitable dark. Her percipience was already gone, lost like the Land: she had no way to measure the spans of loneliness she traversed. But the ring—Covenant’s ring, her ring—lay in her hand, and she held it for comfort.

  And while she was swept through the midnight between worlds, she remembered music—little snatches of a song Pitchwife had once sung. For a time, they were only snatches. Then their ache brought them together.

  My heart has rooms that sigh with dust

  And ashes in the hearth.

  They must be cleaned and blown away

  By daylight’s breath.

  But I cannot essay the task,

  For even dust to me is dear;

  For dust and ashes still recall,

  My love was here.

  I know not how to say Farewell,

  When Farewell is the word

  That stays alone for me to say

  Or will be heard.

  But I cannot speak out that word

  Or ever let my loved one go:

  How can I bear it that these rooms

  Are empty so?

  I sit among the dust and hope

  That dust will cover me.

  I stir the ashes in the hearth,

  Though cold they be.

  I cannot bear to close the door,

  To seal my loneliness away While dust and ashes yet remain

  Of my love’s day.

  The song. made her think of her father.

  He came back to her like Pitchwife’s voice, sprawling there in the old rocker while his last life bled away—driven to self-murder by the possession of Despite. His loathing of himself had grown so great that it had become a loathing of life. It had been like her mother’s religion, only able to prove itself true by imposing itself upon the people around it. But it had been false; and she thought of him now with regret and pity which she had never before been able to afford. He had been wrong about her: she had loved him dearly. She had loved both her parents, although she had been badly misled by her own bitterness.

  In a curious way, that recognition made her ready. She was not startled or bereft when Covenant spoke to her out of the void.

  “Thank you,” he said gruffly, husky with emotion. “There aren’t enough words for it anywhere. But thanks.”

  The sound of his voice made tears stream down her face. They stung like sorrow on her cheeks. But she welcomed them and him.

  “I know it’s been terrible,” he went on. “Are you all right?”

  She nodded along the wind that seemed to rush without motion around her as if it had no meaning except loss. I think so. Maybe. It doesn’t matter. She only wanted to hear his voice while the chance lasted. She knew it would not last long. To make him speak again, she said the first words that occurred to her.

  “You were wonderful. But how did you do it? I don’t have any idea how you did it.”

  In response, he sighed—an exhalation of weariness and remembered pain, not of rue. “I don’t think I did it at all. All I did was want. The rest of it—

  “Caer-Caveral made it possible. Hile Troy.” An old longing suffused his tone. “That was the ‘necessity’ he talked about. Why he had to give his life. It was the only way to open that particular door. So that Hollian could be brought back. And so that I wouldn’t be like the rest of the Dead—unable to act. He broke the Law that would’ve kept me from opposing Foul. Otherwise I would’ve been just a spectator.

  “And Foul didn’t understand. Maybe be was too far gone. Or maybe he just refused to believe it. But he tried to ignore the paradox. The paradox of white gold. And the paradox of himself. He wanted the white gold—the ring. But I’m the white gold too. He couldn’t change that by killing me. When he hit me with my own fire, he did the one thing I couldn’t do for myself. He burned the venom away. After that, I was free.”

  He paused for a moment, turned inward, “I didn’t know what was going to happen. I was just terrified that he would let me live until after he attacked the Arch.” Dimly she remembered the way Covenant had jibed at Lord Foul as if he were asking for death.

  “We aren’t enemies, no matter what he says. He and I are one. But he doesn’t seem to know that. Or maybe he hates it too much to admit it. Evil can’t exist unless the capacity to stand against it also exists. And you and I are the Land—in a manner of speaking, anyway. He’s just one side of us. That’s his paradox. He’s one side of us. We’re one side of him. When he killed me, he was really trying to kill the other half of himself. He just made me stronger. As long as I accepted him—or accepted myself, my own power, didn’t try to do to him what he wanted to do to me—he couldn’t get past me.”

  There he fell silent. But she had not been
listening to him with any urgency. She had her own answers, and they sufficed. She listened chiefly to the sound of his voice, cared only that he was with her still. When he stopped, she groped for another question. After a moment, she asked him how the First and Pitchwife had been able to escape the Cavewights.

  At that, a note like a chuckle gleamed along the wind. “Ah, that.” His humor was tinged with grimness; but she treasured it because she had never heard him come so close to laughter. “That I’ll take credit for.

  “Foul gave me so much power. And it made me crazy to stand there and not be able to touch you. I had to do something. Foul knew what the Cavewights were doing all along. He let them do it to put more pressure on us. So I made something rise out of the Wightbarrow. I don’t know what it was—it didn’t last long. But while the Cavewights were bowing, the First and Pitchwife had a chance to get away. Then I showed them how to reach you.”

  She liked his voice. Perhaps guilt as well as venom had been burned out of it. They shared a moment of companionship. Thinking about what he had done for her, she almost forgot that she would never see him alive again.

  But then some visceral instinct warned her that the darkness was shifting—that her time with him was almost over. She made an effort to articulate her appreciation.

  “You gave me what I needed. I should be thanking you. For all of it. Even the parts that hurt. I’ve never been given so many gifts. I just wish—”

  Shifting and growing lighter. On all sides, the void modulated toward definition. She knew where she was going, what she would find when she got there; and the thought of it brought all her hurts and weaknesses together into one lorn outcry. Yet that cry went unuttered back into the dark. In mute surprise, she realized that the future was something she would be able to bear—

  Just wish I didn’t have to lose you.

  Oh, Covenant!

  For the last time, she lifted her voice toward him, spoke to him as if she were a woman of the Land: