The Last Dark

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Then she did.

  Oh, God—

  Stars were going out.

  One. Then another. A pause while realities reeled. Two together as if they had been swallowed simultaneously.

  God in Heaven! The sun was not the only casualty. And the Worm of the World’s End had not yet reached the Land.

  The stars were vast in number, of course they were: numberless beyond counting. By the measure of their profusion, their losses were small; almost trivial. But by the measure of brief human lives—by any measure that included life and death—the scale of the carnage surpassed conception.

  What kind of power could eat stars?

  Who could hope to stand against it?

  “Mom!” Jeremiah said urgently. “You need to listen. I’ve been waiting long enough.”

  She could not hear him; could not drag her gaze down to meet his. She was transfixed by the incremental ruin of beauty. She had to watch it because there was no sun.

  “Maybe it’s a good thing I waited.” Jeremiah’s voice was taut with restraint. “Maybe now you’ll understand why my idea is important. Maybe now I understand what Covenant was trying to tell me.” But then he could not hold back a yell. “Mom!”

  His shout dragged at her attention. “Jeremiah—” His name caught in her throat. Hoarse as a woman who had spent the night howling, she asked, “What is it, honey? What’s so important?”

  Don’t you see it? The stars are going out!

  “You need to listen,” he repeated. “I know what to do!”

  Stave regarded the boy steadily. The former Master’s gaze seemed full of the deaths of stars. Mahrtiir continued to peer blindly upward, but he appeared to be tracking the progress of Kevin’s Dirt. Perhaps the stars were beyond the reach of his remaining senses.

  Slowly the Giants forced themselves to lower their heads. Blinking as though they had been appalled, they turned their eyes on Jeremiah. None of them spoke. Rigid as women who had become stone, they were too full of horror to express it.

  Without stars, every sailor on the seas of the world would be lost. Every Giant aboard a ship, every seafarer from all the peoples of the Earth: trackless and doomed.

  “All right.” Jeremiah sounded incongruously satisfied and eager, as if the heavens held nothing fearsome. Nothing except an opportunity. “I have an idea. I said that already. Infelice gave it to me. I mean, I got it from her. I’m sure she didn’t mean what I heard.”

  Fortunately Kevin’s Dirt had no immediate effect: it wrought its particular harm slowly. With her health-sense if not with her eyes, Linden watched her son. He no longer looked like a boy. He looked like a young man who did not need her.

  The sight made her heart shiver as if she were feverish.

  “You’ll have to start from the beginning, Jeremiah. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “You do, Mom,” he replied without hesitation. “You were there. You just haven’t thought about it enough.

  “The stars going out.” His assurance amazed Linden. It frightened her. “That’s the Worm. It’s eating the Elohim.”

  Too stricken to speak, everyone stared at Jeremiah. Beneath his familiar fierceness, Mahrtiir’s visage betrayed an ashen dismay. The muscles of Rime Coldspray’s jaws knotted and released like the hard beat of her heart. Latebirth had covered her eyes with her hands. Frostheart Grueburn gaped like a woman who had forgotten the meaning of her actions.

  Every Giant—

  “So what are they afraid of?” Jeremiah asked. “I mean, the Elohim. I’m just a kid. Why are they scared of me? What do they think I can do that’s worse than being eaten?”

  His purpose for us is an abomination, more so than our doom in the maw of the Worm.

  “Infelice told us,” he answered himself. “She thinks I’m going to trap them. And she knows I can do it. I can make a door they can’t refuse. No matter how far they scatter, or how hard they try to hide. They can’t refuse. That’s part of who they are. They’ll have to come if I make a door. I mean, the right door. The right size and shape. The right materials. I can construct a doorway that forces them. They’ll have to pass through it.

  “So of course she thinks I’ll make a door they can’t get out of.” —the Worm is mere extinction. “That’s what the Vizard wanted. It’s what she would do if she were me.” The prison which the boy will devise is eternal helplessness, fully cognizant and forever futile. “She thinks I’ll trap the Elohim forever.”

  Caught in such a construct, Infelice and her people would out-live the ending of suns and stars.

  Stave regarded Jeremiah without expression. Several of the Swordmainnir studied him as if he were changing in front of them, revealing unguessed aspects of horror or hope.

  “But she doesn’t know me, Mom.” Jeremiah sounded almost smug. “She doesn’t know what I’ve been learning all these years.

  “I’m not crazy like the Harrow. I know I can’t build anything big or strong enough to hold the Worm. But I can make a door that sucks the Elohim in. A door that takes them to a place where the Worm can’t get at them. Only it won’t be a prison because my door will let them leave whenever they want. I can keep them alive until they decide it’s safe to come out.

  “Then the stars will stop dying. And we’ll have a better chance to stop the Worm.”

  He was moving too quickly for Linden. She scrambled to catch up with him; to untangle the significance of what he was saying. What had he told her about the Elohim? They’re like a metaphor?A symbol?They represent the stars. Or maybe they are the stars. Or maybe the stars and the Elohim are like shadows of each other.

  The idea made a weird kind of sense. Saving the Elohim might actually stop—or at least delay—the destruction of the stars.

  Still Linden faltered. His purpose for us is an abomination, more so than our doom in the maw of the Worm. But it is not the worst evil.

  Infelice believed that Lord Foul would eventually use Jeremiah to trap the Creator. Would that outcome be more or less likely if Linden’s son contrived to preserve some of the Elohim?

  Such questions were beyond her. She could not imagine their answers. She could hardly believe that they had answers.

  She required an act of will to avoid looking up at the slow ravage of the heavens.

  “I am exceeded,” muttered Mahrtiir under his breath. “Here even a youth of newborn mind surpasses a Manethrall of the Ramen. Serving only the Ranyhyn, my people are too small to comprehend or equal such powers.”

  When no one else found a response, Linden asked tentatively, “But Jeremiah, honey, what will that accomplish? We can’t stop the Worm. We just can’t. It’s too much for us.”

  “But I can slow it down!” Jeremiah crowed. “If I can build my door before it eats too many Elohim, I can buy us time!” With exaggerated patience, he explained, “The Elohim are its natural food. If it doesn’t get enough to eat, it’ll be weaker. It’ll move more slowly.

  “Then who knows?” He shrugged as though he knew nothing of uncertainty. “Maybe we’ll think of something. Or Covenant will. He’s like that.”

  If Covenant were still alive. If he had survived his encounter with Joan and turiya Raver. And if the Worm did not swallow Jeremiah’s door whole. By the measure of mountains, it is a small thing, no more than a range of hills. It would dwarf anything that Jeremiah could build.

  And still the Worm would get all of the nourishment that it needed from the EarthBlood under Melenkurion Skyweir. Anele had said as much. He had gleaned his knowledge from a stretch of veined malachite at the foot of the Hazard: stone lined with stains like Linden’s jeans.

  The prospect of acting on Jeremiah’s desires scared her. She drew inferences from it that appalled her. If he did what he wanted to do, she would have to—

  That thought she could not complete. It led her toward places which were too extreme to be contemplated.

  The construct which he envisioned would be vulnerable. It would need protection. She would have to—<
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  Against the Worm? She had never had that kind of strength. No one with her did. Perhaps even Covenant did not.

  She would have to—

  How could she make such choices? How could any mother put her son at risk and not stand ready to defend him?

  And yet—

  He was not the sum of her responsibilities. She had brought about the deaths of Elohim and stars. Liand, Anele, and Galt. Even Esmer. All of Lord Foul’s victims. She had awakened the Worm: she bore the burden of a world’s ruin.

  Holding up a hand to ward off Jeremiah’s eagerness, she said, “I’m sorry, honey.” She could not meet his hot gaze. “I need to think about this. It puts a lot of pressure on you, and we can’t be sure what the results will be.” What materials would his construct require? And where in this blighted landscape could such things be found? “I want to talk to Rime Coldspray.” She already knew what Stave and Mahrtiir would say. “Then I’ll decide.”

  “Mom!” he protested. But almost at once he bit down on his frustration. Sounding truculent, he muttered, “Talk as much as you want. It won’t change anything. I’m sure I’m right.”

  Linden glanced at Stave, asking him with her eyes to watch over her son. Then she raised her head to the Ironhand. “Do you mind if we talk alone?”

  Coldspray acquiesced with a shrug. Her jaws continued to bunch arrhythmically, chewing prayers or curses, as she walked away along the stream.

  Consumed by her own prayers, Linden followed.

  They did not go far. Linden halted when Coldspray did, still within sight of their companions. Arms folded across her cataphract, the Ironhand stood rigid, waiting for Linden to speak.

  Linden understood her attitude: she read it in the lines of Coldspray’s visage, the set of her shoulders. The Ironhand was not reluctant to talk to Linden. Instead she was shaken to the core by the sight of stars dying; by the sheer scale of what was being lost.

  “Here’s my problem,” Linden began. Reluctance and doubt made her brusque. “I don’t know what to think of Jeremiah. He’s my son. Seeing him like this is like seeing a new dawn. But I don’t know what’s happening to him—or in him. After what he’s been through, I don’t understand how he can be so eager. It doesn’t seem natural.

  “Mahrtiir thinks that I should trust him.” Far more than his wounds have been restored to him, and to you. “That’s hard for me. Where I come from, people who have been outrageously damaged don’t suddenly become whole. I know that I haven’t said much about my former life.” She had been shot through the heart. Where she had been born—where she belonged—she had no life left. “But back then, I was a doctor. A healer.” Such assertions felt false to her now. She claimed them only so that Coldspray would understand her. “I specialized in trying to help people with broken minds. And I never saw any of them recover completely without facing what happened to them. Not once.

  “I’m afraid for him, Coldspray. I’m afraid of what might happen to him if he can do what he has in mind. I’m afraid of what might happen if he can’t.”

  Either outcome might enable Lord Foul to claim him.

  Brusque herself, Coldspray asked, “Is your health-sense now dulled?”

  Linden shook her head. “Kevin’s Dirt works slowly. It hasn’t had time to affect me yet.”

  “Then I cannot counsel you as you wish to be counseled. Your son is closed to my discernment, as you are. Your perceptions exceed any that I am able to proffer.”

  More softly, the Ironhand admitted, “Yet I am able to conceive of no course more worthy of our hearts and lives than his. What greater deed can we attempt, few as we are, and friendless in this gloom? For that reason alone, I would follow him wheresoever his eagerness leads. But there is more.

  “Linden Giantfriend, my spirit is wracked by the deaths of stars. In their name, my counsel is young Jeremiah’s. We must do what lies within our strength to preserve the Elohim.”

  Before Linden could respond, Coldspray continued, “Nevertheless your son’s purpose is perilous.” Her tone tightened. “Indeed, its hazards are extreme. Should he succeed in his intent, he will draw every surviving Elohim to him. Doing so, he will also draw the Worm. They are its food. It will seek them out. Therefore his portal, his door, will require defense. It will require a defense greater than eight Swordmainnir, or eight score, or eight hundred can provide.

  “For this reason, the choice must be yours. You alone among us wield true power.” Sternly she concluded, “Knowing the plight of the heavens, you will not turn aside.”

  Perilous, Linden thought. Oh, Jeremiah! The same concern had occurred to her, although she had not gauged its implications so concretely. She dreaded what it might require of her.

  Without realizing that she had lifted her eyes, she found herself staring skyward, transfixed by the calamity overhead. A gloom like bereavement covered the Lower Land. For all she knew, it covered the whole world. It would never be relieved.

  Then she realized that Rime Coldspray was right. She would not turn aside. She could not.

  Nevertheless the Giants clearly did not grasp all that Jeremiah’s desires entailed. They were dangerous, yes; but there was more. They meant that Linden would have to leave him. Abandon him to his peril. So that she could find a way to ward his construct when it was complete. In spite of her Staff and Covenant’s ring, she was too weak. She would have to go looking for greater power.

  If such power existed anywhere, and could be found.

  If Covenant did not return—

  She saw no consolation in the gradual reaving of the stars. The heavens were an abyss of uncertainty. Stave did not fear such things. She did. She would have met a kinder fate in the maw of She Who Must Not Be Named.

  Finally she forced herself to meet Rime Coldspray’s gaze.

  Because she could not bear to say what she was thinking, she murmured, “I would feel better about it if you were laughing. It’s going to be hard.” Earlier she had felt that the foundations of her life were shifting. Now they were being shattered. “We don’t just have to find whatever it is that Jeremiah needs to make his door. And we don’t just have to protect him. Somehow we have to live through it.”

  In response, Coldspray managed a wan chuckle. “Then I must concede that I have failed you. If joy is in the ears that hear, I have grown deaf. My hearing is whelmed by the clamor of an unrisen sun, and by the shrieking of slain stars.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Linden answered as if she, too, were dying. “That makes two of us. I’m so deaf, I keep forgetting to be glad that my son is alive and eager.

  “Come on.” She gestured toward the waiting company. “Let’s go find out what Jeremiah needs to save the Elohim.”

  The Ironhand nodded. “Well said, Linden Giantfriend.” Now she made no effort to force a laugh. “Let us confront the challenge of these times together. While we do what we can, there is no fault in failure.”

  Confront the challenge, Linden mused as she and Coldspray began walking. What choice did they have? But if they succeeded in any fashion, they would not do so together. Eventually she would have to face her fears. And she would have to face them alone.

  Her yearning for Covenant was so acute that it brought tears to her eyes.

  Jeremiah seemed to swim through the blurring of her vision as he came to meet her. “Well, Mom?” he asked before she could say anything. “What did you decide?”

  Instead of replying, she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him hard, mutely pleading for his forgiveness. Then she took him with her to rejoin the rest of their companions.

  Stave regarded her return impassively, as if his resolve sufficed for both of them. But the Giants and Mahrtiir were more troubled. Grueburn, Cirrus Kindwind, and the others studied Linden with doubt in their eyes. Perhaps they worried that her desire for Covenant ruled her; that she would insist on waiting for him. But the Manethrall’s disturbance was of another kind. His sense of his own uselessness galled him like an unhealed wound. In the risk
that Jeremiah wanted to take, Mahrtiir would be able to contribute nothing except his service to the Ranyhyn. He would have been better content if the loss of his eyes had killed him.

  Linden paused as though she wanted to be sure that all of her friends were paying attention. But in truth she was searching herself for courage, and trying to blink away her tears. She had always been vulnerable to the kind of paralysis that came from fear. From fear and despair.

  “All right,” she finally managed to say. “I’m willing to do this your way, Jeremiah. What do you need to make your door?”

  She suspected that it could not be formed of bone. Bones implied mortality, and the Elohim did not die. They could only be devoured. Or sacrificed.

  Jeremiah’s instant enthusiasm seemed to fill the gully from wall to wall. Indeed, it seemed to urge the stars closer so that they could hear him. Nevertheless his eagerness made him appear strangely fragile to his mother. What would happen to him if his intentions failed? Or if the Worm simply ate his door after he had gathered all of the Elohim in one place? How would he bear it?

  “Stone,” he replied at once. “A lot of it. In big chunks. I mean, really big. I won’t be able to handle some of them, even with Earthpower.” He flashed a glance around the Swordmainnir. “I’m going to need all the help you can give me.”

  “Forsooth,” Rime Coldspray responded in a noncommittal rumble. “If aid you require, aid you shall have. But of stone the Earth is a vast storehouse. Even this parched wasteland is rich in forms and substances and textures and indeed purities of stone. Surely, young Jeremiah, the portal which you propose cannot be composed of random fragments. Even the theurgies of stonework practiced by Giants demand rock of particular natures and qualities. We must ask you to name the stone which you deem needful.”

  Again Jeremiah did not hesitate. Where his constructs were concerned, he seemed incapable of doubt. “It’s green. More like a deposit than actual rock. I don’t know what it’s called, but I saw some when you took me across the Hazard. Green like veins.”

  “Malachite,” Onyx Stonemage pronounced; and Linden’s stomach tightened as if the word were a prophecy.