The Last Dark

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Begun—? Alarm ran like acid along Covenant’s nerves. In an instant, he forgot dizziness, fatigue, depletion. “Hellfire,” he rasped. “This is my fault. I took too long.” Recovering. Thinking. “Now I’m going to have to do this the hard way.”

  Instead of veiling Loric’s dagger, he held it over his head. A beacon—

  Spectral against the coming night, tangled brush and gnarled trees became visible off to Covenant’s left: limbs and twigs that resembled bleached bones in the silver light; clumps of reeds like thickets of spears; dark floating pads with nacreous flowers; noxious scum; troubled waters so black that they refused lumination. The tenebrous air was thick with stagnation and rot, the putrid remains of corpses. The fetor made knots in Covenant’s guts. Instinctively he wanted to shy away.

  Nevertheless the Ranyhyn and Mishio Massima cantered toward the area where turiya Herem had entered Sarangrave Flat as if that were Covenant’s truest desire.

  Hell and blood. He was not ready for this. Not after everything that he had already endured.

  Even his blunt nerves sensed the inherited dread that gathered in Rallyn and Hooryl.

  “Ur-Lord.” Branl held out his hand, asking for the krill as though he believed that he and Clyme could fight for the lurker in Covenant’s stead.

  But Covenant kept his only blade, his only light. He had no intention of risking his companions in the vile marshes of Horrim Carabal’s demesne.

  Far away through the scrub and trees, the scrannel brush and marshgrass, he caught flickers of a diseased silver that reminded him of his one confrontation with the lurker many centuries ago. Instinctively he believed that the monster was exerting its malevolent theurgies against the Raver. If Horrim Carabal had welcomed turiya’s possession, there would be no battle.

  “Ur-Lord?” Branl asked again.

  Bloody damnation! Covenant had to act. He was already late. He chose to believe that the lurker was fighting hard; but as the Raver mastered more and more of Horrim Carabal’s imponderable bulk, the monster’s resistance would weaken. Soon the lurker might begin to submit.

  While the horses closed the distance, Covenant raised his voice. “We need the Feroce! I won’t ride in that marsh. Some of those waters can strip flesh off bones.” This decision, at least, his companions would approve. “And I don’t know how else to communicate with the lurker!”

  “We are come too late,” countered Branl. “Already the Raver lays claim—”

  “But he hasn’t won yet,” Covenant retorted. “Horrim Carabal is huge. Turiya can’t overrun the whole lurker at once. Parts of that monster must be fighting back.

  “I need to talk to it while it can still resist!”

  If Lord Foul’s servant triumphed, Horrim Carabal would be a horrific foe.

  Clyme’s passion grew stronger, feeding on a private repudiation. “We know not how to summon the lurker’s acolytes.”

  “Then they’ll just have to summon themselves,” Covenant snapped. If they could discern his beacon. If their fear of white gold and Loric’s krill alerted them to his presence. “If they don’t, what good is an alliance?”

  The wetland was close: too close for Rallyn and Hooryl. Their fright showed in their flaring eyes; in the tremors which marred their strides.

  “Stop!” Covenant shouted to the horses. “I want to stop here!” Then he swung one leg over Mishio Massima’s back; stood in the stirrup and braced himself to drop to the ground.

  Hooryl and Rallyn complied. With the Ardent’s mount between them, they slowed in sharp jerks, almost locking their knees. Within half a dozen strides, they halted, quivering as if they were feverish.

  At once, Covenant let go and hit the grass, running toward the border of the Sarangrave, and waving the krill: a signal to any being or creature capable of noticing him.

  Clyme and Branl accompanied Covenant as if they had expected his unpremeditated rush. In the sweeping wash of argent, they looked as ghostly as the wide wetland; as vulnerable to banishment as the Dead. Still they were Haruchai, as solid as their promises. Covenant did not doubt them.

  But now he feared them. Their ak-Haru had judged them severely—and they bore an old grudge against Ravers. He shuddered to imagine how they would react when they learned that he meant to leave them behind.

  “I’m here!” he yelled as he hit soggy ground, stopped at the water’s edge. “We made an alliance! I want to keep it, but I can’t if you don’t hear me!”

  He needed to know how far into the marsh turiya’s possession had spread. And he needed to get there; to the point of conflict, the heart of the struggle. Nothing that he tried would work if he did not first get ahead of the Raver.

  He wanted the power to forbid Lord Foul’s servant, the ancient puissance of the Colossus; but that knowledge was lost.

  Thrashed by distant fighting, the water at Covenant’s feet heaved against its scum and muck. Gouts of tiny plant life rose into the air like miniature geysers, then slumped back into the slime. He thought that he heard screaming, inarticulate fury like far-off thunder; but he could not be sure through the slosh and slap of the disturbed wetland. He strained his eyes for hints of the Feroce, but the krill’s radiance blinded him to everything beyond its reach. Again he yelled for attention—and still there was no sign that he had been heard.

  “God damn it! What good is an alliance if you won’t help me at least try to honor it?”

  Nothing.

  “Ur-Lord,” Clyme offered, “we will bear you. We discern the conflict, though it is distant. We will convey you to a place where you may strike with some hope of effect.”

  “How distant?” snarled Covenant. “Is it leagues? Can you imagine what will happen to you if you try to carry me through leagues of this stuff?” He slapped a gesture at the marsh: bogs and quagmires; quicksand; depths and shallows; poisoned pools as harsh as vitriol. “And turiya is going to keep moving. What if he takes possession faster than you can travel? Our lives will be wasted.”

  Facing the Sarangrave again, he howled, “I need the Feroce!”

  He had time to panic—and time as well to admit that behind his alarm lay a secret relief at the possibility that he might be spared.

  Then Clyme nodded once. “Ur-Lord, you are answered.”

  Hell and blood—“Where? I don’t see anything.”

  Covenant expected flickers of green like hints of the Illearth Stone, an approach of power the hue of sick and rotting chrysoprase. But though he searched until his temples ached, he found nothing except krill-light and darkness.

  “On other occasions,” Branl answered, “we beheld the Feroce bearing fires in their palms. Yet when the Masters observed them in centuries past, they moved within the Sarangrave without flames—indeed, without any evident magicks. We surmise that they require theurgy only when they are parted from the wetland.

  “Nevertheless we discern them. Two now approach.”

  Two? Covenant stared and saw nothing. Only two?

  Would two be enough?

  At the limit of the light, he spotted a blur of movement. The creatures were stealthy, creeping behind clumps of scrub, stealing through pestilential grasses and mirkweed, crouching among trees that writhed as if they were in torment. He recalled the timidity of the lurker’s acolytes during his earlier encounter with them. They had called him the Pure One, wielder of metal and agony, and they had feared him. Without their High God’s command, they would not have dared to enter his presence.

  But he had no time for their craven courage. “I’m waiting, dammit!” he shouted. “I made a promise, and I intend to keep it! Your High God needs me!”

  Fronds rustled some distance away. Passing bodies contradicted the sluggish distress of the waters. At unexpected moments, the large round eyes of the Feroce caught reflections of silver. They were hardly tall enough to reach Covenant’s chest. And they were desperately afraid. Naked and hairless, clad only in the commandments that ruled their fright, they slipped between patches of cover or ducked und
er pads and rushes as if they believed that Covenant could extinguish them with a glance.

  But at last they emerged. At the boundary of the marsh, they risked the krill’s radiance.

  Flinching, the Feroce brought forth guttering emerald from the palms of their hands. Then they crept onto the mud that marked the border of the Sarangrave. There they stood before Covenant, cowering in supplication.

  “Be merciful!” they whimpered as if they shared one voice; one mind. “You are the Pure One. You wield abhorrent metal and deliver agony. Such agony! Yet you accepted our High God’s alliance. The Feroce surrendered many and many lives to complete his offered service. Take pity upon us now. Become the Pure One who redeems, as you have done before.

  “Our High God cannot withstand the horror that assails him.”

  Their tone was piteous, but Covenant felt too much pressure to respond gently. “I’m not the Pure One,” he retorted. “I’ve never been the Pure One. But I try to keep my promises.”

  In truth, he had not committed himself to fight for the lurker. Deliberately he had withheld that reassurance. As far as he was concerned, however, Horrim Carabal had exceeded the terms of their agreement. And he believed that the lurker had a role to play in the Land’s defense, although he could not name it.

  “Right now,” he continued without pausing, “I can’t. I’m too far away. I’ll fight for your High God, but first he has to help me. He has to take me where I’m needed.”

  “Not?” quavered the Feroce as if they had heard only his denial. “You are not the Pure One? We do not comprehend.” Their protest sounded like the soughing of bogs, the suck of quicksand deprived of victims. “You wield vicious metal. You bring excruciation. You have delivered such agony to our High God that he quails to hear you. You are required to be the Pure One. There is no other.”

  “Stop!” Covenant demanded harshly. “Call me whatever you want. We don’t have time for this.

  “Here!”

  Frantic to show his good faith, he swept cloth around the krill’s gem and blade. Instantly the light vanished. Night rushed over the region: it seemed to reel in its haste to fill the void left by covering the dagger. The fires of the Feroce revealed only themselves.

  Urgent and awkward, Covenant thrust the wrapped knife into the waist of his jeans, then jerked Joan’s ring from his finger, looped the chain over his head, dropped the band under his shirt; made himself appear defenseless.

  “I’ll need metal to fight.” Fear made him savage. “And I’ll have to hurt your High God. I’ll have to hurt him bad. I need to cut off the infection,” sever every portion possessed by turiya. “I don’t know another way.” He had no idea how to kill a Raver.

  “But I can’t do anything if he doesn’t take me where I’m needed!”

  The lurker was enormous. It could survive terrible damage.

  As one, the creatures gave a quivering shriek as if he had appalled them to the core of their soft bodies. Their fires sprang high; dropped low. Flames dripped between their fingers like corroded flesh or spilth.

  Covenant swore in frustration. He should have gotten here sooner. If he were not so easily wounded, so damn mortal—

  “Ur-Lord,” cautioned Branl. “Ready yourself. Again you are answered.”

  While Covenant strove to see, a dark shape arose from the waters.

  Visible only as a starker blackness in the dark, a tentacle rose and rose as if it were reaching for the heavens. It was thick as a cedar, tall as an elm. Its surface squirmed with desperation. In spite of Kevin’s Dirt, Covenant felt the lurker’s strength, its bitter hunger. Reaching high above him, its arm seemed to search with inhuman senses for the taste of its prey.

  Covenant had time to tell the tentacle or the Feroce, “Leave my companions here. They can’t help me. I’ll need them later.”

  Then the tentacle lashed down. Like a cracked whip, it snapped around him. Its fingers grasped every possible surface of his shirt, his jeans, his limbs. Coils clasped his arms hard to his sides. A heartbeat later, the tentacle sprang back; jerked him into the air with appalling ease.

  He heard no response from the Haruchai. Only the voice of the Feroce scaled, frail and frantic, into the dark.

  “Try to believe that you are the Pure One.”

  In a flicker as brief as a blink, he thought that he saw the Humbled take hold of Horrim Carabal’s acolytes. Then the lurker snatched him through the sky as though the monster intended to hurl him into the heart of Sarangrave Flat.

  Hellfire! He could not move his arms; could hardly breathe. Black trees and obscured streams rushed below him as if they were plunging into an abyss. If the lurker did not fling him to his death, it was going to squeeze out his life.

  Your alliance was a thing of the moment.

  The Feroce would have reacted differently if their High God had been mastered by turiya. The Humbled would have tried to ward Covenant. But he could not be sure that the lurker understood his intentions—or knew how effortlessly he might be crushed.

  He had no measure for direction or distance. The wetland seethed like a cataract below him. Night blinded every horizon. The roar of wind in his ears covered the stricken pound of his pulse. When he was thrown, he would soar for leagues before he hit and died.

  Without warning, the coils wrenched him downward. Before he could even try to fill his lungs, Horrim Carabal slammed him into a pool, buried him in deep water acrid with poisons. His eyes would have been ruined in their sockets if he had not clenched them shut.

  But the tentacle did not stop. It tore him through water and muck as easily as it had carried him above the marsh, as if he had no substance and did not need air.

  The monster did not mean him harm. It had good reason to be terrified of white gold and Loric’s krill. Good reason to fear wild magic. But it did not understand its own strength—or Covenant’s weakness. He was dying for air. The corrupt water stung him like a swarm of ants, biting and endless. Apart from suffocation and dread and pain, he felt only nascent fire, as if his mere presence sufficed to set the toxic waters ablaze.

  But he was well acquainted with pain. It was human and inevitable: he could ignore it. And dread was akin to fury. You are the white gold. When his fear became a form of rage, he could burn his way free.

  Suffocation was altogether worse. Drowning was worse. He could more readily have endured the excoriation within a caesure. Drowning was desperation. It led only to unthinking frenzy.

  He had to have air. He had to have air.

  Or he had to have peace: the silence of the last dark, voiceless and blissful: the surrender of every demand and desire.

  Air or peace: one or the other. He could not be given both.

  But he wanted air.

  He would never get it. He was already failing.

  Still his given body remembered its own exigencies, its own compulsory striving. It locked itself against the impulse to inhale death—

  —until the lurker suddenly ripped him upward.

  He knew nothing; remembered nothing; could not interpret his changed rush through the fluid dark. But the flesh which Linden had fashioned for him was ruled by strictures that did not require conscious choices. As the tentacle heaved him out of the water and thrust him high, the pressure in his chest seemed to explode. Bursting, he found air.

  For a time, nothing existed except wretched gasping and life. Blots like devoured stars swam across the void inside his eyelids, inside his head. Air and the wind of his blind movement exacerbated the sting of the waters until it felt feral, as fierce as wasps. Every breath was tumid and rank, difficult to take. The night tortured him with questions for which there were no answers.

  Try to believe that you are pure.

  Because he had to see, he slitted a glimpse outward and found ruptured dazzles there as well.

  His eyes bled tears. Light smeared his vision. The shining was a noxious silver like and unlike the alloyed clarity of wild magic. And it was tainted by an underhue of emerald t
hat resembled the virulence of the Illearth Stone. He did not understand it. The tentacle jerked him from side to side, asking its own febrile questions. The Sarangrave’s fouled waters clung to his skin like scales. He felt blisters bubbling everywhere.

  But tears washed away bitter minerals and evil. Blinking rapidly, he began to see.

  Below him stretched a pool the size of a small lake. It veered one way and another as the tentacle squirmed. Its surface blazed with a nacreous lucence as dangerous as necrosis.

  From the depths of the water rose two more tentacles. They were thick as towers, supple as serpents, mighty as siege-engines. And they were locked in battle. One struck at the other while the other writhed to avoid blows that would have toppled oaks. The ferocity of their movement churned the pool to froth. Their struggle cast shadows like screams across the wetland, but did not quench the light.

  The attacking arm feinted to distract the other. An instant later, the attacker flung itself like a noose around its foe near the water-line. It tightened and strained, apparently trying to rip the other arm in half.

  At first, Covenant did not recognize what was happening. Then he did. The lurker seemed to be fighting itself, but it was not. It was resisting the Raver. Covenant felt turiya’s loud malevolence in the caught tentacle. The Raver’s mastery of the monster had reached this far along one arm. Now Horrim Carabal strove to tear off the possessed part of itself before turiya could claim more.

  A doomed struggle: the lurker could not clench tightly enough, dismember itself swiftly enough. And it could not make the Raver flinch or shy because the Raver was not afraid. Moments after the monster grabbed its own arm, Covenant saw turiya Herem’s evil slip past the constriction and spread farther.

  The lurker released that arm, tried for a new grip. What else could the monster do? But it could not preserve itself by that means. The truth was plain. The Raver’s viciousness moved too easily. Even if the lurker contrived to stop turiya in one place, Lord Foul’s servant would simply shift his possession to another tentacle.