The Last Dark

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Gripping Clyme’s shoulder with one hand, Branl cut open the whole of Clyme’s torso in a single slash. When the krill found the friable barrier of bone between Clyme’s hips, Branl dragged the blade in a circle through the Master’s abdomen, disemboweling him. Then Covenant’s companion drew back the dagger and began to hack—

  Covenant tried to look away. In that attempt also, he failed.

  Flesh was soft to the krill’s keenness. Bone meant nothing. In a convulsion of movements so swift that no part of Clyme had time to sink, Branl severed his comrade piece from piece until only gobbets and shards remained. Then finally they drifted away like stains upon the water; and the pool fed on them like a beast devouring tidbits. Moments after Branl ceased his butchery, they were gone, all of them.

  Oh, Clyme! Is this what you think Brinn wanted?

  When he was done, Branl swam below Covenant, squinting upward with galled eyes.

  “Are you content, ur-Lord?” Grief clenched his visage. “Turiya Raver is unmade. Naught of him endures.”

  But the same was true of Clyme.

  Covenant had no answer. He wanted to weep; but he was in too much pain for tears. The Feroce called him the Pure One. They had asked him to believe. But he had not redeemed them, just as he not redeemed their distant ancestors, the jheherrin.

  The Humbled had proven themselves. Nevertheless the difference between Saltheart Foamfollower’s example and that of Branl and Clyme was more than Covenant knew how to bear.

  5.

  Coming

  Fury and thrashing were gone from the Sarangrave. By increments, the astringent light subsided from the pool. Breathing became marginally easier. With elaborate care, the lurker lifted Thomas Covenant high into the air. Another tentacle arose to bear Branl of the Humbled and High Lord Loric’s krill.

  Stately as a procession, at once celebratory and funereal, Horrim Carabal carried its saviors eastward above the writhen trees of the Flat.

  Scores of the Feroce accompanied them. Scurrying around copses, sinking and then rising in quagmires, drifting like mist across streams and backwaters, the creatures went ahead of their High God’s allies. And as they moved, they kept their emerald fires bright in their hands. Like the Wraiths of Andelain, the Feroce thronged forward in homage, escorting Covenant and Branl through the contortions and perils of the lurker’s demesne.

  But Covenant ignored the monster’s acolytes. With the last of his scant endurance, he clung to Joan’s ring and tried to stifle images of butchery. The manner in which Branl had destroyed Clyme burned in his mind. The sight seemed acid-etched inside his lids: whenever he closed his eyes, he saw it. The world had become a visceral dismay that refused utterance.

  Around him the fires of the Feroce shed little insight: a gleam of green across scum and mirkweed here, a brief flash on scrub and branches there. But the krill still shone, casting its spectral light through the Sarangrave. The waters had destroyed the dagger’s protective fabric covering. The haft’s heat must have hurt Branl’s hand; but if it did, he gave no sign. His true wounds ran deeper. His countenance was a fist which he could not unclench, and he did not glance at Covenant.

  In the gem’s echo of wild magic, tree limbs and marsh reeds as ghostly as spirits bobbed as if they were bowing. Harsh grasses swayed from side to side in consternation or awe.

  Then the tentacles paused above a small pond as clear and dark as the ravaged heavens: an eyot of starker blackness in the crowding mass of the Flat. There the damp voice of the Feroce rose. “Our High God loathes the touch of such water,” the creatures intoned. “You will fall. But we have caused the water to recall its ancient purity. It will soothe you while we prepare a more worthy consolation.”

  Soothe you, Covenant thought dully. That would be nice. His body was covered in blisters that stung like the tears which he could not shed. Anything cool—anything that was not gall and bitter lamentation—

  The arms of the lurker sank close to the lightless pond. Briefly they hovered as if they were considering their options. Then they uncoiled.

  With Branl beside him, Covenant dropped into cleanliness that resembled bliss.

  The Feroce had spoken truly. Their magicks had made this water pure. He could drink from it, and drink, without any aftertaste of the seepages and rot which polluted the wetland. Nevertheless it did not heal. It was not Glimmermere. It did not wash away hurts or cleanse souls.

  He needed something more. Untenable weeping filled his chest. He could not shut his mind’s eyes against the brutal slash of the krill in Branl’s hand.

  The Haruchai swam at Covenant’s back, supporting him. That was well. Covenant was too weak to move. And he did not want to look at Clyme’s killer.

  Perhaps to ease his burned hands, Branl held Loric’s knife underwater. That, too, was well. Darkness was another kind of balm. It eased Covenant’s aggrieved nerves.

  After a time, he remembered to replace the chain of Joan’s ring around his neck. Then he asked the dusk, “Did you have to do that? Couldn’t you just kill him and be done with it?”

  He had seen Haruchai fight on any number of occasions, but he had never seen such an abandoned frenzy of violence.

  Branl’s answer ached across the water. “It was agreed between us. We remember Grimmand Honninscrave, and the Sandgorgon Nom, and samadhi Sheol. By Grimmand Honninscrave’s death, Nom rent the Raver. Yet shreds of that dark spirit endured within the Sandgorgon. They endure still, and cling to malice.

  “We knew no other means by which turiya Herem might be altogether unmade.”

  Covenant nodded to himself. He accepted Branl’s justification. What choice did he have? The Humbled had argued against pursuing turiya, or considering the lurker’s plight—and still they had accomplished something that Covenant could not have achieved alone.

  Later he suggested like an offer of forgiveness, although he did not know how to forgive anything that had occurred, “Then maybe you’d better explain how you did it. I told the Feroce to leave you behind.”

  Silence held the gloaming for a while before Branl replied, “It was not difficult to persuade the Feroce that you would have need of us.” He sounded like the stars, forlorn and doomed. “Our lives are memory. The creatures have no power to disturb or alter us. And their fear for their High God was extreme. Regardless of your command, they could not reject any form of aid. They summoned the arms of the lurker, that we might follow behind you.

  “Thereafter Clyme and I determined our course together. I chose the task of your life, deeming that purpose paramount. Freely Clyme assumed the burden of the Raver.

  “The ak-Haru spoke of simony. We are”—his sudden pause had the force of a stab—“we were the Humbled. We could descry no other means by which we might correct our fault. How otherwise might we have become worthy of the Guardian, and of ourselves?”

  In a voice thick with woe, he concluded, “I must believe that good may be gained by evil means.”

  And now you’re alone, Covenant sighed. This far from any of your people, you’re cut off from everything that makes you who you are.

  As isolated as a leper.

  Simony, by hell! Covenant breathed faint curses to himself. Branl’s people had never been as open-hearted as the Giants. But they had always been generous with their lives.

  Eventually Covenant began to think that forgiveness might be possible after all.

  Then a shiver of anticipation or effort ran through the burning green around the pond. Sharing one voice, the Feroce announced, “Consolation has been made ready. We are the Feroce. Our High God speaks in us. But you must remove yourselves from the water. To sustain its purity demands much of us, and our High God will not touch it.”

  With Covenant’s consent, Branl swam toward the pond’s edge. And when they were able to stand in the muck of the bottom, two tentacles snaked out of the surrounding marsh. As before, the lurker’s arms closed carefully around Covenant and Branl, and lifted them high to avoid the trees.

&nb
sp; Again the krill shone silver in all directions, but its light revealed nothing that might be consolation.

  Side by side, Covenant and Branl arced upward, still moving eastward, into the accumulated dark of night in a sunless world.

  Horrim Carabal bore Covenant and his companion so lightly that he had no sense of duration or distance. He only knew that he was moving because the Sarangrave squirmed below him and the air felt like a rasp on his raw skin.

  Soon, however, the tentacles descended again. Then the lurker halted once more. This time, the monster held Covenant and Branl over a vaguely shimmering swath of dampness like a pit of quicksand eight or ten paces wide. Here, also, Feroce surrounded the lurker’s destination. But now their numbers had become a multitude. Hundreds of the creatures waved their small fires, making the wetland garish, and chanted like worshippers in the presence of divinity.

  Horrim Carabal poised Covenant and Branl over the center of the quag, but did not drop them. The Feroce did not speak.

  “Ur-Lord.” Branl’s tone changed. Surprise—or something more than surprise—penetrated his distress. “Here is a great wonder. I would have avowed that such a—I have no name for it—that such astonishment could not exist in Sarangrave Flat. Surely it is precluded by the manifold illnesses and evils of the lurker’s demesne. Yet it is unmistakable. It is—”

  He stopped as though what he beheld had sealed his throat.

  Covenant peered downward, but he saw nothing that did not resemble quicksand or some other mire. He smelled only the cloying scents of rancid plants and putrefaction. The tumid exudation of the lurker’s presence made breathing difficult.

  “What is it?” he murmured. “What do you see?”

  The Humbled appeared to wrestle words past an obstruction. “Ur-Lord, it is hurtloam. Here, where no clean thing grows, and no health flourishes. It cannot be, yet it is.”

  Hurtloam. The word sent conflicted squalls through Covenant in spite of his near-prostration and his complex pains. Hurtloam would heal his wounds; but it might also cure his leprosy. It had done so before. It could restore his crippled health-sense. It could make him potent and capable in ways which were denied to lepers.

  It was life and ruin. It would rescue and damn him—

  —because his illness was essential to him. I don’t expect you to understand, he had told Linden’s company in Andelain. But I need this. I need to be numb. He had believed it then: he believed it now. It doesn’t just make me who I am. It makes me who I can be.

  His leprosy was all that enabled him to hold the krill. In some sense, it was a defense against the Ravers. And he was not done. He had to remain as he was until the end.

  And yet he wanted to be healed. Oh, he wanted it. He had become so much less than he needed to be. Wounds and weakness made him useless. He had nothing left to offer Linden. He would not be able to fight for the Land.

  Inadvertently cruel, the Feroce and their High God proffered a gift which might also be a curse.

  And while hurtloam healed him, it would make him sleep. He would miss his chance to redefine his alliance with the lurker; perhaps his only chance. After everything that he and the Humbled had done to secure the terms of the bargain—

  Fearing the worst, he croaked, “Wait!” If the tentacle dropped him now—“Hellfire! Just wait!”

  At once, the Feroce stilled their chanting. Horrim Carabal did not let go.

  Together the creatures spoke. “Memory is a potent magic. We are the Feroce. We serve our High God. We have caused this small portion of his vast realm to remember what it was. The task has been arduous. We have expended much to complete it. But we are unworthy of the majesty which we worship. We have prepared this consolation because our High God has commanded it, and because we have failed in our service.”

  Impassive now, Branl asked, “How have you failed?”

  A shudder passed through the throng. Emerald guttered in every hand. But the Feroce did not refuse to answer.

  “We hazarded much, fearing the Pure One’s wrath. Yet we are the Feroce. We serve our High God. For his life, we strove to awaken recall in the Pure One.”

  With those words, the small creatures drew Covenant’s attention away from the conundrum of hurtloam.

  “Our High God has not forgotten,” they explained. “He is vast in all things. He recalls a time when a strange force forbade the horror which you have slain from venturing beyond the great cliff in the west. We cannot conceive such might. But the Pure One knows forbidding. He has forgotten it.

  “For our High God’s sake, we sought to awaken memory. Forbidding would have served him better. It would have inflicted less agony. He would not have suffered abhorred metal and fire.

  “Alas, the Pure One has sealed himself against recall. We could not elicit his knowledge. In that, we failed our High God. Our shame is great.”

  “Wait,” Covenant demanded again. “You mean you weren’t fighting for your High God? You were trying to make me remember?”

  That accounted for his wasted regret that he had no lore to forbid turiya Herem.

  The creatures wailed. They cowered. “Now you are wroth. Forgive, Pure One. Our High God is himself, great in wonder and sovereignty. He has no need of our small magicks. If you will not forgive our attempt, forgive our failure.”

  “Wait,” Covenant insisted for the third time. “You don’t need my forgiveness. That’s not important. But forbidding—”

  He could not think. A fretwork of blisters covered his whole body. They seemed to cover his mind. Pain burst and bled wherever he turned. Whether or not he accepted hurtloam and healing, the Feroce were right: he had sealed himself against recall. For him, the strength of the Colossus was lost; irrecoverable.

  But Linden—

  She was capable of surprises that appalled and delighted him. She might—

  Struggling to articulate ideas as they formed, he said urgently, “A message. I need you to carry a message for me. As fast as you can. To Lin”—he stumbled momentarily—“to the woman with the stick of power. The woman you tried to hurt. Tell her to remember forbidding.

  “We’re going to need it.” Without forbidding, there is too little time. “And she has resources we don’t. If nothing else, she’s met Caerroil Wildwood. He knows a thing or two about forbidding.” In an ancient age, he had participated in the formation of the Colossus as an interdict against the Ravers. “Why else did he give her those runes?”

  The end must be opposed by the truth of stone and wood, orcrest and refusal.

  “Tell her,” Covenant ordered; pleaded. “Remember forbidding. Promise me you’ll tell her.”

  Now the Feroce appeared to grow stronger. They stood straighter. Their fires burned more brightly. “It is done,” they announced. “Be assured, Pure One. Even now, your words hasten. We are little, but we are also many. We inhabit our High God’s realm from verge to verge. Your command will be fulfilled.”

  Like a sigh made flesh, Covenant sagged in Horrim Carabal’s coils. He had done what he could. Now there was only one dilemma left to consider. One intolerable choice to make.

  —save or damn—

  His frailty blurred such distinctions. The Lords had misremembered their prophecy about the wielder of white gold; or they had misunderstood it. The words should have been “save and damn.” If he let himself die now, his end would be wasted. And if he let himself be healed, his life would be wasted later.

  Therefore he ought to choose life. While he lived, he could hope that something might change, for good or ill. And betimes some wonder is wrought to redeem us. Preferring death when life was offered was just despair by another name.

  But, God, he was tired! He had already endured too much. In his present state, he imagined that the final darkness would be a kinder fate than hurtloam and more striving.

  And he was a leper. For a man like him, nothing undermined his foundations more than being cured. Because he was who he was, he did not know how to bear the moral contradiction of be
ing spared.

  Like the Haruchai—

  By that reasoning, he should have refused Brinn’s succor.

  But he had always been weak. Time and again, he had turned away from the strictures of his illness because he loved the Land. And Linden. In his own way, he also loved being human.

  And he had always needed help.

  Under the right circumstances, weakness was a form of strength.

  While he wandered in his personal gyre, circling its edges like trapped flotsam, the Feroce renewed their thetic chant. The arms of the lurker held firm, waiting. But Branl grew restive. He, too, was in pain. The damage to his body he would doubtless survive. Certainly he would ignore it. The damage to his spirit was another matter.

  “Ur-Lord,” he said at last. “Hurtloam awaits you. Will you not accept its benison? Alone, I cannot preserve your life. The lurker and the Feroce cannot. Kevin’s Dirt will make corruption of your scalds until no recovery is possible.

  “It was not for this that the ak-Haru healed your earlier hurts. That he saw worth in the lurker’s preservation does not entail that he desired your death.”

  Covenant lifted his head, stared at the Humbled. With two words, Branl had shown him a way out of his confusion: Kevin’s Dirt. Hurtloam would heal him as completely as his various maimings permitted. But it had never altered his essential nature. And some of its effects might be transient. His illness might thrive again under the bale of Kevin’s Dirt.

  Was that not the underlying purpose of Kastenessen’s curse? To thwart the deepest needs of those who loved the Land? In Linden’s case, to limit her access to Earthpower? In Covenant’s, to deny his fitness to be loved in return?

  Save and damn.

  Finally he faced the last of the Humbled. So that he would not be misunderstood, he told Branl, “Only if you join me.”

  Once before, he had required the Master to accept healing. Now Branl needed it as much as he did, if for different reasons.

  He had no idea what he would do if Branl refused. But the Humbled did not. Nodding once, Branl said, “If that is your wish. I have traveled too far from myself to gainsay you.”