The Last Dark

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  But in fact he did not believe that the Land and its world were simply parts of a mechanism. They formed a living creation. And like all living things, they yearned for continuance. If he failed them, the world’s woe would be as vast as the heavens.

  While it lasted.

  There were hints of travail in the wind; suggestions of iniquity. But he did not know how to interpret them—or he was not ready.

  He was still wrestling with himself when Branl returned, no longer carrying his supply of ussusimiel.

  “By good fortune, ur-Lord,” the Humbled announced, “there is a covert which I deem apt for your purpose. The wind is obstructed, yet views to the east and north are accessible. Will you accompany me?”

  Briefly Covenant considered what he could see of his companion. Then he muttered, “Well, hell. Why else are we here?” Extending his arm, he asked for help.

  True to his commitments, the Master lifted Covenant upright. And he kept his hand on Covenant’s arm for support and guidance. His grasp may have been meant as reassurance.

  Covenant glanced downhill to check on the progress of the Feroce. Their noxious fires shone more clearly now; but they were still no more than halfway up the slope. Trusting their uncanny ability to find him wherever he was, he turned away.

  As Branl drew him among the stones, the Humbled asked, “Ur-Lord, have you determined how you will counsel the lurker?”

  Bracing himself on contorted plinths and tall slabs, Covenant picked his way forward. “It’s like I said. I need to know where the Worm is headed. If it comes from the north, or the northeast, and doesn’t turn, it’s probably going straight for Melenkurion Skyweir. In that case, the lurker isn’t in danger. It doesn’t need advice. But if the Worm comes from anywhere south of us, it’s ignoring its direct line to the EarthBlood. That means it wants Kastenessen—or She Who Must Not Be Named. Then I’ll have to tell Horrim Carabal something.”

  “To what purpose?” countered Branl. “That you desire to determine the Worm’s immediate path, I comprehend. But what will any counsel avail? The lurker will not hazard its life at your word.”

  Covenant stumbled to the left around one thrust of basalt, to the right past another. The cry of the wind was louder here. It pummeled him in forlorn gusts. But as he went farther among the stones, he was spared more and more of the wind’s force.

  “I’m still thinking,” he answered through his teeth. “There has to be something we can do.” To accomplish what? Slow the Worm? Stop it? He told himself not to be absurd. “I just don’t know what it is.”

  The Humbled may have shrugged. He did not argue.

  His path twisted like a maze. It seemed long. But eventually Covenant came to a small patch of grass just wide enough to sit in. Branl’s net of melons rested there in a notch between stones the size of Giants. Standing in the center of the grass, Covenant found that he had a clear line of sight northward. Through a gap in the jumble, he could see the rim of the bluffs perhaps ten paces away. And beyond the precipice—

  There the Sunbirth Sea assailed Lifeswallower with the mindless fury of a berserker.

  At one time, perhaps only a few hours earlier, the waters of the Great Swamp had drained eastward in ramified channels like the branches of an immense tree. Among them had stood islands of unpalatable grass, tormented eyots of brush, clusters of hoary cypresses and other marsh-trees like sentinels watching over a sargasso. But such things were gone now. Indeed, every feature of the delta had been inundated or swept away. The mounting seas flailed in all directions, tearing apart or dragging under everything that defined this region of Horrim Carabal’s realm. The portion of Lifeswallower that Covenant could see had become indistinguishable from the ocean’s violence.

  The sight made him shiver as if vertigo had already wrapped its cold fingers around his heart. Grinding his teeth, he turned to the east.

  At first, he could not gain a view of the sea. Too many protruding rocks rose too high. But when he leaned to one side of his covert, he found an opening. There ages of wind and weather had scalloped the sides of several stones. And one slab of basalt had lost a substantial section of its center: it resembled a cripple hunching over a collapsed chest. The result was a window like an oriel, a gap that revealed an arc of the Sunbirth Sea.

  Through the window came flicks and slaps of wind, occasional stings of spray; but Covenant was able to endure them for a few moments at a time.

  At that distance, he could not discern any specific swell or cross-current. The whole ocean looked like a darker and more troubled iteration of the sunless sky. Even the horizon was no more than a smear of grey. If the Worm were coming from that direction, he saw no sign of it.

  Blinking hard, he moved back into shelter. With a gesture, he asked Branl to watch for him. Then he lowered himself to the grass and tried to believe that he had not come so far for nothing: that when the Worm arrived, he would know what to say.

  Branl scrutinized the east for a while; turned his attention briefly to the ruined delta in the north. Then he shook his head.

  “Ur-Lord, I judge that the Worm is not imminent. I know nothing of its speed, but I will believe that a span of time remains to us. We are granted a respite.” He removed the krill from his tunic. “Should you wish it, I will prepare ussusimiel.”

  Covenant nodded. “Sure. Why not?” He needed strength. When the Worm came, he would have to flee, whatever happened. If he and Branl died here, their lives would be truly wasted.

  Uncovering only the dagger’s blade, the Humbled deftly took a melon, sliced it into sections, cut out the seeds. The pieces he handed to Covenant one at a time.

  Covenant ate until only rinds remained; but he did not notice the taste, or attend to what he was doing. He was listening to the unsteady ululation of the wind, trying to decipher its oblique message. Its salt tang and its keening were auguries that he did not know how to interpret.

  Branl offered to prepare another melon. Vaguely Covenant declined. He was not conscious of hunger; or he was not hungry for that kind of sustenance. He wanted the richer nourishment of an answer.

  After cleaning the blade, Branl put the krill away and resumed his study of the east.

  Wind and salt. The ravage of the delta. The Worm of the World’s End. Kastenessen. She Who Must Not Be Named.

  And Linden, who was so far away that only Rallyn would know how to find her. The thought that he might not see her again before the end made Covenant’s chest ache like a wound to the heart.

  Branl stepped back to gaze around the stones. After a moment, he said, “Attend, ur-Lord. The Feroce approach.”

  Jerking up his head, Covenant spotted glints of emerald on the rocks. Fires guttered; flared more brightly; receded. Soon two of the creatures brought their flames and their timidity to the border of the grass. Two or three more Feroce followed behind them. Their eyes cast echoes of their theurgy into his shelter.

  In their damp, squeezed voice, they asked, “Pure One?”

  Covenant faced them until he was sure that they did not mean to say more; that the two words of their question sufficed for them. Then he looked at Branl. “What time is it?”

  The Humbled was a thicker shadow in the gathering murk. “Evening becomes night,” he answered. Responding to Covenant’s underlying query, he added, “I do not yet descry the Worm. Though its coming is plain, it remains beyond my discernment.”

  And mine, Covenant sighed. Tightening his grip on himself, he turned back to the Feroce. “Is the havoc close? The Worm? Do you know? Can your High God feel it?”

  The creatures replied with a thin wail, quickly cut off. Almost gibbering, they forced themselves to say, “It is near. How do you not know that it is near? Our High God asks what he must do. He asks with desperation. His alarm is terrible.”

  Near? Covenant muttered to himself. Hellfire!

  “I’m sorry,” he told the Feroce gruffly. “You’ll just have to wait. I won’t know what to say until I see it.” Almost at once, he went
on, “And I won’t see anything until you get rid of those fires.” They blinded him to everything else; cast a pall of memories over his mind. He remembered the Illearth Stone too well. “If you can’t survive without them outside the Sarangrave, hide them somewhere. I won’t abandon you. I’ll tell you as soon as I have something.”

  The creatures quailed. They moaned like the wind. But they did not protest. One by one, they retreated among the stones. For a while, their emerald lingered on rims of granite and basalt. Then Covenant lost sight of them.

  “Branl?” he asked anxiously. “Anything?”

  “Perhaps,” replied the Humbled. “I am uncertain.”

  Cursing, Covenant surged to his feet. The wind seemed to blow darkness into his covert. Branl was little more than an outline against the rocks.

  If the Master’s acute senses were uncertain, Covenant would be effectively eyeless; but he had to look. Pressing himself against his companion, he stared through the eastward oriel until the strain of trying to see made his forehead throb as if he had bruised it. Still he found nothing.

  Or something.

  A hint of light at the boundary between sea and sky.

  “There.” He pointed. “Did you see it?”

  At first, he thought that it was heat-lightning: a storm brewing. Almost immediately, however, he realized that he was wrong. The light did not flicker and glare. Instead it appeared to float on the distant turmoil of the seas.

  Wind lashed at his eyes. It had become a gale.

  “It resembles fog.” The last of the Humbled sounded utterly dispassionate. “A luminous fog, lit from within. Storms which arise nowhere else clash within it.” After a moment, he remarked, “The fog and its storms shroud an immense power. It brings havoc in all sooth, such havoc as no Haruchai has ever witnessed. Yet the power does not harm the seas. It merely disturbs them.”

  Waves hammered harder at the base of the cliffs. In spite of his numbness, Covenant felt the ground under his boots trembling.

  Hell and blood. “That’s the Worm?”

  Coming from the east? Straight for the Great Swamp?

  “I deem that it is. And it is swift. Yet the fog—and indeed the storms—run some distance ahead of their source.” Branl turned to Covenant. “Ur-Lord, I must speak of this. Time remains to us. If you wish it, we may flee in safety. Wild magic will enable us to traverse many leagues ere this peril achieves landfall.”

  Covenant clenched his teeth until his jaws ached. “Who do you think you’re kidding? We can’t leave now. Not until we see what that thing does.”

  The eerie glow expanded on the horizon. Already it was distinct even to his marred vision. He felt its force in the wind on his face. Its teeth seemed to gnash at his cheeks. The luminescence did indeed resemble fog, vapor filled with lightning. But the lightning did not waver or strike: it endured, a convulsion of bolts without beginning and without end.

  And the fog did not flow toward the southwest. Rather it sent tendrils like arms ahead of the storms, questing over an area as wide as the delta. Soon, however, even the most distant streamers began curving inward, reaching for Lifeswallower.

  Reaching as if they had found the spoor of the Worm’s prey.

  Oh, bloody hell!

  Bands of fog drifted over the seas. They drew closer with every harsh thud of Covenant’s heart. Wild winds hurt his eyes, but he could not look away. Now he saw that the actinic glare within the brume was not truly constant. Instead of jumping and crackling, it swelled and receded incrementally, a slow seethe which belied the speed of its advance; a gradual rhythm like the undulating heave of a tremendous body. And every surge flung the vehemence of the waves harder against the cliffs. Collisions and crashes sounded like thunder; like the blare of steerhorns announcing ruin.

  “Ur-Lord,” Branl stated, “we must not delay. These forces threaten the headland. We cannot withstand them.”

  Damn it! The wind was trying to tell Covenant something. It urged him to think—

  The inundation of Lifeswallower’s delta. The bitter lash of salt.

  If he judged only by smell, he would believe that the whole of the Great Swamp had already been ripped out of existence. Uncounted millennia of poisons no longer reeked; no longer spread their nauseating odors into the air. The fury of wind and water effaced every other perception.

  Surely that meant something?

  Streamers full of fatal light swept closer, riding the blasts. One of them poured up the precipice in front of Covenant and Branl. Squirming like a serpent of moisture, it writhed among the stones. A ribbon as luminous as the enchanted stone of the Lost Deep brushed Covenant’s cheek before he could jump back. For an instant like a heartbeat, it appeared to curl around Branl. Its touch was damp and gelid, bitterly cold, as fierce as the caress of a caesure. But the fog did not react to Covenant and his companion; to Joan’s ring or Loric’s krill. Oblivious to anything that was not food for the Worm, it ran on along the wind, gusting westward.

  Now Covenant saw a shape within the hermetic mass of the storms, a dark form limned by the heavy rise and fall of the lightning. Infelice had described the Worm as no more than a range of hills in size. An earthquake might swallow it. But to him, it looked more like a chain of mountains breasting inexorably through the seas. Its power was staggering: he was barely able to keep his feet. Perhaps his appalled senses exaggerated the Worm’s physical bulk; but nothing could measure its sheer force. He was too human to look at it for more than a moment at a time.

  By comparison, the lurker was trivial in spite of its polluted mass. It could do nothing to thwart the Worm’s passage. It could only die.

  And the World’s End was definitely heading west. Toward Mount Thunder.

  Hellfire! Hell and damnation! Covenant was thinking about the problem backward. The wind carried away the rancid effluviums of Lifeswallower and the Sarangrave. Of course it did. But considered from a different perspective, the gale blocked the fetor.

  And how did the Worm find its prey? How did it locate the Elohim in their myriad hiding places? By scent. It smelled them out. Not in any ordinary sense, no. They did not emit a mundane aroma. But their magicks, the mystical essence of who they were: that the Worm could detect.

  If those emanations could be detected, perhaps they could also be blocked. By a different kind of power. A force that was inherently wrong for the Worm, antithetical to its appetites.

  More urgently, Branl insisted, “Ur-Lord.”

  The Worm’s puissance had become explicit, even to Covenant’s blunted nerves. Its might shone through the rigid rocks of the headland as if they were transparent.

  He guessed that it was still two or three leagues out to sea. But at that speed—He had no time to doubt himself. Practically reeling, he wheeled away from the oriel; away from the heedless band of fog.

  And as he moved, he yelled, “Feroce! I need you!”

  Glints of green showed in the jumble. They were too far away.

  “I need your High God! I need him now!”

  The wind snatched words from his mouth. They disappeared among the stones, meaningless. Nevertheless the fires came closer. Gleams flashed from place to place, apparently running.

  As the first creature emerged from the maze, the voice of the Feroce moaned urgently, “Pure One? What must our High God do? He must not perish!”

  Streamers searched the turmoil of the delta. Lightning pulsed with every heave of the Worm’s bulk. Seas hurled chaos at the cliffs. The silent shout of storms constrained by the Worm’s aura made the ground under Covenant lurch as if the foundations of the promontory were in spasm.

  An earthquake might swallow it. Under the right circumstances, Linden could trigger an earthquake. She and the Staff of Law had that kind of strength. Covenant did not: not with Joan’s ring.

  Haste and frenzy gripped him. “Listen fast.” He was hardly coherent. “Try to understand. I don’t want your High God dead. He can’t fight the Worm. But he has to act like he’s going to fight.
He has to rear up. Make himself as big as he can. Right there.” Covenant pointed at the drowned stretch of Lifeswallower to the north. “I need him to block the way,” confuse the Worm’s instincts, fill the Worm’s senses with corrupt emanations; mask the powers hidden in Mount Thunder.

  “Ur-Lord,” protested Branl.

  “Pure One?” The voice of the Feroce was a cry, a groan, a prayer. Their fires shuddered like the cliffs’ bedrock. “We are little. Our minds are small. We do not—”

  Covenant cut them off. “Just tell him!” He wanted to tear his hair. “I can’t explain. I don’t have time. I need him to do it. Rear up. Make himself huge. Pretend he’s a barrier.”

  If the lurker did not panic—if the monster kept its word—

  Frantically Covenant strove to impose comprehension on Horrim Carabal’s acolytes. “The Worm doesn’t want him. If he doesn’t fight, it won’t hurt him. But he has to look big enough to fight.

  “Tell him! He can get out of the way if the Worm doesn’t stop. But first he has to try to make it pause! He has to make it look somewhere else for food!”

  Would that work? Of course not. Or not for long. But it might distract the Worm for a while. Slow it down. Buy a little time. Until the World’s End found a different scent.

  The Feroce could do what he asked of them. They could communicate swiftly enough. And the deeper waters of Lifeswallower were the lurker’s true home. The core of the monster’s mass and muscle lived there. If Horrim Carabal chose to do so, it could respond immediately.

  Already the Worm had seethed a league closer.

  Wind scattered the wailing of the Feroce among the stones. Their fires rose like screams. The gale did not touch their emerald theurgy, but the mounting convulsions beneath them did. The Worm’s hunger made the flames flinch and bend.

  Instead of answering, they turned and fled.

  “Ur-Lord!” Branl demanded. He stood in the path of a glowing tendril, but it flowed around him as if he were nothing more than granite or basalt. “We must depart!”