The Last Dark

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  She did not step back. Nor did Latebirth.

  Onyx Stonemage and Cabledarm readied themselves to spring forward.

  Under her breath, Coldspray murmured, “Be swift, comrades. You must be watchful and wary, but above all you must be swift. We can ill endure any loss of life.”

  “Or indeed any injury,” muttered Galesend, “worn and weakened as we are.”

  Jeremiah beat bruises onto his thighs and strove to see.

  There. He had lost sight of Stave. The Haruchai had thrust his way into the cleft; or the shape of the jut masked his presence. But the monolith had moved: Jeremiah was sure of it.

  It did not move again.

  Then it did.

  At first, it appeared to lean back toward the cliff as though it sought to crush the force which had disturbed it. For moments as long as heartbeats, as urgent as cries, it hung in place, scattering scree from its base.

  With the suddenness of a calving glacier, the slab slid away.

  Silent as a cast-off leaf, it appeared to drift through the darkness until one end collided with the ridgefront. Instantly it broke apart, became half a dozen pieces. They rebounded from the impact, falling like a barrage toward the waiting Swordmainnir.

  Grueburn, Latebirth, Cabledarm, and Stonemage were all in danger; but the threat to Grueburn and Latebirth was greater.

  “He is yours, Cabledarm!” Grueburn yelled. Jeremiah saw her and then Latebirth leaping down the jagged slope of the rockfall.

  Granite thunder boomed. Heavy shards pounded the rubble where the two women had been standing.

  At the same time, Cabledarm dodged a fragment which would have slain her. She surged upward. Unscathed, Onyx Stonemage braced herself; remained where she was.

  Above them, Stave also struck the cliff. But he twisted as he dropped so that he hit with his feet. Somehow he planted himself long enough to flex his legs and spring away. His great strength transformed his plummet into an outward leap.

  Arms spread like wings, he cast himself soaring into the mad roil of the winds.

  Cabledarm was there when he came down.

  In spite of his splayed posture, he was falling too hard, plunging like a chunk of the slab. Even a Giant could not hope to catch him safely. His weight and momentum would shatter bones, Cabledarm’s as well as his.

  But she did not try to catch him. She had other intentions. During the quick instants of his descent, she crouched low. Then she sprang to meet him, arching away as she did so; already pitching herself backward.

  Her huge hands found his hips. Her arms bent to absorb the collision. Then she gave him a prodigious heave.

  His force and hers flung her, helpless, down the side of the slope. She tumbled like a piece of the ridge.

  But she had redirected his fall. He was soaring again.

  Toward Onyx Stonemage—

  —who caught him in both arms.

  Like Cabledarm, she did not try to hold him. Instead she swung him in an arc and released him so that she seemed to throw him in the direction of open ground beyond the rockfall.

  He landed on his feet; dove and rolled to dissipate the last of his momentum. Then he rose to stand upright in the thick dusk.

  Jeremiah began running before the Haruchai came to a halt.

  The monolith was broken. Its burden of malachite may have been shattered, made useless. Everything may have been wasted. Even Linden’s ride into the chaos of a caesure—

  But Jeremiah was not racing to locate the outcome of his only hope. He was running as if his heart might burst to find out if Stave and Cabledarm were all right.

  In the east, a dull dawn announced the third sunless day.

  9.

  An Impoverished Temple

  The company gathered around Stave and Cabledarm. Jeremiah fought down an impulse to babble. I can’t believe it! That was amazing! Are you all right? But he could hardly speak in any case. He was panting as though he had run an inconceivable distance, and had witnessed wonders.

  Stave’s arms and feet were latticed with scratches. His palms and fingers, his toes, the soles of his feet: all oozed blood. But those injuries were trivial. The effects of his impact with Cabledarm’s hands were another matter. His whole body had struck and recoiled like a cracked whip. Now every joint looked torn; every muscle. His internal organs appeared to throb as if they had been beaten with clubs. Blood gathered at the corners of his mouth: he had bitten into his tongue. In spite of his Haruchai stoicism, he was trembling.

  He stood, but he seemed unable to speak. Like a man who had been blinded, he stared at nothing. If he felt the presence of his companions, he did not react to it.

  Rime Coldspray studied him for a grim moment. Then she sent Cirrus Kindwind to retrieve a waterskin. She had nothing else to offer him.

  Cabledarm’s wounds were more obvious. They looked worse. Pitching Stave to Stonemage, she had flung herself down the raw edges and fanged splinters of the rubble. Like Stave, she had regained her feet beyond the slope. Unlike him, she stood hunched in pain, hugging her left arm against her chest. Giantish obscenities bubbled like froth past her lips. She was bleeding from half a dozen gashes, at least two of them deep enough to expose bone. Contusions covered her from shoulder to ankle. But her worst injury was to her left shoulder.

  The force of Stave’s plummet had ripped her arm out of his socket. It was dislocated so badly that Jeremiah could hardly bear to look at it.

  “Only you, Cabledarm,” the Ironhand muttered through her teeth. “Only you could emerge so harmed from such a rescue.”

  “It is my gift,” Cabledarm rasped. Then she groaned a curse. “Stone and Sea! Am I not a Giant? And have I not vaunted myself the mightiest of the Swordmainnir? How am I thus humbled by mere falling?”

  “We need Mom,” Jeremiah breathed miserably. “We can’t help her. And Stave looks like he’s going to pass out.”

  But the Giants did not respond. Cabledarm’s dislocation, at least, was hurt which they knew how to address. At a nod from Coldspray, Halewhole Bluntfist moved to stand behind Cabledarm. With one arm on Cabledarm’s left shoulder near her neck, and the other across her chest under her right arm, Bluntfist grasped Cabledarm tightly enough to wring a moan from her comrade. Without a moment’s consideration, Coldspray gripped Cabledarm’s damaged limb and heaved; twisted.

  The sound as the arm slipped back into place hit Jeremiah like a jab to the stomach.

  Cabledarm roared. Briefly she wobbled as if she were losing consciousness. But Bluntfist held her until her faintness passed, and she began to curse again.

  Grimacing, Cabledarm moved the fingers of her left hand, managed a fist. When she was done swearing, she muttered, “It is much and naught, Ironhand. It will hamper me, but it will mend. Only stanch some few of my rents, and I will name myself blessed. Stave Rockbrother lives”—she glanced quickly around—“does he not?” Seeing the answer in the eyes of her comrades, she finished, “Then will I name myself blessed in all sooth.”

  “For the present, however,” the Ironhand commanded, “you will conserve yourself, Cabledarm. Cirrus Kindwind brings water. While you drink and rest, we will contrive bindings for your wounds. You have earned the tales which we will tell of you. Now we will contrive to earn those which you will tell.”

  “Aye,” Cabledarm assented: another groan. With Bluntfist’s help, she lowered herself to the dirt. There she extended one gashed leg so that Bluntfist could try to stop the bleeding.

  Jeremiah saw her injuries too clearly: the rich pulse of her blood and pain made him feel sick. About some things he knew too much. About this he knew too little. He could too easily believe that Cabledarm would bleed to death. That Stave was dying inside.

  Fortunately Kindwind soon returned with several waterskins. Two she tossed to Bluntfist. A third she took directly to Stave.

  Fleeing the sight of Cabledarm’s torn flesh, Jeremiah joined Kindwind.

  Stave did not react to their presence. He remained standing; continued
to stare at nothing as though his whole world had become the abyss of the Lost Deep. Tremors ran through him like waves of fever. His hands shook. Even his lips quivered.

  Jeremiah did not know what to say or do. Stave had promised to protect him. This was the result.

  Frowning, Cirrus Kindwind rested her hand on Stave’s shoulder. “You are not alone, Rockbrother,” she assured him. “Rest you need. So much is certain. But first you must drink. Your flesh has been much abused. It requires refreshment. And see?” She unbound the neck of her waterskin, held it in front of him. “Here is water.”

  Stave did not move. He did not appear to hear her. But when she touched his mouth with the lip of the waterskin, he raised his arms, accepted it from her. Trembling, he drank.

  Jeremiah had never seen any Haruchai do more than sip from the cup of one hand. Now Stave swallowed long gulps as though more lives than his depended on them; drank until he had emptied half of the waterskin. Then, slowly, he sank to his knees, settled back to sit on his heels. The waterskin he placed on the ground. His hands he rested, open palms upward, on his thighs. He seemed to nod.

  After that, he resumed gazing sightlessly at the twilight of the new day.

  Beckoning for Jeremiah to accompany her, Kindwind stepped away. When they had withdrawn a few paces, she said, “We must trust, Chosen-son, that his folk restore themselves in this manner. It appears that his spirit has turned inward. But I will believe that a man who has performed his feats must soon heal himself and return to us.”

  Jeremiah swallowed against the dryness in his throat. “I hope so. He doesn’t deserve this.”

  “Ah, deserve,” sighed Kindwind. “The notion of deserved and undeserved is a fancy. Knowing both life and death, we endeavor to impose worth and meaning upon our deeds, and thereby to comfort our fear of impermanence. We choose to imagine that our lives merit continuance. Mayhap all sentience shares a similar fancy. Mayhap the Earth itself, being sentient in its fashion, shares it. Nonetheless it is a fancy. A wider gaze does not regard us in that wise. The stars do not. Perhaps the Creator does not. The larger truth is merely that all things end. By that measure, our fancies cannot be distinguished from dust.

  “For this reason, Giants love tales. Our iteration of past deeds and desires and discoveries provides the only form of permanence to which mortal life can aspire. That such permanence is a chimera does not lessen its power to console. Joy is in the ears that hear.”

  Her assertion startled Jeremiah. It seemed to question his foundations. If he closed his eyes, he could still see the extremity of Stave’s fall. The hard throb of Cabledarm’s bleeding and the excruciation of her shoulder cried out to his senses. Awkwardly he reached for Kindwind’s last waterskin. When she released it, he drank as if his thirst—his dismay—had the force of a moral convulsion.

  “So you’re saying,” he protested or pleaded, “what Stave did is worthless? What Cabledarm did is worthless? It’s all dust?”

  “Aye,” Cirrus Kindwind assented, “if that is how you choose to hear the tale.” Her tone was mild. “For myself, I will honor the effort and the intent. Doing so, I will be comforted.”

  Jeremiah wanted to shout. Instead he fumed, “You sound like the croyel.” Was joy in the ears that hear? Then so were agony and horror. So was despair. “It was forever telling me everything Mom did was useless. Nothing matters. It’s all dust. That’s why Lord Foul laughs—and Roger—and those Ravers. They agree with you. In the end, they’re the only ones who get what they want.”

  Kindwind looked at him sharply. Like the flick of a blade, she retorted, “Then hear me, Chosen-son. Hear me well. There is another truth which you must grasp.

  “Mortal lives are not stones. They are not seas. For impermanence to judge itself by the standards of permanence is folly. Or it is arrogance. Life merely is what it is, neither more nor less. To deem it less because it is not more is to heed the counsels of the Despiser.

  “We do what we must so that we may find worth in ourselves. We do not hope vainly that we will put an end to pain, or to loss, or to death.”

  Failure isn’t something you are. It’s something you do.

  Without warning, Jeremiah found that he ached to share Kindwind’s beliefs, and Linden’s. Perhaps the monolith had never contained enough malachite. Perhaps the deposit had shattered. Perhaps Stave and even Cabledarm would die. Perhaps Mom would never come back. Perhaps futility was the only truth. Still Jeremiah would have to find a way to live with it.

  To himself, he muttered, “It’s not that easy.”

  Cirrus Kindwind had never been possessed.

  Her response was a snort. “We were not promised ease. The purpose of life—if it may be said to have purpose—is not ease. It is to choose, and to act upon the choice. In that task, we are not measured by outcomes. We are measured only by daring and effort and resolve.”

  Jeremiah wanted to insist, It’s not that easy. It’s not. But the words died in his mouth. Kindwind had already turned away. Several of the Giants around Cabledarm had turned away. They were gazing up at the spine of the rockfall.

  At Frostheart Grueburn and Latebirth. As Jeremiah caught sight of them, they labored past the crest and began their descent. Between them, they carried a large chunk of stone.

  It resembled a fragment of the monolith. He detected distinct signs of malachite.

  Not seams or veins, delicate trickles. A concentrated lode.

  In an instant, he forgot everything else. Leaving Kindwind, he ran at the slope.

  That was a piece of the slab: it had to be. And its mineral deposit was still intact.

  How big was that sealed lump of green?

  The two Giants came a little way to meet him. Then they set down their burden and straightened their backs, loosened their arms. Before he reached them, he felt their emotions.

  In spite of the gloom, they were bright with vindication.

  “By good fortune,” Grueburn called to her comrades, “the object of Stave Rockbrother’s extravagance contained an admixture of sandstone. When it struck, it broke along its less durable seams. The malachite of its heart was preserved.”

  Jeremiah needed to see for himself. Filling his hands with Earthpower, he clapped them to the surface of the rock; probed inward with all of his senses.

  Then he wheeled away, flung his gaze down the slope toward Stave.

  “You did it! Stave, you did it!”

  The former Master knelt with his back to the rockfall. He did not lift his head or turn. He may have sunk so far down into himself that he did not hear.

  Nevertheless he had succeeded.

  Some things were too easy. Accepting failure was one of them.

  or a time, Jeremiah was content to confirm the various locations of his materials, study their shapes, and plan. While he did so, the Giants finished tending Cabledarm’s wounds. Then they rested.

  Eventually Stave stirred. With an air of caution, as if he feared that he might break bones, he looked around at the cratered plain, the crepuscular day. Then he rose to his feet.

  The relieved shouts of the Giants elicited no response. Jeremiah’s gladness he acknowledged with no more than a nod. He gave the impression that he had forgotten speech, or gone beyond it. When he had surveyed the company and the rockfall, the beginnings of Jeremiah’s construct, and perhaps the passage of time, he put a hand to his mouth and whistled.

  While Jeremiah and the Swordmainnir watched him, wondering, Stave waited for Hynyn.

  The stallion came promptly. Although Jeremiah had seen no sign of the star-browed roan earlier, Hynyn appeared as if he had reincarnated himself from the substance of the gloaming. At Stave’s side, he halted; stood patiently while Stave welcomed him by stroking his neck and shoulder. Then, together, they approached the Giants.

  At once, Jeremiah hurried to join Rime Coldspray and her comrades.

  Wavering on his feet, Stave stopped. He seemed to have achieved an unstable victory over his private wounds, one which might
become defeat at any unexpected action, any unpremeditated word.

  “You did it,” Jeremiah said again, but hesitantly, unsure of himself in Stave’s presence. “You saved us.”

  You saved me.

  Stave glanced at Jeremiah, then away. He did not meet Coldspray’s gaze. With obvious difficulty, as if language required skills which he had forgotten or misplaced, he said, “Hynyn will guide you to water. The way is long.” His voice began to fade. “But there is water.”

  In a husky whisper, he added, “My thanks to Cabledarm. Also to Onyx Stonemage.” He made an effort to gather himself. “And to Cirrus Kindwind.”

  Still cautiously, he turned his back. With the elaborate care of a man who feared falling, he walked out onto the plain until he was barely visible. There he knelt again, facing the northwest like a diminished sentinel.

  Hynyn remained with the Giants. Clearly the great stallion understood the promise that Stave had made in his name. He waited for the women to act on it.

  After a brief consultation, Kindwind announced, “With your consent, Ironhand, this task is mine. In the shifting of stones, I am hampered, but the bearing of waterskins will test only my dexterity.”

  Rime Coldspray nodded. “Go with my thanks. Return as swiftly as you are able. Water we must have. The tasks remaining to us will be arduous.”

  Nodding to her comrades, Cirrus Kindwind left with Hynyn. The imperious arch of the stallion’s neck seemed to assert that he could not be humbled by such mundane service.

  When they were gone, Rime Coldspray said, “Now, Chosen-son. We have delayed too long. There is death in every lost moment. Instruct us, that we may begin.”

  Jeremiah’s heart beat eagerly. At last—“I’ve found everything I need,” he answered. “But some of it still has to be moved. Then I’ll need help putting the pieces in place.”

  “Indeed.” Coldspray scanned her comrades. “For the present, we are only six. But six are more than five, or three, or one. We must suffice.

  “Instruct us,” she said to Jeremiah again. “Come good or ill, boon or bane, we will strive to do as you ask.”