The Last Dark

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  For his sake, she kissed a promise onto her wedding band, held it up with her hand clenched.

  Weeping like Grueburn, Covenant slapped his ring against the krill’s gem.

  The world will not see her like again.

  Care for her, beloved, so that in the end she may heal us all.

  Too late, Jeremiah cried out, “Mom!” Linden and Stave were gone.

  Covenant turned away as if he were falling.

  Elena, he thought obliquely, I’m so sorry. I’m doing what I can. Somebody else has to care for you.

  till he had no time. He could not afford his own weakness, or the wailing of his wrenched heart. He had to keep moving. He would find some form of peace soon enough.

  Ah, God.

  Jeremiah was standing now, showing Covenant a face fretted with ruin. “I keep doing that,” he said in such misery that Covenant wanted to turn away. “It’s like I don’t even remember her until it’s too late.” His head hung as if he were talking to the floor. “By the time I understand what she’s doing, she’s already gone. I don’t even say goodbye.”

  I’m never ready.

  Covenant knew the feeling.

  He allowed himself to postpone speaking to Linden’s son for a moment. While he tried to gather up the shreds of his courage, he asked Branl, “How much farther?”

  The Humbled glanced at the tunnel ahead. “Kiril Threndor is near, ur-Lord.” Then he frowned. Tension in the lines of his face betrayed anxieties which his tone concealed. “Yet my heart misgives me. I cannot credit that Corruption has no other defenses close about him.” Briefly he appeared to consult with Samil and Canrik. “Also, ur-Lord, I do not discern Corruption’s presence. His malice is particular. It cannot be mistaken. That some great evil awaits us is plain. Yet it is not Corruption. He is absent”—Branl cocked an eyebrow at a sudden thought—“or veiled by glamour.”

  Covenant swore privately, but he could not pretend that he was surprised. Lord Foul knew that he was coming—and the Despiser was cunning.

  Rubbing numbly at the scar on his forehead—the mark of his sins—Covenant turned to Jeremiah.

  “It’s probably a good thing you can see the Worm.” He did not try to be gentle. “You’ll know when it’s time.”

  Jeremiah jerked up his head. “Stop that.” His doom was stark in his eyes. Tattered and soiled, stained with old blood, his thin pajamas made him look as unloved as an empty house. “Stop saying things you know I can’t understand. You keep saying you need me, but you won’t tell me how or why. You act like you think I’m important, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  “Why can’t I come with you?”

  Covenant grinned without humor or kindness. “It’s fun, isn’t it. You’re like all the rest of us. Nobody ever hands you an answer. The only thing you can do is guess. Then you have to take your chances.”

  At once, however, he reached out, wrapped the fingers of his halfhand around the Staff of Law. Another test of truth: he wanted the boy to believe him.

  To his touch, the wood felt dead; almost brittle. Ripe for consummation.

  Startled, Jeremiah quenched his flames. But he did not look away. His gaze clung to Covenant’s. For a moment, his eyes resembled the Harrow’s, deep as voids, hungry for some life that was not his own. But slowly they became harder, flatter: the black of obsidian and anger.

  Distinctly Covenant said, “You can’t come with me because I don’t want you that close to Lord Foul until I can distract him. But I do want you to come. I think you’ll know when. You’ll be able to sense it.” He glanced at the Masters. “Or Canrik and Samil will. Or watching the Worm will tell you.”

  Jeremiah stared.

  Holding the Staff and the krill so hard that his forearms ached, Covenant tried to explain.

  “I need you because I don’t think I can beat Lord Foul by myself. You aren’t strong enough? Neither am I. He’s too much a part of me.

  “When the Worm drinks the EarthBlood, the Arch of Time will start to crumble. That’s when Foul can escape. More than anything else, he wants freedom. If he has to, he’ll even give up trying to trap the Creator. Being stuck here—” Covenant let go of the Staff. He shoved his fingers into his hair and pulled, trying to drag his thoughts into language. “There’s no word big enough for that kind of despair.”

  If Jeremiah understood nothing else, he would understand that.

  Again Covenant found himself swaying, unsure of his balance. His intentions became impossible as soon as he articulated them. He wanted to fall down; just hit the floor and lie there while he could still choose the moment of his last collapse.

  But he had made promises to Linden. Hell, he had made promises to practically everybody, one way or another. And he could not turn his back on Jeremiah’s distress.

  “I need your help to keep him busy. If we can, I want to make him miss his chance. As long as he’s stuck here with us, he’ll be vulnerable. Then I might be able to find an answer of my own.”

  Is that plain enough for you? Hellfire, Jeremiah! It’s all I’ve got.

  The boy glared blackness. His breath came in ragged chunks, as if the labor of his heart did not leave room for his lungs. He swallowed as if his mouth and throat were full of blood.

  “I can’t. Don’t you understand? He’s the Despiser. He can take me whenever he wants. I won’t able to do anything.”

  “Oh, stop,” Covenant snapped. He might have yelled, We’re out of time! “There’s always something you can do. You have talents. You have the Staff. And you know what possession is like.” He broke me. I hate being used. “If nothing else, you can just hide. You can hide as long as you want.”

  Jeremiah had freed himself from years of dissociation. Maybe he would be able to find his way out of Lord Foul’s grip.

  The boy bared his teeth as if he wanted to take a bite out of Covenant; but Covenant was done with him. Intuitively, if not with any of his truncated senses, he felt the end of Time approaching. He had to go.

  “Help me,” he finished. “Don’t help me. It’s up to you. I’m out of time.”

  Like a man who had recovered his balance, he turned his back on Jeremiah’s stained struggle; on the lost boy’s naked need. At one time, Covenant had risked the Land’s ruin for the sake of a snake-bitten child. More than once, he had approved when Linden had made similar choices. This was different. No matter what Jeremiah believed about himself, he was not helpless. He was not.

  And Lord Foul did not understand him. After all of this time, the Despiser still had no real idea what he was up against.

  As Covenant left Linden’s son, Rime Coldspray spoke. In the krill’s light, she looked like a closed door. Her voice was rusted iron, a blade gnawed by neglect. Yet her gaze was sure in its mask of blood.

  “Do not fear, Timewarden. While we live, we will stand with the Chosen-son. If we cannot guide him, mayhap Canrik and Samil will do so. They have shown their worth. They will not fail in Stave’s stead, or in Branl’s.”

  Mute as an unmarked grave, Frostheart Grueburn nodded her assent.

  With that hope, Covenant followed Branl out of the chamber.

  he Humbled held Longwrath’s flamberge ready. He walked lightly, silent as a breeze. That some great evil awaits us is plain. Behind him, Covenant stepped over cracks in the wracked stone, carrying the illumination of Loric’s courage and lore into darkness. The tunnel twisted from side to side as if it were writhing. I cannot credit that Corruption has no other defenses close about him. Here and there, flecks of mica or quartz in the walls caught silver and glittered like eyes.

  More fractures flawed the gutrock. The forces unleashed here must have been appalling: High Lord Prothall’s struggle with Drool Rockworm for the old Staff of Law; Lord Foul’s fierce and increasingly frantic efforts to destroy Covenant’s spirit. Clutching the krill, Covenant rushed past thin splits that called out to him, urging vertigo and surrender. He had surrendered once. Not again. Not now. Linden had gone to meet her wo
rst fear. He intended to do the same.

  Then argent caught the edges of an opening ahead. Covenant smelled sulfur, the dire reek of brimstone. He felt distant heat like the withering touch of Hotash Slay long ago. And attar.

  “Ur-Lord,” Branl said sharply. “Be warned. There is might and evil. Though I cannot name their source, they vow death.”

  Attar, Covenant thought. The sweet sick stink of funerals; of preserved corpses. Lord Foul.

  The Haruchai as a people did not know that smell. They had never confronted the Despiser.

  Hardly aware that he was struggling for breath—that sweat ran like tears down the galls of his visage—that his hands shook as if he had fallen into fever and delirium—Thomas Covenant accompanied the last of the Humbled into Kiril Threndor.

  He knew this place. He would have recognized it in any nightmare. Here he had been killed with his own power, his own ring. Here he had ascended in agony to participate in the Arch of Time, to defend with his soul the most necessary of the Laws which made life possible.

  The space was a chamber like an abscess in the deep chest of Mount Thunder, Gravin Threndor: round and high, large enough to hold scores of Cavewights worshipping, and acute with patches of rocklight like plague-spots. Random illumination oozed like pain from the walls. The walls themselves looked like they had been shaped by a brutal blade, cut angrily into facets that cast radiance in all directions. From the ceiling, the light was thrown back like a spray of shattered glass by stalactites that resembled burnished metal: reflections so bright and broken that they seemed to swirl on the verge of madness. Some of the stalactites, too, had shattered, leaving gaps like gouges overhead, scattering their debris across the floor. Around the cave’s borders, tunnels opened like unuttered screams. Among them were scattered a few boulders that resembled the stones where Covenant had left Jeremiah, displaced by violence or theurgy from where they belonged.

  Here was the source of the gutrock’s fracturing, here in Kiril Threndor. Those cracks were memories of terrible battles, recollections expressed in the language of wounds. Within the chamber, more splits spread insanity across the floor. From their depths, darkness swirled into the air. In places, the surface had buckled, tilting slabs at tormented angles.

  But the fissures did not touch the time-worn dais in the center of the chamber. Flaws avoided that stone as if they had been denied; as if no form of harm could alter the fundamental substance and meaning of the low platform.

  Two steps into Kiril Threndor, Covenant halted. He no longer noticed the stench of attar. He did not regard the allure of cracks in the floor, or the entrances from which Cavewights might pour forth at any moment. He was transfixed where he stood by the figure on the dais.

  The sight was as wrong as a knife to the heart; as hurtful as the piercing which had twice ended his life, once in the woods behind Haven Farm, once here at the Despiser’s hands.

  Roger Covenant.

  Obviously waiting, Roger faced his father. A grin like a rictus stretched his fleshy cheeks. The slouch of his shoulders and the heaviness of his torso betrayed his disregard for his mortal flesh; his disdain. On his shirt and pants, he bore the scorch-marks of his battles with Linden. The puckered skin of healed burns showed through holes and tears in the fabric. For his deeds, he had paid a price in pain—

  His hands were empty of weapons, of any instruments of power. But his right was Kastenessen’s, hot and ruddy as lava, flagrant with power. It blazed like the jaws of the skurj. It, too, must have cost him excruciation.

  He gnashed his teeth at Covenant. “Well, hi, Dad.” His mouth sneered; but his voice was a tortured thing, twisted on a rack of unappeasable desires until its joints opened and its sinews tore. “You took your own sweet time getting here.”

  His eyes were Lord Foul’s, carious as rotting fangs.

  10.

  All Lost Women

  Linden had chosen this. It was not a reaction to the Despiser’s manipulations: it was her own doing. She had stepped off the path of his desires. If she served him now, she could not pretend that she had been misled or tricked.

  Her choice. Her doing, for good or ill.

  And she had promised herself that she would remember; that she would allow no effect of shame or pain, horror or failure, to confuse the fact that she had acted of her own free will. She would not blame Lord Foul, or fault Thomas for failing to spare her, or think less of Jeremiah because he had been weak.

  She had made that promise to herself. Nevertheless she forgot it in the first instant of translation. She forgot who she was, and why she was here, and what she had intended to do. Such things were washed out of her by a scend of enchantment. Her world had become magic and majesty, and nothing was required of her except wonder. Something more than translation had occurred. She had entered a realm of transubstantiation where delight was the only possible response. Here she found contentment in awe and tranquility, the ineffable mansuetude of the redeemed.

  The rich rug luxurious under her feet was distilled solace. It overlapped others as hieratic as arrases depicting scenes of worship, humility, sanctification: tableaux in which the devout ached with joy. She could have gleaned comfort endlessly from each of them; but her eyes and her heart were enticed by rapture on all sides. Somehow the richness of the rugs was both complete and transparent, solid and evanescent. They lay on a lucent floor pristine as aspiration, enduring as marble. Enhanced by the intervening substance of the rugs, the stone seemed polished to the point of incandescence. She was only able to bear its marmoreal radiance because she had been exalted to the tone and timbre of her surroundings.

  Gazing around her, rapt and delirant, she saw a space like the ballroom of a grandiloquent palace; saw beauties in such profusion that she could not hope to appreciate them all. Loveliness effloresced in every direction. Near the walls, braziers of burnished gold offered flames redolent with incense and purity. Among the rugs, delicate filigree shafts like spun glass clean as crystal stretched upward to form arms that supported chandeliers as bright as the splendor of worlds. Beyond them, wide staircases graceful as wings swept toward higher levels and finer glories. Yet their treads and their immaculate banisters did not call her to rise and explore. She was satisfied where she stood, more than satisfied; already so dazzled and enraptured that any ascension—any movement—would diminish her perfect peace.

  High above her, mosaics sang like choirs: a reverent hymnody audible only as praise. They displayed constellations and firmaments like burgeoning creations, like galaxies and stars and worlds always new.

  Yet more delicious to her senses than any other munificence was the fountain. A geyser in the center of the floor, it reached high, flawless and faceted as a single diamond, until it spread its arching waters wide: a feathered spray of droplets as precise as wrought gems. There no small jewel fell. Each clinquant bead hung in abeyance, suspended, motionless. Static and lovely as ice, the fountain displayed its own splendor: an icon of transcended time, sealed against change as though its perfection had been made eternal—and eternally numinous.

  Bespelled, she gazed about her like a figure in a dream, forgetting life and love and peril for the sake of an ecstasy that surpassed comprehension.

  But Stave stood in front of her. She did not know him; or she did not see him; or he had no significance capable of distracting her from wonder. The scar of his lost eye dragged a frown across his visage. His hands gripped her shoulders and conveyed nothing.

  “Chosen,” he said as if he spoke from the far side of the world. “Linden Avery. Will you not hear me?”

  She gazed past him or through him as though he were only a figment, too tenuous to require notice. He may have been no more than a blur in her vision. Soon her sight would clear, and he would be gone.

  “This place is known to me.” Every word vanished as soon as he uttered it, absorbed by astonishment. “I have learned to set aside its power.” For no apparent reason, he studied her closely. “It is known to you as well, Li
nden. We stand where we have stood before, among the mazements of the Lost Deep. Then, however, Earthpower and the Staff of Law enabled you to turn aside from enchantment. Now you must reclaim yourself by other means.”

  In a small voice, Linden asked, “Why am I here?” But she was not talking to Stave. She simply did not understand how she had come to be blessed by so much beauty.

  His frown deepened. “A query with many replies, Linden. One is that I have guided you hither, knowing no better place for your purpose.” He hesitated; gave a slight Haruchai shrug. “I have no apt language for such matters. It is my belief that translations by wild magic are directed by clarity of intent. Heretofore our courses and destinations were determined by the Ranyhyn. Matters obscure to us were plain to them. Now we have found our way unaided.”

  His hands tightened on her shoulders. “Here, however, you did not choose our course. The burden of clarity was mine. As I once conveyed you to Revelstone without your consent, so also I have brought you to the Lost Deep. If I have erred, the fault is mine.”

  He was fading. Linden could hardly see him. By slow increments, an exquisite pleasure erased him from her sight. Soon her eyes would be clear, as untrammeled as the palace, and as precious. She wanted nothing in life except to see and hear and touch and smell—

  “Why have we come?” he continued as if he did not know that he was almost undone. “Another reply is that the bane rises. Though the distance is great, Her emanations are distinct. Seeking your son, Linden, we roused She Who Must Not Be Named. Thereafter it was conceivable that She would relapse to somnolence. She had been deprived of her prey by the Timewarden. Doubtless Her wrath was great. Yet She had also fed upon the soul of High Lord Elena. At another time, She might have resumed Her ancient sleep.

  “Yet now I perceive that She could not. The flood which was released against the skurj has filled the abyss of Her slumber. Indeed, those waters are withheld from the Lost Deep only by the lingering theurgies of the Viles. Such an inundation cannot harm a being such as She Who Must Not Be Named. Nonetheless it vexes Her. Therefore She rises.”