Against All Things Ending

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  She heard the Giants murmuring anxiously to each other, felt Mahrtiir’s troubled regard and Stave’s blunt gaze. Jeremiah’s emptiness made it plain that he did not need her. Tightening her grasp on the Staff, she pushed herself to walk more quickly.

  Her parents had taught her how to meet despair; but there were other answers. She had learned a few from her patients in Berenford Memorial.

  Soon she found a southward slope beyond the basalt. But when she climbed to the hillcrest, she was not high enough to scan the dark horizons for more than a stone’s throw in any direction; so she moved toward the nearest obstruction and plodded upward again.

  That rise afforded her a clear line of sight for perhaps a third of a league on all sides. Was it enough? She did not know. But the vantage suited her. Here she could no longer feel the emanations of her companions. And the ground was littered with loose stones, some of them sharp enough for her purpose.

  She was as weary in her own way as any of the Swordmainnir, yet she needed to stay awake. Hunger and thirst might suffice to keep her from dozing for a time. Cold might help. But she needed more, and had other plans.

  Somewhere in the night, one of the Ranyhyn nickered a query. Surely that was Hyn? But Linden did not know how to respond; and the soft call was not repeated.

  She needed to be left alone. When she had seated herself on uncomfortable rocks exposed to the accumulating turbulence in the air, however, her nerves recognized Stave’s approach. He held a waterskin and a handful of treasure-berries. Over one shoulder, he carried the bedroll.

  Sighing, she composed herself to endure his company, at least for a little while.

  Fortunately he said nothing. Instead he gave her the waterskin, dropped the bedroll nearby. Then he stood motionless beside her, holding aliantha in his cupped fingers so that she could accept the fruit at her own pace.

  He had lost his son so that hers could be saved. He may have understood more of her emotions than she cared to consider.

  For his sake, she made an effort to drink and eat slowly; to convey gratitude by savoring the vitality of the berries. But the strain of his presence was too much for her. Soon she began to gulp from the waterskin. A moment later, she scooped the fruit from his hand so that he would have no excuse to stay with her.

  He did not leave. He was Stave: he had declared his allegiance in spite of its extreme price.

  After a moment, she begged him to go. “Let me do this by myself. Please.” Her voice was little more than a croak. “I’m lost. Too many of us have died, and I’ve done too much killing. I’m like Jeremiah. I need to find my own way out.”

  She prayed that he would not speak. At first, he did not. Then he advised sternly, “Heed the Ranyhyn, Chosen. Their gifts are many. It may be that they are able to divine coming disturbances of Time, or to perceive Falls in the instant of their creation. If so, they will forewarn you.”

  After that, he was gone. With her health-sense, Linden watched him until she was sure that he had returned to the Giants and Mahrtiir. Then she finished her small meal, drank more water, and turned her attention to other things.

  She needed a response to despair that did not require her own death; and she could not think of a way to help Jeremiah.

  Fumbling, she searched around her for a stone that she could use: one with a raw edge or a jagged point.

  The sky overhead was a glittering loveliness of stars, profuse and forsaken. Covenant had gone to face Joan without her. She had no way of knowing what the Ranyhyn wanted from her—or for her. The Worm of the World’s End was coming to the Land. If the stars were sentient in any sense, their bereavement was too vast and irreducible for comprehension.

  Finally her fingers found a stone that suited her. It seemed sharp enough. It had a good point.

  She rolled up her left sleeve, studied the faint pallor of her skin. But her father had killed himself by cutting his wrists. After all these years, she still intended to refuse his legacy. Tugging at the fabric of her jeans, she worked one leg up to her knee.

  An answer to darkness. A way to control her despair so that she did not sink deeper.

  Hunched over herself, she gripped the stone and began scraping cuts into the sensitive flesh of her shin.

  That hurt. Of course it did. But the pain would also help her. As Berenford Memorial’s physician, she had worked with a number of cutters, self-mutilators. Cutting was a common symptom because it was so effective. Voluntary physical hurts suppressed helpless emotional anguish. Cutters damaged themselves so that the pain would calm them. It galvanized their few residual strengths. For some, it provided a relief as exquisite as joy.

  It might do the same for her.

  Using an edge and point as raw as the teeth of a saw, she tried to cut from memory the inadvertent pattern of the grass stains on her jeans into the human skin of her shin and calf.

  Perhaps she would have succeeded. She might have attained the whetted peace that she had witnessed in her patients. Given time, she might even have managed to replicate the mark of fecundity and long grass, the sign that she had paid the price of woe. But while she gasped at each kind, cruel gouge and tear, she realized suddenly that Hyn was standing over her.

  The mare was little more than a silhouette against the blighted horizons. The faint gleam of the star on her forehead was barely visible: her eyes were only dim suggestions. Still her presence shamed Linden.

  No cutter wanted to be watched. Being watched reversed the craved effects of the pain.

  Linden needed those effects. Nevertheless Hyn denied them.

  Groaning, Linden cast away her stone. Pulled down the leg of her jeans. Struggled to her feet. She wanted to swear at Hyn, but she had no curses left: none that were as bitter as her life.

  Now she could only hope that she had hurt herself enough to stay awake as long as her last companions needed her.

  As long as Joan lived and could hurl caesures—

  When the sun rose at last, it came in a brief blare of crimson, as if the horizon were occluded with dust or ash; omens. Then storms came tumbling over the region, and the light was gone.

  They seemed to arise from all directions at random, colliding with such force that their thunder made the ground tremble. Wind and rain slapped at Linden from one side and then the other, a turmoil of spats and downpours that changed more swiftly than she could gauge them. This was no natural battering boil of rains and gusts. Nor was it deliberate, driven by malice. Instead the conflict of squalls and deluges was the oblique consequence of too many Falls.

  Its turmoil felt like a presage.

  Now more than ever, she had to rely on the senses of the Ranyhyn. Wild modulations of violence confused her discernment. She would not be able to recognize a caesure until it was almost on top of her, if Hyn or the other horses did not give warning.

  When the company set out again, Linden rode wrapped in the ground-cloth that had covered the last of the Ardent’s bedrolls. It gave her a measure of protection, slowed the seepage of cold into her bones. But it did not block the erratic flick and cut of rain that stung her exposed cheeks, her open eyes.

  At her request, Stormpast Galesend had wrapped the blankets around Jeremiah. But the boy made no effort to hold them. He did not react to the smack of raindrops in thick gouts and thin spatters, the lash of shearing winds. Galesend was forced to walk at Khelen’s side so that she could replace Jeremiah’s coverings whenever they slipped from his shoulders.

  Perhaps he did not need them. Perhaps his bestowed strength warded him from cold and wet and wind. It had done so for Anele. Still Linden was glad that Galesend did what she could to shield the boy.

  Under the circumstances, Linden was not surprised to hear that Mahrtiir had lost Covenant’s trail. The Manethrall sounded angry at himself; but she wondered how even the most cunning and sighted of the Ramen could have identified hoof-marks on this sodden ground in this weather. In any case, she knew where Covenant was headed. And Clyme and Branl were with him: he would
not lose his way.

  Still the Ranyhyn refused to travel faster than the Giants could walk. As the storms closed around Linden, constricting her percipience, they inspired a kind of claustrophobia; and she could not resist asking Hyn for haste. But Hyn ignored her. Together the horses maintained a trot that felt as slow as plodding.

  Yet they were not tired. Linden could feel the ready power of Hyn’s muscles. And the Ranyhyn did not lack for provender. At irregular intervals, they continued to find patches of sufficient grass for themselves, huddled clumps of aliantha for their riders. When they did so, they did not resume their battered trek until both they and their riders had eaten. Stubbornly they allowed Covenant and the Humbled to run farther and farther ahead.

  Did they seek to diminish the likelihood that the company would be caught by a caesure? Linden did not know. Occasionally Narunal or Hynyn trumpeted a warning. At those times, however, she felt nothing except the moil and barrage of rain, the incessant to-and-fro of wind. Falls had apparently vanished from this region. Joan was concentrating her madness elsewhere, or she had exhausted her fury, or she was dead—or Linden was wrong. If the mounts were alert to some other peril, Linden could not detect it. Even when she used the Staff to extend her senses, she recognized no threat except the weather and her own frailty.

  What could the great horses fear under these conditions, if they were not endangered by caesures?

  Gradually the terrain changed. For a time, there were mounds, and eroded thrusts of rock like worn-out teeth, and drenched ridges. Then the ground became poured sheets of dark stone as smooth as recent lava. Later the stone gave way to a plain so featureless that it seemed to have been pounded flat. Later still, erosion gullies like cracks in the landscape’s flesh complicated the company’s path. Then came more hills arrayed in lines like barricades raised to force anyone advancing from the northwest to turn eastward.

  Doubtless the mounts and the Giants could have held to their course. Long millennia had softened the contours of the hills. Shaking their heads, however, and snorting in apparent disgust, the Ranyhyn allowed themselves to be deflected. For the first time, they began to travel more east than southeast.

  Toward Foul’s Creche? Linden had no idea.

  Late in the afternoon, the storms finally resolved their contention. The winds became a rough blast out of the west: the rains dwindled. Soon the clouds broke open behind the company, letting sunlight touch them for the first time since dawn. Thunderheads scudded along. In a rush, the sky cleared.

  But as Linden watched the clouds race away, she saw with a shudder that the revealed sky was not blue. Instead it had acquired a dun color tinged with grey like smoke as if the gales of an immense dust-storm had found untended flames somewhere on the Upper Land and fanned them into wildfires.

  Like the storms, the hues staining the air did not feel wrong or malevolent. Nonetheless they were palpably unnatural. The Upper Land was not a desert, or barren: it could not be lashed to produce so much dust. And the season was still spring. Its rains had been too plentiful to permit a conflagration on that scale.

  “Stave!” Linden cried. The wind tore his name from her mouth. “What is that?” Shivering, she gestured at the sky.

  At a word from Stave, Hynyn came to Hyn’s side. The former Master leaned closer to Linden.

  “Chosen, I know not. The Haruchai have no experience of such weather. In a distant age, the Bloodguard saw evils storm from the east, the handiwork of Corruption. But this is altogether unlike those blasts.”

  “You will observe, however,” called Rime Coldspray, “that these strange taints do not ride the wind! They spread from the east. In Bhrathairealm, such skies prevail upon occasion. They arise among the nameless theurgies of the Great Desert. Elsewhere we have not witnessed their like!”

  The Worm, Linden thought. Oh, God. Caesures had not filled the sky with dust and ash. Lethal forces of a different kind were starting to spread—

  The refusal of the Ranyhyn to hurry baffled her completely.

  Yet the horses were sensitive to the condition of their drenched riders and companions. Without warning, Narunal veered aside into a breach between the nearest hills, a gap like Bargas Slit or the crooked cut of a plow. When Hyn followed the others, Linden soon found herself in a scallop on one side of the breach; a hollow of comparative shelter formed by the wearing away of softer soil from the hill’s underlying rock. It resembled a scaur in miniature, barely wide and deep enough to hold Linden, Jeremiah, Stave, Mahrtiir, and eight Giants. Still it offered a degree of protection from the blast’s flail.

  The Manethrall dismounted; and at once, Narunal cantered away. Khelen did the same after Galesend lifted Jeremiah to the ground. Wearily Linden slipped off Hyn’s back. As her legs took her weight, neglected pain stabbed her shin. Unable to hide her reaction, she flinched.

  There was still too much wind, too much cold. Nevertheless she was reluctant to call fire from her Staff. She did not want to be reminded of flames as black and lamentable as the wood. And she did not want to announce the company’s location to any being capable of spotting her power. But she and Mahrtiir needed heat, even if their companions—and Jeremiah, perhaps—did not.

  Gritting her teeth so that they would not chatter, Linden summoned flames.

  They were as dark as she had feared: an impenetrable ebony like obsidian which had never seen the light of day. Apparently the change in her was permanent. She could do nothing clean.

  Nevertheless her fire was warm. Its effects remained benign: a tangible relief. Her chills receded in waves like a withdrawing tide. Around her, the Giants opened their arms to her blackness and smiled. After a moment, Mahrtiir’s manner rediscovered its familiar edge, its implied craving for struggle. Only Stave and Jeremiah seemed to derive no comfort from her gentle efforts.

  Ignoring her private revulsion, Linden sustained her exertion of Earthpower until every outward sign that her companions had suffered in the storms was eased. When she quenched her flames at last, she found that she, too, felt somewhat eased. Their benevolence was balm to her sore heart. The blackness was in her as it was in the wood, not in the magicks her Staff wielded. In spite of her sins and her despair, she had not tarnished the fundamental vitality of Earthpower and Law.

  Not yet—

  In any case, the armor of the Giants had absorbed a surprising amount of warmth. It radiated in the hollow, as affectionate as grins and jests. Disregarding the truncated winds, the sodden ground, the promise of a chilled night, Cabledarm and Onyx Stonemage began unpacking food and waterskins. Stormpast Galesend took Jeremiah’s steaming blankets, squeezed out as much water as she could, then draped them around him again.

  While Stave set out Linden’s ground-cloth so that she and a few others would have a dry place to sit, she asked him, “So where are we? How far have we come?”

  He appeared to consult his store of memories. “These hills have urged us away from Landsdrop toward Sarangrave Flat. I gauge that we rest some three leagues north of the promontory of the Colossus.”

  “How close are we to the Sarangrave? Are we in danger?”

  Why had Narunal and Hynyn whinnied so urgently during the day, when there were no caesures?

  Without hesitation, Stave answered, “I estimate the distance at less than a league. However, the Flat’s proximity poses scant peril. In this region, the wetland is extensive but shallow, little more than a marsh sporadically snared with quagmires. The lurker prefers the deeper mire within the heart of the Sarangrave, and in Lifeswallower. Its vast bulk and ferocity require more noisome waters.

  “It is conceivable,” he admitted impassively, “that the monstrous wight which the Ardent has named Horrim Carabal is cognizant of our presence. To the certain knowledge of the Haruchai, the lurker is avid to devour all Earthpower”—he paused to glance at Mahrtiir—“including that which the Ranyhyn possess. It may crave any form of theurgy. But its hungers do not respond swiftly. The lurker is fearsome and fatal, but first it is
slow, suggesting that its attention must be drawn to Earthpower from a considerable distance or depth.

  “Perhaps the lurker has noted your son’s passage. Perhaps it is able to discern the Ranyhyn. Perhaps it has sensed your use of the Staff. Nevertheless its reach is not known to extend beyond the bounds of the Sarangrave.”

  “I am content,” the Manethrall announced when Linden did not speak again. “The appetite of the lurker for the Ranyhyn is familiar to us. It elicits a distress among the great horses which other hazards do not. Plainly some alarm troubled them during the day. Yet no caesure appeared. Therefore I am inclined to believe that they were disturbed by the scent of the lurker.

  “Here, however, their spirits are resigned. For that reason, I likewise deem that there is no present peril.”

  “Then we will eat and rest while we may,” said the Ironhand. “Linden Giantfriend’s benisons have renewed our hearts. And no Giant born is fool enough to refuse viands and ease. Nor do we scorn slumber. Many are the storms through which we have slept, at sea and elsewhere. Indeed, Frostheart Grueburn did so in the toils of the Soulbiter”—she nudged her comrade while Latebirth, Halewhole Bluntfist, and Cirrus Kindwind chuckled—“though others aboard Dire’s Vessel remained watchful, chary of horrors. Guarded by the valor and vigilance of the Ranyhyn, we fear nothing.”

  Sighing, Coldspray sank down to sit in her warmed cataphract against the wall of the small space. Other Swordmainnir did the same. But Linden fretted over concerns that did not involve the lurker. The insistence of the Ranyhyn on taking the company farther into this region of wars and slaughter and evil appeared to confirm Stave’s guess that the horses were intent on satisfying her need for death. Hers, or Jeremiah’s.

  For her son’s sake, she prayed that the need was hers. Nevertheless she feared it. She was sick of killing, morally nauseated, and had no cure. Her leg did not hurt enough.

  God, she wished that Hyn had not interrupted her cutting. Shame was the wrong kind of pain.

  As twilight and then darkness thickened like murk over the Lower Land, Linden and her friends ate as much of their dwindling supplies as they could spare. Chewing on her lip, Linden drew more ebon fire from her Staff and used it to heat the stone of the scant shelter. Then the Giants stretched out as best they could. Gradually they drifted to sleep.