Against All Things Ending

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Since days before the Earth was old

  And Time began its walk to doom,

  The Forests world’s bare rock anneal,

  Forbidding dusty waste and death.

  I am the Land’s Creator’s hold:

  I inhale all expiring breath,

  And breathe out life to bind and heal.

  Unseen within the Arch, unknown to the Forestals, Covenant had often stood witness to this scene. He loved it with his whole heart.

  Caerroil Wildwood was here, and Cav-Morin Fernhold. Dhorehold of the Dark. One who was called the Magister of Andelain; and another who named himself Syr Embattled, doing what he could to defend Giant Woods. Others. All of them. In their times, they had been the exigent guardians of everything precious in the Land: precious and doomed. Here they were wreathed in music and magic, the poignant, potent sorrow of their striving to slow the ineluctable murder of trees.

  Yet something about the scene troubled Covenant: something that was not woe or regret or ire. He was surely entranced; but he was also disturbed. In some fashion that he did not know how to identify, the conclave of the Forestals was not as he remembered it. It had become flat: too superficial to be true. It resembled a masque performed by smaller beings, accurate in every detail, yet somehow less than it should have been.

  If the trees and the glade and the Forestals had been anything other than a memory, Covenant might have concluded that he had lost his health-sense. He could not see in, and so he could not truly see at all.

  Joan was too strong for him. Turiya Herem was too strong. If they did not kill him, he would never survive the tsunami.

  Linden might hang on for a few more days. Then she, too, would perish.

  He had abandoned her as though he had never loved her.

  Without warning, the Forestals began to transgress his recollection of them.

  Together they sang, “Only rock and wood know the truth of the Earth. The truth of life.”

  “But wood is too brief,” Dhorehold of the Dark intoned. “All vastness is forgotten.”

  “Unsustained,” answered Andelain’s Magister, “wood cannot remember the lore of the Colossus, the necessary forbidding of evils—”

  “There is too much,” the Forestals agreed as one. “Power and peril. Malevolence. Ruin.”

  “And too little time,” added Syr Embattled. “The last days of the Land are counted. Without forbidding, there is too little time.”

  Like an antiphonal response, the Forestals chanted, “Become as trees, the roots of trees. Seek deep rock.”

  No! Covenant protested. He felt abruptly wounded; pierced to the soul. No. This isn’t what happened. This isn’t what I heard.

  While the last notes of their litany faded among the trees, Cav-Morin Fernhold walked away from his comrades to look directly at Covenant.

  Directly at Covenant.

  Who was not there.

  “Timewarden,” Cav-Morin mused in a melody that wrenched at Covenant’s bones, “this is false.” He had always been Covenant’s favorite among his kind: a gentler spirit who knew when to condone human intrusion even though he did not know why he should do so. In his own way, he had loved the Ranyhyn as much as the Ramen did. “Your presence is false. Can you not discern this?

  “Your time lies beyond our ken. You are needed then, not here. You are loved then, not here.

  “There must be forbidding. The end must be opposed by the truths of stone and wood, of orcrest and refusal.”

  With those words, he turned his back. Wearing sunshine like song and glory, he went to rejoin the other Forestals.

  His counsel lit recognition like tinder in Covenant’s veins.

  Suddenly Covenant was full of fire. His nerves burned. His muscles blazed. His heart hammered in his damaged chest. All of his senses opened, and he could smell—

  Oh, God.

  Smell? Damnation! He could practically taste Herem Kinslaughterer’s evil. It was everywhere around him, everywhere: hidden behind every tree, lurking under every leaf, twisting like mockery and malice around every bough. Concealed by sunlight, it boiled and chuckled, delighted with its own cunning.

  This was turiya’s doing, this corruption of the remembered past. He had sent Covenant here to distract him until Joan recovered her failing strength; until she was ready to scatter the instants of his life like dust over the seafloor. But the Raver’s power showed through the veil of Covenant’s recall.

  Still the ploy had succeeded. Turiya Herem had chosen a memory that Covenant adored. Covenant could have remembered this scene happily until he died. He loved it and the Forestals too much to trust his own discomfort.

  Or the ploy would have succeeded. Perhaps it should have. But the Raver had made a mistake. He had underestimated the sheer might and melody of the Forestals. He had not considered that they might be able to detect his influence; that they might sing against it, opening Covenant’s perceptions.

  Now Covenant burned with his own fire and abhorrence; his own storm of refusal. And somewhere long ages in the future, millennia after the last Forestal had surrendered his life, Covenant’s maimed hands still held the krill.

  The krill was life. It was the instrument of his resurrection, as it was of Hollian’s before him. And Joan had increased its magicks. Covenant could use it. With wild magic, he could reclaim his heritage.

  For centuries, his spirit had extended throughout the Arch of Time. Now he had been severed from it. He would never wield its forces again. But he could understand them. He could grasp the nature and implications of Joan’s theurgy. He could call upon them indirectly.

  Loric’s dagger made that possible. You are the white gold. It enabled him to burn as if he wore a wedding band that matched his ex-wife’s.

  And if he could burn, he could return to the krill. To the moment when he still gripped the krill. No memory had the power to hold him back.

  Bleeding from more wounds than he could count, Covenant found the path that led toward his present self. At once, he began to work his way along it. And while he arose from the Earth’s past, he fused fissures behind him. He closed cracks. Rife with silver fire, he healed breaks until all of them were mended.

  Deliberately he annealed fragments of his former being, rendering them inaccessible so that he could be whole.

  Like an astral spirit done with wandering, Thomas Covenant reentered his body in front of Joan.

  He stood unsteadily among rocks and pools under a night sky as gravid and heavy as the stone of a tomb. The only light came from Loric’s blade: it may have been the only light left in the world. In the gem’s argent, the seafloor looked garish, ghostly: a nightscape illuminated by lightning or phosphorescence. Clyme and Branl remained on either side of him; but now they resembled shadows of themselves, tenuous as spectres or dreams, as though they inhabited a dimension of existence which he could scarcely perceive. When he completed his reality, they would be gone, lost among the effects of Joan’s madness.

  In the sequences of her life, he had not been absent for more than a few moments: that was obvious. She had not moved. Apart from the uncertain clutch of her fist on her ring, and the tremulous shudder of her breathing, and the pitiless drip of blood down her face, she might have been a corpse so meagerly loved that it had been denied sepulture. Her dulled gaze hardly seemed capable of noticing him.

  But then the Raver gave fuel to a spark of awareness within her. Her eyes caught reflections from the krill: they rediscovered rage.

  Shaking at the force of turiya Herem’s hate, and of her own repudiation, she readied her arm.

  Covenant was still ten paces from her. And he, too, was weak; badly hurt. Blood soaked his torn clothes: they felt like bandages applied in haste. He was barely able to remain on his feet and hold the dagger. He could not reach her quickly enough to interrupt her blow.

  In another moment, another instant, she would hit herself again. Then he would die.

  Gasping against the pain in his chest, he shouted, “J
oan!” His own gambit of distraction. “Don’t do this!

  “One of us has to die. One of us has to live. You know that! You know why. And I think you’ve already suffered too much.

  “Joan, please! Let me live!”

  She heard him. She must have: she paused. Reflections accumulated in her eyes, a wild glare of madness. Her body stiffened as though she feared that he would rape her.

  Her reply was a scream that clawed its way out of her taut throat.

  “Leper!”

  Straining, she lifted her arm; clenched her fist.

  Ah, hell, Covenant groaned in silence.

  He could not use his hands. He needed them to grip the krill. It was his only conceivable defense. But it was not enough. His life and will and even his love seemed to leak out of him from too many injuries. Tottering on the cluttered seabed, he was too drained to do anything except bare his teeth. And the Humbled could not help him. They had already given him the pure gift of their support. They were not substantial here.

  Yet he was not dead. And betimes some wonder is wrought to redeem us.

  With all of the air that he could force from his rent chest, he made a thin whistling sound through his teeth.

  Then he waited for death or life.

  Any delay would have been fatal; but he was answered instantly. Somewhere behind him, two Ranyhyn trumpeted defiance into the night.

  When he heard Mhornym and Naybahn, he secured his grasp on the krill and mustered his resolve.

  Joan heard them as well. She heard horses. Holding her arm poised, she looked away from Covenant.

  A moment later, her face crumpled. Her fury vanished. Even her insanity seemed to vanish. Tears welled in her eyes: they spilled into the blood on her cheek and mouth. Her fist dropped.

  While turiya Kinslaughterer spat and gibbered within her, she opened her arms to welcome Mhornym and Naybahn.

  Careless and quick among the stones and reefs, the shivering pools, the Ranyhyn cantered toward her. As they ran, they neighed again: a kinder call now fretted with compassion and sorrow. Together they came near as if they were eager for her embrace.

  On their foreheads, their stars shone like echoes of Loric’s eldritch gem; instances of salvation.

  Covenant did not hesitate. He would not be able to stay on his feet much longer. He had to act—

  In spite of his peril, he sacrificed a moment for the Humbled. Swinging the krill, he slapped at Clyme’s chest with the flat of the blade. He did the same to Branl. Needy as a supplicant, he touched both of them with the inferred possibilities of wild magic.

  A heartbeat later, he lurched into motion, stumbling toward Joan.

  The Raver tried to warn her. He howled for her attention; roared to break the enchantment of horses. But in her that magic was older than his mastery: much older. It endured like bedrock beneath the rubble of her madness. Rapt in the face of her one remaining love, she waited with her arms wide while Covenant struggled to reach her.

  Five wracked steps. Six.

  God help me. Be merciful to me, for I have sinned.

  Moments before the Ranyhyn came near enough to take his burden from him, Thomas Covenant gave Joan the only gift that he had left. Nearly falling, he slid his blade into the center of her chest.

  With High Lord Loric’s krill, he accepted her guilt and set her free. Then he plunged to his knees.

  As she died, he heard Mhornym and Naybahn cry lamentation into the night.

  Later Covenant realized that Branl and Clyme were still with him. Wild magic and Joan’s death had removed them from the caesure before the Arch healed itself, locking them out of their proper time forever.

  And the Ranyhyn were still with him. Killing Joan, he had spared them the necessity of striking down a woman who loved them. Because he was capable of such things, they feared him—and would remain faithful to the end.

  Turiya Herem was gone. Covenant did not imagine that he had slain the Raver. Doubtless the krill could have killed Lord Foul’s servant, if turiya had continued to possess Joan. However, the Raver had not done so. He had discarded her like a useless husk, seeking some new being or creature to inhabit.

  But Covenant did not think about turiya, or about the Ranyhyn, or about the improbable survival of the Humbled. He hardly thought at all. Stunned in the aftermath of delivering death, he was not aware that he had dropped the krill; or that Branl had retrieved it; or that the dagger’s gem was dark, deprived of wild magic and light. Covenant was only grateful that he was not alone.

  He had never been able to bear his crimes in isolation. Without friends and companions and love steadfast beyond his worth, he would have failed long ago.

  When Clyme or Branl spoke, he did not hear. He had no room for words. Instead he crawled forward, seeping blood, until he reached Joan. Her arms were still outstretched; still waiting for horses. Her right fist still held her wedding band.

  With as much gentleness as he could summon, he peeled back her fingers until he was able to claim her ring.

  For a long moment, he peered at it as if it were a mere trinket; something to be tossed aside when it had served its purpose. But finally he accepted it as well. Looping the chain over his head, he hung her ring against his sternum: one of the few bones in his chest that did not feel cracked or broken.

  Only then did he begin to listen.

  “Ur-Lord,” Clyme or Branl was saying, “we must flee. The tsunami comes.” One of them added, “We cannot bear you to safety. We are not swift enough. You must consent to ride.”

  After a while, Covenant found that he had room for one word.

  “Never.”

  If he accomplished nothing else that would serve as restitution, he was going to by God keep his promise to the Ranyhyn.

  The Humbled did not object or argue. They did not waste time. Quickly they mounted their Ranyhyn. Then they leaned down to Covenant, one on each side of him, grasped him by his arms near his shoulders, and lifted him into the air between them.

  Mhornym and Naybahn needed no urging to run. In perfect step an exact distance apart, they wheeled away and sprang into a gallop, racing toward their only conceivable salvation: the riven cliffs where Foul’s Creche had once stood high above the sea.

  Hanging helpless while his arms wept with pain, and fragments of bone ground against each other in his chest, Covenant heard it now, the unfathomable rumble of the tidal-wave. He felt tremors like incipient spasms in the seafloor, even though the horses were sure of their footing, and the hands of the Humbled were as reliable as iron. If he could have looked behind him, he might have seen havoc looming against the bleak stars, the fragile heavens—

  He did not try to look. He paid no attention to the littleness of the Ranyhyn against the imponderable force of a tsunami. He trusted them absolutely, and had no strength left for fear.

  The rumble became thunder, an upheaval as vast as the Worm’s movement through the sea. It blotted out the world at his back, making every mortal effort vain. To strive against all things ending was simple vanity, valiant and futile. Like the Worm, the tsunami exceeded living comprehension. It could be neither accepted nor opposed. It required a different answer.

  Nevertheless the Ranyhyn ran like figures in dreams, swift as yearning, slow as hopelessness. Their febrile rush tore at Covenant’s arms, but they would never reach the cliffs.

  Then they had already done so. At the verge of a great fan of rubble that piled massively toward the heights of the promontory, Naybahn and Mhornym pounded to a halt.

  Somehow Clyme and Branl dismounted without dropping Covenant; without dislocating his shoulders. At once, Clyme swept Covenant into his arms. As he sprang at the rising wreckage, he told Covenant, “Here we are quicker than Ranyhyn. There is no path. They must ascend with care. If fortune smiles upon them, they may yet survive the onslaught of waters. But we require greater haste.”

  Covenant did not hear him. The roar of the tidal-wave smothered sound. It smothered thought. The tsunami was a moun
tain-range of water mounting against the Land. It would hit like the earthquake which had riven Melenkurion Skyweir. Its violence might resemble the convulsion which had severed the whole of the Lower Land from the Upper. The Ranyhyn would be smashed to pulp in an instant. Covenant and the Humbled would die in the first impact of the wave.

  During the past few days, many regions of the Earth must have suffered similar catastrophes: shocks brutal enough to crush islands, maim continents. Now the Worm was feeding its way toward the Land at last.

  Useless in Clyme’s arms, Covenant tried to say, “Thank you.” Just in case. But his voice made no sound that could be heard through the onset of mountains.

  Supernally fleet, the Humbled bounded upward. Covenant tried to sense the progress of the struggling Ranyhyn, but the tsunami filled every nerve, every perception. It felt higher than the cliffs; higher than the unattainable obstruction of the Shattered Hills. It might flood the Lower Land as far as Landsdrop. Unable to discern the horses, he simply prayed that Linden and her companions would receive enough warning—

  Then the Humbled were not leaping up rocks, not hurling themselves at unassailable boulders. Instead they ran from crest to crest across the foundation-stones of Foul’s Creche. The rubble still climbed toward the comparative flat of the promontory, but more gradually here, allowing them to increase their speed.

  Covenant should have been able to remember this place. He should have known how far he and the Humbled were from cooled Hotash Slay and the Shattered Hills. He had not cut himself off from the memories which belonged to his former mortal life. But he was too weak now. He had lost too much blood; had too many broken bones. He had killed Joan. Even his most human recollections were effaced by the impending mass of the tidal-wave.

  When the Humbled stopped—when they turned to watch the wavefront—he did not understand why. A moment passed before he realized that they stood on old lava at the western boundary of the promontory. He gaped at the dark bulk of the Shattered Hills only a few dozen paces away, and could not comprehend what he saw.