Against All Things Ending (20 page)

Linden herself had nothing to contribute.

Yet Mahrtiir emanated a grim eagerness in spite of his blindness and his Ramen fear of enclosure. In darkness, the loss of his eyes might have the effect of an advantage. And his fierce desire to participate in a tale worth remembering had not waned.

Bhapa doubted himself too much to share his Manethrall’s anticipation. Clearly, however, he found reassurance in Mahrtiir’s attitude. But Pahni’s fears for Liand were growing. She stood at his shoulder as though she ached to cast off her reserve and cling to him openly. Because she was Ramen and followed her Manethrall, she would face any hazard and fight to the end of her life. Still her concern for Liand outweighed any other apprehension.

I wish I could spare you
.
Hell, I wish any of us could spare you
.
But I can’t see any way around it
.

For himself, Liand did not share Pahni’s alarm. When Linden had allowed him to accompany her away from his life in Mithil Stonedown, she had opened the way for a discovery of both the Land and himself: a discovery that still thrilled him. Inadvertently she had cast a glamour over him which she distrusted and he did not. It had made him the first true Stonedownor since before the time of the Sunbane.

And he had new strengths now; strengths that might sustain him if or when Linden failed to justify his faith in her.

Beyond her more human friends, the Giants shared a measure of Mahrtiir’s grimness and excitement. Knowing the Earth as they did, they could probably imagine the dangers better than any Raman. Yet they treasured the tales that resulted from hazard and daring. And they loved stone: they did not fear to seek Jeremiah, or any fate, underground. Linden saw possibilities for joy in them that the Manethrall lacked.

Like the Humbled, Stave remained entirely himself: unreadable in his dedication to the absolute in any situation; his apparent rejection of all sorrow. But Anele grew increasingly impatient. Linden could not guess what prompted his restiveness, but it was evident in his tense shoulders and twitching fingers; in the way he jerked his head from side to side as if he were hearing a multitude of voices. His gaze, milky and sightless, darted from place to place as though he expected horrors to emerge from the sumptuous grass.

And Covenant, the man whom Linden had loved and lost, as she had loved and lost her son: he remained as alone as Jeremiah in spite of his physical presence. Indeed, he seemed immured under a mountain of mental or spiritual rubble. His efforts to extricate himself were palpable, so plain that Linden could almost follow their progress.

Huddling into himself, he talked inexplicably of a time when he and Lord Mhoram had stood looking down into Treacher’s Gorge while an army of Cavewights marched forth.

“So many of them,” he muttered. “Too many to count. Lord Foul used them whenever he wanted fodder for one of his wars. He spent thousands of them fighting Hile Troy. And thousands more against Revelstone. They’re intelligent enough to be used. They’re just not smart enough to recognize lies. They’re so good at killing, it’s easy to forget how badly they’ve been misled.

“Hell, they don’t
need
wars. The Wightwarrens have everything they want. They didn’t ask to be shock troops. Even poor Drool—His only real mistake was listening to Lord Foul. Everything after that was the Despiser’s doing.”

Covenant’s eyebrows were an arch of strain across his forehead. From time to time, he punched his bound fists against each other if he hoped that the pain would jolt him back into coherence. Dampness in his eyes suggested that he might weep. To Linden, he seemed altogether pitiable.

That was her doing. Hers.

And yet, somehow, he remained Thomas Covenant, the man who had twice defeated Lord Foul. The cut lines of his visage and the gauntness of his frame, even the potential tears in his eyes, did not imply frailty. Rather they conveyed an austere authority. He resembled a sovereign brought low, accustomed to command in spite of his ragged state. In the light of Liand’s Sunstone, his silver hair shone like an oriflamme, and the pale scar on his forehead gleamed like an anointment.

The bandages on his hands—cerise and incarnadine, opalescent and viridian—were grotesqueries that only emphasized his stature.

Linden’s eyes burned at the sight of him; at his suffering and his unextinguished spirit. Oh, he diminished her. That was his nature—or hers. Nonetheless his effect on her had shifted. His support against the Humbled made her ache to prove worthy of him. To win back whatever love she had lost during his immeasurable absence with the Arch of Time.

She trusted that he would respond when she needed him.

She was less confident of the Humbled. They had changed their minds once. They might do so again. But when she finally said to Stave, “Let’s go. I’ve kept us all waiting too long,” the three Masters began urging Covenant toward the Harrow.

Stoically Galt, Branl, and Clyme clung to their right to believe in themselves.
How otherwise will the Humbled redeem themselves in my sight?
Beyond question, they feared grief more than any peril. The Vizard had taught them too well. Being
Haruchai
, they did not know how to distinguish between sorrow and humiliation.

Summoning her resolve, Linden led her companions to dare the outcome of her last gamble.

“Are you done with hesitation, lady?” asked the Harrow acidly. “Even now, the Worm feeds. Ere long, its hunger will become a convulsion in the fundament of the Earth. Will you at last permit me to uphold our bargain?”

Linden stared into the black emptiness of his eyes as if she had become fearless. “Let’s be clear.” Her voice felt stiff in her throat, brittle and unwieldy. But it did not tremble. “You’ve already got what you wanted from me. Now you’re going to take us to my son. All of us. And you’re going to bring us all back when we’ve rescued him. You’re going to bring him with us.”

“I have said so,” the Harrow retorted. “I have vowed it. I will fulfill my oath.”

The Ardent nodded. “Allay your doubts, lady.” His anxiety had reclaimed him, quashing his complacent lisp. “The word of any Insequent is as necessary as breath. Knowledge is a strict treasure. It does not suffer falsehood. Should the Harrow fail to perform all that you have asked, all that he has gained will be reft from him. And”—the Ardent’s ribbands twisted like flinching—“I am present to aid the completion of his bargain.”

“All right.” Thoughts of Jeremiah compelled Linden. “Tell us what you need us to do.”

Immediately, vehement with eagerness, the Harrow commanded, “Stand near together. It will ease our passage if the Giants bear those who consent. The Ardent and I will combine our theurgies to preclude any misstep arising from your excess of companions.”

Linden glanced around at the Ramen and Liand. When she saw that they agreed, she looked to the Ironhand.

Mutely Coldspray gestured at her comrades. At once, Latebirth, Cabledarm, and Bluntfist lifted the Ramen into their arms. Stonemage picked up Liand and seated him on one of her massive forearms. While Galesend did the same for Anele, Frostheart Grueburn took Linden. Only Cirrus Kindwind, who had lost an arm against the
skurj
, and Coldspray herself were unencumbered as the Swordmainnir crowded into a cluster.

Stave stood beside Grueburn. The Humbled formed a knot around Covenant close to the Ironhand.

Linden felt wariness on all sides. In this formation, the Giants could not draw their weapons. Only the
Haruchai
would be able to react swiftly to a sudden threat. Nevertheless no one resisted the Harrow’s instructions.

He and the Ardent positioned themselves on opposite sides of the company. While the Harrow began to rub his beads in an elaborate pattern, muttering as his fingers skittered from place to place, the Ardent sent out bright streamers to enclose Linden and her companions. His ribbands spread far enough to touch the Harrow’s shoulders; but the Harrow ignored them.

Still muttering, he demanded, “Douse your magic, youth. It intrudes.”

Linden understood. The Sunstone was an instrument of Earthpower: it expressed Liand’s strength according to the strictures of Law. Clearly the Harrow intended to step outside such boundaries, as he did whenever he translated himself from one location to another.

For a moment, Liand considered the Harrow’s order. Then he shrugged and eased his grip on the
orcrest
, allowing its illumination to fade until the stone lay inert in his hand. But he did not return it to its pouch at his waist.

Lit only by the pinprick glittering of the stars, Linden and her companions waited, dark as shadows, for the Harrow to complete his preparations.

Linden held her breath. She was going to Jeremiah: she repeated that to herself again and again. Going to Jeremiah. After all this time: after so much struggle and inadequacy, so much bitter victory and expensive failure. Soon she would need to find the courage for what she would see, the
croyel
clinging to her son’s helpless back, chewing viciously on the side of his neck; filling her vacant boy with feral hate.

And she had to pray that at least one of her companions possessed the force necessary to make the monster
let go
—

Of its own will, the
croyel
would never allow her to hold Jeremiah in her arms. Never.

Leaning against Grueburn’s stone cataphract, Linden waited; tried to hope. She felt no power gather around her. Nothing more eldritch than Andelain itself seemed to inhabit the night. But she had never been able to sense the peculiar magicks of the Insequent. Like the Theomach’s and the Mahdoubt’s, the Harrow’s form of wizardry articulated itself in a dimension of reality or time which lay outside the reach of her perceptions.

She did not know that anything had happened until the stars, and the deeper night beneath the surrounding trees, and the Hills themselves vanished into utter darkness. Then heavy stone and cold closed over her—over all of her company—like the sealing of a tomb.

6.

Seek Deep Stone

Tightly guarded by the Humbled, Thomas Covenant was snatched out of recollections of Cavewights to find himself standing on the wrought span, long and narrow, that bridged the abyss between the imponderable gutrock of Mount Thunder and the portal of the Lost Deep.

The magicks of the Insequent and his fear for Linden had wrenched him out of his memories. It was possible that no one else understood how badly she could be hurt here.

He saw nothing. The darkness was absolute, encased by leagues of complex stone. He was probably days of tortuous ascents below the nearest caves and tunnels of the Wightwarrens. Nonetheless he had no impression of the terrible chasm that stretched beneath his feet: he could hardly taste the ancient dust in the stagnant, dying air. The cold had not reached him yet. He was numb with leprosy, and had no health-sense to identify his circumstances.

Nevertheless the pervasive brume of Kevin’s Dirt was stifling. He was dangerously close to its source; to the living bane that Kastenessen and Esmer and
moksha
Raver had tapped or harnessed in order to generate the fug which hampered the Staff of Law.

So near that unanswerable evil, Linden and Liand and the Ramen were surely as truncated, as blind and nearly insensate, as he was. Anele’s heritage of Earthpower might preserve him; but even the percipience of the
Haruchai
and the Giants was likely to fail. In moments, every one of Linden’s companions would be effectively as eyeless as Mahrtiir, as deaf as seas, as unresponsive to touch as bluff rock.

Unaware of the danger—

The absence of light was so complete that the stubborn granite in every direction could no longer recall illumination.

Yet Covenant knew exactly where he was. Of course he did. From the perspective of the Arch, his spirit had visited this place too often to be mistaken. Scant hours ago, he had been painfully familiar with the Lost Deep—and with the fragile reach of stone which provided its only access to or from the outer world. Remembering it now, he remembered also that even the Harrow in his avarice had never passed beyond this span. The Insequent’s claim that he knew where to find Linden’s son was based, not on direct observation, but on other forms of knowledge.

By increments, a dull ache invaded Covenant’s chest. The sensation inspired a kind of panic. Perhaps the source of Kevin’s Dirt had already noticed the intrusion of the Staff of Law and white gold, of
orcrest
and Loric’s
krill
, if not the presence of Giants and
Haruchai
and ordinary humans. But he was human himself now. After a moment, he realized that what he felt was oxygen deprivation, not the dire approach of hate. The icy air was too old to sustain him: he was beginning to suffocate.

No one spoke. No one had spoken. The entire company seemed paralyzed, held motionless by shock or terror. By darkness or cold or anoxia. But then Anele began coughing—and the Giants shifted slightly, making room for the Humbled—and a far more immediate alarm seized Covenant.

“Don’t move!” he wheezed urgently. “Don’t anyone move.”

He wanted to say more. Hellfire! Don’t you know where we
are
? But a spasm of coughing closed his throat. Every effort to breathe filled his lungs with dust.

The span was narrow. Anyone who fell would plunge long enough to wish for death before the end.

Linden? he tried to call out; tried and could not. He had not coughed for millennia. Freed from the necessities of muscles and irritated tissues, he had forgotten how to manage them. Coughing wracked him until his mind spun as if he had been stricken with vertigo.

Then he heard Linden’s voice. “Liand,” she gasped: a severe effort. “
Orcrest
.”

For a time that felt interminable, nothing happened. Liand must have been overwhelmed by the suddenness with which he had lost his health-sense; or by simple darkness and alarm. And no one aided him. Blinded, they did not know how.

The Harrow should have taken action. This was
his
doing. But perhaps he was content to let his companions—his victims—fall. He had not vowed to defend them from the dangers of this journey. Under the circumstances, the prospect of being rid of Linden and her friends probably pleased him.

He had no experience with Linden’s Staff.

In that case, the Ardent—

Damnation, it was cold. Covenant felt a kind of astonished fury at his inability to stop coughing; to open his throat and draw breath and speak. What was the good of his resurrection if he could not control his own body?

The Ardent feared
the deep places of the Earth
. With ample reason.

One or more of the Ramen retched for air. The Giants moved cautiously away from each other in spite of Covenant’s warning. They did not fear cold or darkness or old stone: they may have wanted a little space in which to clear their lungs. Or perhaps they sought room to protect the people they carried.

“Heed the Unbeliever,” Stave said as if mere suffocation and sightlessness and chill could not impinge upon him. “Stonedownor, heed the Chosen.”

The Giants stopped. Liand made a hoarse sound. Somewhere in the darkness, he struggled to regain his concentration.

Gradually light began to emerge from the young man’s right fist.

By slow degrees at first, the glow swelled. Benighted and heavy, the bulk of the Swordmainnir took shape. The Humbled appeared around Covenant as though they had condensed from the thinner substance of shadows. Linden leaned, panting, on Grueburn’s breastplate. Held by Galesend, Anele had covered his face with his hands in terror.

Then Liand grew stronger. The ramifications of exerted Earthpower purified the air around him, enabling him to breathe more easily.

In a rush, radiance burst out to contradict the dark.

A strangled cry came from Liand. The Ironhand barked, “Stone and Sea!” Her comrades hissed imprecations and oaths. “Oh, God,” Linden repeated like a wail, “oh, God,” but softly, softly, as if she feared the sound of her own voice.

Cold echoes mocked every word.

Like Liand, the rest of the company began to inhale better air. They grew stronger; strong enough to recognize the extremity of their situation.

Covenant and four
Haruchai
and eight Giants stood near the apex of the bridge, facing their destination. Ahead of them, the Harrow still muttered incantations or invocations. At the rear of the company, the Ardent gagged on protests that choked him. He had withdrawn his ribbands; wrapped them like a form of armor around his corpulence.

Beneath their feet, the smooth span of the bridge traced a shallow arc upward and then down toward the portal of the Lost Deep: a high, arched entryway with nothing beyond it except an impermeable black, a darkness which the Sunstone could not pierce. A host could have entered there, or issued forth; but here the stone was no more than two Giants’ paces wide. It looked too fragile to hold so much weight.

Across this stone, the Viles had left their elaborate demesne in order to measure their lore against the wider world; and so they had learned doubt and then loathing and then doom.

They had not been burdened by flesh. Their makings, the Demondim, had seldom troubled to inhabit bodies. And with the exception of their loremasters, the ur-viles that had once labored in the loreworks were hands shorter than Covenant; more slight than even Pahni. The Waynhim were smaller still. None of them had needed a sturdy bridge.

But the white shining of Liand’s Sunstone reached farther. In spite of his dismay, he extended light into a vast space that made the figures on the bridge seem tiny by comparison.

Overhead a crude dome formed the ceiling of an immense cavern. From the gutrock depended a number of tapering stalactites massive as towers, knaggy as gnarled wood. They glistened with moisture. Among them, spangles of quartz and other crystals cast giddy reflections, as elusive as wheeling stars. None of the stalactites hung directly over the bridge. Yet they looked so ponderous that the mere wind of their passing if they fell might crack the span.

From their tips, streams of water trickled downward, pulling Covenant’s gaze with them.

Downward.

Downward.

Into an abyss that seemed to have no bottom. If those delicate rivulets struck rock somewhere far below the bridge, their plash was too distant to be audible.

The depths called to Covenant. Dizziness clutched at his stomach; his head. Involuntarily he stumbled. Galt’s hands gripped his arms like iron bands, but he did not feel them. Everyone around him seemed to recede until they were beyond reach; unable to aid him. Coldspray rasped questions that had no meaning. His mind whirled, sucking away its own substance.

His spirit had forgotten vertigo: his flesh had not. It urged him to pitch himself into the chasm; to satisfy this whirlpool of nausea by falling and falling like the water, endlessly, until his body redeemed itself in the depths.

If Galt had given him a chance—

“No,” the Ardent wheezed, straining for air. “I cannot. The Harrow has misled himself.” Fright ached in his voice. “The span is warded.
We must not fall!
”

Like a mirage of himself, the Insequent fled toward the safer rock of Mount Thunder’s roots, away from the portal.

“Withdraw,” Coldspray commanded through her teeth. “Follow the Ardent. Now. With care. This stone is seamed with age, ancient beyond reckoning. Our weight may surpass its endurance.”

The sound of her voice seemed to spread cracks through the rock, flaws like the fissures that riddled Covenant’s thoughts. He imagined bits of granite breaking off from the edges of the span, following threads of moisture down to their eternal end. The bridge had begun to fail. Or it would fail. Vertigo reduced his friable balance, his human awareness, to rubble.

“No,” countered Clyme. “The Harrow will forsake us, as the Ardent has done. This mad endeavor will accomplish only ruin if we permit the holder of Staff and ring to precede us.”

“He won’t,” Linden groaned urgently. “He promised. He’s going to take us to Jeremiah. And bring us back. If he doesn’t, he’ll destroy himself.”

Her voice created an eyot of sanity in Covenant’s reeling mind. Uncounted millennia ago, he had been familiar with vertigo. Occasionally he had been able to manage it. And Linden was right, of course she was. In addition, the Harrow—Like another piece of sanity, Covenant remembered that the Harrow had never opened the portal. Perhaps he did not know how.

Or how to use the Staff of Law.

He did not care about Linden’s pain.

The bridge was a way in; but it was also a snare. A defense. Protected. If the Harrow erred, he would shatter the span.

“
Now
,” insisted Rime Coldspray. “We will consider other choices when we have attained more trustworthy rock.”

Without waiting for the assent of the Humbled, she began to descend the bridge, stepping as gently as her size permitted.

At once, Frostheart Grueburn followed with Linden.

“Bring Covenant!” Linden ordered; pleaded. She must have been speaking to the Humbled. The rest of the Swordmainnir had already shifted their feet, readying themselves to obey Coldspray one at a time.

Chunks of stone still crumbled and fell from the rims of the span; but now Covenant understood that he was imagining them.

“Faugh!” spat the Harrow. “The Ardent’s alarm does not surprise me. Selecting him, the Insequent have betrayed themselves. But I did not foresee cowardice in those who name themselves the lady’s friends. I will summon you when I have secured the safety of your passage.”

Muttering again, he crossed the crest of the span like a man who had come too far to remember fear.

Past the edges of the stone, the abyss called to Covenant; sang to him like the siren lure of the
merewives
. But Galt did not release him. Branl and Clyme stood on either side as if to prevent him from breaking away; as if he had ever been strong enough to resist the
Haruchai
.

He continued to resist the whirl in his head. Arduously he gathered scraps of sanity from the inadequate air, accreting them like shards of iron to a magnet. Liand’s blazing Sunstone cleansed the atmosphere to some extent, dispelling increments of depletion and staleness; but it was not enough. Covenant’s dizziness was old and obdurate—and he had not re-learned the limitations of his carnal life. He had to fight for every shred of self-mastery.

His plight recalled the descent from Kevin’s Watch. Foamfollower had carried him once; but twice he had accomplished that feat by force of will. And the Harrow had never opened the portal to the Lost Deep. Wild magic would betray him there. He would need the Staff of Law. And cunning. And subtlety. Even though he had not had time to learn the Staff’s uses.

The portal was the reason. It explained why the Harrow had transported everyone
here
, instead of directly to Jeremiah. The defenses which the Viles had woven for their demesne were complex and duplicitous. If he did not enter the Lost Deep correctly, the entire subterranean realm might collapse. Or he and everyone with him might be slain in some more oblique and cruel fashion.