Against All Things Ending (75 page)

Not for the first time, he appeared reluctant to take command in her presence.

All of the Demondim-spawn had fallen silent. The Giants gathered more closely around Linden, Covenant, and the loremaster. Torn between diffidence and a desire for comprehension, Bhapa joined them. But Pahni stayed with Jeremiah. As if she had no interest or purpose in life except to carry out assigned tasks, she busied herself feeding the boy as long as he was willing to chew and swallow.

Pressed by Covenant’s gaze, Linden asked the first question that came to her.

“How did they know?”

Grueburn cocked her head quizzically. “It may be, Linden Giantfriend, that the creatures comprehend you. Alas, I do not.”

Linden dragged a hand through her hair. She wanted to slap herself, sting a measure of acuity into her thoughts.

“Esmer said that they forged their manacles in the Lost Deep. They must have done it thousands of years ago. He saved the last of them—but they were ready for him. How did they know that they were going to need those manacles? How did they know that he would even exist?” If she understood what Esmer had told her, he had urged the creatures to accompany him before the time of his own birth. “How did they know what he would be like, or what he would do, or how he could be stopped?”

At once, the loremaster began to bark a lengthy response. Scrambling to keep up, Grueburn attempted a simultaneous translation.

“These are matters of lore. They cannot be contained by your speech. We labored in the Lost Deep, where the Snared One could not discover us, for our presence was masked by the hunger and somnolence of the nameless bane. Thus we were not taken by the purge which destroyed all others of our kind. In our fashion, we witnessed the Snared One’s defeat, and the union of the
Haruchai
with those beings whom you name
merewives
, and the first stirrings of the mad
Elohim
’s struggle to escape his Durance. From these gravid portents, we inferred what must follow. We could not be certain of it, just as we could not be certain when we created Vain to serve against the Snared One. But we saw—”

Abruptly Grueburn winced in frustration. “Loremaster, I cry your pardon. You speak in concepts beyond my grasp.”

The Waynhim replied with low growls and snarls as if they were making suggestions. But the Giants shook their heads in bewilderment, and the grey Demondim-spawn fell silent.

Abandoning literal translation, Frostheart Grueburn endeavored to paraphrase instead.

“Linden Giantfriend, the ur-viles saw
possibilities
. I have no better language. They saw possibilities and prepared themselves.

“However, the loremaster states plainly that they did not foreknow Esmer’s coming to bear them across the millennia. But they do not age and die as we do, and they conceived themselves secure in the Lost Deep. It was their intent to simply wait out the centuries until possibilities became certainties, or proved to be chimeras. In the forgotten caverns beneath Gravin Threndor, and in their loreworks, they had much to occupy them.

“Yet when Esmer appeared, they
knew
him. Again the word is not adequate to their meaning. They saw possibilities made flesh. Therefore they consented to accompany him, perceiving that his nature might one day require the constraint of their manacles.”

Increasingly stymied by unfamiliar rationales, Grueburn betrayed a surge of agitation. “Here also,” she continued, hurrying, “the loremaster states plainly that the ur-viles did not foreknow events. They merely—”

She stopped short. As if to herself, she protested, “Stone and Sea! I am a Giant, am I not? How does it transpire that I have no sufficient speech?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Covenant murmured gruffly. “You’re doing fine.” And Halewhole Bluntfist added, “We are not
Elohim
, Grueburn. That we are not more than Giants does not imply that we are therefore less.”

Clenching her fists, Grueburn swallowed her vexation. Uncomfortably she finished, “They merely followed the path of possibilities, and awaited culmination.”

The loremaster may have been satisfied. It made no effort to explain further.

Possibilities? Linden thought. That’s
all
? Her own mind and experiences were alien to those of the ur-viles and Waynhim; too alien. Their thoughts were like Caerroil Wildwood’s runes: they surpassed her ability to interpret them.

Covenant watched her with a complex intensity in his eyes; but he did not interject his own questions.

All right, she told herself. All right. It is what it is. One step at a time.

Studying the stark ebony and eyelessness of the loremaster’s visage, she asked, “So what changed? For a long time, they served Lord Foul. Then they didn’t. They started working against him instead.” Something had inspired them to redefine their Weird. “Why did they do that?”

The loremaster responded with a string of sounds like harsh choking. But this time Grueburn seemed more at ease with the creature’s reply.

“Two—insights? recognitions?—caused them to reexamine the import of their Weird. The first is this.

“They were drawn to the Snared One’s service by promises of fulfillment. When his designs were accomplished, he assured them, they would achieve every aspiration, and the strictures of their Weird would be appeased. Like him, they would perceive themselves as gods, far greater in form and substance and lore and worth than the Demondim, their makers. For this, they strove in his name.”

Through the low mutter of barking and growls from the Waynhim and several of the ur-viles, Frostheart Grueburn’s voice carried more strongly. The creatures may have been encouraging her.

“By increments, however, they became acquainted—how could they not?—with his insatiable contempt for all beings other than himself. They deemed themselves the foremost of his servants, mightier and more necessary than even the Ravers, for the Ravers required stolen forms and did not honor the vast lore of the Demondim. Still less did the Ravers esteem the spanning knowledge and theurgies of the siring Viles. Also the enslavement of the Ravers was such that they had lost themselves. They had grown incapable of any clear aspiration not commanded by their lord. And the ur-viles were many, the Ravers few. Surely, therefore, the ur-viles were the most prized of the Snared One’s adherents.

“Yet they were not. Rather they were despised. Indeed, his contempt for them seemed as unfathomable as the deepest secrets of the Earth. And no promises were kept. At last, they saw that his contempt exceeded their self-loathing. Thus they became disposed to turn aside from their service.”

Urged by soft calls and snarls, Grueburn added, “Yet to turn aside is also to turn toward, and they lacked any new purpose, any new vision of their Weird, toward which they might turn.”

There she paused, apparently trying to follow the strands of the loremaster’s involuted speech.

As if to prompt her, Covenant remarked, “That’s where the Waynhim came in. That was their real gift to the Land. A different interpretation.”

“Aye,” Grueburn assented as the loremaster barked. “You speak of the second insight or recognition which guided the ur-viles to their present course.

“In the unyielding opposition of their smaller, weaker, and fewer kindred, they discerned strength of a kind which lay beyond their emulation. It was neither lore nor puissance. But it may have been wisdom, and it surpassed them.”

Sadly Grueburn admitted, “Mere
wisdom
is too small to suggest the scale of the loremaster’s meaning. The creature implies a discernment of the underlying nature of existence. However, the pith of the matter is this. The Waynhim no longer loathed their own forms. They had surrendered that self-disgust, or they had transcended it. They were impelled to the Land’s service by—I have no more fitting word—by love. They were driven, not by abhorrence, but by affirmation.”

Again the Swordmain paused, wrestling with ramifications. Several of her comrades seemed to want to help her, but they kept their ideas to themselves.

After a moment, Grueburn sighed like an admission of defeat. “This,” she resumed, “the ur-viles did not comprehend. They could not. Yet they saw that there was no ire in the opposition of the Waynhim. Again I lack needful language. The Waynhim fought, and were overwhelmed, and perished—and felt neither rage nor protest. Rather they comported themselves as though their service alone sufficed to vindicate their interpretation of their Weird. To both vindicate and achieve it.

“Though the ur-viles did not comprehend, they recognized that their own service to the Snared One offered no such reward. They were given promises, and they were sacrificed, but they were denied the calm certainty of the Waynhim. Thus they were led to the arcane study of possibilities. And when those possibilities were confirmed in Vain—in Linden Giantfriend’s Staff of Law, and in Covenant Timewarden’s transubstantiation—these ur-viles now among us pursued their study further.”

As the loremaster’s answer ended, Linden saw Covenant watching her sidelong. He appeared to be biding his time, as if he hoped that she would eventually ask a different question.

Perhaps he wished her to seek guidance. If so, he was going to be disappointed. At that moment, she did not want advice. She wanted an effective way to thank the ur-viles for stopping Esmer.

“Then tell me what their Weird
is
,” she said. “What does it
mean
?” A moment later, however, she shook her head. “No. That isn’t what I’m trying to ask.”

Weird, Wyrd, Würd, Word, Worm: she had heard too many explanations. More would not improve her comprehension.

“Before we left Revelstone, I made a promise. I told them that if they ever figured out how to tell me what they need from me, I would do it. I want to keep that promise.” She yearned to keep at least one of her promises, and she had already failed Anele. In truth, she had doomed everyone who had ever trusted her. Facing the loremaster, she concluded, “You’ve done so much for me. For all of us. Tell me how I can repay you.”

Dozens of voices replied simultaneously, as insistent as the clamor of hounds on the scent of their quarry.

Frostheart Grueburn tried to follow them all. Then she punched her fists against each other: a gesture of protest. “I implore you,” she groaned. “I cannot encompass so much. When I am given more than I am able to heed, I receive none of it.”

At once, the tumult of the creatures was cut off. Testing the air with its wide nostrils, the loremaster fell silent.

Abashed, Grueburn turned to Linden. “I am unequal to this task. The Waynhim in particular strive to account for their Weird, but I hear little that I am able to convey. Some cite
worth
and
otherness
. Some make reference to
transfiguration
or
rebirth
. But their true meaning eludes me.”

She looked around at the Swordmainnir, mutely asking for aid. But they shook their heads, admitting their own confusion.

Glumly Grueburn told Linden, “They appear to conflate concepts in a manner baffling to me. Do they equate their own worthiness with that of the wide Earth, or do they attempt some obscure distinction? Do they crave an alteration of themselves, that they may be condign in the world, or do they desire the world’s transformation in their own image? They appear to set their course by many headings. I cannot follow them.”

Now the loremaster spoke again. When it was done, Grueburn squared her shoulders; gazed at Linden more sharply. “To one aspect of your question, however, their response is plain. The nature of the Staff of Law is inimical to them, though they possess a limited virtu to ward themselves. In this circumstance, Linden Giantfriend, they require naught that you may provide.”

To herself, Linden groaned. She needed a different answer. Something tangible, attainable: something that she could actually do to balance the scales of her long debt.

Something to lighten the weight of her growing darkness.

But before she could find words for her regret, Covenant moved closer to the loremaster. “In that case,” he informed the creature, “I have a question.”

His tone suggested potential wrath held in strict abeyance.

“Esmer said he wasn’t the one who betrayed us in the Lost Deep. But hellfire! He was the only one
there
. The Harrow was already dead, and Roger was gone, and Kastenessen sent the
skurj
, and the bane just is what She is.

“So what was Esmer talking about? How were we betrayed?”

Frowning at the question, or at Covenant’s attitude, Grueburn turned back to the loremaster.

For a long moment, all of the ur-viles and Waynhim replied with silence. Then the loremaster uttered a quick, raucous burst.

Translating literally, Grueburn announced, “The son of
merewives
and
Haruchai
spoke of us.”

Covenant waited, stiff and demanding.

Another burst of noise like the yowling of a penned dog.

“He was cognizant of our purpose. He abhorred and desired it. He considered you betrayed because we did not impose our manacles then. Had we done so, you would have been freed to flee without further peril or striving.”

Under his breath, Covenant muttered, “Now we’re getting somewhere.” Then he asked harshly, “So why didn’t you? You could have spared us almost any amount of suffering. I won’t even mention what I did to Elena.” For an instant, his self-control broke. “
She’s my daughter!
” Almost immediately, however, he mastered himself. “But we came close to losing Linden completely. Hell and blood! You know what’s at stake. Why did you take a chance like that?”

Linden wanted to object. Surely the creatures did not merit this? But Covenant’s passion—and his question—held her.

There was a storm building in him. It gathered somewhere beyond the horizon of her comprehension. When it broke, people or beings or creatures were going to die.

Indirectly the ur-viles had doomed Elena. Her sacrifice in the Lost Deep must have appalled him.