Against All Things Ending (87 page)

Oh, stop, Linden thought. I don’t blame you. I don’t know why you did it. But I’m sure you had your reasons. If I knew what they were, I might even approve.

They’re
Ranyhyn,
for God’s sake
.
They’ll think of something
.

To reassure the mare, Linden went to her and wrapped her arms around Hyn’s neck.

Manethrall Mahrtiir prostrated himself briefly in front of Narunal, then sprang onto his mount’s back. When Galesend set Jeremiah astride Khelen, the boy settled there, passive and unmoved, as if there were no perceptible difference between the Swordmain’s care and the young stallion’s. While Linden still held Hyn, Stave mounted Hynyn; and the Giants arrayed themselves around the Ranyhyn.

For a long moment, Linden gazed into the softness of Hyn’s eyes until she was sure that the mare’s abashment had faded. Then she looked up at Frostheart Grueburn.

“All right,” she said as firmly as she could. “Let’s go. I want a bath as much as you do.”

With a fond grin, Grueburn put her huge hands on Linden’s waist, lifted Linden lightly onto Hyn’s back.

At once, the Ranyhyn began to move, trotting at a pace that the Giants could match without running.

The horses had chosen to approach the next wall of hills at a westward angle, away from the Sarangrave; closer to Landsdrop. From Linden’s perspective, the barricade looked impassable, for the mounts if not for the Giants. But within half a league, the Ranyhyn came to a more gradual slope that allowed them to reach a notch like a bite taken out of the forbidding ridge. And as they passed between rocky crests gnarled with lichen and age, she saw that the south-facing hillsides provided an easy descent.

The hills ahead appeared to be the last obstruction plowed to defend the Spoiled Plains.

In the furrow between the ridges, Stave guided Hynyn to Hyn’s side opposite Frostheart Grueburn. Linden expected him to say something about her actions the previous night. But when he had taken his position, he remained silent. Apparently he desired nothing more than to resume his wonted role as her guardian.

She scanned the company; confirmed that Khelen bore Jeremiah easily, and that the Swordmainnir looked able to keep pace with the horses. Then she said to Stave sidelong, “You weren’t with us when Mahrtiir talked about
Kelenbhrabanal
. He did what he could to explain why the Ranyhyn are afraid of the lurker. But he didn’t say anything about why the Ranyhyn took us so close to the Sarangrave in the first place.”

The company’s present path demonstrated that the horses could have chosen a different route.

The former Master gazed at her steadily. “Chosen?”

“You probably don’t know any more about that than I do. But hearing about
Kelenbhrabanal
made me think about Kevin.” Both had sacrificed themselves, if by different means for dissimilar reasons. “I was wondering if you can tell me anything about him.”

Again Stave asked, “Chosen?”

Her query was too vague. But clarifying it would require her to reveal one of her deepest fears. Instinctively she wanted to keep the core of her emotional plight secret. Nevertheless the crisis induced by the Feroce had convinced her that she had to rely more on her friends. If she did not, she might never find a way to thwart Lord Foul’s intentions.

The next rise still looked insurmountable. Among steep slides of shale, sandstone, and gravel, massive knurls of granite and schist gripped each other like fists, too clenched and contorted for horses. Some of the slopes conveyed an impression of imminent collapse: any slight disturbance might unloose them. In places, slabs of sandstone leaned ominously outward, poised to topple. Yet the Ranyhyn approached the obstruction without slackening their pace, heading into the southwest as though they expected the hills to part for them.

Linden had fled flames in a hallway—a gullet—that had no end and no escape. She had only survived because she had turned to face the blaze; had read the map on her jeans and thrown away her only defense.

Trusting
someone
—

“There’s something that I want to understand about Kevin,” she told Stave awkwardly, “but I don’t know how to put it into words.” Grueburn’s presence discomfited her. Her friendship with the Swordmain lacked the earned certainty of her bond with Stave. Still she forced herself to proceed as if she and Stave were alone. “Ever since the Ritual of Desecration, he’s been called the Landwaster. I guess that makes me the Earthwaster. Compared to waking up the Worm, his Ritual looks like a petty offense. I want to know what he and I have in common.”

She needed a reason to believe that she had not already achieved Lord Foul’s victory for him.

“I can see how what
Kelenbhrabanal
did is different. He only sacrificed himself. And he did it because he thought that he was saving the Ranyhyn. He wasn’t trying to commit a Desecration. But what I’ve heard about Kevin sounds like how I feel.

“I mean like how I feel now. I didn’t feel this way in Andelain. Sure, I was too angry to think about the consequences. But I also had hope.” And need. “I wanted Covenant alive because I love him. But I also believed that he’s the only one who can save the Land. If I brought him back, I could afford to concentrate on rescuing Jeremiah. He would take care of everything else.”

Covenant was supposed to be her defense against despair. She had counted on that. She had never imagined that he would want to leave her behind—

“So now,” she finished like a sigh, “I want to know what Kevin and I have in common.” She felt the force of Grueburn’s scrutiny at her side; but she tried to ignore it. “He destroyed pretty much everything. I thought that I was saving everything.”

Fortunately Grueburn did not speak. If she had questions, she was too considerate to express them.

The Ranyhyn confronted the hills as if they were proof against mundane doubts. To Linden’s distracted gaze, the immediate slopes looked ready to slip. Sandstone columns whispered to her nerves that they were friable, too heavy to support their own mass. And beyond the columns stood glowering buttresses without any breach or gap. Nevertheless Narunal and Khelen began an angled ascent as if they were confident of safety. And Hyn and Hynyn followed without hesitation, surrounded by their coterie of stonewise Giants.

Somehow the surface held as horses and Swordmainnir pushed upward.

Stave appeared to dismiss the potential dangers of the climb. For a long moment, he was silent, perhaps probing the ancient memories of the Bloodguard. Then he replied, “
If
, Chosen.”

Grueburn nodded as though she knew what he meant. But Linden stared at him. “I don’t understand.”

Like a man who had resolved a conundrum, Stave stated, “
That
you share with High Lord Kevin Landwaster, who is now forgiven by his sires.
If
.

“Summoned to a parley with or concerning the Demondim,
if
he had not sent his friends and fellow Lords in his stead. Concerned and grieving for your son,
if
you had heeded Anele’s desire for the Sunstone. You believe that you might have acted otherwise, and that you are culpable for your failure to do so. Thus you open your heart to despair, as High Lord Kevin did also.”

Again Frostheart Grueburn nodded—and said nothing.

“Chosen,” Stave continued, “you have rightly charged the Masters with arrogance. They have deemed themselves wise enough, and worthy, to prejudge the use which the folk of the Land would make of their knowledge. After his own fashion, Kevin Landwaster was similarly arrogant. In his damning
if
, he neglected to consider that his friends and fellow Lords selected their own path. He commanded none of them to assume his place. Indeed, many among the Council valued his wisdom when he declined to hazard his own vast lore and the Staff of Law in a perilous vesture. Yet those voices he did not hear. Arrogating to himself responsibility for the fate of those who fell, he demeaned them—and failed to perceive Corruption clearly. Faulting himself for error rather than Corruption for treachery, he was self-misled to the Ritual of Desecration, and could not turn aside.

“So it is with you.”

Linden listened as if she were in shock; as if the impact of his words were so great that her nerves refused to absorb it. No, she thought, shaking her head. No. Damnit, I
learned
that lesson.

I thought I learned it—

Leading the company, Narunal and then Khelen rounded the base of the first plinth; altered the thrust of their strides to pass above the next column. In spite of the sun’s shrouded light, the day was growing warmer. Already the spires of porous rock appeared to shimmer in the heat as if they were about to shatter.

Hell and blood! Echoing one of Covenant’s epithets, Linden reminded herself that she had asked the question. She should at least try to understand the answer.

“Chosen,” Stave said again when he had given her a chance to protest, “I do not name the Unbeliever’s resurrection a Desecration. The Humbled do so. I do not. Yet there you were yourself arrogant. Fearing that your companions would oppose you, you kept your full purpose secret from them. By that means, you denied them the freedom of their own paths. Yet you were honest enough to acknowledge that you do not forgive. And you insisted upon doubt. So doing, you allowed your companions to estimate the extremity of your intent. Also, as you have said, your heart was filled with rage and love rather than with blame. Therefore your deeds in Andelain differ in their essence from High Lord Kevin’s.

“Now, however”—the former Master shrugged—“matters stand otherwise. Now you do not consider that Liand acted according to his own desires, or that Anele did not plainly or loudly or vigorously demand the
orcrest
, or that you had companions who might have been better able to heed the old man at that moment. Nor do you consider that the deed of Liand’s death was Kastenessen’s. Rather you demean all who stand with you by believing that there can be no other fault than yours, and that no fault of yours can be condoned. Doing so, ‘You tread paths prepared for you by Fangthane’s malice,’ as Manethrall Mahrtiir has said. Thus you emulate High Lord Kevin.

“In your present state, Chosen, Desecration lies ahead of you. It does not crowd at your back.”

Linden reeled in her seat. Had her mount been anything less than a Ranyhyn, she might have fallen to the ground. Stave said, Desecration lies ahead of you, as if he meant,
I perceive only that her need for death is great
.

God in Heaven! How bad
was
it? How fatal had her personal failures become? Had she gleaned nothing from Liand’s death, or Anele’s, or Galt’s; or from She Who Must Not Be Named? From the rousing of the Worm of the World’s End?

Did you sojourn under the Sunbane with Sunder and Hollian, and learn nothing of
ruin
?

Yet the world did not reel. The Ranyhyn did not falter, or feel faint. Those weaknesses were hers alone. Narunal and Khelen were moving along the foot of a high wall like a fortification, knuckled and obdurate; visibly impenetrable. After a score of paces, however, they turned upward and disappeared as if the stone had swallowed them. Behind them, Rime Coldspray beckoned to the rest of the company. Then she, too, was gone.

When Hynyn and Hyn reached that spot, Linden found that her companions had entered a narrow defile like a cleft in the gutrock. There the stone was cut as if it had been smitten by a titanic axe. The crevice was too strait to allow either Stave or Grueburn to remain beside her: the company was forced to file upward singly. But the steep clutter of the surface did not impede the Ranyhyn; and the Giants knew stone as if it were the substance of their bones.

Hynyn and Stave must have discovered this route during the night.

Desecration lies ahead of you.

Enclosed by uncompromising walls, she could not have turned aside to save herself from falling rocks or flung spears or theurgy. Jeremiah was beyond her reach in the gloom. Crude rock brushed against her knees. At intervals, she had to lean left or right to avoid an outcropping. Grueburn’s tense breathing carried up the crevice, magnified by echoes.

This symbolized Linden’s life, this defile. She had never lacked for help and support: not really. In the end, even Sheriff Lytton had tried to save her. Nevertheless she had never been able to turn aside. Ever since Roger had come to claim his mother, Linden had been caught between impossible choices.

And every compelled step took her closer to Lord Foul’s ultimate triumph.

Yet the defile was only a cleft in the granite: a passage, comparatively brief. It had an end. Already Linden could see it growing wider. Ahead of her, she sensed that Narunal and Khelen and now the Ironhand had emerged onto a more open hillside.

When Hyn finally surged out of the split, Linden was breathing hard, not from exertion, but from the constriction of her plight.

Desecration lies ahead of you.

She could not contest Stave’s reasoning.

Overhead a soiled sky covered the Lower Land like a foretaste of calamity. To her health-sense, the air did not smell of smoke or destruction. Rather it seemed to be the natural atmosphere of the region, characteristically arid, and reminiscent of ancient warfare. Yet no more than two days ago, the firmament had been blue, untainted by Kevin’s Dirt or omens. Like the previous day’s storms, this ashen sky was a consequence of powers or movements too distant for her to discern.

Linden wanted a few moments alone with Stave and Frostheart Grueburn. At her request, Hyn waited for Grueburn to rejoin her. Then the mare walked away from Mahrtiir, Jeremiah, Coldspray, and the arriving Giants. Without being asked, Hynyn and Stave accompanied her.

When she was confident that she would not be overheard, Linden asked Grueburn awkwardly, “What are you going to tell the others?”

She had revealed and heard truths that filled her with dismay. She was not ready to share them.

Grueburn cocked her head to one side. She appeared to be stifling a grin. “I have no wish to shock you, Linden Giantfriend. Yet I must assure you that Giants are acquainted with discretion. Your words were intended for Stave’s ears, not for mine. I cannot say that I did not attend to them, or that I will forget. But Giants tell no tales that have not been freely offered.”