Against All Things Ending (99 page)

They had come to an impasse. Directly ahead of them, a jut of stone like a plane of slate taller than one Giant standing on another’s shoulders blocked the way. It reached from the louring bulk of the nearest hill to the precipice barely two paces away on Covenant’s left. Shaded from the westering sun, he and the Humbled were shrouded in shadows and gloom. But beyond the barrier, cliffs and crags like clenched knuckles curved crookedly from the southeast out into the wan sunlight of late afternoon. They towered higher than his recollection of them. At their far end, he glimpsed the jagged edge where the collapse of Foul’s Creche had rent the tip of the promontory, sending uncounted thousands of tons of granite and obsidian and malachite into the insatiable hunger of the Sunbirth. And far below him—

A shock like a jolt of lightning ran through him. Bloody damnation!

Far below him, a simple spin and topple over the precipice, seas no longer thundered against the base of the cliff. When he first looked down, clinging fervidly to his saddle, he saw no breakers at all. The whole of the ocean seemed to have vanished, leaving slick rocks, splintered menhirs, and knife-sharp boulders like the detritus of landslides exposed to the air. Among them, reefs like the spines of cripples reticulated the expanse. Grey water lay in pools that trembled at the slow thud of imponderable heartbeats as though even salt and the smallest creatures of the sea understood fear. Patches of cloacal mud seemed to shiver in anticipation, reeking of ancient death and rot. Draped over and around the chaos of stones and reefs, strands of kelp sprawled as if they were already dying.

But when Covenant raised his eyes, cast his gaze farther, he saw the Sunbirth in retreat. Perhaps half a league from the cliff, waves still toppled onto the ocean floor. But they were ebbing. Ebbing dramatically. With every fall and return, they withdrew as if they were being sucked away. As if they were being swallowed by the depths of the world.

Faint with distance, they sounded vulnerable, as forlorn as a plaint.

Instinctively Covenant understood. His mind reeled, and vertigo was an acute teacher.

Somewhere scores or hundreds of leagues out to sea, a shock like a split in the Earth’s crust had begun to gather a tsunami.

The riders had stopped on level stone like a small clearing between the impassable hill and the fatal cliff. There the destrier stood with its legs splayed, gasping out its life. Ahead of and behind the beast, Mhornym and Naybahn fretted, tossing their heads and stamping their hooves.

Had they misjudged the path to their destination? Was that even possible?

Gritting his teeth in a wasted attempt to keep his voice steady, Covenant demanded, “Are we lost? We can’t be. The Ranyhyn don’t get lost.”

“Ur-Lord, we are not,” Branl replied inflexibly. “Our passage lies there.” He pointed at the rockface behind Covenant.

Covenant twisted in his seat, looked where Branl pointed.

The Master was right. A dozen or so paces behind Clyme and Mhornym, a crack opened the wall of stone: a way into the maze of the Shattered Hills. The Ranyhyn knew it was there. And they could thread the maze: Covenant was sure of that. They could navigate time within
caesures
. Yet they had walked past it.

They must have done so deliberately.

Fearing the answer, he asked, “I don’t understand. Why aren’t we moving?”

His horse was done. But he could still walk.

“Ur-Lord,” Clyme answered without expression, “Mhornym and Naybahn choose to halt here. We are not Ramen. We do not discern the thoughts of Ranyhyn. But we speculate.

“It may be that we near our goal. It may be that we do not. We perceive neither your former mate, who is unknown to us, nor vile
turiya
Herem, with whom we are well familiar. They lie beyond the reach of our senses. However, we have no measure for the Raver’s awareness. Perhaps Corruption’s servant descries our approach. Perhaps your former mate does likewise.

“In addition”—Clyme appeared to hesitate momentarily—“we believe that we have felt the exertion of wild magic. Of this we are uncertain. The sensation is too distant for clarity. Nonetheless it suggests that we draw nigh to your former mate. For this reason, we conclude that
turiya
Herem and his victim are indeed aware of us”—the Humbled inclined his head toward Covenant—“or of High Lord Loric’s
krill
.

“Therefore, ur-Lord, we surmise that the Ranyhyn fear an ambush. Among the Shattered Hills, we will be exposed at every moment to an onset of
skest
.”

“But we’re trapped here,” protested Covenant. If
skest
came pouring from that cleft into the Hills, he and the Humbled and the horses would be caught against the slate barricade. They would have nowhere to run—and no room to defend themselves.

“Ur-Lord,” Clyme stated, “I repeat that we speculate. We are not Ramen. Yet we conceive that perhaps the Ranyhyn await the Feroce, the fulfillment of your alliance.”

His lack of inflection seemed to imply that he considered the word of the lurker’s creatures worthless.

“Hellfire!” Covenant made no effort to mask his frustration. “What’re we supposed to do in the meantime? Just stand here? My horse is going to collapse. I’m surprised it isn’t already dead.

“I’m useless against
skest
.”

Even with Loric’s dagger, he could only face one creature at a time. And if any drop or splash of acid touched him—

“You deemed the Feroce honest, ur-Lord,” remarked Branl. “You were not compelled to their alliance. You elected to grant your trust, disregarding the lurker’s enduring malevolence.”

I know that, Covenant thought. I knew it was a risk.

But before he could muster a response, Branl stiffened: a subtle intensification.

“
Skest
advance upon us,” the Master announced. “They are nigh.” A moment later, he added, “They appear to have no direct path. They follow the dictates of the maze. Its intricacy delays them. Nonetheless they come.”

Damnation! Twisting in his seat, Covenant looked past Clyme for some sign of the Feroce. But of course the senses of the Humbled would recognize the lurker’s creatures before Covenant spotted them. Briefly he studied the hill-wall beside him; but he saw no hope there. Its outward face was too steep, too smooth. Given time, Branl and Clyme might contrive to scale it. Covenant could not.

Wincing, he glanced over the cliff; tried to imagine a descent. If he abandoned the Ranyhyn, they might have time to escape.

Then vertigo hit him, a blow to the stomach. He jerked his eyes away.

“Say something,” he panted at his companions. “Tell me what to do. Tell me what we’re going to do.”

They were
Haruchai
. As far as he was concerned, no
Haruchai
had ever failed him. Not even when Bannor had refused to accompany him to Foul’s Creche.

Rigid as rock, Clyme began, “We will trust—”

He may have meant the Ranyhyn, or the Feroce, or Covenant himself; but Covenant no longer heard anything. Through the cloth covering the
krill
, he felt a sudden throb of heat.

Joan! Instinctively he flinched. His whole body tried to squirm away from the dagger.

An instant passed before he realized that the rush of heat was not as fierce as he had expected. He could bear it.

Ah, hell. Was she simply unsure of her target? Was she too badly broken to focus her force when she could not sense his touch on the
krill
? Or was she getting weaker—?

His own questions distracted him. A moment passed before he felt crawling on the sensitive parts of his skin; hiving insects; fornication. Things that could bite and sting were on his scalp, under his clothes, in his boots.

With no more warning than that, a
caesure
erupted above and beyond the slate barrier.

The Fall was comparatively minor, a mere flick of wild magic and chaos no more than five paces wide. And it had missed Covenant and his companions. At once, it began to lurch away, chewing westward through stone and time into the confusions of the Shattered Hills. Nevertheless it was as destructive as a hurricane in the substance of the world. Centuries or millennia were superimposed and shredded until the rock exploded, torn apart by the instantaneous migraine of its own slow life. Shards and splinters were flung in all directions like shrapnel, cutting as knives, fatal as bullets.

They may have struck Covenant, pierced him, ripped through him. They may have killed the Humbled and the Ranyhyn and the destrier. But he did not feel them. As soon as he glanced into the savage kaleidoscope of the
caesure
, he lost his inward footing and slipped—

Oh, God! Not now!
Not now!

—into the broken residue of his memories.

After that, he stood where Ridjeck Thome had once held the apex of the promontory and watched time run backward, incrementally unmaking seven thousand years of ruin.

Ages were erased in instants. Instants were ages. At first, he saw only the ponderous accumulation as a mountain of rubble undid its own erosion beneath the unremitting pressures of the sea. Sand gathered into stones. Stones lost their smoothness, whetted their edges. Reefs melted away around them. But memories were also quick, as swift as thought: they could become more rapid than his ability to comprehend them. The wreckage grew in bulk. At the same time, its area contracted as boulders as big as houses, mansions, temples piled themselves on top of each other. A vast weight of seawater collapsed like an eruption in reverse while riven stones thrust their heads and shoulders above the surface of the waves.

First one at a time, then in a mighty rush, the stones sprang upward to resume their ancient places in the promontory.

In a reality which he no longer inhabited, Covenant observed his mount’s panic. Terror summoned its final vestiges of strength. He felt it lunge for the edge of the cliff, bearing him with it. But he could not react. He was hardly able to care. His spirit lived elsewhere.

Instead of fearing for his life, or hauling on the destrier’s reins, or shouting for help, he watched the torn tip of the promontory and then Foul’s Creche rebuild themselves around him.

Within moments, the Despiser’s delved dwelling was complete, immense and immaculate and empty, flawless and useless in every detail except for the jagged jaws which formed Lord Foul’s throne.

Covenant stood in the thronehall of Ridjeck Thome. The Despiser was there. Before him squatted the dire mass of the Illearth Stone. Beside the Stone, Covenant’s slain self cowered on its knees, craven and powerless. Nearby Foamfollower endured his own helplessness, his final agony.

Lord Foul was nothing more than a bitter shape in the air, a shadow reeking of attar. But his eyes were as eager as fangs, carious and yellow. They seemed to grip the kneeling Covenant’s soul, avid for despair.

Begone, spectre, the Despiser said in Covenant’s mind. You have no place here. You do not exist. Your time will never come.

That voice violated time and memory. It came from a different version of existence, a brief disruption enabled by the
caesure
. Lord Foul
then
had not known that Covenant’s spirit was watching
now
from its remembered place within the Arch of Time. The Despiser had believed himself triumphant.

Nevertheless the intruded command banished Covenant. The thronehall and Ridjeck Thome vanished. Instead he found himself far down in the Lost Deep, far down in the Earth’s past, looking sadly at the first spasms of the bane’s horror and bereavement as She realized that She had been tricked; snared.

Eventually that horror and bereavement would produce the tectonic upheaval which sheared the Upper Land away from the Lower. It would cause the faults in Gravin Threndor which allowed the Soulsease to pour into the bowels of the mountain. But not yet. At this moment, Covenant could only watch and grieve as She Who Must Not Be Named howled rage at Her betrayer.

It was a hurtful memory in every particular, crowded with pain and foreknowledge. But it was also a relief. Lord Foul did not disturb the integrity of this remembered fragment. Perhaps he could not.

As the destrier plunged over the cliff, Covenant saw every cruel span of the fall below him; felt crushing death in all of its vertiginous seduction. He wanted to close his eyes; but his body had no will of its own, and his mind was absent.

Nevertheless a part of him recognized the impact as Branl landed on the charger’s haunches. Branl’s hands gripped Covenant’s shoulders like fetters, manacles. In the same motion, the Master heaved himself backward, hauling Covenant with him.

For a while, Covenant flickered like a chiaroscuro through fractured scenes, forgotten events. He saw Brinn give battle to the Guardian of the One Tree. He watched Kasreyn of the Gyre forge an eldritch sword to use against the Sandgorgons until he acquired the lore and found the materials to perfect Sandgorgons Doom. Impotent and proud, Covenant studied Linden’s fight for her life, and for Jeremiah’s, under
Melenkurion
Skyweir.

His mount’s plunge had become a plummet. They had fallen too far. Even Branl’s supreme strength did not suffice to regain the rim of the precipice.

But Clyme was ready. Outstretched on the stone, he reached down, snatched a handhold in the back of Branl’s tunic.

The vellum should have torn. It did not.

An instant later, Branl released one hand from Covenant to catch at Clyme’s forearm. Together the Humbled wrenched Covenant back to the cliffedge; pulled him to safety. There he sprawled limp on level stone as if nothing had happened.

Too much was happening. Blundering along flaws and crevices, he tried to find a fragment of memory that would save him.
Skest
emerged from the cleft, gleaming vilely in the shrouded gloom. He saw the Theomach divert Roger’s efforts to take Linden and the
croyel
to the time of Damelon Giantfriend’s arrival on Rivenrock. He heard the
Elohim
pride themselves on their uninvolvement. At least a score of
skest
thronged out of the maze. More were coming. He saw Joan appear, charred by lightning, on the promontory of Foul’s Creche. He watched
turiya
Raver pounce on her, into her; watched the Raver compel her to summon Roger, Jeremiah, and Linden. Because they were dead in their former lives, they would never escape this reality.