White Gold Wielder (24 page)

When Linden awoke, her gaze was raw and aggrieved, as if she had spent half the night unable to stanch her tears.

Covenant’s heart went out to her, but he did not know how to say so. The previous evening, she had tended his mangled arm with a ferocity which he recognized as love. But the intensity of his self-repudiation had isolated them from each other. And now he could not forget that her right was better than his. That his accumulating falseness corrupted everything he did or wanted to do.

He had never learned how to give up.

His nightmares insisted that he needed the fire he feared.

Mistweave moved woodenly about the task of preparing breakfast; but abruptly Pitchwife stopped him. Without a word, the crippled Giant rose to his feet. His manner commanded the attention of the company. For a moment, he remained motionless and rigid, his eyes damp in the sunrise. Then, hoarsely, he began to sing. His melody was a Giantish plainsong, and his stretched and fraying voice drew a faint echo from the cliff of Landsdrop, an added resonance, so that he seemed to be singing for all his companions as well as for himself.

When he was done, the First hugged him hard; and Mistweave looked like he had been eased. Linden glanced at Covenant, bit her lips to keep them from trembling. But Honninscrave’s eyes remained shrouded, and his jaws chewed gall as though Farewell were not the only word he could not bring himself to utter.

Covenant understood. Seadreamer had given his life as bravely as Hamako, but no victory had been gained to make his death endurable. And no
caamora
had been granted to accord him peace.

The Unbeliever was bitterly afraid that his own death would have more in common with Seadreamer’s than with Hamako’s.

While the companions ate a meal and repacked the sleds, Covenant tried to imagine how they would be able to find their way up the harsh cliff. Here Landsdrop was not as imposing as it was nearer the center of the Land, where a thousand feet and more of steep rock separated the Lower Land from the Upper, Sarangrave Flat from Andelain—and where Mount Thunder crouched like a titan, presiding darkly over the rift. But still the cliff appeared impassable.

But the eyesight of the Giants had already discovered an answer. They towed the sleds southward; and in less than a league they reached a place where the rim of the precipice had collapsed, sending a wide scallop of earth down fanlike across its base. This slope was manageable, though Covenant and Linden had to ascend on foot while the Giants carried the sleds. Before the morning was half gone, the company stood among the snows of the Upper Land.

Covenant scanned the terrain apprehensively, expecting at any moment to hear Linden announce that she could see the Sunbane rising before them. But beyond Landsdrop lay only more winter and a high ridge of mountains which blocked the west and south.

These appeared to be as tall and arduous as the Westron Mountains. However, the Giants were undaunted, wise in the ways of peaks and valleys. Though the rest of the day was spent winding up into the thin air of the heights. Covenant and Linden were able to remain in their sleds, and the company made good progress.

But the next day the way was harder, steeper, cramped with boulders and old ice; and wind came slashing off the crags to blind the eyes, confuse the path. Covenant clung to the back of the sled and trudged after Honninscrave. His right arm throbbed as if the cold were gnawing at it; his numb hands had no strength. Yet
vitrim
and
diamondraught
were healing him faster than he would have believed possible; and the desire not to burden his companions kept him on his feet.

He lost all sense of progress; the ridge seemed to tower above him. Whenever he tried to breathe deeply, the air sawed at his lungs. He felt frail and useless and immeasurably far from Revelstone. Still he endured. The specific disciplines of his leprosy had been lost long ago; but their spirit remained to him—the dogged and meticulous insistence on survival which took no account of the distance ahead or the pain already suffered. When the onset of evening finally forced the company to halt, he was still on his feet.

The following day was worse. The air became as cold as the malice of the
arghuleh
. Wind flayed like outrage down the narrow coombs which gave the company passage. Time and again, Cail had to help either Covenant or Linden, or was needed to assist the sleds. But he seemed to flourish in this thin air. The Giants fought and hauled their way upward as if they were prepared to measure themselves against any terrain. And Linden stayed with them somehow—as stubborn as Covenant, and in an odd way tougher. Her face was as pale as the snow among the protruding rocks; cold glazed her eyes like frost. Yet she persevered.

And that night the company camped in the lower end of a pass between peaks ranging dramatically toward the heavens. Beyond the far mouth of the pass were no more mountains high enough to catch the sunset.

The companions had to struggle to keep their fire alight long enough to prepare a meal: the wind keening through the pass tore at the brands. Without a makeshift windbreak of blankets, no fire would have been possible at all. But the Giants did their best, contrived both to warm some food and to heat the water Linden needed for Covenant’s arm. When she unwrapped his bandages, he was surprised to see that his self-inflicted wounds were nearly well. After she had washed the slight infection which remained, she applied another light bandage to protect his arm from being chafed.

Grateful for her touch, her concern, her endurance—for more things than he could name in that wind—he tried to thank her with his eyes. But she kept her gaze averted, and her movements were abrupt and troubled. When she spoke, she sounded as forlorn as the peaks.

“We’re getting close to it. This—” She made a gesture that seemed to indicate the wind. “It’s unnatural. A reaction to something on the other side.” The lines of her face stiffened into a scowl. “If you want my guess, I’d say there’s been a desert sun for two days now.”

She stopped. Tensely Covenant waited for her to go on. From the first, the Sunbane had been a torment to her. The added dimension of her senses exposed her unmercifully to the outrage of that evil, to the alternating drought and suppuration of the world, the burning of the deserts and the screaming of the trees. Gibbon had prophesied that the true destruction of the Earth would be on her head rather than Covenant’s—that she would be driven by her very health-sense to commit every desecration the Despiser required. And then the Raver had touched her, poured his malice like distilled corruption into her vulnerable flesh; and the horror of that violation had reduced her to a paralysis as deep as catatonia for two days.

When she had come out of it, after Covenant had rescued her from the hold of Revelstone, she had turned her back entirely on the resource of her percipience. She had begged him to spare her, as he had tried to spare Joan. And she had not begun to recover until she had been taught that her health-sense was also open to beauty, that when it exposed her to ill it also empowered her to heal.

She was a different woman now; he was humbled by the thought of how far she had come. But the test of the Sunbane remained before her. He did not know what was in her heart; but he knew as well as she did that she would soon be compelled to carry a burden which had already proved too heavy for her once.

A burden which would never have befallen her a second time if he had not allowed her to believe the lie that they had a future together.

Firelight and the day’s exertions made her face ruddy against the background of the night. Her long-untended hair fluttered on either side of her head. In her eyes, the reflection of the wind-whipped flames capered. She looked like a woman whose features would not obey her, refused to resume the particular severity which had marked her life. She was returning to the place and the peril that had taught her to think of herself as evil.

Evil and doomed.

“I never told you,” she murmured at last, “I just wanted to forget about it. We got so far away from the Land—even Gibbon’s threats started to seem unreal. But now—” For a moment, her gaze followed the wind. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

After the extremity of the things she had already related to him, Covenant was dismayed that more remained to be told. But he held himself as steady as he could, did not let his regard for her waver.

“That night.” An ache crept into her voice. “The first night we were on Starfare’s Gem. Before I finally figured out we had a Raver aboard. And that rat bit you.” He remembered: that bite had triggered a venom-relapse which had nearly destroyed the quest and the Search and the
dromond
before she found a way to penetrate it and treat him. “I had the most terrible nightmare.”

Softly she described the dream. They had been in the woods behind Haven Farm; and he had taken Joan’s place at the mercy of Lord Foul’s misled band of fanatics; and she, Linden, had gone running down the hillside to save him. But never in all her life had she been able to stop the violence which had driven the knife into his chest. And from the wound had gushed more blood than she had ever seen. It had welled out of him as if a world had been slain with that one blow. As if the thrust of the knife had stabbed the very heart of the Land.

She had been altogether unable to stanch it. She had nearly drowned in the attempt.

The memory left her aghast in the unsteady light; but now she did not stop. She had been gnawing her questions for a long time and knew with frightening precision what she wanted to ask. Looking straight into Covenant’s consternation, she said, “On Kevin’s Watch, you told me there were two different explanations. External and internal. Like the difference between surgery and medicine. The internal one was that we’re sharing a dream. ‘Tied into the same unconscious process,’ you said.

“That fits. If we’re dreaming, then naturally any healing that happens here is just an illusion. It couldn’t have any effect on the bodies we left behind—on our physical continuity back where we came from.

“But what does it mean when you have a nightmare in a dream? Isn’t that some kind of prophecy?”

Her directness surprised him. She had surpassed him; he could not follow without groping. His own dreams—Quickly he scrambled to protest, “Nothing’s that simple.” But then he had to pause. An awkward moment passed before he found a countering argument.

“You had that dream under the influence of a Raver. You dreamed what it made you feel. Lord Foul’s prophecy—not yours. It doesn’t change anything.”

Linden was no longer looking at him. She had bowed her head, braced her forehead in her palms; but her hands did not hide the silent tears streaming down her cheeks. “That was before I knew anything about power.” With an honesty that dismayed him, she exposed the root of her distress. “I could’ve saved Hamako. I could’ve saved them all. You were so close to erupting. I could’ve taken your wild magic and torn out that
croyel
’s heart.
I’m
no danger to the Arch of Time. None of them had to die.”

Dread burned like shame across his face. He knew she spoke the truth. Her health-sense was still growing. Soon she would become capable of anything. He swallowed a groan. “Why didn’t you?”

“I was watching
you
!” she flung back at him in sudden anguish. “Watching you tear your arm apart. I couldn’t think: about anything else.”

The sight of her pain enabled him to take hold of himself, fight down his instinctive panic. He could not afford to be afraid. She needed something better from him.

“I’m glad you didn’t,” he said. “Never mind what it would’ve done to me. I’m glad you didn’t for his sake.” Thinking of her mother, he added deliberately, “You let him achieve the meaning of his own life.”

At that, her head jerked up; her gaze knifed at him. “He
died
!” she hissed like an imprecation too fierce and personal to be shouted. “He saved your life at least twice, and he spent his own life serving the Land you claim to care so much about, and the people that adopted him were nearly wiped off the face of the Earth, and he
died
!”

Covenant did not flinch. He was ready now for anything she might hurl at him. His own nightmares were worse than this. And he would have given his soul for the ability to match Hamako. “I’m not glad he died. I’m glad he found an answer.”

For a long moment, her glare held. But then slowly the anger frayed out of her face. At last, her eyes fell. Thickly she murmured, “I’m sorry. I just don’t understand. Killing people is wrong.” The memory of her mother was present to her as it was to Covenant. “But dear Christ! Saving them has got to be better than letting them die.”

“Linden.” She clearly did not want him to say anything else. She had raised the fundamental question of her life and needed to answer it herself. But he could not let the matter drop. With all the gentleness he had in him, he said, “Hamako didn’t want to be saved. For the opposite reason that your father didn’t want to be saved. And he won.”

“I know,” she muttered. “I know. I just don’t understand it.” As if to keep him from speaking again, she left the fire, went to get her blankets.

He looked around at the mute, attentive faces of the Giants. But they had no other wisdom to offer him. He wanted intensely to be saved himself; but no one would be able to do that for him unless he surrendered his ring. He was beginning to think that his death would be welcome when it came.