White Gold Wielder (48 page)

Mount Thunder lay to the east; but Covenant was leading the company west and south down through the dead foothills below the intricately wrought face of the Keep. His intent, he explained, was to join the watercourse which had once been the White River and follow it toward Andelain. That was not the most direct path, but it would enable the company to do what Sunder, Linden, and he had done previously—to ride the river during a sun of rain. Recollections of cold and distress made Linden shiver, but she did not demur. She favored any plan which might reduce the amount of time she had to spend exposed to the sun.

Above her rose the sheer, hard face of Revelstone. But some distance ahead, Furl Falls came tumbling down the side of the plateau; and its implications were comforting. Already much of the potent water springing from the roots of Glimmermere had been denatured. Furl Falls was only a wisp of what it should have been. Yet it remained. Centuries of the Sunbane had not ruined or harmed the upland tarn. Through the brown heat and light of the sun, Furl Falls struck hints of blue like sparks from the rough rock of the cliff.

To the south, the hills spread away like a frown of pain in the ground, becoming slowly less rugged—or perhaps less able to care what happened to them—as they receded from the promontory of the Westron Mountains. And between them wound the watercourse Covenant sought. Following what might once have been a road, he brought the company to an ancient stone bridge across the broad channel where the White River had stopped running. A trickle of water still stretched thinly down the center of the riverbed; but even that moisture soon vanished into a damp, sandy stain. The sight of it made Linden thirsty with empathy, although she had eaten and drunk well before leaving Mhoram’s quarters.

Covenant did not cross the bridge. For a moment, he glared at the small stream as if he were remembering the White River in full spate. Then, controlling his fear of heights with a visible effort, he found a way down into the riverbed. The last sun of rain had not left the channel smooth or clear, but its bottom offered an easier path than the hills on either side.

Linden, Sunder, and Hollian followed him. Pitchwife came muttering after them. Vain leaped downward with a lightness which belied his impenetrability: on his wooden wrist and left ankle, the heels of the Staff of Law caught the sun dully. Findail changed shape and glided gracefully to the river-bottom. But the First did not join the rest of the company. When Covenant looked back up at her, she said, “I will watch over you.” She gestured along the higher ground of the east bank. “Though you have mastered the Clave, some caution is needful. And the exertion will ease me. I am a Giant and eager, and your pace gives me impatience.”

Covenant shrugged. He seemed to think that he had become immune to ordinary forms of peril. But he waved his acceptance; and the First strode away at a brisk gait.

Pitchwife shook his head, bemused by his wife’s sources of strength. Linden saw a continuing disquiet in the unwonted tension of his countenance; but most of his unhappiness had sunk beneath the surface, restoring his familiar capacity for humor. “Stone and Sea!” he said to Covenant and Linden. “Is she not a wonder? Should ever we encounter that which can daunt her, then will I truly credit that the Earth is lost. But then only. For the while, I will study the beauty of her and be glad.” Turning, he started down the watercourse as if he wished his friends to think he had left his crisis behind.

Hollian smiled after them. Softly Sunder said, “We are fortunate in these Giants. Had Nassic my father spoken to me of such beings, mayhap I would have laughed—or mayhap wept. But I would not have believed.”

“Me neither,” Covenant murmured. Doubt and fear cast their shadows across the background of his gaze; but he appeared to take no hurt from them. “Mhoram was my friend. Bannor saved my life. Lena loved me. But Foamfollower made the difference.”

Linden reached out to him, touched her palm briefly to his clean cheek to tell him that she understood. The ache of the Sunbane was so strong in her that she could not speak.

Together they started after Pitchwife.

The riverbed was a jumble of small stones and large boulders, flat swaths of sand, jutting banks, long pits. But it was a relatively easy road. And by midafternoon the west rim began casting deep shade into the channel.

That shade was a balm to Linden’s abraded nerves—but for some reason it did not make her any better able to put one foot in front of another. The alternation of shadow and acid heat seemed to numb her mind, and the consequences of two days without rest or sleep came to her as if they had been waiting in the bends and hollows of the watercourse. Eventually she found herself thinking that of all the phases of the Sunbane the desert sun was the most gentle. Which was absurd: this sun was inherently murderous. Perhaps it was killing her now. Yet it gave less affront to her health-sense than did the other suns. She insisted on this as if someone had tried to contradict her. The desert was simply dead. The dead could inspire grief, but they felt no pain. The sun of rain had the force of incarnate violence; the malign creatures of the sun of pestilence were a pang of revulsion; the fertile sun seemed to wring screams from the whole world. But the desert only made her want to weep.

Then she was weeping. Her face was pressed into the sand, and her hands scrubbed at the ground on either side of her head because they did not have the strength to lift her. But at the same time she was far away from her fallen body, detached and separate from Covenant and Hollian as they called her name, rushed to help her. She was thinking with the precision of a necessary belief, This can’t go on. It has got to be stopped. Every time the sun comes up, the Land dies a little deeper. It has got to be stopped.

Covenant’s hands took hold of her, rolled her onto her back, shifted her fully into the shadows. She knew they were his hands because they were urgent and numb. When he propped her into a sitting position, she tried to blink her eyes clear. But her tears would not stop.

“Linden,” he breathed. “Are you all right? Damn it to hell! I should’ve given you a chance to rest.”

She wanted to say, This has got to be stopped. Give me your ring. But that was wrong. She knew it was wrong because the darkness in her leaped up at the idea, avid for power. She could not hold back her grief.

Hugging her hard, he rocked her in his arms and murmured words which meant nothing except that he loved her.

Gradually the helplessness faded from her muscles, and she was able to raise her head. Around her stood Sunder, Hollian, the First, and Pitchwife. Even Findail was there; and his yellow eyes yearned with conflicts, as if he knew how close she had come—but did not know whether he was relieved or saddened by it. Only Vain ignored her.

She tried to say, I’m sorry. Don’t worry. But the desert was in her throat, and no sound came.

Pitchwife knelt beside her, lifted a bowl to her lips. She smelled
diamondraught
, took a small swallow. The potent liquor gave her back her voice.

“Sorry I scared you. I’m not hurt. Just tired. I didn’t realize I was this tired.” The shadow of the west bank enabled her to say such things.

Covenant was not looking at her. To the watercourse and the wide sky, he muttered, “I ought to have my head examined. We should’ve stayed in Revelstone. One day wouldn’t have killed me.” Then he addressed his companions. “We’ll camp here. Maybe tomorrow she’ll feel better.”

Linden started to smile reassurance at him. But she was already asleep.

That night, she dreamed repeatedly of power. Over and over again, she possessed Covenant, took his ring, and used it to rip the Sunbane out of the Earth. The sheer violence of what she did was astounding: it filled her with glee and horror. Her father laughed blackness at her. It killed Covenant, left him as betrayed as her mother. She thought she would go mad.

You have committed murder. Are you not evil?

No. Yes. Not unless I choose to be. I can’t help it.

This has got to be stopped. Got to be stopped.
You are being forged as iron is forged
. Got to be stopped.

But sometime during the middle of the night she awoke and found herself enfolded by Covenant’s sleeping arms. For a while, she clung to him; but he was too weary to waken. When she went back to sleep, the dreams were gone.

And when dawn came she felt stronger. Stronger and calmer, as if during the night she had somehow made up her mind. She kissed Covenant, nodded soberly in response to the questioning looks of her friends. Then, while the Stonedownors and Giants defended themselves against the sun’s first touch by standing on rock, she climbed a slope in the west bank to get an early view of the Sunbane. She wanted to understand it.

It was red and baleful, the color of pestilence. Its light felt like disease crawling across her nerves.

But she knew its ill did not in fact arise from the sun. Sunlight acted as a catalyst for it, a source of energy, but did not cause the Sunbane. Rather it was an emanation from the ground, corrupted Earthpower radiating into the heavens. And that corruption sank deeper every day, working its way into the marrow of the Earth’s bones.

She bore it without flinching. She intended to do something about it.

Her companions continued to study her as she descended the slope to rejoin them. But when she met their scrutiny, they were reassured. Pitchwife relaxed visibly. Some of the tension flowed out of the muscles of Covenant’s shoulders, though he clearly did not trust his superficial vision. And Sunder, who remembered Marid, gazed at her as if she had come back from the brink of something as fatal as venom.

“Chosen, you are well restored,” said the First with gruff pleasure. “The sight gladdens me.”

Together Hollian and Pitchwife prepared a meal which Linden ate ravenously. Then the company set itself to go on down the watercourse.

For the first part of the morning, the walking was almost easy. This sun was considerably cooler than the previous one; and while the east bank shaded the riverbottom, it remained free of vermin. The ragged edges and arid lines of the landscape took on a tinge of the crimson light which made them appear acute and wild, etched with desiccation. Pitchwife joined the First as she ascended the hillside again to keep watch over the company. Although Hollian shared Sunder’s visceral abhorrence of the sun of pestilence, they were comfortable with each other. In the shade’s protection, they walked and talked, arguing companionably about a name for their son. Initially Sunder claimed that the child would grow up to be an eh-Brand and should therefore be given an eh-Brand’s name; but Hollian insisted that the boy would take after his father. Then for no apparent reason they switched positions and continued contradicting each other.

By unspoken agreement, Linden and Covenant left the Stonedownors to themselves as much as possible. She listened to them in a mood of detached affection for a time; but gradually their argument sent her musing on matters that had nothing to do with the Sunbane—or with what Covenant hoped to accomplish by confronting the Despiser. In the middle of her reverie, she surprised herself by asking without preamble, “What was Joan like? When you were married?”

He looked at her sharply; and she caught a glimpse of the unanswerable pain which lay at the roots of his certainty. Once before, when she had appealed to him, he had said of Joan,
She’s my ex-wife
, as if that simple fact were an affirmation. Yet some kind of guilt or commitment toward Joan had endured in him for years after their divorce, compelling him to accept responsibility for her when she had come to him in madness and possession, seeking his blood.

Now he hesitated momentarily as if he were searching for a reply which would give Linden what she wanted without weakening his grasp on himself. Then he indicated Sunder and Hollian with a twitch of his head. “When Roger was born,” he said, overriding a catch in his throat, “she didn’t ask me what I thought. She just named him after her father. And her grandfather. A whole series of Rogers on her side of the family. When he grows up, he probably won’t even know who I am.”

His bitterness was plain. But other, more important feelings lay behind it. He had smiled for Joan when he had exchanged his life for hers.

And he was smiling now—the same terrible smile that Linden remembered with such dismay. While it lasted, she was on the verge of whispering at him in stark anguish. Is
that
what you’re going to do? Again?
Again?

But almost at once his expression softened; and the thing she feared seemed suddenly impossible. Her protest faded. He appeared unnaturally sure of what he meant to do; but, whatever it was, it did not reek of suicide. Inwardly shaken, she said, “Don’t worry. He won’t forget you.” Her attempt to console him sounded inane, but she had nothing else to offer. “It’s not that easy for kids to forget their parents.”

In response, he slipped an arm around her waist, hugged her. They walked on together in silence.

But by midmorning sunlight covered most of the riverbed, and the channel became increasingly hazardous. The rock-gnarled and twisted course, with its secret shadows and occasionally overhanging banks, was an apt breeding place for pestilential creatures which lurked and struck. From Revelstone Hollian had brought an ample store of
voure
; but some of the crawling, scuttling life that now teemed in the riverbottom seemed to be angered by the scent or immune to it altogether. Warped and feral sensations scraped across Linden’s nerves. Every time she saw something move, a pang of alarm went through her. Sunder and Hollian had to be more and more careful where they put their bare feet. Covenant began to study the slopes where the Giants walked. He was considering the advantages of leaving the channel.

When a scorpion as large as Linden’s two fists shot out from under a rock and lashed its stinger at the side of Covenant’s boot, he growled a curse and made his decision. Kicking the scorpion away, he muttered, “That does it. Let’s get out of here.”

No one objected. Followed mutely by Vain and Findail, the four companions went to a pile of boulders leaning against the east bank and climbed upward to join the First and Pitchwife.