White Gold Wielder (50 page)

Then they were on him, a tide of black, monstrous flesh breaking against his ebon hardness. They seemed to have no interest in the company. Perhaps Vain had always been their target. All of them tried to hurl themselves at him. Even the ur-viles on the far bank of the river surged toward him.

“Now!” breathed the First eagerly. “Now is our opportunity! While they are thus engaged, we may pass them by.”

Linden swung toward the Giant. The fury she had felt from Vain whipped through her. “We can do that,” she grated. “As long as we leave him to die. Those are ur-viles. They know how he was made. As soon as he kills enough of them to get their attention, they’re going to remember how to un-make him.” She rose to her feet, knotted her fists at her sides. “We’ve got to make him stop.”

Behind her, she felt the violence of Vain’s struggle, sensed the blood of ur-viles spurting and flowing. They would never kill him by physical force. He would reduce them one at a time to crushed, raw meat. All that butchery—! Even the abominable products of the Sunbane did not deserve to be slaughtered. But she knew she was right. Before long, the frenzy of the horde would pass: the ur-viles would begin to think. They had shown that they were still capable of recognition and thought when they had used the word of command. Then Vain would die.

Covenant appeared to accept her assertion. But he responded bitterly, “
You
stop him. He doesn’t listen to me.”

“Earthfriend!” the First snapped. “Chosen! Will you remain here and be slain because you can neither redeem nor command this Vain? We must flee!”

That’s right. Linden was thinking something different; but it led to the same conclusion. Findail had moved to the ridgecrest. He stood watching the bloody fray with a particular hunger or hope in his eyes. In
Elemesnedene
, the
Elohim
had imprisoned Vain to prevent him from the purpose for which he had been designed. But they had been thwarted because Linden had insisted on leaving the area—and Vain’s instinct to follow her or Covenant had proved stronger than his bonds.

Now Findail seemed to see before him another means by which the Demondim-spawn could be stopped. And the answer was unchanged: flee so that Vain would follow.

But how? The company could not hope to outrun the ur-viles now.

“Perhaps it may be done,” said Hollian, speaking so quietly that she could barely be heard over the savage din. “Assuredly it is conceivable. The way of it is plain. Is it not possible?”

Sunder turned back from the rim to gape at her. Inchoate protests tumbled together in him, fell voiceless.

“Conceivable?” Covenant demanded. “What’re you talking about?”

Hollian’s pale face was intense with exaltation or vision. Her meaning was so clear to her that she seemed beyond question.

“Sunder and I have spoken of it. In Crystal Stonedown Sivit na-Mhoram-wist titled me Sun-Sage—and that naming was false. But does not his very fear argue that such work is possible?”

Linden flinched. She had never done anything to earn the epithet the
Elohim
had given her. She feared even to consider its implications. Did Hollian think that she, Linden, could change the Sunbane?

But Sunder strode toward Hollian urgently, then stopped and stood trembling a few steps away. “No,” he murmured. “We are mortal, you and I. The attempt would reave us to the marrow. Such power must not be touched.”

She shook her head. “The need is absolute. Do you wish to lose the lives of the ur-Lord and the Chosen—the hope of the Land—because we dare not hazard our own?” He started to expostulate. Suddenly her voice rose like flame. “Sunder, I have not been tested! I am unknown to myself. No measure has been taken of that which I may accomplish.” Then she grew gentle again. “But your strength is known to me. I have no doubt of it. I have given my heart into your hands, and I say to you, it is possible. It may be done.”

From beyond the ridge came harsh screams as Vain ripped and mangled the ur-viles. But the pace of their cries had diminished: he was killing fewer of them. Linden’s senses registered a rippling of power in the horde. Some of the clamor had taken on a chanting cadence. The monsters were summoning their lore against the Demondim-spawn.

“Hellfire!” Covenant ejaculated. “Make sense! We’ve got to do something!”

Hollian looked toward him. “I speak of the alteration of the Sunbane.”

Surprise leaped in his face. At once, she went on, “Not of its power or its ill. But of its course, in the way that the shifting of a stone may alter the course of a river.”

His incomprehension was plain. Patiently she added, “The morrow’s sun will be a sun of rain. And the pace of the Sunbane increases as its power grows, ever shortening the space of days between the suns. It is my thought that perhaps the morrow’s sun may be brought forward, so that its rain will fall upon us now.”

At that, Linden’s apprehension jerked into clarity, and she understood Sunder’s protest. The strength required would be enormous! And Hollian was pregnant, doubly vulnerable. If the attempt ran out of control, she might rip the life out of more than one heart.

The idea appalled Linden. And yet she could think of no other way to save the company.

Covenant was already speaking. His eyes were gaunt with the helplessness of his alloyed puissance. Thoughts of warped black flesh and bloodshed tormented him. “Try it,” he whispered. “Please.”

His appeal was directed at Sunder.

For a long moment, the Graveler’s eyes went dull, and his stature seemed to shrink. He looked like the man who had faced Linden and Covenant in the prison-hut of Mithil Stonedown and told them that he would be required to kill his own mother. If she had been able to think of any alternative at all—any alternative other than the one which horrified her—Linden would have cried out, You don’t have to do this!

But then the passion that Covenant had inspired in Sunder’s life came back to him. The muscles at the corners of his jaw bunched whitely, straining for courage. He was the same man who had once lied to Gibbon-Raver under extreme pain and coercion in an effort to protect the Unbeliever. Through his teeth, he gritted, “We will do it. If it can be done.”

“Praise the Earth!” the First exhaled sharply. Her sword leaped into her hands. “Be swift. I must do what I may to aid the Demondim-spawn.” Swinging into motion, she passed the rim and vanished in the direction of Vain’s struggle.

Almost immediately, a roynish, guttural chorus greeted her. Linden felt the mounting power of the ur-viles fragment as they were thrown into frenzy and confusion by the First’s onset.

But Sunder and Hollian had room in their concentration for nothing else. Slowly, woodenly, he placed himself before her. She gave him a smile of secret eagerness, trying to reassure him: he scowled in reply. Fear and determination stretched the skin of his forehead across the bones. He and Hollian did not touch each other. As formally as strangers, they sat down cross-legged, facing each other with their knees aligned.

Covenant came to Linden’s side. “Watch them,” he breathed. “Watch them hard. If they get into trouble, we’ve got to stop them. I can’t stand—” He muttered a curse at himself. “Can’t afford to lose them.”

She nodded mutely. The clangor of battle frayed her attention, urged it away from the Stonedownors. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself into focus on Sunder and Hollian. Around her, the edges of the landscape throbbed with the sun’s lambency, the hue of blood.

Sunder bowed his head for a moment, then reached into his jerkin and drew out his Sunstone and the wrapped
krill
. The
orcrest
he set down squarely between himself and Hollian. It lay like a hollow space in the dead dirt: its strange translucence revealed nothing.

Hollian produced her
lianar
, placed it across her ankles. A soft invocation began to sough between her lips as she raised her palms to Sunder. She was the eh-Brand: she would have to guide the power to its purpose.

Dread twisted Sunder’s visage. His hands shook as he exposed the
krill
, let its light shine into his eyes. Using the cloth to protect his grip from the
krill’s
heat, he directed its tip at Hollian’s palms.

Covenant winced as the Graveler drew a cut down the center of each of her hands.

Blood streaked her wrists. Her face was pale with pain, but she did not flinch. Lowering her arms, she let thick drops fall onto the
orcrest
until all its surface was wet. Then she took up her wand.

Sunder sat before her as if he wanted to scream; but somehow he forced his passion to serve him. With both fists, he gripped the handle of the
krill
, its tip aimed upward in front of his chest. The eh-Brand held her
lianar
likewise, echoing his posture.

The sun was almost directly above them.

Faintly Linden heard the First cursing, felt an emanation of Giantish pain. Pieces of the ur-viles’ power gathered together, became more effective. With a groan like a sob, Pitchwife tore himself from the Stonedownors and ran past the ridge to help his wife.

Sweating under the sun of pestilence, Linden watched as Sunder and the eh-Brand reached
krill
and
lianar
toward each other.

His arms shook slightly: hers were precise. Her knuckles touched his, wand rested against
krill
-gem, along a line between the bloodied
orcrest
and the sun.

And hot force stung through Linden as a vermeil shaft sprang from the Sunstone. It encompassed the hands of the Stonedownors, the blade and the wand, and shot away into the heart of the sun.

Power as savage as lightning: the keen might of the Sunbane. Sunder’s lips pulled back from his teeth. Hollian’s eyes widened as if the sheer size of what she was attempting suddenly appalled her. But neither she nor the Graveler withdrew.

Covenant’s halfhand had taken hold of Linden’s arm. Three points of pain dug into her flesh. On the Sandwall, for entirely different reasons, Cail had gripped her in that same way. She thought she could hear the First’s sword hacking against distorted limbs, hideous torsos. Vain’s anger did not relent. The strain of Pitchwife’s breathing came clearly through the blood-fury of the ur-viles.

Their lore grew sharper.

But the scalding shaft of Sunbane-force had a white core. Argent blazed within the beam, reaching like the will of the Stonedownors to pierce the sun. It came from the gem of the
krill
and the clenched strength of Sunder’s determination.

It pulled him so far out of himself that Linden feared he was already lost.

She started forward, wildly intending to hurl herself upon him, call him back. But then the eh-Brand put forth her purpose; and Linden froze in astonishment.

In the heart of the gem appeared a frail blue glimmer.

Sensations of power howled silently against Linden’s nerves, scaled upward out of comprehension, as the blue gleam steadied, became stronger. Flickers of it bled into the beam and flashed toward the sun. Still it became stronger, fed by the eh-Brand’s resolve. At first, it appeared molten and limited, torn from itself drop after drop by a force more compelling than gravity. But Hollian renewed it faster than it bled. Soon it was running up the beam in bursts so rapid that the shaft seemed to flicker.

Yet the aura around the sun showed no sign of alteration.

The Stonedownors chanted desperately, driving their exertion higher; but their voices made no sound. The incandescent beam absorbed their invocations directly into itself. Soundless force screamed across Linden’s hearing. Something inside her gibbered, Stop them stop they’ll kill themselves
stop
! But she could not. She could not tell the difference between their agony and the wailing in her mind.

The
krill’s
jewel shone blue. Constant azure filled the core of the shaft, hurled itself upward. Still the aura around the sun did not change.

The next instant, the power became too great.

The
lianar
caught fire. It burst in Hollian’s hands, shedding a bright vehemence that nearly blinded Linden. The wood flared to cinders, burned the eh-Brand’s palms to the bone. A cry ripped through her. The shaft wavered, faltered.

But she did not fall back. Leaning into the power, she closed her naked hands around the blade of the
krill
.

At her touch, the shaft erupted, shattering the Sunstone, shattering the heavens. The ground wrenched itself aside in a convulsion of pain, sent Linden and Covenant sprawling. She landed on him while the hills reeled. The air was driven from his lungs. She rolled off him, fought to get her feet under her. The earth quivered like outraged flesh.

Another concussion seemed to wipe everything else out of the world. It rent the sky as if the sun had exploded. Linden fell again, writhed on the heaving dirt. Before her face, the dust danced like shocked water, leaving fine whorls in the wake of the blast. The light faded as if the fist of the heavens had begun to close.

When she raised her head, she saw tremendous thunderheads teeming toward her from all the horizons, rushing to seal themselves over the sun’s blue corona.

For an instant, she could not think, had forgotten how to move. There was no sound at all except the oncoming passion of the rain. Perhaps the battle beyond the ridge was over. But then awareness recoiled through her like a thunderclap. Surging in panic to her hands and knees, she flung her percipience toward the Stonedownors.

Sunder sat as if the detonation of earth and sky had not touched him. His head was bowed. The
krill
lay on the ground in front of him, its handle still partially covered. The fringes of the cloth were charred. His breathing was shallow, almost indiscernible. In his chest, his heart limped like a mauled thing from beat to beat. To Linden’s first alarm, his life looked like the fading smoke of a snuffed wick. Then her health-sense reached deeper, and she saw that he would live.

But Hollian lay twisted on her back, her cut and heat-mangled palms open to the mounting dark. Her black hair framed the pale vulnerability of her face, pillowed her head like the cupped hand of death. Between her lost lips trickled a delicate trail of blood.