White Gold Wielder (62 page)

More tunnels followed, most of them tending sharply downward. She did not know how the Appointed chose his route; but he was sure of it. Perhaps he gained all the information he needed from the mountain itself, as his people were said to read the events of the outer Earth in the peaks and cols of the Rawedge Rim which enclosed
Elemesnedene
. Whatever his sources of knowledge, however, Linden sensed that he was leading the company through delvings which were no longer inhabited or active. They all smelled of abandonment, forgotten death—and somehow, obscurely, of ur-viles, as if this section of the catacombs had once been set apart for the products of the Demondim. But they were gone now, perhaps forever. Linden caught no scent or sound of any life here.

No life except the breathing, dire existence of the mountain, the sentience too slow to be discerned, the intent so immemorially occluded and rigid that it was hidden from mortal perception. Linden felt she was wandering the vitals of an organism which surpassed her on every scale—and yet was too time-spanning and ponderous to defend itself against quick evil. Mount Thunder loathed the banes which inhabited it, the use to which its depths were put. Why else was there so much anger compressed in the gutrock? But the day when the mountain might react for its own cleansing was still centuries or millennia away.

The First’s bulk blocked most of Findail’s glow. But Linden did not need light to know that Vain was still behind her, or that Covenant was nearly prostrate on his feet, frail with exhaustion. Yet he appeared determined to continue until he dropped. For his sake, she called Findail to a halt. “We’re killing ourselves like this.” Her own knees trembled with strain; weariness throbbed in her temples. “We’ve got to rest.”

Findail acceded with a shrug. They were in a rude chamber empty of everything except stale air and darkness. She half expected Covenant to protest; but he did not. Numbly he dropped to the floor and leaned his fatigue against one wall.

Sighing to himself, Pitchwife rummaged through the packs for
diamondraught
and a meal. Liquor and food he doled out to his companions, sparing little for the future. The future of the Search would not be long, for good or ill.

Linden ate as much as she could stomach, but only took a sip of the
diamondraught
so that she would not be put to sleep. Then she turned her attention to Covenant.

He was shivering slightly. Findail’s light made him look pallid and spectral, ashen-eyed, doomed. His body seemed to draw no sustenance from the food he had consumed. Even
diamondraught
had little effect on him. He looked like a man who was bleeding internally. On Kevin’s Watch, he had healed the wound in his chest with wild magic. But no power could undo the blow which had pierced him back in the woods behind Haven Farm. Now his physical condition appeared to be merging with that of the body he had left behind, the torn flesh with the knife still protruding from its ribs.

He had told her this would happen.

But other signs were missing. He had no bruises to match the ones he had received when Joan had been wrested from him. And he still had his beard. She clung to those things because they seemed to mean that he was not yet about to die.

She nearly cried out when he raised the knife he had brought from Revelstone and asked Pitchwife for water.

Without question, Pitchwife poured the last of the company’s water into a bowl and handed it to the Unbeliever.

Awkwardly Covenant wet his beard, then set the knife to his throat. His hands trembled as if he were appalled. Yet by his own choice he conformed himself to the image of his death.

Linden struggled to keep herself from railing at his self-abnegation, the surrender it implied. He behaved as if he had indeed given himself up to despair. It was unbearable. But the sight of him was too poignant: she could not accuse or blame him. Wrestling down her grief, she said in a voice that still sounded like bereavement, “You know, that beard doesn’t look so bad on you. I’m starting to like it” Pleading with him.

His eyes were closed as if in fear of the moment when the blade would slice into his skin, mishandled by his numb fingers. Yet with every stroke of the knife his hands grew calmer.

“I did this the last time I was here. An ur-vile knocked me off a ledge. Away from everyone else. I was alone. So scared I couldn’t even scream. But shaving helped. If you’d seen me, you would’ve thought I was trying to cut my throat in simple terror. But it helps.” Somehow he avoided nicking himself. The blade he used was so sharp that it left his skin clean. “It takes the place of courage.”

Then he was done. Putting the knife back under his belt, he looked at Linden as if he knew exactly what she had been trying to say to him. “I don’t like it.” His purpose was in his voice, as hard and certain as his ring. “But it’s better to choose your own risks. Instead of just trying to survive the ones you can’t get out of.”

Linden hugged her heart and made no attempt to answer him. His face was raw—but it was still free of bruises. She could still hope.

Gradually, he recovered a little strength. He needed far more rest than he allowed himself; but he was noticeably more stable as he climbed erect and announced his readiness.

The First joined him without hesitation. But Pitchwife looked toward Linden as if he wanted confirmation from her. She saw in his gaze that he was prepared to find some way to delay the company on Covenant’s behalf if she believed it necessary.

The question searched her; but she met it by rising to her feet If Covenant were exhausted, he would be more easily prevented from destruction.

At once, her thoughts shamed her. Even now—when he had just given her a demonstration of his deliberate acquiescence to death, as if he wanted her to be sure that Kevin had told her the truth—she felt he deserved something better than the promises she had made against him.

Mutely Findail bore his light into the next passage. The First shouldered her share of the company’s small supplies, drew her longsword. Muttering to himself, Pitchwife joined her. Vain gazed absently into the unmitigated dark of the catacombs. In single file, the questors followed the Appointed of the
Elohim
onward.

Still his route tended generally downward, deeper by irregular stages and increments toward the clenched roots of Mount Thunder; and as the company descended, the character of the tunnels changed. They became more ragged and ruinous. Broken gaps appeared in the walls, and from the voids beyond them came dank exhalations, distant groaning, cold sweat. Unseen denizens slithered away to their barrows. Water oozed through cracks in the gutrock and dripped like slow corrosion. Strange boiling sounds rose and then receded.

With a Giant’s unfear of stone and mountains. Pitchwife took a rock as large as his fist and tossed it into one of the gaps. For a long time, echoes replied like the distant labor of anvils.

The strain of the descent made Linden’s thighs ache and quiver.

Later, she did hear anvils, the faint metallic clatter of hammers. And the thud of bellows—the warm, dry gusts of exhaust from forges. The company was nearing the working heart of the Wightwarrens. Sourceless sounds made her skin crawl. But Findail did not hesitate or waver; and gradually the noise and effort in the air lessened. Moiling and sulfur filled the tunnel as if it were a ventilation shaft for a pit of brimstone. Then they, too, faded.

The tremendous weight of the mountain impending over her made Linden stoop. It was too heavy for her. Everywhere around her was knuckled stone and darkness. Findail’s light was ghostly, not to be trusted. Somewhere outside Mount Thunder, the day was ending—or had already ended, already given the Land its only relief from the Sunbane. But the things which soughed and whined through the catacombs knew no relief. She felt the old protestations of the rock like the far-off moaning of the damned. The air felt as cold, worn, and dead as a gravestone. Lord Foul had chosen an apt demesne: only mad creatures and evil could live in the Wightwarrens.

Then, abruptly, the wrought passages through which Findail had been traveling changed. The tunnel narrowed, became a rough crevice with a roof beyond the reach of Linden’s percipience. After some distance, the crevice ended at the rim of a wide, deep pit. And from the pit arose the fetor of a charnal.

The stench made Linden gag. Covenant could barely stand it. But Findail went right to the edge of the pit, to a cut stair which ascended the wall directly above the rank abysm. Covenant fought himself to follow; but before he had climbed a dozen steps he slumped against the wall. Linden felt nausea and vertigo gibbering in his muscles.

Sheathing her blade, the First lifted him in her arms, bore him upward as swiftly as Findail was willing to go.

Cramps knotted Linden’s guts. The stench heaved in her. The stair stretched beyond comprehension above her; she did not know how to attempt it. But the gap between her and the light—between her and Covenant—was increasing at every moment. Fiercely she turned her percipience on herself, pulled the cramps out of her muscles. Then she forced herself upward.

The fetor called out to her like the Sunbane, urged her to surrender to it—surrender to the darkness which lurked hungrily within her and everywhere else as well, unanswerable and growing toward completion with every intaken breath. If she let go now, she would be as strong as a Raver before she hit bottom; and then no ordinary death could touch her. Yet she clung to the rough treads with her hands, thrust at them with her legs. Covenant was above her. Perhaps he was already safe. And she had learned how to be stubborn. The mouth of the old man whose life she had saved on Haven Farm had been as foul as this; but she had borne that putrid halitus in order to fight for his survival. Though her guts squirmed, her throat retched, she fought her way to the top of the stair and the well.

There she found Findail, the First, and Covenant. And light—a different light than the Appointed emitted. Reflecting faintly from the passage behind him, it was the orange-red color of rocklight. And it was full of soft, hot boiling, slow splashes. A sulfurous exudation took the stench from the air.

Pitchwife finished the ascent with Vain behind him. Linden looked at Covenant. His face was waxen, slick with sweat: vertigo and sickness glazed his eyes. She turned to the First and Findail to demand another rest.

The
Elohim
forestalled her. His gaze was shrouded, concealing his thoughts. “Now for a space we must travel a common roadway of the Wightwarrens.” Rocklight limned his shoulders. “It is open to us at present—but shortly it will be peopled again, and our way closed. We must not halt here.”

Linden wanted to protest in simple frustration and helplessness. Roughly she asked the First, “How much more do you think he can take?”

The Giant shrugged. She did not meet Linden’s glare. Her efforts to refuse doubt left little room for compromise. “If he falters, I will carry him.”

At once, Findail turned and started down the passage.

Before Linden could object, Covenant shambled after the Appointed. The First moved protectively ahead of the Unbeliever.

Pitchwife faced Linden with a grimace of wry fatigue. “She is my wife,” he murmured, “and I love her sorely. Yet she surpasses me. Were I formed as other Giants, I would belabor her insensate rather than suffer this extremity.” He clearly did not mean what he was saying: he spoke only to comfort Linden.

But she was beyond comfort. Fetor and brimstone, exhaustion and peril pushed her to the fringes of her self-control. Fuming futilely, she coerced her unsteady limbs into motion.

The passage soon became a warren of corridors; but Findail threaded them unerringly toward the source of the light. The air grew noticeably warmer: it was becoming hot. The boiling sounds increased, took on a subterranean force which throbbed irrhythmically in Linden’s lungs.

Then the company gained a tunnel as broad as a road; and the rocklight flared brighter. The stone thrummed with bottomless seething. Ahead of Findail, the left wall dropped away: acrid heat rose from that side. It seemed to suck the air out of Linden’s chest, tug her forward. Findail led the company briskly into the light.

The road passed along the rim of a huge abyss. Its sheer walls were stark with rocklight; it blazed heat and sulfur.

At the bottom of the gulf burned a lake of magma.

Its boiling made the gutrock shiver. Tremendous spouts reached massively toward the ceiling, then collapsed under their own weight, spattering the walls with a violence that melted and reformed the sides.

Findail strode down the roadway as if the abyss did not concern him. But Covenant moved slowly, crouching close to the outer wall. The rocklight shone garishly across his raw face, made him appear lunatic with fear and yearning for immolation. Linden followed almost on his heels so that she would be near if he needed her. They were halfway around the mouth of the gulf before she felt his emanations clearly enough to realize that his apprehension was not the simple dread of vertigo and heat. He recognized this place: memories beat about his head like dark wings. He knew that this road led to the Despiser.

Linden dogged his steps and raged uselessly to herself. He was in no shape to confront Lord Foul. No condition. She no longer cared that his weakness might lessen the difficulty of her own responsibilities. She did not want her lot eased. She wanted him whole and strong and victorious, as he deserved to be. This exhausting rush to doom was folly, madness.

Gasping at the heat, he reached the far side of the abyss, moved two steps into the passage, and sagged to the floor. Linden put her arms around him, trying to steady herself as well as him. The molten passion of the lake burned at her back. Pitchwife was nearly past the rim. Vain was several paces behind.

“You must now be swift,” Findail said. He sounded strangely urgent. “There are Cavewights nigh.”

Without warning, he sped past the companions, flashed back into the rocklight like a striking condor.

As he hurtled down the roadway, his form melted out of humanness and assumed the shape of a Sandgorgon.