Against All Things Ending (3 page)

The confrontation ends abruptly when news comes that riders are approaching Revelstone. From the battlements, Linden sees four Masters racing to reach Lord’s Keep ahead of the Demondim. With the Masters are Thomas Covenant and Jeremiah. And Jeremiah has emerged enthusiastically from his unreactive passivity.

In
Fatal Revenant
, the arrival of Covenant and Jeremiah brings turmoil. They are tangibly present and powerful, able to evade the forces of the Demondim. Yet they give no satisfactory account of their presence. And they refuse to let Linden touch them: they refuse to acknowledge her love. Instead they insist on being sequestered until they are ready to talk to her.

Meanwhile the Demondim mass at the gates, apparently preparing the evil of the Illearth Stone to destroy Revelstone. But they do not attack.

Profoundly shaken, Linden retreats alone to the plateau above Lord’s Keep to await Covenant’s summons. There she calls for Esmer, hoping that he will hear her—and that he will answer her questions. When he manifests himself, however, he surprises her by bringing more creatures out of the Land’s distant past: a band of ur-viles and a smaller number of Waynhim who have joined together to serve Linden. Cryptically Esmer informs her that the creatures have prepared “manacles.” And he reveals that the Demondim besieging Revelstone are now working in concert with Kastenessen. But he avoids Linden’s other questions. Instead, for no apparent reason, he tells her that she “must be the first to drink of the EarthBlood.”

When Esmer vanishes, Covenant’s summons comes. Linden meets with Covenant and Jeremiah in their chambers—an encounter which only exacerbates her distress. Covenant speaks primarily in non sequiturs and evasions, although he insists that he knows how to save the Land. At the same time, Jeremiah pleads with Linden to trust his companion: he considers Covenant his friend. Feeling both rejected and suspicious, Linden refuses when Covenant asks for his white gold ring. In response, Covenant demands that she join him on the plateau, where he will show her how he intends to save the Land.

Linden complies. She knows no other way to discover why and how her loved ones have changed. Instead of revealing their intentions for the Land, however, Covenant and Jeremiah create a portal which snatches her away from her present. Without transition, she finds herself with Covenant and Jeremiah ten millennia in the Land’s past, during the time of Berek Halfhand’s last wars before he became the first of the High Lords.

They are near the dire forest of Garroting Deep—and they are far from the place and time that Covenant and Jeremiah sought. Instead they have been deflected from their destination by a man called the Theomach, who appears to have a mystical relationship with time. He is one of the Insequent, a race of humans who pursue arcane knowledge and power in complete isolation from each other: a race whose only shared trait, apparently, is a loathing for the
Elohim
. The Theomach interfered with Covenant and Jeremiah because he believed that their intentions were too dangerous—and because he wished to frustrate any interference by the
Elohim
.

The result, however, is that Linden, Covenant, and Jeremiah stand in the dead of winter many brutal leagues from
Melenkurion
Skyweir, where Covenant and Jeremiah hope to use the EarthBlood and the Power of Command to defeat Lord Foul permanently. They are too close to Garroting Deep; and they have no warm clothing or supplies. In desperation, Linden decides to approach Berek for help. Accompanied by the Theomach, Covenant, and Jeremiah, she wins the future High Lord’s trust by healing many of his injured—and by introducing him to his own newborn health-sense.

Afterward the Theomach accomplishes his own purpose by persuading Berek to accept him as a guide and teacher. To show his good faith, he speaks the Seven Words. They are a mighty invocation of Earthpower which Linden has never heard before.

With supplies and horses provided by Berek Halfhand, Linden, Covenant, and Jeremiah begin the arduous trip along the Last Hills toward
Melenkurion
Skyweir. But when the exhausted mounts start to die, Covenant and Jeremiah transport Linden to the Skyweir through a series of spatial portals. On a plateau below the towering mountain, Jeremiah reveals the magic of his talent for constructs. With the right materials, he is able to devise “doors”: doors from one place to another; doors that bypass time; doors between realities. Building a door shaped like a large wooden box, he conveys himself, Covenant, and Linden deep into
Melenkurion
Skyweir, to the hidden caves of the EarthBlood.

Covenant is now ready to exert the Power of Command. But Linden drinks first, remembering Esmer’s counsel. She then uses her Command to expose the secrets of her companions.

At once, a glamour is dispelled. Covenant shows his true form: he is Roger Covenant, not Thomas, and he despises all that his father loves. His right hand wields immense power: it is Kastenessen’s, grafted onto him to give him magicks which he does not naturally possess. And on Jeremiah’s back rides one of the
croyel
, a succubus that both feeds from and strengthens its host. The sentience that Jeremiah has demonstrated is the
croyel
’s, not his own. Gloating, Roger explains that he and the
croyel
aspire to become gods when the Arch of Time falls. Bringing Linden into the past—and bringing her here—was an attempt to trick her into performing some action which would irretrievably violate the Land’s history, thereby causing the Arch to crumble. So far, she has avoided that danger. But now she is trapped ten thousand years in the Land’s past and cannot escape.

A terrible battle follows, during which the Staff of Law turns black. Using her Staff and the Seven Words to draw on the EarthBlood, Linden forces Roger and her possessed son to retreat. While an earthquake splits
Melenkurion
Skyweir, however, Roger and Jeremiah escape Linden and the past, leaving her stranded.

The experience transforms Linden. Assured of her own inadequacy, she now believes that only Thomas Covenant can accomplish what must be done. At the same time, her determination to save Jeremiah becomes even stronger—and more unscrupulous.

After an encounter with Caerroil Wildwood, the Forestal of Garroting Deep, who engraves her Staff with runes to make it more powerful, she is rescued from the past by the Mahdoubt. Here the Mahdoubt is revealed as one of the Insequent. When Linden is returned to Revelstone and her friends in her proper time, she learns that Liand has acquired a piece of
orcrest
, a stone capable of channeling Earthpower in various ways. She also hears that a stranger has single-handedly destroyed the entire horde of the Demondim.

Meeting this stranger, she finds that he is the Harrow, yet another Insequent. He covets both her Staff and Covenant’s ring, and he has the power to take them by emptying her mind, depriving her of will. However, the Mahdoubt intervenes. Violating the fundamental ethics which govern the Insequent, she opposes the Harrow and defeats him, winning from him the promise that he will not wrest the Staff of Law and Covenant’s ring from Linden by force: a victory which costs the Mahdoubt her own life. After assuring Linden that he will gain his desires by other means later, the Harrow disappears.

The next day, Linden, her friends, and the three Humbled summon Ranyhyn and ride away from Revelstone. Because she still has no idea where Jeremiah is hidden, or how to rescue him, her stated intention is to reach Andelain and consult with the Dead, as Covenant once did long ago. For reasons which she does not explain, she also hopes to recover High Lord Loric’s
krill
, an eldritch dagger forged to wield quantities of power too great for any unaided mortal.

Along the way, she and her companions come upon a Woodhelven, a tree-village, which has been destroyed by a
caesure
: a
caesure
controlled by Esmer as a weapon against the Harrow. From them, she learns that the Harrow knows where Jeremiah has been hidden—and that Esmer intends to prevent the Insequent from revealing his secret. At the same time, Roger Covenant attacks with an army of Cavewights. Like Esmer, Roger desires the Harrow’s death. In the ensuing battle, Linden’s company is soon overwhelmed. Frantic, she takes a wild gamble: she tries to summon a Sandgorgon, a savage monster that once aided Covenant against the Clave. Six Sandgorgons charge into the fight, routing Roger and the Cavewights, and allowing the Harrow to escape with his life.

Later Linden hears that a large number of Sandgorgons have come to the Land, driven by the rent remnants of a Raver’s malign spirit. In Covenant’s name, they answered Linden’s call. But now they have repaid their debt to him. They seek a new outlet for their own savage hungers, and for the Raver’s malice.

When Linden and her companions have done what they can for the homeless tree-villagers, they ride on to Salva Gildenbourne, a great forest which encircles most of Andelain. There they encounter a party of Giants, Swordmainnir, all women except for one deranged man, Longwrath, who is their prisoner. When the Giants and Linden’s company reach a place of comparative safety, they stop to rest and exchange tales.

The leader of the Giants, Rime Coldspray, the Ironhand, explains that Longwrath is a Swordmain who has been possessed by a
geas
: some external force drives him to kill an unnamed woman. With nine of her fellow Swordmainnir, the Ironhand has been following him across the seas, seeking the cause or purpose of his
geas
. After acquiring an apparently powerful sword, he has led the Giants to the Land. Here it becomes clear that the woman he feels coerced to kill is Linden herself.

To protect Linden, and for the sake of Linden’s old friendship with the Giants of the Search, the Swordmainnir agree to accompany her to Andelain. But during the next day, they are assailed by the
skurj
, fiery worm-like monsters that serve Kastenessen. Two of the Giants are killed. Yet Liand saves the company by using his
orcrest
to summon a thunderstorm. The downpour forces the
skurj
underground, and the surviving companions are able to flee once more.

At last, they reach the safety of Andelain. The sacred Hills are warded by the Wraiths, small candle-flame sprites that repulse evil by drawing power from the awakened
krill
. Thus protected, the companions hasten to find the place where Covenant and Linden left the
krill
long ago.

During the dark of the moon, however, the company meets the Harrow again. Indirectly he has offered Linden a bargain: if she surrenders the Staff of Law and Covenant’s ring, he will take her to Jeremiah. But while he taunts Linden, Infelice, the monarch of the
Elohim
, appears. She argues passionately against the Harrow—and against everything that Linden intends to do. Yet Linden ignores both Infelice and the Harrow as she approaches the
krill
.

There the Dead begin to arrive. While the four original High Lords observe, Caer-Caveral and High Lord Elena escort Thomas Covenant’s spectre. Yet the Lords and the last Forestal and Covenant himself refuse to speak. None of them answer Linden.

Driven to the last extremity, Linden raises all of her power from both her Staff and Covenant’s ring, and commits their contradictory magicks to the
krill
. With the
krill
, she cuts through the Laws of Life and Death until she succeeds at resurrecting Covenant; drawing his spirit out of the Arch of Time; restoring his slain body.

Yet power on such a scale has vast consequences. Resurrecting Covenant, Linden Avery also awakens the Worm of the World’s End.

Part One

“to achieve the ruin of the Earth”

1.

The Burden of Too Much Time

Thomas Covenant knelt on the rich grass of Andelain as though he had fallen there from the distance of eons. He was full of the heavens and time. He had spent uncounted millennia among the essential strictures of creation, participating in every manifestation of the Arch: he had been as inhuman as the stars, and as alone. He had seen everything, known everything—and had labored to preserve it. From the first dawn of the Earth to the ripening of Earthpower in the Land—from the deepest roots of mountains to the farthest constellations—he had witnessed and understood and served. Across the ages, he had wielded his singular self in defense of Law and life.

But now he could not contain such illimitable vistas. Linden had made him mortal again. His mere flesh and bone refused to hold his power and knowledge, his span of comprehension. With every beat of his forgotten heart, intimations of eternity were expelled. They oozed from his new skin like sweat, and were lost.

Still he held more than he could endure. The burden of too much time was as profound as orogeny: it subjected his ordinary mind to pressures akin to those which caused earthquakes; tectonic shifts. His compelled transubstantiation left him frangible. As the structure of what he had known and understood and thought and desired failed, moment after unaccustomed moment, the sentience that had sustained him across uncounted ages became riddled with fault-lines and potential slippage.

In some fashion which was not yet awareness or true sensation, he recognized that he was surrounded by needs; by people and spectres who had gathered to witness Linden’s choices. Dark against the benighted heavens, broad-boughed trees defined the hollow where he knelt among Andelain’s hills. But their shadows paled in the fervid gleaming of Loric’s
krill
, bright with wild magic—and in the ghostly luminescence of the four High Lords whose presence formed the boundaries of Covenant’s crisis, and of Linden Avery’s.

Towering and majestic, the Dead Lords stood timeless as sentinels at the points of the compass to observe, and perhaps to judge, the long consequences of their own lives. Berek and Damelon, Loric and Kevin: Covenant knew them—or had known them—as intimately as they knew themselves. He felt Berek’s empathy, Damelon’s concern, Loric’s chagrin, Kevin’s vehement repudiation. He comprehended their presence. They had been summoned by the same urgency which had brought him to this night, drawn and escorted by the Law-Breakers.

But when he regarded the spirits of the Lords—briefly, briefly, between one wrenching heartbeat and the next—he found that he was no longer one of them; one with them. Their thoughts had become as alien and immemorial as the speech of mountains.

Each throb of blood in his veins bereft him of himself.

Caer-Caveral and Elena he comprehended as well. They remained behind him on the slope of the hollow, Caer-Caveral wreathed in the austere self-sacrifice of his centuries as Andelain’s Forestal, Elena heart-rent and grieving at the cost of the misplaced faith which had led her, unwilling, into the Despiser’s service. The Law-Breakers might have had the stature of the High Lords—the grandeur and might of Berek and Damelon, the severe valor of Loric, the anguish of Kevin—but they had been diminished by their chosen deaths; their deliberate participation in the severances which had made possible Covenant’s return to mortality. Now they had completed their purpose. They stood back, leaving Covenant to lose himself among his flaws.

Had he been able to do so, he might have acknowledged Infelice, not because he esteemed the self-absorbed surquedry of the
Elohim
, but because he understood the doom which Linden had wrought for them. Of the peoples of the Earth, the
Elohim
would be the first to suffer extermination. The havoc which would extinguish all of the world’s glories would begin with them.

The Harrow he perceived in glimpses like the flickering of a far signal-fire. But he had already forgotten the warning that those glimpses should have conveyed. His human vision was blurred as if he were weeping, shedding tears of knowledge and power. Terrible futures hinged upon the Insequent, as they did upon Anele: Covenant saw that. Yet their import had dripped into the fissures of his dwindling mind, or had seeped away like blood.

The losses which Linden had forced him to bear surpassed his strength. They could not be endured. And still they grew, depriving him by increments of everything that death and purified wild magic and the Arch of Time had enabled. With every lived moment, fractures spread deeper into his soul.

The Worm of the World’s End was coming. It was holocaust incarnate. He seemed to feel its hot breath on the nape of the Earth’s neck.

The
Haruchai
he knew, and the Ranyhyn, and the Ramen, although their names had fled from him. Of the people who had once been the Bloodguard, and once his friends, he remembered only sorrow. In the name of their ancient pride and humiliation, they had made commitments with no possible outcome except bereavement. Now three of them had been maimed so that their right hands resembled his: the fourth had lost his left eye. Recognizing them, Covenant wanted to cry out against their intransigence. They should have obeyed the summons of their Dead ancestors.

But he did not. Instead he found solace in the company of the Ranyhyn and the Ramen—although he could not have explained in any mortal language why they comforted him. He knew only that they had never striven to reject the boundaries of themselves. And that the Ranyhyn had warned Linden as clearly as they could.

Like the Ramen, the horses appeared to study the
Haruchai
warily, as if the halfhand warriors posed a threat which Covenant could not recall.

The Stonedownor he identified more by the
orcrest
in his hand and the fate on his forehead than by his features or devotion. The young man had chosen his doom when he had first closed his fingers on the Sunstone. He could not alter his path now without ceasing to be who he was.

Everyone who had remained near Linden in this place, this transcendent violation, watched Covenant with shock or consternation or bitterness. However, he was not yet fully present among them. He was only conscious of them dimly, like figures standing at the fringes of a dream. His first frail instants of concrete awareness were focused on Linden.

The anguish on her face, loved and broken, held him. It kept him from losing his way among the cracks of his mind.

She stood defenseless a few paces in front of him. His ring and her Staff had fallen from her stricken fingers. In the silver glare of the
krill
, the traced stains on her jeans looked as black as accusations. The red flannel of her shirt was snagged and torn as though she had made her way to him through a wilderness of thorns. She seemed empty of resolve or hope, fundamentally beaten, as if he had betrayed her.

The sight of her, unconsoled and inconsolable, magnified the stresses which damaged him. But it also anchored him to his mortality. The fault of her plight was his. He had ignored too much of the Law which had bound and preserved him.

Moments or lifetimes ago, he had said, Oh, Linden. What have you done?—but not in horror. Rather she had filled him with awe. He had loved her across the entire span of the Arch of Time, and she had become capable of deciding the outcome of worlds.

Done, Timewarden?
Infelice had answered.
She has roused the Worm of the World’s End
. But he cared nothing for Infelice herself: only the fate of her people concerned him.—
every
Elohim
will be devoured
. Involuntarily he was remembering his own sins. They seemed more real than the people or beings around him.

Trust yourself
, he had told Linden when he should not have spoken to her at all, not under any circumstance. He had said,
You need the Staff of Law
, and
Do something they don’t expect
. He had even addressed her friends through Anele, although their names and exigencies were lost among the cracks of his sentience. And he had pleaded with her to find him—

Defying every necessity that sustained the Earth and the Land, he had pointed her toward the ineffable catastrophe of his resurrection.

Still he could not grasp what Linden’s companions were doing. He had not known an illucid instant since his passing; but now people were in motion for reasons which bewildered him.

Shouting, “Desecrator!” one of the
Haruchai
rushed to strike her. A single blow of his fist would crush her skull. But another
Haruchai
, the man who had lost an eye, opposed her attacker; flung him away in a flurry of strikes and counters.

The two remaining
Haruchai
also charged at Linden. One stumbled under an onslaught of Ramen. Aided by the Stonedownor, the three Ramen kept that
Haruchai
from his target. And his kinsman was impeded by Ranyhyn. A roan stallion kicked the man in the chest; sent him sprawling backward.

“Yes!” Kevin Landwaster shouted. “
Slay
her! She merits death!”

But Berek Halfhand’s great voice answered, “
Hold!
Restrain yourselves,
Haruchai!
Matters beyond your comprehension lie between the Timewarden and the Chosen. You have no part in them!”

“This night is sacred,” added Damelon Giantfriend more quietly. “Your strife is unseemly. Beings mightier than you would not contend here.”

Elena may have been weeping. Caer-Caveral stood apart from her, distancing himself from her distress.

Perhaps out of respect for the Lords, or perhaps for some reason of their own, the
Haruchai
ceased their struggles.

Covenant made no sense of it. He could more easily have explained why the Wraiths had not intervened. The
Haruchai
were simply too human and necessary to invoke the forces which defended Andelain. Still he said nothing. There was no room in his crippled apprehension for anything or anyone except Linden.

She was moving as well, as if she had been released by the quick violence of the
Haruchai
. Every line of her form was agony and protest as she strode toward him. Flagrant with pain, she seemed to rear over him as she raised her arm. When she struck him, he was too confused to duck his head or defend himself.

“God
damn
you!” she cried: a tortured wail. “Why didn’t you
say
something? You could have
told
me—!”

Covenant gaped in wonder at the forgotten sensation of physical hurt as Linden fell to her knees in front of him. She covered her face with her hands; but she could not stop the sobs bursting from the bottom of her heart. Nearly shouting, she wept as if she were being torn out of herself by the roots.

He recognized her torment. But it was the rich sting of her blow that brought him into focus at last. For the first time since his death in agony, and his transfiguration, he tasted the crisp balm of Andelain’s air, cooled and accentuated by the darkness that enclosed the Hills. It should have eased him, but it did not.

“Oh, Linden,” he gasped softly. Fearing that she would repudiate his touch, he tried to put his arms around her nonetheless. His movements were awkward with disuse; weak; almost numb. Yet he clasped her to his chest. “I shouldn’t have said anything at all. In your dreams. Through Anele. The risk was too great. But I was afraid you might lose hope. I couldn’t—” He swallowed implications of ruin. “Couldn’t just abandon you.

“You haven’t done anything wrong. This is my fault. I was too weak.”

He meant, I was too human. Even living in the Arch. I couldn’t watch you suffer and let you think you were alone.

I would spare you the cost of what you’ve done if I knew how.

“Anything
wrong
?” snapped Infelice. “You rave, Timewarden. Your transformation is an immitigable evil. It has undone you. Do you not see that she has wrought the destruction of the Earth?”

Anger and Earthpower glittered around the
Elohim
as if she wore garments of disillusioned gems. Even in her wrath, she should have been lovely to behold. But everything that Thomas Covenant still possessed was concentrated on Linden: her sob-wracked body in his arms; her hair against the side of his face. Immersed in her distress, he ignored Infelice.

Loric Vilesilencer did not. “Be still,
Elohim
,” he growled. “The fault of this—if it
is
fault—is yours as much as his or hers. You fear only for yourselves. You care nothing for the Earth. Yet there is much here that surpasses your self-regard.”

“No!” protested Kevin urgently. “The
Elohim
speaks sooth. Have I suffered damnation and learned naught? She has performed a Desecration which exceeds comprehension. The Humbled know it, if the Timewarden does not. The Chosen herself knows it.”

“Enough, Loric-son,” Berek said in a voice of commandment. “The fate of life belongs to those who know love and death. It is not our place to judge, or to condemn. And Time remains to us, as it does to the living. The making of worlds is not accomplished in an instant. It cannot be instantly undone. Much must transpire before the deeds of the Chosen bear their last fruit.”