The Last Dark (16 page)

“Here!”

Frantic to show his good faith, he swept cloth around the
krill
’s gem and blade. Instantly the light vanished. Night rushed over the region: it seemed to reel in its haste to fill the void left by covering the dagger. The fires of the Feroce revealed only themselves.

Urgent and awkward, Covenant thrust the wrapped knife into the waist of his jeans, then jerked Joan’s ring from his finger, looped the chain over his head, dropped the band under his shirt; made himself appear defenseless.

“I’ll need metal to fight.” Fear made him savage. “And I’ll have to hurt your High God. I’ll have to hurt him
bad
. I need to cut off the infection,” sever every portion possessed by
turiya
. “I don’t know another way.” He had no idea how to kill a Raver.

“But I can’t do anything if he doesn’t
take me where I’m needed
!”

The lurker was enormous. It could survive terrible damage.

As one, the creatures gave a quivering shriek as if he had appalled them to the core of their soft bodies. Their fires sprang high; dropped low. Flames dripped between their fingers like corroded flesh or spilth.

Covenant swore in frustration. He should have gotten here sooner. If he were not so easily wounded, so damn mortal—

“Ur-Lord,” cautioned Branl. “Ready yourself. Again you are answered.”

While Covenant strove to see, a dark shape arose from the waters.

Visible only as a starker blackness in the dark, a tentacle rose and rose as if it were reaching for the heavens. It was thick as a cedar, tall as an elm. Its surface squirmed with desperation. In spite of Kevin’s Dirt, Covenant felt the lurker’s strength, its bitter hunger. Reaching high above him, its arm seemed to search with inhuman senses for the taste of its prey.

Covenant had time to tell the tentacle or the Feroce, “Leave my companions here. They can’t help me. I’ll need them later.”

Then the tentacle lashed down. Like a cracked whip, it snapped around him. Its fingers grasped every possible surface of his shirt, his jeans, his limbs. Coils clasped his arms hard to his sides. A heartbeat later, the tentacle sprang back; jerked him into the air with appalling ease.

He heard no response from the
Haruchai
. Only the voice of the Feroce scaled, frail and frantic, into the dark.

“Try to believe that you are the Pure One.”

In a flicker as brief as a blink, he thought that he saw the Humbled take hold of Horrim Carabal’s acolytes. Then the lurker snatched him through the sky as though the monster intended to hurl him into the heart of Sarangrave Flat.

Hellfire! He could not move his arms; could hardly breathe. Black trees and obscured streams rushed below him as if they were plunging into an abyss. If the lurker did not fling him to his death, it was going to squeeze out his life.

Your alliance was a thing of the moment.

The Feroce would have reacted differently if their High God had been mastered by
turiya
. The Humbled would have tried to ward Covenant. But he could not be sure that the lurker understood his intentions—or knew how effortlessly he might be crushed.

He had no measure for direction or distance. The wetland seethed like a cataract below him. Night blinded every horizon. The roar of wind in his ears covered the stricken pound of his pulse. When he was thrown, he would soar for leagues before he hit and died.

Without warning, the coils wrenched him downward. Before he could even try to fill his lungs, Horrim Carabal slammed him into a pool, buried him in deep water acrid with poisons. His eyes would have been ruined in their sockets if he had not clenched them shut.

But the tentacle did not stop. It tore him through water and muck as easily as it had carried him above the marsh, as if he had no substance and did not need air.

The monster did not mean him harm. It had good reason to be terrified of white gold and Loric’s
krill
. Good reason to fear wild magic. But it did not understand its own strength—or Covenant’s weakness. He was dying for air. The corrupt water stung him like a swarm of ants, biting and endless. Apart from suffocation and dread and pain, he felt only nascent fire, as if his mere presence sufficed to set the toxic waters ablaze.

But he was well acquainted with pain. It was human and inevitable: he could ignore it. And dread was akin to fury.
You are the white gold
. When his fear became a form of rage, he could burn his way free.

Suffocation was altogether worse. Drowning was worse. He could more readily have endured the excoriation within a
caesure
. Drowning was desperation. It led only to unthinking frenzy.

He had to have air.
He had to have air
.

Or he had to have peace: the silence of the last dark, voiceless and blissful: the surrender of every demand and desire.

Air or peace: one or the other. He could not be given both.

But he wanted air.

He would never get it. He was already failing.

Still his given body remembered its own exigencies, its own compulsory striving. It locked itself against the impulse to inhale death—

—until the lurker suddenly ripped him upward.

He knew nothing; remembered nothing; could not interpret his changed rush through the fluid dark. But the flesh which Linden had fashioned for him was ruled by strictures that did not require conscious choices. As the tentacle heaved him out of the water and thrust him high, the pressure in his chest seemed to explode. Bursting, he found air.

For a time, nothing existed except wretched gasping and life. Blots like devoured stars swam across the void inside his eyelids, inside his head. Air and the wind of his blind movement exacerbated the sting of the waters until it felt feral, as fierce as wasps. Every breath was tumid and rank, difficult to take. The night tortured him with questions for which there were no answers.

Try to believe that you are pure.

Because he had to see, he slitted a glimpse outward and found ruptured dazzles there as well.

His eyes bled tears. Light smeared his vision. The shining was a noxious silver like and unlike the alloyed clarity of wild magic. And it was tainted by an underhue of emerald that resembled the virulence of the Illearth Stone. He did not understand it. The tentacle jerked him from side to side, asking its own febrile questions. The Sarangrave’s fouled waters clung to his skin like scales. He felt blisters bubbling everywhere.

But tears washed away bitter minerals and evil. Blinking rapidly, he began to see.

Below him stretched a pool the size of a small lake. It veered one way and another as the tentacle squirmed. Its surface blazed with a nacreous lucence as dangerous as necrosis.

From the depths of the water rose two more tentacles. They were thick as towers, supple as serpents, mighty as siege-engines. And they were locked in battle. One struck at the other while the other writhed to avoid blows that would have toppled oaks. The ferocity of their movement churned the pool to froth. Their struggle cast shadows like screams across the wetland, but did not quench the light.

The attacking arm feinted to distract the other. An instant later, the attacker flung itself like a noose around its foe near the water-line. It tightened and strained, apparently trying to rip the other arm in half.

At first, Covenant did not recognize what was happening. Then he did. The lurker seemed to be fighting itself, but it was not. It was resisting the Raver. Covenant felt
turiya
’s loud malevolence in the caught tentacle. The Raver’s mastery of the monster had reached this far along one arm. Now Horrim Carabal strove to tear off the possessed part of itself before
turiya
could claim more.

A doomed struggle: the lurker could not clench tightly enough, dismember itself swiftly enough. And it could not make the Raver flinch or shy because the Raver was not afraid. Moments after the monster grabbed its own arm, Covenant saw
turiya
Herem’s evil slip past the constriction and spread farther.

The lurker released that arm, tried for a new grip. What else could the monster do? But it could not preserve itself by that means. The truth was plain. The Raver’s viciousness moved too easily. Even if the lurker contrived to stop
turiya
in one place, Lord Foul’s servant would simply shift his possession to another tentacle.

A timid shriek thronged into the dark sky. Around the pool were gathered the lurker’s worshippers, hundreds of them. Some stood to their waists in the water: others crowded the verge. From all of their hands shone green fires, bright desperation. Their wailing was a ululation of terror. But their hands and flames moved in unison, dropping low and then rising high as one, swaying from side to side like an invocation.

In the distance behind them crouched tormented growth and lurid streams, helpless in spite of innumerable toxins. Beyond the light lay beleaguered darkness.

The Feroce were trying to save their High God. Surely that was what they were doing? But Covenant had no idea what they sought to accomplish.

Then he understood.

Two nights ago, in his cave above the Sunbirth Sea, the lurker’s creatures had given him unexpected aid. Wielding their peculiar theurgy, they had caused the Harrow’s prostrate destrier to recover its captious nature.
We have not given it strength
.
We cannot
.
But we have caused it to remember what it is
. That gift had enabled the beast to bear Covenant farther than he would have thought possible.

Now the Feroce were fighting for the spirit of their High God with the only power they had: the power to impose memories. Frantically they struggled to help the lurker recall freedom.

That effort, too, was doomed.
Turiya
Herem was stronger.

Nevertheless the effects of emerald worship and panic granted Covenant a little time to gather himself.

He could not help the lurker as he was, trapped in the tentacle’s coils. But he had only one way to communicate with the monster, to explain his needs and intentions; and the turgid atmosphere resisted every breath. His gasping did not bring in enough good air to support a shout that the Feroce might hear.

He tried anyway.

“Listen,” he croaked: a sound too small to pierce the forlorn shrieking; the savage slash and pound of tentacles; the turmoil of bright water. “I want to fight, but I can’t move my arms. I have to reach the
krill
. And your High God has to work with me. We have to fight together.”

His flawed sight detected no sign that any of the creatures had heard him.

Still the lurker of the Sarangrave feared possession more than pain. Doubtless the monster did not understand what Covenant had said. Yet it recognized that he had spoken. Perhaps it had felt his resistance as he squirmed against its coils.

Abruptly a fourth arm reached out of the scourged pool. It snatched up a cluster of the Feroce. Wrapping them like Covenant, the massive appendage lifted them until he could look straight into their appalled eyes.

“Listen,” he panted again. “I need my arms. I have to reach my knife.” It was likely that the Feroce did not know Loric’s dagger by name. “And your High God has to carry me to the right place. The place where I can cut off the horror, all of it.

“Make him understand. We have to do this
now
.”

Turiya
did not fear the lurker, but he would fear the
krill
. He would fear wild magic.

Round eyes gaped at Covenant as if they had been blinded. The creatures had been crying out continuously. They did not stop. And there was no difference between the wailing in front of Covenant and the shrieks from below. All of the Feroce had one voice, the same voice. They uttered only anguish.

Yet the grip of the lurker’s arm loosened. Its fingers shifted the coils lower on Covenant’s chest.

Still he could hardly breathe. The air was too damn thick—

With all of his insignificant strength, he tried to grasp the
krill
.

The tentacle moved farther. After a moment that made dots of weakness dance across his sight, his halfhand found the dagger.

Now, he thought. Hellfire!
Now
.

Holding his weapon for his life, he drew it free. Dropped its covering. Raised it over his head in both hands.

“I’m ready,” he gasped. “Do it!”

With actions as plain as language, Horrim Carabal chose agony. Any maiming was better than possession. In an instant, the monster stopped fighting itself. With a ponderous heave of its possessed tentacle, it extended the boundary between itself and
turiya
Herem’s mastery higher and then higher; away from the corrosive waters; closer to Covenant’s elevation.

As if Covenant were an axe, the lurker swung him at a section of the massive arm which
turiya
had not yet claimed.

In every limb, Horrim Carabal had the strength of half a dozen Giants. It struck with the force of frenzy. Covenant whipped forward like the crack of a flail. When his blade bit flesh, any ordinary weapon would have been ripped from his clutch. But wild magic whetted the edges of Loric’s
krill
. Spitting flames, the dagger cut. Covenant hardly felt the impact.

His blow sliced partway through the tentacle. Vile blood fountained from the wound. It stank like distilled corruption. The whole of the Sarangrave seemed to erupt in an excruciated howl as if every leaf and stem and bog, every current, every swath of scum gave voice to the lurker’s pain: a howl so vast that it effaced the thin shrieking of the Feroce.

But the tentacle was not severed. It was far too thick to be lopped off by a single slash. Through the gush of blood and the yowling, Covenant felt
turiya
hesitate in alarm; draw back. In another moment, however, the Raver would surely control his fear. He would rush to pass beyond the cut deeper into Horrim Carabal.

“Again!” Covenant rasped, although he could not hope to be heard. He could not hear himself. He needed the lurker to understand that if it did not ignore its hurt—