The Last Dark (32 page)

Coldspray and her people studied him with darkness in their faces. Some of them still wished to protest, especially Latebirth, who had often carried the Manethrall. Others showed resignation or grief, or waited uncertainly for their Ironhand’s reply. But Linden bowed her head and let new gratitude flow through her. Although she wanted Mahrtiir with her, she had been loath to ask so much of him. His unrequested willingness eased her reluctance.

After a long moment, Rime Coldspray raised her voice into the twilight. “Manethrall of the Ramen, I am abashed.” Her tone was gentler now, and more sorrowful. “I confess it, Giant though I am. Eyeless, your sight is clear where mine is clouded. We must accede to your counsel.”

“Then,” Mahrtiir returned, “I bid you farewell for a time. May our absence be brief. For my part, I am certain of you. When you have set your hearts to any purpose, you will accomplish it. So it was said of the Unhomed, and so it is with you. But where their tale has grown dim with age, yours will shine out, illuminating the last days of the Earth.”

Hurrying as if he feared that Linden might object, the Manethrall turned to her. While she sat with her head lowered and a dull ache in her chest, he asked, “Ring-thane, shall we depart?” An eagle’s eagerness sharpened his voice. “That you are sorely weary is plain. Yet delay will not restore you. Doubtless you desire to be reconciled with your son. Yet delay will not comfort him. He spoke thoughtlessly, and will recant when he is calmer. I do not doubt that he will greet your return with joy.”

“All right.” Linden did not raise her head. “All right.” Carefully she took a last drink from her waterskin. Then she rested her hands on the blackness of her Staff. “We should go while I’m too tired to be terrified.”

Still without looking at her friends, she said, “Coldspray, Grueburn, all of you—I’m not worried about you.” Instead of facing anyone, she studied Caerroil Wildwood’s runes as if they might suddenly reveal their meaning. “You’re
Giants
. If it can be done, you’ll do it.”

Her weakness and dread were a sickness in the pit of her stomach, a foretaste of nausea and hornets and gelid emptiness as cruel as a chasm. They seemed bottomless.

“But, Stave—” she added unnecessarily. “Be sharp.” She could not meet his gaze. “At some point, someone is going to try to stop Jeremiah. I hope that Mahrtiir and I can come back before that happens. If we don’t, Jeremiah and the Giants will need everything that you have in you.”

The former Master regarded her with no expression that her nerves could interpret. “Linden Avery, I have said that uncertainty is an abyss.” His flat voice contradicted the gust and swirl of the wind; the plumes of dust. “Nevertheless I do not fear it. Only your self-doubt troubles me. You esteem yourself too slightly. For that reason, you are prone to darkness—and for that reason alone. Forget such concerns. You are not Kevin Landwaster. Remember, rather, that you are loved by those who know you well.

“Go blessed by the goodwill of your companions here, and by the stalwart aid of the Manethrall, and by the prowess of the Ranyhyn. It may chance that you will accomplish something other than your intent. Yet good will come of it ere the end.”

“All right,” Linden repeated. What else could she say? But still she did not lift her head or rise to her feet. Her mortality was too heavy for her to carry.

She felt Frostheart Grueburn moving toward her; but she did not know why until Grueburn scooped her from the ground. Clasping her under her arms, Grueburn held her high, extending her into the grey light as if she were the standard around which all of the Swordmainnir rallied; and as Grueburn did so, the other Giants called Linden’s name softly, celebrating her with murmurs. Then Grueburn set Linden on her feet.

There Mahrtiir took her arm. Baring his teeth like a hunter who had finally found the spoor of his prey, he said, “Come, Ringthane. Lean upon me while you may. In a moment, Stave will summon the Ranyhyn. To spare our companions, we must gain a wary distance ere you attempt the creation of a Fall. We will walk while we await great Narunal and valiant Hyn.”

Linden accompanied him because he drew her with him. Her attention was contracting. Already the Giants were becoming dim. Stave had begun to fade. Jeremiah was little more than a will-o’-the-wisp bobbing among the boulders and shards. But she was not growing faint with fatigue and fear; not sinking back into the blankness which had overcome her in front of She Who Must Not Be Named. Rather she was concentrating inward, seeking the private door, secret and familiar, that opened on wild magic; the learned impulse which allowed her to invoke rampant argent.

Its imperfection is the very paradox of which the Earth is made, and with it a master may form perfect works and fear nothing.
Kasreyn of the Gyre had said that. But he may have been wrong. And she was not a master.

Still she persisted. In recent days, she had surrendered any number of things. The time had come to surrender hesitation and doubt. Like a derelict, she limped over the cratered ground. Step by step, the stains mapped into her jeans and the runes which defined her Staff led her away from her son. Without the Manethrall’s help, she could have fallen.

Vaguely she heard Stave whistling. Soon the Ranyhyn would come: yet another reason for gratitude. It impelled her to turn her mind outward once more.

Resting on Mahrtiir’s support, she asked, “You do understand, don’t you? You can let Hyn and Narunal know what we want?”

“Aye, Ringthane,” Mahrtiir answered steadily. “I comprehend. And that which I comprehend, our mounts will grasp as well. Are they not Ranyhyn, the great horses of Ra, Tail of the Sky, Mane of the World? Their devoir will both serve and preserve us.”

Linden nodded, but she was not listening. He had said enough. Now she needed wild magic, and it did not come naturally.

Perhaps she managed a hundred paces. The scuff of her boots cast small plumes of dust into the swirling wind, the increasing chill. Then she heard or felt the approach of hooves.

Gratitude, she thought. Maybe that was the answer. Gratitude and trust. Jeremiah was alive and free. So was Covenant, in spite of Joan. And Covenant had urged Linden to take this risk. Hyn and Narunal would make it possible. Maybe if she remembered to be grateful and have faith, she would be able to avoid High Lord Kevin’s tragic arrogance.

When the mare and the stallion joined her, Mahrtiir spent only a moment in homage. Then he boosted Linden onto Hyn’s capable back. A heartbeat later, he mounted Narunal. In the half-light, he looked to Linden like all of the Land’s bounty incarnated in one mere human as frail and fallible as herself.

Prompted by Narunal’s imperious whinny, Linden passed the Staff of Law to the Manethrall. Covenant’s ring she lifted from its hiding place under her shirt. Pressing the wedding band between both of her hands, she brought forth silver flame as if she had the courage to defy the Earth’s doom.

As if she believed that good could be accomplished by Desecration.

In the distance, Jeremiah seemed to call her name. Overhead Kevin’s Dirt appeared to catch fire and burn, lit by wild magic. But she paid no heed. Taking the risk, she created a disruption of Time and history that might destroy the world.

The Right Materials

Jeremiah was only a boy, but in some ways he knew too much. In others, he knew too little.

Dissociation had denied him the normal processes of growing up; the gradually acquired experience of passions and denials, of joys and disappointments. Even in the most practical matters, his development—his acquisition of earned knowledge—had been stunted. At the age of fifteen, he had never so much as changed his own clothes. Certainly he had never learned the most mundane social interactions. In that respect, he was younger than his years; unfamiliar with himself.

Yet he had learned other lessons too well. The flames of Lord Foul’s bonfire had taught him that some pains were unendurable. And the moral rape of possession—the manner in which he had been used by the
croyel
to betray Linden’s trust—had shown him that hating what was done to him both aided and harmed him. It gave him the desire to fight back—and yet it also convinced him that he would not have been so hurt if he did not deserve it. Hate cut both ways. If he had not been such a coward—if he had not hidden himself away to escape his wounds—Lord Foul and the
croyel
would not have been able to possess him, use him. He had brought his worst suffering on himself.

He did not understand why that was true. Nevertheless he yearned to
pay back
what had happened to him. At the same time, he hated what he felt. He hated himself for feeling it.

But there had been other forces at work in him as well. His mother’s love and devotion had kept him alive. With Tinkertoys and Legos, Lincoln Logs and racetrack sections, he had constructed a sense of possibility and worth that might have eluded a less abused youth. And during his visits to the Land, Covenant’s spirit in the Arch had offered him a one-sided friendship, compassionate and respectful.

The result was a conflicting moil of emotions which he did not know how to manage.

And now Linden had abandoned him; actually
abandoned
him in order to enter a
caesure
with Mahrtiir. The fact that she had explained her actions did not ease him. It did not muffle the beat of indignation and fear in his veins. He had
counted
on her. She had
taught
him to count on her.

And yet, strangely, he could hardly contain his excitement. Right here, right now, he had a chance to make his whole life worthwhile. If he succeeded, he would save some of the
Elohim
, some of the stars. He would prove that Lord Foul and the
croyel
and his natural mother were wrong about him. From head to foot, he trembled with eagerness to begin.

That contradiction was confusing enough; but he had more.

He had inherited Anele’s legacy of Earthpower. It belonged to him now: the Land’s living energy had become as much a part of him as the blood in his veins. He was inured against the vagaries of heat and cold, wind and wet. His bare feet endured sharp rocks and the ancient shards of weapons or armor without discomfort. His health-sense sloughed off Kevin’s Dirt. He could fuse bones to make marrowmeld sculptures. He could even summon fire from his hands. And there might be more possibilities.

For him, Earthpower had become a piercing pleasure. It had enabled him to rescue himself from his prison.

But he had received other things from Anele as well. The old man had given him inarticulate scraps of knowledge, and horrific vulnerabilities, and an instinct for moral dread. Much as he treasured Anele’s gifts, their implications appalled him.

And because he had never learned how to manage among his emotions, he tried to ignore the worst of them. Nevertheless they clung to him. He was like his pajamas. His mother had dressed him in them and tucked him lovingly into bed. The horses rearing across their faded blue might have been Ranyhyn. Now they were torn and tattered; soiled with grime and dirt; defined by bullets. From the waist down, their innocence bore the stains of Liand’s death. The
croyel
’s gore marked the shirt.

So he had turned his back on Linden when she had insisted on throwing her life away in the Land’s past. What else could he have done? He did not know who he was without her. He hardly seemed to exist. When her
caesure
collapsed into itself and vanished, taking her and Mahrtiir and their Ranyhyn to a place and time from which they might never return, Jeremiah dissociated them in his mind, buried them away. Then he chose the excitement of building. It was his only escape.

“Come on!” he called down to the Giants and Stave. “Let’s get started. The longer we wait, the more
Elohim
we’ll lose.”

Elohim
and stars.

That was why he was here, after all: to save things that could not save themselves. To delay the Worm’s feeding, slow its progress toward the Blood of the Earth. To buy time until somebody came up with a better answer.

But the Giants ignored his shout. None of them glanced up at him. Even Stave did not. With the Swordmainnir, the former Master watched the place where Linden and Mahrtiir had disappeared as if he hoped or feared that she would return almost immediately. They were all acting like there was no need to hurry. Like Jeremiah did not need them—or like the
Elohim
and the stars and the whole world did not need
him
.

Wind skirled like travail around him, tugged at his pajamas. It carried dust from the gouged cliff, the fallen debris. Perhaps it would have stung his eyes if he had not been so full of Earthpower. Somewhere inside him was a small boy who wanted to cry because his mother had left him. But he refused to be that boy. The structure that he wanted to make both goaded and protected him.

Somehow he swallowed the impulse to yell at the Giants in frustration. Here was another aspect of his confusion, his inability to resolve his own contradictions. The Giants were ignoring him—but they were
Giants
, and he had loved them ever since he had first seen them. When he and Linden and Stave had ridden to rejoin the Ironhand and her comrades, his response to the sheer size and wonder of who and what the Swordmainnir were had opened like a flower in his heart. They were Giants in every sense: he had no other word for them. And he had seen the delight in their eyes when they had gazed at him, the relief and welcome. They had made him feel that he was capable of putting his past behind him. Of cutting it off entirely. Under their influence, he had believed that he could accomplish something wonderful.

If they rebuffed him now—

Abruptly his frustration became chagrin. His health-sense was precise: he could see that he had offended the Swordmainnir. There was anxiety in the slump of their shoulders, worries aggravated by a great weight of weariness. And they carried griefs which Jeremiah did not recognize. But there was also anger. Their refusal to acknowledge his call was deliberate.

He had to talk to them—and he was afraid of what they would say.

Hesitating, he took a moment to scan his surroundings. Above him hung the gouge which his mother had made in the ridgefront. It and its slope of rubble faced the north, or a bit west of north. At odd intervals, chunks of rock and clumps of dirt still fell from the upper surfaces of the gouge; but they clattered harmlessly to the sides. Buffets of wind scattered the dust before it could settle.

The ridge filled that side of the landscape. In every other direction, an almost featureless plain stretched out to the horizons, a beaten flat pocked with hollows like craters left behind by a barrage of huge stones or heavy iron, or of bolts of magic. In the cloying dusk, these hollows or craters gave the terrain a mottled appearance, as if it were stippled with shadows or omens.

As far as Jeremiah could see, nothing grew or moved. Nothing lived at all. And no springs or streams nourished the plain. In this region, the foundations of the Lower Land wore only a thin mantle of dirt, soil so barren that it refused even
aliantha
.

And over it all lay the pall of the sunless murk, an augury of the last dark. As Jeremiah gazed around, he noticed that the afternoon was waning. Evening was not far off. Then would come full darkness, the second night since the sun had failed.

Even now, the stars were visible, as bright as cries overhead. He could have watched them wink out of existence, had he been willing to face them. But at night—

At night, the Giants would have more difficulty doing what he wanted from them.

The situation was urgent—and still the Swordmainnir rested against their boulders. They had promised to help him. Now they acted like they had changed their minds.

He had to talk to them.

His private turmoil made him awkward as he began to descend from the rubble. Whenever he was working on one of his constructs, he was deft and graceful, full of confidence. But when he felt stymied, his muscles forgot what they were doing. He fumbled at the rocks, jerked downward, lost his balance and caught himself like a child half his age.

He hated being clumsy. He hated himself when he was clumsy.

The curve of boulders where the Giants sat faced away from him. Like Stave, they were not affected by Kevin’s Dirt: they must have been aware of Jeremiah. Still they did not look in his direction. Earlier they had shed their armor and swords. Now they all rested against thrusts of stone. Only Stave remained on his feet, still watching the place where Linden and Mahrtiir had disappeared.

Biting his lower lip, Jeremiah resisted a desire to start protesting before he reached his companions. Fortunately Rime Coldspray turned toward him while he was still a short distance away. Although her disapproval was obvious, her gaze steadied him. Clearly she did not intend to keep ignoring him.

Troubled gusts stirred up dust, carried it away. Clad in twilight, the Giants resembled shadows or stones. Like shadows or stones, they looked deaf to persuasion. Still Jeremiah walked closer until he stood near Coldspray at the edge of the arc.

None of the Giants spoke. Stave did not. But they were all looking at him now.

For a moment, Jeremiah clamped his teeth down on his lip. Then he tried to say something that would not make his mother’s friends angrier.

“I know you’re tired.” He was whining: he heard it in his tone. That, too, he hated. “I know you need rest. But I can’t tell how long this is going to take”—he gestured at the slope of rocks—“or how much time we have, or how many
Elohim
we can save. And it’ll be harder at night.

“I want to get started. Why is that wrong?”

He felt the attention of the Swordmainnir. Nevertheless they conveyed the impression that they wanted him to go away.

The Ironhand shifted her shoulder so that she faced Jeremiah more squarely. Even seated, she was taller than he was. She seemed to glare down at him in the gloom.

“Young Jeremiah,” she sighed, “we are Giants. Children are more than our joy and our delight. They are our future—if the notion of any future has meaning in these fraught times. We are endlessly indulgent.”

Before Jeremiah could ask, Then why are you mad at me? she said more sternly, “But by the measure of your kind, you are not a child. Much has been given to you. Therefore much is expected in return.”

Wincing, Jeremiah retorted, “I know that.” The sound of his own truculence disgusted him. It sharpened the vexation of the Giants. But he did not know how to control it.

“Do you, forsooth?” drawled Frostheart Grueburn. “You conceal your wisdom well.”

Latebirth and Cabledarm offered their own ripostes; but the Ironhand gestured them to silence. On their behalf, she asked Jeremiah, “Do you indeed comprehend what Linden Giantfriend has done for love of you?” Her tone was a bared blade. “Your manner suggests that you do not.

“I do not speak of her search for you across many centuries and uncounted leagues. Other mothers have done as much, if in differing times by different means. Nor do I speak of her surrender to the machinations of the Harrow, or of her perilous descent into the Lost Deep, or of her many efforts to relieve your absent mind. These things might other mothers have done as well. We ourselves have done much in Lostson Longwrath’s name, and we are not his mothers.

“Now, however, Linden Giantfriend has exceeded our conceptions of love and fidelity.” Rime Coldspray’s voice cut. “She has surpassed the hearts of Giants. Knowing that you have need of her, she yet prizes your worth so highly that she has hazarded more than her own extinction. She has dared the end of all Time and life. This she has done for the Land’s sake, aye, but also for yours, that your endeavors here may accomplish their intended purpose.

“Does her attempt not express her devotion? Does it not merit your esteem?”

Remember that I’m proud of you.

Jeremiah’s immediate reaction was a flare of anger. “She
left
me.” But then tears burned his eyes, and he wanted to weep. He understood what his mother was trying to do—and yet he had treated her courage like a betrayal. Winds swirled around him like misery. Abruptly he sank to the ground; sat cross-legged with his elbows braced on his thighs and his head down.