The Last Dark (33 page)

Come on, he commanded himself bitterly. Don’t be a baby. If you start crying now, I’ll never forgive you.

In a small voice, he asked the scoured dirt, “What do you want me to do?”

Gradually the Ironhand’s aura lost its irate flavor. “Attempt patience, young Jeremiah,” she replied as if she had exhausted her reprimands. “Grant to us an hour of rest. Linden Giantfriend’s fire is a rare gift, but it cannot efface the cost of all that we have endured. When we have rested, two of us will commence the labor which your purpose requires. The others will sleep while they may. When the two must pause, they will awaken two others in turn. By twos, we will achieve what we can until all have slept. With the return of day, we will arise together to serve you.”

After a moment, she added, “If need compels you, make use of the night. Doubtless there are preparations which will serve to hasten the morrow’s labors.”

Attempt patience? That seemed impossible to Jeremiah. Patience was for people who were incapable of anything else. He had spent ten passive years exhausting his ability to
wait
. But when Coldspray suggested preparations, his heart veered. That he understood: identifying his materials; setting them out so that he would not have to search for them when the time came to put them in place. And he knew that he would have to spend a lot of time searching for the right sizes and shapes and quantities of malachite. While he did that, two Giants might be able to give him as much help as he could use.

Thinking hard, he grew calmer.

A flurry of gusts out of the northeast slapped at the company. They tumbled against the ridgefront, scurried out across the plain. To Jeremiah’s nerves, they felt like the leading edge of a gale. But the forces driving the wind were still distant. The full strength of the blast might not reach so far.

A part of his mind was making calculations: measuring the mass of rocks against their hidden seams of malachite; estimating sizes and dimensions and positions. But that part of him was instinctive. It did not require his conscious attention. Instead of focusing on it, he tried to think of a way to make amends.

He did love Giants.

Groping, he said tentatively, “You’ve talked about Longwrath before. Lostson Longwrath. I heard you”—in spite of himself, he winced—“when the
croyel
had me. But I don’t know who he is.

“What happened to him? Where is he?”

At once, Jeremiah felt a pang spread among the Giants, and he feared that he had made a stupid mistake. They looked at each other or turned away; shifted uncomfortably where they sat; touched their weapons. But then he saw that he had not irritated them again. Instead he had reminded them of a pain which they did not know how to relieve.

“Ah, young Jeremiah.” The Ironhand sighed once more. “You request a tale—”

Abruptly Frostheart Grueburn heaved herself to her feet. Towering against the dimming sky and the lucid stars, she announced to her comrades, “It is a tale which need not delay young Jeremiah’s task. If Latebirth will consent to join me, we two will be the first to aid him. And while we do so, we will speak of Longwrath.

“I have borne Linden Giantfriend across many arduous leagues. In her name, I will bear this burden also.”

“You are harsh, Grueburn,” Latebirth retorted. “You ask much. Scend Wavegift’s death clings unkindly to me. Should Longwrath appear before us here, I would wish both to embrace him and to strike him down.”

“As would we all,” muttered Coldspray. “Nonetheless Frostheart Grueburn’s offer is a gift. Should you prefer to rest, Latebirth, I will join her.”

“Nay, Ironhand.” Groaning lugubriously, Latebirth pushed herself upright. “I merely complain, as is my wont. Grueburn’s thought is worthy of her—”

“A jest of two edges,” remarked Onyx Stonemage. “It both gives and takes.”

“—and I will endeavor to prove worthy as well,” Latebirth finished without pausing.

Ducking his head, Jeremiah mustered the grace to say, “Thanks. I know this is hard. But I really can’t do it without your help.”

Grueburn swung her hand at his shoulder, a comradely clap that nearly knocked him off his feet. “Waste no heed on us, young Jeremiah. We are Giants. We revel in bewailing our lot.

“Come.” Followed by Latebirth, she steered him back toward the sloping rockfall. “You will describe what is required, and we will speak of Lostson Longwrath while we attempt your desires.”

“In that case”—with a nudge of his shoulder, Jeremiah redirected her toward a stretch of open ground at the foot of the rubble—“let’s start there.” Within three steps, his distress became excitement again. Wind slapped grit and portents at his face, but he ignored it. The preparations for his construct seemed to spring into focus of their own volition. “I’ll show you where I want to build.”

Grueburn nodded her approval; and Latebirth said, “That is well thought, young Jeremiah. In the absence of plain commands, we would doubtless cause ourselves much unnecessary labor.”

“And we would moan,” Grueburn stated, feigning pride. “Even among Giants, I am prized for the purity and pathos of my moans.”

“I don’t believe you,” snorted Jeremiah. Carried on a rise of anticipation, he tried to emulate his companions. With gibes, the Swordmainnir refreshed their spirits: he saw that. Now he wanted to participate. “You’ve probably never moaned in your whole life.”

“Latebirth has not,” Grueburn asserted while the other Swordmain chuckled. “She is entirely dour. But I am capable, I do assure you, of the most extravagant and heart-rending moans.”

“Enough, I implore you!” pleaded Latebirth. “Young Jeremiah’s ears will bleed if you proceed to a demonstration.” More soberly, she added, “And we have consented to speak of Longwrath.”

“Yet time remains to us,” Frostheart Grueburn countered. “When I regard the approach of the Worm, the hours appear as brief as heartbeats. But when I contemplate the exertions before us, mere moments are protracted to the horizons and beyond. If we lack time sufficient to speak at leisure, we also lack time for our task. Haste will gain naught.”

Latebirth grunted glum acquiescence. In silence, the two Giants accompanied Jeremiah to the span of ground where he proposed to build.

“Here,” he announced at the edge of his goal. With a gesture, he asked Grueburn and Latebirth to halt. “I’ll mark out dimensions. If we don’t pile rocks inside that space, they won’t be in the way later.”

Latebirth scanned the area, muttered something that he did not hear. His attention had shifted. Images flared in his mind, becoming more explicit as he estimated shapes and masses, ratios of malachite, necessary boundaries. Stooping, he selected a fragment of basalt with a sharp point. For a moment longer, he studied the ground. When he was sure, he began gouging lines in the dirt.

Four paces for a Giant straight toward the ridgefront. Five parallel to the spill of rubble. Four more to form the third side of a precise rectangle. And a line along the northwest to close the space. There he interrupted his marks to suggest a gap. Eventually that gap would become an entryway.

While Jeremiah outlined his construct, Frostheart Grueburn began.

“Speaking of Lostson Longwrath is hurtful to us,” she said gruffly. “The fault of his plight lies with our forebears. From them, we inherit a shame which we do not bear lightly. For that reason, and because your kind is born to brevity, and because we must conserve our strength, I will be concise.”

“Concise, forsooth,” scoffed Latebirth. “Already you falter in your intent.”

Grueburn ignored her comrade. “Young Jeremiah,” she went on, “Longwrath’s plight shares much with your former state.”

Jeremiah flicked a startled glance toward her. But his task held him, and he did not pause.

“He is possessed,” she explained. “Forces which he did not choose and could not refuse have deprived him of himself. In the name of a foolish and unheeding bargain with the
Elohim
, he is ruled by a
geas
both cruel and minatory. Where he was once a Swordmain honored among us, he has become a madman bent on murder.

“And he is lost in another sense as well.” Grueburn’s tone was as personal as a plea. “Though we were his guardians and caretakers, he was separated from us. Now we know not where he wanders, or indeed whether he yet lives. Nor do we know what form his
geas
has taken. He failed in his first compulsion. Has he now been released? Is some new atrocity required of him? It is possible that Infelice might have answered us, had we inquired of her in Andelain. But we were consumed by our shame—aye, and also by our wrath. We did not think to inquire.

“Whatever the burden he now bears may be, he was consigned to it by our thoughtlessness as much as by the
Elohim
.”

Jeremiah tried not to listen. Grueburn raised too many echoes. They were as insistent as the erratic buffeting of the wind. But unlike the wind, they did not hurry past him. Instead they squirmed like crimes in the background of his mind.

He should not have asked about Longwrath.

Nevertheless he surprised himself by demanding when he meant to remain silent, “What’s your point?”

Some denied part of him wanted an answer.

His companions regarded him gravely. After a moment, Grueburn replied, “My point, young Jeremiah, is that Longwrath’s madness and pain do not foretell your doom. There is this difference between you. You were taken. He was bartered in a witless exchange.”

Jeremiah flinched. Before he could stop himself, he retorted, “It’s the same thing.” He did not want to say this. The words were compelled from him by pressures which he yearned to defy. “My mother gave us away.” He remembered it vividly. The
croyel
had delighted in raising such spectres from their graves. “I mean my natural mother, not Mom. She must have thought she was getting something. She sacrificed my sisters and me when she handed herself to Lord Foul.” The bonfire had cost him two fingers. If he had not hidden from them, eyes as hungry as fangs would have claimed him. “We were too young to know what she was doing.”

But he had not been too young to be terrified—

Grueburn’s shoulders slumped. “Then I will grieve for you. And I will hold out hope for Lostson Longwrath, that he may evade his
geas
as you have foiled your imprisonment.”

Jeremiah poked at his leg with the tip of his rock, trying to suppress a residue of agony. Dust had already begun to fill his lines. In any case, they were shrouded in twilight, almost imperceptible. Resisting the unspoken appeal in Grueburn’s voice, he asked roughly, “Can you still see where I want to build?”

“We are Giants,” Latebirth replied as if she were certain of herself. “We will not forget.”

“Good for you,” Jeremiah muttered under his breath: a sour whisper. Then he turned toward the rubble. “Come on. We’ve wasted enough time.”

Almost immediately, however, he regretted his tone. It sounded too much like petulance, the whining of a boy who did not want to grow up. As an apology, he clenched his hands into fists, then opened them with cornflower flames in his palms.

Lighting the way, he led Frostheart Grueburn and Latebirth onto the rockfall to search for malachite.

ome of the stones with their secret deposits of minerals and hope were small enough that he could manage them without help. Those he ignored temporarily. Instead he probed the rubble until he located two or three rocks that required Giants. These he indicated to Grueburn and Latebirth. When they assured him that they would be able to wrestle the stones from the slope without causing it to shift, he quenched his fires. In darkness softened only by the half-light of evening, he returned to the smaller pieces of granite and basalt, and began hurrying them downward.

He was going to need a lot of them. And dozens or scores of bigger chunks. The proportions of malachite were meager. With purer, richer deposits, he could have contrived a structure no taller than himself, its walls closer together: little more than a shrine. But with these rocks, his construct would have to be the size of an impoverished temple, crudely raised by people too poor to afford a better place of worship. And even then, he could not be sure that he would find enough malachite for his purpose.