The Last Dark (45 page)

As she climbed the hill’s accreted hunger, however, she recognized other emotions as well. Listening with her nerves, her health-sense, she heard more. The passion of Gallows Howe was for revenge, retribution: the ground burned to repay its ancient pain. But that trenchant yearning arose from a foundation of unannealed bereavement. Trees beyond counting had been destroyed before the woods had awakened to anger. Grief came first. Without woe and protest, there would have been no wrath.

Then inchoate perceptions which had tugged at the edges of her thoughts for days shifted toward clarity, and she heard still more. In spite of their avid bitterness, the songs sung by Caerroil Wildwood beside his gibbet were more complex than they appeared to be. First came grief. Yes. It led inexorably to rage. But it did so only because a different need had been denied. Between the underlying loss and the accumulated gall lay a yearning of another kind altogether: a vast, sorrowing, stymied desire, not for revenge, but for
restitution
. The forests, and the emblem of Gallows Howe, would not have grown so dark if they had not first failed to reclaim what they had lost. If the Forestals had not failed at restitution, they would not have succumbed to ire and viciousness.

That unbidden insight humbled Linden. It daunted her when she could not afford to flinch or turn away. It had too many personal implications.

She, too, had gone from loss to rage when her first efforts to find her son had failed. Nevertheless Jeremiah had been restored to her. Even though she had refused to forgive.

She could not ask Caerroil Wildwood to pardon the foes and forces which had ravaged his demesne. His vehemence was necessary. It was just. It was—

But the Forestal did not wait for her to sort through her confusions. His music demanded more of her. While she and Mahrtiir neared his gibbet, the tall figure commanded, “Speak, then.” Melodies sawed across her hearing as if they sought to cut away subterfuge and falseness. “I am done with forbearance.”

Because she did not know what else to do, Linden lifted her Staff once more.

“Great One.”

Every word required an effort of will. Inwardly she slogged through a quagmire. How could she ask Caerroil Wildwood for anything? He was doing what she would have done in his place; what she had already done. Nevertheless she made the attempt for Jeremiah’s sake, and for the Land’s, and for Covenant’s—and perhaps even for her own.

“A long time ago, you asked me a question. I think that I can answer it now. Or a piece of it, anyway.

“That isn’t why I came. I’ve tried to imagine an answer for you ever since you spared my life, but I couldn’t think of one. I wasn’t even trying to reach you. But now that I am here, I see things differently.

“Great One, I need your help. If I’m right, that’s your answer. You can help me.”
Must it transpire that beauty and truth shall pass utterly when we are gone?
“And you’re the only one who can. If you don’t, beauty and truth will be just the first casualties.” She meant the
Elohim
. “Eventually the whole world is going to die.”

The Forestal studied her. In a voice as low as a hum, and as piercing as an auger, he commanded her again. “Set aside your blackness. I well recall the craving which inspired me to carve my will upon it. It has no virtue to preserve you.”

He may have been asking for a show of good faith.

As if the written wood had burned her hands, Linden dropped her Staff.

Caerroil Wildwood allowed the limbs of his trees a brief flourish of approval. But he did not dwell on it. Still stringently, he sang, “You acknowledge that it was not your intent to seek me out. To that extent, I discern sooth. Now you will speak further. Do you ask me to credit that the desires of one human, or of two, or of a myriad myriad, suffice to determine the doom of the Earth? Justify your need, woman. Sway me or perish.”

Linden shook her head. “You already know the truth.” She had come too far to hold back. And she understood the peril of revealing things which might affect the Wildwood’s role in the Land’s history. “You’ve known it for a long time. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have given me your runes.”

He would not have prevented Hile Troy from accepting Covenant’s ring.

“You asked me how life can go on without Forestals. It can’t. Thousands of years from now, it won’t. Evil doesn’t die. It doesn’t stop. And where I come from, it’s finally found a way to end everything. Unless you teach me how to
forbid
it.”

There must be forbidding.

“If I can do that, maybe I can save something.”
Without forbidding, there is too little time
. “I’ll start with the
Elohim
,” what was left of them. “If that works, I’ll do more. With my Staff and white gold and what you know, I’ll stop as much evil as I can.”
If it is not opposed by the forgotten truths of stone and wood
—“But I can’t do anything without the power to say
no
.

“You blocked the Ravers from the Upper Land. I need to learn how you did that. I need to be able to do the same thing. If you don’t teach me, you might as well give up.” From her perspective, his surrender had already happened. Something had driven Caerroil Wildwood to abandon his devoir long before she had first entered the Land with Covenant. “There won’t be any hope for any of us.

“Do you need a future for trees, Great One? This is your only chance. Without your help, I’m as lost as you are.”

Silver flared in the Forestal’s eyes. It limned his gibbet and the surrounding trees, gave them a spectral cast as if they were etched with presentiments of ruin. The music of the woods became a threnody, forlorn and irredeemable. Leaves rose and sank like sobbing on their twigs. Song fell like tears on all sides.

“Then you are lost indeed. You speak words which you deem sooth. That I acknowledge. And you have striven to satisfy my query. That, also, I acknowledge. Therefore I will not require your heart’s blood to repay the hurt inflicted by your plea.

“But I cannot grant your desire. You are human and ignorant, incognizant of deeper truths. You do not grasp that the forbidding which you seek is not lore. It is neither knowledge nor skill. It is essence. It is both my nature and my task. I cannot impart it.”

His response was as simple as a sigh—and as fatal as an earthquake. Linden staggered as if the Howe itself had shuddered under her; refused her. Cannot? She wanted to wail in chagrin. You
cannot
? After what she had done?

But he was Caerroil Wildwood, the Forestal of Garroting Deep. His grandeur and grief silenced her protests. Instead of yelling, she floundered for arguments.

“Then how did you make your Interdict against the Ravers?” Her voice trembled on the verge of breaking. “If you can’t impart what you are, how did the Colossus of the Fall keep Ravers away from the Upper Land?”

Abruptly Mahrtiir took a step forward. Like the woods around the Howe, like the gallows, he looked sharp with intensity, whetted by the Forestal’s shining. His eyeless visage seemed to yearn. His hands were ready for his garrote; for some demand that required death. But the Wildwood did not regard him.

“By transformation,” the Forestal told Linden severely. “By the alteration of essence. There is no other means. The
Elohim
who became the Colossus of the Fall ceased to be who she was. She was made stone and could not unmake herself. Therefore her refusal endured. It did not wane until the forests dwindled, too grievously diminished to sustain her.”

While Linden cried out inwardly, unable to articulate her sudden despair, Mahrtiir took another step forward; upward. Then he stopped, holding himself poised as if for battle.

“Great One,” he said, insisting on Caerroil Wildwood’s attention. “The world of our time requires forbidding—and the forest of our time requires a Forestal to wield that stricture.” His tone defied contradiction. “You have it within you to create another of your kind, as you did with Caer-Caveral. Do so again with me. Make of me a Forestal for the woodland which will arise when its time has come, and for the preservation of the world. Permit me to carry on your labors. Share with me your mighty purpose, for I have none of my own, except to stand with those who shed their lives for the Land’s sake.”

He was certainly as blind as Hile Troy had been: as blind and as valiant. Like Troy, he had already chosen his doom.

Linden tried to object; but the Manethrall’s willingness and the Wildwood’s singing closed her throat.
No
, she pleaded,
no
, but her voice made no sound, or no one heard her.

The guardian of the trees was going to refuse. Of course he was. His own fate was sealed, whatever happened. She had offered him only abstractions, vague predictions empty of substance. He had no reason to care about a world that did not exist for him.

Yet he seemed to stand taller, towering over the Manethrall. The multiplicity of songs around him acquired a new tune that vied against the woods’ immedicable sorrow and ire. He raised his scepter. From its gnarled length sprouted notes woven to form harmonies which Linden had never heard before.

“That gift,” he pronounced as if it were a sentence of death, “is mine to grant.”

Oh, Mahrtiir—

Were
all
of her friends going to sacrifice themselves?

If she had snatched up her Staff, she might have been able to intervene. She could at least have made the effort.
And betimes some wonder is wrought to redeem us
. But she did not move. Perhaps she could not. Or perhaps she simply understood.

I seek a tale which will remain—

Still she had to say something. “Mahrtiir—”

“No, Ringthane,” the Manethrall replied at once. “You are the Chosen, but this choice is mine.” He knew her too well. “In this, Anele spoke wisely, as he did on other matters. To you, he said, ‘All who live share the Land’s plight. Its cost will be borne by all who live. This you cannot alter. In the attempt, you may achieve only ruin.’” Then he gave her a fierce grin. “It is done. The Forestal of Garroting Deep has heard me. His heart and his pain are great. He will not refuse.”

“Indeed,” Caerroil Wildwood hummed in harmony with his trees. “I do not recant my gifts.”

A sharp skirl of music seemed to snatch her Staff from the dirt, carry it toward him. Holding his scepter in one hand, he caught the Staff in the other. The lines of his runes began to burn like his eyes, silver and severe.

“Yet I am grievously diminished. My strength falters. Therefore I will make use of your blackness to sustain me, as I have written that I must.”

With the Staff and his scepter held high, he brandished gleaming like certainty over the Howe. “Harken now. Hear my answer to your need.”

Extremes contradicted each other in Linden’s heart, a turmoil of unexpected hope and dread. Possibilities that she had failed to foresee daunted and exalted her. In the dirt under her boots, complex emotions thrummed as if Gallows Howe had forgotten or surrendered none of its desires. Ahead of her, Mahrtiir stood with his hands open as if he were waiting for the weapon which would give them meaning at last: an import which no mere garrote could supply. Higher on the hill, and wreathed in compulsions which appeared to draw only purity from the Staff of Law, Caerroil Wildwood made his music louder, more encompassing, until it became a hymn chorused by the entire woodland. At the same time, he tuned his singing to a pitch that resembled language. Perhaps with her ears, or perhaps only with her health-sense, Linden listened to an arboreal melody more numinous than speech.

    “It is my heart I give to you,

My blood and sap and bone and root,

To serve the woods with what we are

While what we are endures to serve.

    “I guard and grow the world’s deep love.

Its loveliness must justify

The sterner truths of rock and sea,

For they persist but do not grow

And so their life is only Law:

It is not melody or joy.

Their substance, substanceless, is woe

Unless it is redeemed by green,

By growth and verdure that relieve

The world from stone’s commanding cold.

    “If rock does not erode it does

Not feed the trees that give it worth.

If sea does not give way to rain

It does not vindicate its surge.

Such passage is Creation’s pulse:

Its transformation brings forth love

From Law’s unending rest and flood,

For only life which passes on

Can glorify remaining life.

    “For loving’s sake I guard the green:

Its steward I became and am—

And you as well, for by my song

It is my soul I give to you

To serve the woods until we die.”

And while the Forestal’s invocation swelled across tree and hill, Manethrall Mahrtiir of the Ramen began to change. Ineffable magicks wrapped him in their cocoon until he was barely visible. Swathed in Caerroil Wildwood’s power, his bandage was burned away, and his raiment fell from him like dross. His lean form with its scars of struggle and its ropes of muscle was robed in samite that shone like incarnate cleanliness. An unalloyed argent too rare and refined to be wild magic transformed his visage. As if he had brought it forth from within him, a twig grew in his grasp until it became a sapling nearly as tall as himself: a child-tree crowned with new leaves, its roots clinging to a ball of rich loam, which he held with the ease of supernal strength.

The end of his human life had come upon him. When he emerged from the Forestal’s theurgy, the man who had been steadfast in the face of every peril would be gone. Like the
Elohim
of the Colossus, he would not be able to revoke his transubstantiation. Nevertheless his gladness aspired among the harmonies of Garroting Deep, and his eagerness for strife contributed a peal of joy.

Watching him, Linden wanted to cry; but she had no tears for a friend who had found his heart’s desire.

Back from the Brink

Thomas Covenant could hardly stand. He felt like wreckage. Certainly he looked like a derelict, with his tattered jeans and T-shirt, and his silver hair wild. Only his boots had come intact through his immersions in Sarangrave Flat. If Rallyn had not led Mishio Massima through an arduous series of translations by wild magic, he would not have arrived anywhere. He and Branl would still be trudging along the edges of the lurker’s wetland an impossible distance from where he was needed. Traveling through argent circles drawn on grass and stone and dirt with Loric’s
krill
, he had exceeded his image of himself.

But he had not done so without help. He was not as weak as he should have been, or as numb. Some of the effects of hurtloam lingered deep within him. He had drunk water made clean for him by the Feroce, and had eaten
ussusimiel
melons. Aided beyond any reasonable expectation, he had been able to traverse the leagues.

With Kastenessen gone, Kevin’s Dirt may have begun to dissipate; but if so, that was a victory which Covenant could neither confirm nor measure. Instead he was torn inside, frantic and grieving. Clyme’s death remained as vivid as scars, as harsh as Joan’s. The Worm was coming: it had already reached the Land. And Linden was not here.

She was not here.

In the instant of his arrival, he had seen things that deserved celebration. Jeremiah had escaped from his mental prison, or had been freed: that was obvious. Otherwise he would not have been able to design the crude structure at the foot of the rubble and the ridge. The Giants would not have known how to build it. And the edifice had succeeded. Infelice’s presence at the portal, and Kastenessen’s raging opposition, demonstrated that Jeremiah’s efforts had achieved their strange purpose—whatever that might be.

But the boy sprawled on the roof of the construct as if he had been felled. Stave lay motionless in the dirt near Infelice. None of the Giants wore their armor. They had no weapons. And there was no sign of Mahrtiir. Like Linden, the Manethrall had gone somewhere else—or had been left behind—or—

Covenant was stretched too thin to appreciate what the Land’s defenders had accomplished.

Without any flicker of hesitation or pause for thought, he had flung himself toward Kastenessen armed only with Loric’s eldritch dagger and his own extremity.
I killed my ex-wife
. Joan’s ring seemed trivial against a being of Earthpower merged with brimstone and lava.
I helped destroy a Raver
. Yet Kastenessen had believed him.
And I’ve seen the Worm of the World’s End
. Perhaps the
krill
was capable of killing greater foes than Joan and
turiya
Herem.
I am
done with restraint
!
Or perhaps Kastenessen had secretly wished to be swayed.

Beyond the construct where Infelice and Emereau Vrai’s lover had vanished, the gouged ridge rose like a barricade against the southeast; against memories of Joan. Covenant had sacrificed his own daughter. More than once. He had raped her mother. Ignored Triock’s death. Permitted Clyme’s. And he was Roger’s father. He was responsible for that lost soul as well. In Morinmoss long ago, he may have killed the woman who had healed his mind. Hell, he had even ridden the Harrow’s destrier to its death. He had committed wrongs enough to mark him as an acolyte of the Despiser.

Now Linden was not
here
. He could not confess himself to her, or seek absolution.

Stave had said of her that she did not forgive. If that were true—

The aftermath of Kastenessen’s surrender left Covenant reeling with needs and ignorance. To defeat Joan, he had sealed the fracturing of his mind, but he had not rid himself of vertigo. Even the comparatively level plain felt like a precipice in the doom-clogged twilight. Slaps of wind raised dust on all sides as if every step altered the ground itself. He hardly noticed when Branl took the
krill
to spare him at least that one burden.

Unheeded or unneeded, Rallyn and Mishio Massima trotted away, presumably seeking water and forage.

“Unbeliever,” Giants murmured or panted. “Timewarden.” Wan with exhaustion, Rime Coldspray called, “You are timely come.” And Frostheart Grueburn, “Have you accomplished your purpose?” And Cirrus Kindwind, “Some ill end has befallen Clyme
Haruchai
.” Other Swordmainnir repeated like groans, “Longwrath,” and, “Lostson.” They sighed the names of the
geas
-damned man’s parents, and ached for Moire Squareset and Scend Wavegift, both of whom were dead because of Longwrath.

Too many questions. Too many contradictions to absorb. Covenant only knew that Jeremiah was still alive because the boy was looking at him; staring as if he were stunned, barely conscious. Stave lay like Longwrath. Like Longwrath’s, Stave’s flesh smoked as if Kastenessen had scoured his heart with scoria.

It was all too much. As if he were being ripped open, Covenant released a cry that seemed to come from the marrow of his bones.

“
What happened to Linden?
”

Then he stood wavering as if he could not take another step without the woman whom he had loved for all of the Earth’s ages.

Swordmainnir hung their heads, too weary or overwhelmed to answer. But after a moment, Rime Coldspray summoned a vestige of resolve. She leaned into motion, came unsteadily toward Covenant. Tears that might have been relief or chagrin or sorrow—that might have been anger—made runnels through the dust on her face. When she was near enough to speak in a hoarse whisper and be heard, she stopped.

Like Saltheart Foamfollower, the Ironhand towered over Covenant. The Giants had always been too much for him, more than he deserved. Trying to meet her gaze, he staggered until Branl steadied him.

“Timewarden,” Coldspray breathed, “our need is great. We have expended our last strength, Lostson Longwrath lies before us, slain for our salvation, and Stave Rockbrother is much harmed. For these ills, we have no anodyne. We must—Ah, Stone and Sea. We must be more than we are.

“Yet I discern that your need is also great. Indeed, I fear that it exceeds comprehension. Therefore I will speak when I fain would hear.”

She looked like she might collapse, but she did not. Even now, she met the challenge he represented.

“We deem that an alteration in Linden Giantfriend began when she was borne to the verge of the Sarangrave a second time.”

Gloom held the plain. Beyond the stark brilliance of the
krill
’s gem, the preternatural twilight seemed to defy every sentence. A second time? When was the first? Was that when she had hurt the lurker enough to inspire an alliance?

“There the Feroce conveyed a message, citing your command. They urged her to
Remember forbidding
. For that reason, she parted from us.”

The Feroce had done Covenant’s bidding. He had no one else to blame.

“Here we have fashioned a fane for the
Elohim
. It compelled them to come, and to enter, drawing Kastenessen with them. There its magicks will ward them from the Worm’s feeding.”

Covenant stared up at her. Silver etched the lines of her visage, cut them into shapes that he feared to recognize. He believed the Ironhand, of course he did. Vast spans of time and knowledge were gone from him; but he remembered Jeremiah’s importance, Jeremiah’s talent. In some nameless sense, every future depended on Linden’s son.

Chosen-son. The Giants had given the boy an epithet to call his own.

Exhaustion abraded the Ironhand’s voice. “All remaining
Elohim
are now here. Therefore the Worm also must come. Preserved within the fane, they cannot be consumed. When the Worm destroys our edifice, however, they will have no egress. They will be eternally lost. For this reason, Linden Giantfriend determined that the Worm must be turned aside.”

That, at least, Covenant understood. The Worm would come. It was coming. He wanted to ask, Then why gather all the
Elohim
in one place? But he knew the answer: to give them a chance. They were helpless otherwise. And their presence here would not hasten the Earth’s demise. Having reached the Land—and having been blocked from Mount Thunder—the Worm was bound to sense the location, the comparative proximity, of its final food. It would have come this way no matter what Jeremiah and the Giants did.

But it was not here now. The crazy turmoil of winds might mean anything. The clotted darkness on the northeastern horizon had more than one possible interpretation.

“Therefore Linden Giantfriend has invoked and entered a
caesure
. Accepting only Manethrall Mahrtiir as her companion, she seeks the deep past of the Land, where it is her hope that a Forestal will impart to her the forbidding which the world’s peril demands.”

Without Branl’s support, Covenant might not have been able to stay on his feet. The deep past—Oh, hell. Joan’s death had not put an end to
caesures
. In spite of everything, Linden was still exceeding his expectations.

Branl’s expression was unreadable, as inarticulate as a mask of marble. However, his gaze was fixed, not on Rime Coldspray, but on Stave. Mind to mind, the Humbled may have been asking the former Master for confirmation.

How had Linden persuaded Stave to let her go without him?

At the end of her determination, the Ironhand said, “If she succeeds—and if the Arch does not fall—and if she is able to return—she will endeavor to refuse the Worm from this place.”

Covenant groaned aloud. Linden’s absence was his doing. He had pushed her toward a risk so extreme that merely hearing it described made his pulse falter in his veins. He had been pushing her ever since she had returned to the Land, even though every stricture of Law and Time had screamed against such intervention. If she failed, the fault would be his.

But what else could he have done? He could not have acted differently without ceasing to be who he was.

Rime Coldspray was waiting. Her comrades were waiting. He had to say
some
thing: something that was not more self-recrimination. He had done enough of that. It served no purpose.

And Linden was not here to heal or curse him.

Goading himself, he rasped, “You already know some of my story.” The Swordmainnir had heard his challenge to Kastenessen. “Joan is dead. I rode the Harrow’s horse until I killed it. We almost lost Mhornym and Naybahn. But they saved me. Then we went after
turiya
. Branl and me. And Clyme.”

Now that he had made a start, he meant to continue. But Coldspray held up her hand, asking him to pause. Other Giants were coming closer. Limping arduously, Frostheart Grueburn led the way with Latebirth and Cirrus Kindwind at her back. Onyx Stonemage and Stormpast Galesend moved like cripples, supporting Cabledarm between them. Wheezing, Halewhole Bluntfist labored after them.

As the women gathered beside the Ironhand, Covenant went on.

“Some things I have to guess,” he admitted, “but I gather Linden had a run-in with the lurker. You were probably there. Whatever happened, it got that monster’s attention. Apparently Horrim Carabal can feel the Worm coming. It doesn’t want to die. It needs more power. But it couldn’t beat Linden—or you and Linden. So the Feroce found me.” They had accused him of being the Pure One. “They offered us an alliance.”
In pain and desperation
—“Mutual help, safe passage, that sort of thing.”
Already he suffers the presence of one who wanders lost within his realm
—“That must be how Longwrath got here. The lurker let him through. And dozens of those little creatures died helping us get to Joan.”

His listeners nodded again. Silver reflected like keening in their eyes. Longwrath’s attack on Kastenessen must have astonished or appalled them. They had tried so hard to follow his
geas
with him until he found peace. But they did not interrupt.

“After that,” Covenant said, fierce and quavering, “I wanted an alliance myself.” He dreaded memories like this one. They were as piercing as images of Joan. “It isn’t hard to imagine we’re going to need all the help we can get. And I was afraid
turiya
would take the lurker.” He did not mention the former Guardian of the One Tree. The Swordmainnir would recognize Brinn’s name; but Covenant had no courage to spare for that explanation. “Once I learned how to jump across leagues, we went after the Raver.

“We didn’t catch up with him until he was in the Sarangrave. I tried to kill him, but I couldn’t. Clyme and Branl did it.” In spite of his private horror, he could not gloss over this detail. The Giants needed to hear it. They would understand. And the Humbled deserved at least that much homage. “Clyme let
turiya
possess him.” Like Honninscrave in Revelstone. “Then he held the Raver while Branl cut him to pieces.” Covenant remembered hacked flesh, severed bones, blood. “
Turiya
wasn’t just rent. He’s gone. There isn’t anything left.”

The distress of the Giants showed in the way they looked at Branl; in glances teary with compassion and dismay. Perhaps more than any other living people, Coldspray and her comrades knew the cost of causing a Raver’s end. Yet Branl’s gaze gave them nothing. He was
Haruchai
and did not accept grief.