White Gold Wielder (11 page)

He did not wait to see whether he was obeyed. Wrapping his arms as far as he could around the bole of the spar, be brought up white fire to tear the stone apart.

With a fierce yell, Honninscrave wrenched Covenant from the spar, shoved him away.

“Honninscrave—!” the First began.

“I must have this spar whole!” roared the Master. His beard jutted fury and aggrievement along his jaw. “Starfare’s Gem cannot endure any sea with but one mast!” The plight of his ship consumed him. “If Pitchwife can mend this shaft by any amount, then I must have a spar to hold sail! He cannot remake the Giantship entire!”

For an instant, he and the First confronted each other furiously. Covenant fought to keep himself from howling.

Then a groan and thud of granite shook the deck as four or five Giants rolled the mast off the end of the spar.

At once, the First and Honninscrave sprang to work. With Galewrath and every Giant who could lay hand to the beam, they pitted their strength against the spar.

The long stone shaft lifted like an ordinary timber in their arms.

As the weight left her, the crushed crewmember let out a shredded moan and lost consciousness.

Immediately Galewrath crouched under the yard to her. Clamping one hand under the woman’s chin, the other at the back of her head to minimize the risk of further injuring a broken spine, the Storesmaster drew her comrade from beneath the spar to a small clear space in the middle of the wreckage.

Covenant gaped at them half-wittedly, trembling as if he had been snatched from the brink of an act of desecration.

Swiftly Galewrath examined the crushed woman. But the fragmentary light of the lanterns made her appear tentative, hampered by hesitation and uncertainty. She was the
dromond
’s healer and knew how to treat any hurt that she could see; but she had no way to correct or even evaluate such severe internal damage. And while she faltered, the woman was slipping out of reach.

Covenant tried to say Linden’s name. But at that moment a group of Giants came through the shambles carrying lanterns. Mistweave and Cail were among them. Mistweave bore Linden.

She lay in his arms as if she were still asleep—as if the
diamondraught
’s hold over her could not be breached by any desperation.

But when he set her on her feet, her eyes fluttered open. Groggily she ran her fingers through her hair, pulled it back from her face. Shadows glazed her eyes; she looked like a woman who was walking in her dreams. A yawn stretched her mouth. She appeared unaware of the pain sprawling at her feet.

Then abruptly she sank down beside the dying Giant as though her knees had failed. She bowed her head, and her hair swung forward to hide her face again.

Rigid with useless impatience, the First clenched her fists on her hips. Galewrath glared back at the lamps. Honninscrave turned away as if he could not bear the sight, began whispering commands. His tone made the crew obey with alacrity.

Linden remained bowed over the Giant as if she were praying. The noise of the crew in the wreckage, the creaking of the
dromond
’s granite, the muffled crackle of ice made what she was saying inaudible. Then her voice came into clearer focus.

“—but the spinal cord is all right. If you splint her back, strap her down, the bones should mend.”

Galewrath nodded stiffly, glowering as if she knew there was more to be said.

The next moment, a tremor ran through Linden. Her head jerked up.

“Her heart’s bleeding. A broken rib—” Her eyes cast a white blind stare into the dark.

Through her teeth, the First breathed, “Succor her, Chosen. She must not die. Three others have lost life this night. There must not be a fourth.”

Linden went on staring. Her voice had a leaden sound, as though she were almost asleep again. “How? I could open her up, but she’d lose too much blood. And I don’t have any sutures.”

“
Chosen
.” The First knelt opposite Linden, took hold of her shoulders. “I know nothing of these ‘sutures.’ Your healing surpasses me altogether. I know only that she must die if you do not aid her swiftly.”

In response, Linden gazed dully across the deck like a woman who had lost interest

“Linden!” Covenant croaked at last. “
Try
.”

Her sight swam into focus on him, and he saw glints of light pass like motes of vision across the dark background of her eyes. “Come,” she said faintly. “Come here.”

All his muscles were wooden with suppressed dismay; but he forced himself to obey. Beside the dying Giant, he faced Linden. “What do you—?”

Her expression stopped him. Her features wore the look of dreams. Without a word, she reached out, caught his halfhand by the wrist, stretched his arm like a rod over the Giant’s pain.

Before he could react, she frowned sharply; and a blare of violation ripped across his mind.

In a rush, fire poured from his ring. Wild magic threw back the night, washing the foredeck with incandescence.

He recoiled in shock rather than pain; her hold did not hurt him. Yet it bereft him of choice. Without warning, all his preconceptions were snatched apart. Everything changed. Once before, in the cavern of the One Tree, she had exerted his power for herself; but he had hardly dared consider the implications. Now her percipience had grown so acute that she could wield his ring without his bare volition. And it
was
a violation. Mhoram had said to him,
You are the white gold
. Wild magic had become a crucial part of his identity, and no one else had the right to use it, control it.

Yet he did not know how to resist her. Her grasp on what she was doing was impenetrable. Already she had set fire to the Giant’s chest as if she intended to burn out the woman’s heart.

Around the Giantship, every sound fell away, absorbed by fire. The First and Galewrath shaded their eyes against the blaze, watched the Chosen with mute astonishment. Linden’s mouth formed mumbling shapes as she worked, but no words came. Her gaze was buried deep in the flames. Covenant could feel himself dying.

For one moment, the Giant writhed against his thighs. Then she took a heavy, shuddering breath: and the trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth stopped. Her chest rose more freely. In a short time, her eyes opened and stared at the sensation of being healed.

Linden dropped Covenant’s wrist. At once, the fire vanished. Night clapped back over the
dromond
. For an instant, even the lanterns appeared to have gone out. He flinched back against a pile of ruined gear, his face full of darkness. He hardly heard the First muttering, “Stone and Sea!” over and over again, unable to voice her amazement in any other way. He was completely blind. His eyes adjusted quickly enough, picking shapes and shadows out of the lantern-glow; but that was only sight, not vision: it had no power or capacity for healing.

Before him, Linden lay across the torso of the Giant she had called back from death. She was already asleep.

From his position in the
dromond
’s prow, Findail studied her as if he expected a transformation to begin at any moment.

Blinking fiercely, Covenant fought to keep the hot grief down. After a moment, he descried Pitchwife near the First. The lamps made the malformed Giant’s face haggard, his eyes red. He was breathing heavily, nearly exhausted. But his voice was calm as he said. “It is done. Starfare’s Gem will not run with its wonted ease until it has been granted restoration by the shipwrights of Home. But I have wived the breaches. We will not go down.”

“Run?” Honninscrave growled through his beard. “Have you beheld the foremast? Starfare’s Gem will never run. In such hurt, I know not how to make it walk.”

The First said something Covenant did not hear. Cail came toward him, offered a hand to help him to his feet. But he did not react to any of them. He was being torn out of himself by the roots.

Linden had a better right to his ring than be did.

When the cold seeped so far into him that he almost stopped shivering, he made his preterite way to the oven-thick atmosphere of the galley. Seated there with his back to one wall, he stared at nothing as if he were stupefied, unable to register what he beheld. All he saw was the gaunt, compulsory visage of his doom.

Outside, the Giants labored at the needs of the ship. For a long time, the muffled thud of the pumps rose from below-decks. The sails of the aftermast were clewed up to their yards to protect them from any resurgence of the now-diminished Dolewind. The stone of the foremast and its spars was cleared out of the wreckage and set aside. Anything that remained intact in the fallen gear and rigging was salvaged. Either Seasauce or Hearthcoal was away from the stoves constantly, carrying huge buckets of broth to the Giants to sustain them while they worked.

But nothing the crew could do changed the essential fact: the
dromond
was stuck and crippled. When dawn came, and Covenant went, hollow-eyed and spectral, to look at the Giantship’s condition, he was dismayed by the severity of the damage. Aft of the midship housing, nothing had been hurt: the aftermast raised its arms like a tall tree to the blue depths and broken clouds of the sky. But forward Starfare’s Gem looked as maimed as a derelict. Scant feet above the first yards, which had been stripped to the bone by the collapse of the upper members, the foremast ended in a ragged stump.

Covenant had no sea-craft, but he recognized that Honninscrave was right: without sails forward to balance the canvas aft, Starfare’s Gem would never be able to navigate.

Aching within himself, he turned to find out what the vessel had struck.

At first, what he saw seemed incomprehensible. Starfare’s Gem lay surrounded to the horizons by a vast flat wilderland of ice. Jagged hunks were crushed against the
dromond
’s sides; but the rest of the ice was unbroken. Its snow-blown surface appeared free of any channel which could have brought the Giantship to this place.

But when he shaded his gaze and peered southward, he discerned a narrow band of gray water beyond the ice. And, squinting so hard that his temples throbbed, he traced a line between the
dromond
’s stern and the open sea. There the ice was thinner. It was freezing back over the long furrow which Starfare’s Gem had plowed into the floe.

The Giantship was trapped—locked here and helpless. With all three masts intact and a favoring wind, it could not have moved. It was stuck where it sat until spring came to its rescue. If this part of the world ever felt the touch of spring.

Damnation!

The ship’s plight stung him like the gusts which came skirling off the ice. In the Land, the Clave was feeding the Banefire, stoking it with innocent blood to increase the Sunbane. No one remained to fight the na-Mhoram’s depredations except Sunder and Hollian and perhaps a handful of
Haruchai
—if any of them were still alive. The quest for the One Tree had failed, extinguishing Covenant’s sole hope. And now—!

Have mercy on me.

But he was a leper, and there was never any mercy for lepers. Despite did not forbear. He had reached the point where everything he did was wrong. Even his stubborn determination to cling to his ring, to bear the cost of his doom himself, was wrong. But he could not endure the alternative. The simple thought wrung a mute howl from the pit of his heart.

He had to do something, find some way to reaffirm himself. Passivity and silence were no longer viable. His despair itself compelled him. He
had
to. Linden had proved the
Elohim
right. With his ring she was able to heal. But he could not forget the taste of eager fire when he had warmed the stewpot to save her.
Had
to! He could not give it up.

His ring was all he had left.

He had become the most fundamental threat to everything he loved. But suddenly that was no longer enough to stop him. Deliberately he set aside Linden’s reasons—her wish to see him do what she believed she would do in his place, her desire to fight Lord Foul through him—and chose his own.

To show himself and his companions and the Despiser if necessary that he had the right.

Without looking away from the ice, he said to Cain, “Tell Honninscrave I want to talk to him. I want to talk to everybody—the First, Linden, Pitchwife. In his cabin.”

When the
Haruchai
moved soundlessly away, Covenant hugged the scant protection of his robe and set himself to wait.

The idea of what he meant to do made his pulse beat like venom in his veins.

There was blue in the sky, the first blue he had seen for days. A crusty glitter reflected the sun. But the ice was not as smooth as the sunlight made it appear. Its surface was marked with sharp spines and ridges, mounds where floe-plates rubbed and depressions which ran from nowhere to nowhere. The ice was a wasteland, its desolation grieving in the cold, and it held his gaze like the outcome of his life. Once in winter he had fought his way through long leagues of snow and despair to confront the Despiser—and he had prevailed. But he knew now that he would never prevail in that way again.

He shrugged against the chill. So what? He would find some other way. Even if the attempt drove him mad. Madness was just a less predictable and scrupulous form of power. And he did not believe that either Lord Foul or Findail had told him the whole truth.

Yet he did not intend to surrender his scruples or go mad. His leprosy had trained him well for survival and affirmation against an impossible future. And Foamfollower had once said to him,
Service enables service
. Hope came from the power and value of what was served, not from the one who served it.

When Cail returned. Covenant felt that he was ready. Slowly, carefully, he turned from the sea and picked his way across the clogged stone toward one of the entryways to the underdecks.

Below, the door to Honninscrave’s cabin was open; and beside it stood Mistweave. His face wore a conflicted expression. Covenant guessed that the Giant had undertaken more than he realized when he had assigned himself to Cail’s former responsibility for Linden. How could he have foreseen that his dedication to her would require him to ignore the needs of the
dromond
and the labors of the crew? The dilemma made him look unsure of himself.