White Gold Wielder (2 page)

Seeing the trap, Linden calls Covenant back from battle. In turn, he tries to return her to their former world so that she can tend his mortally wounded body, but she causes his attempt to fail so that she can remain with him. In despair, the company retreats to Starfare’s Gem without a new Staff of Law, while the Isle of the One Tree sinks into the sea.

Here begins
White Gold Wielder
, Book Three of The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

Awkward without its midmast, Starfare’s Gem turned heavily toward the north, putting its stern to the water clogged with sand and foam which marked the passing of the One Tree. In the rigging, Giants labored and fumbled at their tasks, driven from line to line by the hoarse goad of Sevinhand’s commands, even though Seadreamer lay dead on the deck below them. The Anchormaster stood, lean and rue-bitten, on the wheeldeck and yelled up at them, his voice raw with suppressed pain. If any compliance lagged, the Storesmaster, Galewrath, seconded him, throwing her shout after his like a piece of ragged granite because all the Search had come to ruin and she did not know any other way to bear it. The
dromond
went north simply to put distance between itself and the deep grave of its hope.

But Grimmand Honninscrave, the Giantship’s Master, huddled on the afterdeck with his brother in his arms and did not speak. His massive face, so strong against storms and perils, looked like a yielded fortification; his beard tangled the shadows as the sun declined toward setting. And beside him stood the First of the Search and Pitchwife as if they were lost without the Earth-Sight to guide them.

Findail the Appointed stood there also, wearing his old misery like a man who had always known what would happen at the Isle of the One Tree. Vain stood there with one heel of the former Staff of Law bound around his wooden wrist and his useless hand dangling. And Linden Avery stood there as well, torn between bereavements: outrage and sorrow for Seadreamer swimming in her eyes, need for Covenant aching in her limbs.

But Thomas Covenant had withdrawn to his cabin like a crippled animal going to ground; and he stayed there.

He was beaten. He had nothing left.

Harsh with revulsion, he lay in his hammock and stared at the ceiling. His chamber had been made for a Giant; it outsized him, just as his doom and the Despiser’s manipulations had outsized him. The red sunset through the open port bloodied the ceiling until dusk came and leeched his sight away. But he had been blind all along, so truncated of perception that he had caught no glimpse of his true fate until Linden had cried it into his face:

This is what Foul wants!

That was how his former strengths and victories had been turned against him. He could not feel Cail standing guard outside his door like a man whose fidelity had been redeemed. Beyond the slow rolling of the Giantship’s pace, the salt of futility in the air, the distant creak of rigging and report of canvas, he could not tell the difference between this cabin and the dungeon of the Sandhold or the betrayed depths of Revelstone. All stone was one to him, deaf to appeal or need, senseless, He might have destroyed the Earth in that crisis of power and venom, might have broken the Arch of Time as if he were indeed the Despiser’s servant, if Linden had not stopped him.

And then he had failed at his one chance to save himself. Horrified by love and fear for her, he had allowed Linden to return to him, abandoning the stricken and dying body of his other life. Abandoning him to ruin, though she had not intended any ruin.

Brinn had said to him,
That is the grace which has been
given to you, to bear what must be borne
. But it was a lie.

In darkness he lay and did not move, sleepless although he coveted slumber, yearned for any oblivion which would bring surcease. He went on staring upward as if he too were graven of dead stone, a reification of folly and broken dreams snared within the eternal ambit of his defeat. Anger and self-despite might have impelled him to seek out his old clothes, might have sent him up to the decks to bear the desolation of his friends. But those garments he had left in Linden’s cabin as though for safe-keeping; and he could not go there. His love for her was too corrupt, had been too severely falsified by selfishness. Thus the one lie he had practiced against her from the beginning came back to damn him.

He had withheld one important fact from her, hoping like a coward that it would prove unnecessary—that his desire for her would be permissible in the end. But by the lie of withholding he had accomplished nothing except her miscomprehension. Nothing except the Search’s destitution and the Despiser*s victory. He had let his need for her blind both of them.

No, it was worse than that. He did need her, had needed her so acutely that the poignance of it had shredded his defenses. But other needs had been at work as well: the need to be the Land’s rescuer, to stand at the center of Lord Foul’s evil and impose his own answer upon it; the need to demonstrate his mortal worth against all the bloodshed and pain which condemned him. He had become so wrapped up in his isolation and leprosy, so certain of them and what they meant, that they had grown indistinguishable from Despite.

Now he was beaten. He had nothing left for which he might sanely hope or strive.

He should have known better. The old man on Haven Farm had spoken to Linden rather than to him. The
Elohim
had greeted her as the Sun-Sage, him as the wrongness which imperiled the Earth. Even dead Elena in Andelain had said plainly that the healing of the Land was in Linden’s hands rather than his. Yet he had rejected comprehension in favor of self-insistence. His need or arrogance had been too great to allow comprehension.

And still, with the destruction of everything he held precious laid squarely at his door, he would not have done otherwise—would not give up his ring, not surrender the meaning of his life either to Linden or to Findail. It was all that remained to him: to bear the blame if he could not achieve the victory. Failing everything else, he could still at least refuse to be spared.

So he lay in his hammock like a sacrifice, with the stone vessel spread out unreadably around him. Fettered by the iron of his failures, he did not move or try to move. The first night after the dark of the moon filled his eyes. In Andelain, High Lord Mhoram had warned,
He has said that you are his Enemy. Remember that he seeks always to mislead you
. It was true: he was the Despiser’s servant rather than Enemy. Even his former victory had been turned against him. Sucking the wounded places of his heart, he returned the sightless stare of the dark and remained where he was.

He had no measure for the passage of time; but the night was not far advanced when he heard a stiff, stretched voice rumble outside his door. It uttered words he was unable to distinguish. Yet Cail’s reply was precise. ‘The doom of the Earth is upon his head,” the
Haruchai
said. “Will you not pity him?”

Too weary for indignation or argument, Honninscrave responded, “Can you believe that I mean him harm?”

Then the door opened, and a lantern led the Master’s tall bulk into the cabin.

The light seemed small against the irreducible night of the world; but it lit the chamber brightly enough to sting Covenant’s eyes, like tears he had not shed. Still he did not turn his head away or cover his face. He went on staring numbly at the ceiling while Honninscrave set the lantern on the table.

The table was low for the size of the cabin. From the first day of the quest’s voyage, the Giantish furniture had been replaced by a table and chairs better suited to Covenant’s stature. As a result, the lantern threw the hammock’s shadow above him. He seemed to lie in the echo of his own dark.

With a movement that made his sark sigh along the wall, Honninscrave lowered himself to the floor. After long moments of silence, his voice rose out of the wan light.

“My brother is dead.” The knowledge still wrung him. “Having no other family since the passing of our mother and father, I loved him, and he is dead. The vision of his Earth-Sight gifted us with hope even as it blighted him with anguish, and now that hope is dead, and he will never be released. As did the Dead of The Grieve, he has gone out of life in horror. He will never be released. Cable Seadreamer my brother, bearer of Earth-Sight voiceless and valiant to his grave.”

Covenant did not turn his head. But he blinked at the sting in his eyes until the shadow above him softened it.
The way of hope and doom
, he thought dumbly.
Lies open to you
. Perhaps for him that had been true. Perhaps if he had been honest with Linden, or had heeded the
Elohim
, the path of the One Tree might have held some hope. But what hope had there ever been for Seadreamer? Yet without hope the Giant had tried to take all the doom upon himself. And somehow at the last he had found his voice to shout a warning.

Roughly Honninscrave said, “I beseeched of the Chosen that she speak to you, but she would not. When I purposed to come to you myself, she railed at me, demanding that I forbear. Has he not suffered sufficiently? she cried. Have you no mercy?” He paused briefly, and his voice lowered. “She bears herself bravely, the Chosen. No longer is she the woman of frailty and fright who quailed so before the lurker of the Sarangrave. But she also was bound to my brother by a kinship which rends her in her way.” In spite of her refusal, he seemed to believe that she deserved his respect.

Then he went on, “But what have I to do with mercy or forbearance? They are too high for me. I know only that Cable Seadreamer is dead. He will never be released if you do not release him.”

At that, Covenant flinched in surprise and pain. If
I
don’t—? He was sick with venom and protest. How can
I
release him? If revelation and dismay and Linden had not driven restraint so deeply into him during his struggle against the aura of the Worm of the World’s End, he would have burned the air for no other reason than because he was hurt and futile with power. How can I bear it?

But his restraint held. And Honninscrave looked preternaturally reduced as he sat on the floor against the wall, hugging his unanswered grief. The Giant was Covenant’s friend. In that light, Honninscrave might have been an avatar of lost Saltheart Foamfollower, who had given Covenant everything. He still had enough compassion left to remain silent.

“Giantfriend,” the Master said without lifting his head, “have you been given the tale of how Cable Seadreamer my brother came by his scar?”

His eyes were hidden beneath his heavy brows. His beard slumped on his chest. The shadow of the table’s edge cut him off at the torso; but his hands were visible, gripping each other. The muscles of his forearms and shoulders were corded with fatigue and strain.

“The fault of it was mine,” he breathed into the empty light. “The exuberance and folly of my youth marked him for all to see that I had been careless of him.

“He was my brother, and the younger by some years, though as the lives of Giants are reckoned the span between us was slight. Surely we were both well beyond the present number of your age, but still were we young, new to our manhood, and but recently prenticed to the seacraft and the ships we loved. The Earth-Sight had not yet come upon him, and so there was naught between us beyond my few years and the foolishness which he outgrew more swiftly than I. He came early to his stature, and I ended his youth before its time.

“In those days, we practiced our new crafts in a small vessel which our people name a
tyrscull
—a stone craft near the measure of the longboats you have seen, with one sail, a swinging boom, and oars for use should the wind be lost or displayed. With skill, a
tyrscull
may be mastered by one Giant alone, but two are customary. Thus Seadreamer and I worked and learned together. Our
tyrscull
we named Foamkite, and it was our heart’s glee.

“Now among prentices it is no great wonder that we reveled in tests against each other, pitting and honing our skills with races and displays of every description. Most common of these was the running of a course within the great harbor of Home—far sufficiently from shore to be truly at sea, and yet within any swimmer’s reach of land, should some prentice suffer capsize—a mishap which would have shamed us deeply, young as we were. And when we did not race we trained for races, seeking new means by which we might best our comrades.

“The course was simply marked. One point about which we swung was a buoy fixed for that purpose, but the other was a rimed and hoary rock that we named Salttooth for the sheer, sharp manner in which it rose to bite the air. Once or twice or many times around that course we ran our races, testing our ability to use the winds for turning as well as for speed.”

Honninscrave’s voice had softened somewhat: remembrance temporarily took him away from his distress. But his head remained bowed. And Covenant could not look away from him. Punctuated by the muffled sounds of the sea, the plain details of Honninscrave’s story transfixed the atmosphere of the cabin.

“This course Seadreamer and I ran as often as any and more than most, for we were eager for the sea. Thus we came to stand well among those who vied for mastery. With this my brother was content. He had the true Giantish exhilaration and did not require victory for his joy. But in that I was less worthy of my people. Never did I cease to covet victory, or to seek out new means by which it might be attained.

“So it befell that one day I conceived a great thought which caused me to hug my breast in secret, and to hasten Seadreamer to Foamkite, that I might practice my thought and perfect it for racing. But that thought I did not share with him. It was grand, and I desired its wonder for myself. Not questioning what was in me, he came for the simple pleasure of the sea. Together we ran Foamkite out to the buoy, then swung with all speed toward upthrust Salttooth.

“It was a day as grand as my thought.” He spoke as if it were visible behind the shadows of the cabin. “Under the faultless sky blew a wind with a whetted edge which offered speed and hazard, cutting the wave-crests to white froth as it bore us ahead. Swiftly before us loomed Salttooth. In such a wind, the turning of a
tyrscull
requires true skill—a jeopardy even to competent prentices—and it was there that a race could be won or lost, for a poor tack might drive a small craft far from the course or overturn it altogether. But my thought was for that turning, and I was not daunted by the wind.