White Gold Wielder (41 page)

Linden had stayed with Covenant.

Stayed with him and felt the excoriation of his soul until at last his envenomed power burned clean, and he came walking back out of the Banefire as if he were deaf and blind and newborn, unable in the aftermath of his anguish to acknowledge her presence or even know that she was there, that through her vulnerable senses she had now shared everything with him except his death.

And as he had moved sightlessly past her toward some place or fate which she could no longer guess, her heart had turned to bitterness and dust, leaving her as desolate as the demesne of the Sunbane. She had thought that her passion was directed at him, at his rejection of her, his folly, his desperate doom; but when she saw him emerge from the Banefire and pass by her, she knew better. She had been appalled at herself—at the immedicable wrong of what she had tried to do to him. Despite her horror of possession, her revulsion for the dark ill which Lord Foul had practiced on Joan and the Land, her clear conviction that no one had the right to master others, suppress them, rule them in that way, she had reacted to Covenant’s need and determination as if she were a Raver. She had tried to save him by taking away his identity.

There was no excuse. Even if he had died in the Banefire, or brought down the Arch of Time, her attempt would have been fundamentally evil—a crime of the spirit beside which her physical murder of her mother paled.

Then for a moment she had believed that she had no choice but to take his place in the Banefire—to let that savage blaze rip away her offenses so that Covenant and her friends and the Land would no longer be in danger from her. Gibbon-Raver had said,
The principal doom of the Land is upon your shoulders
. And,
You have not yet tasted the depths of your Desecration
. If her life had been shaped by a miscomprehended lust for power, then let it end now, as it deserved. There was no one nearby to stop her.

But then she had become aware of Findail. She had not seen him earlier. He seemed to have appeared in answer to her need. He had stood there before her, his face a hatchment of rue and strain; and his yellow eyes had ached as if they were familiar with the heart of the Banefire.

“Sun-Sage,” he had breathed softly, “I know not how to dissuade you. I do not desire your death—though mayhap I would be spared much thereby. Yet consider the ring-wielder. What hope will remain for him if you are gone? How will he then refuse the recourse of the Earth’s ruin?”

Hope? she had thought. I almost took away his ability to even know what hope is. Yet she had not protested. Bowing her head as if Findail had reprimanded her, she had turned away from the sacred enclosure. After all, she had no right to go where Covenant had gone. Instead, she had begun trying to find her way through the unfamiliar passages of Revelstone toward the upland plateau.

Before long, Durris had joined her. Reporting that the resistance of the Clave had ended, and that the
Haruchai
had already set about fulfilling her commands, he had guided her up to the afternoon sunlight and the stream of Glimmermere.

She had found the First and Nom together. Following the First’s instructions, Nom was bludgeoning a channel out of the raw rock. The beast obeyed her as if it knew what she wanted, understood everything she said—as if it had been tamed. Yet the Sandgorgon did not appear tame as it tore into the ground, shaping a watercourse with swift, exuberant ferocity. Soon the channel would be ready, and the clear waters of Glimmermere could be diverted from Furl Falls.

Leaving Nom to Linden, the First went back into Revelstone to help the rest of the company. Shortly she sent another
Haruchai
upland to say that the hurts of
Grim
-fire and Courser-poison were responding to
voure
,
vitrim
, and
diamondraught
. Even Mistweave was out of danger. Yet there were many injured men and women who required Linden’s personal attention.

But Linden did not leave the Sandgorgon until the channel was open and water ran eagerly down into the city and Nom had convinced her that it could be trusted not to attack the Keep once more. That trust came slowly: she did not know to what extent the rending of the Raver had changed Nom’s essential wildness. But Nom came to her when she spoke. It obeyed her as if it both understood and approved of her orders. Finally she lifted herself out of her desert enough to ask the Sandgorgon what it would do if she left it alone. At once, it went and began improving the channel so that the water flowed more freely.

Then she was satisfied. And she did not like the openness of the plateau. The wasted landscape on all sides was too much for her. She seemed to feel the desert sun shining straight into her, confirming her as a place of perpetual dust. She needed constriction, limitation—walls and requirements of a more human scale—specific tasks that would help her hold herself together. Leaving the Sandgorgon to go about its work in its own way, she followed the water back into Revelstone.

Now the rapid chattering torchlight-spangled current drew her in the direction of the Banefire.

Durris remained beside her; but she was hardly aware of him. She sensed all the
Haruchai
as if they were simply a part of Revelstone, a manifestation of the Keep’s old granite. With the little strength she still possessed, she focused her percipience forward, toward the fierce moil of steam where the Banefire fought against extinction. For a time, the elemental passion of that conflict was so intense that she could not see the outcome. But then she heard more clearly the chuckling eagerness with which Glimmermere’s stream sped along its stone route; and she knew the Banefire would eventually fail.

In that way, the upland tarn proved itself a thing of hope.

But hope seemed to have no meaning anymore. Linden had never deluded herself with the belief that the quenching of the Banefire would alter or weaken the Sunbane. Ages of bloodshed had only fed the Sunbane, only accelerated its possession of the Land, not caused it or controlled it.

When Covenant had fallen into despair after the loss of the One Tree, she had virtually coerced him to accept the end of the Clave’s power as an important and necessary goal. She had demanded commitments from him, ignoring the foreknowledge of his death as if it signified nothing and could be set aside, crying at him,
If you’re going to die, do something to make it count!
But even then she had known that the Sunbane would still go on gnawing its way inexorably into the heart of the Earth. Yet she had required this decision of him because she needed a concrete purpose, a discipline as tangible as surgery on which she could anchor herself against the dark. And because anything had been preferable to his despair.

But when she had wrested that promise from him, he had asked,
What’re you going to do?
And she had replied,
I’m going to wait
, as if she had known what she was saying.
My turn’s coming
. But she had not known how truly she spoke—not until Gibbon had said to her,
You have not yet tasted the depths of your Desecration
, and she had reacted by trying to possess the one decent love of her life.

Her turn was coming, all right. She could see it before her as vividly as the savage red steam venting like shrieks from all the doors of the sacred enclosure.
Driven to commit all destruction
. The desert sun lay within her as it lay upon the Land; soon the Sunbane would have its way with her altogether. Then she would indeed be a kind of Sun-Sage, as the
Elohim
avowed—but not in the way they meant.

An old habit which might once have been a form of self-respect caused her to thrust her hands into her hair to straighten it. But its uncleanness made her wince. Randomly she thought that she should have gone to Glimmermere for a bath, made at least that much effort to cleanse—or perhaps merely disguise—the grime of her sins. But the idea was foolish, and she dismissed it. Her sins were not ones which could be washed away, even by water as quintessentially pure as Glimmermere’s. And while the Banefire still burned, and the company still needed care, she could not waste time on herself.

Then she reached the wet fringes of the steam. The Banefire’s heat seemed to condense on her face, muffling her perceptions; but after a moment she located the First and Pitchwife. They were not far away. Soon they emerged from the crimson vapor as if Glimmermere’s effect upon the Banefire restored them to life.

Pitchwife bore the marks of battle and killing. His grotesque face was twisted with weariness and remembered hurt. It looked like the visage of a man who had forgotten the possibility of mirth. Yet he stood at his wife’s side; and the sight tightened Linden’s throat.
Weeps as no
Haruchai
has ever wept
. Oh, Pitchwife, she breathed to him mutely. I’m sorry.

The First was in better shape. The grief of Honninscrave’s end remained in her eyes; but with Pitchwife beside her she knew how to bear it. And she was a Swordmain, trained for combat. The company had achieved a significant victory. To that extent, the Search she led had already been vindicated.

Somehow, they managed to greet Linden with smiles. They were Giants, and she was important to them. But a dry desert wind blew through her because she could not match them. She did not deserve such friends.

Without preamble, the First gestured toward the sacred enclosure. “It is a bold conception, Chosen, and worthy of pride. With mounting swiftness it accomplishes that which even the Earthfriend in his power—” But then she stopped, looked more closely at Linden. Abruptly her own rue rose up in her, and her eyes welled tears. “Ah, Chosen,” she breathed. “The fault is not yours. You are mortal, as I am—and our foe is malign beyond endurance. You must not—”

Linden interrupted the First bitterly. “I tried to possess him. Like a Raver. I almost destroyed both of us.”

At that, the Giant hardened. “No.” Her tone became incisive. “It skills nothing to impugn yourself. There is need of you. The wounded are gathered in the forehall. They must be tended.” She swallowed a memory of pain, then went on, “Mistweave labors among them, though he is no less hurt. He will not rest.” Facing Linden squarely, the First concluded, “It is your work he does.”

I know. Linden sighed. I know. Her eyes blurred and ran as if they had no connection to the arid loss in her heart.

With that for recognition and thanks, she let Durris guide her toward the forehall.

The sheer carnage there smote her as she entered the great hall. The
Grim
had done severe damage to the floor, tearing chunks from it like lumps of flesh. Dead Coursers sprawled in pools of their own blood. A number of the
Haruchai
had been hurt as badly as Mistweave; one of them was dead. Riders lay here and there across the floor, scarlet-robed and contorted, frantic with death. But worse than anything else were the hacked and broken bodies of those who should never have been sent into battle: cooks and cleaners, herders and gatherers, the innocent servants of the Clave. Among the litter of their inadequate weapons, their cleavers, pitchforks, scythes, clubs, they were scattered like the wreckage which their masters had already wrought upon the villages of the Land.

Now Linden could not stanch her tears—and did not try. Through the blur, she spoke to Durris, sent him and several other
Haruchai
in search of splints, bindings, a sharp knife, hot water, and all the
metheglin
they could find to augment the company’s scant
vitrim
and dwindling
diamondraught
. Then, using percipience instead of sight to direct her, she went looking for Mistweave.

He was at work among the fallen of the Clave as if he were a physician—or could become one by simply refusing to let so much hurt and need lie untended. First he separated the dead from those who might yet be saved. Then he made the living as comfortable as possible, covered their wounds with bandages torn from the raiment of the dead. His aura reached out to her as though he, too, were weeping; and she seemed to hear his very thoughts: This one also I slew. Her I broke. Him I crippled. These I took from life in the name of service.

She felt his distress keenly. Self-distrust had driven him to a kind of hunger for violence, for any exertion or blow which might earn back his own esteem. Now he found himself in the place to which such logic led—a place that stank like an abattoir.

In response, something fierce came unexpectedly out of the wilderness of Linden’s heart. He had not halted his labor to greet her. She caught him by the arm, by the sark, pulled at him until he bent over her and she was able to clinch her frail strength around his neck. Instinctively he lifted her from the floor in spite of his broken arm; and she whispered at him as if she were gasping, “You saved my life. When I couldn’t save myself. And no
Haruchai
could save me. You’re not responsible for this. The Clave made them attack you. You didn’t have any choice.” Mistweave. “You couldn’t just let them kill you.” Mistweave, help me. All you did was fight. I tried to
possess
him.

He’s gone, and I’ll never get him back.

For a moment, Mistweave’s muscles knotted with grief. But then slowly his grip loosened, and he lowered her gently to her feet. “Chosen,” he said as if he had understood her, “it will be a benison to me if you will tend my arm. The pain is considerable.”

Considerable, Linden thought. Sweet Christ, have mercy, Mistweave’s admission was an appalling understatement. His right elbow had been crushed, and whenever he moved the splinters ground against each other. Yet he had spent the entire day in motion, first fighting for the company, then doing everything he could to help the injured. And the only claim he made for himself was that the pain was considerable. He gave her more help than she deserved.

When Durris and his people brought her the things she had requested, she told him to build a fire to clean the knife and keep the water hot. Then while the sun set outside and night grew deep over the city, she opened up Mistweave’s elbow and put the bones back together.