White Gold Wielder (42 page)

That intricate and demanding task made her feel frayed to the snapping point, worn thin by shared pain. But she did not stop when it was finished. Her work was just beginning. After she had splinted and strapped Mistweave’s arm, she turned to the injuries of the
Haruchai
, to Fole’s leg and Harn’s hip and all the other wounds dealt out by the
Grim
and the Coursers, the Riders and the people of Revelstone. Fole’s hurt reminded her of Ceer’s—the leg crushed by a Sandgorgon and never decently treated—and so she immersed herself in the damage as if restitution could be made in that way, by taking the cost of broken bones and torn flesh upon herself. And after that she began to tend as best she could the Riders and servants of the Clave.

Later, through the riven gates at the end of the forehall, she felt midnight rise like the moon above the Keep. The reek of spilled and drying blood filled the air. Men and women cried out as if they expected retribution when she touched them. But still she went weary and unappeased about her chosen work. It was the only answer she had ever found for herself until she had met Covenant. Now it was the only answer she had left.

Yes. It was specific and clean. It had meaning, value; the pain of it was worth bearing. Yes. And it held her in one piece.

As if for the first time: Yes.

She had never faced so many wounds at once, so much bloodshed. But after all, the number of men and women, old and young, who had been able to survive their hurts this long was finite. The consequences of the battle were not like the Sunbane, endless and immedicable. She had nearly finished everything she knew how to ask of herself when Cail came to her and announced that the ur-Lord wished to see her.

She was too tired to feel the true shock of the summons. Even now she could see Covenant standing in the Banefire until his blackness burned away as if he had taken hold of that evil blaze and somehow made it holy. His image filled all the back of her mind. But she was exhausted and had no more fear.

Carefully she completed what she was doing. As she worked, she spoke to Durris. “When the Banefire goes out, tell Nom to turn the stream back where it belongs. Then I want the dead cleaned out of here. Tell Nom to bury them outside the gates.” They deserved at least that decency. “You and your people take care of these.” She gestured toward the people arrayed around her in their sufferings and bandages. “The Land’s going to need them.” She understood poignantly Covenant’s assertion that Sunder and Hollian were the Land’s future. Freed from the rule of the Clave, these wounded men and women might help serve the same purpose.

Durris and Cail blinked at her, their faces flat in the incomplete torchlight. They were
Haruchai
, disdainful of injury and failure—not healers. And what reason did they have to obey her? Their commitment was to Covenant, not to her. With Brinn, Cail had once denounced her as a minion of Corruption.

But the
Haruchai
were not unaffected by their part in the Land’s plight. The
merewives
and the Clave had taught them their limitations. And Brinn’s victory over the Guardian of the One Tree had done much to open the way for Cable Seadreamer’s death and the Despiser’s manipulations. In a strange way, the
Haruchai
had been humbled. When Linden looked up at Cail, he said as if he were still unmoved, “It will be done. You are Linden Avery the Chosen. It will be done.”

Sighing to herself, she did what she could for the last of the wounded—watched him die because she was only one woman and had not reached him in time. Then she straightened her stiff knees and went with Cail out of the forehall.

As she turned, she glimpsed a perfect ebony figure standing at the verge of the light near the gates. Vain had returned.

Somehow, he had recognized the end of the Clave and known that he could safely rejoin the company. But Linden was past questioning anything the Demondim-spawn did. She lost sight of him as she entered the passages beyond the forehall; and at once she forgot him.

Cail guided her deep into a part of Revelstone which was new to her. The movement and confusion of the past day had left her sense of direction so bewildered that she had no idea where she was in relation to the Hall of Gifts; and she could barely discern the sacred enclosure in the distance as the Banefire declined toward extinction. But when she and Cail reached a hall that led like a tunnel toward the source of a weird silver illumination, she guessed their destination.

The hall ended in a wide, round court. Around the walls were doorways at intervals, most of them shut. Above the doors up to the high ceiling of the cavity were coigns which allowed other levels of the Keep to communicate with this place. But she recognized the court because the polished granite of its floor was split from wall to wall with one sharp crack, and the floor itself shone with an essential argence like Covenant’s ring. He had damaged and lit that stone in the excess of his power when he had emerged from the soothtell of the Clave. Here had been revealed to him enough of the truth to send him on his quest for the One Tree—but only enough to ensure the outcome Lord Foul intended. In spite of her exhaustion, Linden shivered, wondering how much more had been revealed to him now.

But then she saw him standing in one of the doorways; and all other questions vanished. Her eyes were full of silver; she felt she could hardly see him as he dismissed Cail, came out into the light to meet her.

Mute with shame and longing, she fought the inadequacy of her vision and strove to annele her sore heart with the simple sight of him.

Luminous in silver and tears, he stood before her. All the details were gone, blinded by the pure glow of the floor, his pure presence. She saw only that he carried himself as if he had not come to berate her. She wanted to say in a rush before she lost her sight altogether. Oh, Covenant, I’m so sorry, I was wrong, I didn’t understand, forgive me, hold me, Covenant. But the words would not come. Even now, she read him with the nerves of her body; her percipience tasted the timbre of his emanations. And the astonishment of what she perceived stopped her throat.

He was there before her, clean in every limb and line, and strong with the same stubborn will and affirmation which had made him irrefusable to her from the beginning. Alive in spite of the Banefire; gentle toward her regardless of what she had tried to do to him. But something was gone from him. Something was changed. For a moment while she tried to comprehend the difference, she believed that he was no longer a leper.

Blinking furiously, she cleared her vision.

His cheeks and neck were bare, free of the unruly beard which had made him look as hieratic and driven as a prophet. The particular scraped hue of his skin told her that he had not used wild magic to burn his whiskers away: he had shaved himself with some kind of blade. With a blade instead of fire, as if the gesture had a special meaning for him. An act of preparation or acquiescence. But physically that change was only superficial.

The fundamental alteration was internal. Her first guess had been wrong; she saw now that his leprosy persisted. His fingers and palms and the soles of his feet were numb. The disease still rested, quiescent, in his tissues. Yet something was gone from him. Something important had been transformed or eradicated.

“Linden.” He spoke as if her name sufficed for him—as if he had called her here simply so that he could say her name to her.

But he was not simple in any way. His contradictions remained, denning him beneath the surface. Yet he had become new and pure and clean. It was as if his doubt were gone—as if the self-judgments and -repudiation which had tormented him had been reborn as certainty, clarity, acceptance in the Banefire.

It was as if he had managed to rid himself of the Despiser’s venom.

“Is it—?” she began amazedly. “How did you—?” But the light around him seemed to throng with staggering implications, and she could not complete the question.

In response, he smiled at her—and for one stunned instant his smile seemed to be the same one he had given Joan when he had exchanged his life for hers, giving himself up to Lord Foul’s malice so that she would be free. A smile of such valor and rue that Linden had nearly cried out at the sight of it.

But then the angles of his face shifted, and his expression became bearable again. Quietly he said, “Do you mind if we get out of this light? I’m not exactly proud of it.” With his halfhand, he gestured toward the doorway from which he had emerged.

The cuts on his fingers had been healed.

And there were no scars on his forearm. The marks of Marid’s fangs and of the injuries he had inflicted on himself had become whole flesh.

Dumbly she went where he pointed. She did not know what had happened to him.

Beyond the door, she found herself in a small suite of rooms clearly designed to be someone’s private living quarters. They were illuminated on a more human scale by several oil lamps and furnished with stone chairs and a table in the forechamber, a bare bed in one back room and empty pantry shelves in another. The suite had been unused for an inestimably long time, but the ventilation and granite of Revelstone had kept it clean. Covenant must have set the lamps himself—or asked the
Haruchai
to provide them.

The center of the table had been strangely gouged, as though a knife had been driven into it like a sharp stick into clay.

“Mhoram lived here,” Covenant explained. “This is where I talked to him when I finally started to believe that he was my friend—that he was capable of being my friend after everything I’d done.” He spoke without gall, as if he had reconciled himself to the memory. “He told me about the necessity of freedom.”

Those words seemed to have a new resonance for him; but almost immediately he shrugged them aside. Indicating the wound in the tabletop, he said, “I did that. With the
krill
. Elena tried to give it to me. She wanted me to use it against Lord Foul. So I stabbed it into the table and left it there where nobody else could take it out. Like a promise that I was going to do the same thing to the Land.” He tried to smile again; but this time the effort twisted his face like a grimace. “I did that even before I knew Elena was my daughter. But he was still able to be my friend.” For a moment, his voice sounded chipped and battered; yet he stood tall and straight with his back to the open door and the silver lumination as if he had become unbreakable. “He must’ve removed the
krill
when he came into his power.”

Across the table, he faced her. His eyes were gaunt with knowledge, but they remained clear. “It’s not gone,” he said softly. “I tried to get rid of it, but I couldn’t.”

“Then what—?” She was lost before him, astonished by what he had become. He was more than ever the man she loved—and yet she did not know him, could not put one plain question into words.

He sighed, dropped his gaze briefly, then looked up at her again. “I guess you could say it’s been fused. I don’t know how else to describe it. Ifs been burned into me so deeply that there’s no distinction. I’m like an alloy—venom and wild magic and ordinary skin and bones melted together until they’re all one. All the same. I’ll never be free of it.”

As he spoke, she saw that he was right. He gave her the words to see that he was right. Fused. An alloy. Like white gold itself, a blend of metals. And her heart gave a leap of elation within her.

“Then you can control it!” she said rapidly, so rapidly that she did not know what she was about to say until she said it. “You’re not at Foul’s mercy anymore!” Oh, beloved. “You can beat him!”

At that, sudden pain darkened his visage. She jerked to a halt, unable to grasp how she had hurt him. When he did not reply, she took hold of her confusion, forced it to be still. As carefully as she could, she said, “I don’t understand. I can’t. You’ve got to tell me what’s going on.”

“I know,” he breathed. “I know.” But now his attention was fixed on the gouged center of the table as if no power had ever been able to lift the knife out of his own heart; and she feared that she had lost him.

After a moment, he said, “I used to say I was sick of guilt. But not anymore.” He took a deep breath to steady himself. “It’s not a sickness anymore. I
am
guilt. I’ll never use power again.”

She started to protest; but his certainty stopped her. With an effort, she held herself mute as he began to quote an old song.

She listened to him intently, striving for comprehension. But at the same time her mind bifurcated, and she found herself remembering Dr. Berenford. He had tried to tell her about Covenant by describing one of Covenant’s novels. According to the older doctor, the book argued
that innocence is a wonderful thing except for the fact that it’s impotent. Guilt is power. Only the damned can be saved
. The memory seemed to hint at the nature of Covenant’s new certainty.

Was that it? Did he no longer doubt that he was damned? He paused, then repeated, “Keystone, The Arch of Time is held together at the apex by wild magic. And the Arch is what gives the Earth a place in which to exist. It’s what imprisons Foul. That’s why he wants my ring. To break Time so he can escape.

“But nothing’s that simple anymore. The wild magic has been fused into me. I
am
wild magic. In a sense, I’ve become the keystone of the Arch. Or I will be—if I let what I am loose. If I ever try to use power.

“But that’s not all. If it were, I could stand it. I’d be willing to be the Arch forever, if Foul could be beaten that way. But I’m not just wild magic. I’m venom, too. Lord Foul’s venom. Can you imagine what the Earth would be like if venom was the keystone? If everything in the world, every particle of life, was founded on venom as well as wild magic? That would be as bad as the Sunbane.” Slowly he lifted his head, met Linden with a glance that seemed to pierce her. “I won’t do it.”