White Gold Wielder

Eleven: Aftermath

HELD upright and active only by the fierce pressure of her need. Linden Avery walked numbly down through the ways of Revelstone, following the mounting stream of water inward. She had Just left Nom on the upland plateau, where the Sandgorgon tended the channel it had brunted through sheer rock and dead soil from the outflow of Glimmermere to the upper entrance of the Keep; and the tarn's untainted waters now ran past her along a path prepared for it by the First, Pitchwife, and a few Haruchai.

Pure in spite of the harsh ages of the Sunbane, those waters shone blue against the desert of the late afternoon sun until they began to tumble like rapids into Revelstone. Then torchlight glinted across their splashing rush so that they looked like the glee of mountains as they washed passages, turned at closed doors and new barricades, rolled whitely down stairways. The Giants were adept at stone, and they read the inner language of the Keep. The route they had designed led with surprising convolution and efficiency to Linden's goal.

It was an open door at the base of the sacred enclosure, where the Banefire still burned as if Thomas Covenant had never stood within its heart and screamed against the heavens.

In rage and despair she had conceived this means of quenching the Clave's power. When Covenant had turned away from the Hall of Gifts and his friends, she had seen where he was going; and she had understood him-or thought she understood. He meant to put an end to his life, so that he would no longer be a threat to what he loved. Like her father, possessed by self-pity. But, standing so near to Gibbon-Raver, she had learned that her own former visceral desire for death was in truth a black passion for power, for immunity from all death forever. And the way that blackness worked upon her and grew showed her that no one could submit to such hunger without becoming a servant of the Despiser Covenant's intended immolation would only seal his soul to Lord Foul.

Therefore she had tried to stop him.

Yet somehow he had remained strong enough to deny her. In spite of his apparently suicidal abjection, he had refused her completely. It made her wild.

In the Hall, the First had fallen deep into the grief of Giants. Nom had begun to belabour a great grave for Honninscrave, as if the gift the Master had given Revelstone and the Land belonged there. Call had looked at Linden, expecting her to go now to aid the rest of the company, care for the wounded. But she had left them all in order to pursue Covenant to his doom. Perhaps she had believed that she would yet find a way to make him heed her. Or perhaps she had simply been unable to give him up.

His agony within the Banefire had nearly broken her. But it had also given her a focus for her despair. She had sent out a mental cry which had brought Nom and Cail running to her with the First between them. At the sight of what Covenant was doing, the First's visage had turned grey with defeat. But when Linden had explained how the Banefire could be extinguished, the First had come instantly back to herself. Sending Cail to rally their companions, she had sped away with Nom to find the upland plateau and Glimmermere.

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 Bane fire 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 vapour 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 labours 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 labour 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.

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 Can 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 anele 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, defining 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 valour 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 half-hand, 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 centre 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 centre 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.

“There is wild magic graven in every rock,

contained for white gold to unleash or control -

gold, rare metal, not born of the Land,

nor ruled, limited, subdued

by the Law with which the Land was created -

but keystone rather, pivot, crux

for the anarchy out of which Time was made:

wild magic restrained in every particle of life,

and unleashed or controlled by gold

because that power is the anchor of the arch of life

that spans and masters Time.”

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.”

She felt helpless to reach him; but she could not stop trying. She heard the truth as he described it; he had named the change in himself for her. In the Banefire he had made himself as impotent as innocence. The power to resist Despite, the reason of his life, had been burned out of him. Aching for him, she asked, “Then what? What will you do?”

His lips drew taut, baring his teeth; for an instant, he appeared starkly afraid. But no fear marked his voice. “When I saw Elena in Andelain, she told me where to find Foul. In Mount Thunder-a place inside the Wightwarrens called Kiril Threndor. I'm going to pay him a little visit.”

“He'll kill you!” Linden cried, immediately aghast. “If you can't defend yourself, he'll just kill you and it'll all be wasted,” everything he had suffered, venom-relapses, the loss of Seadreamer and Honninscrave, of Ceer, Hergrom, and Brinn, the silence of the Elohim, his caamora for the Unhomed of Seareach, the tearing agony and fusion of the Banefire,

“Wasted! What kind of answer is that”

But his certainty was unshaken. To her horror, he smiled at her again. Until it softened, his expression wrung her out of herself, made her want to scream at him as if he had become a Raver. Yet it did soften. When he spoke, he sounded neither desperate nor doomed, but only gentle and indefeasibly resigned.

“There are a few things Foul doesn't understand. I'm going to explain them to him.”

Gentle, yes, and resigned; but also annealed, fused to the hard metal of his purpose. Explain them to him? she thought wildly. But in his mouth the words did not sound like folly. They sounded as settled and necessary as the fundament of the Earth.

However, he was not untouched by her consternation. More urgently, as if he also wanted to bridge the gulf between them, he said, "Linden, think about it. Foul can't break the Arch without breaking me first. Do you really think he can do that? After what I've been through?”

She could not reply. She was sinking in a vision of his death-of his body back in the woods behind Haven Farm pulsing its last weak life onto the indifferent stone. The old man whose life she had saved before she had ever met Covenant had said to her like a promise. You will not fail, however he may assail you. There is also love in the world. But she had already failed when she had let Covenant be struck by that knife, let him go on dying. All love was gone.

But he was not done with her. He was leaning on the table now, supporting himself with his locked arms to look at her more closely; and the silver glow of the floor behind him limned his intent posture, made him luminous. Yet the yellow lamplight seemed human and needy as it shone on his face, features she must have loved from the beginning-the mouth as strict as a commandment, the cheeks lined with difficulties, the hair greying as if its colour were the ash left by his hot mind. The kindness he conveyed was the conflicted empathy and desire of a man who was never gentle with himself. And he still wanted something from her. In spite of what she had tried to do to him. Before he spoke, she knew that he had come to his reason for summoning her here-and for selecting this particular place, the room of a compassionate, dangerous, and perhaps wise man who had once been his friend.

In a husky voice, he asked, “What about you? What're you going to do?”

He had asked her that once before. But her previous response now seemed hopelessly inadequate. She raised her hands to her hair, then pushed them back down to her side. The touch of her unclean tresses felt so unlovely, impossible to love, that it brought her close to tears. “I don't know,” she said. “I don't know what my choices are.”

For a moment, his certitude faded. He faced her, not because he was sure, but because he was afraid. “You could stay here,” he said as if the words hurt him. “The lore of the old Lords is still here. Most of it, anyway. Maybe the Giants could translate it for you. You might find a way out of this mess for yourself. A way back.” He swallowed at an emotion that leaked like panic past his resolve. Almost whispering, he added, “Or you could come with me.”

Come with-? Her percipience flared toward him, trying to read the spirit behind what he said. What was he afraid of? Did he dread her companionship, fear the responsibility and grief of having her with him? Or was he dismayed to go on without her?

Her legs were weak with exhaustion and desire, but she did not let herself sit down. A helpless tremor ran through her. "What do you want me to do?”

He looked like he would have given anything to be able to turn his head away; yet his gaze held. Even now, he did not quail from what he feared.

“I want what you want. I want you to find something that gives you hope. I want you to come into your power. I want you to stop believing that you're evil-that your mother and father are the whole truth about you. I want you to understand why you were chosen to be here.” His visage pleaded at her through the lamplight. “I want you to have reasons.”

She still did not comprehend his apprehension. But he had given her an opportunity she coveted fervidly, and she was determined to take it at any cost. Her voice was thick with a kind of weeping she had suppressed for most of her life; but she no longer cared how much frailty or need she exposed. All the severity and detachment to which she had trained herself had fled, and she did not try to hail them back. Trembling fiercely to herself, she uttered her avowal.

“I don't want hope. I don't want power. I don't care if I never go back. Let Foul do his worst-and to hell with him. I don't even care if you're going to die.” That was true. Death was later: he was now. “I'm a doctor, not a magician. I can't save you unless you go back with me-and if you offered me that, I wouldn't take it. What's happening here is too important. It's too important to me.” And that also was true; she had learned it among the wounded in the forehall of the Keep. “All I want is a living love. For as long as I can get it.” Defying her weakness, she stood erect before him in the lamplight as if she were ablaze. “I want you.”

At that, he bowed his head at last; and the relief which flooded from him was so palpable that she could practically embrace it. When he looked up again, he was smiling with love-a smile which belonged to her and no one else. Tears streaked his face as he went to the door and closed it, shutting out the consequences of wild magic and venom. Then from the doorway he said thickly, “I wish I could've believed you were going to say that. I would've told Cail to bring us some blankets.”

But the safe gutrock of Revelstone enclosed them with solace, and they did not need blankets.

Twelve: Those Who Part

THEY did not sleep at all that night Linden knew that Covenant had not slept the previous night, on the verge of the jungle outside Revelstone; she had been awake herself, watching the stretched desperation of his aura with her percipience because Cail had refused to let her approach the ur-Lord. But the memory no longer troubled her; in Covenant's place, she might have done the same tiling. Yet that exigent loneliness only made this night more precious too precious-to be spent in sleep. She had not been in his arms since the crisis of the One Tree; and now she sought to impress every touch and line of him onto her hungry nerves.

If he had wanted sleep himself, she would have been loath to let him go. But he had resumed his certainty as if it could take the place of rest; and his desire for her was as poignant as an act of grace. From time to time, she felt him smiling the smile that belonged solely to her; and once he wept as if his tears were the same as hers. But they did not sleep.

At the fringes of her health-sense, she was aware of the great Keep around her. She felt Cail's protective presence outside the door. She knew when the Banefire went out at last, quenched by the sovereign waters of Glimmermere. And as the abused stone of the sacred enclosure cooled, the entire city let out a long granite sigh which seemed to breathe like relief through every wall and floor. Finally she felt the distant flow of the lake stop as Nom restored the stream to its original channel. For the remainder of this one night, at least, Revelstone had become a place of peace.

Before dawn, however, Covenant arose from Mhoram's intimate bed. As he dressed, he urged Linden to do the same. She complied without question. The communion between them was more important than questions. And she read him clearly, knew that what he had in mind pleased him. That was enough for her. Shrugging her limbs back into the vague discomfort of her grimy clothes, she accepted the clasp of his numb hand and climbed with him through the quiet Keep to the upland plateau.

At Revelstone's egress, they left Cail behind to watch over their privacy. Then, with a happy haste in his strides Covenant led her west and north around the curve of the plateau toward the eldritch tarn which she had used against the Banefire without ever having seen it.

Toward Glimmermere, where Mhoram had hidden the krill of Loric for the Land's future. Where sprang the only water outside Andelain Earthpowerful enough to resist the Sunbane. And where, Linden now remembered Covenant had once gone to be told that his" dreams were true.

She felt he was taking her to the source of his most personal hope.

From the east, a wash of grey spread out to veil the stars, harbingering dawn. A league or two away in the west, the Mountains strode off toward the heavens; but the hills of the upland were not rugged. In ages past, their grasses and fields had been rich enough to feed all the city at need. "Now, however, the ground was barren under Linden's sensitive feet; and some of her weariness, a hint of her wastelanded mood, returned to her, leeching through her soles. The sound of the water, running unseen past her toward Furl Falls, seemed to have a hushed and uncertain note, as if in some way the outcome of the Earth were precariously balanced and fragile about her. While the Sunbane stalked the Land, she remembered that Covenant's explanation of his new purpose made no sense.

There are a few things Foul doesn't understand. I'm going to explain them to him.

No one but a man who had survived an immersion in the Banefire could have said those words as if they were not insane.

But the dry coolness of the night still lingered on the plateau; and his plain anticipation made doubt seem irrelevant, at least for the present. Northward among the hills he led her, angling away from the cliffs and toward the stream. Moments before the sun broached the horizon, he took her past the crest of a high hill; and she found herself looking down at the pure tarn of Glimmermere, It lay as if it were polished with its face open to the wide sky. In spite of the current flowing from it, its surface was unruffled, as flat and smooth as burnished metal. It was fed by deep springs which did not stir or disturb it. Most of the water reflected the fading grey of the heavens; but around the rims of the tam were imaged the hills which held it, and to the west could be seen the Westron Mountains, blurred by dusk and yet somehow precise, as faithfully displayed as in a mirror. She felt that if she watched those waters long enough she would see all the world rendered in them.

All the world except herself. To her surprise, the lake held no echo of her. It reflected Covenant at her side; but her it did not heed. The sky showed through her as if she were too mortal or insignificant to attract Glimmermere's attention.

“Covenant-?” she began in vague dismay. “What-?” But he gestured her to silence, smiled at her as if the imminent morning made her beautiful. Half running, he went down the slope to the tarn's edge. There he pulled on" his T-shirt, removed his boots and pants. For an instant, he looked back up at her, waved his arm to call her after him. Then he dove out into Glimmermere. His pale flesh pierced the water like a flash of joy as he swam toward the centre of the lake.

She followed half involuntarily, both moved and frightened by what she saw. But then her heart lifted, and she began to hurry. The ripples of his dive spread across the surface like promises. The lake took hold of her senses as if it were potent enough to transform her. Her whole body ached with a sudden longing for cleanliness. Out in the lake, Covenant broke water and gave a holla of pleasure that carried back from the hills. Quickly, she unbuttoned her shirt, kicked her shoes away, stripped off her pants, and went after him.

Instantly, a cold shock flamed across her skin as if the water meant to burn the grime and pain from her. She burst back to the surface, gasping with a hurt that felt like ecstasy. Glimmermere's chill purity lit all her nerves.

Her hair straggled across her face. She thrust the tresses aside and saw Covenant swimming underwater toward her. The clarity of the lake made him appear at once close enough to touch and too far away to ever be equalled.

The sight burned her like the water's chill. She could see him-but not herself. Looking down at her body, she saw only the reflection of the sky and the hills. Her physical substance seemed to terminate at the waterline. When she raised her hand, it was plainly visible-yet her forearm and elbow beneath the surface were invisible. She saw only Covenant as he took hold of her legs and tugged her down to him.

Yet when her head was underwater and she opened her eyes, her limbs and torso reappeared as if she had crossed a plane of translation into another kind of existence.

His face rose before her. He kissed her happily, then swung around behind her as they bobbed back upward. Breaking water, he took a deep breath before he bore her down again. But this time as they sank he gripped her head in his hands, began to scrub her scalp and hair. And the keen cold water washed the dirt and oil away like an atonement.

She twisted in his grasp, returned his kiss. Then she pushed him away and regained the surface td gulp air as if it were the concentrated elixir of pleasure.

At once, he appeared before her, cleared his face with a jerk of his head, and gazed at her with a light like laughter in his eyes.

“You-!” she panted, almost laughing herself. “You've got to tell me.” She wanted to put her arms around him; but then she would not be able to speak. “It's wonderful!” Above her, the tops of the western hills were lit by the desert sun, and that shining danced across the tarn, “How come I disappear and you don't?”

“I already told you!” he replied, splashing water at her. “Wild magic and venom. The keystone of the Arch.” Swimming in this lake, he could say even those words without diminishing her gladness. “The first time I was here, I couldn't see myself either. You're normal!” His voice rose exuberantly. "Glimmermere recognizes me!”

Then she did fling her arms about his neck; and they sank together into the embrace of the tarn. Intuitively, for the first time, she understood his hope. She did not know what it meant, had no way to estimate its implications. But she felt it shining in him like the fiery water; and she saw that his certainty was not the confidence of despair. Or not entirely. Venom and wild magic: despair and hope. The Banefire had fused them together in him and made them clean.

No, it was not true to say that she understood it. But she recognized it, as Glimmermere did. And she hugged and kissed him fervently-splashed water at him and giggled like a girl-shared the eldritch lake with him until at last the cold required her to climb out onto a sheet of rock along one edge and accept the warmth of the desert sun.

That heat sobered her rapidly. As Glimmermere evaporated from her sensitive skin, she felt the Sunbane again. Its touch sank into her like Gibbon's, drawing trails of desecration along her bones. After all, the quenching of the Banefire had not significantly weakened or even hampered Lord Foul's corruption. The Land's plight remained, unaltered by Covenant's certitude or her own grateful cleansing. Viscerally unwilling to lie naked under the desert sun, she retrieved her clothes and Covenant's, dressed herself while he watched as if he were still hungry for her. But slowly his own high spirits faded. When he had resumed his clothing, she saw that he was ready for the questions he must have known she would ask.

“Covenant,” she said softly, striving for a tone that would make him sure of her, “I don't understand. After what I tried to do to you, I don't exactly have the right to make demands.” But he dismissed her attempted possession with a shrug and a grimace; so she let it go. “And anyway I trust you. But I just don't understand why you want to go face Foul. Even if he can't break you, he'll hurt you terribly. If you can't use your power, how can you possibly fight him?”

He did not flinch. But she saw him take a few mental steps backward as if his answer required an inordinate amount of care. His emanations became studied, complex. He might have been searching for the best way to tell her a lie. Yet when he began to speak, she heard no falsehood in him; her percipience would have screamed at the sound of falsehood. His care was the caution of a man who did not want to cause any more pain.

“I'm not sure. I don't think I can fight him at all. But I keep asking myself, how can he fight me?

“You remember Kasreyn.” A wry quirk twisted the comer of his mouth. “How could you forget? Well, he talked quite a bit while he was trying to break me out of that silence. He told me that he used pure materials and pure arts, but he couldn't create anything pure. In a flawed world purity cannot endure. Thus within each of my works I must perforce place one small flaw, else there would be no work at all. That was why he wanted my ring. He said, 'It's imperfection is the very paradox of which the Earth is made, and with it a master may form perfect works and fear nothing.' If you look at it that way, an alloy is an imperfect metal.”

As he spoke, he turned from her slowly, not to avoid her gaze, but to look at the fundamental reassurance of his reflection in the tarn. “Well, I'm a kind of alloy. Foul has made me exactly what he wants-what he needs. A tool he can use to perfect his freedom. And destroy the Earth in the process.

“But the question is my freedom, not his. We've talked about the necessity of freedom. I've said over and over again that he can't use a tool to get what he wants. If he's going to win, he has to do it through the choices of his victims. I've said that.” He glanced at her as if he feared how she might react. “I believed it. But I'm not sure it's true anymore. I think alloys transcend the normal strictures. If I really am nothing more than a tool now, Foul can use me any way he wants, and there won't be anything we can do about it.”

Then he faced her again, cocked his fists on his hips. “But that I don't believe. I don't believe I'm anybody's tool. And I don't think Foul can win through the kinds of choices any of us has been making. The kind of choice is crucial. The Land wasn't destroyed when I refused Mhoram's summons for the sake of a snake-bitten kid. It isn't going to be destroyed just because Foul forced me to choose between my own safety and Joan's. And the opposite is true, too. If I'm the perfect tool to bring down the Arch of Time, then I'm also the perfect tool to preserve it. Foul can't win unless I choose to let him.”

His surety was so clear that Linden almost believed him. Yet within herself she winced because she knew he might be wrong. He had indeed spoken often of the importance of freedom. But the Elohim did not see the world's peril in those terms. They feared for the Earth because Sun-Sage and ring-wielder were not one-because he had no percipience to guide his choices and she had no power to make her choices count. And if he had not yet seen the full truth of Lord Foul's machinations, he might choose wrongly despite his lucid determination.

But she did not tell him what she was thinking. She would have to find her own answer to the trepidation of the Elohim. And her fear was for him rather than for herself. As long as he loved her, she would be able to remain with him. And as long as she was with him, she would have the chance to use her health-sense on his behalf. That was all she asked: the opportunity to try to help him, redeem the harm of her past mistakes and failures. Then if he and the Land and the Earth were lost, she would have no one to blame but herself.

The responsibility frightened her. It implied an acknowledgment of the role the Elohim had assigned to her, an acceptance of the risk of Gibbon's malign promise. You are being forged- But there had been other promises also Covenant had avowed that he would never cede his ring to the Despiser. And the old man on Haven Farm had said. You will not fail, however he may assail you. For the first time, she took comfort in those words.

Covenant was looking at her intently, waiting for her response. After a moment, she pursued the thread of his explanation.

“So he can't break you. And you can't fight him. What good is a stalemate?”

At that, he smiled harshly. But his reply took a different direction than she had expected. “When I saw Mhoram in Andelain”- his tone was as direct as courage- “he tried to warn me. He said, “It boots nothing to avoid his snares, for they are ever beset with other snares, and life and death are too intimately intergrown to be severed from each other. When you have come to the crux, and have no other recourse, remember the paradox of white gold. There is hope in contradiction.” By degrees, his expression softened, became more like the one for which she was insatiable. “I don't think there's going to be any stalemate.”

She returned his smile as best as she could, trying to emulate him in the same way that he strove to match the ancient Lord who had befriended him.

She hoped he would take her in his arms again. She wanted that, regardless of the Sunbane. She could bear the violation of the desert sun for the sake of his embrace. But as they gazed at each other, she heard a faint, strange sound wafting over the upland hills-a high run of notes, as poignant as the tone of a flute. But it conveyed no discernible melody. It might have been the wind singing among the barren rocks.

Covenant jerked up his head, scanned the hillsides “The last time I heard a flute up here-” He had been with Elena; and the music of a flute had presaged the coming of the man who had told him that his dreams were true.

But this sound was not music. It cracked on a shrill note and fell silent. When it began again, it was clearly a flute-and clearly being played by someone who did not know how. Its lack of melody was caused by simple ineptitude.

It came from the direction of Revelstone.

The tone cracked again; and Covenant winced humorously. “Whoever's playing that thing needs help,” he muttered. “And we ought to go back anyway. I want to settle things and get started today.”

Linden nodded. She would have been content to spend a few days resting in Revelstone; but she was willing to do whatever he wanted. And she would, be able to enjoy her scrubbed skin and clean hair better in the Keep, protected from the Sunbane. She took his band, and together they climbed out of the basin of the tarn.

From the hilltop, they heard the flute more accurately. It sounded like its music had been warped by the desert sun.

The plains beyond the plateau looked flat and ruined to the horizons, all life hammered out of them; nothing green or bearable lifted its head from the upland dirt. Yet Glimmermere's water and the shape of the hills seemed to insist that life was still possible here, that in some stubborn way the ground was not entirely wasted.

However, the lower plains gave no such impression. Most of the river evaporated before it reached the bottom of Furl Falls; the rest disappeared within a stone's throw of the cliff. The sun flamed down at Linden as if it were calling her to itself. Before they reached the flat wedge of the plateau which contained Revelstone, she knew that her determination to stand by him would not prove easy. In the bottom of her heart lurked a black desire for the power to master the Sunbane, make it serve her. Every moment of the sun's touch reminded her that she was still vulnerable to desecration.

But by the time they rejoined Cail at the city's entrance, they could hear that the fluting came from the tip of the promontory overlooking the watchtower. By mute agreement, they walked on down the wedge; and at the Keep's apex they found Pitchwife. He sat with his legs over the edge, facing eastward. The deformation of his spine bent him forward. He appeared to be leaning toward a fall.

His huge hands held a flute to his mouth as if he were wrestling with it-as if he thought that by sheer obstinate effort he would be able to wring a dirge from the tiny instrument.

At their approach, he lowered the flute to his lap, gave them a wan smile of habit rather than conviction. “Earthfriend,” he said; and his voice sounded as frayed and uncertain as the notes he had been playing. “It boons me to behold you again and whole. The Chosen has proven and reproven her worth for all to see-and yet has survived to bring her beauty like gladness before me.” He did not glance at Linden. “But I had thought that you were gone from us altogether.”

Then his moist gaze wandered back to the dry, dead terrain below him. “Pardon me that I have feared for you. Fear is born in doubt, and you have not merited my doubt.” With an awkward movement, like suppressed violence, he indicated the flute. “The fault is mine. I can find no music in this instrument.”

Instinctively, Linden went to stand behind the Giant, placed her hands on his shoulders. In spite of his sitting posture and crooked back, his shoulders were only a little below hers; and his muscles were so oaken that she could hardly massage them. Yet she rubbed at his distress because she did not know how else to comfort him.

“Everybody doubts,” Covenant breathed. He did not go near the Giant. He remained rigidly where he was, holding his vertigo back from the precipice. But his voice reached out through the sun's arid heat. “We're all scared. You have the right.” Then his tone changed as if he were remembering what Pitchwife had undergone. Softly, he asked, “What can I do for you?”

Pitchwife's muscles knotted under Linden's hands. After a moment, he said simply, “Earthfriend, I desire a better outcome.”

At once, he added, “Do not mistake me. That which has been done here has been well done. Mortal though you are, Earthfriend and Chosen, you surpass all estimation.” He let out a quiet sigh. “But I am not content. I have shed such blood-The lives of the innocent I have taken from them by the score, though I am no Swordmain and loathe such work. And as I did so, my doubt was terrible to me. It is a dire thing to commit butchery when hope has been consumed by fear. As you have said. Chosen, there must be a reason. The world's grief should unite those who live, not sunder them in slaughter and malice.

“My friends, there is a great need in my heart for song, but no song comes. I am a Giant. Often have I vaunted myself in music. 'We are Giants, born to sail, and bold to go wherever dreaming goes.' But such songs have become folly and arrogance to me. In the face of doom, I have not the courage of my dreams. Ah, my heart must have song. I find no music in it.

“I desire a better outcome.”».

His voice trailed away over the cliff-edge and was gone. Linden felt the ache in him as if she had wrapped her arms around it. She wanted to protest the way he seemed to blame himself; yet she sensed that his need went deeper than blame. He had tasted the Despiser's malice and was appalled. She understood that. But she had no answer to it.

Covenant was more certain. He sounded as strict as a vow as he asked, “What're you going to do?”

Pitchwife responded with a shrug that shifted Linden's hands from his shoulders. He did not look away from the destitution sprawling below him. “The First has spoken of this,” he said distantly. The thought of his wife gave him no ease. “We will accompany you to the end. The Search requires no less of us. But when you have made your purpose known, Mistweave will bear word of it to Seareach. There Starfare's Gem will come if the ice and the seas permit. Should you fail, and those with you fall, the Search must yet continue. The knowledge which Mistweave will bear to Seareach will enable Sevinhand Anchormaster to choose the path of his service.”

Linden looked at Covenant sharply to keep him from saying that if he failed there would be no Earth left for the Search to serve. Perhaps the journey the First had conceived for Mistweave was pointless; still Linden coveted it for him. It was clear and specific, and it might help him find his way back to himself. Also she approved the First's insistence on behaving as if hope would always endure.

But she saw at once that Covenant had no intention of denying the possibility of hope. No bitterness showed beyond his empathy for Pitchwife; his alloyed despair and determination were clean of gall. Nor did he suggest that Pitchwife and the First should Join Mistweave. Instead, he said as if he were content, “That's good. Meet us in the forehall at noon, and we'll get started.”

Then he met Linden's gaze. “I want to go look at Honninscrave's grave.” His tone thickened momentarily. “Say good bye to him. Will you come with me?”

In response, she went to him and hugged him so that he would understand her silence.

Together they left Pitchwife sitting on the rim of the city. As they neared the entrance to Revelstone, they heard the cry of his flute again. It sounded as lorn as the call of a kestrel against the dust-trammelled sky.

Gratefully, Linden entered the great Keep, where she was shielded from the desert sun. Relief filled her nerves as she and Covenant moved down into the depths of Revelstone, back to the Hall of Gifts.

Call accompanied them. Beneath his impassivity she sensed a strange irresolution, as if he wanted to ask a question or boon and did not believe he had the right. But when they reached their goal, she forgot his unexplained emanations.

During Covenant's battle with Gibbon, and the rending of the Raver, she had taken scant notice of the cavern itself. All her attention had been focused on what was happening-and on the blackness which Gibbon had called up in her. As a result, she had not registered the extent to which the Hall and its contents had been damaged. But she saw the havoc now, felt its impact.

Those Who Part Around the walls, behind the columns, in the corners and distant reaches, much of the Land's ancient artwork remained intact. But the centre of the cavern was a shambles. Tapestries had been cindered, sculptures split, paintings shredded. Cracks marked two of the columns from crown to pediment; hunks of stone had been ripped from the ceiling, the floor; the mosaic on which Gibbon had stood was a ruin. Centuries of human effort and aspiration were wrecked by the uncontainable forces Covenant and the Raver had unleashed.

For a moment Covenant's gaze appeared as ravaged as the Hall. No amount of certainty could heal the consequences of what he had done-and had failed to do.

While she stood there, caught between his pain and the Hall's hurt, she did not immediately recognize that most of the breakage had already been cleared away. But then she saw Nom at work, realized what the Sandgorgon was doing.

It was collecting pieces of rock, splinters of sculpture, shards of pottery, any debris it was able to lift between the stumps of his forearms, and it was using those fragments meticulously to raise a cairn for Honninscrave.

The funerary pile was already taller than Linden; but Nom was not yet satisfied with it. With swift care, the beast continued adding broken art to the mound. The rubble was too crude to have any particular shape” Nevertheless Nom moved around and around it to build it up as if it were an icon of the distant gyre of Sandgorgons Doom.

This was Nom's homage to the Giant who had enabled it to rend Gibbon-Raver. Honninscrave had contained and controlled samadhi Sheol so that the Raver could not possess Nom, not take advantage of Nom's purpose and power. In that way, he had made it possible for Nom to become something new, a Sandgorgon of active mind and knowledge and volition. With this cairn, Nom acknowledged the Master's sacrifice as if it had been a gift.

The sight softened Covenant's pain. Remembering Hergrom and Ceer, Linden would not have believed that she might ever feel anything akin to gratitude toward a Sandgorgon. But she had no other name for what she felt as she watched Nom work.

Though it lacked ordinary sight or hearing, the beast appeared to be aware of its onlookers. But it did not stop until it had augmented Honninscrave's mound with the last rubble large enough for its arms to lift. Then, however, it turned abruptly and strode toward Covenant. A few paces in front of him, it stopped. With its back bent knees, it lowered itself to the floor, touched its forehead to the stone.

He was abashed by the beast's obeisance. “Get up,” he muttered. “Get up. You've earned better than this.” But Nom remained prostrate before him as if it deemed him worthy of worship.

Unexpectedly, Cail spoke for the Sandgorgon. He had recovered his Haruchai capacity for unsurprise. He reported the beast's thoughts as if he were accustomed to them.

“Nom desires you to comprehend that it acknowledges you. It will obey any command. But it asks that you do not command it. It wishes to be free. It wishes to return to its home in the Great Desert and its bound kindred. From the rending of the Raver, Nom has gained knowledge to unmake Sandgorgons Doom-to release its kind from pent fury and anguish. It seeks your permission to depart”

Linden felt that she was smiling foolishly; but she could not stop herself. Fearsome though the Sandgorgons were, she had hated the idea of their plight from the moment when Pitchwife had told her about it. “Let it go,” she murmured to Covenant. “Kasreyn had no right to trap them like that in the first place.”

He nodded slowly, debating with himself. Then he made his decision. Facing the Sandgorgon, he said to Cail, “Tell it, it can go. I understand it's willing to obey me, and I say it can go. It's free. But,” he added sharply, “I want it to leave the Bhrathair alone. Those people have the right to live, too. And God knows I've already done them enough damage. I don't want them to suffer any more because of me.”

Faceless, devoid of expression, the albino beast raised itself erect again. “Nom hears you,” Cail replied. To Linden's percipience, his tone seemed to hint that he envied Nom's freedom. “It will obey. Its folk it will teach obedience also. The Great Desert is wide, and the Bhrathair will be spared.”

Before he finished, the Sandgorgon burst into a run toward the doorway of the Hall. Eager for its future, it vanished up the stairs, speeding in the direction of the open sky. For a few moments. Linden felt its wide feet on the steps; their force seemed to make the stone Keep jangle. But then Nom passed beyond her range, and she turned from it as if it were a healed memory-as if in some unexpected way the deaths of Hergrom and Ceer and Honninscrave had been made bearable at last.

She was still smiling when Covenant addressed Cail. “We've got some time before noon.” He strove to sound casual; but the embers in his eyes were alight for her. “Why don't you find us something to eat? We'll be in Mhoram's room.”

Cail nodded and left at once, moving with swift unhaste. His manner convinced Linden that she was reading him accurately: something had changed for him. He seemed willing, almost eager, to be apart from the man he had promised to protect.

But she had no immediate desire to question the Haruchai Covenant had put his arm around her waist, and time was precious. Her wants would have appeared selfish to her if he had not shared them.

However, when they reached the court with the bright silver floor and the cracked stone, they found Sunder and Hollian waiting for them.

The Stonedownors had rested since Linden had last seen them, and they looked better for it. Sunder was no longer slack-kneed and febrile with exhaustion. Hollian had regained much of her young clarity. They greeted Covenant and Linden shyly, as if they were uncertain how far the Unbeliever and the Chosen had transcended them. But behind their shared mood, their differences were palpable to Linden.

Unlike Sunder's former life, Hollian's had been one of acceptance rather than sacrifice. The delicate scars which laced her right palm were similar to the pale pain lattice on his left forearm, but she had never taken anyone else's blood. Yet since that time her role had been primarily one of support, aiding Sunder when he had first attuned himself to Memla's rukh during the company's journey toward Seareach as well as in his later use of the krill. It was he, guilt sore and vehement, who hated the Clave, fought it-and had been vindicated. He had struck necessary blows on behalf of the Land, showing himself a fit companion for Giants and Haruchai, Covenant and Linden. Now he bore himself with a new confidence; and the silver light seemed to shine bravely in his eyes, as though he knew that his father would have been proud of him.

HoIIian herself was proud of him. Her open gaze and gentle smile showed that she regretted nothing. The child she carried was a Joy to her. Yet Linden saw something plainly unfinished in the en Brand. Her emanations were now more complex than Sunder's. She looked like a woman who knew that she had not yet been tested. And she wanted that test, wanted to find the destiny which she wore about her like the raven wings of her lustrous hair. She was an eh-brand, rare in the Land. She wished to learn what such rareness meant.

Covenant gave Linden a glance of wry rue; but he accepted the untimely presence of the Stonedownors without protest. They were his friends, and his surety included them.

In response to Covenant's greeting, Sunder said with abrupt awkwardness, “Thomas Covenant, what is your purpose now?” His recent accomplishments had not given him an easy manner. “Forgive us that we intrude upon you. Your need for rest is plain.” His regard told Linden that her fatigue was more obvious than Covenant's. “Should you elect to remain here for any number of days, the choice would become you. In times past”- his scowl was a mix of self-mockery and regret- “I have questioned you, accusing you of every madness and all pain.” Covenant made a gesture of dismissal; but Sunder hastened to continue, “I do not question you now. You are the Earthfriend, IIIender and Prover of Life-and my friend. My doubt is gone.

“Yet,” he went on at once, “we have considered the Sunbane. The eh-brand foretells its course. With Sunstone and krill, I have felt its power. The quenching of Banefire and Clave is a great work-but the Sunbane is not diminished. The morrow's sun will be a sun of pestilence. It reigns still upon the Land, and its evil is clear.”

His voice gathered strength and determination as he spoke. “Thomas Covenant, you have taught me the falsehood of the Clave. I had believed the Land a gallow-fells, a punishing place conceived by a harsh Master. But I have learned that we are born for beauty rather than ill-that it is the Sunbane which is evil, not the life which the Sunbane torments.” His gaze glinted keenly. “Therefore I find that I am not content. The true battle is yet before us.” He was not as tall as Covenant; but he was broader and more muscular. He looked as solid as the stone of his home. “Thus I ask, what is your purpose now?”

The question distressed Covenant. His certainty could not protect him from his own empathy. He concealed his pain; but Linden saw it with her health-sense, heard it in the gruffness of his reply. “You're not content,” he muttered. “Nobody's content. Well, you ought to be.” Beneath the surface, he was as taut as a fraying bowstring. “You've done enough. You can leave the Sunbane to me-to me and Linden. I want you to stay here.”

“Stay-?” The Graveler was momentarily too surprised to understand. “Do you mean to depart from us?” Hollian placed a hand on his arm, not to restrain him, but to add her concern to his.

“Yes!” Covenant snapped more strongly than necessary. But at once he steadied himself. "Yes. That's what I want. You're the future of the Land. There's nobody else. The people the Clave let live are all too old or sick to do much, or too young to understand. You two are the only ones left who know what's happened, what it means. What the life of the Land should be like. If anything happens to you, most of the survivors won't even know the CIave was wrong. They'll go on believing those lies because there won't be anybody around to contradict them. I need you to tell them the truth. I can't risk you.”

Linden thought he would say, Please. Please. But Sunder's indignation was vivid in the sharp light. “Risk, ur-Lord?” he rasped as soon as Covenant stopped. “Is it risk you fear? Or do you deem us unworthy to partake of your high purpose? Do you forget who we are?” His hand gripped at the krill wrapped and hidden within his jerkin. "Your world is otherwhere, and to it you will return when your task is done. But we are the Land. We are the life which remains. We will not sit in safety while the outcome of that life is determined!”

Covenant stood still under Sunder's outburst; but the small muscles around his eyes flinched as if he wanted to shout, What's the matter with you? We're going to face Lord Foul! I'm trying to spare you! Yet his quietness held.

“You're right,” he said softly-more softly than Linden's desire to defend him. “You are the life of the Land. And I've already taken everything else away from you. Your homes, your families, your identities-I've spent them all and let you bear the cost. Don't you understand? I want to give something back. I want you to have a future.” The one thing he and Linden did not possess. “So your son will have at least that much chance to be born and grow up healthy.” The passion underlying his tone reminded her that he had a son whom he had not seen for eleven years. He might have been crying, Let me do this for you! "Is safety such a terrible price to pay?”

Hollian appeared to waver, persuaded by Covenant's unmistakable concern. But Sunder did not. His anger was swept out of him; his resolution remained. Thickly, he said, “Pardon my unseemly ire. Thomas Covenant, you are my friend in all ways. Will you grant to me your white ring, that I may ward you from the extremity of the Land's plight?” He did not need to wait for Covenant's answer. "Neither will I cede to you the meaning of my life. You have taught me to value that meaning too highly.”

Abruptly, he dropped his gaze. “If it is her wish, Hollian will abide here. The son she bears is ours together, but that choice must be hers.” Then his eyes fixed Covenant squarely again. “I will not part from you until I am content.”

For a moment, the Graveler and Covenant glared at each other; and Linden held her breath. But then Hollian broke the intensity. Leaning close to Sunder, grinning as if she meant to bite his ear, she breathed, “Son of Nassic, you have fallen far into folly if you credit that I will be divided from you in the name of simple safety.”

Covenant threw up his hands. “Oh, hell,” he muttered. “God preserve me from stubborn people.” He sounded vexed; but his frown had lost its seriousness.

Linden gave a sigh of relief. She caught Hollian's glance, and a secret gleam passed between them. With feigned brusqueness, she said, “We're going to leave at noon. You might as well go get ready. We'll meet you in the forehall.”

Allowing Covenant no opportunity to demur, she drew him into Mhoram's quarters and closed the door.

But later even through Revelstone's vital rock she felt the midday of the desert sun approaching; and her heart shrank from it. Sunder was right: the Sunbane had not been diminished. And she did not know how much more of it she could bear. She had stood up to it across the expanse of the North Plains. She had faced Gibbon-Raver, although his mere proximity had made the darkness in her writhe for release. But those exertions had pushed her to her limits. And she had had no sleep. The comfort of Covenant's love did many things for her, but it could not make her immune to weariness. In spite of the shielding Keep, a visceral dread seeped slowly into her.

Covenant himself was not impervious to apprehension. The mood in which he hugged her was complicated by a tension that felt like grief. When Call called them to the forehall, Covenant did not hesitate. But his eyes seemed to avoid hers, and his hands fumbled as he buckled his belt, laced up his boots.

For a moment, she did not join him. She sat naked on Mhoram's bed and watched him, unwilling to cover his place against her breasts with the less intimate touch of her shirt. Yet she knew that she had to go with him, that everything she had striven for would be wasted if she faltered now. She said his name to make him look at her; and when he did so, she faced her fear as directly as she could.

“I don't really understand what you think you're going to do-but I suppose that doesn't matter. Not right now, anyway. I'll go with you anywhere. But I still haven't answered my own question. Why me?” Perhaps what she meant was. Why do you love me? What am I, that you should love me? But she knew that if she asked her question in those terms she might not comprehend the reply. “Why was I chosen? Why did Gibbon keep insisting I'm the one-?” She swallowed a lump of darkness. “The one who's going to desecrate the Earth. Even if I give in-even if I go crazy and decide I want to be like him after all. Where would I get that kind of power?”

Covenant met her gaze through the dim lantern-light. He stood straight and dear before her, a figure of dread and love and contradiction; and he seemed to know what she sought. Yet the timbre of his voice told her he was not certain of it.

“Questions like that are hard. You have to create your own answer. The last time I was here, I didn't know I was going to beat Foul until I did it. Then I could look back and say that was the reason. I was chosen because I had the capacity to do what I did-even though I didn't know it” He spoke quietly, but his manner could not conceal the implications of severity and hope which ran through his words. “I think you were chosen because you're like me. We're the kind of people who just naturally feel responsible for each other. Foul thinks he can use that to manipulate us. And the Creator- ” For an instant, he reminded her strangely of the old man who had said to her, You will not fail, however he may assail you. There is also love in the world. “He hopes that together we'll become something greater than we would alone.”

Severity and hope. Hope and despair. She did not know what would happen-but she knew how important it had become. Arising from the bed, she went to Covenant and kissed him hard. Then she donned her clothes quickly so that she would be ready to accompany him wherever he wanted to go.

In the name of his smile, she accepted everything.

While she hurried, Cail repeated his announcement that the Giants, Haruchai, and Stonedownors were waiting in the forehall. “We're coming!” Covenant responded. When she nodded, he opened the door and ushered her outward with a half humorous flourish, as if she were regal in his eyes.

Cail bowed to them, looking as much as his dispassion allowed like a man who wanted to say something and had almost made up his mind to say it. But Linden saw at a glance that he still had not found the right moment. She returned his bow because he, too, had become someone she could trust. She had never doubted his fidelity, but the native extravagance of his judgment had always made him appear dangerous and unpredictable. Now, however, she saw him as a man who had passed through repudiation and unworth to reach a crucial decision a decision-she hoped she would be able to comprehend.

Together, Covenant, Cail, and Linden left behind the bright silver aftermath of the Unbeliever's first encounter with the Clave. That radiance shining against her back gave her a pang of regret; it represented a part of him which had been lost. But he was frowning to himself as he strode forward, concentrating on what lay ahead. That was his answer to loss. And he did not need Call's guidance to find his way through the involute Keep. For a sharp moment, she let the rue wash through her, experiencing it for both of them. Then she shrugged her attention back to his side and tried to brace herself for the Sunbane.

The forehall hardly resembled her memory of it. Its floor remained permanently peeked and gouged, awkward to walk; but the space was bright with torches, and sunlight reflected through the broken gates. The bodies of the dead had been cleared away; the blood of battle had been sluiced from the stone. And the wounded had been moved to more comfortable quarters. The improvement suggested that Revelstone might yet become habitable again.

Near the gates were gathered the people who had accompanied or fought for the Unbeliever and survived: the First of the Search with Pitchwife and Mistweave; Sunder and Hollian; Durris and Fole, Harn, Stell, and the rest of the Haruchai; the black Demondim-spawn; Findail the Appointed. Pitchwife hailed Covenant and Linden as if the prospect of leaving Revelstone had restored some portion of his good cheer; but the rest of the company stood silent. They seemed to wait for Covenant as if he were the turning point of their lives. Even the Haruchai- Linden sensed with a touch of quiet wonder. In spite of their mountain-bred intransigence, they were balanced on a personal cusp and could be swayed. As Covenant drew near, each of them dropped to one knee in mute homage.

The others had fewer questions to ask. Neither Vain nor Findail had any use for questions. And Covenant had already accepted the companionship of the First and Pitchwife, Hollian and Sunder. They only needed to know where they were going. The issues which had yet to be resolved belonged to the Haruchai.

But when Covenant had urged Cail's people back to their feet, it was the First who addressed him. In spite of battle and grief, she looked refreshed. Unlike her husband, she had found exigencies and purposes she understood, was trained for, in the test of combat. “Earthfriend,” she said formally, a gleam in her hair and her voice, “you are well come. The quenching of Clave and Banefire and the freeing of Revelstone merit high pride, and they will be honoured in song from Sea to Sea wherever our people still hold music in their hearts. None would gainsay you, should you choose to bide here in rest and restoration. It is fitting that the craft and vision of this Giant-wrought bourne should serve as accolade to that which you and the Chosen have accomplished.

“Yet,” she went on without pausing, “I applaud the purpose which draws you away. From peril to loss across the world I have followed in your wake, and at last have been granted to strike a blow against evil. But our losses have been dire and sore, and one blow does not suffice. I desire to strike again, if I am able. And the Stonedownors have shown to us that the Sunbane remains, seeking the rapine of the Earth. The Search has not reached its end. Earthfriend, where do you go?”

Linden looked at Covenant. He was an upright self-contradiction, at once fearful and intrepid. He held his head high as if he knew that he was worthy of the Giants and Haruchai, the Graveler and the eh-brand; and sunlight reflecting from the washed stone lit his clean face, so that he looked like the pure bone of the Earth. And yet his shoulders were rigid, knotted in the act of strangling his own weakness, his desire to be spared. Too much depended on him, and he had no health-sense for guidance.

Frail, invincible, and human, he met the First's gaze, looked past her to Cail and Durris and the injured Haruchai. Then he answered.

“When I was in Andelain, I met some of my old friends the people who had faith in me, took care of me, loved me long before I could do any of those things for myself. Mhoram reminded me of a few lessons I should've already learned. Foamfollower gave me Vain. Banner promised his people would serve me. And Elena,” Elena his daughter, who had loved him in the same unbalanced way that she had hated Lord Foul, “told me what I'd have to do in the end. She said, 'When the time is upon you, and you must confront the Despiser, he is to be found in Mount Thunder-in Kiril Threndor, where he has taken up his abode.' ” He swallowed thickly. “That's where I'm going. One way or another, I'm going to put an end to it.”

Though he spoke quietly, his words seemed to ring and echo in the high hall The First gave a nod of grim, eager approval.

She started to ask him where Mount Thunder was, then stopped. Durris had taken a step forward. He faced Covenant with an unwonted intensity gleaming from his flat eyes.

“Ur-Lord, we will accompany you.”

Covenant did not hesitate. In a voice as unshakable as the Haruchai’s, he said, “No, you won't.”

Durris lifted an eyebrow, but permitted himself no other sign of surprise. For an instant, his attention shifted as he conferred silently with his people. Then he said, “It is as you have claimed. A promise of service was given to you by Banner of the Bloodguard among the Dead. And that service you have earned in our redemption from the compulsion and sacrifice of the Clave. Ur-Lord, we will accompany you to the last.”

Pain twisted Covenant's mouth. But he did not waver. His hands were closed into fists, pressed against his thighs. “I said, no.”

Again, Durris paused. The air was tight with suspense; issues Linden did not know how to estimate had come to a crisis. She did not truly comprehend Covenant's intent. The First moved as though she wanted to interpose some appeal or protest. But the Haruchai did not need her to speak for them. Durris leaned slightly closer to Covenant, and his look took on a hint of urgency. His people knew better than anyone else what was at stake.

“Thomas Covenant, bethink you.” Obliquely, Linden wondered why it was Durris who spoke and not Cail. “The Haruchai are known to you. The tale of the Bloodguard is known to you. You have witnessed that proud, deathless Vow-and you have beheld its ending. Do not believe that we forget. In all the ages of that service, it was the grief of the Bloodguard that they gave no direct battle to Corruption. And yet when the chance came to Banner when he stood at your side upon Landsdrop with Saltheart Foamfollower and knew your purpose-he turned aside from it. You had need of him, and he turned aside.

“We do not judge him. The Vow was broken. But I say to you that we have tasted failure, and it is not to our liking. We must restore our faith. We will not turn aside again.”

Shifting still closer to Covenant, he went on as if he wanted no one else to hear him, “Ur-Lord, has it become with you as it was with Kevin Landwaster? Is it your intent to be parted from those who would prevent you from the Ritual of Desecration?”

At that. Linden expected Covenant to flare out. She wanted to protest herself, deny hotly Durris' unwarranted accusation. But Covenant did not raise his voice. Instead, he lifted his half-hand between himself and Durris, turned it palm outward, spread his fingers. His ring clung like a manacle to what had once been his middle finger.

“You remember,” he said, allowing himself neither sarcasm nor bitterness. “Have you forgotten why the Vow was broken?

“I'll tell you why. Three Bloodguard got their hands on a piece of the Illearth Stone, and they thought that made them powerful enough to do what they always wanted. So they went to Foul's Creche, challenged Corruption. But they were wrong. No flesh and blood is immune. Foul mastered them the same way he mastered Kevin when Elena broke the Law of Death He maimed them to look like me-like this”- he waved his half-hand stiffly “and sent them back to Revelstone to mock the Bloodguard.”

An outcry rose in him; but he held it down. “Are you surprised the Vow was broken? I thought it was going to break their hearts.

“Banner didn't turn aside. He gave me exactly what I needed. He showed me it was still possible to go on living.” He paused to steady himself; and now Linden felt the meld of his certainty and power growing, felt him become palpably stronger.

“The fact is,” he said without accusation, “you've been wrong all along. You've misunderstood your own doubt from the beginning. What it means. Why it matters. First Kevin, then the other Lords, then me-ever since your people first came to the Land, you've been swearing yourselves in service to ordinary men and women who simply can't be worthy of what you offer. Kevin was a good man who broke down when the pressure got to be worse than he could stand-and the Bloodguard were never able to forgive him because they pinned their faith on him and when he failed they thought it was their fault for not making him worthy, not preventing him from being human. Over and over again, you put yourselves in the position of serving someone who has to fail Those Who Part you for the mere reason that he's human and all humans fail at one time or another-and then you can't forgive him because his failure casts doubt on your service. And you can't forgive yourselves either. You want to serve perfectly, and that means you're responsible for everything. And whenever something comes along to remind you you're mortal-like the merewives- that's unforgivable too, and you decide you aren't worthy to go on serving. Or else you want to do something crazy, like fighting Foul in person.”

Slowly, he lowered his hand; but the gaze he fixed on Durris did not falter, and his clarify burned from his eyes. “You can do better than that. Nobody questions your worth. You've demonstrated it a thousand times. And if that's not enough for you, remember Brinn faced the Guardian of the One Tree and won. Ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol. Any one of you would've done the same in his place. You don't need to serve me anymore.

“And,” he added carefully, “I don't need you. Not in the way you think. I don't want you to come with me.”

Durris did not retreat. But Linden sensed that he wished to draw back, that Covenant's certain strength abashed him. He seemed unable to deny the image Covenant painted-and unwilling to accept its implications.

“Ur-Lord, what would you have us do?” he asked as if he felt no distress. “You have given our lives to us. We must make recompense. That is necessary. In spite of its inflexibility, his voice put the weight of Haruchai history into the word, necessary. The extravagance and loyalty of his people required an outlet. “The Vow of the Bloodguard was sworn to meet the bounty and grandeur of High Lord Kevin and Revelstone. It was not regretted. Do you ask such an oath from us again, that we may preserve the meaning of our lives?”

“No.” Covenant's eyes softened and blurred, and he put his hand on Durris' shoulder as if he wanted to hug the Haruchai. Linden felt pouring from him the ache of his appreciation. Bloodguard and Haruchai had given themselves to him without question; and he had never believed that he deserved them. “There's something else I want you to do.”

At that, Durris' stance sharpened. He stood before the Unbeliever like a salute.

“I want you to stay here. In Revelstone. With as many of your people as you can get. For two reasons. To take care of the wounded. The Land's going to need them. It's going to need every man or woman who can possibly be persuaded to face the future. And to protect the city. This is Revelstone, Lord's Keep. It belongs to the Land-not to Corruption or Ravers. I want it safe. So the future will have a place to centre. A place where people can come to learn about the past-and see what the Land means-and make plans. A place of defence. A place of hope. You've already given me everything Banner promised and more. But I want you to do this, too. For me. And for yourselves. Here you can serve something that isn't going to fail you.”

For a long moment. Durris was silent while his mind addressed his people. Then he spoke, and his dispassionate voice thrilled Linden's hearing like a distant tantara of horns.

“Ur-Lord, we will do it.”

In response, Covenant squeezed Durris’ shoulder and tried to blink the gratitude out of his eyes. Instinctively, Linden put her arms around him, marvelling at what he had become.

But when Durris withdrew to stand among the other Haruchai, Cail came forward. His old scar showed plainly on one arm; but he bore other hurts as well. With Brinn, he had once demanded retribution against Linden, believing her a servant of Corruption. And with Brinn, he had succumbed to the song of the merewives. But Brinn had gone alone to meet the Guardian of the One Tree; Cail had been left behind to pay the price of memory and loss.

“Thomas Covenant,” he said softly. “Earthfriend. Permit me.”

Covenant stared at him. A strange bleakness showed in Cail's eyes.

“I have heard your words,” said the Haruchai, “but they are not mine to acknowledge or eschew. Since that time when the white beauty and delusion of the merewives took me from myself, I have not stood in your service. Rather have I followed the command placed upon me by ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol. You have not forgotten.” Covenant nodded, wary of grief; but still Cail quoted, “ 'Cail will accept my place at your side until the word of the BIoodguard Bannor has been carried to its end.' ” Then he went on, “That I have done. But it was not I who was proven against the Guardian of the One Tree. In the stead of victory, I have met only the deaths of Giants and the doubt of my people. And this I have done, not solely because I was commanded, but also because I was promised. It was given to me that when the word of Banner was fulfilled I would be permitted to follow my heart.

“Earthfriend, you have proclaimed that fulfilment. And I have served you to my best strength. I ask now that you permit me.

“Permit me to depart.”

“Depart?” Covenant breathed. His open face showed that this was not what he had expected. He made an effort to pull himself out of his surprise. “Of course you can go. You can do whatever you want. I wouldn't stop you if I could. You've earned- ” Swallowing roughly, he changed direction. “But you're needed here. Are you going home-back to your family?”

Without expression, Cail replied, “I will return to the merewives.”

Covenant and the First reacted in simultaneous protest, but her hard voice covered his. “That is madness, Have you forgotten that you were scant moments from death? Almost Galewrath and I failed of your rescue, I will not see the life which I brought up from the deep cast away!”

But surprise and apprehension seemed to tighten Linden's percipience to a higher pitch, a keener penetration; and she saw Cail with sudden acuity, felt parts of him which had been hidden until now. She knew with the instantaneous certainty of vision that he did not intend to throw his life away, did not want death from the Dancers of the Sea: he wanted a different kind of life. A resolution for the inextricable desire and bereavement of his extreme nature.

She cut Covenant off, stopped the First. They glared at her; but she ignored their vehemence. They did not understand. Brinn had said. The limbs of our women are brown from sun and birth. But there is also a whiteness as acute as the ice which bleeds from the rock of mountains, and it burns as the purest snow burns in the most high tor, the most wind-flogged col. And from it grew a yearning which Cail could no longer bear to deny. Panting with the force of her wish to support him, give him something in return for his faithfulness, she rushed to utter the first words that came to her.

“Brinn gave his permission. Don't you see that? He knew what he was saying-he knew what Cail would want to do. He heard the same song himself. Call isn't going to die.”

But then she had to halt She did not know how to explain her conviction that Brinn and Cail could be trusted.

“Thomas Covenant,” Cail said, “I comprehend the value of that which you have granted to the Haruchai- a service of purity and worth. And I have witnessed Brinn's encounter with ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol, the great victory of our people. But the cost of that victory was the life of Cable Seadreamer. For myself I do not desire such worth.

“The song of the merewives has been named delusion. But is not all life a manner of dreaming? Have you not said that the Land itself is a dream? Dream or delusion, the music I have heard has altered me. But I have not learned the meaning of this change. Ur-Lord, I wish to prove what I have dreamed to its heart. Permit me.”

Linden looked at Covenant, imploring him with her eyes; but he did not meet her gaze. He faced Cail, and conflicting emotions wrestled each other visibly across his mien: recognition of what Cail was saying; grief over Seadreamer; fear for the Haruchai. But after a moment he fought his way through the moil. "Cail- “ he began. His throat closed as though he dreaded what he meant to say. When he found his voice, he sounded unexpectedly small and lonely, like a man who could not afford to let even one friend go.

“I heard the same song you did. The merewives are dangerous. Be very careful with them.”

Cail did not thank the Unbeliever. He did not smile or nod or speak. But for an instant the glance he gave Covenant was as plain as a paean.

Then he turned on his heel, strode out of the forehall into the sunlight, and was gone.

Covenant watched the Haruchai go as if even now he wanted to call Cail back; but he did not do so. And none of the other Haruchai made any move to challenge Cail's decision. Slowly, a rustle like a sigh passed through the hall, and the tension eased. Hollian blinked the dampness out of her eyes. Sunder gazed bemusement and awe at the implications of Cail's choice. Linden wanted to show Covenant the gratitude Cail had neglected; but it was unnecessary. She saw that he understood now, and his expression had softened. Behind his sorrow over all the people he had lost lurked a wry smile which seemed to suggest that he would have made Cail's choice if she had been a Dancer of the Sea.

The First cleared her throat. "Earthfriend, I am no equal for you. These determinations surpass me. In your place, my word would have been that our need for the accompaniment of the Haruchai is certain and immediate. But I do not question you. I am a Giant like any other, and such bravado pleases me.

“Only declare swiftly where this Mount Thunder and Kiril Threndor may be found, that Mistweave may bear the knowledge eastward to Seareach. It may be that his path and Call's will lie together-and they will have need of each other.”

Covenant nodded at once “Good idea.” Quickly, he described as well as he could Mount Thunder's location astride the centre of Landsdrop, where the Soulsease River passed through the Wightwarrens and became the main source for Sarangrave Rat and the Great Swamp. “Unfortunately,” he added, “I can't tell you how to find Kiril Threndor. I've been there once-it's in the chest of the mountain somewhere-but the whole bloody place is a maze.”

“That must suffice,” the First said. Then she turned to Mistweave. “Hear you? If skill and courage may achieve it, Sevinhand Anchormaster will bring Starfare's Gem to Seareach and The Grieve. There you must meet him. If we fail, the fate of the Earth falls to you. And if we do not,” she continued less grimly, “you will provide for our restoration Homeward.” In a softer voice, she asked, “Mistweave, are you content?”

Linden looked at Mistweave closely and was reassured. The Giant who had sought to serve her and believed that he had failed was injured and weary, his arm in a sling, bruises on his broad face; but much of his distress had faded. Perhaps he would never entirely forget his self-doubt. But he had redeemed most of it. The spirit within him was capable of peace.

She went to him because she wanted to thank him-and wanted to see him smile. He towered over her; but she was accustomed to that. Taking one of his huge bands in her small grasp, she said up to him. “Sevinhand's going to be the Master now. GaIewrath'll be the Anchormaster.” Deliberately, she risked this reference to Honninscrave's end. “Starfare's Gem will need a new Storesmaster. Someone who knows something about healing. Tell them I said you should have the job.”

Abruptly, he loomed over her, and she was swept into the embrace of his uninjured arm. For an instant, she feared that he was hurt and weeping; but then his emotions came into better focus, and she returned his clasp as hard as she could.

When he set her down again, he was grinning like a Giant.

“Begone, Mistweave,” the First muttered in a tone of gruff kindness. “Cail Haruchai will outdistance you entirely.”

In response, he shouted a laugh. “Outdistance a Giant? Not while I live!” With a holla to Pitchwife and a salute to Covenant and Linden, he snatched up his sack of supplies and dashed for the tunnel under the watchtower as if he intended to run all the way to Landsdrop rather than let Cail surpass him.

After that; nothing remained to delay the company. The First and Pitchwife shouldered their packs. Sunder and Hollian lifted the bundles they had prepared for themselves. For a moment Covenant looked around the stone of the forehall as though he feared to leave it, dreaded the consequences of the path he had chosen; but then his certitude returned. After saying a brief farewell to the Haruchai, and accepting their bows with as much grace as his embarrassment allowed, he turned his feet toward the sunlight beyond the broken gates. Vain and Findail took their familiar positions behind him-or behind Linden-as the company moved outward.

Gritting her teeth against the shock of the Sunbane on her bare nerves. Linden went back out into the desert sun.

Thirteen: The Eh-Brand

IT was worse than she had expected. It seemed worse than it had been that morning. Glimmermere's cleansing and Revelstone's protection appeared to have sharpened her health-sense, making her more vulnerable than ever to the rife ill of the Sunbane. The sun's heat felt as hard and heavy as stone. She knew it was not literally gnawing the flesh from her bones, not charring her bones to the malign blackness which she had inherited from her father. Yet she felt that she was being eaten away-that the Sunbane had found its likeness in her heart and was feeding on her.

During the long days when she and the quest had been away from the sun's corruption, she had groped toward a new kind of life. She had heard intimations of affirmation and had followed them urgently, striving to be healed. At one time, with the tale of her mother told for the first time and Covenant's arms about her, she had believed that she could say no forever to her own dark hungers. There is also love in the world. But now the desert sun flamed at her with the force of an execration, and she knew better.

In some ways, she was unable to share Covenant's love for the Land. She had never seen it healthy; she could only guess at the loveliness be ascribed to it. And to that extent he was alone in his dismay. There's only one way to hurt a man who's lost everything. Give him back something broken. Yet she was like the Land herself. The power tormenting it was the same might which demonstrated to her undefended nerves that she was not whole.

And she and her companions were on their way to confront Lord Foul, the source and progenitor of the Sunbane.

And they were only eight. In effect, they were only six: two Giants, two Stonedownors, Covenant and Linden, Vain and Findail could be trusted to serve no purposes but their own. With the sun burning against her face as it started its afternoon decline, she lost what little understanding she had ever had of Covenant's reasons for refusing the aid of the Haruchai. Their intransigent integrity at her side might have helped to keep the Sunbane out of her soul.

Mount Thunder lay to the east; but Covenant was leading the company west and south down through the dead foothills below the intricately-wrought face of the Keep. His intent, he explained, was to join the watercourse which had once been the White River and follow it toward Andelain. That was not the most direct path, but it would enable the company to do what Sunder, Linden, and he had done previously-to ride the river during a sun of rain. Recollections of cold and distress made Linden shiver, but she did not demur. She favoured any plan which might reduce the amount of time she had to spend exposed to the sun.

Above her rose the sheer, hard face of Revelstone. But some distance ahead. Furl Falls came tumbling down the side of the plateau; and its implications were comforting. Already, much of the potent water springing from the roots of Glimmermere had been denatured. Furl Falls was only a wisp of what it should have been. Yet it remained. Centuries of the Sunbane had not ruined or harmed the upland tarn. Through the brown heat and light of the sun. Furl Falls struck hints of blue like sparks from the rough rock of the cliff.

To the south, the hills spread away like a frown of pain in the ground, becoming slowly less rugged or perhaps less able to care what happened to them-as they receded from the promontory of the Westron Mountains. And between them wound the watercourse Covenant sought. Following what might once have been a road, he brought the company to an ancient stone bridge across the broad channel where the White River had stopped running. A trickle of water still stretched thinly down the centre of the riverbed; but even that moisture soon vanished into a damp, sandy stain. The sight of it made Linden thirsty with empathy, although she had eaten and drunk well before leaving Mhoram's quarters.

Covenant did not cross the bridge. For a moment, he glared at the small stream as if he were remembering the White River in full spate. Then, controlling his fear of heights with a visible effort, he found a way down into the riverbed. The last sun of rain had not left the channel smooth or clear, but its bottom offered an easier path than the hills on either side.

Linden, Sunder, and Hollian followed him. Pitchwife carne muttering after them. Vain leaped downward with a lightness which belied his impenetrability; on his wooden wrist and left ankle, the heels of the Staff of Law caught the sun dully. Findail changed shape and glided gracefully to the river bottom. But the First did not join the rest of the company. When Covenant looked back up at her, she said, “I will watch over you.” She gestured along the higher ground of the east bank. "Though you have mastered the Clave, some caution is needful. And the exertion will ease me. I am a Giant and eager, and your pace gives me impatience.”

Covenant shrugged. He seemed to think that he had become immune to ordinary forms of peril. But he waved his acceptance; and the First strode away at a brisk gait.

Pitchwife shook his head, bemused by his wife's sources of Strength. Linden saw a continuing disquiet in the unwonted tension of his countenance; but most of his unhappiness had sunk beneath the surface, restoring his familiar capacity for humour. “Stone and Sea!” he said to Covenant and Linden. “Is she not a wonder? Should ever we encounter that which can daunt her, then will I truly credit that the Earth is lost. But then only. For the while, I will study the beauty of her and be glad.” Turning, he started down the watercourse as if he wished his friends to think he had left his crisis behind.

Hollian smiled after them. Softly, Sunder said, “We are fortunate in these Giants. Had Nassic my father spoken to me of such beings, mayhap I would have laughed-or mayhap wept. But I would not have believed.”

“Me neither,” Covenant murmured. Doubt and fear cast their shadows across the background of his gaze; but he appeared to take no hurt from them. “Mhoram was my friend. Banner saved my life. Lena loved me. But Foamfollower made the difference.”

Linden reached out to him, touched her palm briefly to his clean cheek to tell him that she understood. The ache of the Sunbane was so strong in her that she could not speak.

Together, they started after Pitchwife.

The riverbed was a jumble of small stones and large boulders, flat swaths of sand, jutting banks, long pits. But it was a relatively easy road. And by mid-afternoon the west rim began casting deep shade into the channel.

That shade was a balm to Linden's abraded nerves-but for some reason it did not make her any better able to put one foot in front of another. The alternation of shadow and acid heat seemed to numb her mind, and the consequences of two days without rest or sleep came to her as if they had been waiting in the bends and hollows of the watercourse. Eventually, she found herself thinking that of all the phases of the Sunbane the desert sun was the most gentle. Which was absurd: this sun was inherently murderous. Perhaps it was killing her now. Yet it gave less affront to her health-sense than did the other suns. She insisted on this as if someone had tried to contradict her. The desert was simply dead. The dead could inspire grief, but they felt no pain. The sun of rain had the force of incarnate violence; the malign creatures of the sun of pestilence were a pang of revulsion; the fertile sun seemed to wring screams from the whole world. But the desert only made her want to weep.

Then she was weeping. Her face was pressed into the sand, and her hands scrubbed at the ground on either side of her head because they did not have the strength to lift her. But at the same time she was far away from her fallen body, detached and separate from Covenant and Hollian as they called her name, rushed to help her. She was thinking with the precision of a necessary belief. This can't go on. It has got to be stopped. Every time the sun comes up, the Land dies a little deeper. It has got to be stopped.

Covenant's hands took hold of her, rolled her onto her back, shifted her fully into the shadows. She knew they were his hands because they were urgent and numb. When he propped her into a sitting position, she tried to blink her eyes clear. But her tears would not stop.

“Linden,” he breathed. “Are you all right? Damn it to hell! I should've given you a chance to rest.”

She wanted to say. This has got to be stopped. Give me your ring. But that was wrong. She knew it was wrong because the darkness in her leaped up at the idea, avid for power. She could not hold back her grief.

Hugging her hard, he rocked her in his arms and murmured words which meant nothing except that he loved her.

Gradually, the helplessness faded from her muscles, and she was able to raise her head. Around her stood Sunder, Hollian, the First, and Pitchwife. Even Findail was there; and his yellow eyes yearned with conflicts, as if he knew how close she had come-but did not know whether he was relieved or saddened by it. Only Vain ignored her.

She tried to say, I'm sorry. Don't worry. But the desert was in her throat, and no sound came.

Pitchwife knelt beside her, lifted a bowl to her lips. She smelled diamondraught, took a small swallow. The potent liquor gave her back her voice.

“Sorry I scared you. I'm not hurt. Just tired. I didn't realize I was this tired.” The shadow of the west bank enabled her to say such things.

Covenant was not looking at her. To the watercourse and the wide sky, he muttered, “It ought to have my head examined. We should've stayed in Revelstone. One day wouldn't have killed me.“ Then he addressed his companions. “We'll camp here. Maybe tomorrow she'll feel better.”

Linden started to smile reassurance at him. But she was already asleep.

That night, she dreamed repeatedly of power. Over and over again, she possessed Covenant, took his ring, and used it to rip the Sunbane out of the Earth. The sheer violence of what she did was astounding; it filled her with glee and horror. Her father laughed blackness at her. It killed Covenant, left him as betrayed as her mother. She thought she would go mad.

You have committed murder. Are you not evil?

No. Yes. Not unless I choose to be. I can't help it.

This has got to be stopped. Got to be stopped. You are being forged as iron is forged- Got to be stopped.

But sometime during the middle of the night she awoke and found herself enfolded by Covenant's sleeping arms. For a while, she clung to him; but he was too weary to waken. When she went back to sleep, the dreams were gone.

And when dawn came she felt stronger. Stronger and calmer, as if during the night she had somehow made up her mind. She kissed Covenant, nodded soberly in response to the questioning looks of her friends. Then, while the Stonedownors and Giants defended themselves against the sun's first touch by standing on rock, she climbed a slope in the west bank to get an early view of the Sunbane. She wanted to understand it.

It was red and baleful, the colour of pestilence. Its light felt like disease crawling across her nerves.

But she knew its ill did not in fact arise from the sun. Sunlight acted as a catalyst for it, a source of energy, but did not cause the Sunbane, Rather, it was an emanation from the ground, corrupted Earthpower radiating into the heavens. And that corruption sank deeper every day, working its way into the marrow of the Earth's bones.

She bore it without flinching. She intended to do something about it.

Her companions continued to study her as she descended the slope to rejoin them. But when she met their scrutiny, they were reassured. Pitchwife relaxed visibly. Some of the tension flowed out of the muscles of Covenant's shoulders, though he clearly did not trust his superficial vision. And Sunder, who remembered Marid, gazed at her as if she had come back from the brink of something as fatal as venom.

“Chosen, you are well restored,” said the First with gruff pleasure. “The sight gladdens me.”

Together, Hollian and Pitchwife prepared a meal which Linden ate ravenously. Then the company set itself to go on down the watercourse.

For the first part of the morning, the walking was almost easy. This sun was considerably cooler than the previous one; and while the east bank shaded the river bottom, it remained free of vermin. The ragged edges and arid lines of the landscape took on a tinge of the crimson light which made them appear acute and wild, etched with desiccation. Pitchwife joined the First as she ascended the hillside again to keep watch over the company. Although Hollian shared Sunder's visceral abhorrence of the sun of pestilence, they were comfortable with each other. In the shade's protection, they walked and talked, arguing companionably about a name for their son. Initially, Sunder claimed that the child would grow up to be an eh-brand and should therefore be given an eh-Brand's name; but Hollian insisted that the boy would take after his father. Then for no apparent reason they switched positions and continued contradicting each other.

By unspoken agreement. Linden and Covenant left the Stonedownors to themselves as much as possible. She listened to them in a mood of detached affection for a time; but gradually their argument sent her musing on matters that had nothing to do with the Sunbane-or with what Covenant hoped to accomplish by confronting the Despiser. In the middle of her reverie, she surprised herself by asking without preamble, "What was Joan like? When you were married?”

He looked at her sharply; and she caught a glimpse of the unanswerable pain which lay at the roots of his certainty. Once before, when she had appealed to him, he had said of Joan, She's my ex-wife, as if that simple fact were an affirmation. Yet some kind of guilt or commitment toward Joan had endured in him for years after their divorce, compelling him to accept responsibility for her when she had come to him in madness and possession, seeking his blood.

Now he hesitated momentarily as if he were searching for a reply which would give Linden what she wanted without weakening his grasp on himself. Then he indicated Sunder and Hollian with a twitch of his head. “When Roger was born,” he said, overriding a catching his throat, “she didn't ask me what I thought She just named him after her father. And her grandfather. A whole series of Rogers on her side of the family. When he grows up, he probably won't even know who I am.”

His bitterness was plain. But other, more important feelings lay behind it. He had smiled for Joan when he had exchanged his life for hers.

And he was smiling now-the same terrible smile that Linden remembered with such dismay. While it lasted, she was on the verge of whispering at him in stark anguish. Is that what you're going to do? Again? Again?

But almost at once his expression softened; and the thing she feared seemed suddenly impossible. Her protest faded. He appeared unnaturally sure of what he meant to do; but, whatever it was, it did not reek of suicide. Inwardly shaken, she said, “Don't worry. He won't forget you.” Her attempt to console him sounded inane, but she had nothing else to offer. “It's not that easy for kids to forget their parents.”

In response, he slipped an arm around her waist, hugged her. They walked on together in silence.

But by mid-morning sunlight covered most of the riverbed, and the channel became increasingly hazardous. The rockgnarled and twisted course, with its secret shadows and occasionally overhanging banks, was an apt breeding place for pestilential creatures which lurked and struck. From Revelstone Hollian had brought an ample store of voure; but some of the crawling, scuttling life that now teemed in the river bottom seemed to be angered by the scent or immune to it altogether. Warped and feral sensations scraped across Linden's nerves; every time she saw something move, a pang of alarm went through her. Sunder and Hollian had to be more and more careful where they put their bare feet Covenant began to study the slopes where the Giants walked. He was considering the advantages of leaving the channel.

When a scorpion as large as Linden's two fists shot out from under a rock and lashed its stinger at the side of Covenant's boot, he growled a curse and made his decision. Kicking the scorpion away, he muttered, "That does it. Let's get out of here.”

No one objected. Followed mutely by Vain and Findail, the four companions went to a pile of boulders leaning against the east bank and climbed upward to join the First and Pitchwife.

They spent the rest of the day winding through the hills beside the empty riverbed. Periodically, the First strode up to a crest that gave her a wider view over the region; and her fingers rubbed the hilt of her longsword as if she were looking for a chance to use it. But she saw nothing that threatened the company except the waterless waste.

Whenever the hills opened westward, Linden could see the Westron Mountains sinking toward the horizon as they curved away to the south. And from the top of a rocky spine she was able to make out the distant rim of Revelstone, barely visible now above the crumpled terrain. Part of her yearned for the security it represented, for stone walls and the guardianship of Haruchai. Red limned the edges of the Land, made the desert hills as distinct as the work of a knife. Overhead, the sky seemed strangely depthless. Considered directly, it remained a pale blue occluded with fine dust; but the comers of her vision caught a hue of crimson like a hint of the Despiser's bloody-mindedness; and that colour made the heavens look fiat, closed.

Though she was defended by voure, she flinched internally at the vibrating ricochet of sandflies as big as starlings, the squirming haste of oversized centipedes. But when the First and Covenant started on down the far side of the spine, she wiped the sweat from her forehead, combed her hair back from her temples with her fingers, and followed.

Late in the afternoon, as shadows returned the sun's vermin to quiescence, the company descended to the watercourse again so that they could travel more easily until sunset. Then, when the light faded, they stopped for the night on a wide stretch of sand. There they ate supper, drank metheglin lightly flavoured with diamondraught, hollowed beds for themselves. And Hollian took out her lianar wand to discover what the morrow's sun would be.

Without a word. Sunder handed her the wrapped krill. Carefully, as if Loric's blade still awed her, she parted the cloth until a clear shaft of argent pierced the twilight. Sitting cross legged with the knife in her lap, she began to chant her invocation; and as she did so, she raised her Iianar into the krill-gem's light.

From the wood grew shoots and tendrils of fine fire. They spread about her on the ground like creepers, climbed into the argence like vines. They burned without heat, without harming the wand; and their radiant filigree made the night eldritch and strange.

Her flame was the precise incarnadine of the present sun.

Linden thought then that Hollian would cease her invocation. A second day of pestilence was not a surprise. But the eh-Brand kept her power alight, and a new note of intensity entered her chant. With a start. Linden realized that Hollian was stretching herself, reaching beyond her accustomed limits.

After a moment, a quiet flare of blue like a gentle coruscation appeared at the tips of the fire-fronds.

For an instant, azure rushed inward along the vines, transforming the flames, altering the crimson ambience of the dark. Then it was quenched; all the fire vanished. Hollian sat with the lianar cradled in her fingers and the light of the krill on her face. She was smiting faintly.

“The morrow's sun will be a sun of pestilence.” Her voice revealed strain and weariness, but they were not serious. “But the sun of the day following will be a sun of rain.”

“Good!” said Covenant. “Two days of rain, and we'll practically be in Andelain.” He turned to the First. “It looks like we're not going to be able to build rafts. Can you and Pitchwife support the four of us when the river starts to run?”

In answer, the First snorted as if the question were unworthy of her.

Gleaming with pride. Sunder put his arms around Hollian. But her attention was fixed on Covenant. She took a deep breath for strength, then asked, "Ur-Lord, is it truly your intent to enter Andelain once again?”

Covenant faced her sharply. A grimace twisted his mouth. “You asked me that the last time.” He seemed to expect her to renew her former refusal. “You know I want to go there. I never get enough of it. It's the only place where there's any Law left alive.”

The krill light emphasized the darkness of her hair; but its reflection in her eyes was clear. "You have told that tale. And I have spoken of the acquaintance of my people with the peril of Andelain. To us its name was one of proven madness. No man or woman known to us entered that land where the Sunbane does not reign and returned whole of mind. Yet you have entered and emerged, defying that truth as you defy all others. Thus the truth is altered. The life of the Land is not what it was. And in my turn I am changed. I have conceived a desire to do that which I have not done-to sojourn among my fears and strengths and learn the new truth of them.

“Thomas Covenant, do not turn aside from Andelain. It is my wish to accompany you.”

For a long moment, no one spoke. Then Covenant said in a husky voice, “Thanks. That helps.”

Softly, Hollian re-covered the krill, let darkness wash back over the company. The night was the colour of her hair, and it spread its wings out to the stars.

The next day, the red sun asserted its hold over the Land more swiftly, building on what it had already done. The company was forced out of the watercourse well before mid-morning. Still they made steady progress. Every southward league softened the hills slightly, and by slow degrees the going became easier. The valleys between the rises grew wider; the slopes, less rugged. And Hollian had said that the next day would bring a sun of ram. Severely, Linden tried to tell herself that she had no reason to feel so beaten, so vulnerable to the recurring blackness of her life.

But the Sunbane shone full upon her. It soaked into her as if she had become a sponge for the world's ill. The stink of pestilence ran through her blood. Hidden somewhere among the secrets of her bones was a madwoman who believed that she deserved such desecration. She wanted power in order to extirpate the evil from herself.

Her percipience was growing keener-and so her distress was keener.

She could not inure herself to what she felt No amount of determination or decision was enough. Long before noon, she began to stumble as if she were exhausted. A red haze covered her mind, blinding her to the superficial details of the terrain, the concern of her friends. She was like the Land, powerless to heal herself. But when Covenant asked her if she wanted to rest, she made no answer and went on walking. She had chosen her path and did not mean to stop.

Yet she heard the First's warning. Unsteady on her feet, her knees locked, she halted with Covenant as the Giants came back at a tense trot from a low ridge ahead of the company. Distress aggravated Pitchwife's crooked features. The First looked apprehensive, like iron fretted with rust. But in spite of their palpable urgency, they did not speak for a moment. They were too full of what they had seen.

Then Pitchwife groaned far back in his throat. “Ah, Earthfriend.” His voice shuddered. “You have forewarned us of the consequences of this Sunbane-but now I perceive that I did not altogether credit your words. It is heinous beyond speech.”

The First gripped her sword as an anchor for her emotions. “We are blocked from our way,” she said, articulating the words like chewed metal. “Perchance we have come blindly upon an army of another purpose-but I do not believe it. I believe that the Despiser has reached out his hand against us.”

Trepidation beat the haze from Linden's mind. Her mouth shaped a question. But she did not ask it aloud. The Giants stood, rigid, before her; and she could see as clearly as language that they had no answer.

“Beyond that ridge?” asked Covenant. “How far?” “A stone's throw for a Giant,” the First replied grimly. “No more. And they advance toward us.”

He glanced at Linden to gauge her condition, then said to the First, “Let's go take a look.”

She nodded, turned on her heel and strode away. He hurried after her Linden, Sunder, and Hollian followed. Pitchwife placed himself protectively at Linden's side. Vain and Findail quickened their steps to keep up with the company.

At the ridgecrest, Covenant squatted behind a boulder and peered down the southward slope. Linden joined him. The Giants crouched below the line of sight of what lay ahead. Findail also stopped. Careful to avoid exposing themselves, Sunder and Hollian crept forward. But Vain moved up to the rim as if he wanted a clear view and feared nothing.

Covenant spat a low curse under his breath; but it was not directed at the Demondim-spawn. It was aimed at the black seethe of bodies moving toward the ridge on both sides of the watercourse.

As black as Vain himself.

The sight of them sucked the strength from Linden's limbs.

She knew what they were because Covenant had described them to her-and because she had met the Waynhim of Hamako's rhysh. But they had been changed. Their emanations rose to her like a shout, telling her precisely what had happened to them. They had fallen victim to the desecration of the Sunbane.

“Ur-viles,” Covenant whispered fiercely. “Hell and blood”

Warped Ur-viles.

Hundreds of them.

Once they had resembled the Waynhim: larger, black instead of grey; but with the same hairless bodies, the same limbs formed for running on all fours as well as for walking erect, the same eyeless faces and wide, questing nostrils. But no longer. The Sunbane had made them monstrous.

Over the sickness m her stomach. Linden thought bleakly that Lord Foul must have done this to them. Like the Waynhim, the ur-viles were too lore-wise to have exposed themselves accidentally to the sun's first touch. They had been corrupted deliberately and sent here to block the company's way.

“Why?” she breathed, aghast. “Why?”

“Same reason as always,” Covenant growled without looking away from the grotesque horde. “Force me to use too much power.” Then suddenly his gaze flashed toward her. “Or to keep us out of Andelain. Exposed to the Sunbane. He knows how much it hurts you. Maybe he thinks it'll make you do what he wants.”

Linden felt the truth of his words. She knew she could not stay sane forever under the pressure of the Sunbane. But a bifurcated part of her replied. Or maybe he did it to punish them. For doing something he didn't like.

Her heart skipped a beat.

For making Vain?

The Demondim-spawn stood atop the ridge as if he sought to attract the notice of the horde.

“Damnation!” Covenant muttered. Creeping back a short way from the rim, he turned to the Giants. “What're we going to do?”

The First did not hesitate. She gestured eastward along the valley below the ridge. "There lies our way. Passing their flank unseen, we may hope to outrun them toward Andelain.”

Covenant shook his head. “That won't work. This isn't exactly the direct route to Andelain-or Mount Thunder, for that matter-but Foul still knew where to find us. He has some way of locating us. It's been done before.” He glared at his memories, then thrust the past side. “If we try to get around them, they'll know it.”

The First scowled and said nothing, momentarily at a loss for alternatives. Linden put her back to the boulder, braced her dread on the hard stone. “We can retreat,” she said. “Back the way we came.” Covenant started to protest; but she overrode him. “Until tomorrow. When the rain starts. I don't care how well they know where we are. They're going to have trouble finding us in the rain.” She was sure of that. She knew from experience that the Sunbane's torrents were as effective as a wall, “Once the rain starts, we can ride the river right through the middle of them.”

Covenant frowned. His jaws chewed a lump of bitterness. After a moment, he asked, “Can you do it? Those ur-viles aren't likely to rest at night. We'll have to keep going until dawn. And we'll have to stay right in front of them. So they won't have time to react when we try to get past them.” He faltered out of consideration for her, then forced himself to say, “You're already having trouble just staying on your feet.”

She gave him a glare of vexation, started to say, What choice have we got? I can do whatever I have to. But a black movement caught the edge of her sight. She turned her head in time to see Vain go striding down the slope to meet the ur-viles.

Covenant snapped the Demondim-spawn's name. Pitchwife started after Vain; the First snatched him back. Sunder hurried to the rim to see what would happen, leaving Hollian with taut concentration on her face.

Linden ignored them. For the first time, she felt an emotion radiating from Vain's impenetrable form.

It was anger.

The horde reacted as if it could smell his presence even from this range. Perhaps that was bow they knew where to find the company. A spatter of barking burst from the ur-viles; they quickened their pace. Their wide mass converged toward him. At the foot of the slope, he halted. The ur-viles were no great distance from him now. In a few moments, they would reach him. As they moved, their barking resolved into one word:

“Nekhrimah!”

The word of command, by which Covenant had once compelled Vain to save his life. But Foamfollower had said that the Demondim-spawn would not obey it a second time.

For a moment, he remained still, as if he had forgotten motion. His right hand dangled, useless, from his wooden forearm. Nothing else marred his passive perfection. The scraps of his raiment only emphasized how beautifully he had been made.

“Nekhrimah!”

Then he raised his left arm. His fingers curved into claws. His hand made a feral, clutching gesture.

The leading ur-vile was snatched to the ground as if Vain had taken hold of its heart and ripped the organ apart, Snarling furiously, the horde broke into a run.

Vain did not hurry. His good arm struck a sideward blow The eh-brand through the air: two ur-viles went down with crushed skulls. His fingers knotted and twisted: one of the approaching faces turned to pulp. Another was split open by a punching movement that did not touch his assailant.

Then they were on him, a tide of black, monstrous flesh breaking against his ebon hardness. They seemed to have no interest in the company. Perhaps Vain had always been their target. All of them tried to hurl themselves at him. Even the ur-viles on the far bank of the river surged toward him.

“Now!” breathed the First eagerly. “Now is our opportunity! While they are thus engaged, we may pass them by.”

Linden swung toward the Giant. The fury she had felt from Vain whipped through her. “We can do that,” she grated. “As long as we leave him to die. Those are ur-viles. They know how he was made. As soon as he kills enough of them to get their attention, they're going to remember how to unmake him.” She rose to her feet, knotted her fists at her sides. “We've got to make him stop.”

Behind her, she felt the violence of Vain's struggle, sensed the blood of ur-viles spurting and flowing. They would never kill him by physical force. He would reduce them one at a time to crushed, raw meat. All that butchery-! Even the abominable products of the Sunbane did not deserve to be slaughtered. But she knew she was right. Before long, the frenzy of the horde would pass; the or viles would begin to mink. They had shown that they were still capable of recognition and thought when they had used the word of command. Then Vain would die.

Covenant appeared to accept her assertion. But he responded bitterly, "You stop him. He doesn't listen to me.”

“Earthfriend!” the First snapped. “Chosen! Will you remain here and be slain because you can neither redeem nor command this Vain? We must flee!”

That's right. Linden was thinking something different; but it led to the same conclusion. Findail had moved to the ridgecrest. He stood watching the bloody fray with a particular hunger or hope in his eyes. In Elemesnedene, the Elohim had imprisoned Vain to prevent him from the purpose for which he had been designed. But they had been thwarted because Linden had insisted on leaving the area-and Vain's instinct to follow her or Covenant had proved stronger than his bonds.

Now Findail seemed to see before him another means by which the Demondim-spawn could be stopped. And the answer was unchanged: flee so that Vain would follow.

But how? The company could not hope to outrun the ur-viles now.

“Perhaps it may be done,” said Hollian, speaking so quietly that she could barely be heard over the savage din. “Assuredly it is conceivable. The way of it is plain. Is it not possible?”

Sunder turned back from the rim to gape at her. Inchoate protests tumbled together in him, fell voiceless.

“Conceivable?” Covenant demanded. “What're you talking about?”

Hollian's pale face was intense with exaltation or vision. Her meaning was so clear to her that she seemed beyond question.

“Sunder and I have spoken of it. In Crystal Stonedown Sivit na-Mhoram-wist titled me Sun-Sage- and that naming was false. But does not his very fear argue that such work is possible?”

Linden flinched. She had never done anything to earn the epithet the Elohim had given her. She feared even to consider its implications. Did Hollian think that she. Linden, could change the Sunbane?

But Sunder strode toward Hollian urgently, then stopped and stood trembling a few steps away. “No,” he murmured. “We are mortal, you and I. The attempt would reave us to the marrow. Such power must not be touched.”

She shook her head. “The need is absolute. Do you wish to lose the lives of the ur-Lord and the Chose-n the hope of the Land-because we dare not hazard our own?” He started to expostulate. Suddenly, her voice rose like flame. “Sunder, I have not been tested! I am unknown to myself. No measure has been taken of that which I may accomplish.” Then she grew gentle again. "But your strength is known to me. I have no doubt of it I have given my heart into your hands, and I say to you, it is possible. It may be done.”

From beyond the ridge came harsh screams as Vain ripped and mangled the ur-viles. But the pace of their cries had diminished; he was killing fewer of them. Linden's senses registered a rippling of power in the horde. Some of the clamour The eh-brand had taken on a chanting cadence. The monsters were summoning their lore against the Demondim-spawn, “Hellfire!” Covenant ejaculated. “Make sense! We've got to do something!”

Hollian looked toward him. “I speak of the alteration of the Sunbane.”

Surprise leaped in his face. At once, she went on, “Not of its power or its ill. But of its course, in the way that the shifting of a stone may alter the course of a river.”

His incomprehension was plain. Patiently, she added, “The morrow's sun will be a sun of rain. And the pace of the Sunbane increases as its power grows, ever shortening the space of days between the suns. It is my thought that perhaps the morrow's sun may be brought forward, so that its rain will fall upon us now.”

At that. Linden's apprehension jerked into clarity, and she understood Sunder's protest. The strength required would be enormous! And Hollian was pregnant, doubly vulnerable. If the attempt ran out of control, she might rip the life out of more than one heart.

The idea appalled Linden. And yet she could think of no other way to save the company.

Covenant was already speaking, His eyes were gaunt with the helplessness of his alloyed puissance. Thoughts of warped black flesh and bloodshed tormented him. “Try it,” he whispered. “Please.”

His appeal was directed at Sunder.

For a long moment, the Graveler's eyes went dull, and his stature seemed to shrink. He looked like the man who had faced Linden and Covenant in the prison hut of Mithil Stonedown and told them that he would be required to kill his own mother. If she had been able to think of any alternative at all-any alternative other than the one which horrified her-Linden would have cried out. You don't have to do this!

But then the passion that Covenant had inspired in Sunder's life came back to him. The muscles at the comers of his jaw bunched whitely, straining for courage. He was the same man who had once lied to Gibbon-Raver under extreme pain and coercion in an effort to protect the Unbeliever. Through his teeth, he gritted, “We will do it. If it can be done.”

“Praise the Earth!” the First exhaled sharply. Her sword leaped into her hands. “Be swift. I must do what I may to aid the Demondim-spawn.” Swinging into motion, she passed the rim and vanished in the direction of Vain's struggle.

Almost immediately, a roynish, guttural chorus greeted her. Linden felt the mounting power of the ur-viles fragment as they were thrown into frenzy and confusion by the First's onset.

But Sunder and Hollian had room in their concentration for nothing else. Slowly, woodenly, he placed himself before her. She gave him a smile of secret eagerness, trying to reassure him; he scowled in reply. Fear and determination stretched the skin of his forehead across the bones. He and Hollian did not touch each other. As formally as strangers, they sat down cross legged, facing each other with their knees aligned.

Covenant came to Linden's side. “Watch them,” he breathed. “Watch them hard. If they get into trouble, we've got to stop them. I can't stand- “ He muttered a curse at himself. ”Can't afford to lose them.”

She nodded mutely. The clangour of battle frayed her attention, urged it away from the Stonedownors. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself into focus on Sunder and Hollian. Around her, the edges of the landscape throbbed with the sun's lambency, the hue of blood.

Sunder bowed his head for a moment, then reached into his jerkin and drew out his Sunstone and the wrapped krill. The orcrest he set down squarely between himself and Hollian. It lay like a hollow space in the dead dirt; its strange translucence revealed nothing.

Hollian produced her lianar, placed it across her ankles. A soft invocation began to sough between her lips as she raised her palms to Sunder. She was the eh-brand: she would have to guide the power to its purpose.

Dread twisted Sunder's visage. His hands shook as he exposed the krill, let its light shine into his eyes. Using the cloth to protect his grip from the krill's heat, he directed its tip at Hollian's palms.

Covenant winced as the Graveler drew a cut down the centre of each of her hands.

Blood streaked her wrists. Her face was pale with pain, but she did not flinch. Lowering her arms, she let thick drops fall onto the orcrest until all its surface was wet. Then she took up her wand.

Sunder sat before her as if he wanted to scream; but somehow he forced his passion to serve him. With both fists, he gripped the handle of the krill, its tip aimed upward in front of his chest. The eh-brand held her lianar likewise, echoing his posture.

The sun was almost directly above them.

Faintly, Linden heard the First cursing, felt an emanation of Giantish pain. Pieces of the ur-viles' power gathered together, became more effective. With a groan like a sob, Pitchwife fore himself from the Stonedownors and ran past the ridge to help his wife.

Sweating under the sun of pestilence, Linden watched as Sunder and the eh-brand reached krill and lianar toward each other.

His arms shook slightly; hers were precise. Her knuckles touched his, wand rested against krill-gem, along a line between the bloodied orcrest and the sun.

And hot force stung through Linden as a vermeil shaft sprang from the Sunstone. It encompassed the hands of the Stonedownors, the blade and the wand, and shot away into the heart of the sun.

Power as savage as lightning: the keen might of the Sunbane. Sunder's lips pulled back from his teeth. Hollian's eyes widened as if the sheer size of what she was attempting suddenly appalled her. But neither she nor the Graveler withdrew.

Covenant's half-hand had taken hold of Linden's arm. Three points of pain dug into her flesh. On the Sandwall, for entirely different reasons, Cail had gripped her in that same way. She thought she could hear the First's sword hacking against distorted limbs, hideous torsos. Vain's anger did not relent. The strain of Pitchwife's breathing came clearly through the blood-fury of the ur-viles.

Their lore grew sharper.

But the scalding shaft of Sunbane force had a white core. Argent blazed within the beam, reaching like the will of the Stonedownors to pierce the sun. It came from the gem of the krill and the clenched strength of Sunder's determination.

It pulled him so far out of himself that Linden feared he was already lost.

She started forward, wildly intending to hurl herself upon him, call him back. But then the eh-brand put forth her purpose; and Linden froze in astonishment.

In the heart of the gem appeared a frail, blue glimmer.

Sensations of power howled silently against Linden's nerves, scaled upward out of comprehension, as the blue gleam steadied, became stronger. Flickers of it bled into the beam and flashed toward the sun. Still it became stronger, fed by the eh-brand's resolve. At first, it appeared molten and limited, torn from itself drop after drop by a force more compelling than gravity. But Hollian renewed it faster than it bled. Soon it was running up the beam in bursts so rapid that the shaft seemed to Sicker.

Yet the aura around the sun showed no sign of alteration.

The Stonedownors chanted desperately, driving their exertion higher; but their voices made no sound. The incandescent beam absorbed their invocations directly into itself. Soundless force screamed across Linden's hearing. Something inside her gibbered. Stop them stop they'll kill themselves stop! But she could not. She could not tell the difference between their agony and the wailing in her mind.

The krill's jewel shone blue. Constant azure filled the core of the shaft, hurled itself upward. Still the aura around the sun did not change.

The next instant, the power became too great.

The lianar caught fire. It burst in Hollian's hands, shedding a bright vehemence that nearly blinded Linden. The wood flared to cinders, burned the eh-Brand's palms to the bone. A cry ripped through her. The shaft wavered, faltered.

But she did not fall back. Leaning into the power, she closed her naked hands around the blade of the krill.

At her touch, the shaft erupted, shattering the Sunstone, shattering the heavens. The ground wrenched itself aside in a convulsion of pain, sent Linden and Covenant sprawling. She landed on him while the hills reeled. The air was driven from his lungs. She rolled off him, fought to get her feet under her. The earth quivered like outraged flesh.

Another concussion seemed to wipe everything else out of the world. It rent the sky as if the sun had exploded. Linden fell again, writhed on the heaving dirt. Before her face, the dust danced like shocked water, leaving fine whorls in the wake of the blast. The light faded as if the fist of the heavens had begun to close.

When she raised her head, she saw tremendous thunderheads teeming toward her from all the horizons, rushing to seal themselves over the sun's blue corona.

For an instant, she could not think, had forgotten how to move. There was no sound at all except the oncoming passion of the rain. Perhaps the battle beyond the ridge was over. But then awareness recoiled through her like a thunderclap. Surging in panic to her hands and knees, she flung her percipience toward the Stonedownors.

Sunder sat as if the detonation of earth and sky had not touched him. His head was bowed. The krill lay on the ground in front of him, its handle still partially covered. The fringes of the cloth were charred. His breathing was shallow, almost indiscernible. In his chest, his heart limped like a mauled thing from beat to beat. To Linden's first alarm, his life looked like the fading smoke of a snuffed wick. Then her health-sense reached deeper, and she saw that he would live.

But Hollian lay twisted on her back, her cut and heat-mangled palms open to the mounting dark. Her black hair framed the pale vulnerability of her face, pillowed her head like the cupped hand of death. Between her lost lips trickled a delicate trail of blood.

Scrambling wildly across the dirt. Linden dove for the eh-brand, plunged her touch into HoIlian and tried to call back her spirit before it Bed altogether. But it was going fast; Linden could not hold it. Hollian had been damaged too severely. Linden's fingers clutched at the slack shoulders, tried to shake breath back into the lungs; but there was nothing she could do. Her hands were useless. She was just an ordinary woman, incapable of miracles-able to see nothing dearly except the extent of her failure.

As she watched, the life ran out of the eh-brand. The red rivulet from her mouth slowed and stopped.

Power: Linden had to have power. But grief closed her off from everything. She could not reach the sun. The Earth was desecrated and dying. And Covenant had changed. At times in the past, she had tapped wild magic from him without his volition; but that was no longer possible. He was a new being, an alloy of fire and person. His might was inaccessible without possession. And if she had been capable of doing that to him, it would have taken time-time which Hollian had already lost.

The eh-Brand looked pitifully small in death, valiant and fragile beyond endurance. And her son also, gone without so much as a single chance at life. Linden stared blindly at the failure of her hands. The krill-gem glared into her face.

From all directions at once, the rain ran forward, hissing like flame across the dirt.

Drops of water splashed around her as Covenant took hold of her, yanked her toward him. Unwillingly, she felt the feral thrust of his pain. “I told you to watch!” he raged, yelling at her because he had asked the Stonedownors to take this risk in spite of his inability to protect them from the consequences. “I told you to watch.”

Through the approaching clamour of the rain, she heard Sunder groan.

He took an unsteady breath, raised his head. His eyes were glazed, unseeing, empty of mind. For an instant, she thought he was lost as well. But then his hands opened, stretching the cramps from his fingers and forearms, and he blinked several times. His eyes focused on the krill. He reached out to it stiffly, wrapped it back in its cloth, tucked it away under his jerkin.

Then the drizzle caught his attention. He looked toward Hollian.

At once, he lurched to his feet. Fighting the knots in his muscles, the ravages of power, he started toward her.

Linden shoved herself in front of him. “Sunder!” she tried to say. It's my fault. I'm so sorry. From the beginning, failure had dogged her steps as if it could never be redeemed.

He did not heed her. With one arm, he swept her out of his way so forcefully that she stumbled. A blood-ridden intensity glared from his orbs. He had lost one wife and son before he had met Linden and Covenant. Now they had cost him another. He bent over Hollian for a moment as if he feared to touch her. His arms hugged the anguish in his chest. Then, fiercely, he stooped to her and rose again, lifting her out of the new mud, cradling her like a child. His howl rang through the rain, transforming the downpour to grief:

“Hollian!”

Abruptly, the First hove out of the thickening dark with Pitchwife behind her. She was panting hugely. Blood squeezed from the wide wound in her side where the lore of the ur-viles had burned her. Pitchwife's face was aghast at the things he had done.

Neither of them seemed to see Hollian. “Come!” called the First. “We must make our way now! Vain yet withholds the ur-viles from us. If we flee, we may hope that he will follow and be saved!”

No one moved. The rain belaboured Linden's head and shoulders Covenant had covered his face with his hands. He stood immobile in the storm as if he could no longer bear the cost of what he had become. Sunder breathed in great, raw hunks of hurt, but did not weep. He remained hunched over Hollian, concentrating on her as if the sheer strength of his desire might bring her back.

The First gave a snarl of exasperation. Still she appeared unaware of what had happened. Aggravated by her injury, she brooked no refusal. “Come, I say!” Roughly, she took hold of Covenant and Linden, dragged them toward the watercourse.

Pitchwife followed, tugging Sunder.

They scrambled down into the riverbed. The water racing there frothed against the thick limbs of the Giants, Linden could hardly keep her feet. She clung to the First. Soon the river rose high enough to carry the company away.

Rain hammered at them as if it were outraged by its untimely birth. The riverbanks were invisible. Linden saw no sign of the ur-viles or Vain. She did not know whether she and her friends had escaped.

But the lightning that tore the heavens gave her sudden glimpses around her. One of them revealed Sunder. He swam ahead of Pitchwife. The Giant braced him with one hand from behind.

He still bore Hollian in his arms. Carefully, he kept her head above water as if she were alive.

At intervals through the loud rain and the thunder. Linden heard him keening.

Fourteen: The Last Bourne

AT first, the water was so muddy that it sickened Linden. Every involuntary mouthful left sand in her throat, grit on her teeth. Rain and thunder fragmented her hearing. At one moment, she felt totally deaf; the next, sound went through her like a slap. Dragged down by her clothes and heavy shoes, she would have been exhausted in a short time without the First's support. The Swordmain's wound was a throbbing pain that reached Linden in spite of the chaos of water, the exertion of swimming. Yet the Giant bore both Covenant and the Chosen through the turmoil.

But as the water rose it became clearer, less conflicted-and colder. Linden had forgotten how cold a fast river could be with no sunlight on it anywhere. The chill leeched into her, sucking at her bones. It whispered to her sore nerves that she would be warmer if she lowered herself beneath the surface, out of the air and the battering rain. Only for a moment, it suggested kindly. Until you feel warmer. You've already failed. It doesn't matter anymore. You deserve to feel warmer.

She knew what she deserved. But she ignored the seduction, clung instead to the First-concentrated on the hurt in the Giant's side. The cleaner water washed most of the sand and blood from the burn; and the First was hardy. Linden was not worried about infection. Yet she poured her percipience toward that wound, put herself into it until her own side wailed as if she had been gored, then, deliberately, she numbed the sensation, reducing the First's pain to a dull ache.

The cold frayed her senses, sapped her courage. Lightning and thunder blared above her, and she was too small to endure them. Rain nailed the face of the river. But she clinched herself to her chosen use and did not let go while the current bore the company hurtling down the length of the long afternoon.

At last the day ended. The torrents thinned; the clouds rolled back. Legs scissoring, the First laboured across to the west bank, then struggled out of the water and stood trembling on the sodden ground. In a moment, Pitchwife joined her. Linden seemed to feel his bones rattling in an ague of weariness.

Covenant looked as pale as a weathered tombstone, his lips blue with cold, gall heavy on his features. “We need a fire,” he said as if that, too, were his fault.

Sunder walked up the wet slope without a glance at his companions. He was hunched over Hollian as though his chest were full of broken glass. Beyond the reach of the river, he stumbled to his knees, lowered Hollian gently to the ground. He settled her limbs to make her comfortable. His blunt fingers caressed the black strands of hair from her face, tenderly combed her tresses out around her head. Then he seated himself beside her and wrapped his arms over his heart, huddling there as if his sanity had snapped.

Pitchwife unshouldered his pack, took out a Giantish firepot which had somehow remained sealed against the water. Next he produced a few faggots from his scant supply of firewood. They were soaked, and he was exhausted; but he bent over them and blew raggedly until they took flame from the firepot. Nursing the blaze, he made it hot enough to sustain itself. Though it was small and pitiable, it gave enough heat to soften the chill in Linden's joints, the gaunt misery in Covenant's eyes.

Then Pitchwife offered them diamondraught. But they refused it until he and the First had each swallowed a quantity of the potent liquor. Because of his cramped lungs and her injury, the Giants were in sore need of sustenance. After that, however. Linden took a few sips which ran true warmth at last into her stomach.

Bitterly, as if he were punishing himself, Covenant accepted the pouch of diamondraught from her; but he did not drink. Instead, he forced his stiff muscles and brittle bones toward Sunder.

His offer produced no reaction from the Graveler. In a burned and gutted voice Covenant urged, pleaded. Sunder did not raise his head. He remained focused on Hollian as if his world had shrunk to that frail compass and his companions no longer impinged upon him. After a while Covenant shambled back to the fire, sat down, and covered his face with his hands.

A moment later, Vain appeared.

He emerged from the night into the campfire's small illumination and resumed at once his familiar blank stance. An ambiguous smile curved his mouth. The passion Linden had felt from him was gone. He appeared as insentient and unreachable as ever. His wooden forearm had been darkened and charred, but the damage was only superficial.

His left arm was withered and useless, like a congenital deformity. Pain oozed from several deep sores. Mottled streaks the colour of ash marred his ebony flesh.

Instinctively, Linden started toward him, though she knew that she could not help him, that his wounds were as imponderable as his essential nature. She sensed that he had attacked the ur-viles for his own reasons, not to aid or even acknowledge the company; yet she felt viscerally that the wrong his sculptured perfection had suffered was intolerable. Once he had bowed to her. And more than once he had saved her life. Someone had to at least try to help him.

But before she reached him, a wide, winged shape came out of the stars like the plunge of a condor. Changing shapes as it descended, it landed lightly beside the Demondim-spawn in human form.

Findail.

He did not look at Covenant or Linden, ignored Sunder’s hunched and single minded grief; instead, he addressed Vain.

“Do not believe that you will win my heart with bravery.” His voice was congested with old dismay, covert and unmistakable fear. His eyes seemed to search the Demondim-spawn's inscrutable soul. “I desire your death. If it lay within the permit of my wϋrd, I would slay you. But these comrades for whom you care nothing have again contrived to redeem you.” He paused as if he were groping for courage, then concluded softly, “Though I abhor your purpose, the Earth must not suffer the cost of your pain.”

Suddenly lambent, his right hand reached out to Vain's left shoulder. An instant of fire blazed from the touch, cast startling implications which only Linden could hear into the fathomless night. Then it was gone. Findail left Vain, went to stand like a sentinel confronting the moonlit prospect of tile east.

The First breathed a soft oath of surprise. Pitchwife gaped in wonder Covenant murmured curses as if he could not believe what he had seen.

Vain's left arm was whole, completely restored to its original beauty and function.

Linden thought she caught a gleam of relief from the Demondim-spawn's black eyes.

Astonishment stunned her. Findail's demonstration gave her a reason to understand for the first time why the Elohim believed that the healing of the Earth should be left to them, that the best choice she or Covenant could make would be to give Findail the ring and simply step aside from the doom Lord Foul was preparing for them. The restoration of Vain's arm seemed almost miraculous to her. With all the medical resources she could imagine, she would not have been able to match Findail's feat.

Drawn by the power be represented, she turned toward him with Sunder's name on his lips. Help him. He doesn't know how to bear it.

But the silhouette of the Appointed against the moon refused her before she spoke. In some unexplained way, he had aggravated his own plight by healing Vain. Like Sunder, he was in need of solace. His stance told her that he would deny any other appeal.

Pitchwife sighed. Muttering aimlessly to himself, he began to prepare a meal while the fire lasted.

Later that night. Linden huddled near Covenant and the fading embers of the fire with a damp blanket hugged around her in an effort to ward off the sky-deep cold and tried to explain her failure. "It was too sudden. I didn't see the danger in time.”

“It wasn't your fault,” he replied gruffly. “I had no right to blame you.” His voice seemed to issue from an injury hidden within the clenched mound of his blanket-hidden and fatal. "I should've made them stay in Revelstone.”

She wanted to protest his arrogation of responsibility. Without them, we would all be dead. How else were we going to get away from those ur-viles? But he went on, “I used to be afraid of power. I thought it made me what I hate-another Landwaster. A source of Despite for the people I care about. But I don't need power. I can do the same thing by just standing there.”

She sat up and peered at him through the moon edged night. He lay with his back to her, the blanket shivering slightly on his shoulders. She ached to put her arms around him, find some safe warmth in the contact of their bodies. But mat was not what he needed. Softly, harshly, she said, "That's wonderful. You're to blame for everything. Next I suppose you're going to tell me you bit yourself with that venom, just to prove you deserve it.”

He jerked over onto his back as if she had hit him between the shoulder-blades. His face came, pale and wincing, out of the blanket. For a moment, he appeared to glare at her. But then his emanations lost their fierce edge. “I know,” he breathed to the wide sky. “Atiaran tried to tell me the same thing. After all I did to her.” Quietly, he quoted, “ 'Castigation is a doom which achieves itself. In punishing yourself, you come to merit punishment.' All Foul has to do is laugh.” His dark features concentrated toward her. “The same thing's true for you. You tried to save her. It wasn't your fault.”

Linden nodded. Mutely, she leaned toward him until he took her into his embrace.

When she awoke in the early grey of dawn, she looked toward Sunder and saw that he had not moved during the night.

Hollian was rigid with death now, her delicate face pallid and aggrieved in the gloom; but he appeared unaware of any change, uncognizant of night or day-numb to anything except the shards of pain in his chest and her supine form. He was chilled to the bone, but the cold had no power to make him shiver.

Covenant roused with a flinch, yanked himself roughly out of his dreams. For no apparent reason, he said distinctly, “Those ur-viles should've caught up with us by now.” Then he, too, saw Sunder. Softly, he groaned.

The First and Pitchwife were both awake. Her injury was still sore; but diamondraught had quickened her native toughness, and the damage was no longer serious. She glanced at the Graveler, then faced Covenant and Linden and shook her head. Her training had not prepared her to deal with Sunder's stricken condition.

Her husband levered himself off the ground with his elbow and crawled toward the sacks of supplies. Taking up a pouch of diamondraught, he forced his cramped muscles to lift him upright, carry him to the Graveler's side. Without a word, he opened the pouch and held it under Sunder's nose.

Its scent drew a sound like a muffled sob from the Stonedownor. But he did not raise his head.

Helpless with pity, Pitchwife withdrew.

No one spoke. Linden, Covenant, and the Giants ate a cheerless meal before the sun rose. Then the First and Pitchwife went to find stone on which to meet the day. In shared apprehension. Linden and Covenant started toward Sunder. But, by chance or design, he had seated himself upon an exposed face of rock. He needed no protection.

Gleaming azure, the sun crested the horizon, then disappeared as black clouds began to host westward.

Spasms of wind kicked across the gravid surface of the White River. Pitchwife hastened to secure the supplies. By tile time he was finished, the first drizzle had begun to fall. It mounted toward downpour with a sound like frying meat, Linden eyed the quick current of the White and shuddered. Its cold ran past her senses like the edge of a rasp. But she had already survived similar immersions without diamondraught or metheglin to sustain her She was determined to endure as long as necessary. Grimly, she turned back to the problem of Sunder.

He had risen to his feet. Head bowed, eyes focused on nothing, he faced his companions and the River.

He held Hollian upright in his arms, hugging her to his sore breast so that her soles did not touch the ground.

Covenant met Linden's gaze. Then he moved to stand in front of Sunder. The muscles of his shoulders bunched and throttled; but his voice was gentle, husky with rue. “Sunder,” he said, “put her down.” His hands clenched at his sides. “You'll drown yourself if you try to take her with you. I can't lose you too.” In the background of his words blew a wind of grief like the rising of the rain. “We'll help you bury her.”

Sunder gave no response, did not look at Covenant. He appeared to be waiting for the Unbeliever to get out of his way.

Covenant's tone hardened. “Don't make us take her away from you.”

In reply. Sunder lowered Hollian's feet to the ground. Linden felt no shift in his emanations, no warning. With his right hand, he drew the krill from his jerkin.

The covering of the blade fell away, flapped out of reach along the wind. He gripped the hot handle in his bare fingers. Pain crossed his face like a snarl, but he did not flinch. White light shone from the gem, as clear as a threat.

Lifting Hollian with his left arm, he started down toward the River.

Covenant let him pass. Linden and the Giants let him pass. Then the First sent Pitchwife after him, so that he would not be alone in the swift, cold hazard of the current.

“He's going to Andelain,” Covenant grated. “He's going to carry her all the way to Andelain. Who do you think he wants to find?”

Without waiting for an answer, he followed Pitchwife and the Graveler.

Linden stared after them and groaned, His Dead! The Dead in Andelain. Nassic his father. Kalina his mother. The wife and son he had shed in the name of Mithil Stonedown.

Or Hollian herself?

Sweet Christ! How will he stand it? He’ll go mad and never come back.

Diving into the current. Linden went downriver in a wild rush with the First swimming strongly at her side.

She was not prepared for the acute power of the cold. As her health-sense grew in range and discernment, it made her more and more vulnerable to what she felt. The days she had spent in the Mithil River with Covenant and Sunder had not been this bad. The chill cudgelled her flesh, pounded her raw nerves. Time and again, she believed that surely now she would begin to wail, that at last the Sunbane would master her. Yet the undaunted muscle of the First's shoulder supported her. And Covenant stayed with her. Through the bludgeoning rain, the thunder that shattered the air, the lightning that ripped the heavens, his stubborn sense of purpose remained within reach of her percipience. In spite of numbing misery and desperation, she wanted to live-wanted to survive every ill Lord Foul hurled against her. Until her chance came to put a stop to it.

Visible by lightning-burst, Pitchwife rode the River a stroke or two ahead of the First. With one hand, he held up the Graveler. And Sunder bore Hollian as if she were merely sleeping.

Sometime during the middle of the day, the White dashed frothing and tumbling into a confluence that tore the travellers down the new channel like dead leaves in the wind. Joined by the Grey, the White River had become the Soulsease; and for the rest of that day-and all the next-it carried the company along. The rains blinded Linden's sense of direction. But at night, when the skies were clear and the waning moon rose over the pummelled wasteland, she was able to see that the river's course had turned toward the east

The second evening after the confluence, the First asked Covenant when they would reach Andelain. He and Linden sat as close as possible to the small heat of their campfire; and Pitchwife and the First crouched there also as if even they needed something more than diamondraught to restore their courage. But Sunder remained a short distance away in the same posture he had assumed the two previous nights-hunched over his pain on the sheetrock of the campsite with Hollian outstretched rigidly in front' of him as if at any moment she might begin to breathe again.

Side by side. Vain and Findail stood at the fringes of the light. Linden had not seen them enter the River, did not know how they travelled the rain scoured waste. But each evening they appeared together shortly after sunset and waited without speaking for the night to pass.

Covenant mused into the flames for a moment, then replied, “I'm a bad judge of distance. I don't know how far we've come.” His face appeared waxen with the consequences of cold. “But this is the Soulsease. It goes almost straight to Mount Thunder from here. We ought- “ He extended his hands toward the fire, put them too close to the flames, as if he had forgotten the reason for their numbness. But then his leper's instincts caused him to draw back. “It depends on tile sun. It's due to change. Unless we get a desert sun, the River’ll keep running. We ought to reach Andelain sometime tomorrow.”

The First nodded and went back to her private thoughts. Behind her Giantish strength and the healing of her injury, she was deeply tired. After a moment, she drew her longsword, began to clean and dry it with the slow, methodical movements of a woman who did not know what else to do.

As if to emulate her, Pitchwife took his flute from his pack, shook the water out of it, and tried to play. But his hands or his lips were too weary to hold any music. Soon he gave up the attempt.

For a while. Linden thought about the sun and let herself feel a touch of relief. A fertile sun or a sun of pestilence would warm the water. They would allow her to see the sky, open up the world around her. And a desert sun would certainly not be cold.

But gradually she became aware that Covenant was still shivering. A quick glance showed her he was not ill. After his passage through the Banefire, she doubted that he would ever be ill again. But he was clenched around himself, knotted so tightly that he seemed feverish.

She put her hand over his right forearm, drew his attention toward her. With her eyes, she asked what troubled him.

He looked at her gauntly, then returned his gaze to the fire as if among the coals he might find the words he needed. When he spoke, he surprised her by inquiring, “Are you sure you want to go to Andelain? The last time you had the chance, you turned it down.”

That was true. Poised at the southwest verge of the Hills with Sunder and Hollian, she had refused to go with Covenant, even though the radiance of health from across the Mithil River had been vivid to her bruised nerves. She had feared the sheer power of that region. Some of her fear she had learned from Hollian's dread, Hollian's belief that Andelain was a place where people lost their minds. But most of it had arisen from an encompassing distrust of everything to which her percipience made her vulnerable. The Sunbane had bored into her like a sickness, as acute and anguished as any disease; but as a disease she had understood it. And it had suited her: it had been appropriate to the structure of her life. But for that very reason Andelain had threatened her more intimately. It had endangered her difficult self possession. She had not believed that any good could come of anything which had such strength over her.

And later Covenant had relayed to her the words of Elena among the Dead. The former High Lord had said, I rue that the woman your companion lacked heart to accompany you, for you have much to bear. But she must come to meet herself in her own time. Care for her, beloved, so that in the end she may heal us all. In addition, the Forestal had said; It is well that your companions did not accompany you. The woman of your world would raise grim shades here. The simple recollection of such things brought back Linden's fear.

A fear which had made its meaning clear in lust and darkness when Gibbon-Raver had touched her and affirmed that she was evil.

But she was another woman now. She had found the curative use of her health-sense, the access to beauty. She had told Covenant the stories of her parents, drawn some of their sting from her heart. She had learned to call her hunger for power by its true name. And she knew what she wanted Covenant's love. And the end of the Sunbane.

Smiling grimly, she replied, “Try to stop me.”

She expected her answer to relieve him. But he only nodded, and she saw that he still had not said what was in him. Several false starts passed like shadows across the background of his expression. In an effort to reach him, she added, "I need the relief. The sooner I get out of the Sunbane, the saner I'll be.”

“Linden- ” He said her name as if she were not making his way easier. “When we were in Mithil Stonedown-and Sunder told us he might have to kill his mother- “ He swallowed roughly. “You said he should be allowed to put her out of her misery. If that was what he wanted.” He looked at her now with the death of her mother written plainly in his gaze. “Do you still believe that?”

She winced involuntarily. She would have preferred to put his question aside until she knew why he asked it. But his frank need was insistent. Carefully, she said, “She was in terrible pain. I think people who're suffering like that have the right to die. But mercy killing isn't exactly merciful to the people who have to do it. I don't like what it does to them.” She strove to sound detached, impersonal; but the hurt of the question was too acute. “I don't like what it did to me. If you can call what I did mercy instead of murder.”

He made a gesture that faltered and fell like a failed assuagement, His voice was soft; but it betrayed a strange ague. “What're you going to do if something's happened to Andelain? If you can't get out of the Sunbane? Caer-Caveral knew he wasn't going to last. Foul's corrupted everything else. What'll we do?” His larynx jerked up and down like a presage of panic. “I can stand whatever I have to. But not that. Not that”

He looked so belorn and defenceless that she could not bear it. Tears welled in her eyes. “Maybe it'll be all right,” she breathed. "You can hope. It's held out this long. It can last a little longer.”

But down in the cold, dark roots of her mind she was thinking. If it doesn't, I don't care what happens. I'll tear that bastard's heart out. I'll get the power somewhere, and I'll tear his heart out.

She kept her thoughts to herself. Yet Covenant seemed to sense the violence inside her. Instead of reaching out to her for comfort, he withdrew into his certainty. Wrapped in decisions and perceptions she did not understand and could not share, he remained apart from her throughout the night

A long time passed before she grasped that he did not mean to reject her. He was trying to prepare himself for the day ahead.

But the truth was plain in the sharp, grey dawn, when he rolled, bleak and tense, out of his blankets to kiss her. He was standing on an inner precipice, and his balance was fragile. The part of him which had been fused in the Banefire did not waver; but the vessel bearing that sure alloy looked as brittle as an old bone. Yet in spite of his trepidation he made the effort to smile at her.

She replied with a grimace because she did not know how to protect him.

While Pitchwife prepared a meal for the company Covenant went over to Sunder. Kneeling behind the Graveler, he massaged Sunder's locked shoulders and neck with his numb fingers.

Sunder did not react to the gesture. He was aware of nothing except Hollian's pallid form and his own fixed purpose. To Linden's health-sense, his body ached with the weakness of inanition. And she felt the hot blade of the krill scalding his unshielded belly under his jerkin. But he seemed to draw strength from that pain as if it were the promise that kept him alive.

After a while, Covenant rejoined the two Giants and Linden. “Maybe he'll meet her in Andelain,” he sighed. “Maybe she'll be able to get through to him.”

“Let us pray for that outcome,” muttered the First. "His endurance must fail soon.”

Covenant nodded. As he chewed bread and dried fruit for breakfast, he went on nodding to himself like a man who had no other hope.

A short time later, the sun rose beyond the rim of the world; and the companions stood on the rain-swept sheetrock to meet the daybreak.

It crested the horizon in a flaring of emerald, cast green spangles up the swift, broken surface of the River.

At the sight, Linden went momentarily weak with relief. She had not realized how much she had feared another sun of rain.

Warmth: the fertile sun gave warmth. It eased the vehemence of the current, softened the chill of the water. And it shone on her nerves like the solace of dry, fire-warmed blankets. Supported by the First, with Covenant beside her and Pitchwife and Sunder only a few short strokes away, she rode the Soulsease and thought for the first time that perhaps the River had not been gratuitously named.

Yet relief did not blind her to what was happening to the earth on either side of the watercourse. The kindness of the fertile sun was an illusion, a trick performed by the River's protection. On the banks, vegetation squirmed out of the ground like a ghoul-ridden host. Flailed up from their roots, vines and grasses sprawled over the rims of the channel. Shrubs raised their branches as if they were on fire; trees clawed their way into the air, as frantic as the damned. And she found that her own relative safety only accentuated the sensations pouring at her from the wild, unwilling growth. She was floating through a wilderness of voiceless anguish: the torment around her was as loud as shrieks. Tortured out of all Law, the trees and plants had no defence, could do nothing for themselves except grow and grow-and hurl their dumb hurt into the sky.

Perhaps after all the Forestal of Andelain was gone. How long could he bear to hear these cries and be helpless?

Between rising walls of agony, the River ran on toward the east and Mount Thunder after a long south-eastward stretch. Slowly, Linden fell into a strange, bifurcated musing. She held to the First's shoulder, kept her head above water, watched the riverbanks pass, the verdure teem. But on another level she was not aware of such things. Within her, the darkness which had germinated at Gibbon's touch also grew. Fed by the Sunbane, it twined through her and yearned. She remembered now as if she had never forgotten that behind the superficial grief and pain and abhorrence had lurked a secret glee at the act of strangling her mother-a wild joy at the taste of power.

In a detached way, she knew what was happening to her. She had been too long exposed to Lord Foul's corruption. Her command over herself, her sense of who she wanted to be, was fraying.

She giggled harshly to herself-a snapping of mirth like the sound of a Raver. The idea was bitterly amusing. Until now it had been the sheer difficulty and pain of travelling under the Sunbane which had enabled her to remember who she was. The Despiser could have mastered her long ago by simply allowing her to relax.

Fierce humour rose in her throat Fertility seemed to caper along her blood, frothing and chuckling luridly. Her percipience sent out sneaky fingers to touch Covenant's latent fire as if at any moment she would muster the courage to take hold of it for herself.

With an effort of will, she pulled at the First's shoulder. The Giant turned her head, murmured over the wet mutter of the River, “Chosen?”

So that Covenant would not hear her. Linden whispered, “If I start to laugh, hit me. Hold me under until I stop.”

The First returned a glance of piercing incomprehension. Then she nodded.

Somehow, Linden locked her teeth against the madness and did not let it out.

Noon rose above her and passed by. From the truncated perspective of the water-line, she could see only a short distance ahead. The Soulsease appeared to have no future. The world contained nothing except tortured vegetation and despair. She should have been able to heal that. She was a doctor. But she could not. She had no power.

But then without transition the terrain toward which the company was borne changed. Beyond an interdict as precise as a line drawn in the Earth, the wild fertility ended; and a natural woodland began on both sides of the Soulsease.

The shock of it against her senses told her what it was. She had seen it once before, when she had not been ready for it. It rushed into her even from this distance like a distillation of all vitrim and diamondraught, a cure for all darkness.

The First nudged Covenant, nodded ahead. Thrashing his legs, he surged up in the water; and his crow split the air; “Andelain!”

As he fell back, he pounded at the current like a boy, sent sun-glistened streams of spray arcing across the Soulsease.

In silence. Linden breathed, Andelain, Andelain, as if by repeating that name she might cleanse herself enough to enter among the Hills. Hope washed through her in spite of everything she had to fear. Andelain.

Brisk between its banks, the River ran swiftly toward the Forestal's demesne, the last bastion of Law.

As they neared the demarcation. Linden saw it more acutely. Here thronging, tormented brush and bracken, mimosas cracked by their own weight, junipers as grotesque as the dancing of demons, all stopped as if they had met a wall: there a greensward as lush as springtime and punctuated with peonies like music swept up the graceful hill slopes to the stately poplars and red-fruited elders that crowned the crests. At the boundary of the Forestal's reign, mute hurt gave way to aliantha, and the Sunbane was gone from the pristine sky.

Gratitude and gladness and relief made the world new around her as the Soulsease carried the company out of the Land's brokenness into Andelain.

When she looked behind her, she could no longer see the Sunbane's green aura. The sun shone out of the cerulean heavens with the yellow warmth of loveliness.

Covenant indicated the south bank. The First and Pitchwife turned in that direction, angling across the current Covenant swam with all his strength; and Linden followed. The water had already changed from ordinary free-flowing cleanness to crystal purity, as special and renewing as dew. And when she placed her hands on the grass-rich ground to boost herself out of the River, she received a new thrill, a sensation of vibrancy as keen as the clear air. She had been exposed to the Sunbane for so long that she had forgotten what the Earth's health felt like.

But then she stood on the turf with all her nerves open and realized that what she felt was more than simple health. It was Law quintessenced and personified, a reification of the vitality which made life precious and the Land desirable. It was an avatar of spring, the revel of summer; it was autumn glory and winter peace. The grass under her feet sprang and gleamed, seemed to lift her to a taller stature. The sap in the trees rose like fire, beneficent and alive. Flowers scattered colour everywhere. Every breath and scent and sensation was sapid beyond bearing-and yet they urged her to bear them. Each new exquisite perception led her onward instead of daunting her, carried her out of herself like a current of ecstasy.

Laughter and weeping rose in her together and could not be uttered. This was Andelain, the heart of the Land Covenant loved. He lay on his face in the grass, arms outspread as if to hug the ground; and she knew that the Hills had changed everything. Not in him, but in her. There were many things she did not understand; but this she did: the bale of the Sunbane had no power here. She was free of it here. And the Law which brought such health to life was worth the price any heart was willing to pay.

That affirmation came to her like a clean sunrise. It was the positive conviction for which she had been so much in need. Any price. To preserve the last beauty of the Land. Any price at all.

Pitchwife sat on the grass and stared hungrily up the hillsides, his face wide with astonishment. “I would not have credited- ” he breathed to himself. “Not have believed- ” The First stood behind him, her fingertips resting on his shoulders. Her eyes beamed like the sun flashes dancing on the gay surface of the Soulsease. Vain and Findail had appeared while Linden's back had been turned. The Demondim-spawn betrayed no reaction to Andelain; but Findail's habitual distress had lightened, and he took the crisp air deep into his lungs as if, like Linden, he knew what it meant.

Free of the Sunbane and exalted, she wanted to run-wanted to stretch and bound up the Hills and tumble down them, sport like a child, see everything, taste everything, race her bruised nerves and tired bones as far as they would go into the luxuriant anodyne of this region, the sovereign solace of Andelain's health. She skipped a few steps away from the River, turned to call Covenant after her.

He had risen to his feet, but was not looking at her. And there was no joy in his face.

His attention was fixed on Sunder.

Sunder! Linden groaned, instantly ashamed that she had forgotten him in her personal transport.

He stood on the bank and bugged Hollian upright against his chest, seeing nothing, comprehending no part of the beauty around him. For a time, he did not move. Then some kind of focus came into his eyes, and he stumbled forward. Too weak now to entirely lift the eh-Brand's death heavy form, he half dragged her awkwardly in front of him across the grass.

Ashen with hunger and exhaustion and loss, he bore her to the nearest aliantha. There he laid her down. Under its holly like leaves, the bush was thick with viridian treasure-berries. The Clave had proclaimed them poison; but after Marid had bitten Covenant, aliantha had brought the Unbeliever back from delirium. And that experience had not been lost on Sunder. He picked some of the fruit.

Linden held her breath, hoping he would eat.

He did not. Squatting beside Hollian, he tried to feed the berries between her rigid lips.

“Eat, love.” His voice was hoarse, veined and cracked like crumbling marble. “You have not eaten. You must eat.”

But the fruit only broke on her teeth.

Slowly, he hunched over the pain of his fractured heart and began to cry.

Pain twisted Covenant's face like a snarl as he moved to the Graveler's side. But when he said, “Come on,” his voice was gentle. “We're still too close to the Sunbane. We need to go farther in.”

For a long moment. Sunder shook with silent grief as if at last his mad will had failed. But then he scooped his arms under Hollian and lurched, trembling, to his feet Tears streamed down his grey cheeks, but he paid them no heed.

Covenant gestured to the Giants and Linden. They joined him promptly. Together, they turned to the southeast and started away from the River across the first hillsides.

Sunder followed them, walking like a mute wail of woe.

His need conflicted Linden's reactions to the rich atmosphere of Andelain. As she and her friends moved among the Hills, sunshine lay like immanence on the slopes; balm filled the shade of the trees. With Covenant and the Giants, she ate aliantha from the bushes along their way; and the savour of the berries seemed to add a rare spice to her blood. The grass gave a blessing back to the pressure of her shoes, lifting her from stride to stride as if the very ground sought to encourage her forward. And beneath the turf, the soil and skeleton of Andelain were resonant with well-being, the good slumber of peace.

And birds, soaring like melody above the treetops, squabbling amicably among the branches. And small woodland animals, cautious of the company's intrusion, but not afraid. And flowers everywhere, flowers without number-poppy, amaryllis, and larkspur-snapdragon, honeysuckle, and violet-as precise and numinous as poetry. Seeing them. Linden thought that surely her heart would burst with pleasure.

Yet behind her Sunder bore his lost love inward, as if he meant to lay her at the feet of Andelain itself and demand restitution. Carrying death into the arduously defended region, he violated its ambience as starkly as an act of murder.

Though Linden's companions had no health-sense, they shared her feelings Covenant's visage worked unselfconsciously back and forth between leaping eagerness and clenched distress. Pitchwife's eyes devoured each new vista, every added benison-and flicked repeatedly toward Sunder as if he were flinching. The First held an expression of stem acceptance and approval on her countenance; but her hand closed and unclosed around the handle of her sword. Only Vain and the Appointed cared nothing for Sunder.

Nevertheless the afternoon passed swiftly. Sustained by treasure-berries and gladness, and by rills that sparkled like liquid gem-fire across their path, Linden and her companions moved at Sunder's pace among the copses and hillcrests. And then evening drew near. Beyond the western sky-line, the sun set in grandeur, painting orange and gold across the heavens.

Still the travellers kept on walking. None of them wanted to stop.

When the last emblazonry of sunset had faded, and stars began to wink and smile through the deepening velvet of the sky, and the twittering communal clamour of the birds subsided, Linden heard music.

At first it was music for her alone, melody sung on a pitch of significance which only her hearing could reach. It sharpened the star-limned profiles of the trees, gave the light of the low, waning moon on the slopes and trunks a quality of etched and lovely evanescence. Both plaintive and lustrous, it wafted over the Hills as if it were singing them to beauty. Rapt with eagerness, Linden held her breath to listen.

Then the music became as bright as phosphorescence; and the company heard it Covenant drew a soft gasp of recognition between his teeth.

Swelling and aching, the melody advanced. It was the song of the Hills, the incarnate essence of Andelain's health. Every leaf, every petal, every blade of grass was a note in the harmony; every bough and branch, a strand of singing. Power ran through it-the strength which held back the Sunbane. But at the same time it was mournful, as stem as a dirge; and it caught in Linden's throat like a sob.

“Oh, Andelain! Forgive! For I am doomed to fail this war.

I cannot bear to see you die — and live,

Foredoomed to bitterness and all the grey Despiser's lore.

But while I can I heed the call

Of green and tree; and for their worth,

I hold the glaive of Law against the Earth.”

While the words measured out their sorrow and determination, the singer appeared on a rise ahead of the company-became visible like a translation of song.

He was tall and strong, wrapped in a robe as fine and white as the music which streamed from the lines of his form. In his right hand, he gripped a long, gnarled tree limb as though it were the staff of his might. For he was mighty-oh, he was mighty! The sheer potency of him shouted to Linden's senses as he approached, shinning her not with fear but with awe. A long moment passed before she was able to see him clearly.

“Caer-CaveraI,” whispered Covenant. “Hile Troy.” Linden felt his legs tremble as if he ached to kneel, wanted to stretch himself prostrate in front of the eldritch puissance of the Forestal. “Dear God, I'm glad to see you.” Memories poured from him, pain and rescue and bittersweet meeting.

Then at last Linden discerned through the phosphorescence and the music that the tall man had no eyes. The skin of his face spread straight and smooth from forehead to cheek over the sockets in which orbs should have been.

Yet he did not, appear to need sight. His music was the only sense he required. It lit the Giants, entrancing them where they stood, leaving them with a glamour in their faces and a cessation of all hurt in their hearts. It trilled and swirled through Linden, carrying her care away, humbling her to silence. And it met Covenant as squarely as any gaze.

“You have come,” the man sang, drawing glimmers of melody from the greensward, spangled wreaths of accompaniment from the trees. “And the woman of your world with you. That is well.” Then his singing concentrated more personally on Covenant; and Covenant's eyes burned with grief. Hile Troy had once commanded the armies of the Land against Lord Foul. But he had sold himself to the Forestal of Garroting Deep to purchase a vital victory-and the price had been more than three millennia of service.

“Thomas Covenant, you have become that which I may no longer command. But I ask this of you, that you must grant it.” Melody flowed from him down the hillside, curling about Covenant's feet and passing on. The music tuned itself to a pitch of authority. “Ur-Lord and Illender, Unbeliever and Earthfriend. You have earned the valour of those names. Stand aside.”

Covenant stared at the Forestal, his whole stance pleading for comprehension.

“You must not intervene. The Land's need is harsh, and its rigor falls upon other heads as well as yours. No taking of life is gentle, but in this there is a necessity upon me, which you are craved to honour. This Law also must be broken.” The moon was poised above the Hills, as acute as a sickle; but its light was only a pale echo of the music that gleamed like droplets of bright dew up and down the slope. Within the trunks of the trees rose the same song which glittered on their leaves. “Thomas Covenant,” the Forestal repeated, “stand aside.”

Now the rue of the melody could not be mistaken. And behind it shimmered a note of fear.

“Covenant, please,” Caer-CaveraI concluded in a completely different voice the voice of the man he had once been. “Do this for me. No matter what happens. Don't interfere.”

Covenant's throat worked. “I don't- ” he started to say. I don't understand. Then, with a wrench of will, he stepped out of the Forestal's way.

Stately and grave, Caer-CaveraI went down the hillside toward Sunder.

The Graveler stood as if he did not see the tall, white figure, heard no song. Hollian he held upright against his heart, her face pressed to his chest. But his head was up: his eyes watched the slope down which Caer-CaveraI had come. A cry that had no voice stretched his visage.

Slowly, like an action in a dream, Linden turned to look in the direction of Sunder's gaze.

As Covenant did the same, a sharp pang sprang from him.

Above the company, moonshine and Forestal fire condensed to form a human shape. Pale silver, momentarily transparent, then more solid, like an incarnation of evanescence and yearning, a woman walked toward the onlookers A smile curved her delicate mouth; and her hair swept a suggestion of dark wings and destiny past her shoulders; and she shone like loss and hope.

Hollian eh-Brand. Sunder's Dead, come to greet him.

The sight of her made him breathe in fierce, shuddering gasps, as if she had set a goad to his heart.

She passed by Covenant, Linden, and the Giants without acknowledging them. Perhaps for her they did not exist. Erect with the dignity of her calling, the importance of her purpose, she moved to the Forestal's side and stopped, facing Sunder and her own dead body.

“Ah, Sunder, my dear one,” she murmured. “Forgive my death. It was my flesh that failed you, not my love.”

Helpless to reply. Sunder went on gasping as if his life were being ripped out of him.

Hollian started to speak again; but the Forestal raised his staff, silencing her. He did not appear to move, to take any action. Yet music leaped around Sunder like a swirl of moonsparks, and the Graveler staggered. Somehow, Hollian was taken from him. She was enfolded tenderly in the crook of the Forestal’s left arm. Caer-CaveraI claimed her stiff death for himself. The song became keener, whetted by loss and trepidation.

Wildly, Sunder snatched the krill from its resting place against his burned belly. Its argent passion pierced the music. All reason was gone from him. Wracked for air, he brandished Loric's blade at the Forestal, mutely demanding that Hollian be given back to him.

The restraint Hile Troy had asked of Covenant made him shudder.

“Now it ends,” fluted Caer-Caveral. The singing which conveyed his words was at once exquisitely beautiful and unbearable. “Do not fear for me. Though it is severe, this must be done. I am weary, eager of release and called to rest. Your love supplies the power, and none other may take the burden from you. Son of Nassic-” the music contained no command now, but only sorrow- “you must strike me.”

Covenant flinched as if he expected Sunder to obey. The Graveler was desperate enough for anything. But Linden watched him with all her senses and saw his inchoate violence founder in dismay. He lowered the krill. His eyes were wide with supplication. Behind the mad obsession which had ruled him since HoIIian's death still lived a man who loathed killing-who had shed too much blood and never forgiven himself for it. His soul seemed to collapse inward. After days of endurance, he was dying.

The Forestal struck the turf with his staff, and the Hills rang. “Strike!”

His demand was so potent that Linden raised her hands involuntarily, though it was not directed at her. Yet some part of Sunder remained unbroken, clear. The comers of his jaw knotted with the old obduracy which had once enabled him to defy Gibbon. Deliberately, he unbent his elbow, let the krill dangle from his weak hand. His head slumped forward until his chin rested on his chest. He no longer made any effort to breathe.

Caer-Caveral sent a glare of phosphorescence at the Graveler. “Very well,” he trilled angrily. “Withhold-and be lost. The Land is ill served by those who will not pay the price of love.” Turning sharply away, he strode back through the company in the direction from which he had come. He still bore HoIIian's physical form clasped in his left arm.

And the Dead eh-brand went with him as if she approved. Her eyes were silver and grieving.

It was too much. A strangled cry tore Sunder's refusal. He could not let Hollian go; his desire for her was too strong. Raising the krill above his head in both fists, he ran at the Forestal's back.

Too late, Covenant shouted, “No!” and leaped after Sunder.

The Giants could not move. The music held them fascinated and motionless. Linden was not certain that they were truly able to see what was happening.

She could have moved. She felt the same stasis which enclosed the First and Pitchwife; but it was not strong enough to stop her. Her percipience could grasp the melody and make it serve her. With the slow instantaneousness of visions or nightmares, she knew she was able to do it. The music would carry her after Sunder so swiftly that he might never reach the Forestal.

Yet she did not. She had no way to measure the implications of this crisis. But she had seen the pain shining in HoIIian's eyes, the eh-brand's recognition of necessity. And she trusted the sum, brave woman. She made no effort to stop Sunder as he hammered the point of the krill between Caer-Caveral's shoulder blades with the last force of his life.

From the blow burst a deflagration of pearl flame which rent away immobility, sent Linden and the Giants sprawling, hurled Covenant to the grass. At once, all the music became fire and raced toward the Forestal, sweeping around him-and Sunder and Hollian with him-so that they were effaced from sight, consumed in an incandescent whirlwind that spouted into the heavens, reached like the ruin of every song toward the bereft stars. A cacophony of fear clashed and wept around the flame; but the flame did not hear it. In a rush of ascension, the blaze burned its hot, mute agony against the night as if it fed on the pure heart of Andelain, bore that spirit writhing and appalled through the high dark.

And as it rose, Linden seemed to hear the fundamental fabric of the world tearing.

Then, before the sight became unendurable, the fire began to subside. By slow stages, the conflagration changed to an ordinary fire, yellow with heat and eaten wood, and she saw it burning from the black and blasted stump of a tree trunk which had not been there when Caer-Caveral was struck.

Stabbed deep into the charred wood beyond any hope of removal was the krill. Only the flames that licked the stump made it visible: the light of its gem was gone.

Now the fire failed swiftly, falling away from the stricken trunk. Soon the blaze was extinguished altogether. Smoke curled upward to mark the place where the Forestal had been slain.

Yet the night was not dark. Other illuminations gathered around the stunned companions.

From beyond the stump, Sunder and Hollian came walking hand-in-hand. They were limned with silver like the Dead; but they were alive in the flesh-human and whole. Caer-Caveral's mysterious purpose had been accomplished. Empowered and catalyzed by the Forestal's spirit, Sunder's passion had found its object; and the krill had severed the boundary which separated him from Hollian. In that way, the Graveler, who was trained for bloodshed and whose work was killing, had brought his love back into life.

Around the two of them bobbed a circle of Wraiths, dancing a bright cavort of welcome. Their warm loveliness seemed to promise the end of all pain.

But in Andelain there was no more music.

Fifteen: Enactors of Desecration

IN the lush, untrammelled dawn of the Hills, Sunder and Hollian came to say farewell to Covenant and Linden.

Linden greeted them as if the past night had been one of the best of her life. She could not have named the reasons for this; it defied expectation. With Caer-Caveral's passing, important things had come to an end. She should have lamented instead of rejoicing. Yet on a level too deep for language she had recognized the necessity of which the Forestal had spoken. This Law also- Andelain had been bereft of music, but not of beauty or consolation. And the restoration of the Stonedownors made her too glad for sorrow. In a paradoxical way, Caer-Caveral's self-sacrifice felt like a promise of hope.

But Covenant's mien was clouded by conflicting emotions. With his companions, he had spent the night watching Sunder and Hollian revel among the Wraiths of Andelain-and Linden sensed that the sight gave him both joy and rue. The healing of his friends lightened his heart; the price of that healing did not. And surely he was hurt by his lack of any health-sense which would have enabled him to evaluate what the loss of the Forestal meant to Andelain.

However, there were no clouds upon the Graveler and the eh-Brand. They walked buoyantly to the place where Linden and Covenant sat; and Linden thought that some of the night's silver still clung to them, giving them a numinous cast even in daylight, like a new dimension added to their existence. Smiles gleamed from Sunder's eyes. And Hollian bore herself with an air of poised loveliness. Linden was not surprised to perceive that the child in the eh-brand's womb shared her elusive, mystical glow.

For a moment, the Stonedownors gazed at Covenant and Linden and smiled and did not speak. Then Sunder cleared his throat. “I crave your pardon that we will no longer accompany you.” His voice held a special resonance that Linden had never heard before in him, a suggestion of fire. “You have said that we are the future of the Land. It has become our wish to discover that future here. And to bear our son in Andelain.

“I know you will not gainsay us. But we pray that you find no rue in this parting. We do not-though you are precious to us. The outcome of the Earth is in your hands. Therefore we are unafraid.”

He might have gone on; but Covenant stopped him with a brusque gesture, a scowl of gruff affection. “Are you kidding?” he muttered. “I'm the one who wanted you to stay behind. I was going to ask you- ” He sighed, and his gaze wandered the hillside. “Spend as much time here as you can,” he breathed. “Stay as long as possible. That's something I've always wanted to do.”

His voice trailed away; but Linden was not listening to its resigned sadness. She was staring at Sunder. The faint silver quality of his aura was clear-and yet undefinable. It ran out of her grasp like water. Intuition tingled along her nerves, and she started speaking before she knew what she would say.

“The last time Covenant was here, Caer-Caveral gave him the location of the One Tree.” Each word surprised her like a hint of revelation. “But he hid it so Covenant couldn't reach it himself. That's why he had to expose himself to the Elohim, let them work then plots-” The bare memory brought a tremor of anger into her voice. “We should never have had to go there in the first place. Why did Caer-Caveral give him that gift-and then make it such a secret?”

Sunder looked at her. He was no longer smiling. A weird intensity filled his gaze like a swirl of sparks. Abruptly, he said, “Are you not now companioned by the Appointed of the Elohim? How otherwise could that end have been achieved?”

The strangeness of the Graveler's tone snatched back Covenant's attention. Linden felt him scrambling after inferences; a blaze of hope shot up in him. “Are you-?” he asked. “Is that it? Are you the new Forestal?”

Instead of answering. Sunder looked to Hollian, giving her the opportunity to tell him what he was.

She met his gaze with a soft smile. But she answered quietly, kindly, “No.” She had spent time among the Dead and appeared certain of her knowledge. “In such a transferral of power, the Law which Caer-Caveral sought to rend would have been preserved. Yet we are not altogether what we were. We will do what we may for the sustenance of Andelain-and for the future of the Land.”

Questions thronged in Linden. She wanted a name for the alteration she perceived. But Covenant was already speaking.

“The Law of Life.” His eyes were hot and gaunt on the Stonedownors. “Elena broke the Law of Death-the barrier that kept the living and the dead from reaching out to each other. The Law Caer-Caveral broke was the one that kept the dead from crossing back into life.”

“That is sooth,” replied Hollian. “Yet it is a fragile crossing withal, and uncertain. We are sustained, and in some manner defined, by the sovereign Earthpower of the Andelainian Hills. Should we depart this region, we would not long endure among the living.”

Linden saw that this was true. The strange gleam upon the Stonedownors was the same magic which had given Caer-Caveral's music its lambent strength. Sunder and Hollian were solid, physical, and whole. Yet in a special sense they had become beings of Earthpower-and they might easily die if they were cut off from their source.

Covenant must have understood the eh-Brand's words also. But he heard them with different ears than Linden's. As their implications penetrated him, his sudden hope went out.

That loss sent a pang through Linden. She had been concentrating too hard on Sunder and Hollian. She had not realized that Covenant had been looking for an answer to his own death.

At once, she reached out a band to his shoulder, felt the effort he made to suppress his dismay. But the exertion was over in an instant. Braced on his certainty, he faced the Stonedownors. His tone belied the struggle he made to keep it firm.

“I'll do everything I can,” he said. “But my time's almost over. Yours is just beginning. Don't waste it.”

Sunder returned a smile that seemed to make him young. “Thomas Covenant,” he promised, “we will not.”

No goodbyes were said. This farewell could not be expressed with words or embraces. Arm in arm, the Graveler and the eh-brand simply turned and walked away across the bedewed grass. After a moment, they passed the crest of the hill and were gone.

Behind them, they left a silence that ached as if nothing would be able to take their place.

Linden stretched her arm over Covenant's shoulders and hugged him, trying to tell him that she understood.

He kissed her hand, then rose to his feet. As he scanned the bright morning, the untainted sun, the flower-bedizened landscape, he sighed, “At least there's still Earthpower.”

“Yes,” Linden averred, climbing erect to join him, “The Hills haven't changed.” She did not know how else to comfort him. “Losing the Forestal is going to make a difference. But not yet.” She was sure of that. Andelain's health still surged around her in every blade and leaf, every bird and rock. No disease or weakness was visible anywhere. And the shining sun had no aura. She thought that the tangible world had never held so much condensed and treasurable beauty. Like a prayer for Andelain's endurance, she repeated, “Not yet.”

A grin of grim relish bared Covenant's teeth. "Then he can't hurt us. For a while, anyway. I hope it drives him crazy.”

Linden breathed a secret relief, hoping that he had weathered the crisis.

But all his moods seemed to change as soon as he felt them. An old bleakness dulled his gaze; haggard lines marked his mien. Abruptly, he started toward the charred stump which had once been the Forestal of Andelain.

At once, she followed him. But she stopped when she understood that he had gone to say farewell.

He touched the inert gem of the krill with his numb fingers, tested the handle's coldness with the back of his hand. Then he leaned his palms and forehead against the blackened wood. Linden could hardly hear him.

“From fire to fire,” he whispered. “After all this time. First Seadreamer and Brinn. Hamako. Then Honninscrave. Now you. I hope you've found a little peace.”

There was no answer. When at last he withdrew, his hands and brow were smudged with soot like an obscure and contradictory anointment. Roughly, he scrubbed his palms on his pants; but he seemed unaware of the stain on his forehead.

For a moment, he studied Linden as if he sought to measure her against the Forestal's example. Again she was reminded of the way he had once cared for Joan. But Linden was not his ex-wife; she faced him squarely. The encompassing health of the Hills made her strong. And what he saw appeared to reassure him. Gradually his features softened. Half to himself, be murmured, “Thank God you're still here.” Then he raised his voice. “We should get going. Where are the Giants?”

She gave him a long gaze, which Hollian would have understood, before she turned to look for the First and Pitchwife.

They were not in sight. Vain and Findail stood near the foot of the slope exactly as they had remained all night; but the Giants were elsewhere. However, when she ascended to the hillcrest, she saw them emerge from a copse on the far side of a low valley, where they had gone to find privacy.

They responded to her wave with a hail and a gesture eastward, indicating that they would rejoin her and Covenant in that direction. Perhaps their keen eyes were able to descry the smile she gave them, glad to see that they felt safe enough in Andelain to leave their companions unguarded.

Covenant came to her wearily, worn by strain and lack of sleep. But at the sight of the Giants-or of the Hills unfurled before him like pleasure rolling along the kind breeze-he, too, smiled. Even from this distance, the restoration of Pitchwife's spirit was visible in the way be hobbled at his wife's side with a gait like a mummer's capriole. And her swinging stride bespoke eagerness and a fondly remembered night. They were Giants in Andelain. The pure expanse of the Hills suited them.

Softly, Covenant mused, “They aren't people of the Land. Maybe Coercri was enough. Maybe they won't meet any Dead here.” As he remembered the slain Unhomed-and the caamora of release he had given them in The Grieve-the timbre of his voice conveyed pride and pain. But then his gaze darkened; and Linden saw that he was thinking of Saltheart Foamfollower, who had lost his life in Covenant's former victory over the Despiser.

She wanted to tell him not to worry. Perhaps the battle for Revelstone had made Pitchwife familiar with despair and doom. Yet she believed that eventually he would find the song he needed. And the First was a Swordmain, as true as her blade. She would not lightly submit to death.

But Covenant had his own strange.sources of surety and did not wait for Linden's answer. With his resolve stiffening, he placed his half-hand firmly in her clasp and drew her toward the east along a way among the Hills which would intersect the path of the Giants.

After a moment, Findail and Vain appeared behind them, following them as always in the direction of their fate.

For a while Covenant walked briskly, his smudged forehead raised to the sun and the savoury atmosphere. But at the first brook they encountered, he stopped. From under his belt, he drew a knife which he had brought with him from Revelstone. Stooping to the crisp water, he drank deeply, then soaked his ragged beard and set himself to shave.

Linden held her breath as she watched him. His grasp on the blade was numb; and fatigue made his muscles awkward. But she did not try to intervene. She sensed that this risk was necessary to him.

When he had finished, however, and his cheeks and neck were scraped clean, she could not conceal her relief. She knelt beside him, cupped water into her hands, and washed tile soot from his forehead, seeking to remove the innominate implications of that mark.

An oak with a tremendous trunk spread its wide leaves over that part of the brook. Satisfied with Covenant's face, she pulled him after her and leaned back into the shade and the grass. The breeze played down the length of her legs like the sport of a lover; and she was in no hurry to rejoin the Giants.

But suddenly she felt a mute cry from the tree. a burst of pain which shivered through the ground, seemed to violate the very air. She whirled from Covenant's side and surged to her feet, trembling to find the cause of the oak's hurt The cry rose. For an instant, she saw no reason for it. Harm shook the boughs; the leaves wailed; muffled rivings ran through the heartwood. Around the oak, the Hills seemed to concentrate as if they were appalled. But she saw nothing except that Vain and Findail were gone.

Then, too swift for surmise, the Appointed came flowing out of the wood's anguish.

As he transformed himself from oak to flesh, his care-cut visage wore an unwonted shame. Vexed and defensive, he faced Linden and Covenant. “Is he not Demondim-spawn?” he demanded as if they had accused him unjustly. “Are not his makers ur-viles, that have ever served the Despiser with their self-abhorrence? And will you trust him to my cost? He must be slain.”

At his back, the oak's hurt sharpened to screaming.

“You bastard!” Linden spat, half guessing what Findail had done-and afraid to believe it. “You're killing it! Don't you even care that this is Andelain? the only place left that at least ought to be safe?”

“Linden?” Covenant asked urgently. “What-?” He lacked her percipience, had no knowledge of the tree's agony.

But he did not have to wait for an answer. A sundering pain like the blow of an axe split Linden's nerves; and the trunk of the oak sprang apart in a flail of splinters.

From the core of the wood. Vain stepped free. Unscathed, he left the still quivering tree in ruins. He did not glance at Findail or anyone else. His black eyes held nothing but darkness.

Linden stumbled to her knees in the grass and wrapped her arms around the hurt.

For a stunned moment, grief held the Hills. Then Covenant rasped, “That's terrific.” He sounded as shaken as the dying boughs. “I hope you're proud of yourself.”

Findail's reply seemed to come from a great distance. “Do you value him so highly? Then I am indeed lost”

“I don't give a good goddamn!” Covenant was at Linden's side. His hands gripped her shoulders, supporting her against the empathic force of the rupture. “I don't trust either of you. Don't you ever try anything like that again!”

The Elohim hardened, “I will do what I must. From the first, I have avowed that I will not suffer his purpose. The curse of Kastenessen will not impel me to that doom.”

Swirling into the form of a hawk, he flapped away through the treetops. Linden and Covenant were left amid the wreckage.

Vain stood before them as if nothing had happened.

For a moment longer, the ache of the tree kept Linden motionless. But by degrees Andelain closed around the destruction, pouring health back into the air she breathed, spreading green vitality up from the grass, loosening the knotted echo of pain. Slowly, her head cleared. Sweet Christ, she mumbled to herself. I wasn't ready for that.

Covenant repeated her name; his concern reached her through his numb fingers. She steadied herself on the undergirding bones of the Hills and nodded to him. “I'm all right.” She sounded wan; but Andelain continued to lave her in its balm. Drawing a deep breath, she pulled herself back to her feet.

Across the greensward, the sunshine lay like sorrow among the trees and shrubs, aliantha and flowers. But the shock of violence was over. Already, the distant hillsides had begun to smile again. The brook resumed its damp chuckle as though the interruption had been forgotten. Only the riven trunk went on weeping while the tree died, too sorely hurt to keep itself alive.

“The old Lords- ” Covenant murmured, more to himself than to her. “Some of them could've healed this.”

So could I, Linden nearly replied aloud. If I had your ring. I could save it all. But she bit down the thought, hoped it did not show in her face. She did not trust her intense desire for power. The power to put a stop to evil.

However, he lacked the sight to read her emotions. His own grief and outrage blinded him. When he touched her arm and gestured onward, she leaped the brook with him; and together they continued among the Hills.

Unmarred except by the dead wood of his right forearm, Vain followed them. His midnight countenance held no expression other than the habitual ambiguity of his slight grin.

The day would have been one of untrammelled loveliness for Linden if she could have forgotten Findail and the Demondim-spawn. As she and Covenant left the vicinity of the shattered oak, Andelain reasserted all its beneficent mansuetude, the gay opulence of its verdure, the tuneful sweep and soar and flash of its birds, the endearing caution and abundance of its wildlife. Nourished by treasure-berries and rill-water, and blandished from stride to stride by the springy surf, she felt crowded with life, as piquant as the scents of the flowers, and keen for each new vista of the Andelainian Hills. After a time, the First and Pitchwife rejoined Linden and Covenant, appearing from the covert of an antique willow with leaves in their hair and secrets in their eyes. For greeting, Pitchwife gave a roistering laugh that sounded like his old humour; and it was seconded by one of his wife's rare, beautiful smiles.

“Look at you,” Linden replied in mock censure, leasing the Giants. “For shame. If you keep that up, you're going to become parents whether you're ready for it or not.”

A shade like a blush touched the First's mien; but Pitchwife responded with a crow. Then he assumed an air of dismay. “Stone and Sea forfend! The child of this woman would surely emerge bladed and bucklered from the very womb. Such a prodigy must not be blithely conceived,”

The First frowned to conceal her mirth. “Hush, husband,” she murmured. “Provoke me not. Does it not suffice you that one of us is entirely mad?”

“Suffice me?” he riposted. “How should it suffice me? I have no wish for loneliness.”

“Aye, and none for wisdom or decorum,” she growled in feigned vexation. “You are indeed shameful.”

When Covenant grinned at the jesting of the Giants, Linden nearly laughed aloud for pleasure.

Yet she did not know where Findail had gone or what he would do next. And the death of the oak remained aching in the back of her mind. Ballasted by such things, her mood did not altogether lose itself in the analystic atmosphere. There was a price yet to be paid for the passing of the Forestal, and the destination of the company had not changed. In addition, she had no clear sense of what Covenant hoped to achieve by confronting the Despiser. Caer-Caveral had once said of her. The woman of your world would raise grim shades here. She relished Pitchwife's return to glee, enjoyed the new lightness which the badinage of the Giants produced in Covenant. But she did not forget.

As evening settled around Andelain, she experienced a faint shiver of trepidation. At night the Dead walked the Hills. All of Covenant's olden friends, lambent with meanings and memories she could not share. The woman he had raped. And the daughter of that rape, who had loved him-and had broken the Law of Death in his name, trying as madly as hate to spare him from his harsh doom. She was loath to meet those potent revenants. They were the men and women who had shaped the past, and she had no place among them.

Under a stately Gilden, the company halted. A nearby stream with a bed of fine sand provided water for washing. Aliantha were plentiful. The deep grass cushioned the ground comfortably. And Pitchwife was a wellspring of good cheer, of diamondraught and tales. While the satin gloaming slowly folded itself away, leaving Linden and her companions uncovered to the darkness and the hushed stars, he described the long Giantclave and testing by which the Giants of Home had determined to send out the Search and had selected his wife to lead it. He related her feats as if they were stupendous, teasing her with her prowess. But now his voice held a hidden touch of fever, a suggestion of effort which hinted at his more fundamental distress. Andelain restored his heart; but it could not heal his recollection of Revelstone and gratuitous bloodshed, could not cure his need for a better outcome. After a time, he lapsed into silence; and Linden felt the air of the camp growing tense with anticipation.

Across the turf, fireflies winked and wandered uncertainly, as if they were searching for the Forestal's music. But eventually they went away. The company settled into a vigil. The mood Covenant emitted was raw with fatigue and hunger. He, too, appeared to fear his Dead as much as he desired them.

Then the First broke the silence. “These Dead,” she began thoughtfully. “I comprehend that they are held apart from their deserved rest by the breaking of the Law of Death. But why do they gather here, where all other Law endures? And what impels them to accost the living?”

“Companionship,” murmured Covenant, his thoughts elsewhere. “Or maybe the health of Andelain gives them something as good as rest.” His voice carried a distant pang; he also had been left forlorn by the loss of Caer-Caveral's song. “Maybe they just haven't been able to stop loving.”

Linden roused herself to ask, "Then why are they so cryptic? They haven't given you anything except hints and mystification. Why don't they come right out and tell you what you need to know?”

“Ah, that is plain to me,” Pitchwife replied on Covenant's behalf. “Unearned knowledge is perilous. Only by the seeking and gaining of it may its uses be understood, its true worth measured. Had Gossamer Glowlimn my wife been mystically granted the skill and power of her blade without training or test or experience, by what means could she then choose where to strike her blows, how extremely to put forth her strength? Unearned knowledge rules its wielder, to the cost of both.”

But Covenant had his own answer. When Pitchwife finished. the Unbeliever said quietly, “They can't tell us what they know. We'd be terrified.” He was sitting with his back to the Gilden; and his fused resolve gave him no peace. “That's the worst part. They know how much we're going to be hurt. But if they tell us, where will we ever get the courage to face it? Sometimes ignorance is the only kind of bravery or at least willingness that does any good.”

He spoke as if he believed what he was saying. But the hardness of his tone seemed to imply that he had no ignorance left to relieve the prospect of his intent.

The Giants fell still, unable to deny his assertion or respond to it. The stars shone bleak rue around the scant sliver of the moon. The night grew intense among the Hills. Behind the comforting glow of its health and wholeness, Andelain grieved for the Forestal.

Terrified? Linden asked herself. Was Covenant's purpose as bad as that?

Yet she found it impossible to question him. Not here, with the Giants listening. His need for privacy was palpable to her.

And she was too restless to concentrate. She remained charged with the energy and abundance of the Hills; and the night seemed to breathe her name, urging her to walk off her nervous anticipation Covenant's Dead were nowhere in evidence. Within the range of her percipience lay only the fine slumber and beauty of the region.

A strange glee rose in her: she wanted to run and caracole under the slight moon, tumble and roll and tumble again down the lush hillsides, immerse herself in Andelain's immaculate dark. Perhaps a solitary gambol would act as an anodyne for the other blackness which the Sunbane had nourished in her veins.

Abruptly, she sprang to her feet. “I'll be back,” she said without meeting the eyes of her companions. “Andelain is too exciting. I need to see more of it.”

The Hills murmured to her, and she answered, sprinting away from the Gilden southward with all the gay speed of her legs.

Behind her, Pitchwife had taken up his flute. At once broken, piercing, and sweet, its awkward tones followed her as she ran. They carried around her like the ghost limbs of the trees, the crouching midnight of the bushes, the unmoonlit loom and pause of the shadows. He was trying to play the song which had streamed so richly from Caer-Caveral.

For a moment, he caught it-or almost caught it-and it went through her like loss and exaltation. Then she seemed to outrun it as she passed over a rise and sped downward again, deeper into the occult night of the Andelainian Hills.

The Forestal had said that she would raise grim shades here; and she thought of her father and mother. Unintentionally, without knowing what they were doing, they had bred her for suicide or murder. But now she defied them. Come on! she panted up at the stars. I dare you! For good or ill, healing or destruction, she had become stronger than her parents. The passion surging in her could not be named or confined by the harsh terms of her inheritance. She taunted her memories, challenging them to appear before her. But they did not.

And because they did not, she ran on, as heedless as a child-altogether unready for the door of might which opened suddenly against her, slapping her to the ground as if she were not strong or real enough to be noticed by the old puissance emerging from it.

A door like a gap in the first substance of the night, as abrupt and stunning as a detonation, and as tall as the heavens. It opened so that the man could stride through it. Then it closed behind him.

Her face was thrust into the grass. She fought for breath, strove to raise her head. But the sheer force of the presence towering over her crushed her prostrate. His bitter outrage seemed to fall on her like the wreckage of a mountain. Beneath his ire, he was so poignant with ruin, so extreme in the ancient and undiminished apotheosis of his despair, that she would have wept for him if she had been able. But his tremendous wrath daunted her, turned her vulnerability against herself. She could not lever her face out of the turf to look at him.

He felt transcendently tall and powerful. For an instant, she believed that he could not be aware of her, that she was too small for his notice. Surely he would pass by her and go about his fell business. But almost immediately her hope failed. His regard lit between her shoulder-blades like the point of a spear.

Then he spoke. His voice was as desolate as the Land under a desert sun, as twisted and torn as the ravages of a sun of pestilence. But anger gave it strength.

“Slayer of your own Dead, do you know me?”

No, she panted. No. Her fingers gouged into the loam as she struggled to shift her abject posture. He had no right to do this to her. Yet his glare impaled her, and she could not move.

He replied as if her resistance had no meaning:.

“I am Kevin. Son of Loric. High Lord of the Council. Founder of the Seven Wards. And enactor of the Land's Desecration by my own hand. I am Kevin Landwaster.”

In response, she was able to do nothing except groan. Dear God. Oh, dear God.

Kevin.

She knew who he was.

He had been the last High Lord of Berek's lineage, the last direct inheritor of the Staff of Law. The wonder and munificence of his reign in Revelstone had won the service of the Bloodguard, confirmed the friendship of the Giants, advanced the Council's dedication to the Earthpower, given beauty and purpose to all the Land. And he had failed. Tricked and defeated by the Despiser, he had proved himself unequal to the Land's defence. By his own mistakes, the object of his love and service had been doomed. And because he had understood that doom, be had fallen into despair.

Madly, he had conceived the ploy of the Ritual of Desecration, believing that Lord Foul would thereby be undone-that the price of centuries of devastation for the Land would purchase the Despiser's downfall. Therefore they had met in Kiril Threndor within the heart of Mount Thunder, mad Lord and malign foe. Together, they had set in motion the dire Ritual.

But in the end it was Kevin who fell while Lord Foul laughed. Desecration had no power to rid the world of Despite.

Yet that was not the whole tale of his woe. Misled by the confusion of her love and hate, the later High Lord, Elena, daughter of Lena and Covenant, had thought that the Landwaster's despair would be a source of irrefusable might; and so she had selected him for her breaking of the Law of Death, had rent him from his natural grave to hurl him in combat against the Despiser. But Lord Foul had turned the attempt against her. Both she and the Staff of Law had been lost; and Dead Kevin had been forced to serve his foe.

The only taste of relief he had been granted had come when Thomas Covenant and Saltheart Foamfollower had defeated the Despiser.

But that victory was now three millennia past. The Sunbane was rampant upon the Land, and Lord Foul had found the path to triumph. Kevin's dismay and wrath poured from him in floods. His voice was as hard as a cable under terrific stress.

“We are kindred in our way-the victims and enactors of Despite. You must heed me. Do not credit that you may exercise choice here. The Land's need admits no choice. You must heed me. Must!”

The word hammered and echoed and pleaded through her. Must. He had not come to appal her, meant her no harm. Rather, he approached her because he had no other way to reach out among the living, exert himself against the Despiser's machinations.

Must.

She understood that. Her fingers relaxed their grasp on the grass; her senses submitted to his vehemence. Tell me what it is, she said as if she had no more need to choose. Tell me what I should do.

"You will not wish to heed me. The truth is harsh. You will seek to deny it. But it will not be denied. I have borne horror upon my head and am not blinded by the hope which refuses truth. You must heed me.”

Must.

Yes.

Tell me.

“Linden Avery, you must halt the Unbeliever's mad intent. His purpose is the work of Despite. As I have done before him, he seeks to destroy that which he loves. He must not be permitted.

“If no other means suffice, you must slay him.”

No! In a rush of trepidation, she strove against his power-and still she had no strength to raise her head. Slay him? Goaded by his gaze, her heart laboured. No! You don't understand. He wouldn't do that.

But his voice came down on her back like a fall of stone.

“No. It is you who do not understand. You have not yet learned to comprehend the cunning of despair. Can you think that I allowed my fellow Lords to guess my purpose when I had set my heart to the Ritual? Have you been granted the gift of such sight, and are you yet unable to see? When evil rises in its full power, it surpasses truth and may wear the guise of good without fear of discovery. In that way was I brought to my own doom.

“He walks the path which his friends among the Dead have conceived for him. But they also do not comprehend despair. They were redeemed from it by his brave mastery of the Despiser-and so they see hope where there is only Desecration. Their vision of evil is incomplete and false.”

He gathered force in the night, became as shattering as a shout of disaster.

“It is his intent to place the white ring into Lord Foul's hand.

“If you suffer him to succeed, the term of our grief will be slight, for all Earth and Time will be lost.

“You must halt him.”

Repeating until all the Hills replied, Must. Must.

After a moment, he left her. The door of his power closed behind him. But she did not notice his departure. For a long time, she went on staring blindly into the grass.

Sixteen: “Andelain! forgive!”

LATER, it started to rain.

Drizzling lightly, clouds covered the stars and the moon. The rain was as gentle as the touch of springtime, as clean and kind and sad as the spirit of the Hills. It fed the grass, blessed the flowers, garlanded the trees with droplets. In no way did it resemble the hysterical fury of the sun of rain.

Yet it closed the last light out of the world, leaving Linden in darkness.

She lay outstretched on the turf. All will and movement were gone from her. She had no wish to lift her head, to stir from her prostration. The crushing weight of what she had learned deprived her of the bare desire to breathe. Her eyes accepted the rain without blinking.

The drizzle made a quiet stippling noise on the leaves and grass, a delicate elegy. She thought that it would carry her away, that she would never be asked to move again. But bound like the chime of a small, perfect crystal. Its fine note conveyed mourning and pity.

When she looked up, she saw that Andelain was not altogether dark. A yellow light shed streaks of rain to the grass. It came like the chiming from a flame the size of her palm which bobbed in the air as if it burned from an invisible wick.

And the dancing fire sang to her, offering her the gift of its sorrow.

One of the Wraiths of Andelain.

At the sight, pain seized her heart, brought her to her feet. That such things would be destroyed! That Covenant meant to sacrifice even Wraiths and Andelain on the altar of his despair, let so much lorn and fragile beauty be ripped out of life! Instinctively, she knew why the flame had come to her.

“I'm lost in this rain,” she said. Outrage rose behind her clenched teeth. “Take me back to my people.”

The Wraith bobbed like a bow; perhaps it understood her. Dancing and guttering, it moved away through the drizzle. Droplets crossed its light like falling stars.

She followed it without hesitation. Darkness crowded around her and through her; but the flame remained clear.

It did not mislead her. In a short time, it guided her to the place where she had left her companions.

Under the Gilden, the Wraith played for a moment above the huge, sleeping forms of the First and Pitchwife. They were not natives of the Land; unappalled by personal revenants, they slumbered in the peace of the Hills.

The flitting flame limned Vain briefly, sparked the rain beading on his black perfection so that he seemed to wear an intaglio of glisters. His ebon orbs watched nothing, admitted nothing. His slight smile appeared to have no meaning.

But Covenant was not there.

The Wraith left her then as if it feared to go farther with her. It chimed away into the dark like a fading hope. Yet when her sight adjusted to the cloud-closed night, she caught a glimpse of what she sought. In a low hollow to the east lay a soft glow of pearl.

She moved in that direction, and the light became brighter.

It revealed Thomas Covenant standing among his Dead.

His wet shirt clung to his torso. Rain-dark hair straggled across his forehead. But he was oblivious to such things. And he did not see Linden coming. All of him was concentrated on the spectres of his past.

She knew them by the stories and descriptions she had heard of them. The Bloodguard Banner resembled Brinn too closely to be mistaken. The man in the grave and simple robe had dangerous eyes balanced by a crooked, humane mouth: High Lord Mhoram. The woman was similarly attired because she also was a former High Lord; and her lucid beauty was marred-or accentuated-by a prophetic wildness that echoed Covenant's: she was Elena, daughter of Lena. And the Giant with laughter and certainty and grief shining from his gaze was surely Saltheart Foamfollower.

The power they emanated should have abashed Covenant, though it was not on the same scale as Kevin's. But he had no percipience with which to taste their peril. Or perhaps his ruinous intent called that danger by another name. His whole body seemed to yearn toward them as if they had come to comfort him.

To shore up his resolve, so that he would not falter from the destruction of the Earth.

And why not? In that way they would be granted rest from the weary millennia of their vigil.

Must, Linden thought. The alternative was altogether terrible. Yes. Her clothes soaked, her hair damp and heavy against her neck, she strode down into the gathering; and her rage shaped the night Covenant's Dead were potent and determined. At one time, she would have been at their mercy. But now her passion dominated them all. They turned toward her and fell silent in mingled surprise, pain, refusal. Banner's face closed against her. Elena's was sharp with consternation. Mhoram and Foamfollower looked at her as if she cast their dreams into confusion.

But only Covenant spoke. “Linden!” he breathed thickly, like a man who had just been weeping. “You look awful. What's happened to you?”

She ignored him. Stalking through the drizzle, she went to confront his friends.

They shone a ghostly silver that transcended moonlight. The rain fell through their incorporeal forms. Yet their eyes were keen with the life which Andelain's Earthpower and the breaking of the Law of Death made possible for them. They stood in a loose arc before her. None of them quailed.

Behind her, Covenant's loss and love and incomprehension poured into the night But they did not touch her. Kevin had finally opened her eyes, enabled her to see what the man she loved had become.

She met the eyes of the Dead one by one. The flat blade of Mhoram's nose steered him between the extremes of his vulnerability and strength. Elena's eyes were wide with speculation, as if she were wondering what Covenant saw in Linden. Banner's visage wore the same dispassion with which Brinn had denounced her after the company's escape from Bhrathairealm. The soft smile that showed through Foamfollower's jutting beard underscored his concern and regret.

For a fraction of a moment. Linden nearly faltered. Foamfollower was the Pure One who had redeemed the jheherrin. He had once walked into lava to aid Covenant Elena had been driven into folly at least in part by her love for the man who had raped her mother. Banner had served the Unbeliever as faithfully as Brinn or Cail. And Mhoram-Linden and Covenant had embraced in his bed as if it were a haven.

But it had not been a haven. She had been wrong about that, and the truth appalled her. In her arms in Mhoram's bed Covenant had already decided on desecration-had already become certain of it. It is his intent to place the white ring into Lord Foul’s hand. After he had sworn that he would not, Anguish surged up in her. Her cry ripped fiercely across the rain.

“Why aren't you ashamed”

Then her passion began to blow like a high wind. She fanned it willingly, wanted to snuff out, punish, eradicate if she could the faces silver-lit and aghast in front of her.

“Have you been dead so long that you don't know what you're doing anymore? Can't you remember from one minute to me next what matters here? This is Andelain He's saved your souls at least once. And you want him to destroy it!

“You.” She jabbed accusations at Elena's mixed disdain and compassion. “Do you still think you love him? Are you that arrogant? What good have you ever done him? None of this would've happened if you hadn't been so eager to rule the dead as well as the living.”

Her denunciation pierced the former High Lord. Elena tried to reply, tried to defend herself; but no words came. She had broken the Law of Death. The blame of the Sunbane was as much hers as Covenant's. Stricken and grieving, she wavered, lost force, and went out. leaving a momentary afterglow of silver in the ram.

But Linden had already turned on Banner.

“And you, You with your bloody self-righteousness. You promised him service. Is that what you call this? Your people are sitting on their hands in Revelstone when they should be here! Hollian was killed because they didn't come with us to fight those ur-viles. Caer-Caveral is dead and it's only a matter of time before Andelain starts to rot. But never mind that. Aren't you satisfied with letting Kevin ruin the Land once?” She flung the back of her hand in Covenant's direction. “They should be here to slop him!”

Banner had no answer. He cast a glance like an appeal at Covenant; then he, too, faded away. Around the hollow, the darkness deepened.

Fuming, Linden swung toward FoamfoIIower.

“Linden, no,” Covenant grated. “Stop this.” He was close to fire. She could feel the burning in his veins. But his demand did not make her pause. He had no right to speak to her. His Dead had betrayed him-and now he meant to betray the Land.

“And you, Pure One! You at least I would've expected to care about him more than this. Didn't you learn anything from watching your people die, seeing that Raver rip their brains out? Do you think desecration is desirable?” The Giant flinched. Savagely, she went on, “You could've prevented this. If you hadn't given him Vain. If you hadn't tried to make him think you were giving him hope, when what you were really doing was teaching him to surrender. You've got him believing he can afford to give in because Vain or some other miracle is going to save the world anyway. Oh, you're Pure all right. Foul himself isn't that Pure.”

“Chosen-” FoamfoIIower murmured, “Linden Avery-” as if he wanted to plead with her and did not know how. “Ah, forgive-The Landwaster has afflicted you with this pain. He does not comprehend. The vision which he lacked in life is not supplied in death. The path before you is the way of hope and doom, but he perceives only the outcome of his own despair. You must remember that he has been made to serve the Despiser. The ill of such service darkens his spirit Covenant, hear me. Chosen, forgive!”

Shedding gleams in fragments, he disappeared into the dark.

“Damnation!” Covenant rasped. “Damnation!” But now his curses were not directed at Linden. He seemed to be swearing at himself. Or at Kevin.

Transported out of all restraint. Linden turned at last to Mhoram.

“And you,” she said, as quiet as venom. “You. They called you ‘seer and oracle.' That's what I've heard. Every time I turn around, he tells me he wishes you were with him. He values you more than anyone.” Her anger and grief were one, and she could not contain them. Fury that Covenant had been so misled; tearing me that he trusted her too little to share his burdens, that he preferred despair and destruction to any love or companionship which might ease his responsibilities. “You should have told him the truth.”

The Dead High Lord's eyes shone with silver tears yet he did not falter or vanish. The regret he emitted was not for himself: it was for her. And perhaps also for Covenant. An aching smile twisted his mouth. “Linden Avery”- he made her name sound curiously rough and gentle- “you gladden me. You are worthy of him. Never doubt that you may justly stand with him in the trial of all things. You have given sorrow to the Dead. But when they have bethought themselves of who you are, they will be likewise gladdened. Only this I urge of you: strive to remember that he also is worthy of you.”

Formally, he touched his palms to his forehead, then spread his arms wide in a bow that seemed to bare his heart. “My friends!” he said in a voice that rang, “I believe that you will prevail!”

Still bowing, he dissolved into the rain and was gone. Linden stared after him dumbly. Under the cool touch of the drizzle, she was suddenly hot with shame.

But then Covenant spoke. “You shouldn't have done that.” The effort he made to keep himself from howling constricted his voice. “They don't deserve it.”

ln response, Kevin's Must! shouted through her, leaving no room for remorse. Mhoram and the others belonged to Covenant's past, not hers. They had dedicated themselves to the ruin of everything for which she had ever learned to care. From the beginning, the breaking of the Law of Death had served only the Despiser. And it served him still.

She did not turn to Covenant. She feared that the mere shape of him, barely discernible through the dark, would make her weep like the Hills. Harshly, she replied, “That's why you did it, isn't it. Why you made the Haruchai stay behind. After what Kevin did to the Bloodguard, you knew they would try to stop you.”

She felt him strive for self mastery and fail. He had met his Dead with an acute and inextricable confusion of pain and Joy which made him vulnerable now to the cut of her passion. “You know better than that,” he returned. “What in hell did Kevin say to you?”

Bitter as the breath of winter, she rasped, “I'll never give him the ring. Never.” How many times do you think you said that? How many times did you promise-?” Abruptly, she swung around, her arms raised to strike out at him or toward him away. “You incredible bastard!” She could not see him, but her senses picked him precisely out of the dark. He was as rigid and obdurate as an icon of purpose carved of raw granite hurt. She had to rage at him in order to keep herself from crying out in anguish. “Next to you, my father was a hero. At least he didn't plan to kill anybody but himself.” Black echoes hosted around her, making the night heinous. “Haven't you even got the guts to go on living?”

“Linden.” She felt intensely how she pained him, how every word she spat hit him like a gout of vitriol. Yet instead of fighting her he strove for some comprehension of what had happened to her. “What did Kevin say to you?”

But she took no account of his distress. He meant to betray her. Well, that was condign: what had she ever done to deserve otherwise? But his purpose would also destroy the Earth-a world which in spite of all corruption and malice still nurtured Andelain at its heart, still treasured Earthpower and beauty. Because he had given up. He had walked into the Banefire as if he knew what he was doing-and he had let the towering evil burn the last love out of him. Only pretence and mockery were left.

“You've been listening to Findail,” she flung at him. “He's convinced you it's better to put the Land out of its misery than to go on fighting. I was terrified to tell you about my mother because I thought you were going to hate me. But this is worse. If you hated me, I could at least hope you might go on fighting.”

Then sobs thronged up in her. She barely held them back.

“You mean everything to me. You made me live again when I might as well have been dead. You convinced me to keep trying. But you've decided to give up.” The truth was as plain as the apprehension which etched him out of the wet dark. “You're going to give Foul your ring.”

At that, a stinging pang burst from him. But it was not denial. She read it exactly. It was fear. Fear of her recognition. Fear of what she might do with the knowledge.

“Don't say it like that,” he whispered. “You don't understand.” He appeared to be groping for some name with which to conjure her, to compel acquiescence-or at least an abeyance of judgment “You said you trusted me.”

“You're right,” she answered, grieving and weeping and raging all at once. “I don't understand.”

She could not bear any more. Whirling from him, she fled into the rain. He cried after her as if something within him were being torn apart; but she did not stop.

Sometime in the middle of the night, the drizzle took on the full force of a summer storm. A cold, hard downpour pelted the Hills; wind sawed at the boughs and brush. But Linden did not seek shelter. She did not want to be protected Covenant had already taken her too far down that road, warded her too much from. the truth. Perhaps he feared her-was ashamed of what he meant to do and so sought to conceal it. But during the dark night of Andelain she did him the justice of acknowledging that he had also tried to protect her for her own sake-first from involvement in Joan's distress and the Land's need, then from the impact of Lord Foul's evil, then from the necessary logic of his death. And now from the implications of his despair. So that she would be free of blame for the loss of the Earth.

She did him that justice. But she hated it. He was a classic case: people who had decided on suicide and had no wish to be saved typically became calm and certain before taking their lives. Sheer pity for him would have broken her heart if she had been less angry.

Her own position would have been simpler if she could have believed him evil. Or if she had been sure that he had lost his mind. Then her only responsibility would have been to stop him at whatever cost. But the most terrible aspect of her dilemma was that his fused certainty betrayed neither madness nor malice to her health-sense. In the grip of an intent which was clearly insane or malign, he appeared more than ever to be the same strong, dangerous, and indomitable man with whom she had first fallen in love. She had never been able to refuse him.

Yet Kevin had loved the Land as much as anyone, and his protest beat at her like the storm. When evil rises in its full power, it surpasses truth and may wear the guise of good without fear-

Evil or crazy. Unless she fought her way into him, wrestled his deepest self-conceptions away from him and looked at them, she had no way to tell the difference.

But once before when she had entered him, trying to bring him back from the silence imposed on his spirit by the Elohim he had appeared to her in the form of Marid-an innocent man made monstrous by a Raver and the Sunbane. A tool for the Despiser.

Therefore she fled him, hastened shivering and desperate among the Hills. She could not learn the truth without possessing him. And possession itself was evil. It was a kind of killing, a form of death. She had already sacrificed her mother to the darkness of her unhealed avarice for the power of death.

She did not seek shelter because she did not want it. She fled from Covenant because she feared what a confrontation with him would entail. And she kept on walking while the storm blew and rushed around her because she had no alternative. She was travelling eastward, toward the place where the sun would rise-toward the high crouched shoulders and crown of Mount Thunder.

Toward Lord Foul.

Her aim was as grim as lunacy-yet what else could she do? What else but strive to meet and outface the Despiser before Covenant arrived at his crisis? There was no other way to save him without possessing him— without exposing herself and him and the Land to the hot ache of her capacity for blackness.

That's right, she thought. I can do it I've earned it.

She knew she was lying to herself. The Despiser would be hideously stronger than any Raver; and she had barely survived the simple proximity of samadhi Sheol. Yet she persisted. In spite of the night, and of the storm which sealed away the moon and the stars, she saw as clearly as vision that her past life was like the Land, a terrain possessed by corruption. She had let the legacy of her parents denude her of ordinary health and growth, had allowed a dark desire to rule her days like a Raver. In a sense, she had been possessed by hate from the moment when her father had said to her, You never loved me anyway — a hatred of life as well as of death. But then Covenant had come into her existence as he had into the Land, changing everything. He did not deserve despair. And she had the right to confront the Despite which had warped her, quenched her capacity for love, cut her off from the vitality of living. The right and the necessity.

Throughout the night, she went on eastward. Gradually, the storm abated, sank back to a drizzle and then blew away, unveiling a sky so star-bedizened and poignant that it seemed to have been washed clean. The slim curve of the moon setting almost directly behind her told her that her path was true. The air was cold on her sodden clothes and wet skin; her hair shed water like shivers down her back. But Andelain sustained her. Opulent under the unfathomable heavens, it made all things possible. Her heart lifted against its burdens. She kept on walking.

But when she crossed a ridge and met the first clear sight of the sunrise, she stopped-frozen in horror. The slopes and trees were heavy with raindrops; and each bead caught the light in its core, echoing back a tiny piece of daybreak to the sun, so that all the grass and woods were laced with gleams.

Yellow gleams fatally tinged by vermilion.

The sun wore a halo of pestilence as the Sunbane rose over the Hills.

It was so faint that only her sight could have discerned it. But it was there. The rapine of the Land's last beauty had begun.

For a long moment, she remained still, surprised into her old paralysis by the unexpected swiftness with which the Sunbane attacked Andelain's residual Law. She had no power. There was nothing she could do. But her heart scrambled for defences-and found one. Her friends lacked her Land-bred senses. They would not see the Sunbane rising toward them; and so the Giants would not seek stone to protect themselves, "Andelain! forgive!”

They would be transformed like Marid into creatures of destruction and self-loathing.

She had left them leagues behind, could not possibly return to warn them in time. But she had to try. They needed her.

Abandoning all other intents, she launched herself in a desperate run back the way she had come.

The valley below the ridge was still deep in shadow. She was racing frenetically, and her eyes were slow to adjust Before she was halfway down the hillside, she nearly collided with Vain.

He seemed to loom out of the crepuscular air without transition, translated instantly across the leagues. But as she reeled away from him, staggered for balance, she realised that he must have been trailing her all night, Her attention had been so focused on her thoughts and Andelain that she had not felt his presence.

Behind him in the bottom of the valley were Covenant, the First, and Pitchwife. They were following the Demondim-spawn.

After two nights without rest Covenant looked haggard and febrile. But determination glared from his strides. He would not have stopped to save his life-not with Linden travelling ahead of him into peril. He did not look like the kind of man who could submit to despair.

But she had no time to consider his contradictions. The sun was rising above the ridge. “The Sunbane! she cried. “It's here! Find stone!”

Covenant did not react. He appeared too weary to grasp anything except that he had found her again. Pitchwife stared dismay at the ridgecrest But the First immediately began to scan the valley for any kind of rock.

Linden pointed, and the First saw it: a small, hoary outcropping of boulders near the base of the slope some distance away. At once, she grabbed her husband by the arm and pulled him at a run in that direction.

Linden glanced toward the sun, saw that the Giants would reach the stones with a few moments to spare.

In reaction, all her strength seemed to wash out of her Covenant was coming toward her, and she did not know how to face him. Wearily, she slumped to the grass. Everything she had tried to define for herself during the night had been lost. Now she would have to bear his company again, would have to live in the constant presence of his wild purpose. The Sunbane was rising in Andelain for the first time-She covered her face to conceal her tears.

He halted in front of her. For a moment, she feared that he would be foolish enough to sit down. But he remained standing so that his boots would ward him against the sun. He radiated fatigue, lamentation, and obduracy.

Stiffly, he said, “Kevin doesn't understand. I have no intention of doing what he did. He raised his own hand against the Land. Foul didn't enact the Ritual of Desecration alone. He only shared it. I've already told you I'm never going to use power again. Whatever happens, I'm not going to be the one who destroys what I love.”

“What difference does that make?” Her bitterness was of no use to her. All the severity with which she had once endured the world was gone and refused to be conjured back. “You're giving up. Never mind the Land. There're still three of us left who want to save it. We'll think of something. But you're abandoning yourself.” Do you expect me to forgive you for that?

“No.” Protest made his tone ragged. “I'm not. There's just nothing left I can do for you anymore. And I can't help the Land. Foul took care of that long before I ever got here.” His gall was something she could understand. But the conclusion he drew from it made no sense. “I'm doing this for myself. He thinks the ring will give him what he wants. I know better. After what I've been through, I know better. He's wrong.”

His certainty made him impossible to refute. The only arguments she knew were the ones she had once used to her father, and they had always failed. They had been swallowed in darkness-in self pity grown to malice and hosting forth to devour her spirit. No argument would suffice.

Vaguely, she wondered what account of her flight he had given the Giants.

But to herself she swore, I'm going to stop you. Somehow. No evil was as great as the ill of his surrender. The Sunbane had risen into Andelain. It could never be forgiven.

Somehow.

Later that day, as the company wended eastward among the Hills, Linden took an opportunity to drift away from Covenant and the First with Pitchwife. The malformed Giant was deeply troubled. His grotesque features appeared aggrieved, as if he had lost the essential cheer which preserved his visage from ugliness. Yet he was plainly reluctant to speak of his distress. At first, she thought that this reluctance arose from a new distrust of her. But as she studied him, she saw that his mood was not so simple.

She did not want to aggravate his unhappiness. But he had often shown himself willing to be pained on behalf of his friends. And her need was exigent Covenant meant to give the Despiser his ring.

Softly, so that she would not be overheard, she breathed, “Pitchwife, help me. Please.”

She was prepared for the dismal tone of his reply, but not for its import. “There is no help,” he answered. “She will not question him.”

“She-?” Linden began, then caught herself. Carefully, she asked, “What did he say to you?”

For an aching moment, Pitchwife was still. Linden forced herself to give him time. He would not look at her. His gaze wandered the Hills morosely, as if already they had lost their lustre. Without her senses, he could not see that Andelain had not yet been damaged Ay the Sunbane. Then, sighing, he mustered words out of his gloom.

“Rousing us from sleep to hasten in your pursuit, he announced your belief that it is now his intent to destroy the Land. And Gossamer GIowlimn my wife will not question him.

“I acknowledge that he is the Earthfriend-worthy of all trust But have you not again and again proven yourself alike deserving? You are the Chosen, and for the mystery of your place among us we have been accorded no insight. Yet the Elohim have named you Sun-Sage. You alone possess the sight which proffers hope of healing. Repeatedly the burdens of our Search have fallen to you-and you have borne them well. I will not believe that you who have wrought so much restoration among the Giants and the victims of the Clave have become in the space of one night mad or cruel. And you have withdrawn trust from him. This is grave in all sooth. It must be questioned. But she is the First of the Search. She forbids.

“Chosen-” His voice was full of innominate pleading, as if he wanted something from her and did not know what it was. “It is her word that we have no other hope than him. If he has become untrue, then all is lost. Does he not hold the white ring? Therefore we must preserve our faith in him-and be still. Should he find himself poised on the blade-edge of his doom, we must not over-push him with our doubt.

“But if he must not be called to an accounting, what decency or justice will permit you to be questioned? I will not do it, though the lack of this story is grievous. If you are not to be equally trusted, you must at least be equally left in silence.”

Linden did not know how to respond. She was distressed by his troubled condition, gratified by his fairness, and incensed by the First's attitude. Yet would she not have taken the same position in the Swordmain's place? If Kevin Landwaster had spoken to someone else, would she not have been proud to repose her confidence in the Unbeliever? But that recognition only left her all the more alone. She had no right to try to persuade Pitchwife to her cause. Both he and his wife deserved' better than that she should attempt to turn them against each other-or against Covenant. And yet she had no way to test or affirm her own sanity except by direct opposition to him.

Even in his fixed weariness and determination, he was so dear to her that she could hardly endure the acuity of her desire for him.

A fatigue and defeat of her own made her stumble over the uneven turf. But she refused the solace of Pitchwife's support. Wanly, she asked him, “What are you going to do?”

“Naught,” he replied. “I am capable of naught.” His empathy for her made him acidulous. “I have no sight to equal yours. Before the truth becomes plain to me, the time for all necessary doing will have come and gone. That which requires to be done, you must do.” He paused; and she thought that he was finished, that their comradeship had come to an end. But then he gritted softly through his teeth, “Yet I say this. Chosen. You it was who obtained Vain Demondim-spawn's escape from the snares of Elemesnedene. You it was who made possible our deliverance from the Sandhold. You it was who procured safety for all but Cable Seadreamer from the Worm of the World's End, when the Earthfriend himself had fallen nigh to ruin. And you it was who found means to extinguish the Banefire. Your worth is manifold and certain.

“The First will choose as she wishes. I will give you my life, if you ask it of me.”

Linden heard him. After a while, she said simply, “Thanks.” No words were adequate. In spite of his own baffled distress, he had given her what she needed.

They walked on together in silence.

The next morning, the sun's red aura was distinct enough for all the company to see.

Linden's open nerves searched the Hills, probing Andelain's reaction to the Sunbane. At first, she found none. The air had its same piquant savour, commingled of flowers and dew and tree sap. Aliantha abounded on the hillsides. No discernible ill gnawed at the wood of the nearby Gildens and willows. And the birds and animals that flitted or scurried into view and away again were not suffering from any wrong. The Earthpower treasured in the heart of the region still withstood the pressure of corruption.

But by noon that was no longer true. Pangs of pain began t to run up the tree trunks, aching in the veins of the leaves. The birds seemed to become frantic as the numbers of insects increased; but the woodland creatures 'had grown frightened and gone into hiding. The tips of the grass blades turned brown; some of the shrubs showed signs of blight. A distant fetor came slowly along the breeze. And the ground began to give off faint, emotional tremors-an intangible quivering which no one but Linden felt. It made the soles of her feet hurt in her shoes.

Muttering curses Covenant stalked on angrily eastward. In spite of her distrust, Linden saw that his rage for Andelain was genuine. He pushed himself past the limits of his strength to hasten his traversal of the Hills, his progress toward the crisis of the Despiser. The Sunbane welded him to his purpose. Linden kept up with him doggedly, determined not to let him get ahead of her. She understood his fury, shared it: in this place, the red sun was atrocious, intolerable. But his ire made him appear capable of any madness which might put an end to Andelain's hurt, for good or ill.

Dourly, the Giants accompanied their friends Covenant's best pace was not arduous for Pitchwife; the First could have travelled much faster. And her features were sharp with desire for more speed, for a termination to the Search, so that the question which had come between her and her husband would be answered and finished. The difficulty of restraining herself to Covenant's short strides was obvious in her. While the company paced through the day, she held herself grimly silent Her mother had died in childbirth; her father, in the Soulbiter. She bore herself as if she did not want to admit how important Pitchwife's warmth had become, to her.

For that reason, Linden felt a strange, unspoken kinship toward the First. She found it impossible to resent the Swordmain's attitude. And she swore to herself that she would never ask Pitchwife to keep his promise.

Vain strode blankly behind the companions. But of Findail there was no sign. She watched for him at intervals, but he did not reappear.

That evening Covenant slept for barely half the night; then he went on his way again as if he were trying to steal ahead of his friends. But somehow through her weary slumber Linden felt him leave. She roused herself, called the Giants up from the faintly throbbing turf, and went after him.

Sunrise brought an aura of fertility to the dawn and a soughing rustle like a whisper of dread to the trees and brush. Linden felt the leaves whimpering on their boughs, the greensward aching plaintively. Soon the Hills would be reduced to the victimized helplessness of the rest of the Land. They would be scourged to wild growth, desiccated to ruin, afflicted with rot, pummelled by torrents. And that thought made her as fierce as Covenant, enabled her to keep up with him while he exhausted himself. Yet the mute pain of green and tree was not the worst effect of the Sunbane. Her senses had been scoured to raw sensitivity: she knew that beneath the sod, under the roots of the woods, the fever Of Andelain's bones had become so argute that it was almost physical. A nausea of revulsion was rising into the Earthpower of the Hills. It made her guts tremble as if she were walking across an open wound.

By degrees Covenant's pace became laboured. Andelain no longer sustained him. More and more of its waning strength went to ward off the corruption of the Sunbane. As a result, the fertile sun had little superficial effect A few trees groaned taller, grew twisted with hurt; some of the shrubs raised their branches like limbs of desecration. All the birds and animals seemed to have fled. But most of the woods and grass were preserved by the power of the soil in which they grew. Aliantha clung stubbornly to themselves, as they had for centuries. Only the analystic refulgence of the Hills was gone-only the emanation of superb and concentrated health-only the exquisite vitality.

However, the sickness in the underlying rock and dirt mounted without cessation. That night, Covenant slept the sleep of exhaustion and diamondraught. But for a long time Linden could not rest, despite her own fatigue. Whenever she laid her head to the grass, she heard the ground grinding its teeth against a backdrop of slow moans and futile outrage.

Well before dawn, she and her companions arose and went on. She felt now that they were racing the dissolution of the Hills.

That morning, they caught their first glimpse of Mount Thunder.

It was still at least a day away. But it stood stark and fearsome above Andelain, with the sun leering past its shoulder and a furze of unnatural vegetation darkening its slopes. From this distance, it looked like a titan that had been beaten to its knees.

Somewhere inside that mountain Covenant intended to find Lord Foul.

He turned to Linden and the Giants, his eyes red-rimmed and flagrant Words yearned m him, but he seemed unable to utter them. She had thought him incognisant of the Giants’ disconsolation, offended by her own intransigent refusal; but she saw now that he was not. He understood her only too well. A fierce and recalcitrant part of him felt as she did, fought like loathing against his annealed purpose. He did not want to die, did not want to lose her or the Land. And he had withheld any explanation of himself from the Giants so that they would not side with him against her. So that she would not be altogether alone.

He wished to say all those things. They were plain to her aggrieved senses. But his throat closed on them like a fist, would not let them out.

She might have reached out to him then. Without altering any of her promises, she could have put her love around him. But horror swelled in the ground on which they stood, and it snatched her attention away from him.

Abhorrence. Execration. Sunbane and Earthpower locked in mortal combat beneath her feet. And the Earthpower could not win. No Law defended it Corruption was going to tear the heart out of the Hills. The ground had become so unstable that the Giants and Covenant felt its tremors.

“Dear Christ!” Linden gasped. She grabbed at Covenant's arm. “Come on!” With all her strength, she pulled him away from the focus of Andelain's horror.

The Giants were aghast with incomprehension; but they followed her. Together, the companions began to run.

A moment later, the grass where they had been standing erupted.

Buried boulders shattered. A large section of the greensward was shredded; stone-shards and dirt slashed into the sky. The violence which broke the Earthpower in that place sent a shock throughout the region, gouged a pit in the body of the ground. Remnants of ruined beauty rained everywhere.

And from the naked walls of the pit came squirming and clawing the sick, wild verdure of the fertile sun. Monstrous as murder, a throng of ivy teemed upward to spread its pall over the ravaged turf.

In the distance, another eruption boomed. Linden felt it like a wail through the ground. Piece by piece, the life of Andelain was being torn up by the roots.

“Bastard!” Covenant raged. “Oh, you bastard! You've crippled everything else. Aren't you content?”

Turning, he plunged eastward as if he meant to launch himself at the Despiser's throat.

Linden kept up with him. Pain belaboured her senses. She could not speak because she was weeping.

Seventeen: Into the Wightwarrens

EARLY the next morning, the company climbed into the foothills of Mount Thunder near the constricted rush of the Soulsease River Covenant was gaunt with fatigue, his gaze as grey as ash. Linden's eyes burned like fever in their sockets; strain throbbed through the bones of her skull. Even the Giants were tired. They had only stopped to rest in snatches during the night The First's lips were the colour of her fingers clinching the hilt of her sword. Pitchwife's visage looked like it was being torn apart. Yet the four of them were united by their urgency. They attacked the lower slopes as if they were racing the sun which rose behind me fatal bulk of the mountain.

A desert sun.

Parts of Andelain had already become as blasted and ruinous as a battlefield.

The Hills still clung to the life which had made them lovely. While it lasted, Caer-CaveraI's nurture had been complete and fundamental. The Sunbane could not simply flush all health from the ground in so few days. But the dusty sunlight reaching past the shoulders of Mount Thunder revealed that around the fringes of Andelain-and in places across its heart-the damage was already severe.

The vegetation of those regions had been ripped up, riven, effaced by hideous eruptions. Their ground was cratered and pitted like the ravages of an immedicable disease. The previous day, the remnants of those woods had been overgrown and strangled by the Sunbane's feral fecundity. But now, as the sun advanced on that verdure, every green and living thing slumped into viscid sludge which the desert drank away.

Linden gazed toward the Hills as if she, too, were dying. Nothing would ever remove the sting of that devastation from her heart. The sickness of the world soaked into her from the landscape outstretched and tormented before her. Andelain still fought for its life and survived. Much of it had not yet been hurt. Leagues of soft slopes and natural growth separated the craters, stood against the sun's arid rapine. But where the Sunbane had done its work the harm was as keen as anguish. If she had been granted the chance to save Andelain's health with her own life, she would have taken it as promptly as Covenant. Perhaps she, too, would have smiled.

She sat on a rock in a field of boulders that cluttered the slope too thickly to admit vegetation. Panting as if his lungs were raw with ineffective outrage Covenant had stopped there to catch his breath. The Giants stood nearby. The First studied the west as if that scene of destruction would give her strength when the time came to wield her blade. But Pitchwife could not bear it He perched himself on a boulder with his back to the Andelainian Hills, His hands toyed with his flute, but he made no attempt to play it.

After a while Covenant rasped, “Broken- ” There was a slain sound in his voice, as if within him also something vital were perishing. “All that beauty- ” Perhaps during the night he had lost his mind, “Your very presence here empowers me to master you. The ill that you deem most terrible is upon you.” He was quoting Lord Foul; but he spoke as if the words were his. “There is despair laid up for you here-”

At once, the First turned to him. “Do not speak thus. It is false.”

He gave no sign that he had heard her, “It's not my fault,” he went on harshly. “I didn't do any of this. None of it But I'm the cause. Even when I don't do anything. It's all being done because of me. So I won't have any choice. Just by being alive, I break everything I love.” He scraped his fingers through the stubble of his beard; but his eyes continued staring at the waste of Andelain, haunted by it “You'd think I wanted this to happen.”

“No!” the First protested. “We hold no such conception. You must not doubt. It is doubt which weakens-doubt which corrupts. Therefore is this Despiser powerful. He does not doubt While you are certain, there is hope.” Her iron voice betrayed a note of fear. “This price will be exacted from him if you do not doubt!”

Covenant looked at her for a moment. Then he rose stiffly to his feet His muscles and his heart were knotted so tightly that Linden could not read him.

“That's wrong.” He spoke softly, in threat or appeal. “You need to doubt. Certainty is terrible. Let Foul have it. Doubt makes you human.” His gaze shifted toward Linden. It reached out to her like flame or beggary, the culmination and defeat of all his power in the Banefire. “You need every doubt you can find. I want you to doubt I'm hardly human anymore.”

Each flare and wince of his eyes contradicted itself. Stop me. Don't touch me. Doubt me. Doubt Kevin. Yes. No. Please.

Please.

His inchoate supplication drew her to him. He did not appear strong or dangerous now, but only needy, appalled by himself. Yet he was as irrefusable as ever. She touched her hand to his scruffy cheek; her arms hurt with the tenderness of her wish to hold him.

But she would not retreat from the commitments she had made, whatever their cost. Perhaps her years of medical training and self abnegation had been nothing more than a way of running away from death; but the simple logic of that flight had taken her in the direction of life, for others if not for herself. And in the marrow of her bones she had experienced both the Sunbane and Andelain. The choice between them was as clear as Covenant's pain.

She had no answer for his appeal. Instead, she gave him one of her own. “Don't force me to do that” Her love was naked in her eyes. “Don't give up.”

A spasm of grief or anger flinched across his face. His voice sank to a desert scraping in the back of his throat. “I wish I could make you understand.” He spoke flatly, all inflection burned away. “He's gone too far. He can't get away with this. Maybe he isn't really sane anymore. He isn't going to get what he wants.”

But his manner and his words held no comfort for her. He might as well have announced to the Giants and Vain and the ravaged world that he still intended to surrender his ring.

Yet he remained strong enough for his purpose, in spite of little food, less rest, and the suffering of Andelain. Dourly, be faced the First and Pitchwife again as if he expected questions or protests. But die Swordmain held herself stem. Her husband did not look up from his flute.

To their silence Covenant replied, “We need to go north for a while. Until we get to the river. That's our way into Mount Thunder.”

Sighing, Pitchwife gained his feet. He held his flute in both hands. His gaze was focused on nothing as he snapped the small instrument in half. With all his strength, he hurled the pieces toward the Hills.

Linden winced. An expostulation died on the Firsts lips.

Covenant's shoulders hunched.

As grim as a cripple, Pitchwife raised his eyes to the Unbeliever. “Heed me well,” he murmured clearly. “I doubt”

“Good!” Covenant rasped intensely. Then he started moving again, picking a path for himself among the boulders.

Linden followed with old cries beating against her heart Haven't you even got the guts to go on living? You never loved me anyway. But she knew as surely as vision that he did love her. She had no means by which to measure what had happened to him in the Banefire. And Gibbon’s voice answered her, taunting her with the truth. Are you not evil?

The foothills of Mount Thunder, ancient Gravin Threndor, were too rugged to bear much vegetation. And the light of the desert sun advanced rapidly past the peak now, wreaking dissolution on the ground's residual fertility. The company was hampered by strewn boulders and knuckled slopes, but not by the effects of the previous sun. Still the short journey toward the Soulsease was arduous. The sun's loathsome corruption seemed to parch away the last of Linden's strength. Heatwaves like precursors of hallucination tugged at the edges of her mind. A confrontation with the Despiser would at least put an end to this horror and rapine. One way or the other. As she panted at the hillsides, she found herself repeating the promise she had once made in Revelstone-the promise she had made and broken. Never. Never again. Whatever happened, she would not return to the Sunbane.

Because of her weakness Covenant's exhaustion, and the difficulty of the terrain, the company did not reach the vicinity of the River until mid-morning.

The way the hills baffled sound enabled her to catch a glimpse of the swift water before she heard it. Then she and her companions topped the last rise between them and the Soulsease; and the loud howl of its rush slapped at her. Narrowed by its stubborn granite channel, the river raced below her, white and writhing in despair toward its doom. And its doom towered over it, so massive and dire that the mountain filled all the east. Perhaps a league to Linden's right, the river flumed into the gullet of Mount Thunder and was swallowed away-ingested by the catacombs which mazed the hidden depths of the peak. When that water emerged again, on the Lower Land behind Gravin Threndor, it would be so polluted by the vileness of the Wightwarrens, so rank with the waste of charnels and breeding-dens, the spillage of forges and laboratories, the effluvium of corruption, that it would be called the Denies Course-the source of Sarangrave Flat's peril and perversion.

For a crazy moment. Linden thought Covenant meant to ride that extreme current into the mountain. But then he pointed toward the bank directly below him; and she saw that a roadway had been cut into the foothills at some height above the River. The River itself was declining: six days had passed since the last sun of rain; and the desert sun was rapidly drinking away the water which Andelain still provided. But the markings on the channel's sheer walls showed that the Soulsease virtually never reached as high as the roadway.

Along this road in ages past, armies had marched out of Mount Thunder to attack the Land. Much of the surface was ruinous, cracked and gouged by time and the severe alternation of the Sunbane, slick with spray; but it was still traversable. And it led straight into the dark belly of the mountain.

Covenant gestured toward the place where the walls rose like cliffs to meet the sides of Mount Thunder. He had to shout to make himself heard, and his voice was veined with stress. “That's Treacher's Gorge! Where Foul betrayed Kevin and the Council openly for the first time! Before they knew what he was! The war that broke Kevin's heart started there!”

The First scanned the thrashing River, the increasing constriction of the precipitate walls, then raised her voice through the roar. “Earthfriend, you have said that the passages of this mountain are a maze! How then may we discover the lurking place of the Despiser?”

“We won't have to!” His shout sounded feverish. He looked as tense and strict and avid as he had when Linden had first met him-when he had dammed the door of his house against her. “Once we get in there, all we have to do is wander around until we run into his defences. He’ll take care of the rest. The only trick is to stay alive until we get to him!”

Abruptly, he tamed to his companions. “You don't have to come! I’ll be safe. He won't do anything to me until he has me in front of him.” To Linden, he seemed to be saying the same things he had said on. Haven Farm, You don't know what's going on here. You couldn't possibly understand it. Go away. I don't need you. “You don't need to risk it”

But the First was not troubled by such memories. She replied promptly, “Of what worth is safety to us here? The Earth itself is at risk. Hazard is our chosen work. How will we bear the songs which our people will sing of us. if we do not hold true to the Search? We will not part from you.”

Covenant ducked his head as though he were ashamed or afraid. Perhaps he was remembering Saltheart Foamfollower. Yet his refusal or inability to meet Linden's. gaze indicated to her that she had not misread him. He was stilt vainly trying to protect her, spare her the consequences of her choices-consequences she did not know how to measure. And striving also to prevent her from interfering with what he meant to do.

But he did not expose himself to what she would say if he addressed her directly. Instead, he muttered, “Then let's get going.” The words were barely audible. “I don't know how much longer I can stand this.”

Nodding readily, me First at once moved ahead of him toward an erosion gully which angled down to the roadway. With one hand, she gripped the hilt of her longsword. Like her companions, she had lost too much in this quest. She was a warrior and wanted to measure out the price in blows.

Covenant followed her stiffly. The only strength left in his limbs was the stubbornness of his will.

Linden started after him, then turned back to Pitchwife. He still stood on the rim of the hill, gazing down into the Into the Wightwarrens River's rush as if it would carry his heart away. Though he was half again as tall as Linden, his deformed spine and grotesque features made him appear old and frail. His mute aching was as tangible as tears. Because of it, she put everything else aside for a moment.

“He was telling the truth about that, anyway. He doesn't need you to fight for him. Not anymore.” Pitchwife lifted his eyes like pleading to her. Fiercely, she went on, “And if he's wrong, I can stop him.” That also was true: the Sunbane and Ravers and Andelain's hurt had made her capable of it. “The First is the one who needs you. She can't beat Foul with just a sword-but she's likely to try. Don't let her get herself killed. Don't do that to yourself. Don't sacrifice her for me.”

His visage sharpened like a cry. His hands opened at his sides to show her and the desert sky that they were empty. Moisture blurred his gaze. For a moment, she feared he would say farewell to her; and hard grief clenched her throat But then a fragmentary smile changed the meaning of his face.

“Linden Avery,” he said clearly, “have I not affirmed and averred to all who would hear that you are well Chosen?”

Stooping toward her, he kissed her forehead. Then he hurried after the First and Covenant.

When she had wiped the tears from her cheeks, she followed him.

Vain trailed her with his habitual blankness. Yet she seemed to feel a hint of anticipation from him-an elusive tightening which he had not conveyed since the company had entered Elemesnedene.

Picking her way down the gully, she gained the rude shelf of the roadway and found her companions waiting for her. Pitchwife stood beside the First, reclaiming his place there; but both she and Covenant watched Linden. The First's regard was a compound of glad relief and uncertainty. She welcomed anything that eased her husband's unhappiness-but was unsure of its implications Covenant's attitude was simpler. Leaning close to Linden, he whispered against the background of the throttled River, “I don't know what you said to him. But thanks.”

She had no answer. Constantly, he foiled her expectations. When he appeared most destructive and unreachable, locked away in his deadly certainty, he showed flashes of poignant kindness, clear concern. Yet behind his empathy and courage lay his intended surrender, as indefeasible as despair. He contradicted himself at every turn. And how could she reply without telling him what she had promised?

But he did not appear to want an answer. Perhaps he understood her, knew that in her place he would have felt as she did. Or perhaps he was too weary and haunted to suffer questions or reconsider his purpose. He was starving for an end to his long pain. Almost immediately, he signalled his readiness to go on.

At once, the First started along the crude road toward the gullet of Mount Thunder.

With Pitchwife and then Vain behind her. Linden followed, stalking the stone, pursuing the Unbeliever to his crisis.

Below her, the Soulsease continued to shrink between its walls, consumed by the power of the Sunbane. The pitch of the rush changed as its roar softened toward sobbing. But she did not take her gaze from the backs of the First and Covenant, the rising sides of the gorge, the dark bulk of the mountain. Off that sun-ravaged crown had once come creatures of fire to rescue Thomas Covenant and the Lords from the armies of Drool Rockworm, the mad Cavewight. But those creatures had been called down by Law; and there was no more Law.

She had to concentrate to avoid the treachery of the road's surface. It was cracked and dangerous. Sections of the ledge were so tenuously held in place that her precipience felt them shift under her weight. Others had fallen into the Gorge long ago, leaving bitter scars where the road should have been. Only narrow rims remained to bear the company past the gaps. Linden feared them more on Covenant's behalf than on her own: his vertigo might make him fall. But he negotiated them without help, as if his fear of height were just one more part of himself that he had already given up. Only the strain burning in his muscles betrayed how close he came to panic.

Mount Thunder loomed into the sky. The desert sun scorched over the rocks, scouring them bare of spray. The noise of the Soulsease sounded increasingly like grief. In spite of her fatigue. Linden wanted to run-wanted to pitch herself into the mountain's darkness for no other reason than to get out from under the Sunbane. Out of daylight into the black catacombs, where so much power lurked and hungered.

Where no one else would be able to see what happened when the outer dark met the blackness within her and took possession.

She fought the logic of that outcome, wrestled to believe that she would find some other answer. But Covenant intended to give Lord Foul his ring. Where else could she find the force to stop him?

She had done the same thing once before, in a different way. Faced with her dying mother, the nightmare blackness had leaped up in her, taking command of her hands while her brain had detached itself to watch and wail. And the darkness had laughed like lust.

She had spent every day of every year of her adulthood fighting to suppress that avarice for death. But she knew of no other source from which she might obtain the sheer strength she would need to prevent Covenant from destruction.

And she had promised—

Treacher's Gorge narrowed and rose on either side. Mount Thunder vaulted above her like a tremendous cairn that marked the site of buried banes, immedicable despair. As the River's lamentation sank to a mere shout, the mountain opened its gullet in front of the company.

The First stopped there, glowering distrust into the tunnel that swallowed the Soulsease and the roadway. But she did not speak. Pitchwife unslung his diminished pack, took out his firepot and the last two fagots he had borne from Revelstone. One he slipped under his belt; the other he stirred into the firepot until the wood caught flame. The First took it from him, held it up as a torch. She drew her sword Covenant's visage wore a look of nausea or dread; but he did not hesitate. When the First nodded, he started forward.

Pitchwife quickly repacked his supplies. Together, he and Linden followed his wife and Covenant out of the Gorge and the desert sun.

Vain came after them like a piece of whetted midnight, acute and imminent.

Linden's immediate reaction was one of relief. The First's torch hardly lit the wall on her right, the curved ceiling above her. It shed no light into the chasm beside the roadway. But to her any dark felt kinder than the sunlight. The peak's clenched granite reduced the number of directions from which peril could come. And as Mount Thunder cut off the sky, she heard the sound of the Soulsease more precisely. The crevice drank the River like a plunge into the bowels of the mountain, carrying the water down to its defilement. Such things steadied her by requiring her to concentrate on them.

In a voice that echoed hoarsely, she warned her companions away from the increasing depth of the chasm. She sounded close to hysteria; but she believed she was not. The Giants had only two torches. The company would need her special senses for guidance. She would be able to be of use again.

But her relief was shortlived. She had gone no more than fifty paces down the tunnel when she felt the ledge behind her heave itself into rubble.

Pitchwife barked a warning. One of his long, arms swept her against the wall. The impact knocked the air from her lungs. For an instant while her head reeled, she saw Vain silhouetted against the daylight of the Gorge. He made no effort to save himself.

Thundering like havoc, the fragments of the roadway bore him down into the crevice.

Long tremors ran through the road, up the wall. Small stones rained from the ceiling, pelted after the Demondim-spawn like a scattering of hail. Linden's chest did not contain enough air to cry out his name.

Torchlight splayed across her and Pitchwife. He tugged her backward, kept her pressed to the wall. The First barred Covenant's way. Sternness locked her face. Sputtering flames reflected from his eyes. “Damnation,” he muttered. “Damnation!” Little breaths like gasps slipped past Linden's teeth.

The torch and the glow of day beyond the tunnel lit Findail as he melted out of the roadway, transforming himself from stone to flesh as easily as thought.

He appeared to have become leaner, worn away by pain. His cheeks were hollow. His yellow eyes had sunk into his skull; their sockets were as livid as bruises. He was rife with mortification or grief.

“You did that,” Linden panted. “You're still trying to kill him.”

He did not meet her gaze. The arrogance of his people was gone from him. “The wϋrd of the Elohim is strict and costly.” If he had raised his eyes to Linden's, she might have thought he was asking for understanding or acceptance. "How should it be otherwise? Are we not the heart of the Earth in all things? Yet those who remain in the bliss and blessing of Elemesnedene have been misled by their comfort Because the clachan is our home, we have considered that all questions may be answered there. Yet it is not in Elemesnedene that the truth lies, but rather in we who people the place. And we have mistaken our wϋrd. Because we are the heart, we have conceived that whatever we will must perforce transcend all else.

“Therefore we do not question our withdrawal from the wide Earth. We contemplate all else, yet give no name to what we fear.”

Then he did look up; and his voice took on the anger of self justification. “But I have witnessed that fear. Chant and others have fallen to it. Infelice herself knows its touch. And I have participated in the binding to doom of the Appointed. I have felt the curse of Kastenessen upon my head.” He was ashamed of what he had done to Vain-and determined not to regret it “You have taught me to esteem you. You bear the outcome of the Earth well. But my peril is thereby increased.

“I will not suffer that cost.”

Folding his arms across his chest, he closed himself off from interrogation.

In bafflement Covenant turned to Linden. But she had no explanation to offer. Her percipience had never been a match for the Elohim. She had caught no glimpse of Findail until; he emerged from the roadway, still knew nothing about him except that he was Earthpower incarnate, capable of taking any form of life he wished. Altogether flexible. And dangerously unbound by scruple. His people had not hesitated to efface Covenant's mind for their own inhuman reasons. More than once, he had abandoned her and her companions to death when he could have aided them.

His refusals seemed innumerable; and the memory of them made her bitter. The pain of the tree he had slaughtered in his last attempt on Vain's life came back to her. To Covenant, she replied, “He's never told the truth before. Why should she start now?”

Covenant frowned darkly. Although he had no cause to trust Findail's people, he appeared strangely reluctant to judge them, as if instinctively he wanted to do them more justice than they had ever done him.

But there was nothing any of the company could do about Vain. The River-cleft was deep now-and growing sharply deeper as it advanced into the mountain. The sound of the water diminished steadily.

The First gestured with her touch. “We must hasten. Our light grows brief.” The fagot she held was dry and brittle; already half of it had burned away. And Pitchwife had only one other brand.

Swearing under his breath, Covenant started on down the tunnel.

Linden was shivering. The stone piled imponderably around her felt cold and dire. Vain's fall repeated itself across her mind. Her breathing scraped in her throat No one deserved to fall like that. In spite of Mount Thunder's chill atmosphere, sweat trickled uncertainly between her breasts.

But she followed Covenant and the First. Bracing herself on Pitchwife's bulky companionship, she moved along the roadway after the wavering torch. She stayed so close to the wall that it brushed her shoulder. Its hardness raised reminders of the hold of Revelstone and the dungeon of the Sandhold.

Findail walked behind her. His bare feet made no sound.

As the reflected light from the mouth of the gullet faded, the darkness thickened. Concentrated midnight seemed to flow up out of the crevice. Then a gradual bend in the wall cut off the outer world altogether. She felt that the doors of hope and possibility were being closed on all sides. The First's torch would not last much longer.

Yet her senses clung to the granite facts of the road and the tunnel. She could not see the rim of the chasm; but she knew where it was exactly. Pitchwife and Findail were also explicit in spite of the dark. When she focused her attention, she was able to read the surface of the ledge so clearly that she did not need to stumble. If she had possessed the power to repulse attack, she could have wandered the Wightwarrens in relative safety.

That realization steadied her. The inchoate dread gnawing at the edges of her courage receded.

The First's brand started to gutter.

Beyond it. Linden seemed to see an indefinable softening of the midnight. For a few moments, she stared past the First and Covenant. But her percipience did not extend so far. Then, however, the Swordmain halted, lowered her torch; and the glow ahead became more certain.

The First addressed Covenant or Linden. “What is the cause of that light?”

“Warrenbridge,” Covenant replied tightly. “The only way into the Wightwarrens.” His tone was complex with memories. “Be careful. The last time I was here, it was guarded.”

The leader of the Search nodded. Placing her feet softly, she moved forward again Covenant went with her. Linden gripped her health-sense harder and followed. Gradually, the light grew clear. It was a stiff, red orange colour; and it shone along the ceiling, down the wall of the tunnel. Soon Linden was able to see that the roadway took a sharp turn to the right near the glow. At the same time, the overhanging stone vaulted upward as if the tunnel opened into a vast cavern. But the direct light was blocked by a tremendous boulder which stood like a door ajar across the ledge. The chasm of the river vanished under that boulder.

Cautiously, the First crept to the edge of the stone and peered beyond it.

For an instant, she went rigid with surprise. Then she breathed a Giantish oath and strode out into the light.

Advancing behind Covenant, Linden found herself in a high, bright cavity like an entryhall to the catacombs. The floor was flat, worn smooth by millennia of use. Yet it was impassable. The deft passed behind the boulder, then turned to cut directly through the cavern, disappearing finally into the far wall. It was at least fifty feet wide, and there were no other entrances to the cavity on this side. The only egress. by beyond the crevice.

But in the centre of the vault, a massive bridge of native stone spanned the gulf. Warrenbridge Covenant's memory had not misled him.

The light came from the crown of the span. On either side of it stood a tall stone pillar like a sentinel; and they shone as if their essential rock were afire. They made the entire tavern bright-too bright for any interloper to approach Warrenbridge unseen.

For an instant, the light held Linden’s attention. It reminded her of the hot lake of graveling in which she and the company had once almost lost their lives. But these emanations were redder, angrier. They lit the entrance to the Wightwarrens as if no one could pass between them in hope or peace.

But the chasm and the bridge and the light were not what had surprised the First. With a wrench, Linden forced herself to look across the vault.

Vain stood there, at the foot of Warrenbridge. He seemed to be waiting for Covenant or Linden.

Near him on the stone sprawled two long-limbed forms. They were dead. But they had not been dead long. The blood in which they lay was still warm.

A clench of pain passed across Findail's visage and was gone.

The First's torch sputtered close to her hand. She tossed its useless butt into the chasm. Gripping her longsword m both fists, she started onto the span.

“Wait!” Covenant's call was hoarse and urgent At once, the First froze. The tip of her blade searched the air for perils she could not see.

Covenant wheeled toward Linden, his gaze as dark as bloodshed. Trepidation came from him in fragments.

“The last time-It nearly killed me. Drool used those pillars-that rocklight-I thought I was going to lose my mind.”

Drool Rockworm was the Cavewight who had recovered the Staff of Law after the Ritual of Desecration. He had used it to delve up the Illearth Stone from the roots of Mount Thunder. And when Covenant and the Lords had wrested the Staff from Drool, they had succeeded only in giving the IIIearth Stone into Lord Foul's hold.

Linden's percipience scrambled into focus on the pillars. She scrutinized them for implications of danger, studied the air between them, the ancient stone of Warrenbridge. That stone had been made as smooth as mendacity by centuries of time, the pressure of numberless feet. But it posed no threat. Rocklight shone like ire from the pillars, concealing nothing.

Slowly, she shook her head. “There's nothing there.”

Covenant started to ask, “Are you-?” then bit down his apprehension. Waving the First ahead, he ascended the span as if Warrenbridge were crowded with vertigo.

At the apex, be flinched involuntarily; his arms flailed, grasping for balance. But Linden caught hold of him. Pitch wife put his arms around the two of them. By degrees Covenant found his way back to the still centre of his certitude, the place where dizziness and panic whirled around him but did not touch him. In a moment, he was able to descend toward the First and Vain.

With the tip of her sword, the First prodded the bodies near the Demondim-spawn. Linden had never seen such creatures before. They had hands as wide and heavy as shovels, heads like battering rams, eyes without pupil or iris, glazed by death. The thinness of their trunks and limbs belied their evident strength. Yet they had not been strong enough to contend with Vain. He had broken both of them like dry wood.

“Cavewights,” Covenant breathed. His voice rattled in his throat. “Foul must be using them for sentries. When Vain showed up, they probably tried to attack him.”

“Is it possible”- the First's eyes glared in the rocklight- “that they contrived to send alarm of us ere they fell?”

“Possible?” growled Covenant. “The way our luck's going, can you think of any reason to believe they didn't?”

“It is certain.” Findail's unexpected interpolation sent a strange shiver down Linden's spine Covenant jerked his gaze to the Appointed. The First swallowed a jibe. But Findail did not hesitate. His grieving features were set. “Even now,” he went on, “forewarning reaches the ears of the Despiser. He savers the fruition of his malign dreams.” He spoke quietly; yet his voice made the air of the high vault ache. “Follow me. I will guide you along ways where his minions will not discover you. In that, at least, his intent will be foiled.”

Passing through the company, he strode into the dark maze of the Wightwarrens. And as he walked the midnight stepped back from him. Beyond the reach of the rocklight, his outlines shone like the featureless lumination of Elemesnedene.

“Damn it!” Covenant spat. “Now he wants us to trust him.”

The First gave a stem shrug. “What choice remains to us?” Her gaze trailed Findail down the tunnel. “One brand we have. Will you rather trust the mercy of this merciless bourne?”

At once, Linden said, “We don't need him. I can lead us. I don't need light.”

Covenant scowled at her. “That's terrific. Where're you going to lead us? You don't have any idea where Foul is.”

She started to retort, I can find him. The same way I found Gibbon. All I need is a taste of him. But then she read him more clearly. His anger was not directed at her. He was angry because he knew he had no choice. And he was right. Until she felt the Despiser's emanations and could fix her health-sense on them, she had no effective guidance to offer.

Swallowing her vexation, she sighed, “I know. It was a bad idea.” Findail was receding from view; soon he would be out of sight altogether. “Let's get going.”

For a moment Covenant faced her as though he wanted to apologize and did not know how because he was unable to gauge the spirit of her acquiescence. But his purpose still drove him. Turning roughly, he started down the tunnel after the Appointed.

The First joined him. Pitchwife gave Linden's shoulder a quick clasp of comradeship, then urged her into motion.

Vain followed them as if he were in no danger at all.

The tunnel went straight for some distance; then side-passages began to mark its walls. Glowing like an avatar of moonlight, Findail took the first leftward way, moved into a narrow corridor which had been cut so long ago that the rock no longer seemed to remember the violence of formation. The ceiling was low, forcing the Giants to stoop as the corridor angled upward, Findail’s illumination glimmered and sheened on the walls. A vague sense of peril rose behind Linden like a miasma. She guessed that more of the Despiser's creatures had entered the tunnel which the company had just left. But soon she reached a high, musty space like a disused mustering-hall; and when she and her companions had crossed it to a larger passage, her impression of danger faded.

More tunnels followed, most of them tending sharply downward. She did not know how the Appointed chose his route; but he was sure of it. Perhaps he gained all the information he needed from the mountain itself, as his people were said to read the events of the outer Earth in the peaks and cols of the Rawedge Rim which enclosed Elemesnedene. Whatever his sources of knowledge, however, Linden sensed that he was leading the company through delvings which were no longer inhabited or active. They all smelled of abandonment, forgotten death-and somehow, obscurely, of ur-viles, as if this section of the catacombs had once been set apart for the products of the Demondim. But they were gone now, perhaps forever. Linden caught no scent or sound of any life here.

No life except the breathing, dire existence of the mountain, the sentience too slow to be discerned, the intent so immemorially occluded and rigid that it was hidden from mortal perception. Linden felt she was wandering the vitals of an organism which surpassed her on every scale-and yet was too time-spanning and ponderous to defend itself against quick evil. Mount Thunder loathed the banes which inhabited it, the use to which its depths were put. Why else was there so much anger compressed in the gutrock? But the day when the mountain might react for its own cleansing was still centuries or millennia away.

The First's bulk blocked most of Findail's glow. But Linden did not need light to know that Vain was still behind her, or that Covenant was nearly prostrate on his feet, frail with exhaustion. Yet he appeared determined to continue until he dropped. For his sake, she called Findail to a halt. “We're killing ourselves like this.” Her own knees trembled with strain; weariness throbbed in her temples. ”We've got to rest.”

Findail acceded with a shrug. They were in a rude chamber empty of everything except stale air and darkness. She half expected Covenant to protest; but he did not. Numbly, he? Sighing to himself, Pitchwife rummaged through the packs for diamondraught and a meal. Liquor and food he doled out to his companions, sparing little for the future. The future of the Search would not be long, for good or ill.

Linden ate as much as she could stomach, but only took a sip of the diamondraught so that she would not be put to sleep. Then she turned her attention to Covenant.

He was shivering slightly. Findail's light made him look, pallid and spectral, ashen-eyed, doomed. His body seemed to draw no sustenance from the food he had consumed. Even diamondraught had little effect on him. He looked like a man who was bleeding internally. On Kevin's Watch, he had healed the wound in his chest with wild magic. But no power could undo the blow which had pierced him back in the woods behind Haven Farm. Now his physical condition appeared to be merging with that of the body he had left behind, the torn flesh with the knife still protruding from its ribs.

He had told her this would happen.

But other signs were missing. He had no bruises to match the ones he had received when Joan had been wrested from him. And he still had his beard. She clung to those things because they seemed to mean that he was not yet about to die.

She nearly cried out when he raised the knife be had brought from Revelstone and asked Pitchwife for water.

Without question, Pitchwife poured the last of the company's water into a bowl and handed it to the Unbeliever.

Awkwardly, Covenant wet his beard, then set the knife to his throat. His hands trembled as if he were appalled. Yet by his own choice he conformed himself to the image of his death.

Linden struggled to keep herself from railing at his self-abnegation, the surrender it implied. He behaved as if he had indeed given himself up to despair. It was unbearable. But the sight of him was too poignant; she could not accuse or blame him. Wrestling down her grief, she said in a voice that still sounded like bereavement, “You know, that beard doesn't look so bad on you. I'm starting to like it” Pleading with him.

His eyes were closed as if in fear of the moment when the blade would slice into his skin, mishandled by his numb fingers. Yet with every stroke of the knife his hands grew calmer.

“I did this the last time I was here. An ur vile knocked me off a ledge. Away from everyone else. I was alone. So scared I couldn't even scream. But shaving helped. If you'd seen me, you would've thought I was trying to cut my throat in simple terror. But it helps.” Somehow, he avoided nicking himself. The blade he used was so sharp that it left his skin clean. “It takes the place of courage.”

Then he was done. Putting the knife back under his belt, he looked at Linden as if he knew exactly what she had been trying to say to him. “I don't like it.” His purpose was in his voice, as hard and certain as his ring. “But it's better to choose your own risks. Instead of just trying to survive the ones you can't get out of.”

Linden hugged her heart and made no attempt to answer him. His face was raw-but it was still free of bruises. She could still hope.

Gradually, he recovered a little strength. He needed far more rest than he allowed himself; but he was noticeably more stable as he climbed erect and announced his readiness.

The First joined him without hesitation. But Pitchwife looked toward Linden as if he wanted confirmation from her. She saw in his gaze that he was prepared to find some way to delay the company on Covenant's behalf if she believed it necessary.

The question searched her; but she met it by rising to her feet If Covenant were exhausted, he would be more easily prevented from destruction.

At once, her thoughts shamed her. Even now-when he had just given her a demonstration of his deliberate acquiescence to death, as if he wanted her to be sure that Kevin had told her the truth-she felt he deserved something better than the promises she had made against him.

Mutely, Findail bore his light into the next passage. The First shouldered her share of the company's small supplies. drew her longsword. Muttering to himself, Pitchwife joined her. Vain gazed absently into the unmitigated dark of the catacombs. In single-file, the questors followed the Appointed of the Elohim onward.

Still his route tended generally downward, deeper by irregular stages and increments toward the clenched roots of Mount Thunder; and as the company descended, the character of the tunnels changed. They became more ragged and ruinous. Broken gaps appeared in the walls and from the voids beyond them came dank exhalations, distant groaning, cold sweat. Unseen denizens slithered away to their barrows. Water oozed through cracks in the gutrock and dripped like slow corrosion. Strange boiling sounds rose and then receded.

With a Giant's fearlessness of stone and mountains. Pitchwife took a rock as large as his fist and tossed it into one of the gaps. For a long time, echoes replied like the distant labour of anvils.

The strain of the descent made Linden's thighs ache and quiver.

Later, she did hear anvils, the faint, metallic clatter of hammers. And the thud of bellows-the warm, dry gusts of exhaust from forges. The company was nearing the working heart of the Wightwarrens. Sourceless sounds made her skin crawl. But Findail did not hesitate or waver; and gradually the noise and effort in the air lessened. Moiling and sulphur filled the tunnel as if it were a ventilation shaft for a pit of brimstone. Then they, too, faded.

The tremendous weight of the mountain impending over her made Linden stoop. It was too heavy for her. Everywhere around her was knuckled stone and darkness. Findail's light was ghostly, not to be trusted. Somewhere outside Mount Thunder, the day was ending-or had already ended, already given the Land its only relief from the Sunbane. But the things which soughed and whined through the catacombs knew no relief. She felt the old protestations of the rock like the far-off moaning of the damned. The air felt as cold, worn, and dead as a gravestone. Lord Foul had chosen an apt demesne: only mad creatures and evil could live in the Wightwarrens.

Then, abruptly, the wrought passages through which Findail had been travelling changed. The tunnel narrowed, became a rough crevice with a roof beyond the reach of Linden's percipience. After some distance, the crevice ended at me rim of a wide, deep pit And from the pit arose the fetor of a charnel. The stench made Linden gag Covenant could barely stand it But Findail went right to the edge of the pit, to a cut stair which ascended the wall directly above the rank abysm Covenant fought himself to follow; but before he had climbed a dozen steps he slumped against the wall. Linden felt nausea and vertigo gibbering in his muscles.

Sheathing her blade, the First lifted him in her arms, bore him upward as swiftly as Findail was willing to go.

Cramps knotted Linden's guts. The stench heaved in her. The stair stretched beyond comprehension above her; she did not know how to attempt it. But the gap between her and the light-between her and Covenant-was increasing at every moment. Fiercely, she turned her percipience on herself, pulled the cramps out of her muscles. Then she forced herself upward.

The fetor called out to her like the Sunbane, urged her to surrender to it-surrender to the darkness which lurked hungrily within her and everywhere else as well, unanswerable and growing toward completion with every intaken breath. If she let go now, she would be as strong as a Raver before she hit bottom; and then no ordinary death could touch her. Yet she clung to the rough treads with her hands, thrust at them with her legs Covenant was above her. Perhaps he was already safe. And she had learned how to be stubborn. The mouth of the old man whose life she had saved on Haven Farm had been as foul as this; but she had borne that putrid halitus in order to fight for his survival. Though her guts squirmed, her throat retched, she fought her way to the top of the stair and the well.

There she found Findail, the First, and Covenant. And light-a different light than the Appointed emitted. Reflecting faintly from the passage behind him, it was the orange-red colour of rocklight. And it was full of soft, hot boiling, slow splashes. A sulphurous exudation took the stench from the air.

Pitchwife finished the ascent with Vain behind him. Linden looked at Covenant. His face was waxen, slick with sweat; vertigo and sickness glazed his eyes. She turned to the First and Findail to demand another rest.

The Elohim forestalled her. His gaze was shrouded, concealing his thoughts. “Now for a space we must travel a common roadway of the Wightwarrens.” Rocklight limned his shoulders. “It is open to us at present-but shortly it will be peopled again, and our way closed. We must not halt here.”

Linden wanted to protest in simple frustration and helplessness. Roughly, she asked the First, “How much more do you think he can take?”

The Giant shrugged. She did not meet Linden's glare. Her efforts to refuse doubt left little room for compromise. “If he falters, I will carry him.”

At once, Findail turned and started down the passage.

Before Linden could object, Covenant shambled after the Appointed. The First moved protectively ahead of the Unbeliever.

Pitchwife faced Linden with a grimace of wry fatigue. “She is my wife,” he murmured, “and I love her sorely. Yet she surpasses me. Were I formed as other Giants, I would belabour her insensate rather than suffer this extremity.” He clearly did not mean what he was saying; he spoke only to comfort Linden.

But she was beyond comfort. Fetor and brimstone, exhaustion and peril pushed her to the fringes of her self control. Fuming futilely, she coerced her unsteady limbs into motion.

The passage soon became a warren of corridors; but Findail threaded them unerringly toward the source of the light. The air grew noticeably warmer; it was becoming hot. The boiling sounds increased, took on a subterranean force which throbbed irrhythmically in Linden's lungs.

Then the company gained a tunnel as broad as a road; and the rocklight flared brighter. The stone thrummed with bottomless seething. Ahead of Findail, the left wall dropped away; acrid heat rose from that side. It seemed to suck the air out of Linden's chest, tug her forward. Findail led the company briskly into the light.

The road passed along the rim of a huge abyss. Its sheer walls were stark with rocklight; it blazed heat and sulphur.

At the bottom of the gulf burned a lake of magma.

Its boiling made the gutrock shiver. Tremendous spouts reached massively toward the ceiling, then collapsed under their own weight, spattering the walls with a violence that melted and reformed the sides.

Findail strode down the roadway as if the abyss did not concern him. But Covenant moved slowly, crouching close to the outer wall. The rocklight shone garishly across his raw face, made him appear lunatic with fear and yearning for immolation. Linden followed almost on his heels so that she would be near if he needed her. They were halfway around the mouth of the gulf before she felt his emanations clearly enough to realize that his apprehension was not the simple dread of vertigo and heat. He recognized this place: memories beat about his head like dark wings. He knew that this road led to the Despiser.

Linden dogged his steps and raged uselessly to herself. He was in no shape to confront Lord Foul. No condition. She no longer cared that his weakness might lessen the difficulty of her own responsibilities. She did not want her lot eased. She wanted him whole and strong and victorious, as he deserved to be. This exhausting rush to doom was folly, madness.

Gasping at the heat, he reached the far side of the abyss, moved two steps into the passage, and sagged to the floor. Linden put her arms around him, trying to steady herself as well as him. The molten passion of the lake burned at her back. Pitchwife was nearly past the rim. Vain was several paces behind.

“You must now be swift,” Findail said. He sounded strangely urgent. “There are Cavewights nigh.”

Without warning, he sped past the companions, flashed back into the rocklight like a striking condor.

As he hurtled down the roadway, his form melted out of humanness and assumed the shape of a Sandgorgon.

Fatal as a bludgeon, he crashed headlong against the Demondim-spawn.

Vain made no effort to evade the impact. Yet he could not withstand it. Findail was Earthpower incarnate. The shock of collision made the road lurch, sent tremors like wailing through the stone. Vain had proved himself stronger than Giants or storms, impervious to spears and the na-Mhoram's Grim. He had felt the power of the Worm of the World's End and had survived, though that touch had cost him the use of one arm. He had escaped alone from Elemesnedene and all the Elohim. But Findail hit him with such concentrated might that he was driven backward.

Two steps. Three. To the last edge of the rim.

“Vain!” Covenant thrashed in Linden's grasp. Frenzy almost made him strong enough to break away from her. “Vain!”

Instinctively, Linden fought him, held him.

Impelled by Covenant's fear, the First charged past Pitchwife after the Appointed.

Vain caught his balance on the lip of the abyss. His black eyes were vivid with intensity. A grin of relish sharpened his immaculate features. The iron heels of the Staff of Law gleamed dully in the hot rocklight.

He did not glance away from Findail. But his good arm made a warding gesture that knocked the First backward, stretched her at her husband's feet, out of danger.

“Fall!” the Appointed raged. His fists hammered the air. The rock under Vain's feet ruptured in splinters. “Fall and die!”

The Demondim-spawn fell. With the slowness of nightmare, he dropped straight into the abyss.

At the same instant, his dead arm lashed out, struck like a snake. His right hand closed on Findail’s forearm. The Appointed was pulled after him over the edge.

Rebounding from the wall, they tumbled together toward the centre of the lake Covenants cry echoed after them, inarticulate and wild.

Findail could not break Vain's grip.

He was Elohim, capable of taking any form of the living Earth He dissolved himself and became an eagle, pounded the air with his wings to escape the spouting magma. But Vain dung to one of his legs and was borne upward.

Instantly, Findail transformed himself to water. The heat threw him in vapour and agony toward the ceiling. But Vain clutched a handful of essential moisture and drew the Appointed back to him.

Swifter than panic, Findail became a Giant with a greatsword in both fists. He hacked savagely at Vain's wrist. But Vain only clenched his grip and let the blade glance off his iron band.

They were so close to the lava that Linden could barely see them through the blaze. In desperation, Findail took the shape of a sail and rode the heat upward again. But Vain still held him is an unbreakable grasp.

And before he rose high enough, a spout climbed like a tower toward him. He tried to evade it by veering; but he was too late. Magma took both Elohim and Demondim-spawn and snatched them down into the lake.

Linden hugged Covenant as if she shared his cries.

He was no longer struggling. “You don’t understand!” he gasped. AH the strength had gone out of him. “That's the place. Where the ur-viles got rid of their failures. When something they made didn't work, they threw it down there. That's why Findail- ” The words seized in his throat.

Why Findail had made his final attempt upon the Demondim-spawn here. Even Vain could not hope to come back from that fall.

Dear Christ! She did not understand how the Elohim saw such an extravagant threat in one lone creation of the ur-viles. Vain had bowed to her once-and had never acknowledged her again. He had saved her life-and had refused to save it. And after all this time and distance and peril, he was lost before he found what he sought. Before she understood—

He had gripped Findail with the hand that hung from his wooden forearm.

Other perceptions demanded her attention, but she was slow to notice them. She had not heeded the Appointed's warning. Too late, she sensed movement in the passage which had led the company to this abyss.

Along the rim of the pit, a party of Cavewights charged into the rocklight.

At least a score of them. Upright on their long limbs, they were almost as tall as Pitchwife. They ran with an exaggerated, jerky awkwardness, like stick-figures; but their strength was unmistakable: they were the delvers of the Wightwarrens. The red heat of lava burned in their eyes. Most of them were armed with truncheons; the rest carried battle axes with wicked blades.

Still half stunned by the force of Vain's blow, the First reeled to her feet. For an instant, she wavered. But the company's need galvanized her. Her longsword flashed in readiness. Roaring, “Flee!” she faced the onset of the Cavewights.

Covenant made no effort to move. The people he loved were in danger, and he had the power to protect them-power he dared not use. Linden read his plight immediately. The exertion of will which held back the wild magic took all his strength.

She fought herself into motion. Summoning her resolve, she began to wrestle him down the tunnel.

He seemed weightless, almost abject Yet his very slackness hampered her. Her progress was fatally slow.

Then Pitchwife caught up with her. He started to take Covenant from her.

The clangour of battle echoed along the passage. Linden spun and saw the First fighting for her life.

She was a Swordmain, an artist of combat. Her glaive flayed about her, at once feral an precise; rocklight flared in splinters off the swift iron. Blood spattered from her attackers as if by incantation rather than violence, her blade the wand or sceptre by which she wrought her theurgy.

But the roadway was too wide to constrict the Cavewights. Their reach was as great as hers. And they were born to contend with stone; their blows had the force of granite. Most of her effort went to parry clubs which would have shattered her arms. Step by step, she was driven backward.

She stumbled slightly on the uneven surface, and a truncheon flicked past her. On her left temple, a bloody welt seemed to appear without transition. The Cavewight that hit her pitched into the abyss, clutching his slashed chest. But more creatures crowded after her.

Linden looked at Pitchwife. He was being torn apart by conflicting needs. His eyes ached whitely, desperate and sup; pliant. He had offered her his life. Like Mistweave. She could not bear it. He deserved better. “Help the First!” she barked at him. “I'll take care of Covenant!”

Pitchwife was too frantic to hesitate. Releasing the Unbeliever, he sped to the aid of his wife.

Linden grabbed Covenant by the shoulders, shook him fiercely. “Come on!” she raged into his raw visage. “For God's sake!”

His struggle was terrible to behold. He could have effaced the Cavewights with a simple thought-and brought down the Arch of Time, or desecrated it with venom. He was willing to sacrifice himself. But his friends! Their peril rent at him. For the space of one heart-beat, she thought he would destroy everything to save the First and Pitchwife. So that they would not die like Foamfollower for him.

Yet he withheld-clamped his ripped and wailing spirit in a restraint as inhuman as his purpose. His features hardened; his gaze became bleak and desolate, like the Land under the scourge of the Sunbane. “You're right,” he muttered softly. “This is pathetic.”

Straightening his back, he started down the tunnel.

She clinched his numb half-hand and fled with him into darkness. Cries and blows shouted after them, echoed and were swallowed by the Wightwarrens.

As the reflected rocklight faded, they reached an intersection Covenant veered instinctively to the right; but she took the leftward turning because it felt less travelled. Almost at once. she regretted her choice. It did not lead away from the light. Instead, it opened into a wide chamber with fissures along one side that admitted the shining of the molten lake. Sulphur and heat clogged the air. Two more tunnels gave access to the chamber; but they did not draw off the accumulated reek.

The roadway along the rim of the abyss was visible through the fissures. This chamber had probably been intended to allow Mount Thunder's denizens to watch the road without being seen.

The First and Pitchwife were no longer upon the rim. They had retreated into the tunnel after Linden and Covenant. Or they had fallen—

Linden's senses shrilled an alarm. Too late: always too late. Bitterly, she wheeled to face the Cavewights that thronged into the chamber from all three entrances.

She and her companions must have been spotted from this covert when they first made their way past the abyss. And the brief time they had spent watching Vain and Findail had given the Cavewights opportunity to spring this trap.

In the tunnel Linden and Covenant had used, the First and Pitchwife appeared, battling tremendously to reach their friends. But most of the Cavewights hurried to block the Giants’ way. The Swordmain and her husband were beaten back.

Pitchwife's inchoate cry wrung Linden's heart. Then he and the First were forced out of sight. Cavewights rushed in pursuit.

Brandishing cudgels and axes, the rest of the creatures advanced on Covenant and Linden.

He thrust her behind him. took a step forward. Rocklight limned his desperate shoulders. “I'm the one you want.” His voice was taut with suppression and wild magic. “I'll go with you. Leave her alone.”

Rapt and grim, the Cavewights gave no sign that they beard turn. Their eyes smouldered.

“If you hurt her,” he gritted, “I’ll tear you apart.” One of them grabbed him, manacled both his wrists in a huge fist Another raised his club and levelled a crushing blow at Linden's head.

She ducked. The truncheon whipped through her hair, almost touched her skull. Launching herself from the wall, she dodged toward Covenant.

The Cavewights seemed slow. awkward. For a moment, they did not catch her.

Somehow, Covenant twisted his wrists free. He snatched his knife from his belt, began slashing frenetically about him. A Cavewight howled, hopped back. But the blade was deep in the creature's ribs, and Covenant's half-hand failed of its If grip; the knife was ripped from him.

Weaponless, he spun toward Linden. His face stretched as if he wanted to cry out. Forgive!

The Cavewights surrounded him. They did not use their cudgels or axes: apparently, they wanted him alive. With their fists, they beat him until he fell.

Linden tried to reach him. She was avid for power, futile without it. Her arms and legs were useless against the Cavewights. They laughed coarsely at her struggles. Wildly, she groped for Covenant's ring with her health-sense, tried to take hold of it. The infernal air choked her lungs. Bottomless and hungry through the fissures came the boiling of the molten lake. Vain and Findail had fallen. The First and Pitchwife were lost Covenant lay like a sacrifice on the stone. She had nothing left—

She was still groping when a blow came down gleefully on the bone behind her left ear. At once, the world turned over and sprawled into darkness.

Eighteen: No Other Way

THOMAS Covenant lay face down on the floor. It pressed like flat stone against his battered cheek. Bruises malformed the bones of his visage. Though he wanted nothing but peace and salvation, he had become what he was by violence-the consequences of his own acts. From somewhere in the distance arose a throaty murmuring, incessant and dire, like a litany of invocation, dozens of voices repeating the same word or name softly, but with different cadences, at varying speeds. They were still around him, the people who had come to bereave him. They were taunting his failure.

Joan was gone.

Perhaps he should have moved, rolled over, done something to soften the pain. But the effort was beyond him. All his strength was sand and ashes. And be had never been physically strong. They had taken her from him without any trouble at all. It was strange, he reflected abstractly, that someone who had as little to brag of as he did spent so much time trying to pretend he was immortal. He should have known better. God knew he had been given every conceivable opportunity to outgrow his arrogance.

Real heroes were not arrogant. Who could have called Berek arrogant? Or Mhoram? Foamfollower? The list went on and on, all of them humble. Even Hile Troy had finally given up his pride. Only people like Covenant himself were arrogant enough to believe that the outcome of the Earth depended on their purblind and fallible choices. Only people like himself. And Lord Foul. Those who were capable of Despite and chose to refuse it And those who did not Linden had told him any number of times that he was arrogant.

That was why he had to defeat Lord Foul-why the task devolved on him alone.

Any minute now, he told himself. Any minute now he was going to get up from the floor of his house and go exchange himself for Joan. He had put it off long enough. She was not arrogant-not really. She did not deserve what had happened to her. She had simply never been able to forgive herself for her weaknesses, her limitations.

Then he wanted to laugh. It would have done him a world of good to laugh. He was not so different from Joan after all. The only real difference was that he had been summoned to the Land while it was still able to heal him-and while he was still able to know what that meant He was sane-if he was sane-by grace, not by virtue.

In a sense, she actually was arrogant. She placed too much importance on her own faults and failures. She had never learned to let them go.

He had never learned that lesson either. But he was trying. Dear God, he was trying. Any minute now, he was going to take her place in Lord Foul's fire. He was going to let everything go.

But somehow the floor did not feel right. The murmurous invocation that filled his ears and his lungs and his bones called on a name that did not sound like the Despiser's. It perplexed him, seemed to make breathing difficult. He had forgotten something.

Wearily, he opened his eyes, blinked at the blurring of his vision, and remembered where he was.

Then be thought that surely his heart would fail. His bruises throbbed in his skull. He had received them from Cavewights, not from Joan's captors. He did not have long to live.

He lay near the centre of a large cave with rough walls and a ragged ceiling. The air smelled thickly of rocklight, which burned from special stones set into the walls at careless intervals. The cave was crudely oval in shape; it narrowed at both ends to dark, unattainable tunnels. The odour of the rocklight was tinged with a scent of ancient mouldering-rot so old that it had become almost clean again.

It came from a large, high mound nearby. The heap looked like a barrow, as if something revered had been buried there. But it was composed entirely of bones. Thousands of skeletons piled in one place. Most of them had been set there so long ago that they had decomposed to fine grey dust, no longer of interest even to maggots. But the top of the mound was more recent. None of the skeletons were whole: all had been either broken in death or dismembered afterward. Even the newer ones had been cleaned of flesh. However, a few of them still oozed from the marrow.

They were not human bones, or ur vile. Cavewight, then. Apparently, the creatures that the First and Pitchwife had slain had already been added to the mound.

The murmuring went on without let, as if dozens or hundreds of predators were growling to themselves. He felt that sound like the touch of panic in his vitals. Some name was being repeated continuously, whispered or muttered at every pitch and pace; but he could not distinguish it. Heat and sound and rocklight squeezed sweat from the sore bones of his head.

He was surrounded by Cavewights. Most of them squatted near the walls, their knees jutting at their ears, their hot eyes glowing. Others appeared to be dancing about the mound, stork-like and graceless on their long legs. Their hands attacked the air like spades. They all murmured and murmured, incantatory and hypnotic. He had no idea what they were saying, or how much longer he would be lulled, snared.

He was afraid-so afraid that his fear became a kind of lucidity. Not afraid for himself. He had met that particular terror in the Banefire and burned it to purity. These creatures were only Cavewights, the weak-minded and malleable children of Mount Thunder's gutrock, and Lord Foul had mastered them long ago. They could hardly hope to come between Covenant and the Despiser. Though the way to it was hard, his purpose was safe.

But in a small clear space against one wall sat Linden. He saw her with the precision of his fear. Her right shoulder leaned on the stone. With her arms, she hugged her knees to her chest like a lorn child. Her head was bowed; her hair had fallen forward, hiding her face. But the side of her neck was bare. It gleamed, pale and vulnerable, in the red-orange illumination.

Black against the pallor, dried blood marked her skin. It led in a crusted trail from behind her left ear down to the collar of her shirt.

She, too-! A tremor of grief went through him. She, too, had been made to match the physical condition of the body she had left behind in the woods behind Haven Farm. They did not have much time left.

He would have cried out, if he had possessed the strength. Not much time-and to spend it like this! He wanted to hold her in his arms, make her understand that he loved her-that no death or risk of ruin could desecrate what she meant to him. Lena had once tried to comfort him by singing. The soul in which the flower grows survives. He wanted—

But perhaps the blow she had been struck had been harder than either of them had realized, and she also was about to die. Killed like Seadreamer because she had tried to save him. And even if she did not die, she would believe that she had lost him to despair. In Andelain, EIena had told him to Care for her. So that in the end she may heal us all. He had failed at that as at so many other things.

Linden. He tried to say her name, but no sound came. A spasm of remorse twisted his face, made his bruises throb. Ignoring the pain, the fathomless ache of his exhaustion, he levered his elbows under him and strove to pry his weakness off the stone.

A rough kick pitched him onto his back, closer to the mound of bones. Gasping, he looked up into the leer of a Cavewight.

“Be still, accursed!” the creature spat. "Punishment comes. Punishment and apocalypse! Do not hasten it.”

Cavorting grotesquely on his gangly limbs, he resumed his muttering and danced away.

Covenant wrestled for breath and squirmed onto his side to look toward Linden again.

She was facing him now, had turned toward him when the Cavewight spoke. Her visage was empty of blood, of hope. The gaze she cast at him, was stark with abuse and dumb pleading. Her hands clasped each other uselessly. Her eyes seemed as dark and hollow as wounds.

She must have looked like that when she was a child, locked in the attic with her father while he died.

He fought for his voice, croaked her name through the manifold invocation of the Cavewights. But she did not appear to hear him. Slowly, she dropped her head, lowered her gaze to the failure of her hands.

He could not go to her. He hardly knew where he might find enough strength to stand. And the Cavewights would not let him move. He had no way to combat them except with his ring-the wild magic he could not use. He and she were prisoners completely. And there was no name that either of them might call upon for rescue..

No name except the Despiser's.

Covenant hoped like madness that Lord Foul would act quickly.

But perhaps Lord Foul would not act. Perhaps he permitted the Cavewights to work their will, hoping that Covenant would once again be forced to power. Perhaps he did not understand-was incapable of understanding-the certainty of Covenant's refusal.

The throaty chant of the Cavewights was changing: the incessant various repetitions were shifting toward unison. One creature started a slightly sharper inflection, a more specific cadence; and his immediate neighbours fell into rhythm with him. Cavewight by Cavewight, the unison spread until the invoked name took Covenant by surprise, jolted alarm through him.

He knew that name.

Drool Rockworm.

More than three millennia ago. Drool Rockworm of the Cavewights had recovered the lost Staff of Law-and had conceived a desire to rule the Earth. But he had been too unskilled in lore to master what he had found. In seduction or folly, he had turned to the Despiser for knowledge. And Lord Foul had used the Cavewight for his own purposes.

Drool Rockworm.

First he had persuaded Drool to summon Covenant, luring the Cavewight with promises of white gold. Then he had snatched Covenant away, sent the Unbeliever instead to the Council of Lords. And the Lords had responded by challenging Drool's power. Sneaking into the Wightwarrens, they had taken the Staff from him, had called down the Fire-Lions of Mount Thunder to destroy him.

Thus armed, they had thought themselves victorious. But they had only played into the Despiser's bands. They had rid him of Drool, thereby giving him access to the terrible bane he desired-the Illearth Stone. And from that time forward the Cavewights had been forced to serve him like puppets.

Drool Rockworm.

The name vibrated like add in the air. The rocklight throbbed. All the Cavewights held themselves still. Their laval eyes focused on what they were invoking.

Beside Covenant, an eerie glow began to leak from the mound of bones. Sick red flames licked like swamp-fire around the pile. Fragments of bone seemed to waver and melt as if they were passing into hallucination.

Suddenly, he no longer believed that these creatures served the Despiser.

Drool Rockworm!

“Covenant.” Linden's voice reached between the beats of the name. She had come out of herself, drawn by what the Cavewights were doing. “There's something- ” Fiercely, she struggled to master her despair. “They're bringing it to life.”

Covenant winced in dismay. But he did not doubt her. The Law that protected the living had been broken. Any horror might now be summoned past the barrier of death, given the will-and the power. The mound squirmed with fires and gleamings like a monstrous cocoon, decay and dust in the throes of birth.

Then one of the Cavewights moved. He strode across the chant toward Covenant. “Rise, accursed,” he demanded. His eyes were as feral as his grin. “Rise for blood and torment”

Covenant stared whitely up at him, did not obey.

“Rise!” the creature raged. With one spatulate hand, he grabbed Covenant's arm and nearly dislocated it yanking him to his feet.

Covenant bit down panic and pain. “You're going to regret this!” He had to shout to make himself heard. The invocation pounded in his chest “Foul wants me! Do you think you can defy him and get away with it?”

“Hal” barked the Cavewight as if he were close to ecstasy. “We are too wily! He does not know us. We have learned. Learned. Him so wise.” For an instant, all the voices shared his contempt. Drool Rockworm! “He is blind. Believes we have not found you.” The creature spat wildness instead of laughter.

Then he wrenched Covenant around to face the mound. Linden groaned Covenant's name. He heard a thud as one of the creatures silenced her. His arm was gripped by fingers that knew how to break stone.

Flames began to writhe like ghouls across the mound, casting anguish toward the roof of the cave.

“Witness!” the Cavewight grated. “The Wightbarrow!”

The invocation took on a timbre of lust.

“We have served and served. Forever we have served. Chattel. Fodder. Sacrifice. And no reward. Do this. Do that Dig. Run. Die. No reward. None!

“Now he pays. Punishment and apocalypse.

The Cavewights’ virulence staggered Covenant. The muscles of his arm were being crushed. But he shut his mind to everything else. Groping for a way to save Linden's life if not his own, he protested hoarsely, “How? He's the Despiser He’ll tear your hearts out!”

But the Cavewights were beyond fear. “Witness!” Covenant's captor repeated. “See it Fire. Life! The Wightbarrow of Drool Rockworm!”

Drool Rockworm, hammered the chant. Drool Rockworm! “From the dead. We have learned. Bloodshed. Sunbane. Law broken. The blood of the accursed!” He almost capered in his exultation. “You!”

His free hand clasped a long spike of rock like a dagger.

In litany, he shouted, “Blood brings power! Power brings life! Drool Rockworm rises! Drool takes ring! Ring crashes Despiser! Cavewights are free! Punishment and apocalypse!”

Brandishing his spike at Covenant's face, he added, “Soon. You are the accursed. Bringer of ruin. Your blood shed upon the Wightbarrow.” The side of the spike stroked Covenant's stiff cheek. “Soon.”

Covenant heard Linden pant as she struggled for breath, No Other Way “Bones- ” He winced, expecting her to be hit again. But still she tried to make him hear her. “The bones- ”

Her voice was congested with effort and intention; but he had no idea what she meant.

The flames worming through the mound made his skin crawl; yet he could not look away from them. Perhaps everything he had decided or understood was false, Foul-begotten. Perhaps the Banefire had been too essentially corrupt to give him any kind of trustworthy caamora. How could he tell? He could not see.

The pain in his arm made his head reel. The rocklight seemed to yell orange-red heat, stoking the fire in the Wightbarrow. He had lost the First and Pitchwife and Vain, had lost Andelain itself. Now he was about to lose his life and Linden and everything because there was no middle ground, no wild magic without ruin. She was whispering his name, but it no longer made any difference.

His balance drifted, and he found himself staring emptily at the stone on which he barely stood. It was the only part of the floor that had been purposefully shaped. The Cavewight had placed him in the centre of a round depression like a basin. Its shallow sides had been rubbed smooth and polished until they reflected rocklight around him like burnished metal.

From between his feet, a narrow trough led straight under the mound. A trough to channel his blood toward what remained of Drool Rockworm's bones. Fire rose hungrily toward the ceiling.

Abruptly, the invocation was cut off, slashed out of the air as if by the stroke of a blade. Its sudden cessation seemed to leave him deaf. He jerked up his head.

The spike was poised to strike like a fang at the middle of his chest. He planted his feet, braced himself to try to twist away, make one last effort for life.

But the blow did not fall. The Cavewight was not looking at him. None of the creatures were looking at him. Around the cave, they surged upright in outrage and fear.

An instant later, he recovered his hearing as the clamour of battle resounded past the Wightbarrow.

Into the cave charged the First and Pitchwife.

They were alone; but they attacked as if they were as potent as an army.

Surprise made them momentarily irresistible. She was battered and weary; but her longsword flashed in her hands like red lightning, hit with the force of thunder. The Cavewights went down before her like wheat in a storm. Pitchwife followed at her back with a battle axe in each hand and fought as if he were not wounded and scarcely able to draw breath. Bright galls scored her sark where the mail had deflected blows; his dripped blood where cudgels had crushed it into his flesh. Exertion sheened their faces and limbs.

The Cavewights moiled against them in frenzy.

The creatures were too frantic to fight effectively. They hampered each other, blocked their own efforts. The First and Pitchwife were halfway to the Wightbarrow before the sheer pressure of numbers stopped them.

But there the impetus of combat shifted. Desperation rallied the Cavewights. And the widening of the cave allowed the Giants to be surrounded, assailed from all sides. Their attempted rescue was valiant and doomed. la moments, they would be overwhelmed.

Sensing their opportunity, the creatures became less wild. Their mountain-delving strength dealt out blows which forced the First and Pitchwife back-to-back, drove them to fight defensively, for bare survival.

Covenant's captor faced him again. The Cavewight's laval eyes burned flame and fury. Rocklight gleamed on his spike as he cocked his arm to stab out Covenant's life.

Hoarse with panic and insight. Linden yelled, “The bones! Get the bones!”

At once, one of the creatures hit her so hard that she sprawled into the basin at Covenant's feet. She lay there, stunned and twisted. He feared her back had been broken.

But the Cavewights understood her if he did not. A sound like a wail shrilled across the combat. They fought with redoubled fever. The spike aimed at Covenant wavered as the Cavewight looked fearfully toward the fray.

Covenant could not see the First or Pitchwife through the fierce press. But suddenly her shout sprang at the ceiling-the tantara of a Swordmain summoning her last resources:

“Stone and Sea!”

And the throng of Cavewights seemed to rupture as if she had become a detonation. Abandoning Pitchwife, she crashed past the creatures, shed them from her arms and shoulders like rubble. In a spray of blood, she hacked her way toward the Wightbarrow.

Pitchwife could have been slain then. But he was not. His assailants hurled themselves after the First. His axes bit into their backs as he followed her.

The wailing scaled into a shriek when she reached the mound.

Snatching up a bone, she whirled to face her attackers. The bone shed flame like a fagot; but her Giantish fingers bore the pain and did not flinch.

Instantly, all the creatures froze. Silence seized their cries; horror locked their limbs.

Pitchwife wrenched one axe out of the spine of a Cavewight, raised his weapons to parry blows. But none came. He was ignored. Retching for air, he thrust through the crowd toward the First No one moved.

He limped to her side, dropped one axe, and grasped another burning bone. The paralysis of the Cavewights tightened involuntarily. Their eyes pleaded. Some of them began to shiver in chill panic.

By threatening the mound, the First and Pitchwife endangered the only thing which had given these creatures the courage to defy Lord Foul.

Covenant struggled against his captor, tried to reach Linden. But the Cavewight did not release him, seemed oblivious to his efforts-entranced by fear.

Stooping, the First wiped the blood from her glaive on the nearest body. Then she sheathed the longsword and took up a second bone. Fire spilled over her hands, but she paid it no heed. “Now,” she panted through her teeth. “Now you will release the Earthfriend.”

The Cavewight locked his fingers around Covenant's arm and did not move. A few creatures at the fringes of the press shifted slightly, moaned in protest.

Abruptly, Linden twitched. With a jerk, she thrust herself out of the basin. When she got her feet under her, she staggered and stumbled as if the floor were tilting. Yet somehow she kept her balance. Her eyes were glazed with anger and extremity. She had been pushed too far. Half lurching, she passed behind Covenant.

Among the Cavewights crouching there, she found a loose truncheon. It was almost too heavy for her to lift. Gripping its handle in both hands, she heaved it from the floor, raised it above her head, and brought it down on the wrist of the creature holding Covenant.

He heard a dull snapping noise. The Cavewight's fingers were torn from his arm.

The creature yowled. Madly, he cocked the spike to stab it down at Linden's face.

“Hold!” The First's command rang through the cave. She thrust one foot into the mound, braced herself to kick dust and fragments across the floor.

The Cavewight froze in renewed terror.

Slowly, she withdrew her foot A faint sigh of relief soughed around the walls of the cave.

Pain lanced through Covenant's elbow, knifed into his shoulder. For a moment, he feared that he would not be able to stand. The clutch of the Cavewight had damaged his arm; the blood pounding back into it felt like acid. The cave seemed to roar in his ears. He heard no other sound except Pitchwife's harsh respiration.

But he had to stand, had to move. The Giants deserved better than this from him. Linden and the Land deserved better. He could not afford such weakness. It was only pain and vertigo, as familiar to him as an old friend. It had no power over him unless he was afraid-unless he let himself be afraid. If he held up his heart, even despair was as good as courage or strength.

That was the centre, the point of stillness and certainty. Briefly, he rested. Then he let the excruciation in his arm lift him out of the basin.

Linden came to him. Her touch made his body totter; but inwardly he did not lose his balance. She would stop him if he proved himself wrong. But be was not wrong. Together, they moved toward the Giants.

Pitchwife did not look up from his gasping. His lips were flecked with red spittle; his exertions had torn something in his chest. But the First gave Covenant and Linden a nod of greeting. Her gaze was as grim as a hawk's. “You gladden me!” she muttered. “I had not thought to behold you again alive. It is well that these simple creatures do not glance often behind them. Thus we were able to follow when we had No Other Way foiled our pursuers. What dire rite do they seek to practice against you?”

Linden answered for Covenant, “They're trying to bring an old leader back from the dead. He's buried under there somewhere.” She grimaced at the Wightbarrow. “They want Covenant's blood and the ring. They think this dead leader'll free them from Foul. We've got to get out of here.”

“Aye,” growled the First. Her eyes assayed the Cavewights. “But they are too many. We cannot win free by combat. We must entrust ourselves to the sanctity of these bones.”

Covenant thought he smelted the faint reek of charring flesh. But he had no health-sense, could not tell how seriously the Giants hands were being hurt.

“My husband,” the First gritted, “will you lead us?”

Pitchwife nodded. A moment of coughing brought more blood to his lips. Yet he rallied. When he raised his head, the look in his eyes was as fierce as hers.

With a bone flaming like a brand in one hand, an axe in the other, he started toward the nearer mouth of the cave.

At once, a snarl sharpened the air, throbbing from many throats. A shiver ran through the Cavewights. The ones farthest from the Wightbarrow advanced slightly, placed themselves to block Pitchwife's path. Others tightened their hands on their weapons.

“No!” Linden snapped at Pitchwife. “Come back!”

He retreated. When he reached the mound, the Cavewights froze again.

Covenant blinked at Linden. He felt too dizzy to think. He knew he ought to understand what was happening. But it did not make sense.

“What means this. Chosen?” the First asked like iron. “Are we snared in this place for good and all?”

Linden replied with a look toward Covenant as if she were begging him for courage. Then, abruptly, she wrapped her arms around her chest and strode away from the mound.

The First breathed a sharp warning. Linden's head flinched from side to side. But she did not stop. Deliberately, she moved among the Cavewights.

She was alone and small and vulnerable in their midst. Her difficult bravery was no defence; any one of them could have felled her with one blow. But none of them reacted. She squeezed between two of them, passed behind a poised cluster, walked halfway to the cavemouth. Their eyes remained fixed on the First and Pitchwife-on the bones and the Wightbarrow.

As she moved, she raised her head, grew bolder. The vindication of her percipience fortified her. Less timorously, she made her way back to her companions.

Rocklight burned in Covenant's eyes. The First and Pitchwife stared at Linden. Grimly, she explained, “They won't move while you threaten the mound. They need it. It's their reason-the only answer they've got.” Then she faltered; and her gaze darkened at the implications of what she was saying. “That's why they won't let us take any of the bones out of here.”

For one momenta piece of time as acute as anguish-the First looked beaten, overcome by everything she had already lost and would still be required to lose. Honninscrave and Seadreamer had been dear to her. Pitchwife was her husband Covenant and Linden and life were precious. Her sternness broke down, exposing a naked hurt. Both her parents had. given their lives for her, and she had become what she was by grief.

Yet she was the First of the Search, chosen for her ability to bear hard decisions. Almost at once, her visage closed around itself. Her hands knotted as if they were hungry for the fire of the bones.

“Then,” she responded stiffly, “I must remain to menace this mould, so that you may depart.” She swallowed a lump of sorrow. “Pitchwife, you must accompany them. They will have need of your strength. And I must believe that you live.”

At that, Pitchwife burst into a spasm of coughing. A moment passed before Covenant realized that the malformed Giant was trying to laugh.

“My wife, you jest,” he said at last. “I have found my own reply to doubt. The Chosen has assigned me to your side. Do not credit that the song which the Giants will sing of this day will be sung of you alone.”

“I am the First of the Search!” she retorted. “I command- ”

“You are Gossamer Glowlimn, the spouse of my heart.” His mouth was bloody; but his eyes gleamed. “I am proud of you beyond all endurance. Demean not your high courage with foolishness. Neither Earthfriend nor Chosen has any need of my accompaniment. They are who they are-and will not fail. I am sworn to you in love and fealty, and I will remain.”

She glared at him as if she were in danger of weeping openly. “You will die. I have borne all else until my heart breaks. Must I bear that also?”

“No.” Around Covenant, the rock seemed to spin and fade as if Mount Thunder itself were on the verge of dissolution; but he clung to the centre of his mortality and stood certain, an alloy in human flesh and bone of wild magic and venom, life and death. “No,” he repeated when the First and Pitchwife met his gaze. “There's no reason for either of you to die. It won't take long. Kiril Threndor can't be very far from here. All I have to do is get there. Then it'll be over, one way or the other. All you have to do is hang on until I get there.”

Then Pitchwife did laugh, and his face lifted with gladness. “There, my wife!” he chortled. “Have I not said that they are who they are? Accept that I am with you, and be content.” Abruptly, he dropped his axe. drew out his last fagot and lit ft from the Wightbarrow, handed the sputtering wood to Linden. “Begone!” he gleamed, “ere I become maudlin at the witnessing of such valour. Fear nothing for us. We will hold and hold until the mountain itself is astonished, and still We will hold. Begone. I say!”

“Aye, begone,” growled the First as if she were angry; but her tears belied her tone. “I must have opportunity to instruct this Pitchwife in the obedience which is his debt to me First of the Search.”

Covenant wanted words, but none came to hum. What could he have said? He had made his promises long ago, and they covered everything. He rubbed the heels of his hands into his eyes to clear his sight Then he turned toward Linden, If he had spoken, he would have asked her to stay with the Giants. He had never forgotten the shock of her intervention in the woods behind Haven Farm. And he had not loved her then. Now everything was multiplied to the acuteness of panic. He did not know how he might preserve the bare shreds and tatters of dignity-not to mention clear courage or conviction-if she accompanied him.

But the look of her silenced him. She was baffled and perceptive, frightened and brave; terrified of Cavewights and Lord Foul, and yet avid for a chance to stand against them; mortal, precious, and irrefusable. Her face had lost its imposed severity, had become in spite of wear and strain as soft as her mouth and eyes. Yet its underlying structure remained precise, indomitable. The sad legacy of her parents had led her to what she was-but the saddest thing about her was that she did not understand how completely she had transformed that legacy, had made of herself something necessary and admirable. She deserved a better outcome than this. But he had nothing else to offer her.

She held his gaze as if she wanted to match him-and feared she could not. Then she tightened her grip on her torch and stepped out among the clenched Cavewights.

She had read them accurately: any threat to the Wightbarrow outweighed all other considerations. When Covenant left the First and Pitchwife, a raw muttering aggravated the rocklight. Several Cavewights shifted their positions, raised their weapons. But the First poised one foot to begin scattering the mound; and the creatures went rigid again Covenant let weakness and fear and pain carry him like hope toward the mouth of the cave.

“Go well, Earthfriend.” the First breathed after them, “hold faith. Chosen,” as if she had become impervious to doubt. Pitchwife's faint chuckling was torn and frayed; but it followed Covenant and Linden like an affirmation of contentment.

Barely upright on his feet Covenant made his way past the Cavewights. Their eyes flamed outrage and loss at him; but they did not take the risk of striking out. The cave narrowed to a tunnel at its end, and Linden began to hurry. He did his best to keep up with her. The vulnerable place between his shoulder-blades seemed to feel the Cavewights turning to hurl their truncheons; but he entrusted himself to the Giants, did not look back. In a moment, he left the rocklight behind. Linden's torch led him back into the darkness of the catacombs.

At the first intersection, she turned as if she knew where she was going Covenant caught up with her, put his hand on her arm to slow her somewhat She acceded, but continued to bear herself as though she were being harried by unseen wings in Mount Thunder's immeasurable midnight. As her senses hunted the way ahead for peril or guidance, she began to mutter-to herself or to him, he could not tell which.

“They're wrong. They don't know enough. Whatever they brought back from the dead, it wasn't going to be Drool Rockworm. Not just another Cavewight. Something monstrous.

“Blood brings power. They had to kill someone. But what Caer-CaveraI did for Hollian can't be done here. It only worked because they were in Andelain. And Andelain was intact. All that concentrated Earthpower-Concentrated and clean. Whatever those Cavewights resurrected, it was going to be abominable.”

When he understood that she was not talking about the Cavewights and Drool-that she was trying to say something rise entirely-Covenant stumbled. His throbbing arm struck the wall of the passage, and he nearly lost his balance. Pain made his arm dangle as if it were being dragged down by the inconceivable weight of his ring. She was talking about the hope which he had never admitted to himself-the hope that if he died he, too, might be brought back.

“Linden- ” He did not wish to speak, to argue with her. They had so little time left. Fire gnawed up and down his arm. He needed to husband his determination. But she had already gone too far in his name. Swallowing his weakness, he said, “I don't want to be resurrected.”

She did not look at him. Roughly, he went on, “You're going to go back to your own life. Sometime soon. And I won't get to go with you. You know it's too late to save me. Not back there. Where we come from, that kind of thing doesn't happen. Even if I'm resurrected, I won't get to go with you.

“If I can't go with you”- he told her the truth as well as he could- “I'd rather stay with my friends. Mhoram and Foamfollower. Elena and Banner. Honninscrave. And the wait for Sunder and Hollian would not seem long to him.

She refused to hear him. “Maybe not,” she rasped. “Maybe we can still get back in time. I couldn't save you before because your spirit wasn't there-your will to live. If you would Just stop giving up, we might still have a chance.” Her voice was husky with thwarted yearning. “You're bruised and exhausted. I don't know how you stay on your feet. But you haven't been stabbed yet.” Her gaze flashed toward the faint scar in the centre of his chest. “You don't have to die.”

But be saw the grief in her eyes and knew that she did not believe her own protestation.

He drew her to a halt. With his good hand, he wrested his wedding band from its finger. His touch was cold and numb, as if he had no idea what he was doing. Fervent and silent as a prayer, he extended the ring toward her. Its unmarred argent cast glints of the wavering torchlight.

At once, tears welled in her eyes. Streaks of reflected fire flowed down the lines which severity and loss had left on either side of her mouth. But she gave the ring no more than a glance. Her gaze clung to his countenance. “No,” she whispered. “Not while I can still hope.”

Abruptly, she moved on down the passage.

Sighing rue and relief like a man who had been reprieved or damned and did not know the difference-did not care if there were no difference-he thrust the ring back into place and followed her.

The tunnel became as narrow as a mere crack in the rock, then widened into a complex of junctions and chambers. The torch barely lit the walls and ceiling; it revealed nothing of what lay ahead. But from one passage came a breeze like a scent of evil that made Linden wince; and she turned that way Covenant's hearing ached as he struggled to discern the sounds of pursuit or danger. But he lacked her percipience; he had to trust her.

The tunnel she had chosen angled downward until he thought that even vertigo would not be strong enough to keep him upright. Darkness and stone piled tremendously around him. The torch continued to burn down. It was half consumed already. Somewhere beyond the mountain, the Land lay in day or night; but he had lost all conception of time. Time had no meaning here, in the lightless unpity of Lord Foul's demesne. Only the torch mattered-and Linden's pale-knuckled grasp on the brand-and the fact that he was not alone. For good or ill, redemption or ruin, he was not alone. There was no other way.

Without warning, the walls withdrew, and a vast impression of space opened above his head. Linden stopped, searched the dark. When she lifted the torch, he saw that the tunnel had emerged from the stone, leaving them at the foot of a blunt gutrock cliff. Chill air tingled against his cheek. The cliff seemed to go straight up forever. She looked at him as if she were lost. The scant fire made her eyes appear hollow and brutalized.

A short distance from the tunnel's opening rose a steep slope of shale, loam, and refuse-too steep and yielding to be climbed. He and Linden were in the bottom of a wide crevice. Something high up in the dark had collapsed any number of millennia ago, filling half the floor of the chasm with debris.

Memories flocked at him out of the enclosed night: recognitions ran like cold sweat down his spine. All his skin felt clammy and diseased. This looked like the place-The place where he had once fallen, with an ur vile struggling to bite off his ring and no light anywhere, nothing to defend him from the ambush of madness except his stubborn insistence on himself. But that defence was no longer of any use. Kiril Threndor was not far away. Lord Foul was close-

“This way.” Linden gestured toward the left, along the sheer wall. Her voice sounded dull, half stupefied by the effort of holding onto her courage. Her senses told her things that appalled her. Though his own perceptions were fatally truncated, he felt the potential for hysteria creep upward in her. But instead of screaming she became scarcely able to move. How virulent would Lord Foul be to nerves as vulnerable as hers? Covenant was at least protected by his numbness. But she had no protection, might as well have been naked. She had known too much death. She hated it-and ached to share its sovereign power. She believed that she was evil.

In the unsteady torchlight, he seemed to see her already falling into paralysis under the pressure of Lord Foul's emanations.

Yet she still moved. Or perhaps the Despiser's will coerced her. Dully, she walked in the direction she had indicated.

He joined her. All his joints were stiff with pleading. Hang on. You have the right to choose. You don't have to be trapped like this. Nobody can take away your right to choose. But he could not work the words into his locked throat. They were stifled by the accumulation of his own dread.

Dread which ate at the rims of his certainty, eroded the place of stillness and conviction where he stood. Dread that he was wrong—

The air was as damp and dank as compressed sweat. Shivering in the chill atmosphere, he accompanied Linden along the bottom of the chasm and watched the volition leak out of her until she was barely moving.

Then she stopped. Her head slumped forward. The torch hung at her side, nearly burning her hand. He prayed her name, but she did not respond. Her voice trickled like blood between her lips:

“Ravers.”

And the steep slope beside them arose as if she had called it to life.

Two of them: creatures of scree and detritus from the roots of the mountain. They were nearly as tall as Giants, but much broader. They looked strong enough to crush boulders in their massive arms. One of them struck Covenant a stone blow that scattered him to the floor. The other impelled Linden to the wall.

Her torch fell, guttered and went out. But the creatures did not need that light. They emitted a ghastly lumination that made their actions as vivid as atrocities.

One stood over Covenant to prevent him from rising. The other confronted Linden. It reached for her. Her face stretched to scream, but even her screams were paralyzed. She made no effort to defend herself.

With a gentleness worse than any violence, the creature began to unbutton her shirt.

Covenant gagged for breath. Her extremity was more than he could bear. Every inch of him burned for power. Suddenly, he no longer cared whether his attacker would strike him again. He rolled onto his chest, wedged his knees under him, tottered to his feet. His attacker raised a threatening arm. He was battered and frail, barely able to stand. Yet the passion raging from him halted the creature in mid-blow, forced it to retreat a step. It was a Raver, sentient and accessible to fear. It understood what his wild magic would do, if he willed.

His half-hand trembling, he pointed at the creature in front of Linden. It stopped at the last buttons. But it did not turn away.

“I'm warning you.” His voice spattered and scorched like hot acid. “Foul's right about this. If you touch her, I don't care what else I destroy. I'll rip your soul to atoms. You won't live long enough to know whether I break the Arch or not.”

The creature did not move. It seemed to be daring him to unleash his white gold.

“Try me,” he breathed on the verge of eruption. “Just try me.”

Slowly, the creature lowered its arms. Backing carefully, it retreated to stand beside its fellow.

A spasm went through Linden. All her muscles convulsed in torment or ecstasy. Then her head snapped up. The dire glow of the creatures flamed from her eyes.

She looked straight at Covenant and began to laugh.

The laughter of a ghoul, mirthless and cruel.

“Slay me then, groveller!” she cried. Her voice was as shrill as a shriek. It echoed hideously along the crevice. “Rip my soul to atoms!” Perchance it will pleasure you to savage the woman you love as well!

The Raver had taken possession of her. and there was nothing in all the world that he could do about it.

He nearly fell then. The supreme evil had come upon her, and he was helpless. The ill that you deem most terrible-. Even if he had grovelled entirely, abject and suppliant, begging the Ravers to release her, they would only have laughed at him. Now in all horror and anguish there was no other way-could be no other way. He cried out at himself, at his head to rise, his legs to uphold him, his back to straighten. Seadreamer! he panted as if that were the liturgy of his conviction, his fused belief. Honninscrave. Hamako. Hile Troy. All of them had given themselves. There was no other way.

“All right,” he grated. The sound of his voice in the chasm almost betrayed him to rage; but he clamped down his wild magic, refused it for the last time, “Take me to Foul. I'll give him the ring.”

No way except surrender.

The Raver in Linden went on laughing wildly.

Nineteen: Hold Possession

SHE was not laughing.

Laughter came out of her mouth. It sprang from her corded throat to scale like gibbering up into the black abyss. Her lungs drew the air which became malice and glee. Her face was contorted like the vizard of a demon-or the rictus of her mother's asphyxiation.

But she was not laughing. It was not Linden Avery who laughed.

It was the Raver.

It held possession of her as completely as if she had been born for its use, formed and nurtured for no other purpose than to provide flesh for its housing, limbs for its actions, lungs and throat for its malign joy. It bereft her of will and choice, voice and protest At one time, she had believed that her hands were trained and ready, capable of healing-a physician's hands. But now she had no hands with which to grasp her possessor and fight it. She was a prisoner in her own body and the Raver's evil.

And that evil excoriated every niche and nerve of her being. It was heinous and absolute beyond bearing. It consumed her with its memories and purposes, crushed her independent existence with the force of its ancient strength. It was the corruption of the Sunbane mapped and explicit in her personal veins and sinews. It was the revulsion and desire which had secretly ruled her life, the passion for and against death. It was the fetid halitus of the most diseased mortality condensed to its essence and elevated to the transcendence of prophecy, promise, suzerain truth-the definitive commandment of darkness.

All her life, she had been vulnerable to this. It had thronged into her from her father's stretched laughter, and she had confirmed it by stuffing it down her mother's abject throat. Once, she had flattered herself that she was like the Land under the Sunbane, helplessly exposed to desecration. But that was false. The Land was innocent.

She was evil.

Its name was moksha Jehannum, and it brought its past with it. She remembered now as if all its actions were her own. The covert ecstasy with which it had mastered Marid-the triumph of the blow that had driven hot iron into Nassic's human back (and the rich blood frothing at the heat of the blade) — the cunning which had led moksha to betray its possession of Marid to her new percipience, so that she and Covenant would be condemned and Marid would be exposed to the perverting sun. She remembered bees-Remembered the apt mimesis of madness in the warped man who had set a spider to Covenant's neck. She might as well have done those things herself.

But behind them lay deeper crimes. Empowered by a piece of the Illearth Stone, she had mastered a Giant. She had named herself Fleshharrower and had led the Despiser's armies against the Lords. And she had tasted victory when She had trapped the defenders of the Land between her own forces and the savage forest of Garroting Deep-the forest which she hated, had hated for all the long centuries, hated in every green leaf and drop of sap from tree to tree-the forest which should have been helpless against ravage and fire, would have been helpless if some outer knowledge had not intervened, making possible the interdict of the Colossus of the Fall, the protection of the Forestals.

Yet she had been tricked into entering the Deep, and so she had fallen victim to the Deep's guardian, Caerroil Wildwood. Unable to free herself, she had been slain in torment and ferocity on Gallows Howe, and her spirit had been sorely pressed to keep itself alive.

For that reason among many others, moksha Jehannum was avid to exact retribution. Linden was only one small morsel to the Raver's appetite. Yet her possessor savoured the pleasure her futile anguish afforded. Her body it left unharmed for its own use. But it violated her spirit as fundamentally as rape. And it went on laughing.

Her father's laughter, pouring like a flood of midnight from the old desuetude of the attic; a throng of nightmares in which she foundered; triumph hosting out of the dire cavern and plunge which had once been his frail mouth. You never loved me anyway. Never loved him-or anyone else. She had not mustered the bare decency to cry aloud as she strangled her mother, drove that poor sick woman terrified and alone into the last dark.

This was what Joan had felt, this appalled and desperate horror which made no difference of any kind, could not so much as muffle die sound of malice. Buried somewhere within herself, Joan had watched her own fury for Covenant's blood, for the taste of his pain. And now Linden looked out at him as if through moksha Jehannum's eyes, heard him with ears that belonged to the Raver. Lit only by the ghoulish emanations of the creatures, he stood in the bottom of the crevice like a man who had just been maimed. His damaged arm dangled at his side. Every line of his body was abused with need and near-prostration. The bruises on his face made his visage appear misshapen, deformed by the pressures building inside him. where the wild magic was manacled. Yet his eyes gleamed like teeth, focused such menace toward the Ravers that moksha Jehannum’s brother had not dared to strike him again.

“Take me to Foul,” he said. He had lost his mind. This was not despair: it was too fierce for despair. It was madness. The Banefire had cost him his sanity. “I'll give him the ring.”

His gaze lanced straight into Linden. If she had owned a voice, she would have cried out He was smiling like a sacrifice.

Then she found that she did not have to watch him. The Raver could not require consciousness of her. Its memories told her that most of its victims had simply fled into mindlessness. The moral paralysis which had made her so accessible to moksha Jehannum would protect her now, not from use but from awareness. All she had to do was let go her final hold upon her identity. Then she would be spared from witnessing the outcome of Covenant's surrender.

With glee and hunger, the Raver urged her to let go. Her consciousness fed it, pleased it, sharpened its enjoyment of her violation. But if she lapsed, it would not need exertion to master her. And she would be safe at last-as safe as she had once been in the hospital during the blank weeks after her father's suicide-relieved from excruciation, inured to pain-as safe as death.

There were no other choices left for her to make.

She refused it. With the only passion and strength that remained to her, she refused it.

She had already failed in the face of Joan's need-been stricken helpless by the mere sight of Marid's desecration. Gibbon's touch had reft her of mind and will. But since then she had learned to fight.

In the cavern of the One Tree, she had grasped power for the first time and had used it, daring herself against forces so tremendous-though amoral-that terror of them had immobilized her until Findail had told her what was at stake. And in the Hall of Gifts-There samadhi Sheol's nearness had daunted her, misled her, tossed her in a whirlwind of palpable ill; she had hardly known where she stood or what she was doing. But she had not been stripped of choice.

Not, she insisted, careless of whether the Raver heard her. Because she had been needed. By all her friends. By Covenant before the One Tree. if not in the Hall of Gifts. And because she had experienced the flavour of efficacy, had gripped it to her heart and recognized it for what it was. Power: the ability to make choices that mattered. Power which came from no external source, but only from her own intense self.

She would not give it up Covenant needed her still, though the Raver's mastery of her was complete and she had no way to reach him. I'll give him the ring. She could not stop him. But if she let herself go on down the blind road of her paralysis, there would be no one left to so much as wish him stopped. Therefore she bore the pain. Moksha Jehannum crowded every nerve with nausea, filled every heartbeat with vitriol and dismay, shredded her with every word and movement. Yet she heeded the call of Covenant's fierce eyes and flagrant intent. Consciously, she clung to herself and refused oblivion, remained where the Raver could hurt her and hurt her, so that she would be able to watch.

And try.

“Will you?” chortled her throat and mouth. “You are belatedly come to wisdom, groveller.” She raged at that epithet: he did not deserve it. But moksha only mocked him more trenchantly. "Yet your abasement has been perfectly prophesied. Did you fear for your life among the Cavewights? Your fear was apt Anile as the Dead, they would have slain you-and blithely would the ring have been seduced from them. From the moment of your summoning, all hope has been folly! All roads have led to the Despiser's triumph, and all struggles have been vain. Your petty- “

“I'm sick of this,” rasped Covenant. He was hardly able to stay on his feet-and yet the sheer force of his determination commanded the Ravers, sent an inward quailing through them. “Don't flatter yourselves that I'm going to break down here.” Linden felt moksha's trepidation and shouted at it, Coward! then gritted her teeth and gagged for bare life as its fury crashed down on her. But Covenant could not see what was happening to her, the price she paid for defiance. Grimly, he went on, “You aren't going to get my ring. You'll be lucky if he even lets you live when he's finished with me.” His eyes flashed, as hard as hot marble. “Take me to him.”

“Most assuredly, groveller,” moksha Jehannum riposted. “I tremble at your will.”

Tearing savagery across the grain of Linden’s clinched consciousness, the Raver turned her, sent her forward along the clear spine of the chasm.

Behind her, the two creatures-both ruled now by moksha’s brother-set themselves at Covenant's back. But she saw with the senses of the Raver that they did not hazard touching him.

He followed her as if he were too weak to do more than place one foot in front of the other-and too strong to be beaten.

The way seemed long: every step, each throb of her heart was interminable and exquisite agony. The Raver relished her violation and multiplied it cunningly. From her helpless brain, moksha drew images and hurled them at her, made them appear more real than Mount Thunder's imponderable gutrock. Marid with his fangs. Joan screaming like a predator for Covenant's blood, wracked by a Sunbane of the soul. Her mother's mouth, mucus drooling at the comers-phlegm as rank as putrefaction from the rot in her lungs. The incisions across her father's wrists, agape with death and glee. There was no end to the ways she could be tortured, if she refused to let go. Her possessor savoured them all.

Yet she held. Stubbornly, uselessly, almost without reason, she clung to who she was, to the Linden Avery who made promises. And in the secret recesses of her heart she plotted moksha Jehannum's downfall Oh, the way seemed long to her! But she knew, had no defence against knowing, that for the Raver the distance was short and eager, little more than a stone's throw along the black gulf. Then the dank light of Covenant's guards picked out a stairway cut into the left wall. It was a rude ascent, roughly hacked from the sheer stone immemorially long ago and worn blunt by use; but it was wide and safe. The Raver went upward with strong strides, almost jaunty in its anticipation. But Linden watched Covenant for signs of vertigo or collapse.

His plight was awful. She felt his bruises aching in the bones of his skull, read the weary limp of his pulse. Sweat like fever or failure beaded on his forehead. An ague of exhaustion made all his movements awkward and imprecise. Yet he kept going, as rigid of intent as he had been on Haven Farm when he had walked into the woods to redeem his ex-wife. His very weakness and imbalance seemed to support him.

He was entirely out of his mind; and Linden bled for him while moksha Jehannum raked her with scorn.

The stairway was long and short. It ascended for several hundred feet and hurt as if it would go on forever without surcease. The Raver gave her not one fragment or splinter of respite while it used her body as if she had never been so healthy and vital. But at last she reached an opening in the wall, a narrow passage-mouth with rocklight reflecting from its end. The stairs continued upward; but she entered the tunnel Covenant followed her, his guards behind him in single file.

Heat mounted against her face until she seemed to be walking into fire; but it meant nothing to moksha. The Raver was at home in dire passages and brimstone. For a while, all the patients she had failed to help, all the medical mistakes she had made beat about her mind, accusing her like furies. In the false name of life, she was responsible for so much death. Perhaps she had employed it for her own ends. Perhaps she had introduced pain and loss to her victims, needing them to suffer so that she would have power and life.

Then the passage ended, and she found herself in the place where Lord Foul had chosen to wield his machinations.

Kiril Threndor. Heart of Thunder.

Here Kevin Landwaster had come to enact the Ritual of Desecration. Here Drool Rockworm had recovered the lost Staff of Law, It was the dark centre of all Mount Thunder's ancient and fatal puissance.

The place where the outcome of the Earth would be decided.

She knew it with moksha Jehannum's knowledge. The Raver's whole spirit seemed to quiver in lust and expectation.

The cave was large, a round, high chamber. Entrances gaped,like mute cries, stretched in eternal pain, around its circumference. The walls glared rocklight in all directions. They were shaped entirely into smooth, irregular facets which cast their illumination like splinters at Linden's eyes. And that sharp assault was whetted and multiplied by a myriad keen reflections from the chamber's ceiling. There the stone gathered a dense cluster of stalactites, as bright and ponderous as melting metal. Among them swarmed a chiaroscuro of orange-red gleamings.

But no light seemed to touch the figure that stood on a low dais in the middle of the time burnished floor. It rose there like a pillar, motionless and immune to revelation. It might have been the back of a statue or a man; perhaps it was as tall as a Giant. Even the senses of the Raver saw nothing certainly. It appeared to have no colour and no clear shape or size. Its outlines were blurred as if they transcended recognition. But it radiated power like a shriek through the echoing rocklight.

The air reeked of sulphur-a stench so acrid that it would have brought tears to her eyes if it had not given such pleasure to her possessor. But under that rank odour lay a different scent, a smell more subtle, insidious, and consuming than any brimstone. A smell on which moksha fed like an addict.

A smell of attar. The sweetness of the grave. Linden was forced to devour it as if she were revelling. The force of the figure screamed into her like a shout poised to bring down the mountain, rip the vulnerable heart of the Land to rubble and chaos.

Covenant stood a short distance away from her now, dissociating his plight from hers so that she would not suffer the consequences of his company. He had no health-sense. And even if his eyes had been like hers, he might not have been able to discern what was left of her-might not have seen the way she cried out to have him beside her. She knew everything to which he was blind, everything that could have made a difference to him. Everything except how in his battered weakness he had become strong enough to stand there as though he were indefeasible.

With moksha’s perceptions, she saw the two creatures and the Raver which controlled them leave the chamber. They were no longer needed. She saw Covenant look at her and form her name, trying mutely to tell her something that he could not say and she could not hear. The light flared at her like a shattered thing, stone trapped in the throes of fragmentation, the onset of the last collapse. The stalactites shed gleams and imminence as if they were about to plunge down on her. Her unbuttoned shirt seemed to let attar crawl across her breasts, teasing them with anguish. Heat closed around her faint thoughts like a fist”

And the figure on the dais turned..

Even moksha Jehannum's senses failed her. They were a blurred lens through which she saw only outlines that dripped and ran, features smeared out of focus. She might have been trying to gauge the figure past the high, hot intervention of a bonfire. But it resembled a man. Parts of him suggested a broad chest and muscular arms, a patriarchal beard, a flowing robe. Tall as a Giant, puissant as a mountain, and more exigent than any conflagration of bloodshed and corruption, he turned; and his gaze swept Kiril Threndor-swept her and Covenant as if with a blink he could have brushed them out of existence.

His eyes were the only precise part of him.

She had seen them before.

Eyes as bitter as fangs, carious and cruel; eyes of deliberate force, rabid desire; eyes wet with venom and insatiation. In the woods behind Haven Farm, they had shone out of the blaze and pierced her to the pit of her soul, measuring and disdaining every aspect of her as she had crouched in fright.

They had required paralysis of her as if it were the first law of her existence. When she had unlocked her weakness, run down the hillside to try to save Covenant, they had fixed her like a promise that she would never be so brave again, never rise above her mortal contradictions. And now with infinitely multiplied and flagrant virulence they repeated that promise and made it true. Reaching past moksha Jehannum to the clinched relict of her consciousness, they confirmed their absolute commandment Never again.

Never.

In response, her voice said, "He has come to cede his ring. I have brought him to your will,” and chortled like a burst of involuntary fear. Even the Raver could not bear its master's direct gaze and sought to turn that baleful regard aside.

But for a moment Lord Foul did not look away. His eyes searched her for signs of defiance or courage. Then he said, “To you I do not speak.” His voice came from the rocklight and the heat, from the reek of attar and the chiaroscuro of the stalactites-a voice as deep as Mount Thunder's bones and veined with savagery. Orange-red facets glittered and glared in every word. “I have not spoken to you. There was no need-is none. I speak to set the feet of my hearers upon the paths I design for them, but your path has been mine from the first. You have been well bred to serve me, and all your choices conduce to my ends. To attain that which I have desired from you has been a paltry exercise, scarce requiring effort. When I am free”- she heard a grin in the swarming reflections- “you will accompany me, so that your present torment may be prolonged forever. I will gladly mark myself upon such flesh as yours.”

With her mouth, the Raver giggled tense and sweating approval. The Despiser's gaze nailed dismay into her. She was as abject as she had ever been, and she tried to wail; but no sound came.

Then she would have let go. But Covenant did not. His eyes were midnight with rage for her; his passion refused to be crushed. He looked hardly capable of taking another step yet he came to her aid.

“Don't kid yourself,” he snapped like a jibe. “You're already beaten, and you don't even know it. All these threats are just pathetic.”

Assuredly he was out of his mind. But his sarcasm shifted the Despiser toward him. Linden was left to the cunning tortures of her possessor. They slashed and flayed at her, showed her in long whipcuts all the atrocities an immortal could commit against her. But when Lord Foul's gaze left her, she found that she was still able to cling. She was stubborn enough for that.

“Ah,” the Despiser rumbled like the sigh of an avalanche, “at last my foeman stands before me. He does not grovel-but grovelling has become needless. He has spoken words which may not be recalled. Indeed, his abasement is complete. though he is blind to it He does not see that he has sold himself to a servitude more demeaning than prostration. He has become the tool of my Enemy, no longer free to act against me. Therefore he submits himself, deeming in his cowardice that here the burden of havoc and ruin will pass from him.” Soft laughter made the rocklight throb; mute Shrieks volleyed from the walls. “He is the Unbeliever in all sooth. He does not believe that the Earth's doom will at last be laid to his charge.

“Thomas Covenant”- he took an avid step forward- “the spectacle of your puerile strivings gives me glee to repay my long patience, for your defeat has ever been as certain as my will. Were I to be foiled, the opportunity belonged to your companion, not to you-and you see how she has availed herself of it.” With one strong, blurred arm, he made a gesture toward Linden that nearly unseated her reason. Again, he laughed; but his laughter was devoid of mirth. “Had she seduced you of the ring-ah, then would I have been tested. But therefore did I choose her, a woman altogether unable to turn aside from my desires.

“You are a fool,” he went on, “for you have known yourself doomed, and yet you have come to me. Now I require your soul.” The heat of his voice filled Linden's lungs with suffocation. Moksha Jehannum shivered, hungry for violence and ravage. The Despiser sounded unquestionably sane-but that only made him more terrible. One of his hands-a bare smear across the Raver's sight-seemed to curl into a fist; and Covenant was jerked forward, within Lord Foul's reach. The walls spattered light like sobs, as if Mount Thunder itself were appalled.

As soft as the whisper of death, the Despiser said, “Give the ring to me.”

Linden believed that she would have obeyed in Covenant's place. The command of that voice was absolute But he did not move. His right arm hung at his side. The ring dangled as if it were empty of import-as if his numb finger within the band had no significance. His left fist closed and unclosed like the aggrieved labour of his heart. His eyes looked as dark as the loneliness of stars. Somehow, he held his head up, his back straight-upright in conviction or madness.

“Talk's cheap. You can say anything you want. But you're wrong, and you ought to know it. This time you've gone too far. What you did to Andelain. What you're doing to Linden- ” He swallowed acid. “We aren't enemies. That's just another lie. Maybe you believe it-but it's still a lie. You should see yourself. You're even starting to look like me.” The special gleam of his gaze reached Linden like a gift. He was irremediably insane-or utterly indomitable. “You're Just another part of me. Just one side of what it means to be human. The side that hates lepers. The poisonous side.” His certainty did not waver at all. “We are one.”

His assertion made Linden gape at what he had become. But it only drew another laugh from the Despiser-a short, gruff bark of dismissal. “Do not seek to bandy truth and falsehood with me,” he replied. “You are too inane for the task. Lies would better serve the trivial yearning which you style love. The truth damns you here. For three and a half millennia I have mustered my will against the Earth in your absence, groveller. I am the truth. I. And I have no use for the sophistry of your Unbelief.” He levelled his voice at Covenant like the blade of an axe. Fragments of rocklight shot everywhere but could not bring his intense form into any kind of focus. “Give the ring to me.”

Covenant's visage slackened as if he were made ill by the necessity of his plight. But still he withheld submission. Instead, he changed his ground.

“At least let Linden go.” His stance took on an angle of pleading. “You don't need her anymore. Even you should be satisfied with how much she's been hurt. I've already offered her my ring once. She refused it Let her go.”

In spite of everything, he was still trying to spare her.

Lord Foul's response filled Kiril Threndor. “Have done, groveller.” Attar made the Raver ecstatic, wracked Linden. “You weary my long patience. She is forfeit to me by her own acts. Are you deaf to yourself? You have spoken words which can never be recalled.” Concentrated venom dripped from his outlines. As distinct as the breaking of boulders, he demanded a third time, “Give the ring to me.”

And Covenant went on sagging as though he had begun to crumble. All his strength was gone. He could no longer pretend to hold himself upright. One by one, his loves had been stripped from him: he had nothing left. After all, he was only one ordinary man, small and human. Without wild magic, he was no match for the Despiser.

When he weakly lifted his half band, began tugging the ring from his finger. Linden forgave him. No choice but to surrender it. He had done everything possible, everything conceivable, had surpassed himself again and again in his efforts to save the Land. That he failed now was cause for grief, but not for blame.

Only his eyes showed no collapse. They burned like the final dark, the last deep midnight where no Sunbane shone.

His surrender took no more than three heartbeats. One to raise his hand, take bold of the ring. Another to pull the band from his finger as if in voluntary riddance of marriage, love, humanity. A third to extend the immaculate white gold toward the Despiser.

But extremity and striving made those three moments as long as agony. During them. Linden Avery pitted her ultimate will against her possessor.

She forgave Covenant. He was too poignant and dear to be blamed. He had given everything that her heart could ask of him.

But she did not submit.

Gibbon had said. The principal doom of the Land is upon your shoulders. Because no one else had this chance to come between Covenant and his defeat. You are being forged as iron is forged to achieve the ruin of the Earth. Forged to fail here. Because you can see.

Now she meant to determine what kind of metal had been made of her.

Gibbon-Raver had also told her she was evil. Perhaps that was true. But evil itself was a form of power.

And she had become intimately familiar with her possessor. From the furthest roots of its past. she felt springing its contempt for all things that had flesh and could be mastered-a contempt born of fear. Fear of any form of life able to refuse it. The Forests. Giants. The Haruchai. It was unquenchably hungry for immortal control, for the safety of sovereignty. All refusals terrified it. The logic of its failures led inexorably to death. If it could be refused, then it could also be slain.

She had no way to understand the lost communal mind of the Forests. But Giants and Haruchai were another question. Though moksha Jehannum ripped and shrieked at her, she picked up the strands of what she knew and wove them to her purpose.

The Giants and Haruchai had always been able to refuse. Perhaps because they had not suffered the Land's long history of Ravers, they had not learned to doubt their autonomy. Or perhaps because they used little or no outward expressions of power, they comprehended more fully that true choice was internal. But whatever the explanation, they were proof against possession where the people of the Land were not. They believed in their capacity to make choices which mattered.

That belief was all she needed.

Moksha was frantic now, savage and brutal. It assailed every part of her that was able to feel pain. It desecrated her as if she were Andelain. It made every horrifying memory of her life incandescent before her: Nassic's murder and Gibbon's touch; the lurker of the Sarangrave; Kasreyn's malign cunning; Covenant bleeding irretrievably to death in the woods behind Haven Farm. It poured acid into every wound which futility had ever inflicted upon her.

And it argued with her. She could not choose: she had already made the only choice that signified. When she had accepted the legacy of her father and stuffed it in handfuls of tissue down her mother's throat, she had declared her crucial allegiance, her definitive passion-a passion in no way different than her possessor's. Despite had made her what she was, a lost woman as ravaged as the Land, and the Sunbane dawning in her now would never set.

But the sheer intensity of her hurt made her lucid. She saw the Raver's lie. Only once had she tried to master death by destroying life. After that, all her striving had gone to heal those who suffered. Though she had been haunted and afraid, she had not been cruel. Suicide and murder were not the whole story. When the old man on Haven Farm had collapsed in front of her, the stink issuing from his mouth had sickened her like the foretaste of Despite; but she had willingly breathed and breathed that fetor in her efforts to save him.

She was evil. Her visceral response to the dark might of her tormentors gave her the stature of a Raver. And yet her instinct for healing falsified moksha.

That contradiction no longer paralyzed her. She accepted it. It gave her the power to choose.

Squalling like a butchered thing, the Raver fought her. But she had entered at last into her true estate. Moksha Jehannum was afraid of her. Her will rose up in its shackles. Tested the iron of her possessor's malice. Took hold of the chains.

And broke free.

Lord Foul had not yet grasped the ring. There was still an instant of space between his hand and Covenant's. Rocklight yowled desire and triumph from the walls.

Linden did not move. She had no time to think of that Motionless as if she were still frozen, she hurled herself forward. With her Land-born health-sense, she sprang into Covenant, scrambled toward the fiery potential of his wedding band.

Empowered by wild magic, she drew back his hand.

At that, rage swelled Lord Foul: he sent out a flood of fury which should have washed her away. But she ignored him. She was sure that he would not touch her now-not now, while she held possession of Covenant and the ring. She was suddenly strong enough to turn her back upon the Despiser himself. The necessity of freedom protected her. The choice of surrender or defiance was hers to make.

In the silent privacy of his mind, she faced the man she loved and took all his burdens upon herself.

He could not resist her. Once before, he had beaten back her efforts to control him. But now he had no defence. With his own strength, she mastered him as completely as ever the Elohim or Kasreyn had mastered him.

No evil! she breathed at him. Not this time. Her previous attempt to possess him had been wrong, inexcusable. She had read in him his intent to risk the Banefire, and she had reacted as if he meant to commit suicide. Instinctively, she had tried to stop him. But then his life and the risk had been his alone. She had had no right to interfere.

Now, however, he surrendered the Earth as well as himself. He was not simply risking his own life: he was submitting all life to certain destruction. Therefore she had the responsibility to intervene. The responsibility and the right.

The right! she cried. But he made no answer. Her will occupied him completely.

She seemed to meet him where they had met once before, when she had surrendered herself to save him from the silence of the Elohim- in a field of flowers, under an inviolate sky, a clean sun. But now she recognized that field as one of the rich leas of Andelain, bordered by hills and woods. And he was no longer young. He stood before her exactly as he stood before the Despiser-altogether untouchable, his face misshaped by bruises he did not deserve, his body nearly prostrate with exhaustion, the old knife-cut in the centre of his shirt gaping. His eyes were fixed on her, and they flamed hot midnight, the final extremity of the heavens.

No smile in the world could have softened his gaze.

He stood there as if he were waiting for her to search him, catechize him, learn the truth. But she failed to close the gulf between them. She ran and ran toward him, aching to fling her arms around him at last; but the field lay as still as the sunlight, and his eyes shone darkness at her, and all her strength brought her no nearer. She knew that if she reached him she would understand-that the vision or despair which he had found in the Banefire would be communicated to her-that his certainty would become comprehensible. He was certain, as sure as white gold. But she could not approach him. He met her appeal with the indefeasible Don't touch me of leprosy or ascension, apotheosis.

His refusal made grief well up in her like the wail of a lost child.

Then she wanted to turn and hurl all her newfound force at the Despiser, wanted to call up white fire and scourge him from the face of the Earth, Some infections have to be cut out. Why else do you have all that power? She could do it He had hurt Covenant so deeply that she was no longer able to reach him. In her anguish she was greedy for fire. She possessed him heart and limb-and his left hand held the ring, gripped it on the brink of detonation. She was capable of that. If no other hope remained, and she could not touch her love, then let it be she who fought, she who ravaged, she who ruled. Let Lord Foul learn the nature of what he had forged!

Yet Covenant's gaze held her as if she were sobbing, too weak to do anything except weep. He said nothing, offered her nothing. But the purity of his regard did not let her turn. How could he speak, do anything other than repudiate her? She had taken his will from him-had dehumanized him as thoroughly as if she were a Raver and relished his helplessness. And yet he remained human and desirable and stubborn, as dear as life to her. Perhaps he was mad. But was she not something worse?.

Are you not evil?

Yes. Beyond question.

But the black flame in his eyes did not accuse her of evil. He did not despise her in any way. He only refused to be swayed.

You said you trusted me.

And who was she to believe him wrong? If doubt was necessary, why should it be doubt of him rather than of herself? Kevin Landwaster had warned her, and she had felt his honesty. But perhaps after all he did not understand, was blinded by the consequences of his own despair. And Covenant remained before her in sunshine and flowers as if the beauty of Andelain were the ground on which he took his stand. His darkness was as lonely as hers. But hers was like the lightless cunning and violence of the Wightwarrens; his resembled the heart of the true night, where the Sunbane never shone.

Yes, she said again. She had known all along that possession in every guise was evil; but she had tried to believe otherwise, both because she wanted power and because she wanted to save the Land. Destruction and healing: death and life. She could have argued that even evil was Justified to keep the white ring out of Lord Foul's grasp. But now she was truly weeping Covenant had said, I'm going to find some other answer. That was the only promise which mattered.

Deliberately, she let him go-let love and hope and power go as if they were all one, too pure to be possessed or desecrated. Locking her cries in her throat, she turned and walked away across the lea. Out of sunshine into attar and rocklight With her own eyes, she saw Covenant lift the ring once more as if his last fears were gone. With her own ears, she heard the savage relief of Lord Foul's laughter as he claimed his triumph. Heat and despair seemed to close over her like the lid of a coffin.

Moksha Jehannum tried to enter her again, cast her down. But the Raver could not touch her now. Grief crowded upward in her, thronged for utterance. She was hardly aware of moksha's failure.

The Despiser made Kiril Threndor shudder:

“Fool!”

He was crowing over Linden, not Covenant. His eyes bit a trail of venom through her mind.

“Have I not said that all your choices conduce to my ends? You serve me absolutely!” The stalactites threw shards of malice at her head. “It is you who have accorded the ring to me!”

He raised one hand like a smear across her sight In his grasp, the band began to blaze. His shout gathered force until she feared it would shatter the mountain.

“Here at last I hold possession of all life and Time forever! Let my Enemy look to his survival and be daunted! Freed of my gaol and torment, I will rule the cosmos!”

She could not remain upright under the weight of his exaltation. His voice split her hearing, hampered the rhythm of her heart. Kneeling on the tremorous stone, she gritted her teeth, swore to herself that even though she had failed at everything else she would at least breathe no more of this damnable attar. The walls threw argent in carillon from all their facets. The Despiser's power scaled toward apocalypse.

Yet she heard Covenant. Somehow, he kept his feet. He did not shout; but every word he said was as distinct as augury.

“Big deal. I could do the same thing-if I were as crazy as you.” His certainty was unmatched. “It doesn't take power. Just delusion. You're out of your mind.”

The Despiser swung toward Covenant. Wild magic effaced the rocklight, made Kiril Threndor scream white fire. “Groveller, I will teach you the meaning of my suzerainty!” His whole form rippled and blurred with ecstasy, violence. Only his carious eyes remained explicit, as cruel as fangs. They seemed to shred the substance from Covenant's bones. “I am your Master!”

He towered over Covenant; his arms rose in transport or imprecation. In one fist, he held the prize for which he had craved and plotted. The searing light he drew from the ring should have blinded Linden entirely, scorched her eyes out of their sockets. But from moksha Jehannum she had learned how to protect her senses. She felt that she was peering into the furnace of the desecrated sun; but she was still able to see.

Able to see the blow which Lord Foul hammered down on Covenant as if the wild magic were a dagger.

It made Mount Thunder lurch, snapped stalactites from the ceiling like a rain of spears which narrowly missed Linden. It dapped Covenant to the floor as if all his limbs had been broken. For an instant, a convulsion of lightning writhed over him. Power and coruscation like the immaculate silver-white of the ring clamoured through him, shrilled along the lines of his form. She tried to yell; but the air in her lungs had given out When the blow passed, it left white flame spouting from the centre of his chest. The wound bled argent: all his bipod was ablaze. Fire fountained from his gaping hurt, spat gouts and plumes of numinous and incandescent deflagration, untainted by any darkness or venom. During that moment, he looked like he was still alive.

But it was transitory. The fire faded rapidly. Soon it flickered and failed. His blasted husk lay on the floor and did not move again.

Too stunned to cry out. Linden hugged her arms around herself and keened in the marrow of her bones.

But Lord Foul went on laughing.

Like a ghoul he laughed, a demon of torment and triumph. His lust riddled the mountain; more stalactites fell. From wall to wall, a crack sprang through the chamber; and shattered stones burst like cries from the fissure. Kiril Threndor shrieked argent. The Despiser became titanic with white fire.

“Ware of me. my Enemy!” His shout deafened Linden in spite of her instinctive self protection. She heard him, not with her overwhelmed ears, but with the tissues and vessels of her lungs. “I hold the keystone of Time, and I will reave it to rubble! Oppose me if you dare!”

Fire mounted around him, whipped higher and higher by his fierce arms. The ring raged like a growing sun in his fist. Already, his power dwarfed the Banefire, outsized every puissance she had ever witnessed, surpassed even the haunted faces of her nightmares.

Yet she moved. Crawling across the agonized lurch and shudder of the stone, she wrestled her weak body toward Covenant. She could not help him. She could not help herself. But she wanted to hold him in her embrace one more time. To ask his forgiveness, though he would never be able to hear her. Lord Foul had become so tremendous that only the edges of his gathering cataclysm were still discernible. She crept past him as if she were ignoring him. Battered arid aggrieved of body and soul, she reached Covenant, sat beside him, lifted his head into her lap, and let her hair fall around his face.

In death, his visage wore a strange grimace of relief and pain. He looked like a man who was about to laugh and weep at the same time.

At least I trusted you, she replied. Whatever else I did wrong. I trusted you in the end.

Then anguish seized her heart.

You didn't even say good bye.

None of the people who had died while she loved them had ever said goodbye.

She did not know how it was possible to continue breathing. Lord Foul's attar had become as intense as the light. The destruction he purposed tore a howl through the stone. Kiril Threndor became the stretched mouth of the mountain's hurt. Her mere flesh seemed to fray and dissolve in the proximity of such power. His blast was nearly ready.

Instinctively, almost involuntarily, she looked up from Covenant's guilt and innocence, impelled by an inchoate belief that there should be at least one witness to the riving of Time. While her mind lasted, she could still watch what the Despiser did, still send her protest to hound him into the heavens.

A maelstrom swept around him and grew as if he meant to break the Earth by consuming it alive. His fire was so extreme that it pulsed through the mountain, made all of Mount Thunder pound. But gradually he pulled the flame into himself, focused it in the hand that held the ring. Too bright to be beheld, his fist throbbed like the absolute heart of the world.

With a terrible cry, he hurled his globe splitting power upward.

An instant later, his exaltation changed to astonishment and rage.

Somewhere in the rock which enclosed Kiril Threndor, his blast shattered. Because it was aimed at the Arch of Time, it was not an essentially physical force, though the concussion of its delivery nearly reft Linden of consciousness. It did no physical damage. Instead, it burst as if it had struck a midnight sky and snapped. In a fathomless abyss, ruptured fragments of fire shot and blazed.

And the hot lines of light spread like etchwork, merged and multiplied swiftly, took shape within the bulk of the mountain. From wild magic and nothingness, they created a sketch of a man.

A man who had placed himself between Lord Foul and the Arch of Time.

The outlines gained substance and feature as they absorbed the Despiser's attack. Thomas Covenant.

He stood there inside Mount Thunder's gutrock, a spectre altogether different than the ponderous stone. All which remained of his mortal being was the grimace of power and grief that marked his countenance.

“No!” the Despiser howled. “No!”

But Covenant replied, “Yes.” He had no earthly voice, made no human sound. Yet he could be heard through the clamour of tormented stone, the constant repercussions of Lord Foul's fury. Linden listened to him as if he were as clear as a trumpet “Brinn showed me the way. He beat the Guardian of the One Tree by sacrificing himself, letting himself fall. And Mhoram told me to “Remember the paradox of white gold.” But for a long time I didn't understand. I'm the paradox. You can't take the wild magic away from me.” Then he seemed to move forward, concentrating more intensely on the Despiser. His command was as pure as white fire. “Put down the ring.”

“Never!” Lord Foul shouted instantly Might leaped in him, wild for use. “I know not what chicane or madness has brought you before me from the Dead-but it will not avail! You have once cast me down! I will not suffer a second debasement! Never! The white gold is mine, freely given! If you combat me. Death itself will not ward you from my Wrath!”

Something like a smile sharpened the spectre’s acute face. "I keep telling you you're wrong. I wouldn't dream of fighting you.”

Lord Foul's retort was a bolt that sizzled the air like frying meat. Power fierce enough to blow off the crown of the peak sprang at Covenant, raging for his immolation.

He did not oppose it, made no effort to resist or evade the attack. He simply accepted it The clench of pain between his brows showed that he was hurt; but he did not flinch. The blast raved and scourged into him until Linden feared that even a dead soul could not survive it. Yet when it ended he had taken it all upon himself. Bravely, be stood forth from the fire.

“I'm not going to fight you.” Even now, he seemed to pity his slayer. “All you can do is hurt me. But pain doesn't last. It just makes me stronger.” His voice held a note of sorrow for the Despiser. “Put down the ring.”

But Lord Foul was so far gone in fury and frustration that he might have been deaf. “No!” he roared again. No fear hampered him: he was transported to the verge of absolute violence.

“No!”

“NO!”

And with every cry he flung his utterest force against the Unbeliever.

Blast after blast, faster and faster. Enough white power to bring Mount Thunder down in rubble, cast it off Landsdrop into the ruinous embrace of Sarangrave Flat. Enough to leave the One Tree itself in ash and cinders. Enough to shatter the Arch of Time. All Lord Foul's ancient puissance was multiplied and channelled by the argent ring. He struck and struck, the unanswerable knell of his hunger adumbrating through Kiril Threndor until Linden's mind reeled and her life almost stopped, unable to support the magnitude of his rage. She clung to Covenant's body as if it were her last anchor and fought to endure and stay sane while Lord Foul strove to rip down the essential definition of the Earth.

But each assault hit nothing except the spectre, hurt nothing except Covenant. Blast after blast, he absorbed the power of Despite and fire and became stronger: Surrendering to their savagery, he transcended them. Every blow elevated him from the mere grieving spectation of the Dead in Andelain, the ritualized helplessness of the Unhomed in Coercri, to the stature of pure wild magic. He became an unbreakable bulwark raised like glory against destruction.

At the same time, each attack made Lord Foul weaker Covenant was a barrier the Despiser could not pierce because it did not resist him; and he could not stop. After so many millennia of yearning, defeat was intolerable to him. In accelerating frenzy, he flung rage and defiance and immitigable hate at Covenant. Yet each failed blow cost him more of himself. His substance frayed and thinned, denatured moment by moment, as his attacks grew more reckless and extravagant. Soon he had reduced himself to such evanescence that he was barely visible.

And still he did not stop. Surrender was impossible for him. If he had not been limited and confined by the mortal Time of his prison, he would have gone on forever, seeking Covenant's eradication. For a while, his form guttered and wailed as complete fury drove him to the threshold of banishment. Then he failed and went out. Though she was stunned and stricken. Linden heard the faint metallic clink of the ring when it fell to the dais and rolled to a stop.

Twenty: The Sun-Sage

SLOWLY, silence settled like dust back into Kiril Threndor. Most of the rocklight had been extinguished, but pieces still flared along the facets of the walls, giving the chamber an obscure illumination. Without the cloying scent of attar, the brimstone atmosphere smelled almost clean. Holes gaped in the ceiling where many of the stalactites had hung. Long tremors still rumbled into the distance, but they were no longer dangerous. They subsided like sighs as they passed beyond Linden's percipience.

She sat cross-legged near the dais, with Covenant's head in her lap. No breath stirred his chest. He was already growing cold. The capacity for peril which had made him so dear to her had gone out. But she did not let him go. His face wore a grimace of defeat and victory-a strange fusion of commandment and grace-that was as close as he would ever come to peace.

She did not look up to meet the argent gaze of his revenant She did not need to see him bending over her as if his heart bled to comfort her. The simple sense of his presence was enough. In silence, she bowed over his body. Her eyes streamed at the beauty of what he had become.

For a long moment, his empathy breathed about her, clearing the last reek from the air, the taste of ruin from her lungs. Then he said her name softly. His voice was tender, almost human, as if he had not passed beyond the normal strictures of life and death. “I'm sorry.” He seemed to feel that it was he who needed her forgiveness, rather than she who ached for his. “I didn't know what else to do. I had to stop him.”

I understand, she answered. You were right Nobody else could’ve done it If she had possessed half his comprehension, a fraction of his courage, she might have tried to help him. There had been no other way. But she would have failed. She was too tainted by her own darkness for such pure sacrifices.

Nobody else, she repeated. But any moment now she was going to begin sobbing. She had lost him at last. When the true grief started, it might never stop.

Yet he had already passed beyond compassion into necessity. Or perhaps he felt the hurt rising in her and sought to answer it. As gentle as love, he said, “Now it's your turn. Pick up the ring.”

The ring. It lay at the edge of the dais perhaps ten feet from her. And it was empty-devoid of light or power-an endless silver-white band with no more meaning than an unused manacle. Without Covenant or Lord Foul to wield it, it had lost all significance.

She was too weak and lorn to wonder why Covenant wanted her to do something about his ring. If she had been given some reason to hope that his spirit and his flesh might be brought back to each other, she would have obeyed him. No frailty or incomprehension would have prevented her from obeying him. But those questions had already been answered. And she had no desire to let his body out of her embrace.

“Linden.” His emanations were soft and kind; but she felt their urgency growing. “Try to think. I know it's hard-after what you've been through. But try. I need you to save the Land.”

She could not look up at him. His dead face was all that remained to her, all that held her together. If she raised her head to his unbearable beauty, she would be lost as well. With her fingertips, she stroked the gaunt lines of his cheek. In silence, she said, I don't need to. You've already done it.

“No,” he returned at once. “I haven't” Every word made his tension clearer. “All I did was stop him. I haven't healed anything. The Sunbane is still there. It has a life of its own. And the Earthpower's been too badly corrupted. It can't recover by itself.” His tone went straight into her heart. “Linden, please. Pick up the ring.”

Into her heart, where a storm of lamentation brewed. Instinctively, she feared it. It seemed to rise from the same source which had given birth to her old hunger for darkness, I can't, she said. Gusts and rue tugged through her. You know what power does to me. I can't stop hurting the people I want to help. I'll just turn into another Raver.

His spirit shone with comprehension. But he did not try to answer her dread, to deny or comfort it. Instead, his voice took on a note of harsh exigency.

“I can't do it myself. I don't have your hands-can't touch that kind of power anymore. I'm not physically alive. And I can be dismissed. I'm like the Dead. They can be invoked-and they can be sent away. Anybody who knows how can make me leave.” He appeared to believe he was in that danger. "Even Foul could've done it, if he hadn't tried to use wild magic against me.

“Linden, think.” His sense of peril burned in the cave. “Foul isn't dead. You can't kill Despite. And the Sunbane will bring him back. It'll restore him. He can't get past me to break the Arch. But he'll be able to do anything he wants to the Land-to the whole Earth.

“Linden!” The appeal broke from him. But at once he coerced himself to quietness again. “I don't mean to hurt you. I don't want to demand more than you can do. You've already done so much. But you've got to understand. You're starting to fade.”

That was true. She recognized it with a dim startlement like the foretaste of a gale. His body had become harder and heavier, more real-or else her own flesh was losing definition. She heard winds blowing like the ancient respiration of the mountain. Everything around her-the rocklight, the blunt stone, the atmosphere of Kiril Threndor-sharpened as her perceptions thinned. She was dwindling. Slowly, inexorably, the world grew more quintessential and necessary than anything her trivial mortality could equal. Soon she would go out like a snuffed candle.

“This is the way it usually works,” Covenant went on. “The power that called you here recoils when whoever summoned you dies. You're going back to your own life. Foul isn't dead-but as far as your summons goes, he might as well be. You'll lose your last chance.” His demand focused on her like anger. Or perhaps it was her own diminishment that made him sound so fiercely grieved. “Pick up the ring!”

She sighed faintly. She did not want to move; the prospect of dissolution struck her as a promise of peace. Perhaps she would die from it-would be spared the storm of her pain. That hurt cut at her, presaging the wind which blew between the worlds. She had lost him. Whatever happened now, she had lost him absolutely.

Yet she did not refuse him. She had sworn that she would put a stop to the Sunbane. And her love for him would not let her go. She had failed at everything else.

She was in no hurry. There was still time. The process leeching her away was slow, and she retained enough percipience to measure it. Groaning at the ache in her bones, she unbowed her back, lowered his head tenderly to her thighs. Her fingers fumbled stiffly, as if they were no longer good for anything; but she forced them to serve her-to re-button her shirt, closing at least that much protection over her bare heart. In her nightmare, she had used her shirt to try to stanch the bleeding. But she had failed then as well.

At that moment, a voice as precise as a bell rang in her mind. She seemed to recognize it, though it could not be him, that was impossible. Nothing had prepared her for his desperation.

— Avaunt, shade! Your work is done! Urge me no more dismay!

Commands clamoured through the chamber; revocations thronged against Covenant Instantly, his spectre frayed and faded like blown mist. His power was gone. He had no way to refuse the dismissal.

Crying Linden's name in supplication or anguish, he dissolved and was effaced. His passing left trails of argent across her vision Then they, too, were gone. There was nothing left of him to which she might cling.

At once, the bell rang again, clarion and compulsory. It was so close to frenzy that it nearly deafened her.

— Chosen, withhold! Do not dare the ring!

In the wake of the clangour, Findail and Vain entered Kiril Threndor, came struggling forward as if they were locked in mortal combat.

But the battle was all on one side. Findail thrashed and twisted, fought wildly; Vain simply ignored him. The Elohim was Earthpower incarnate, so fluid of essence that he could turn himself to any conceivable form. Yet he was unable to break the Demondim-spawn's grip. Vain still clasped his wrist The black creation of the ur-viles remained adamantine and undaunted.

Together, they moved toward the ring. Findail's free hand clawed in that direction. His mute voice was a tuneless clatter of distress.

— He has compelled me to preserve him! But he must not be suffered! Chosen, withhold!

Now Vain resisted Findail, exerted himself to hold the Elohim back. But in this Findail was too strong for him. Fighting like hawks, they strove closer and closer to the dais.

Then Linden thought that she would surely move. She would go to the ring and take it, if for no other reason than because she trusted neither the Appointed nor his ebon counterpart. Vain was either unreachable or utterly violent.

Findail showed alternate compassion and disdain as if both were simply facets of his mendacity. And Covenant had tried to warn her. The abrupt brutality of his dismissal drew anger from her waning heart.

But she had waited too long. The mounting winds blew through her as if she were a shadow Covenant's head had become far more real than her legs; she could not shift them. The ceiling leaned over her like a distillation of itself, stone condensed past the obduracy of diamond. The snapped fragments of the stalactites were as irreducible as grief. This world was too much for her. In the end, it surpassed all her conceptions of herself. Flashes of rocklight seemed to leave lacerations across her sight. Findail and Vain struggled and struggled toward the ring; and every one of their movements was as acute as a catastrophe. Vain wore the heels of the Staff of Law like strictures. She was fading to extinction Covenant's dead weight held her helpless.

She tried to cry out. But she was too insubstantial to make any sound which Mount Thunder might have heard.

Yet she was answered. When she believed that she had wasted all hope, she was answered.

Two figures burst from the same tunnel which had brought her to Kiril Threndor. They entered the chamber, stumbled to a halt. They were desperate and bleeding, exhausted beyond endurance, nearly dead on their feet. Her longsword was notched and gory; blood dripped from her arms and mail. His breathing retched as if he were haemorrhaging. But their valour was unquenchable. Somewhere, Pitchwife found the strength to gasp urgently, "Chosen! The ring!”

The sudden appearance of the Giants defied comprehension. How could they have escaped the Cavewights? But they were here, alive and half prostrate and willing. And the sight of them lifted Linden's spirit like an act of grace. They brought her back to herself in spite of the gale pulling her away.

Findail was scarcely a step from the ring. Vain could not hold him back.

But the Appointed did not reach it.

Linden grasped Covenant's wedding band with the thin remains of her health-sense, drew fire spouting like an affirmation out of the metal. It was her ring now, granted to her in love and necessity; and the first touch of its flame restored her with a shock at once exquisitely painful and glad, ferocious and blessed Suddenly, she was as real as the stone and the light, as substantial as Findail’s frenzy, Vain's intransigence the Giants' courage. The pressure thrusting her out of existent did not subside; but now she was a match for it. Her lung took and released the sulphur-tinged air as if she had a right to it. With white fire, she repelled the Elohim. Then, as kindly as if he were alive, she slid her legs from under Covenant’s head.

Leaving him alone there, she went to take the ring.

For an instant, she feared to touch it, thinking its flame might burn her. But she knew better. Her senses were explicit this blaze was hers and would not harm her. Deliberately, she closed her right fist around the fiery band.

At once, argent flame ran up her forearm as if her flesh were afire. It danced and spewed to the beat of her pulse. Bu it did not consume her, took nothing away from her: the price of power would be paid later, when the wild magic was gone. Instead, it seemed to flow into her veins, infusing vitality. The fire was silver and lovely, and it filled her with stability and strength and the capacity for choice as if it were a feast.

She wanted to shout aloud joy simple joy. This was power and it was not evil if she were not. The hunger which had dogged her days was only dark because she had feared it, denied it: It had two names, and one of them was life.

Her first impulse was to turn to the Giants, heal the Firs and Pitchwife of their hurts, share her relief and vindication with them. But Vain and Findail stood before her the appointed held by the clench of Vain's hand-and they demanded her attention.

The Demondim-spawn was looking at her: a feral grin shaped his mouth. Rough bark unmarked by lava or strain enclosed his wooden forearm. But Findail could not meet he gaze. The misery of his countenance was now complete. His eyes were blurred with tears; his silver hair straggled to his shoulders in strands of pain. He sagged against Vain as if a his strength had failed. His free hand clutched at his companion's black shoulder like pleading.

Linden had no more anger for them. She did not need it. But the focus of Vain's midnight eyes baffled her. She knew intuitively that he had come to the cusp of his secret purpose-and that somehow its outcome depended on her. But even white gold did not make her senses sharp enough to read him. She was sure of nothing except Findail's fear.

Clinging to Vain's shoulder, the Appointed murmured like a child, “I am Elohim. Kastenessen cursed me with death-but I am not made for death. I must not die.”

The Demondim-spawn's reply was so unexpected that Linden recoiled a step. “You will not die.” His voice was mellifluous and clean, as perfect as his sculpted flesh-and entirely devoid of compassion. He neither dismissed nor acknowledged Findail’s fear. “It is not death. It is purpose. We will redeem the Earth from corruption.”

Then he addressed Linden. Neither deference nor command flawed his tone. “Sun-Sage, you must embrace us.”

She stared at him. “Embrace-?”

He did not respond: his voice seemed to lapse as if he had uttered all the words he had been given and would never speak again. But his gaze and his grin met her like expectation, an unwavering and inexplicable certainty that she would comply.

For a moment, she hesitated. She knew she had little time. The pressure which sought to recant her summoning continued to grow. Before long, it would become too potent to be resisted. But the decision Vain required of her was crucial. Everything came together here-the purpose of the ur-viles, the plotting of the Elohim, the survival of the Land-and she had already made too many bad choices.

She glanced toward the Giants. But Pitchwife had no more help to give her. He sat against the wall and wrestled with the huge pain in his chest. Crusted blood rimmed his mouth. And the First stood beside him, leaning on her sword and watching Linden. She held herself like a mute statement that she would support with her last strength whatever the Chosen did.

Linden turned back to the Demondim-spawn.

For no sufficient reason, she found that she was sure of him. Or perhaps she had become sure of herself. White fire curled up and down her right arm, plumed toward her shoulder, accentuated the strong rush of her life. He was rigid and murderous, blind to any concerns but his own. But because he had been given to Covenant by Foamfollower-because he had bowed to her once-because he had saved her life-and because he had met with anger the warping of his makers-she did what he asked.

When she put her arms around his neck and Findail's, the Elohim flinched. But his people had Appointed him to this peril, and their will held. At the last instant, he raised his head to meet his personal wϋrd.

In that instant. Linden became a staggering concussion of power which she had not intended and could not control.

But the blast had no outward force: it cast no light or fire, flung no fury. It might have been invisible to the Giants. All its energy was directed inward.

At the two strange beings hugged in her arms.

Wild magic graven in every rock,

contained for white gold to unleash or control—

gold, rare metal, not born of the Land,

nor ruled, limited, subdued

by the Law, with which the Land’ was created—

and white — white gold—

because white is the hue of bone:

structure of flesh,

discipline of life.

Filled with white passion, her embrace became the crucible in which Vain and Findail melted and were made new.

Findail, the tormented Elohim: Earthpower incarnate. Amoral, arrogant, and self-complete, capable of everything. Sent by his people to redeem the Earth at any cost. To obtain the ring for himself if he could. And if he could not, to pay the price of failure.

This price.

And Vain, the Demondim-spawn: artificially manufactured by ur-viles. More rigid than gutrock, less tractable than bone. Alive to his inbred purpose and cruelly insensate to every other need or value or belief.

In Linden's clasp, empowered by wild magic, their opposite bodies bled together. While she held them, they began to merge.

Findail's fluid Earthpower. Vain's hard, perfect structure. And between them, the old definition forged into the heels of the Staff of Law. The Elohim lost shape, seemed to flow through the Demondim-spawn. Vain changed and stretched toward the iron bands which held his right wrist and left ankle.

His forearm shed its bark, gleamed like new wood. And the wood grew, spread out across the transformation, imposed its form upon the merging.

When she understood what was happening. Linden poured herself into the apotheosis. Wild magic supplied the power, but that was not enough. Vain and Findail needed more from her. Vain had been so perfectly made that he attained the stature of natural Law, brought to beauty all the long self-loathing of the ur-viles. But he had no ethical imperative, no sense of purpose beyond this climax. Findail's essence supplied the capacity for use, the strength which made Law effective. But he could not give it meaning: the Elohim were too self absorbed. The transformation required something which only the human holder of the ring could provide.

She gave the best answer she had. Fear and distrust and anger she set aside: they had no place here. Exalted by white fire, she shone forth her passion for health and healing, her Land-born percipience, the love she had learned for Andelain and Earthpower. By herself, she chose the meaning she desired and made it true.

In her hands, the new Staff began to live.

Living Law filled the bands of lore; living power shone in every fiber of the wood. The old Staff had been rune-carved to define its purpose. But this Staff was alive, almost sentient: it did not need runes.

As her fingers closed around the wood, she was swept away in a flood of possibility.

Almost without transition, her health-sense became as huge as the mountain. She tasted Mount Thunder's tremendous weight and ancientness, felt the slow, wracked breathing of the stone. Cavewights scurried like motes through the unmeasured catacombs. Far below her, two Ravers cowered among the banes and creatures of the depths. Somewhere above them, the few surviving ur-viles watched Kiril Threndor in a reflective pool of acid and barked vindication at Vain's success. Spouting lava cast its heat onto her bare cheek. A myriad passages, dens, offal-pits, and charnels ached emptily and stank because the river which should have run through Treacher's Gorge was dry, supplied no water to wash the Wightwarrens. At the peak, Fire-Lions crouched, waiting in eternal immobility for the invocation to life.

And still her range increased. Wild magic and Law carried her outward. Before she could clarify half her perceptions, they reached beyond the mountain, went out to the Land.

The sun was rising. Though she stood in Kiril Threndor as if she were entranced, she felt the Sunbane dawn over her.

It was insanely intense. She had become too vulnerable: it stabbed along her nerves like the life-thrust of a hot knife, pierced her heart with venom like a keen fang. At once, she snatched herself back toward shelter-recoiled as if she were reeling to the cave where the Giants watched her in wide astonishment and Covenant lay dead upon the floor.

A fertile sun. Visceral fever gripped her. Sunder and Hollian had abhorred the sun of pestilence more than any other. But for Linden the fertile sun was the worst. It was ill beyond bearing, and everything it touched became a sob of anguish.

Echoes of her fire licked the walls. One long crack marked the floor. Something precious had been broken here. The First and Pitchwife stared at her as if she had become wonderful.

She had so little time left. She needed time, needed peace and rest and solace in which to muster courage. But the pressure of her dismissal continued to build. And the Staff of Law multiplied that force. Summons and return acted by rules which the Staff affirmed. Only her fist on the ring and her grip on the dean wood-only her clenched will-held her where she was.

She knew what she would have to do.

The prospect appalled her.

But she had already borne so much, and it would all be rendered meaningless if she faltered now. She did not have to fail. This was why she had been chosen. Because she was fit to fulfil Covenant's last appeal. It was too much-and yet it was hardly enough to repay her debts. Why should she fail? The mere thought that she would have to let the Sunbane touch her and touch her made her guts writhe, sent nausea beating down her veins. Horror raised mute cries of protest. In a sense, she would have to become the Land-to expose herself as fully as the Land to the Sunbane's desecration. It would be like being locked again in the attic with her dying father while dark glee came hosting against her-like enduring again her mother's abject blame until she was driven to the point of murder. But she had survived those things. She had found her way through them to a life worthy of more respect than she had ever given it. And the old man whose life she had saved on Haven Farm had given her a promise to sustain her.

Ah, my daughter, do not fear. You will not fail, however he may assail you. There is also love in the world.

Because she needed at least one small comfort for herself, she turned to the Giants.

They had not moved. They had no eyes to see what was happening. But indomitability still shone in the First's face. No grime or bloodshed could mar her iron beauty. She looked as acute as an eagle. And when he met Linden's gaze. Pitchwife grinned as if she were the last benison he would ever need.

With the Staff of Law and the white ring. Linden caressed the fatigue out of the First's limbs, restored her Giantish strength. The rupture in Pitchwife's lungs Linden effaced, healing his respiration. Then, so that she would be able to trust herself later, she unbent his spine, restructured the bones in a way that allowed him to stand straight, breathe normally.

But after that she had no more time. The wind between the worlds keened constantly across the background of her thoughts, calling her away. She could not refuse it much longer.

Be true.

Deliberately, she opened her senses and went. by her own choice back out into the Sunbane.

Its power was atrocious beyond belief; and the Land lay broken under it-broken and dying, a helpless body slain like Covenant in her worst nightmare, the knife driven by an astonishing violence which had brought up more blood than she had ever seen in her life. And from that wound corruption welled upward.

Nothing could stop it. It ate at the ground like venom. The wound grew wider with every sunrise. The Land had been stabbed to its vitals. Murder spewed across the sodden hillsides, clogged the dry riverbeds, gathered and reeked in every hollow and valley. Only the heart of Andelain remained unruined; but even there the sway of slaughter grew. The very Earth was bleeding to death. Linden had no way to save herself from drowning.

That was the truth of the Sunbane. It could never be stanched. She was a fool to make the attempt.

But she held wild magic clenched like bright passion in her right fist; and her left hand gripped the living Staff. Both were hers to wield. Guided by her health-sense- by the same vulnerability which let the Sunbane run through her like a riptide, desecrating every thew of her body, every ligament of her will-she stood within her mind on the high slopes of Mount Thunder and set herself to do battle with perversion.

It was a strange battle, weird and terrible. She had no opponent. Her foe was the rot Lord Foul had afflicted upon the Earthpower; and without him the Sunbane had neither mind nor purpose. It was simply a hunger which fed on every form of nature and health and life. She could have fired her huge forces blast after blast and struck nothing except the ravaged ground, done no hurt to anything not already lost. Only scant moments after dawn, green sprouts of vegetation stretched like screams from the soil.

And beyond this fertility lurked rain and pestilence and desert in erratic sequence, waiting to repeat themselves over and over again, always harder and faster, until the foundations of the Land crumbled. Then the Sunbane would be free to spread.

Out to the rest of the Earth.

But she had learned from Covenant-and from the Raver's possession. She did not attempt to attack the Sunbane. Instead, she called it to herself, accepted it into her personal flesh.

With white fire she absorbed the Land's corruption.

At first, the sheer pain and horror of it excruciated her hideously. One shrill cry as hoarse as terror ripped her throat, rang like Kevin's despair over the wide landscape below her, echoed and echoed in Kiril Threndor until the Giants were frantic, unable to help her. But then her own need drove her to more power.

The Staff named so intensely that her body should have been burned away. Yet she was not hurt. Rather, the pain she had taken upon herself was swept from her-cured and cleansed, and sent spilling outward as pure Earthpower. With Law she healed herself.

She hardly understood what she was doing: it was an act of exaltation, chosen by intuition rather than conscious thought. But she saw her way now with the reasonless clarity of Joy. It could be done: the Land could be redeemed. With all the passion of her thwarted heart, all the love she had learned and been given, she plunged into her chosen work.

She was a storm upon the mountain, a barrage of determination and fire which no eyes but hers could have witnessed. From every league and hill and gully and plain of the Land, every slope of Andelain and cliff of the peaks, every southern escarpment and northern rise, she drew ruin into herself and restored it to wholeness, then sent it back like silent rain, analystic and invisible.

Her spirit became the medicament that cured. She was the Sun-Sage, the Healer, Linden Avery the Chosen, altering the Sunbane with her own life.

It fired green at her like the sickness of emeralds. But she understood intimately the natural growth and decay of plants. They found their Law in her, their lush or hardy order, their native abundance or rarity; and then the green was gone.

Blue volleyed thunderously at her head, then lost the Land as she accepted every drop of water and flash of violence.

The brown of deserts came blistering around her, scorched her skin. But she knew the necessity of heat-and the restriction of climate. She felt in her bones the rhythm of rise and fall, the strict and vital alternation of seasons, summer and winter. The desert fire was cooled to a caress by the Staff and emitted gently outward again.

And last, the red of pestilence, as scarlet as disease, as stark as adders. It swarmed against her like a world full of bees, shot streaks of blood across her vision. In spite of herself, she was fading, could not keep from being hurt. But even pestilence was only a distortion of the truth. It had its clear place and purpose. When it was reduced, it fit within the new Law which she set forth.

Sun-Sage and ring-wielder, she restored the Earthpower and released it upon the wracked body of the Land.

She could not do everything. Already, she had made herself faint with self-expenditure, and the ground sprawling below her to the horizons reeled. She had nothing left with which she might bring back the Land's trees and meadows and crops, its creatures and birds. But she had done enough. She knew without questioning the knowledge that seeds remained in the soil-that even among the wrecked treasures of the Waynhim were things which might yet produce fruit and young-that the weather would be able to find its own patterns again. She saw birds and animals still nourishing in the mountains to the west and south, where the Sunbane had not reached: they would eventually return. The people who stayed alive in their small villages would be able to endure.

And she saw one more reason for hope, one more fact that made the future possible. Much of Andelain had been preserved. Around its heart, it had mustered its resistance-and had prevailed.

Because Sunder and Hollian were there.

In their human way, they contained as much Earthpower as the Hills; and they had fought-Linden saw how they had fought. The loveliness of what they were-and of what they served-was lambent about them. Already, it had begun to regain the lost region.

Yes, she breathed to herself. Yes.

Across the wide leagues, she spoke a word to them that they would understand. Then she withdrew.

She feared the dismissal would take her while she was still too far from her body to bear the strain. As keen as a gale, the wind reached toward her. Too weary even to smile at what she had accomplished, she went wanly back through the rock toward Kiril Threndor and dissolution.

When she gained the cave, she saw in the faces of the" Giants that she had already faded beyond their perceptions. Grief twisted Pitchwife's visage; the First's eyes streamed. They had no way of knowing what had happened-and would not know it until they found their way out of the Wightwarrens to gaze upon the free Land. But Linden could not bear to leave them hurt. They had given her too much. With her last power, she reached out and placed a silent touch of victory in their minds. It was the only gift she had left.

But it, too, was enough. The First started in wonder: unexpected gladness softened her face. And Pitchwife threw back his head to crow like a clean dawn, “Linden Avery! Have I not said that you are well Chosen?”

The long wind pulled through Linden. In moments, she would lose the Giants forever. Yet she clung to them. Somehow, she lasted long enough to see the First pick up the Staff of Law.

Linden still held the ring; but at the last moment she must have dropped the Staff beside the dais. The First lifted it like a promise. “This must not fall to ill hands,” she murmured* Her voice was as solid as granite: it nearly surpassed Linden's hearing. “I will ward it in the name of the future which Earthfriend and Chosen have procured with their lives. If Sunder or Hollian yet live, they will have need of it”

Pitchwife laughed and cried and kissed her. Then he bent, lifted Covenant into his arms. His back. was strong and straight. Together, he and the First left Kiril Threndor. She strode like a Swordmain, ready for the world. But he moved at her side with a gay hop and caper, as if he were dancing.

There Linden let go. The mountain towered over her, as imponderable as the gaps between the stars. It was heavier than sorrow, greater than loss. Nothing would ever heal what it had endured. She was only mortal; but Mount Thunder's grief would go on without let or surcease, unambergrised for all time.

Then the wind took her, and she felt herself go out.

Out into the dark.