Against All Things Ending

  “Linden Avery, I ask your leave to attempt your son’s release.”

  Before Linden could reply, Onyx Stonemage countered, “And if the croyel exceeds your strength? What then? We have seen Linden Giantfriend’s flame transformed to blackness. I pray that the alteration proves fleeting. Yet if she who is adept at Earthpower can be tainted thus, how will you endure?

  “Liand of Mithil Stonedown, I honor your willing valor. I am proud to name you among my companions. But when you gaze into this lost boy’s heart, his possessor will gaze into yours. Then mayhap no admixture will remain to ease our own lament.”

  Linden started to say, Do it, Liand. At some better time, she might have added, I trust you. While urgency clogged her throat, however, she felt the sickening migraine aura of a caesure slam into existence among the hills.

  Whirling, she scrambled to focus her senses. Around her, Giants turned, scanning the horizons swiftly. Groaning to himself, Bhapa hastened toward Manethrall Mahrtiir.

  “Protect Anele!” the old man gasped frantically. “He is the hope of the Land! It seeks him!”

  “It is there, Chosen,” Stave announced, pointing into the northeast. “It writhes a league or more distant. At present, it does not threaten us. Yet it seethes toward us. If it does not veer aside or disperse itself, you must oppose it.”

  He was right. As soon as Linden located the Fall, she felt it clearly: a miasma of corruption as vicious as a swarm of hornets, and as massive as Revelstone’s watchtower, chewing its way through the Law of Time. It lurched from side to side, apparently reacting to the whims and impulses of Joan’s madness rather than to the terrain. But it was coming—

  Damn it!

  “Stave’s discernment is certain,” growled the Ironhand. “A great evil advances against us. Its path is erratic, aye, yet it hastens in its own fashion. If we do not scatter before it, we must have some other defense.

  “Is this a caesure? A Fall? You have spoken of such wrongs, but ere now we have not beheld their like.”

  No one answered her. “Whatever you’re going to do,” Covenant snapped at Liand, “do it soon. Joan won’t stop with just one. Turiya won’t let her. She’ll keep trying until she finds the range.”

  Linden jerked a look at the croyel—and nearly wailed. The creature’s whole face radiated triumph like a cynosure.

  For the space of a heartbeat, she froze while her entire reality split into fragments. A dismembered part of her recalled inhabiting Joan’s mind in the core of a Fall: a lorn figure who should have perished long ago; a madwoman so weak and wounded that only turiya Raver’s compulsion and the ministrations of the skest kept her alive. Standing between thrashing seas and a wilderland of rubble, she used blasts of wild magic to destroy small pieces of stone and Time, creating caesures from the riven remains of granite; of sequence and causality. Nothing except her broken humanity and her inability to make her own choices prevented her from tearing the whole Arch from its foundations.

  At the same time, another part of Linden gaped mutely at the croyel, crying, Why aren’t you afraid? Surely the creature was in the same danger? Surely the merest touch of a Fall would destroy the croyel as effectively as any physical death?

  Why was turiya Herem willing to risk the destruction of a monster that both Roger and Lord Foul wanted alive?

  But Linden had no time for this. When her heart beat again, her scattered mind sprang back into focus.

  “Go!” With a shove, she sent Liand toward Jeremiah. “Save him if you can! Caesures are my problem!”

  Then she swung the Staff of Law and begged it for fire.

  If Joan struck again, and closer—If the Raver could impose that much coherence—

  A moment later, dark flames bloomed from the Staff; and some of the aftereffects of wielding white gold left her. This conflagration was hers in spite of its compelled blackness: it felt right in her hands. And she was not Joan. She could choose. Earthpower and Law could heal the harm of wild magic. As long as Joan did not contrive to strike the exact place where Linden stood, the exact moment, Linden would be able to protect Liand.

  “Ringwielder, no!” Pahni cried. “You must not permit this! I implore you! The peril is too great!”

  She meant the peril to Liand.

  “Cord!” barked Mahrtiir harshly. “Be silent! This matter is not ours to adjudge.”

  Pahni ignored her Manethrall. “Liand, please. You are my love! I will beseech you on my knees, if that will sway you. Leave this hazard to those who are not so loved.”

  Linden watched the coming storm of evil and readied herself. But she studied Liand more closely than she regarded the caesure, praying that he would not falter. That the Sunstone would not crumble to dust in his fist.

  Liand turned from Jeremiah to wrap his arms around Pahni. So quietly that Linden barely heard him, he told the Cord, “Fear for me, my love. I fear for myself. Yet in Linden Avery’s company, and in your embrace, and in orcrest, I have found myself when I had not known that I was lost. If I do not give of my utmost here, I will become less than my aspirations. I will prove unworthy of the gifts which I have discovered in you.”

  “But if you are slain—!” Pahni moaned.

  “If I am slain,” he replied so tenderly that Linden’s heart lurched, “you will remain to serve the Land, and the Ranyhyn, and the Ringwielder, as you must. My love will abide with you. Grief is strength. The use that you will make of it vindicates me.”

  While Liand held Pahni tight, a second caesure violated the night.

  It opened its destructive horrors to Linden’s left—and closer than the first; much closer. Like an eruption, it split the air no more than half a dozen paces from Clyme’s position north of the ridge. Then the chaos of instants lunged toward him. But he sprang away, preternaturally swift. Scanning the hills for other threats, he kept his distance from the Fall.

  Like the first, this caesure swarmed toward Jeremiah and the croyel as if it were drawn by the bright passion of Loric’s krill.

  Through his teeth, Covenant rasped, “Soon would be good. Now would be better.”

  He may have been speaking to Linden as much as to Liand.

  Gently Liand separated himself from Pahni, raised his Sunstone high; strode toward Jeremiah.

  The croyel’s look of triumph was gone. The nausea in the creature’s eyes echoed the sick squirming in Linden’s chest.

  As he advanced, Liand made his light brighter, and still brighter. It lit Jeremiah’s slack features like a small sun, challenging the night; burned like ruin on the monster’s sweating face. Impossibly torn, Linden tried to concentrate on the caesures, and could not. She needed to stop those gyring evils. But her need to witness what happened between Liand and the croyel—what happened to her son—was greater.

  “Hellfire, Linden!” Covenant shouted. “Pay attention! Joan isn’t done. Look at the krill! Saving Jeremiah won’t do any good if a caesure gets us!”

  The gem around which High Lord Loric had forged his dagger was throbbing like a heart in ecstasy.

  Caesures aren’t the only bad thing that can happen—

  Joan’s attacks were Linden’s doing: she knew that. She had announced her location. But the effort of turning her back on Jeremiah and Liand surpassed her.

  She had to do it. If Liand failed now—If he failed because of her—

  Shaking with strain, she lifted ebon flame to meet savagery and madness.

  —when somebody uses white gold.

  Nearly in tears, she faced the Fall squirming toward her from Clyme’s hilltop. It was closer. Again she tried to believe that she could do this. She had quashed other caesures by affirming the structures of Law and the passion of Earthpower. She could do the same here. Surely she could do the same here?

  But Liand was reaching out to touch Jeremiah’s forehead with his Sunstone; and there were no ur-viles or Waynhim nearby to help Linden transcend herself.

  The crash of the third caesure would have sent her sprawling if Stave had
not caught her. It struck the ridge directly behind her. In the midst of the company.

  While alarms squalled in her nerves, Stave spun her to confront the assault.

  Virulent sickness nearly undid her. The caesure was not large: not by the measure of other evils which she had encountered. But it boiled and twisted right where—

  God in Heaven!

  —right where Covenant and Mahrtiir and several of the Giants had been standing.

  In the first rush of panic, Linden could not count her companions. She did not know whether any of them had been taken. The Fall was no more than ten steps from Liand and Jeremiah.

  Then her heart hammered once; and she saw Covenant plunge down the side of the ridge wrapped in Mahrtiir’s arms. Grueburn snatched Pahni aside. On all sides, Swordmainnir sprang out of the caesure’s path.

  Frantic with haste, Stormpast Galesend staggered backward—

  —and tripped—

  —spilling Anele out of her armor.

  With the second thud of her heart, Linden became flame.

  God, she hated caesures!

  She knew this evil; knew it in every nerve and sinew of her being. She had experienced it too often. She needed only percipience and dread to focus Earthpower on the complex distortions shredding Time’s necessary Law. If she had been stronger, or better, or clearer, she might have been able to reach straight through the Fall into Joan’s excoriated heart. But she did not require that much force to counter the storm itself. While she believed in the commandments of linear cause and inevitable effect, she could stitch them together as she had once sewn a patch of her shirt onto the Mahdoubt’s gown.

  Watched by the abandoned stars, she flung black fire into the caesure and began its unmaking.

  She did not have to grasp every severed instant and restore its proper sequence. The Staff’s rich outpouring performed that repair for her. And Caerroil Wildwood’s runes made the wood’s theurgies more specific than her own instincts for health and wholeness; more definite. Almost immediately, the caesure started to implode. The collision of energies within Joan’s maelstrom caused a deflagration which shrank as it burned.

  In moments, the Fall vanished as though it had been sucked away, inhaled by the sovereign rightness of healed Time.

  Yet encroaching evils still wailed in the night. The caesure which had struck near Clyme surged closer. Joan’s initial attack continued the hard wrench-and-lurch of its advance.

  And Anele had risen to his feet on bare dirt: crumbling sandstone and gypsum, exposed chunks of shale, the friable detritus of erosion and ancient wars.

  Anele!

  He radiated raw power as horrendous as the caesures, but far more conscious; full of intention and screaming rage. With gestures like shrieks of lava, he dismissed Giants, swept obstacles aside. A fulvous crimson like primal brimstone blazed in his blind eyes, the hue of fangs in the maws of the skurj.

  Howling, he rushed at Liand.

  Kastenessen had taken possession of the old man. In agony, the Elohim had come to rescue the croyel and claim Jeremiah.

  Linden could not react quickly enough. She was too human; too horrified. But Stave had already left her side to stand in Anele’s path.

  Long days ago, the former Master had lost an eye to the horde of the Demondim. Nevertheless he had struck down Anele then, borne the old man to safety. Now he did not hesitate to confront Kastenessen’s charge.

  A slash of power flung Stave aside as if he were a handful of desiccated bones.

  Standing in the heart of the orcrest’s clean light, Liand seemed unaware of his peril. Oblivious to every darkness, he touched Jeremiah’s forehead with his Sunstone: the sum and incarnation of his Stonedownor birthright.

  Galt saw the threat. Of course he saw it. His flat eyes watched Anele. Yet the Master remained motionless, uncharacteristically trapped by conflicting commitments. He gripped Loric’s krill. And he was swift. He could have driven death into the center of Kastenessen’s fury. Could have killed Anele. Distrusting the old man’s heritage of Earthpower, Galt might have slain him without a qualm.

  But he could not do so without releasing the croyel.

  Freed from the blade at its throat, the monster would surely support Kastenessen. It might destroy or deflect Galt before the Humbled could harm Anele.

  Perhaps Galt considered killing the croyel and Jeremiah before confronting Kastenessen. Perhaps he did not have time to weigh every implication, Covenant’s commands against the cause of Kevin’s Dirt.

  Screaming like Elena, Linden finally hurled black Earthpower against the Elohim. But she was too late. Anele shed her fire like water as he slapped his hands to the sides of Liand’s head.

  Compelled by Kastenessen’s strength, the old man filled Liand’s fragile skull with lava. In a spray of blood and bone and tissues, Liand’s head was torn apart.

  Then Stormpast Galesend hurtled forward. She slammed into Anele; wrapped her arms around the old man’s incinerating force; carried him past Liand and Jeremiah, Galt and the croyel. Ignoring the murderous heat in her clasp, the instantaneous burn like a furnace-blast, she somehow remembered to roll as she fell so that Anele’s flesh lost contact with the ground.

  In the instant before Galesend hit him, however, Anele contrived to catch the orcrest as it dropped from Liand’s dead fingers. Linden saw the old man clearly. Kastenessen was trying to destroy the Sunstone—

  —until Galesend snatched Anele off the dirt.

  When Galesend landed on her back in a welter of stones and snarled pain, Kastenessen’s power vanished. The orcrest went dark. Night seemed to crash down onto the ridge like the sealing of a sepulcher despite the hungry throb of the krill’s gem and the swelling rapacity of the caesures.

  Galt remained as rigid as a carving in the Hall of Gifts. Jeremiah stood like an empty husk while the croyel gibbered and spat on his back. Gushing blood, Liand slumped to his knees; leaned forward until he rested like an act of contrition against Jeremiah’s legs.

  When your deeds have come to doom—

  Unconscious in Galesend’s arms, Anele still gripped the inert Sunstone as though his life depended on it.

  —remember that he is the hope of the Land.

  The impending Falls were all that kept Linden from wailing like a maimed child.

  4.

  Attempts Must Be Made

  Storms of time and anguish filled the night. Somewhere turiya Raver imposed purpose on Joan’s weakness by sheer brutality; compelled her to direct her blasts. Moments after Linden quenched the nearest caesure, a fourth made madness of the stream at the foot of the canyon, spun the sand where she and her companions had eaten and slept into a migraine tornado. A fifth nearly claimed Branl as he sprinted toward the company. He saved himself only by diving headlong down a bouldered slope. A sixth found the ridge a stone’s throw to the east and staggered closer.

  After that, there were no more. The Raver must have exhausted Joan. Still five fierce instances of chaos converged on Jeremiah—or on the krill. Linden could not answer them all. Other storms raged through her, leaving her concentration in shreds.

  Liand.

  She had brought this upon him. In spite of his youth and ignorance, she had allowed him to accompany her when she fled from Mithil Stonedown. She had taken him to Revelstone, where he had become the first true Stonedownor in many millennia. And she had practically commanded him to risk his life for Jeremiah.

  Liand!

  She had seen Anele gesture at Liand, asking for the orcrest and sanity: his only defense against possession. But in the frenzy of other pressures, she had ignored the old man’s plea.

  Liand!

  Here was the result. Still on his knees, Liand leaned against Jeremiah’s legs, resting there with his skull torn open as though he prayed to the idol of a false god.

  In a sense, Handir had foretold this. Speaking of Anele, the Voice of the Masters had said, Yet the Earthpower within him cannot be set aside. Therefore his deeds will serve Corru
ption, whatever his intentions may be. Now Anele had killed Liand.

  It was too much. Linden needed to hold Liand in her arms and wail her bereavement; weep herself out of existence. Yet caesures lurched closer. Toward Jeremiah. Joan sent no more; but these five did not dissipate. Instead they raved like hurricanes trapped in spaces too small for them. Joan or turiya Herem had made them strong. And Thomas Covenant’s spirit no longer defended the Arch of Time.

  If Linden did not set aside her horror and grief—and if she did not do so now—everyone she loved would be destroyed. Swept away into a future of unrelieved absence and cruel cold. The eventual outcome of Joan’s craziness.

  Voices shouted tumult at Linden, but she did not hear Covenant’s among them. Stave said her name with something like urgency. She did not hear him at all.

  Battered by storms, she could not look away from Liand and Jeremiah.

  The hunger echoing like exaltation from the krill’s gem had begun to ebb. Now the croyel struggled for freedom. Finally it feared the caesures. Jeremiah jerked up his head; his arms. Reaching behind him, he clawed at Galt’s forearm, tried to drag it away from the throat of the creature.

  If he shifted Galt’s grasp, the blade would bite into his own neck. Nevertheless he strained to free the croyel.

  The Humbled did not move. He betrayed no hint that the heat of wild magic had hurt him. Unyielding as Loric’s dagger, his forearm defied Jeremiah’s efforts.

  The Ironhand barked orders, rallied the Swordmainnir. Still on her back, Stormpast Galesend hugged Anele as though she meant to squeeze out his life. Swift as a hawk, Pahni threw herself at Liand.

  Through the confusion, Mahrtiir yelled Bhapa’s name.

  Instantly obedient, the older Cord rushed to Linden’s side. But she hardly noticed him. She only remained on her feet because Stave held her.

  Caesures yowled at her from every direction. Their sheer wrongness made her want to puke up her soul.

  Bhapa may have rubbed something under her nose. He may have dabbed a powder as fine as dust onto her tongue. Nothing made any sense—