Against All Things Ending

  Mahrtiir sat on the ground-cloth with Linden, apparently determined to wait with her until she allowed herself to rest. But she kept herself awake by galling her cuts with the damp fabric of her jeans, pretending to massage them; and after a time, the Manethrall began to doze. Then only Stave remained to share her watchfulness and her fears.

  Soon the night grew so deep that she could not see the far wall of the breach. Lulled by the warmed stone, she felt her attention fraying. She had not slept the previous night, and her cut shin did not hurt enough to sustain her. Before Stormpast Galesend went to sleep herself, she had wrapped Jeremiah in his blankets—again—and laid him carefully on the ground-cloth between Linden and Mahrtiir. If the boy’s eyes had closed, Linden’s might have done the same. But he stared upward, gazing at nothing as though he had outlived his need for rest or dreams.

  Linden watched him like a mother with a sick child. More and more, the stained tint of his eyes seemed to resemble the milky hue of Anele’s blindness. Jeremiah’s new Earthpower had done nothing to relieve his dissociation. Instead it appeared to emphasize the silt that defined his sight, as if the ramifications of Anele’s gift had driven him deeper into his graves.

  For a time, anxiety kept Linden alert in spite of her weariness.

  Eventually, however, her concentration faded. She was helpless to stop it. By degrees, her thoughts became so vague that she did not recognize Hynyn’s stentorian call until she felt Stave slip silently out of the hollow.

  Inchoately alarmed, she jerked up her head, slapped at her cheeks. After an instant’s hesitation, she took up the Staff and ground one iron heel against the cuts in her shin and calf until she broke them open; drew fresh blood.

  After a few moments, Stave returned. Touching Mahrtiir’s shoulder, he said softly, “Manethrall.” Then he nudged the Ironhand’s armor with one foot, spoke her name more loudly.

  Linden struggled to her feet. “What is it?”

  At the same time, Mahrtiir came instantly awake; surged upright. Coldspray shook her head as if she were scattering dreams, rubbed her face vigorously to dispel them.

  Without preamble or inflection, Stave announced quietly, “We are approached. The Ranyhyn have departed.”

  Simultaneously Linden said, “Approached?” the Manethrall demanded, “Departed?” and Coldspray asked, “What comes?”

  Before Linden could insist on an answer, Mahrtiir stated harshly, “The Ranyhyn do not flee any peril.”

  “They flee no peril,” Stave countered, “except that of the lurker.”

  The lurker? Linden thought, scrambling to understand. Here? But you said—

  The Manethrall’s whole body seemed to blaze with anger, but he did not contradict Stave.

  “Swordmainnir!” Coldspray barked to her comrades. “We are needed!” Then she confronted Stave. “I await your explanation, Stave of the Haruchai.”

  As the other Giants lurched awake and began to rise, Stave shrugged. “Whether we are threatened is beyond my discernment. I do not sense the lurker’s presence. I am certain only that the Ranyhyn no longer watch over us, and that a small throng of wights approaches from the direction of the Sarangrave.

  “However,” he added, “these creatures are not entirely unknown. Upon occasion in more recent centuries, such wights have been observed by Masters who chanced to be scouting the boundaries of Sarangrave Flat.

  “They appear to roam freely among the fens and quags, singly or in sparse groups. They are man-shaped, short of stature, and hairless, with large eyes well formed for vision in darkness. Within sight of the Masters, they have not heretofore wandered beyond the waters of the Flat. Observed, they have betrayed no awareness of their observers.

  “And there is this—” Stave paused; almost seemed to hesitate. “To the Masters, they have evinced no theurgy or other puissance. Indeed, they have appeared altogether harmless. Yet those that now draw nigh hold in their hands a green flame like unto the emerald hue of the skest. In some fashion, this fire sustains their emergence from their wonted habitation.”

  Linden scrambled—and could not catch up. She felt stupid with sleeplessness. What was Stave saying? He had not seen any indication of the lurker. But the Ranyhyn feared it: Mahrtiir had not denied that. And the horses were gone.

  “My God,” she breathed, hardly aware that she spoke aloud. “Are those things minions? Servants of the lurker?”

  Millennia ago, the skest had served the ancient monster. Horrim Carabal? Those creatures of living acid had tried to herd Covenant and Linden, Sunder and Hollian, and a small party of Haruchai into the lurker’s snare. Their quest for the One Tree would have died there, if Covenant had not risked his life to wound the lurker with Loric’s krill and wild magic. And if he, Linden, and their companions had not encountered Giants: the Giants of the Search. And if the skest had not been opposed by creatures called the sur-jheherrin.

  Now the skest cared for Joan. They had tended Jeremiah.

  How many of them were there?

  They did not match Stave’s description.

  Again the former Master shrugged. “Chosen, I know not. I cannot discern their intent, for good or ill. I am confident only that our presence has been marked. Now we are sought.”

  The Ranyhyn had abandoned their riders.

  Oh, hell! Without Hyn—Given room to move, the Giants could survive any force that resembled the skest. But without Hyn and Hynyn, Narunal and Khelen—

  God, please. Not more killing.

  While the Ironhand’s comrades chafed wakefulness into their cheeks, and donned their cataphracts, Coldspray commanded, “At once, Swordmainnir. We are too easily contained where we stand. Come boon or bane, we must meet it upon open ground.”

  “Aye,” Stormpast Galesend agreed. “We hear you.” Scooping up Jeremiah, she cradled him in one arm; kept the other free to wield her sword.

  “Hear, indeed,” growled Frostheart Grueburn, grinning. “When the Ironhand speaks in such dulcet tones, she is heard by the Lower Land entire.”

  As if Coldspray had slapped at her, Grueburn ducked. Then she drew her longsword and ran from the hollow, heading toward the place where the company had first entered among the hills.

  Halewhole Bluntfist and Cabledarm followed immediately. The other Swordmainnir arrayed themselves like an escort around their smaller companions. With the Ironhand in the lead, Linden and her friends went after Cabledarm.

  Sheltered by the breach, Linden had forgotten the full force of the wind. In the lowland between this line of hills and the next, however, icy air struck her like the rush of a flood. She felt pummeled and tossed as if she had fallen into a torrent. Even in darkness, she would have seen or felt her breath steaming, condensed to frost, if the wind had not torn it away.

  Dirt crunched under her boot heels as she walked among the Giants. The ground was freezing—

  After High Lord Elena’s disastrous use of the Power of Command, when her spirit had been forced to serve Lord Foul, she had used Berek’s Staff of Law to inflict an unnatural winter upon the Land. Standing at the Colossus, she had scourged the Despiser’s foes with snow and ice.

  In Andelain, Linden had unleashed something worse. This day’s deranged weather was only the leading edge of a far more savage storm.

  Berek’s spectre had said of Lord Foul, He may be freed only by one who is compelled by rage, and contemptuous of consequence.

  Had she done that? Truly? Had she already accomplished the Despiser’s release?

  If so, she had earned the right to despair.

  The cold made her leg ache as though the cuts had sunk into her bones.

  The blast struck tears from her eyes: she could not see. Coldspray shouted demands or warnings that vanished along the wind. Cirrus Kindwind, Latebirth, and Onyx Stonemage joined Grueburn, Bluntfist, and Cabledarm to form a partial cordon. The Ironhand and Galesend stayed with Linden, Stave, and Mahrtiir.

  Jeremiah still had not closed his eyes. He did not appear to blink. Perhaps h
e never blinked. If so, he would eventually go blind. As blind as Anele. It was inevitable.

  Stave gripped Linden’s arm. “Attend, Chosen.”

  She was already shivering.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, scrubbed tears away, opened them again.

  At first, she saw only small green flames bobbing like Wraiths in the distance. Their essential wrongness was palpable; but they were so little—Too minor to wield much force.

  Then she realized that the fires were not affected by the wind. They danced and moved blithely, oblivious to the blast.

  That should have been impossible.

  Blinking fervidly, she made out the forms of the creatures. As Stave had said, they looked vaguely human. Naked, lacking either pelts or garments. No taller than her shoulders. Cupped in each of their hands, they carried quick flaws of emerald like recollections of the Illearth Stone. Green glints reflected auguries or promises in their large round eyes. Small as they were, they resembled eidolons reeking with malice.

  They advanced steadily, but not in a group. Instead they spread out across the lower ground and partway up the hillsides: at least a score of them; perhaps thirty. Straining her senses, Linden saw no bonds of theurgy between them, no reinforced power. Yet she felt certain that they had come with a shared intent.

  While the nearest creatures were still a dozen Giantish strides away, Rime Coldspray swept out her stone glaive. “Hold!” she shouted at the caper of fires, the green reflections. “Friend or foe, we require a parley! Name your purpose. Explain your wishes. We mean to defend ourselves if we must!”

  The wind carried her voice away as if it would never be heard.

  Yet the—eight? ten?—creatures most directly in front of her halted. For a few paces, the others did not. Then, beginning on the lowland and spreading incrementally up the slopes on both sides, those creatures also stopped.

  Now the company stood half-enclosed in a shallow arc of handheld fires that defied the wind.

  A creature spoke, Linden could not tell which one. Perhaps they all did, using a single voice. Without apparent effort, or any hint of emotion, it said, “We are the Feroce.”

  Its sound was strangely squishy, damp and ill-defined, like mud squeezed between toes.

  “We are Swordmainnir of the Giants,” answered Coldspray. Her blade did not waver. “Why have you come?”

  The pain in Linden’s leg had begun to burn. Without the support of her Staff, she might not have been able to stand.

  “There is among you,” replied the creature or creatures, “a stick of power.” They may all have been discrete instances of the same being. “The cruel metal we will not touch. It is abhorrent. But we claim the stick. Our High God hungers for it.”

  Linden gasped; felt the breath snatched from her lungs. Christ, her leg—!

  All of the Giants drew their swords. Stave shifted closer to Linden. With his garrote in his hands, the Manethrall positioned himself near Stormpast Galesend and Jeremiah.

  The blast was becoming a gale, as gelid and heartless as the wasteland within a caesure.

  Who were the Feroce? What were they?

  Loudly the Ironhand replied, “You cannot have the Staff of Law!” Her tone was firm, but unthreatening. “Yet if you will speak with us concerning your High God’s hunger, perhaps we will discover some fashion in which we may be of service. We neither fear nor desire contention. Rather our preference is for amity in all things. Speak, therefore. Let us together consider the nature of your need.”

  Linden heard a splash of water, an ooze of loam, as the creature responded, “We are the Feroce. We do not need.”

  Did she see a multitude of verdant fires leap and flare, mounting like disease into the heavens? No: it was only imagination. Hallucination. Not magic.

  There was nothing except darkness.

  A subtle shift in the air. Realities swept aside; replaced.

  A momentary sensation of falling, of vertigo, as if she had lost her balance.

  But she caught herself. Her leg held. It did not hurt.

  It had never hurt. That pain did not exist. She had already forgotten it. Only her palm stung where she had gouged it with her car keys.

  She was in the farmhouse, Covenant’s house. It shook around her, battered by angry winds. Outside, lightning glared, an erratic succession of furies from a clear sky. Thunder groaned in the timbers of the building. Joists squalled at the force of the dry storm.

  The detritus of Covenant’s former life littered the kitchen floor. Blood cooled in coagulating puddles. But she did not stop here. She did not turn and flee. Instead she entered the short passage leading to three doors. Covenant’s bedroom. The bathroom. The last room, where he had cared for Joan.

  Following splashes of blood and the splayed illumination of her flashlight, Linden went down the hall to the last room. Where else could she go? Roger had Jeremiah.

  The weight of her medical bag in her left hand steadied her. It was her anchor against the storm’s madness, and Roger’s. Her only weapon. Her grip on the flashlight abraded the small wound in her palm, but that beam was too frail to protect her. She had left her coat at home. Deliberately she had put on a clean red flannel shirt, clean jeans, sturdy boots. She had driven here, to Haven Farm, where she knew what she would find.

  The door was open: the last room. She smelled ozone and blood. The house trembled. Roger had committed butchery here. But he had not killed some poor animal. Certainly not: not Covenant’s heartless son. He had shed the life of one of his hostages.

  Linden felt as buffeted as Covenant’s abandoned home. A strange disorientation thwarted her. For some reason, she expected there to be crusted dirt on her shirt. Stains, grime, tatters: consequences. She expected a neat hole over her heart. But the flannel was still clean. It was practically new. Her jeans were innocent of Roger’s carnage.

  Lightning struck nearby, lightning and thunder, a crash like a tall tree shattering. Roger had taken Jeremiah. Jeremiah had driven a splinter like a spike through the center of her hand. The last room was a ruin, wrecked and toxic. There the wan thrust of the flashlight revealed Sara Clint lying on the forlorn bed in the dark residue of her life. She had been cut dozens of times, dozens of times. Roger had lashed her wrists and ankles to the bed frame with duct tape. Then, over and over again, he had sliced through the white fabric of her uniform, drawing venous blood. Preparation for a ritual.

  Static made a galvanic nimbus of Linden’s hair, a halo of desperation. Jeremiah! Roger had cut Sara with that knife, the large cleaver protruding from the pillow beside her desecrated head. When he was satisfied, he had stabbed the blade into her heart before leaving the knife in the pillow: a presentation for Linden’s benefit, demonstrating his seriousness.

  He was gone now. He had taken Jeremiah and Joan and Sandy Eastwall. To the place where he meant to sacrifice Jeremiah. And probably Sandy as well. He might need her blood to open the way. He might need even his own mother’s life.

  Linden should have spent a while grieving over Sara’s body. Absolutely she should have. No one could say that Sara Clint had not earned at least that much recognition. She was a good woman, and she had been murdered.

  But Linden had no time. She knew where Roger was going; where he was taking his prisoners. She knew why. She had to catch up with him before—

  Jeremiah!

  There was something that she needed to remember.

  —before he reached the sheet of rock in the woods where Thomas Covenant had been killed. The place where Lord Foul’s bonfire had claimed half and more of Jeremiah’s hand.

  No, there was nothing to remember.

  Yes. There was.

  A face.

  Whose face was it? Jeremiah’s? No. She had not forgotten his lost visage. It was as essential to her as the pathways of her brain. That was why she was here.

  Liand’s, then? Anele’s? Stave’s?

  Who in hell were Liand and Anele and Stave?

  And why did she want to thin
k about Giants? She had not seen them for ten years, and could not afford to be distracted by old love. Not now.

  In spite of her haste, she tried to honor Sara briefly. A few heartbeats of sorrow. But she could no longer smell blood. Or ozone. Those scents were heavy enough to cling. Nevertheless the barrage of winds had torn them from the house, through the broken windows and gapped walls.

  Instead she smelled smoke: smoke so thick and dire that it could have been the leaping fume of the Despiser’s blaze. She saw wisps in the beam of her flashlight. Pressure grew in her chest. Threats of suffocation filled her lungs.

  She had to go. She had wasted too much time.

  Wait! Her shirt—Her jeans—

  Nothing. They might as well have been new. She did not know Liand, or Anele, or Stave, of course not, she had never heard those names before.

  Roger had taken Jeremiah and Joan and Sandy into the woods. Linden knew where he was going.

  Where had Liand’s name come from—or Anele’s and Stave’s—or Mahrtiir’s—if she had never met them?

  Lightning had struck the house: it must have. All of this dry wood was going to burn like a pyre.

  God, she was hallucinating! Her son needed her, and she was losing her mind. Stave spurned by the Masters. Covenant’s hands burning, ravaged by Joan and wild magic. Covenant was dead. Killed ten years ago. Nothing after this moment had happened. She had imagined it, all of it. Every struggle, every nightmare, every loss. Liand and Anele: Stave and Mahrtiir: Pahni and Bhapa: Giants. They were figments, chimeras sent to distract her. To paralyze her. Until the flames took her. So that she would not follow Roger.

  So that she would not save her son.

  Screams of rage or terror that she could not hear ripped at her throat as she wheeled away from Sara and murder, rushed from the bedroom back into the hall.

  Covenant’s ring hung on its chain under her clean shirt; but white gold had no power to save her here.