Kindwind’s condition was the worst. Septicemia had polluted her bloodstream, and her long exertions had spread its taint throughout her body. Linden could not cleanse away the infection until she had searched the marrow of Kindwind’s bones with percipience and strict fire.
By comparison, repairing the structure of Bluntfist’s cheek was a simple task, easily completed. The burns suffered by Liand, the Ramen, and Stave responded well to their given healing.
Linden expected her own weariness to hamper her efforts, but it did not. Andelain’s air was a roborant, restoring her reserves. It dimmed the effects of Kevin’s Dirt. Every glance around the ineffable Hills strengthened her. And the grass under her boots sent a caress of warmth and generosity along her nerves. While she worked, she found that she was capable of more than she had imagined.
The krill was in Andelain. Esmer had said so. The Hills themselves might make her strong enough to fulfill her intentions.
As she tended the Swordmainnir, their wonder and thankfulness gathered palpably around her. The tales of their people had not prepared them for what could be accomplished with health-sense and Earthpower. Even the First and Pitchwife had never seen her wield the Staff as she used it here.
If these women ever found their way Home, they would tell long tales about Linden’s efforts. Like the other Giants whom she had known, they relished small miracles as much as grander achievements.
When Cabledarm and Latebirth returned, they bore huge stacks of deadwood. For a moment, Cabledarm bowed over the spot where she meant to build a fire as if she were asking the grass and ground to forgive her. Then she readied a small pile of twigs and kindling, took out her pouch of tinder and stones, and began to strike sparks.
As the wood began to burn, Linden cared for Cabledarm and Latebirth with the same attentiveness that she had expended on Coldspray and her other companions.
In the west, the sun was setting among the tallest trees. Long shadows blurred by distance streaked the hillside while darkness accumulated in the margins of Salva Gildenbourne. A soothing breeze wafted like beneficence among the Hills. Pahni and Bhapa brought back an abundance of aliantha to nourish the company. And water was plentiful nearby. The stream which had led the Giants here ran eastward along the foot of the slope until it found its own course into Andelain.
Within the borders of the Land’s essential health and bounty, Rime Coldspray and her comrades formed a circle around Cabledarm’s fire and began their ritual of grief.
They were Giants: they took their time. Dusk and then night covered the hillside. Slowly stars added their cold glitter to the subdued dance of the flames. In the numinous dark, the Swordmainnir raised their voices as if they addressed Andelain and the wide heavens as well as each other.
First the Ironhand spoke sternly of “fault.” The previous night, she had accepted some responsibility for Longwrath’s condition. Now she claimed a similar blame for Scend Wavegift’s death. Certainly Latebirth had erred. She was mortal: she could be taken by surprise, or suffer mishap, as easily as any being defined by birth and death. But she had not caused Longwrath’s plight—and the deed of Wavegift’s end was his, not Latebirth’s.
Then Coldspray assumed the fault—if fault there was—for Moire Squareset, who had been slain by the skurj. Responsibility belonged to the Ironhand, whose decisions led the Swordmainnir. Like Wavegift’s, Squareset’s blood was on Coldspray’s hands or no one’s, for even Longwrath could not be held accountable. While she lived, she would both accuse and forgive herself.
When she was done, she knelt beside the fire and reached into the heart of the flames with both hands as though she sought to burn them clean.
Her flesh refused the harm of fire, but it could not refuse the pain. Her act was a deliberate immolation: in flame and willing agony, she surrendered her bereavement and remorse. This was the Giantish caamora, the articulation of their grief. In some sense, Linden understood it, although it filled her with dismay. Coldspray kept her hands in the fire while Cabledarm stoked it with more and more wood. A scream stretched the Ironhand’s mouth, but she did not permit herself to voice it. The flames spoke for her.
The Ramen watched with their fists clenched and a kind of ferocity in their eyes. Long ago, their ancestors had known the Unhomed. Ramen may have witnessed a caamora: they had certainly given the story to their descendants. But millennia had passed since any Ramen had seen what transpired here. Their legends could not have prepared them for the intensity of Coldspray’s chosen excruciation.
Liand stood near Pahni, but he did not touch her. He needed his arms; needed to clasp them across his chest with all of his strength in order to contain his horror and empathy, his protests. Unlike the Ramen and Linden—and the Haruchai—he had nothing except his health-sense to help him comprehend what he was seeing.
Finally Coldspray withdrew. As she regained her feet, her arms trembled, and tears spilled from her eyes. But her hands were whole.
Cirrus Kindwind was the next to speak. In careful detail, alternately grave and humorous, she described Moire Squareset’s training and initiation among the Swordmainnir. Kindwind herself, with Onyx Stonemage and two other Giants, had been charged with developing Squareset’s skills, and she remembered those years with loving vividness. She knew Squareset’s strengths and weaknesses intimately, and she gave them all to the night.
Then she took her turn in the flames. The harsh silence of her pain and rue was so loud that Linden did not know how to bear it.
When Kindwind was done, Stormpast Galesend told similar tales of Scend Wavegift. She, too, thrust her hands into the fire. Grueburn, Bluntfist, and the rest of the Giants related their experiences with Wavegift and Squareset, their shared love and laughter, their memories of blunders and triumphs and longing. Each in turn, they offered their grief to the flames, and endured agony, and were annealed. Separately as well as together, they gave the ambergris of their woe to the dead.
But Linden turned away long before the Giants were done. She could not release her own tears and fury: they had been fused, made adamantine, by Roger’s betrayal and Jeremiah’s immeasurable suffering. She, too, yearned for a caamora—but not like this. Her heart craved an altogether different fire.
When she had gained some distance from the firelight and the Giants, she spent a while studying the vast isolation of the stars. In the expanse of the heavens, only the faintest glimmer of their mourning reached her—or each other. Yet she heeded their infinite lament. They could not burn away their loneliness without extinguishing themselves.
In that aspect of their limitless sojourn, she understood them better than she did the Giants. They calmed her as if she were in the presence of kindred spirits.
Gradually she let her attention return to Andelain, to the gentle embrace of health—and to the reasons that had compelled her here. But she did not rejoin the Giants, or listen to their stories and pain. Instead, certain of Stave’s notice, she beckoned the former Master toward her.
He came to her softly, more silent than the drifting breeze. Under the stars, he asked in a low voice. “Linden?”
It was the second time that he had called her by her given name.
His friendship touched her—and she did not want to be touched. More brusquely than she intended, she asked. “What are the Humbled going to say when they get back to Revelstone?” We will speak with one voice—“What will they tell the Masters?”
Stave made a small sound that may have been a snort. “They remain uncertain. The Giants threaten the defined service of the Masters. It is their nature to do so. With tales alone, they wield power to overthrow millennia of dedication and sacrifice. Yet in all ways they merit admiration. Therefore the Humbled withhold appraisal. They will adjudge the Giants according to your deeds rather than theirs.”
Oh, good, Linden thought mordantly. That’s perfect. It galled her to think that the attitude of the Masters toward the Giants depended on her. But then she swallowed her vexation. Whatever the H
umbled decided was their problem, not hers. She could not make their choices for them. She would simply have to live with the consequences.
Sighing, she said, “This is Andelain, Stave. You might think that here, at least,” if nowhere else in the Land. “it would be acceptable for the Giants to be who they are.”
“Yet Andelain is not free of peril,” he returned stolidly. “It may be that Kastenessen and the skurj cannot enter. Nonetheless the fate of the Land is the fate of Andelain as well. I do not concur with the Humbled, but I comprehend their doubt. In some measure, I share it.”
You share—? He startled her. In dozens of ways, he had declared his loyalty.
“Chosen,” he explained. “you have not revealed your deeper purpose. You have not named your hopes for the unfathomable theurgies which the krill of Loric Vilesilencer will enable. By your own word, you desire those around you to know doubt.
“I do not seek to question you,” he stated before she could respond. “I am content in the knowledge that you are Linden Avery the Chosen, Sun-Sage and Ringthane, companion of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. To me, you are ‘acceptable’ in all things.
“Yet I am constrained by doubt to inquire if you also are uncertain. Have you not found cause to reconsider your intent?”
Linden stared at him in darkness. The stars shed too little light to unmask his features, and her health-sense could not reach into the mind or emotions of any Haruchai. She was barely able to discern the new skin where she had healed Stave’s burns.
Without inflection, he continued, “We stand now within the safety of Andelain. Here choices may diverge. Other paths lie before you. If you must confront your Dead, you do not require Loric’s krill to do so. And Gravin Threndor may be approached without risk, though hazards wait within the Wightwarrens. It is there—is it not?—that Kevin’s Dirt has its source. Are not Gravin Threndor’s depths conceivable as a hiding place for the Unbeliever’s son, and for your own?”
Linden wanted to cover her face. Jeremiah had built an image of Mount Thunder in her living room, as he had of Revelstone. Eventually she would have to go into the catacombs under the mountain: she knew that. But not yet—
Not while she was still so weak.
“I’m not Covenant,” she answered softly. “I’m not Berek, or some other hero. I’m just me. And I could be wrong. Of course I could be wrong. This whole thing might turn out to be a monumental exercise in futility.” Or something worse—“That’s possible. It’s absolutely possible.”
The breeze seemed to pause as if it wanted to hear her. Andelain itself appeared to hold its breath. In the distance, the voices of the Giants withdrew to a nearly inaudible murmur.
She needed to be doubted because she could not afford to doubt herself.
“But I have to have more power. Covenant’s ring is useless whenever Esmer decides to interfere. Kevin’s Dirt hampers Earthpower. If Jeremiah”—oh, my son!—“stood right in front of me, I might not be able to save him. I don’t know how to kill the croyel without killing him. I’m just not that strong.
“And look at who wants to stop me.” She gathered force as she spoke. “Look at who wants to help. Kastenessen and Roger and the Ravers have tried hard to kill us. The ur-viles and Waynhim are united, for God’s sake, even though they’re the last, and too many of them are dead. The Mahdoubt gave up everything to protect me. I must be doing something right.”
“Chosen—” Stave tried to interrupt her, but she was not finished.
“Lord Foul has my son. I’m going to get him back. But first I need more power.”
“Chosen,” Stave said again more firmly. “Longwrath approaches Andelain.”
Oh, shit. Wheeling, Linden projected her senses toward Salva Gildenbourne.
Almost immediately, she felt Longwrath’s unbridled rage. It was lurid in the darkness, a cynosure of hunger and desperation. The last trees still shrouded him, but he was heading straight toward her with his flamberge in his fists. Evanescent glints like phosphorescence wavered along the edges of his blade as though the iron had been forged to catch and hold starshine.
For the first time, Linden wondered whether his sword might be an instrument of magic. If his weapon had been formed with theurgy as well as fire, however, the effects were no longer perceptible. They had been attenuated by too much time—or they had been designed for circumstances which no longer existed.
The Swordmainnir seemed unaware of Longwrath. They were not done with their caamora: it held them like a geas. The Ramen and Liand remained transfixed by what they witnessed. But the Humbled were already moving, silent as thought.
Surely three Haruchai would suffice to restrain Longwrath until the caamora ended?
Nonetheless Linden tightened her grip on the Staff. Stave walked a little way down the slope to place himself between her and Longwrath.
But Esmer had told her the truth. Andelain is preserved. Suddenly a small piece of night appeared to condense as if something blurred or invisible had come into focus; made itself real. Without transition, a yellow light like the delicate flame of a candle began to dance along the grass. As precise and self-contained as a single note of song, it bobbed some distance beyond the Giants. Yet it conveyed the impression that the distance was irrelevant. If the flame had shone directly in front of Linden, it would have been no larger—and no less vivid.
She recognized it instantly. It was a Wraith: one of the Wraiths of Andelain. She had seen its like before, during that cruel and necessary night when Sunder had slain Caer-Caveral with Loric’s krill so that Hollian could live again. Wraiths had appeared then, dozens of them, hundreds, to mourn the passing of the last Forestal’s music, and to celebrate what Sunder and Hollian had become.
The sight compelled an involuntary gasp from Linden. For a moment, she forgot Longwrath and every peril. The Wraith incarnated Andelain’s eldritch beauty: it entranced her. Its beauty reminded her of loss and resurrection; of broken Law and death that enabled life and victory. And it made Thomas Covenant live again in her mind, her savior and lover, whose consternation and courage had ruled him as severely as commandments.
I can’t help you unless you find me.
Everything for which she had struggled since her escape from Melenkurion Skyweir was contingent upon him.
Then the moment passed—and the Wraith was not alone. Another appeared near Linden, and another among the Ramen. Exquisite candle flames pranced over the hillside, more and more of them, until at least a score had become manifest.
They seemed to cast a spell over the caamora as they swept down the slope toward Longwrath. Even the Humbled paused as if they were amazed.
As soon as Longwrath’s foot touched the palpable demarcation between Salva Gildenbourne and Andelain, the Wraiths arrayed themselves in front of him. Together they gyred and flared as though they meant to ensorcel his madness.
Linden held her breath. At the edge of the stream, Longwrath hesitated. Yellow warmth illuminated his confusion. Other beings also act in Andelain’s defense. Although they exerted no magic that Linden could detect, the Wraiths formed a barrier against Longwrath’s craving for death.
Then he roared in defiance and charged at the lucent denial of the flames—
—and staggered as if he had collided with a wall. In some fashion that baffled Linden, he was shoved back. Each Wraith was a note, and together they formed a lush chord of rejection. As they danced, they looked small and frail; easily plucked from the air. Yet they refused Longwrath despite his size and strength.
His rage scaled higher as he charged again. The Wraiths took no visible notice of him. They merely swirled, bright and lovely, and self-absorbed as stars, as though they had no purpose except to be themselves: the simple fact of their existence summed up their significance. Nonetheless they repulsed Longwrath so firmly that he nearly fell.
Now he cut at them with his sword. His flamberge wove and slashed among the flames as if its dance might equal theirs. But his vehemence could not to
uch the Wraiths. They only flickered and burned, and were unharmed.
His fury became a scream that threatened to tear his throat; his lungs. Still the Wraiths did not permit him to advance. They made no discernible effort to elude his blade, yet their chord remained inviolate.
Then one of them swooped closer to alight delicately on the scar that disfigured his visage.
At once, his scream rose into a shriek. He plunged backward, pounding at his face with fists that still clutched his sword. An instant later, the Wraith danced away; but he continued to strike and flounder after the flame was gone.
Finally he appeared to realize that he was no longer threatened; and his cry turned to rent sobs. Stumbling to his feet, he fled back into the forest. Behind him, dismay and horror seemed to linger in the air. When they faded at last, he had passed beyond the reach of Linden’s percipience.
Shuddering, she began to breathe again.
After a moment, Stave observed quietly. “Andelain is indeed warded. Yet the Wraiths refuse none but Longwrath. Perhaps the shades of Sunder Graveler and Hollian eh-Brand are mistaken.” Darkness consumes you. Doom awaits you in the company of the Dead. “Perhaps there is no peril in your craving for Loric’s krill—or in your chosen ire.”
The Wraiths had permitted Anele. They had permitted Linden herself. By forbidding Longwrath, they had countered Stave’s doubt.
Until she concentrated on Stave’s voice and understood what he was saying, she did not realize that the flames had scattered. Somehow they had wandered away without calling attention to their departure.
The Despiser has planned long and cunningly for your presence, and his snares are many.
Simultaneously bemused and troubled, Linden began to take notice of her companions once more. Around the fire, the caamora of the Giants had ended. At first, she did not know whether they had finished grieving. But the mood of their ritual had been broken—or the time for it had passed. They moved slowly, glancing around with a dazed air as if they had been dazzled by the Wraiths. Liand and the Ramen seemed to rouse themselves from reveries or dreams.