At once, they broke away from each other and hastened toward the wetland. As soon as their feet entered the waters of the Sarangrave, their flames went out. Covenant lost sight of them as if the marsh had swallowed them whole.
His mouth was suddenly dry, and his heart pumped dread. The enormity of what he meant to do seemed to thicken the murk. It made the air difficult to breathe. He had no real comprehension of the Worm’s puissance. For all he knew, its power was too destructive to be gazed upon. The sight alone might scald his eyes in their sockets.
Fiercely he told himself, Or it might not. He would learn nothing if he did not take the risk.
Stop dithering. Just do it.
There was no other way to earn the necessary knowledge.
“We need the horses,” he muttered to Branl. He would probably never see Hooryl again. He had to hope that Rallyn would be able to command Mishio Massima without help. “And food. Water. From here on, everything is only going to get harder. I don’t doubt that you can hang on indefinitely, but I have to keep up my strength.”
The Humbled nodded. He did not speak of trust in the Ranyhyn, or in himself.
That was well. Memories of turiya and butchery clung to Covenant. When the Haruchai invoked trust, the word meant too much. Long centuries ago, Covenant had asked the ancestors of the Humbled to preserve Revelstone. Clyme’s death was only one of the results.
ut trust was still trust. It was earned, or it was not. As faithful as the Haruchai, who remembered everything, Rallyn cantered out of the dusk in Naybahn’s place, answering Branl’s summons. And the palomino stallion brought the Ardent’s mulish beast with him. When the Humbled had checked Mishio Massima’s tack, he announced that the horses were ready.
With leaves to protect his hands, Covenant uncovered the krill. Then he removed Joan’s ring from around his neck. As he had done before, he pushed the ring onto the stub-end of the last finger of his left hand; closed his fist around the chain to secure the band. As before, he struck the dagger’s gem with the ring until his body blazed with wild magic. After that, he concentrated on pressing the point of the blade into the grass while Branl carried him around Rallyn and Mishio Massima.
When Branl lifted him into his saddle, he nearly fell off the far side. A second Humbled should have been there to catch him. But he managed to steady himself on the saddle horn.
While his line of silver lingered in the turf, the horses surged into motion, bearing him farther from his heart’s desire.
fter a blink of darkness which seemed to deny any possible passage, either through time or across distance, Covenant and Branl arrived galloping in a region that looked indistinguishable from the place which they had left. The hillside may have leaned at a slightly different angle. The slope ahead may have been less even. Conceivably Sarangrave Flat had receded to the west. But Covenant could not be sure. Beyond the krill’s reach, the unnatural dusk masked details, and his vision was fading.
Branl took Loric’s dagger and covered it, giving Covenant’s eyes a chance to adjust to the universal grey. The horses ran on as if they were determined to reach the edge of the world.
Before Covenant could swallow enough of his vertigo to frame a question, the Humbled pointed ahead. After a few moments, Covenant made out a deeper gloom like a clump of shadows in the rumpled ground: a small copse in a hollow. Soon he caught the faint glint of water. A stream purled over the contours of the hillside, hastening in the direction of the Sarangrave.
As the horses slowed, Branl stated with quiet satisfaction, “The Land is provident—as is Rallyn. Here we will find both water and sustenance. Corruption’s wars did not extend into this region. Nor do the blights of Sarangrave Flat.”
Covenant did not doubt his companion, but he had other concerns. While he scrambled for balance, he asked, “How far have we come?”
“A score of leagues, ur-Lord. Perhaps somewhat more.”
Covenant winced. Only a score?
“Did we lose much time?”
“No other mount could have borne us so swiftly,” Branl replied with uncharacteristic asperity. He seemed to hear a complaint in Covenant’s tone. But then he continued more flatly, “Yet it is plain that our passages are not immediate. Though the sun no longer measures the day, I gauge that mid-morning is nigh.”
Covenant frowned, thinking hard. To some extent, at least, the distances that he and Branl could cover appeared to be controlled as much by Rallyn’s instincts as by the size or even the precision of his argent enclosures. Nevertheless the abilities of the Ranyhyn clearly had limits. Otherwise they would not have needed two attempts to reach the Sarangrave the previous day.
Still he was losing chunks of time. Where did the hours go? Where—if anywhere—did he and Branl and their horses exist during the interval?
The lag may have been inherent to his specific use of wild magic; or it may have been an outcome of his relationship with Joan’s ring, a ring which was not his. After all, Linden had experienced something similar. When she had saved herself and Anele from the collapse of Kevin’s Watch, she had done more than pass from one place to another. She had also moved through time: in effect, she had fallen more slowly than the broken remains of the Watch.
As soon as the horses halted near the stream, Mishio Massima jerked the reins away from Covenant and began cropping grass. Branl slid down from Rallyn’s back; offered to help Covenant. But Covenant dismounted on his own. For a few moments, he braced himself against the Ardent’s steed while the last sensations of vertigo faded, giving himself a chance to accept the returning numbness of his feet and the loss of sensation in his finger-tips. Kevin’s damn Dirt—Then he left the beast’s side.
With Branl, he considered the nearby trees.
They were wattle, fast-growing and resilient. In sunlight, they would have been a verdant green, fresh and promising. Now they resembled shadows cast by a different version of reality, although they swayed in the tumble of a growing breeze. Certainly they appeared to offer nothing that Covenant could eat.
Nevertheless the Humbled seemed sure of his own perceptions. Firmly he beckoned Covenant to accompany him among the trees.
The copse was thick. Pushing his way between the trunks, Covenant soon tripped. When he looked down, he found that he had caught one of his boots on the thick stem of a vine.
In fact, vines twisted all over the ground among the trees. The whole stand was tangled with them.
“Do you recall this, ur-Lord?” Branl sounded subtly amused. “You were once familiar with it.”
“Huh?” Covenant had lost ages of memories, but he was sure that he had never heard one of the Haruchai sound amused. “When?”
“During the time of the Sunbane,” answered Branl, “it provided nourishment when Corruption’s evil spawned no edible growth, and aliantha were scarce. It is ussusimiel.”
For a moment, Covenant groped inwardly. Then he spotted the darker knob of a melon in the gloom; and he remembered. Long ago under a desert sun, Sunder had invoked vines and their fruit from parched, barren dirt. At need it will sustain life—
It did not taste as piquant as treasure-berries. And it lacked their extraordinary vitality. But it would be enough.
“Well, damn,” Covenant muttered. “If that isn’t providence, I don’t know what is.” He felt unexpectedly cheered, as if an old friend had taken him by surprise. “Hell, I don’t even know what the word means.”
“Then, ur-Lord”—Branl held up the wrapped krill—“if you do not deem it an incondign use, I will harvest melons. While you break your fast, I will weave a net of smaller vines to carry a supply of the fruit.”
Covenant found that he was too hungry to argue. “Do it. Somehow I’m sure Loric wouldn’t object, even if he did spend damn decades sweating over that knife.”
But he did not stay to watch Branl work. Instead he turned away, sparing his eyes the stab of the gem’s shining. Lit by slashes of silver, he withdrew from the copse and went to the stream to drink.
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Providence in all sooth. Even here, so many leagues away from the wonders of the Land that he had known in life, there were still gifts—
Now he prayed that food and water would sustain him well enough for what lay ahead.
second self-contained violation of time or space took him and Branl nearly thirty leagues closer to their destination. As Rallyn and Mishio Massima galloped out of theurgy onto a long facet of exposed rock, Covenant clung frantically to his saddle horn, straining to contain a gyre of dizziness. But Branl rode as though he and Rallyn were more dependable than stone. Over one shoulder, the Humbled carried a net sack filled with enough melons to keep Covenant fed for a day or two.
A wind out of the east buffeted the riders like the presage of a gale, but it was useless to Covenant. It did not stop the spin that sickened him, or lessen the blurring of his sight.
According to Branl, one more passage of comparable length would convey them to the bluffs between the Sunbirth Sea and Lifeswallower, the headland which bordered the delta of the Great Swamp. From that vantage, they would be able to watch for the Worm without precluding contact with the Feroce.
Unfortunately noon had already passed. Each translation by wild magic washed away time as well as balance. In some sense, the linear certainty of causality and sequence formed the ground on which Covenant’s mind stood. His thoughts were moments; bits of bedrock. When he blinked from one location to the next, the change staggered him as if every nerve in his body had misfired.
For that reason, and because each exertion of Joan’s ring drained him, he had to rest in spite of an accumulating sense of urgency. When the horses had slowed to a halt, he half fell out of Mishio Massima’s saddle and lurched away like a wounded animal looking for a place to hide.
He yearned to be alone, at least for a little while; to soothe his vulnerability in isolation. But Branl followed him. After a silence, the Humbled pronounced, “This frailty is an effect of Kevin’s Dirt, ur-Lord.”
Instead of speaking, Covenant gritted his teeth and waited.
Inflexibly Branl added, “The distress which results will fade more readily if I am permitted to hold High Lord Loric’s krill.”
Covenant blinked at the knife bright in his grasp. Damnation. It’s getting worse. Like the encroaching deadness of leprosy, vertigo was tightening its noose around him. In his confusion, the injured whirl of disorientation, he had not realized that he was still holding the dagger. He had not felt its heat—
With a jerk of his arm, he surrendered the krill.
As Branl covered the gem, dusk flooded over the region. Under other circumstances, the sun’s absence would have galled Covenant. Now, however, it felt like an act of kindness. Twilight was a kind of privacy. He needed it to recover his balance.
The lurker wanted counsel, but he had no idea what he could possibly say. If the Worm caught Kastenessen’s scent, it would head toward Mount Thunder—and toward She Who Must Not Be Named. Nothing would survive that encounter.
To prevent that outcome, Covenant might have to ask Horrim Carabal to sacrifice itself. But the monster would surely refuse. No alliance would persuade it to surrender its life voluntarily.
He had to hope that the Worm’s approach to Lifeswallower was a coincidence; that it would ignore Mount Thunder. Otherwise he would have to think of a better answer for the lurker.
Hampered by Kevin’s Dirt and vertigo, he could hardly think at all.
ortunately a third passage brought him to the headland. His mount hammered up a slope of saw-edged grass between bare juts of granite and basalt: a narrowing wedge of rising ground. To the north stood the bluffs which restricted the spread of Lifeswallower. In the east were the low cliffs bordering the Sunbirth Sea. Beyond the gap-toothed horizon ahead was nothing except grey sky and stars. They seemed to mark the edge of existence.
This time, the wind hit Covenant hard. Heavy as a torrent, it knocked him askew. When he tried to dismount, he toppled backward; landed on the grass with a jolt that stopped his breathing. The ground tilted from side to side, forward and back, in a sequence devoid of reason, as unpredictable and dangerous as dreaming. Gusts swept past him, sucking air out of his mouth. Blots marred his vision like the mottling of disease.
But then Branl took the krill. With a suddenness that resembled fainting, Covenant began to breathe again.
While the stains faded from his sight, and the canting of the horizons eased, he was content to lie still and let the impact of his fall ebb. The troubled labor of his heart suggested that he had undergone an obscure ordeal. Nevertheless it reassured him. It confirmed that time endured, unbroken; that one thing led to another. The Law that constrained and enabled life held true.
When he felt ready, he rolled onto one side, forced his arms and knees under him, pushed himself upright.
God, the wind—He could barely stand against it; had to squint at the sting of tears. Without Branl’s support, he might not have been able to move.
Blinking, he scanned his surroundings. He had the visceral impression that he was standing on the highest peak of the world. But of course that was nonsense: this was not a mountain. Rather he had arrived downhill from the wedge-tip of the headland. To the east, the sea thrashed at the Land’s last rock. He smelled salt on the blast. If he could find the vantage he sought, he would be able to see the surge of waves.
Around him, the headland was a jumble of protruding stone, granite and basalt weathered smooth; gnawed across the millennia into shapes that resembled anguish and intransigence. Some of the rocks wore fringes of moss in the lee of the wind. Others had acquired threadbare cloaks of lichen.
Peering behind him, he thought at first that the slope sank lower indefinitely. But when he squeezed the wind from his eyes and looked harder, he realized that the westward hillside was cut off by a line of darkness in the distance. There lay the Great Swamp, sweeping around the headland toward the sea. He could not smell Lifeswallower. The wind tore away the swampland’s complex fetors. But below him the waters of the delta reflected a faint shimmer.
After a moment, he spotted the horses. They were cantering down the slope, keeping their distance from the wetland as they descended. Apparently Rallyn believed that the riders had no immediate need of their mounts. And naturally both Rallyn and Mishio Massima wanted water as well as forage.
Then Covenant noticed the emerald fires, small as dots, ascending slowly toward him.
He watched the creatures briefly. But they were still far away; and he had nothing to say to them. Turning back toward the tip of the promontory, he went upward with Branl’s aid until he glimpsed the darker grey of the sea beyond the headland’s rim. There he stopped.
The waves heaved frantically against their own weight, hacking across each other, rising into sudden breakers, erupting in spume. Some mighty pressure disrupted the normal scend and recession of tides. The seas were flung in frenzy at the cliffs, where they rebounded, smashed together, became chaos. The wind assailed Covenant’s ears with their clamor as if the headland were under siege.
Gripping his companion’s arm, he asked, “Can you see anything?”
Branl studied the sea. “I do not doubt that the Worm comes, as the Feroce have declared. In turmoil, the waves contradict themselves. Some cataclysm goads these waters. But its source is too distant for my discernment.”
“How much time did we lose?”
A slight frown of concentration or surprise disturbed Branl’s mien. After a moment, he replied, “It appears that our final passage was prolonged. Mayhap the Worm’s approach misleads my senses. Nonetheless I gauge that evening is nigh. Ere long, this dusk will turn toward true night.”
The coming of night after a second sunless day felt like a bad omen. Covenant had no power against the World’s End.
Nonetheless he had made promises—
“In that case,” he told Branl, “I need to get out of this wind. Can you find a place where I can watch the sea and Lifeswallower? A place with some shelte
r?”
Nodding, Branl drew him toward the stones which cluttered the corner of the headland. In the lee of a blunted fang as tall as Covenant, the Humbled urged him to sit and rest. Then Branl left. Still bearing his net of melons as well as Loric’s krill, he disappeared among the twisted shapes of basalt and granite, the motley of lichen and moss.
Covenant sagged against the fang; rubbed his stiff cheeks with his insensate fingers; wiped away residual tears. Reflexively he confirmed that Joan’s ring still hung under his T-shirt. The wind moaned miserably past the rocks, a raw sound like keening, but he tried to ignore it. Tried to think. Wind was only air in motion, he told himself. It merely reacted to forces beyond its control. If he heard lamentation in it, or auguries of havoc, he was misleading himself. The world did not care: the natural order of things did not grieve or grow glad. Only the sentient beings who inhabited time wept and struggled and loved.
There was a kind of comfort in the notion that the Earth neither understood nor feared its own peril. Its life was not a reflection of himself. But such consolation was too abstract to touch him—or his dying nerves did not feel it. Ultimately nothing ever mattered, except to the people who cared about it. To them, however, the import of the stakes was absolute.
Covenant grimaced ruefully at his thoughts. Long ago, he had insisted that the Land did not exist, except as a form of self-contained delirium. In that sense, it was a reflection of himself. And he was powerless in it because he could not change his own image in the mirror: it only showed him who he was. Therefore he could not be blamed for his actions; or for the Land’s fate. Now he found himself arguing that the world was really nothing more than an impersonal mechanism inhabited by self-referential beings. Therefore no failure, here or anywhere, could be held against him.
After so many years, he had changed very little. He was still looking for a way to forgive himself for being human and afraid.