The Last Dark
“You have wrought a surpassing wonder. I acknowledge it. I acknowledge that we have misesteemed you. And your theurgy is—” Bells described her astonishment. “Child, it is vast. My strengths are many, yet I cannot unmake what you have formed. Against any threat other than the Worm, this fane would stand.
“But you do not comprehend the Worm’s power. It transcends. Sensing our presence, the Worm will devour the fane without thought or effort. Then it will continue its search for the EarthBlood and doom. Deprived of egress, we will be eternally lost.”
“Mom is working on that,” Jeremiah replied without hesitation. “Sure, what we’ve done is vulnerable.” Roger had smashed Jeremiah’s Tinkertoy castle with the ease of contempt. “And we don’t have enough power to stop the Worm. But Mom went looking for somebody who can teach her how to do what we need.
“As long as she gets back—”
“Madness!” Infelice cried at once. “Utter madness!” Apparently her fears had blinded her to other things. Preoccupied by carnage, she had focused on Jeremiah rather than Linden. Now she reached for arcane sources of knowledge. Revelations struck her like blows. “The Wildwielder hazards the world’s past. She seeks a Forestal forged from the substance of an Elohim. She seeks forbidding.
“It is madness.” Infelice seemed to be speaking to herself. Arguing with her own instincts. “Should she fail, she will destroy all Time and life ere the Worm achieves its culmination.” But then her attention focused on Jeremiah again. Softer hues flowed through her raiment. “Yet I see valor also in her, as we have from the first. Therefore we sought to forestall her darkest desires, and to serve her in defiance of her own wishes. Should she succeed—”
“That’s right,” Jeremiah said again. “You’ll still have a chance. You’ll be safe, at least until the Worm gets to the EarthBlood. And it’ll be slow. I mean, slower than if it ate you. We’ll have more time.”
Time for Linden or even Covenant to come up with a better answer.
“A worthy effort,” murmured the Ironhand, “regardless of its hazards.”
The other Giants remained silent.
Infelice appeared to consider Jeremiah’s assertion. Instead of contradicting or challenging him, she consulted the ineffable ramifications of her bells and Linden’s daring and his construct.
He bit his lip; tried not to hold his breath. He had done what he could. If Infelice turned her thoughts now to what she had called the worst evil, nothing that he had done—nothing that he might say—would satisfy her.
Abrupt gusts broke free around the Elohim. Winds like the discarded scraps of a hurricane, tattered and imminent, gusted at the Giants, the fane, Jeremiah. Fretted with new grit, they rebounded from the ridge. The plain blurred and ran like a landscape in a mirage. Driven air did not touch Infelice, but it pulled like thorns at Jeremiah’s pajamas, moaned in the gaps between the stones of his construct.
It was possible that Jeremiah had built hope for everyone else, and had left none for himself.
Finally Infelice looked at him again. For the first time, he heard regret in her voice.
“You have exceeded our conceptions of you. This I confess freely, though it humbles me. Yet one threat remains unaddressed. Your companions have named you Chosen-son. I do so also. Yet you are chosen of a-Jeroth as you are of the Wildwielder. I have spoken of his desire to accomplish absolute evil. Chiefly for that reason, he has endeavored to possess you. He will do so again.
“You have completed your fane.” The music of her bells became sharper. It cut against the winds. “Your part in the world’s doom is done. For the Earth’s sake, and for Creation’s, I must now slay you.”
Her words shocked the Giants. They hit Jeremiah hard even though he had expected them. He had no defense.
“I am loath to do so,” admitted Infelice. “Yet I cannot otherwise forestall a-Jeroth. The Worm will feed, or it will not. The Arch of Time will fall, or it will not. Still the Despiser will make use of your gifts. From your heart and passion and youth and weakness, he will devise imprisonment for the Creator. He will put an end to the very possibility of Creation. Only your death will prevent his eternal triumph.”
Jeremiah stared at her; said nothing. Simply standing his ground required everything within him, his most intense love and his bitterest darkness.
He had inherited too much from Anele.
But Cirrus Kindwind rose to her feet. She spoke for him. With gems reflecting in her eyes, she said, “You forget, Elohim, though you are the highest of your kind. The Chosen-son is not alone.”
“He is not,” Rime Coldspray affirmed. She sounded as hard as a fist. “Doubtless you discount his companions. And in this you are perchance correct. Our striving in your name has weakened us. We cannot oppose you.” In spite of her weariness, her voice hit and tore as if its knuckles were studded with spurs. “Nor do I name the Timewarden, whose deeds and purposes remain unknown to us. But having misesteemed young Jeremiah, will you now compound your error? Have you forgotten that Linden Avery, Giantfriend and Wildwielder, has proven herself capable of much? Have you forgotten that there is hope in contradiction?
“No. I will not credit it. You are Elohim. You do not forget. Yet one matter lies beyond your comprehension. Being who you are, you have no experience of it. Therefore I will say this in the teeth of all who meditate ill toward the Chosen-son. He has friends. The Despiser may well attempt to possess him. If so, that evil will fail. No possession can hold one who does not stand alone.”
She seemed to mean, One who is loved.
“Why otherwise,” she concluded, punching home her avowal, “is he now free of the monster which once ruled him? Doubtless foes who relied upon the croyel were certain of their designs. Yet here he stands, relieved from mastery, and dedicated to the preservation of beings who abhorred him.”
Conflicting responses appeared to twist Infelice’s mien. Her raiment fluttered in disarray. At first, Jeremiah thought that she had taken offense; that she would react with wrath and violence. But then he saw her more clearly.
The sovereign Elohim was diminished. Her assurance, her contentment in herself, had received a blow from which she did not know how to recover. The notion of friends perplexed her; undermined her. Winds gyred around her like relief and dismay: a conundrum which she appeared unable to resolve.
But she did not hesitate long. Pressures that surpassed Jeremiah compelled her to a decision. Her voice wore discordant chiming like a funeral wreath. Though she was the highest of her kind, she had been wrong too often.
“I can delay no longer. I must acknowledge that I am answered, as the summons must be answered. You have spoken truly. We are Elohim. We have no knowledge of friends.
“This, then, is my word. Come what may, we who are great must now place our faith in you who are small.”
Then she found a brief severity. “Be wary, Chosen-son. Your deeds bring perils which you do not foresee. We have given of our utmost, according to our Würd. Now we can do naught. If your companions fail you, you are undone.”
Turning away, Infelice lifted a cry into the heavens: a resounding clang like a hammer-stroke on an immense gong.
At once, other Elohim began to appear as if they had been brought by the winds; as if they had found their substance among the oneiric seethings that troubled the plain.
One after another, they flowed like liquid light toward the fane, so many of them that Jeremiah was astonished. He had seen stars dying: he had not considered the number that still lived. Perhaps the relationship between these beings and stars was more symbolic than literal. Nevertheless the heavens had not been entirely decimated. Those Elohim that answered the call of Jeremiah’s construct resembled a multitude.
The sight enchanted him. They were so beautiful—! One and all, they were lovely beyond description. To his human eyes, they were men and women clad in elegance, and accustomed to glory: innocent of mortality; untainted by the dross of inadequacy and the burden of suffering; immune to the wo
es and protests that could only be stilled by death.
They were the Elohim, eldritch and fey: as cryptic as prophecies in a foreign tongue, and as ineffable as the beauties of Andelain, or the melodies of Wraiths. An uncounted host of them had already perished: a throng remained, craving life.
They sanctified the unnatural twilight as if their coming were a sacrament.
Instinctively Stormpast Galesend and Latebirth forced themselves to their feet. Even Cabledarm found the strength to stand. All of the Giants endeavored to square their shoulders, straighten their backs. In spite of their troubled history with the Elohim, they set aside their exhaustion.
Graceful as willows, stately as Gilden, each faery individual paused only to exchange a nod with Infelice, who stood aside for her people. Each glided into the fane and vanished from sight. And Jeremiah watched them stream past like a boy who had become magnificent in his own estimation, full of pride. He had caused this: he. He had justified Linden’s highest hopes for him. Yet the swelling of his heart was not pride. At that moment, at least, it was gratitude. The success of his temple was not something that he had accomplished: it was a gift that he had been given. He did not waste himself on pride.
For that moment, while it lasted, he soared above his secrets as if he had been lifted into the heavens.
Exalted and transfixed, he could not brace himself against the convulsion that shook the ground like the onset of an earthquake. He had no answer for the blast of heat as fierce as an eruption of magma, or for the blare of savagery that seemed to repudiate the world. He did not understand the sudden cries of the Elohim, or the haunted look that filled Infelice’s eyes, or the frantic shouts of the Giants. He did not know what was happening until Kastenessen entered him, and all of his thoughts became anguish and slaughter.
Ecstatic agony. Rage so great that it could not be contained. Pain too extreme to be called insanity.
The mad Elohim struck the plain like a fireball flung by a titan. At the impact, the very ground under his feet seemed to ripple and clench like water, liquefied by ferocity. He came roaring with triumph and lunacy and hate: a monster who no longer resembled the people who had imprisoned him; damned him. He was not lovely, not graceful. His visage was a contortion of suffering. Interminable pains gnarled his limbs. His vestments were fire. His eyes blazed like the fangs of the skurj. From his kraken teeth, slaver splashed the dirt and smoldered. And he dominated the horizon; cast back the gloom until even the darkness in the east appeared to wither and fade. He had made himself taller than a Giant, as tall as one of the avid worms which he had once restrained.
His right fist he held above his head, ready to hurl ruin at the fane.
It was not an Elohim’s fist. It was Roger’s, human and fatal. With it, Kastenessen could deliver devastations that no other being of his race might attempt or condone.
But he did not strike. He was not ready—or he saw no need.
He had already taken Jeremiah, who stood on bare dirt. The boy had inherited this vulnerability from Anele.
In an instant, less than an instant, a particle of time infinitely prolonged, Jeremiah passed through the eager malice and sadism of the croyel into pure fire, the catastrophic frenzy of bonfires. During that interminable flicker, his spirit was split. He seemed to become several separate selves, all simultaneous or superimposed, all cruelly distinct.
Now he knew why Anele had chosen madness.
One Jeremiah realized that he had been possessed—again!—and tried to scream. One stood in the white core of a furnace, while another interpreted every form of pain as delight, as agony perfected to ecstasy. One watched the Giants, who should have scattered, saved themselves. But they did not. Doomed and determined, they placed themselves in the path of Kastenessen’s savagery. And another Jeremiah relished the knowledge that he had become incarnate lava. The idea that his companions were about to die glorified him. It was for this that the Despiser had marked him. It was for this that he lived.
Swift with glee, he moved to do his ruler’s bidding.
Still another self remembered every horror which the croyel had inflicted upon him. He experienced again the misery of deluding Linden in Roger’s company, cringed at what he had done under Melenkurion Skyweir. Another aspect of his shredded identity fled for the safety of sepulchres. Another gibbered for the godhood of eternity. In that manifestation, he knew the keen pain of the krill against his throat.
And one—
One of the many Jeremiahs understood.
This Jeremiah recognized the extremity of Kastenessen’s need for ruin. He remembered the forbidden love, potent as delirium, and altogether delicious, which had drawn Kastenessen to mortal Emereau Vrai, daughter of kings. He felt Kastenessen’s rage and dismay while he fought for his love against Infelice and others of the Elohim, who should have valued him more highly. This Jeremiah knew intimately the unconscionable hurt of Kastenessen’s Durance, his imprisonment against and among the skurj. This Jeremiah recalled in every detail the torment which had driven Kastenessen to begin merging himself with monsters.
This Jeremiah understood why Kastenessen cared only for the utter destruction of the Elohim. More, he knew why Kastenessen had not acted directly against Linden, or indeed against Jeremiah himself, until now; until all of his surviving people were gathered in one place. Although Kastenessen had used Esmer with remorseless brutality, he had not delivered his fury in person because any absence from the proximity of She Who Must Not Be Named would have put an end to Kevin’s Dirt. His presence was required to channel and shape and direct the bane’s fearsome energies. And he had believed, or moksha Raver had persuaded him, that only the dire brume which hampered Earthpower and Law would make his revenge possible.
Now Kastenessen had no more need for such stratagems. He had come in response to the fane’s call, but he was not mastered by it. He was part skurj and part human: he was in enough pain to refuse any coercion. No, he was here because he had achieved his desires. One of the Jeremiahs would carry out the last preparations.
That in turn was why Kastenessen raised Roger’s fist, but did not strike. He had the power to shatter the fane, render it back to rubble. Nevertheless he withheld his blow, waiting for the certainty that every one of the Elohim would be destroyed.
Nothing that happened in or to Jeremiah took any time at all. Part of him regretted that. He loved what he had become. He reveled in the purity of his given hate.
Incandescent or incinerated in each of his separated selves, he flung himself at Infelice.
It was for this that he—that Kastenessen—had planned and waited and endured: so that the highest and mightiest and most dangerous of the Elohim would be slain with the rest when he delivered his retribution.
Three swift strides would be enough. Then Kastenessen in Jeremiah would wrap hate like molten stone around Infelice. He would hurl her through the fane’s portal, the entryway to extinction. After that, only heartbeats would remain until the summons was complete; until every Elohim was inside.
Until Kastenessen could unleash uncounted millennia of torment.
Jeremiah was sudden. He was quick.
Stave was faster.
The former Master was scarcely conscious. He could barely stand. Nevertheless he kept his promise to Linden. Lunging, he grasped Jeremiah’s arm.
Heat as fierce as brimstone savaged his hand, but he did not let go. Desperate and already failing, he delivered Jeremiah to the only protection that lay within his reach.
As Rime Coldspray had done to Stave himself earlier, the Haruchai wrenched Jeremiah into the air. Off the bare dirt that exposed him to Kastenessen. Onto the stone roof of the temple.
Into the direct line of Kastenessen’s intended attack.
Then Stave collapsed again. He did not rise.
But Infelice remained untouched outside the fane.
Kastenessen howled rage at the heavens, but Jeremiah no longer heeded him. As Jeremiah’s feet left the ground, he crashed inwardly. H
is many selves seemed to smash against each other like projectiles, like bullets.
The force of their impact stunned him. It numbed his mind. He no longer thought or moved: he hardly breathed. Instead he lay still, wracked by revulsion; as weak as Stave. He could do nothing except watch and dread.
Kastenessen roared, but he did not strike. He wanted his full triumph. In moments, even Infelice would answer the fane’s call. Then—
Already the last of the Elohim were passing inward. Their hope had become horror, and their features were written with dismay, but they had no power to reject their own natures. Two heartbeats, or perhaps three, no more than that, and Infelice would stand alone. Then she, too, would enter—and Kastenessen would strike.
No, he would not. Not with Roger’s hand. Never again.
While Kastenessen readied his blast, a Giant surged out of a crater behind him. Jeremiah would not have known who the newcomer was if Frostheart Grueburn had not shouted, “Longwrath!”
Swift as a bolt of lightning, the man reared high behind the deranged Elohim. In both fists, he gripped a long flamberge with a wicked blade. It edges gleamed against Kastenessen’s lurid radiance as if starlight had been forged into its iron.
One stroke severed Roger’s hand from Kastenessen’s wrist.
Kastenessen screamed like an exploding sun. He staggered.
Longwrath followed him to strike again.
But Kastenessen caught his balance. Blood pulsed from his wrist, the tainted ichor of Earthpower and lava. He did not heed it. Wheeling, he swung at his attacker with his good arm.
Power erupted in Longwrath’s chest. His armor had been damaged, torn apart at one shoulder: it could not withstand Kastenessen’s virulence. The wrought stone sprang apart, spitting splinters as piercing as knives. But the shards evaporated or melted at the touch of Kastenessen’s lava. Longwrath was flung backward, hurled away like a handful of scree. When he fell, he did not move again. Smoke gusted out of his chest as if his heart and lungs were on fire.
Roaring once more, Kastenessen turned back to Infelice and the fane. Obscene heat mounted within him. He grew taller, blazed brighter. Acrid flames swirled higher, spinning about him like the birth-pangs of a cyclone. His sick brilliance stung Jeremiah’s eyes, but the boy could not look away.