Stave rode effortlessly, like a man who had become one with his mount. In Khelen’s care, Jeremiah waved his arms and shouted encouragement. But Linden gripped her Staff and prayed that she had not driven her son to bury his wounds more deeply.
The quality of the light in the stained air told her that the sun was setting beyond the barrier of Landsdrop. In the distance ahead, still scores of leagues away, she felt the advance of Kevin’s Dirt more strongly. After their fashion, the Ranyhyn were trying to outrace a doom for which she had no answer.
Linden’s relief and joy at her son’s restoration would have been greater if she had not been so afraid for him.
In your present state, Chosen, Desecration lies ahead of you. It does not crowd at your back.
It was entirely impossible that he had not been maimed in some way by Lord Foul’s malice and the croyel’s cruelty.
2.
Nightfall
The sun set, casting darkness across the Spoiled Plains; shrouding everything except the sensory glower of Kevin’s Dirt. But Kastenessen’s oblique assault on Earthpower and Law was increasingly vivid to Linden’s percipience. Soon it would begin to hamper her. Even Jeremiah’s inherited theurgy might be tainted. And the resources of the Staff would be diminished.
In addition, Covenant’s leprosy would worsen. He might go blind, or lose the use of his hands altogether. He might find it difficult to keep his balance because his feet were numb.
I need to be numb, he had insisted in Andelain. It doesn’t just make me who I am. It makes me who I can be.
Linden did not understand that. The way in which he defined himself as a leper was like his relationship with wild magic, inherent, inexplicable—and too ambiguous to be measured.
Crossing terrain that made her feel numbed herself, Linden clung to the flowing reassurance of Hyn’s back and prayed that some good would come of this long gallop through the threatened night.
Fortunately no caesures appeared. Joan’s attention was focused elsewhere; or turiya Raver’s was. Nevertheless Linden felt a growing disquiet across the region, an almost subliminal sense of disturbance that seemed separate from Kevin’s Dirt. At first, she thought that she was tasting a nameless discomfiture in Hyn, a new anxiety that affected only the Ranyhyn. Yet when she pushed her percipience farther, she found a sensation of restiveness in the ground under Hyn’s hooves. The foundations of the Lower Land appeared to be bracing themselves for an impact which they might not be able to withstand.
Across the leagues, Jeremiah’s mood had changed. His eagerness had become impatience, frustration. He rode low over Khelen’s neck, apparently urging the Ranyhyn to greater speed as if he fled from ghouls—or as if he were filled to bursting with an unspoken sense of purpose.
Stars sprinkled the firmament overhead: the only light on the Lower Land. Surely the moon would rise soon? Even a slim crescent would do more than the lorn stars to soften the dark. But there was no moon. In its absence, the stars seemed strangely closer, at once more distinct and more vulnerable, as if they were drawing near to witness the outcome of their long yearning.
The shadows of the Creator’s children, for good or ill: come boon or bane. They glistened like weeping in the absolute black of the heavens.
With growing urgency, Linden tried to recognize some specific feature of the terrain. But she had not attended to her surroundings during the ride to Muirwin Delenoth. She did not know where she was, and could only guess where she was going.
Hyn’s unfaltering strides spoke eloquently of trust. Linden heard them well enough. She knew what they meant. Nevertheless her anxieties harried her through the night. Galled by them, she traversed an unreadable landscape in darkness like the onset of a nightmare from which there could be no awakening.
How much time had passed? An hour since sunset? Surely no more than two? Nonetheless the star-strewn dark seemed complete, as if it were the last night of the world.
Abruptly Hynyn uttered a loud neigh like a blare of triumph in the face of oncoming evils. And a moment later, the stallion was answered. From the distance ahead came a welcoming whinny. Linden thought that she recognized Narunal’s call.
“There, Chosen,” Stave announced over the pounding of hooves. “Our companions await us where we last found water.”
The Ranyhyn were running between low hillocks like mounds inadequately cloaked in scraps of grass. Vaguely Linden smelled water. But her attention was fixed elsewhere, straining to discern the presence of the Swordmainnir and the Manethrall.
“At last!” Jeremiah shouted. Then he began to halloo as if he expected everyone who could hear him to know his voice.
In moments, the Ranyhyn slowed their strides. Panting heavily, they dropped from a gallop to a canter, then to a jolting trot. Sure of their footing, they angled down into a gully where a small stream ran southward. As it muttered along its crooked path, it caught glints from the stars, a spangling of slight reflections which seemed to confirm that the lost lights were indeed becoming more distinct.
Silhouetted vague and fireless against the faint glisten of the water stood ten shapes that Linden knew instantly: eight Giants, Manethrall Mahrtiir, and Narunal.
At once, Rime Coldspray and her comrades raised a loud huzzah that startled the night, shivering in the air like a challenge to calamity. Jeremiah replied gladly, and all of the Ranyhyn whickered their approval. Only Mahrtiir voiced neither pleasure nor exultation. His reactions were more complex.
As Hynyn, Hyn, and Khelen halted, Frostheart Grueburn and Stormpast Galesend surged forward to lift Linden and Jeremiah from their mounts. On Hyn’s back, Linden almost felt equal to the exuberant relief of the Swordmainnir; but when Grueburn set her on her feet, the Giants towered over her, dwarfing her with their open hearts as much as with their size. She had more in common with Mahrtiir. While the Ironhand, Onyx Stonemage, and Cirrus Kindwind greeted Stave with claps on his back and shoulders that buffeted him in spite of his strength, Linden walked on legs stiff with riding toward the Manethrall. When she reached him, she dropped her Staff so that she could hug him with both arms.
Taken aback by her display of affection, he resisted momentarily. But then he returned her clasp. “Ringthane,” he breathed softly. “Linden Avery. Though I trust the Ranyhyn in all things, I must acknowledge that I have been sorely afraid. Also I am much vexed that I was not permitted to stand at your side. I am diminished in my own estimation. I must remember that I am Ramen and human. I must not judge myself by the majesty of the Ranyhyn.”
As if she were answering him, Linden murmured privately, “Jeremiah saved himself. Now I don’t know how to help him.”
Like Mahrtiir, she would never be equal to miracles. She had to learn how to serve them, as he did.
But the Manethrall appeared not to understand her. “Help him?” he asked in a voice as low as hers. “His alteration is plain. He is transformed beyond all expectation or conception. What manner of aid does he require?”
Jeremiah was already talking to the Giants, practically babbling in his eagerness to tell his story. But caesures and Stave and Infelice and Linden and the Ranyhyn and his racecar and Anele’s legacy and a construct of bone all tried to find words at the same time: they tripped over each other and fell and bounced back up like tumblers performing some implausible feat of dexterity. Laughing at his own happy incoherence, he repeated his verbal pratfalls until he occasionally achieved a complete sentence. And the Giants laughed with him, rapt and delighted.
Only Stave stood apart. His native dispassion did not waver. If he took note of Linden’s exchange with Mahrtiir, he feigned otherwise.
Whispering so that she would not weep again, Linden told Mahrtiir, “He doesn’t want to remember what he’s been through. I can’t think about anything else. No one suffers like that without being damaged.”
The Manethrall stepped back to regard her with his bandaged gaze. Still softly, he replied, “That I comprehend, Ringthane. Who would if I do not, I who have lost ey
es and use in a cause which exceeds my best strength? But I will speak once again of trust. Hear his vitality and joy. Hear him well. Far more than his wounds have been restored to him, and to you. If a lifetime of your love has not already wrought some healing, it will do so when its time is ripe.”
Linden had no response. She recognized his effort to reassure her, but she was not comforted. Jeremiah was not her only concern: other anxieties were tightening around her. His emergence required her to shift how she thought of herself.
She had no idea what had happened to Thomas Covenant. League by league, Kevin’s Dirt swelled closer, expanding the ambit of Kastenessen’s wrath and pain. Her awareness of a visceral alarm in the earth was growing stronger. And the Worm of the World’s End was at work. Where its power was concerned, she doubted nothing that Infelice had told her; nothing that she had heard from Anele.
The company’s circumstances, and the Land’s, implied an imperative need for action. Now that she had rejoined her friends, she felt the pressure of events mounting. Instinctively she believed that she and her companions had to make decisions and act on them. Now, while they still could.
Yet she restrained herself for the sake of her son’s rambling tale; and also for the sake of the Giants, so that they could gauge him for themselves. Raising both of her hands, she bowed her thanks and respect to Mahrtiir in the Ramen fashion. Then she retrieved the Staff of Law and went to the stream to quench her thirst. The Giants still carried some portion of the Ardent’s largesse. Surely she could afford to eat a meal and rest before she imposed her tension on her friends?
Yes, she could afford that—but she could not do it. When Jeremiah had given his audience a fairly complete description of what had occurred during his rescue or escape, she went in a gust of compulsion to join Rime Coldspray and Frostheart Grueburn and the rest of the Swordmainnir.
“Have you felt it?” she asked without preamble. “Kevin’s Dirt is coming this way. Kastenessen knows where we are, and he intends to hurt us if he can. At this rate, Mahrtiir and I will start to lose our health-sense sometime around dawn. Even Jeremiah may be affected. And Kevin’s Dirt is going to limit what I can do with my Staff. I won’t be able to fight the skurj. I may not even be able to fight the Sandgorgons.
“Can you feel it?”
One by one, the Giants turned toward her. She could not make out their expressions by starlight; but her nerves felt their enjoyment of Jeremiah subside, replaced by more somber emotions. The last of their laughter faded into the night. Standing with their Ironhand, the Swordmainnir regarded Linden gravely.
“Linden Giantfriend,” Coldspray replied with an air of formality, “we have felt it. But it will not assail us until dawn, as you have observed. For that reason among others, it is not our immediate consideration.
“You have ridden long and long without food or rest or sufficient water. And Giant that I am, I confess that my weariness clings to me, though we have bathed as well as we are able, and have conserved our endurance. Will you not partake of our remaining food? Will you not sleep for a time? The trials of the morrow will not be made less by effort in darkness, when we are scarce able to discern where we set our feet.”
Linden shook her head. Fears coerced her: she did not know how to relent.
“And there’s some kind of distress in the ground,” she countered. “Can you feel that, too? It’s like the rock under this whole part of the Lower Land is afraid. The Worm must be getting close. What else can it mean?
“I don’t regret anything that we’ve done since we lost Liand and Anele.” Anything except Covenant’s departure—and his desire to distance himself from her. “But we’re running out of time. We need to decide what we’re going to do, and then we need to do it.”
The Ironhand regarded Linden for a moment, apparently searching for some clue to the turmoil which goaded her. Then the leader of the Swordmainnir said more gently, “You reveal a welcome alteration, Linden Giantfriend—as welcome as your son’s restoration in mind and power. Heretofore you have given your concern chiefly to him, heedless of the Earth’s doom.
“I do not fault you in this,” she hastened to add. “We are Giants and adore children. Nonetheless other matters also weigh upon us. Your readiness now to challenge the foes of Land and life lifts our spirits.”
Before Linden could find an appropriate response, Coldspray continued, “Yet your need for food and rest remains. Though you did not choose to be so, you are the rock on which we have anchored our own purposes. Since our first encounter in Salva Gildenbourne, we have claimed a place in your company at every turn of the winds and currents. This we have done because we see more in you than you see in yourself, and also because we seek to make amends for the follies which led to Lostson Longwrath’s geas. We will be guided by your heart.
“Still I must urge you to contain your apprehension for this one night. Much has transpired. Much has been asked of you—and much given in return.” She nodded toward Jeremiah. “You would be more or less than mortal if you did not require time to absorb the gift of your son’s restoration. And if you do not eat and rest now, you will be less able to withstand the coming storms.
“We will have need of you, Linden Giantfriend. You must grant to yourself some measure of kindness.”
The Ironhand’s consideration seemed to dissolve a barrier in Linden; to weaken or transform it. Her desire for decisions was as much an expression of incomprehension as it was of urgency. There were too many things that she did not understand. Covenant. Jeremiah. Lord Foul’s plans for her son. And the Elohim, who could have done so much differently.
In bafflement, she nodded to Coldspray. “I’m sure you’re right. Jeremiah must be hungry. And I could use a bath.” The Ranyhyn had withdrawn into the night as if they had satisfied their own purposes; as if now they were content to wait until she determined hers. “Let’s all get some rest. Maybe we’ll be able to see what to do more clearly in the morning.”
The Giants replied with murmurs of approval; and Jeremiah yawned unexpectedly. “I’m not just hungry,” he announced. “I’m sleepy. I thought I was too excited to sleep, but maybe I’m not.”
Linden nodded again. “All right.” Feeling suddenly drained, she turned to Stave. “Will you guide me? I want to wash, but I’m not sure that I can find my way.”
Without hesitation, the Haruchai took her arm and steered her into the darkness away from the company. Trusting his friendship and his certainty, she accompanied him downstream.
But she wanted more than a bath. She wanted to understand. Questions about Jeremiah led her to quellvisks, and to the Elohim. When she and Stave had gone beyond earshot of the Giants and her son, she asked him quietly, “Why do you think they did it?”
“Linden?” the former Master inquired with as much gentleness as his dispassion allowed.
“Why did the Elohim leave those bones where the Ranyhyn could find them? If they’re so afraid of Jeremiah? They can move through time. The Theomach told me that. So did Esmer. They could have known that Jeremiah would need those bones. And they had the whole Earth to choose from. Why did they pick the Lower Land?”
Why did they make possible a fate that they abhorred and then try to prevent it?
Stave shrugged. “Mayhap they did not foresee him.” Then he added, “Their belief that they are equal to all things deludes them. They cannot perceive their own misapprehensions. How otherwise did they fail to foresee that you would permit ur-Lord Covenant to retain his white gold ring when you had become the Sun-Sage? Their fear of the Unbeliever’s power and resurrection blinded them to other paths.”
By slow increments, Linden began to relax. Stave’s answer sounded reasonable. If nothing else, it implied that comprehension was attainable.
As far as she was concerned, the Elohim had been wrong about her from the first.
Before long, the Haruchai brought her to a small pool among the mounded hillocks. It was too shallow to let her immerse herself, had no virtue to as
soil her sins; but it offered her enough water to scrub at the worst of her dirt and doubt. When Stave had assured her that he would stand watch somewhere out of sight, he faded soundlessly into the night, and she was alone.
Kneeling among the stones and sand at the pool’s edge, she placed the Staff of Law beside her; lowered her face into the cold tang of the water. As long as she could hold her breath, she dragged her fingers through her hair and rubbed hard at her scalp. After that, she unbuttoned and dropped her shirt, removed her boots and socks, took off her grass-marked jeans.
Alone with the stars, she did what she could to remove the stains of sweat and strain and dust and blood from her skin. With cold clean water, she tried to scour the soilure from her thoughts. Then she tossed her clothes into the pool and beat them like a woman who wanted to pound away every reminder that she was vulnerable to despair.
hen she returned—sodden, dripping, and chilled—to her friends, she had not been made new. Her many taints had been ground too deeply into her to be simply washed away. Her runed Staff remained darkest black. If she raised fire from the wood, her flames of Earthpower and Law would be black as well, indistinguishable from the world’s night. And there was an ache of apprehension in the ground that did not allow her to forget that her company and the Land and all of life were in peril. Nevertheless she had begun to feel the need for rest. And she knew that she was hungry.
“You look better,” Jeremiah pronounced. “I know how you like being clean.” Then he snorted a soft laugh. “I mean, I can guess. You sure gave me enough baths.”
Linden answered by wrapping him in a long, wet hug. She had no other way to express what she felt.
In her absence, the Giants had set out a meal for her: cheese, dried fruit, a bit of stale bread and some cured meat. Embracing Jeremiah, her nerves assured her that he had already eaten. Now she felt a tide of drowsiness rising in him. While she held him, he stifled a yawn.