For a moment while Covenant blazed, Rime Coldspray and the other Giants hesitated. They did not know him as Linden did, but they could see how his attempt to both exert and restrain himself wracked him. At the same time, however, they recognized what he was offering. Even if they had not heard about the gift which he had once given to the Dead of The Grieve, they would have yearned to seize this opportunity.
He had chosen to risk himself. How could they refuse him?
Abruptly the Ironhand reached into the whirl of fire, caught Covenant in her huge hands, and lifted him high. There she held him while his flames attacked her flesh as if they threatened to char her bones, reaching for her heart.
Her grasp threatened his concentration; but he did not withdraw his power.
Her pain was severe, as she needed it to be. She required such anguish to cauterize her bereavements. Without the cleansing of fire, her sorrow would have become bitterness. Eventually she would have lost her ability to hear joy.
While Coldspray gripped him, Covenant fought to keep his balance between too much and not enough. But when she passed him to Frostheart Grueburn, his self-control faltered. Wild magic mounted higher.
Linden watched him with her own agony. Cries that she could not utter closed her throat. Stave had come to stand at her back. He clasped her shoulders to steady her. Jeremiah had dropped the Staff of Law. He gaped at Covenant with consternation in his silted gaze. But she was aware of nothing except silver fire and Thomas Covenant.
How much could he endure? Three Swordmainnir remained after Grueburn. Stoutgirth and his crew numbered eleven. They, too, were eager for the healing hurt of a caamora. How could Covenant possibly—?
How could she stop him?
Cirrus Kindwind received him from Grueburn, supported him awkwardly with her good hand and the stump of her maimed forearm. She kept him too long, and not long enough. Sensitive to his ordeal, she did not allow herself to anneal her whole lament. When she released him to Onyx Stonemage, she looked incompletely assuaged.
Linden could not stop him. She could not help him. Not without possessing him. By imposing her choices on his. By using her health-sense to enter him as she had once entered Jeremiah; as she had done to Covenant himself several times long ago.
Good cannot be accomplished—
Hoarse gasps of strain burst between his teeth as Stonemage gave him to Bluntfist.
“Mom!” Jeremiah yelled. “Do something!”
Near Linden’s ear, Stave said sharply, “Attend, Chosen. Your ring answers.”
As soon as he said the words, she felt fire spitting from her wedding band.
She, too, was a rightful white gold wielder.
—find another truth—
In the small gap of inspiration between heartbeats, she recovered her voice.
“Put him down.” From her ring, she drew flames like streamers and wrapped them around her. She spoke fire. “Put him down!”
The Swordmainnir knew her too well. They could not resist her. Baffled and uncertain, Halewhole Bluntfist lowered Covenant to the ground.
At once, Linden rushed to him. Her arms and her love and her shining she flung around him. Then she gave herself to him—or she made him hers. With percipience, she united their powers until she found a way to balance his extremity with her physician’s caution.
Together they stood in conflagration while the Giants of Dire’s Vessel crowded around them. Together Covenant and Linden burned as the sailors came two at a time to grip his shoulders or hers; to be flensed by pain and find release.
A curtain of tears fell between Linden and her companions. For a moment, she was blind. She was almost deaf. But then the caamora was done. When she felt the last of the Giants withdraw, she relaxed her fire, taking Covenant’s with her. Her ring had answered his: now his answered hers. As if they had briefly become one, they let go of wild magic until they stood, unburned and unburning, in each other’s arms.
She heard the Giants singing; but they seemed impossibly far away, and she did not listen to them. Instead she heeded only the need in her husband’s embrace and the relieved beat of his heart.
There is also love in the world.
5.
“No Prospect of Return”
As if the croyel still had the power to dredge up his buried past—or as if Lord Foul had inherited that power—Jeremiah remembered his sisters. Two of them, both barely toddling on their stick-thin legs. There was never enough to eat. Their names were—? Their names were gone. He could not imagine their faces, except as pale smudges lit by the Despiser’s bonfire. They had existed in a different world, on the far side of a wall of absence. He was not sure now that they had ever meant anything to him, except as squalling mouths that needed food worse than he did. And yet he remembered that they had been his sisters.
Linden and Covenant did not know that about him. It was his last secret: he remembered his sisters.
A scornful voice told him that he should have done something to protect them.
He should have, even though he had gone first, he had put his right hand in the fire as soon as his mother finished screaming, and after that he was in too much pain to feel anything else. Even after he had learned how to conceal himself so that those terrible flames could not touch him again, the idea that he should have done something twisted his heart.
Why was he thinking about this now? It did not make sense. Protect his sisters? How? He was only five. His mother was always praying or crying. Just about the only thing he knew for sure was that he had to be good. He had to do what she told him. He had to obey Lord Foul’s eyes in the bonfire. That was what kids did. It was how they stayed alive.
Yet they were your sisters, were they not?
I don’t even remember their names.
Yet you knew their peril, did you not?
I was just a kid. I didn’t know anything.
Yet you heard your mother’s pain, did you not? You understood that fire burns, did you not?
I was only five, Jeremiah tried to protest. I had to obey.
Did you? At such a cost?
I couldn’t do anything else! Everything hurt too much!
Yet they needed you, did they not? Had you refused the flames, would they not have done likewise? Are you not therefore the cause of their sufferings?
I was just a kid.
Yet you are no longer a child.
Stop.
And are you not as blameworthy now as you were then? For deeds and self-pity which imperil those whom you profess to love, are you not blameworthy still? Did you not reveal their heading and purpose by defying possession? You knew that peril also, did you not?
Stop. Yes. Stop.
How then do you now refuse blame?
Jeremiah had no answer for that voice. The sanctuary which he had designed for the Elohim was not an answer. It was no excuse for standing on grass as if he thought that he could outface Lord Foul. He should have protected his sisters. He could not have protected them. He should have done it anyway. He deserved to watch the Worm while Linden and Covenant failed to save the world because of him. He had told Lord Foul where they were.
So now he concentrated obsessively on the Staff of Law: as obsessively as he had worked on any construct. As soon as he recovered from the surprise of the caamora, the jolt of alarm, he picked up the Staff and resumed his study. Covenant was not hurt. Linden was not. Jeremiah could see that. They did not need him; and he had other things to do.
When he held the strange black wood, he felt its possibilities. In a sense, it too was a construct. It was made of parts that he could identify. The living wood. The iron heels full of old magic. The language of the runes. The blackness, Linden’s blackness: the deep ebony which had taken over his own Earthpower when he had tried to change it. How those parts interacted was a mystery, but that did not trouble him. How the parts of his own constructs interacted was a mystery. He did not need to think about it. Instead he tried to understand how the parts fit together.
He wanted to see the design.
If he could do that, he would know how to use the Staff. He would have power. He would be able to do things. Things that might make a difference. Things that might excuse him.
Things that might silence the scorn in his mind, block visions of the Worm. Then he would have a chance—
Linden had given him that gift. His mother: the one who loved him, not the one who had put her own hand in Lord Foul’s bonfire. Studying the Staff, he believed that he would cheerfully kill anybody or anything that tried to hurt her.
But the design—the secret of Linden’s gift—eluded him. No matter how hard he tried, he could not see it. He was beginning to sense some of the Staff’s uses. A few of them might even be possible for him. And while he concentrated on those possibilities, Lord Foul’s visions lost some of their harrowing vividness, their inevitability, their weight of ridicule. Still the design itself, the key that would unlock the gift, was beyond him. He could not alter the blackness of the flames.
In his heart, he was still only five.
Eventually his efforts to find his way felt less like his familiar obsession with building. They became a kind of fever, a ragged desperation that went nowhere. When Cirrus Kindwind offered him food, he ate. He accepted water. Vaguely he noticed the Swordmainnir and the sailors talking together, adding details and explanations to their stories, discussing the hazards ahead. He heard them decide to give their dead to the river, hoping that the lurker would convey the bodies to the cleaner waters of the sea. He saw Linden and Covenant wander away together—not far, but far enough so they could at least pretend that they were alone. Without thinking about it, he knew that Stave and Branl watched over the whole company. But his real attention remained fixed on the Staff.
It should have been everything he wanted. Calling upon the resources of Earthpower and Law should have been as natural as reaching out his hand.
It was not. His ability to raise and shape flames like midnight blossoms mocked him with all that it was not. His fire did not extend his percipience or ease his fatigue. It was too insubstantial for healing. It had no force. And it was always black.
The laughter in his head derided him. Involuntary glimpses of the Worm made fun of him.
Are you not therefore the cause of their sufferings? How then do you now refuse blame?
The Staff of Law required a Linden Avery—or a Thomas Covenant—and Jeremiah was just a kid.
Finally he dropped it as if he were merely worn out. With both hands, he tried to scrub the bitterness off his face. Hiding behind a scowl, he gnawed on a dry sausage for a while, drank more water. Then he looked for a patch of level ground where he could stretch out.
Almost immediately, Linden called, “Jeremiah, honey. Are you all right?”
He wanted to retort, Leave me alone! I don’t need you worrying about me. But of course if he said that everybody would know how he felt.
Instead he muttered, “Just tired, Mom. I need sleep.”
“Rest as much as you can.” Covenant sounded distant. He was thinking about something else. Probably about Linden. “We’re running out of time. I want to start before midnight.”
Fine, Jeremiah thought. You start. I’m going to lie down until somebody takes pity on me.
But he did not mean that. He meant, I’m lost. I need help. But you can’t help me. You’ve already done everything. The rest is up to me, and I’m not enough.
e expected to lie awake, chewing his misery while voices laughed and the Worm ravaged. But he was more tired than he realized. He surprised himself by falling out of the world.
In dreams, he watched the stars spin. At first, they wheeled slowly, as cautious and deliberate as if they were performing an unfamiliar dance. Later they moved faster. And as they swirled, they drew closer to each other, contracting their glitter, leaving the rest of the heavens drowned in blackness, as doomed as the Lost Deep. After a while, they began to collide and join. Yet the merging of one distinct gleam with others, and then still others, did not make their shining brighter. Instead their private lives seemed to extinguish each other. Soon hundreds or thousands of them had become one, and that one was scarcely visible: a dying ember in the fathomless ruin of the night.
But at the same time, that single dulled spark became heavier. Not bigger, no. Just more massive. And it leaned down on Jeremiah, pressed its intolerable weight against his heart. He did not breathe. There was no room in his chest for air. His heart no longer beat. It could not lift blood through his veins under so much pressure. He was becoming the sky, black and blank, infinitely desolate.
He awoke with an enfilade trapped between his ribs. Memories of bullets whined past him and into him, furious as hornets. Wildly he floundered to his feet, frantic for relief.
He nearly yelped when Stave grasped his arm.
“Still your alarm, Chosen-son,” said the Haruchai, almost whispering. “There is no imminent peril. Dreams are not omens. They bespeak only your fears.” Then he added, “The Chosen slumbers yet, as do the Giants. Only the Ironhand and the Anchormaster stand watch with Branl. We do well to permit their rest.”
Jeremiah resisted an impulse to cling to the former Master. There was no light: Branl must have covered the krill. Stave’s grip felt like the only certainty in a reality which had lost its moorings. The boy half expected to see the stars continue their shrinking spiral, their fatal deflagration. But of course they remained where they were, clinging to their fate.
The air was thick with the complex reeks of the Defiles Course and Sarangrave Flat, of ironwood ash and drowned skurj and the charred corpses of Sandgorgons. Around Jeremiah, darkness clotted like blood. It filled every span of ground and hidden niche. When he considered the movement of time, he found that midnight was near.
As quietly as Stave, he asked, “Where’s Covenant?”
The Haruchai pointed down the valley. “There. He communes once again with the Feroce.”
Jeremiah looked toward the marshy verge of the Sarangrave. At this distance, he could not descry Covenant. There was too much sensory clutter from the restless currents and predators. The lurker still complained over its pains, whimpering wetly. But near the wetland, Jeremiah spotted glints of emerald arrayed as if they had gathered to attend a potentate. Green flames fell and rose like sighs.
Behind them, the Flat stretched eastward, growing darker with every league until its doom became the sky’s.
Closer to him lay the benighted shapes of Giants. A few of them slept against the boles of ironwoods near the crest of the slope. They snored and started fretfully, troubled by their dreams. Lower down, but still above the chancres and spilth of battle, the other sailors and Swordmainnir had found patches of ground where they could feign comfort.
Overhead carrion-eaters flapped across the background of the stars. Slaps and splashes from the Flat sounded like feeding. The contorted carcasses of monsters littered the valley-floor like rubble. Bleached in the Great Desert for millennia, the dead Sandgorgons smelled only of sulfur and Fire-Lions. But the gangrene fetor of the skurj clung wherever their blood had been spilled. If many of them had not been sucked into the marsh when the lurker’s flood receded, the stench would have been worse.
Standing with Stave in the last night of the Earth, Jeremiah pined for sunshine. He craved one more warm yellow wash of light. Trying to summon clean fire, he filled his palms with flame. But the blackness of his heritage persisted. Covered by darkness, his magicks were visible to ordinary sight only as deeper blots, stark as stigmata.
Stave still held his arm. “Chosen-son.” The former Master pitched his voice for Jeremiah alone. “It may be that the task which the Chosen has offered is too extreme. She has asked of you an achievement which has surpassed her. If you will heed my counsel, therefore—”
The Haruchai paused, apparently awaiting a response.
“Please.” Jeremiah was tempted to snort, Don’t bother. You can’t help me. Contemptuous laughter echoed in his ears as if it ha
d become a part of him, a cancer too insidious and personal to be cut out. More and more, the coming end seemed like an act of kindness. But he did not sneer at Stave. Any suggestion that did not make him feel smaller—“I’ve already tried everything I can think of.”
“It is this,” Stave replied. “Set aside those tasks which daunt you. As your knowledge of the Staff grows, your strength will also. For the present, strive only to meet present needs. The lacks and requirements of this company are many. Choose among them one which lies within your compass.”
“Like what?” Jeremiah asked. Stave’s manner seemed to banish scorn.
“Chosen-son,” Stave returned, “your senses are acute. And you will comprehend that our intended ascent into Gravin Threndor must present grave obstacles. Of these, the first is plain. The air is noisome. It discomfits us where we stand. It will become unendurable within the mountain.
“The Timewarden conceived that the Chosen would cleanse the air. However, the Staff of Law has now been entrusted to you.” Stave stooped, retrieved the shaft, held it up. “Therefore the task falls to you—the task and the opportunity. An increase of strength comes from the use of strength.”
As Stave spoke, bursts of surprise like little explosions ran through Jeremiah’s veins. He clutched at the Staff. “The air,” he breathed. To his nerves, the atmosphere was as distinct as Earthpower. Its insidious taints were so clear that they were almost tangible. He had wasted so much time and effort. “Why didn’t I think of that?”
Stave shrugged. Finally he released Jeremiah’s arm. But Jeremiah hardly noticed. His mind raced. How had he let himself believe that he had to fail? Did the croyel still have that much power over him? Did Lord Foul? Had he simply assumed that the small flames which he could raise from the Staff were trivial? Ineffective because he did not know how to make them clean? Had he tested them?
He had not. Instead he had let the Despiser and the Worm and even Linden’s encouragement distract him. A stupid mistake, as stupid as breaking his own neck by not watching where he put his feet. And stupidity was worse than failure. It was worse than terror: it made him useless.