Covenant watched them, but he did not follow. Instead he rasped to the Giants and the Haruchai, “Just remember. White gold is going to be mostly useless, at least for a while. I don’t have much control. I’m more likely to cause a cave-in than accomplish anything useful. Plus I can’t keep my balance worth a damn. And Linden hasn’t had time to learn what she can do. We’ll need all the help you can give us.”
“This we have foreseen, Timewarden,” the Ironhand answered calmly. “If Giants are fools, they are also rock-wise, certain of foot on any stone. With your consent, we will bear you, and also Linden Giantfriend and Jeremiah Chosen-son. In our arms, you will be warded from many perils.”
Now Covenant looked back at his companions. “Linden?”
“I think it’s a good idea.” She made a palpable effort to sound confident; but Jeremiah heard the congested tension in her voice. “Grueburn has carried me more times than I can count. I’m not worried about her. And I don’t like the way that looks.” She gestured at the river mouth. “If nothing else, it’s going to be slick.” Her mouth twisted. “I would rather be carried. If Grueburn doesn’t mind.”
Grueburn’s response was a snorted chortle.
Covenant nodded. “Jeremiah?”
Jeremiah felt a touch of relief. “Mom’s right. I’m not as strong as I want to be. I mean with the Staff. If I don’t have to do my own climbing, I can concentrate better.”
For himself, Covenant did not hesitate. To Coldspray, he said brusquely, “Thanks. I should have thought of that myself.”
Then he made a visible effort to relax as Bluff Stoutgirth lifted him from his feet.
In a moment, Jeremiah was sitting on Kindwind’s forearm with his back against her breastplate. His lightless flames scurried up and down the length of the Staff. They were weaker than they needed to be, but they gathered enough purity to ease the company’s breathing.
From her position in Grueburn’s clasp, Linden glanced at Jeremiah with an expression which he could not interpret. A warning? A prayer? Was she saying goodbye?
She had found her own sense of purpose, but he had no idea what it might be.
One after another, Rime Coldspray and all of the Giants followed the receding green of the Feroce. Holding the krill above his head to extend its illumination, Branl walked close behind the Ironhand near Stoutgirth and Covenant. Stave took a position between Grueburn and Kindwind.
Striding as if they were about to burst into song, the Swordmainnir and the sailors left the world they knew. Beside the Defiles Course, they entered Gravin Threndor and darkness.
6.
The Aid of the Feroce
As Frostheart Grueburn carried her into the gutrock gullet of the Defiles Course, Linden lost her last glimpse of the heavens. It was cut off as if the whole of the world beyond the immediate channel, the immediate darkness, had vanished. As if the fate of every living thing, of life itself, had been reduced to this: impenetrable midnight; stone as slick as oil or black ice; Mount Thunder’s imponderable tons, ominous and oppressive. As if she herself had become nothing more than a burden.
The decimation of the stars had been a constant reminder of the carnage which the Worm had already wrought. But what had been lost only made what remained more precious.
Yet she had set aside her responsibility for the world. She had chosen her task. It was necessary to her, the only choice that offered any hope of forgiveness. But it would not stop the Worm. It would not hinder Lord Foul, or save her friends, or spare her son.
At first, the watercourse became narrower, ascending in low stages like terraces or past obstructions like weirs. Beyond the Ironhand—beyond Stoutgirth, Covenant, and Branl—the Feroce clambered, elusive as eidolons, over a tumble of boulders barely wide enough to accommodate the Giants in single file. Long ages of poisons and leaking malice had pitted the stone, cut it into cruel shapes, left it brittle with corrosion. But the waters had also caked every surface with slime like scum. And wherever the tumult of the currents had left gaps, necrotic mosses clung, viscid as wax, treacherous as grease. Touching them would be like trailing fingers through pus.
While the passage narrowed, however, its ceiling stretched higher. Here the Defiles Course ran down a fissure in Mount Thunder’s substance. A few arm spans up the walls, the green of the Feroce gleamed sickly on moisture and moss: the residue of the river’s former flow. Above that demarcation, the krill’s argent faded into the dark.
The crevice was old: far older than Linden’s knowledge of the Land. It had endured for eons, perhaps ever since the convulsion which had created Landsdrop. It might continue to do so. Nevertheless the gutrock overhead seemed fragile. The clutter of boulders where the Feroce led the companions demonstrated that stones did fall.
But the possibility that some tremor might release sheets of rock did not trouble her. She had more urgent concerns. More than the mountain or the darkness—more than slick surfaces and vile moss—she feared the air. It was not merely fetid and hurtful: it was thick with leached evils. Every breath brought dire scents from offal and corpses; from strange lakes of lava and ruin arising from the deep places of the Earth; from the detritus of horrid theurgies and delving. From time and rot and distillation.
And from She Who Must Not Be Named. At intervals like the tightening of a rack, Linden tasted hints of the bane’s distinctive anguish, terrible and bitter. She could only bear the miasma which she drew into her lungs because Jeremiah was ameliorating it with Earthpower.
Earlier he had sweetened some of the air in the valley. He could not do as much here. The atmosphere was more concentrated. And the fact that his companions were forced to advance one at a time exacerbated his difficulties. He had to push the Staff’s benefits too far. As a result, Rime Coldspray and the other Giants in the lead had begun to cough as if they were about to bring up blood. Between their stertorous gasps, Linden heard Covenant wheezing. Some of the Giants in the rear retched. The sounds of their distress rebounded from the walls; multiplied upward until they filled the crevice.
The air would continue to deteriorate as the company climbed. Leagues of unknown passages, dangerous footing, and pollution lay between the company and the more tolerable atmosphere of the Wightwarrens. And Jeremiah was already faltering.
He was not ready for this; not ready at all to have twenty-one lives depending on him for every breath.
Instinctively she yearned to reach out for the Staff’s resources; to wield them herself. Jeremiah was not far behind her: only Stave followed Frostheart Grueburn ahead of Cirrus Kindwind. Linden could siphon Earthpower and Law from the wood while he held it. Her chest hurt. She wanted good air.
Resisting her impulse to assume the work that she had given to her son was as painful as breathing.
But she had surrendered the Staff because Jeremiah needed it more than she did. Eventually he might need it absolutely. He had to become stronger. If she took back her trust prematurely—if she made his challenge easier from the start—she would undermine his efforts to believe in himself.
Yet the company was struggling. Sweat ran from Grueburn’s face, although the stone and the water were cold as a crypt. Her distress ached through her lore-hardened armor. By degrees, frantic coughing spread among the Giants. In front of Grueburn, Baf Scatterwit was taken by a spasm so fierce that she slipped. She caught herself with both hands, avoided a plunge into the river, but not before her kneecap struck rock with an audible crack. Choking on Giantish obscenities, she hauled herself upright. Then, however, she was forced to halt, hunching over to massage her knee.
From Coldspray or Covenant, ragged murmurs passed Linden’s name back to her; but she did not need to hear it. She understood. Jeremiah had to do better.
“Jeremiah, honey.” She was panting herself. “You’re trying too hard.” He did not know himself well enough yet. “It’s easier than you think. It’s the Staff of Law. It was made for this. You don’t have to force it. You just have to encourage it. Guide it. Let it express
how you feel.”
“I can’t.” Jeremiah’s protest was thick with dread. “That doesn’t make sense.”
Linden fought for patience. “Try it this way. Close your eyes. Forget where you are. Forget what’s happening. Forget the Staff, if you can. Concentrate on Earthpower and air, clean air, air that keeps you alive. It’s like building one of your castles. You think about what you’re making. You don’t think about how you make it. The Staff is just a means.
“You can do this if you trust yourself.”
She could almost hear his resolve breaking. “That doesn’t—” he began to insist. But then he stopped. “All right,” he said like a groan. “I’ll try building. That worked before. Just don’t blame me if—”
He fell silent.
For a moment, the effects of his theurgy disappeared entirely. Linden drew air like shards of glass into her lungs. All of her muscles seemed to seize at once. Grueburn’s gasps sounded like tearing flesh. Along the line, Giants stumbled to a halt, sank to their hands and knees. The krill lit them like spectres, as if they had crossed over into the realm of the Dead.
The Feroce had caused some of Sarangrave Flat’s mud to remember that it was once hurtloam. Covenant had said so. Surely they could do something similar to the air? If he asked them?
Then Linden felt a stronger current of Earthpower emanate from Jeremiah and the Staff. It was tentative at first. It surged and receded. She found one healing breath, lost it again. Nevertheless her heart lifted. His access to the Staff’s potential resembled the chamber hidden in her own mind, the room which could open on wild magic. Learning that the chamber existed had enabled her to locate it again. And each time, the search was more familiar. The door opened more easily. The same could be true for Jeremiah, if he refused to panic.
He was young and gifted. In some respects, his sense of himself was more flexible than hers, less conflicted by an awareness of his limitations. For a heartbeat or two, his power shrank; but it also became steadier. Then better air began to gust outward. Some of it escaped into the empty heights of the fissure. Most of it swept over the company.
Linden snatched freshness into her lungs, fought for it. It was still tainted, but it became cleaner with every breath. Groans of relief spread among the Giants as Jeremiah expanded his efforts. Grueburn seemed to bite off great chunks of air, swallow them gratefully. A fierce grin bared her teeth. Still coughing, Baf Scatterwit started to laugh. One at a time, sailors and Swordmainnir joined her.
“Well done, Chosen-son!” called the Ironhand. “Well done in all sooth! It may be that our cause is doomed. It may be that we will soon perish. Yet miracles abound, and Jeremiah Chosen-son stands high among them.”
Gradually Linden’s companions stood straighter. They began to move again.
The Feroce had not paused. They may not have noticed the company’s difficulties. Or they may not have cared. They had their own fears. Perhaps a stone’s throw ahead of the Ironhand and Covenant, the troubled green passed from sight beyond a corner. Streaks of argent lit the rubble piled along the river as if the stones had tumbled there from Gravin Threndor’s dreams.
As her respiration eased, Linden thought that she heard thunder.
No, not thunder. By degrees, the sound clarified itself. It was too wet, too complex, too constant to be atmospheric. It cast spray into the ambit of the krill’s illumination. The company was approaching a waterfall.
Where the spray brushed her cheeks, it stung.
She could not gauge the height of the plunge by the timbre of its muffled roar; but she heard neither warnings nor chagrin from the Giants. The Ironhand did not hesitate as she bore Covenant out of sight, leaving Branl behind to light the way.
In moments, a few sailors and Onyx Stonemage scrambled to Branl’s position, followed by Squallish Blustergale and more of the Anchormaster’s crew. As Grueburn neared the turn, Linden became more confident that the water did not plummet from a great height. Still her anxiety did not relent until Grueburn carried her past the corner. Then she was able to see that the waterfall was no taller than one Giant standing on the shoulders of another.
She could not have climbed it. Perhaps Grueburn could not. But here the river’s diminishment was obvious. A comparatively narrow gush of water pounded into the deep center of the channel. Beside the river on both sides, eons of a far heavier flow had left more gradual slopes. Broken rocks cloaked in mosses like shredded skin mounted upward in possible increments.
A short way up the rise, Coldspray and Covenant waited for Branl and light. Above them, the Feroce scrambled for the rim as if they were in no danger of slipping. Their emerald glow wavered and gibbered on the walls as they scuttled out of sight. Then their fires faded as if the crevice had opened to accommodate a cavern.
Linden looked back at Jeremiah. The radiance of Loric’s gem revealed black tendrils of power like vines curling away from the Staff, making the air precious. As the boy worked, however, a scowl of strain clenched his features, and the wood trembled in his grasp. He was still trying too hard.
“Are you all right, honey?” Linden asked over the shout of the water. “Do you need rest? We should be able to survive for a few minutes.”
“Don’t bother me.” He sounded distant, wrapped in concentration. She barely heard him. “I’m fine.”
“The Feroce act like they’re in a hurry,” Covenant offered, “but I can ask them to wait”—he glanced at the waterfall—“once we catch up with them.”
When Jeremiah nodded, Rime Coldspray continued upward. Behind her, Bluff Stoutgirth gestured his crew forward. Moving as surely as the Giants, Branl passed Grueburn and Linden to rejoin the head of the line.
Accompanied by argent, the Ironhand took Covenant past the lip of the fall, out of the harsh spray. At the rim, Branl waited again. Still in single file, Giants made the ascent. Ahead of Grueburn and Linden, Scatterwit limped over the treachery of the stones. She was obviously in pain, yet she chuckled in short bursts as if her damaged kneecap amused her.
Then Grueburn crested the waterfall; and Linden stared in surprise. Ahead of her, krill-light played across the black surface of a lake.
It may have been vast. The height of the cavern seemed to imply that it was; and the darkness beyond the krill’s reach concealed the boundaries of the water. Liquid obsidian curved away to Linden’s left, following the cavern wall out of sight. But ahead and to the right, the lake appeared to have no end—or her senses were confused by intimations of power.
It was eerily motionless, as still as stone. Water dripped from mosses high on the walls, where until recently the cavern had been filled. Thin trickles fell here and there across the emptiness, perhaps dribbling from stalactites invisible in the dark. But there were no ripples: none at all. And no sounds. Drops struck the lake and were absorbed seamlessly. Water lay flat as glass against the rocks of the verge.
The Ironhand had halted with Covenant near the curve of the lakefront. One by one, the rest of the company reached them and stopped, peering into the blind depths or the veiled distance. Branl waved Loric’s dagger for a moment, watched silver sweep across the immaculate ebony. Then he stepped back.
A leaden silence ruled the cavern. From this vantage, even the waterfall appeared to make no sound. The Giants seemed unwilling or unable to speak. To Linden’s eyes, the air over the lake looked as condensed and heavy as sweat.
Again her health-sense caught hints of She Who Must Not Be Named. Here they were stronger. The spilth of theurgies as old as the mountain—as old as the Land—stained the lake wherever she looked. Implied carrion-eaters tasted her skin.
Distracted by noisome things, she was slow to notice that the Feroce were gone.
Gone?
“Thomas?” The silence seemed to seal her throat. She had to swallow several times before she could say more than his name. “The Feroce? Where did they go?”
Rime Coldspray and her comrades scanned the cavern, the lake. Covenant gazed past or through Linden l
ike a man who had lost his sight. “Into the water.” His voice sounded preternaturally distinct: precise and defiant. It should have raised echoes. Instead it fell stillborn. “I don’t know why. They didn’t say anything.”
“I am loath to believe,” remarked Branl, “that they have forsaken us.”
“As am I,” Stave agreed. “They heed their High God.”
The Ironhand coughed, cleared her throat. “Without them—”
As if she had summoned them, delicate green flames appeared on the surface near the spot where the cavern’s leftward sweep interrupted Linden’s view. Untroubled by the waters, the creatures arose under their fires, lifted emerald from the lake. Their passing left no mark on the water’s black sheen as they climbed the rocks.
“Why do you tarry?” Their damp voice scaled into the heights. “You must hasten. There is peril, much peril. Are you deaf to majesty? Blind to wonder? You must hasten.”
Tensions ran among the Giants. They prepared to move. But Rime Coldspray stood where she was. From her clasp, Covenant called to the Feroce, “What’s going on? You picked a hell of a time for a swim. Did you wake something up?”
Studying the lake, Linden saw nothing, heard nothing. She felt only the noxious tickling of centipedes, tentative and eager.
“Will you not hasten?” the creatures urged. “We are merely the Feroce. There is no peril for us. Your lives are forfeit.”
Covenant appeared to freeze for an instant, startled into incomprehension. Then he snapped to the Ironhand, “Go!”
At once, Coldspray surged ahead over the hazardous stones. Behind her, Giants followed as swiftly as they could. But Baf Scatterwit’s cracked knee slowed her. Grueburn waved her free arm, urged Halewhole Bluntfist and the trailing sailors to pass her. Then she drew her longsword; kept pace with Scatterwit. Cirrus Kindwind did the same, bracing Jeremiah with her maimed forearm. Holding Cabledarm’s longsword, Stave positioned himself between them and the water.