The Last Dark

  As if he were answering his mother, Jeremiah raised the Staff of Law. He held it over his head like a quarterstaff, braced to hammer down fire. The look in his eyes was agony.

  Abruptly Branl gripped Covenant’s arm, turned him toward the tunnel where Handir had proposed to leave the cave. At the same time, the Haruchai between the company and that exit changed their tactics.

  Imponderably graceful amid the viciousness and turmoil, those Masters drew back, leaving an open line for the Cavewights, an aisle straight toward the clenched center of the defense.

  Covenant thought that he heard Linden yell, “Now, Jeremiah!”

  Roaring triumph, the creatures rushed forward—

  Now or never.

  —and Jeremiah swung the Staff.

  Black lightning raged from the shaft. Earthpower struck at the Cavewights, fire hot as an inferno. It set them ablaze as if their bones were kindling. Their roars became shrieks. Lit like torches, they blundered away, trying to escape.

  More creatures charged. More creatures caught fire. Jeremiah screamed as if his efforts were claws tearing at his heart. His eyes wept anguish. Nevertheless he poured out power in a convulsion of killing.

  For a moment—if only for a moment—he cleared a path.

  “Now!” Linden cried again. “Run!”

  This time, she was shouting at the Giants.

  The company obeyed. Shielded by Masters and Swordmainnir, and then by the Giants of Dire’s Vessel, Branl hauled Covenant forward. With Bhapa and Pahni, Stave herded Linden and Jeremiah. While the surviving Haruchai gathered to ward the rear, the Land’s defenders dashed along Jeremiah’s path.

  A moment later, the boy’s power failed. He crumpled as if his tendons had been cut. He dropped the Staff: he may have fainted. But Far Horizoneyes snatched him off the floor, cradled him without missing a step. Furledsail grabbed the Staff and kept running.

  Cavewights crowded the passage ahead. They had only paused, shocked or startled by screaming. But while they were in the tunnel, their movements were constricted. With Canrik and Samil—with Vortin, Ulman, and Dast—Handir tore into the creatures, broke them like boughs in a rending wind. And those Cavewights that withstood the force of the Haruchai fell to the blades of the Swordmainnir.

  Trampling bodies, the company gained their exit.

  But now the Masters also were hampered. Their speed and agility became less effective. Dodging a spear, Ulman stepped into the stroke of a falchion. The blade opened his side, cut deep enough to reach his spine. He fell, fountaining crimson. The other warriors in the lead survived only because they were supported by the swift skill of the Swordmainnir, the lick and thrust of longswords.

  The Haruchai holding the rear did so without the aid of battle-trained Giants. The Anchormaster and Frothbreeze gave what aid they could: still the losses among the Masters were grievous. While they struggled against swords and axes, massive clubs, they also had to contend with spears hurled over their heads to strike at Stoutgirth’s crew. Leaping to intercept some of those shafts left the Masters defenseless. They were cut down or spitted.

  Behind the warriors, Keenreef and Setrock swung their sacks of supplies, blocked spears with bundled waterskins and food.

  As the Masters died, the Cavewights drove closer. How many Haruchai remained in the rear? Ten? Less?

  Covenant heard Scatterwit laughing amid the clamor: a horrific sound, shrill and urgent, feverish as hysteria. It jerked him around to watch as Scatterwit thrust her way among the Masters. Stoutgirth’s shout, and Blustergale’s, carried after her, but she ignored them.

  Lurching on the stump of her ankle, she rushed the Cavewights with her arms spread wide as if she wanted to embrace every creature within reach.

  In an instant, the point of a spear jutted from her back. A truncheon crashed onto her left shoulder. An axe bit between her ribs on the right. Her laughing was cut off; but she did not falter. Four, no, five Cavewights she hugged to her chest. Using them as a shield, she drove her great strength and weight against the pursuing creatures.

  For a moment, she was impossibly successful. Somehow she cleared a space between her comrades and their foes. Five paces. Seven. Ten. When the blade of an axe came down on her head, spilling brains and ruined bone, she sagged. Still her legs thrust her forward. Supporting herself on the creatures in her arms, she kept fighting.

  Then she was done. Strength and life drained out of her: her legs failed: she dropped to her knees. Propped upright by corpses, she knelt there until her foes hacked her to pieces.

  Screaming, the Anchormaster tried to follow her. Frothbreeze and Blustergale caught his arms, held him back.

  Rage filled Covenant’s throat. He could hardly breathe. “The krill,” he gasped. “I need the krill!”

  Scatterwit had opened a gap. If he could reach the rear before the Cavewights resumed their advance—

  Stave and Branl must have understood him. Without hesitation, Stave slapped the bright krill into Covenant’s hands. At the same time, Branl moved past Covenant. With one arm, the Humbled parted the sailors so that Covenant could pass.

  While Linden cried his name, Covenant brought up a rush of wild magic.

  But he did not unleash its raw force. Instead he shaped silver fire along the blade of the krill. As he had done against the Sandgorgons, he fashioned an argent sword fierce as the white core of a furnace.

  With Branl, he went to meet the Cavewights.

  Behind the two men, the rest of the company fled, following Handir’s embattled cadre and the striking Swordmainnir. Supported only by the last of the rearguard, Covenant and Branl carried bloodshed among their attackers.

  Covenant made no attempt to defend himself. He had no skill, and was burning too hotly to care. He left his own protection to Branl’s flamberge, to the fleet prowess of the few Masters. Wielding his chosen theurgy, Covenant became incarnate killing.

  With every slash and thrust, every frantic swing, he appalled himself. He had to goad himself with curses like groans in order to keep moving. Otherwise he would have plunged to his knees, crippled by abhorrence. The Cavewights were only simple in their thinking: they were not unintelligent. And they had a long history. On their own terms, they had a civilization. They had never deserved the use which Lord Foul had made of them. They did not deserve what Covenant did to them now.

  He promised himself that the Despiser would pay for this; but no promise sufficed to condone such slaughter.

  Branl and the Masters exacted their own toll. They were as precise as surgeons, as fluid as wind. But where they cut and blocked, punched and fended, Covenant ravaged.

  The Cavewights seemed endless. Those still alive after the struggle in the cave were joined by more issuing from the other passages, entire hordes of creatures mad with blood-lust and ancient resentments. Yet even they could not withstand a blade forged of wild magic that shone like condensed stars. Nor could they match the skill of the Haruchai. Their screams and shrieks raced back down the tunnel, pierced the hearts of the Cavewights behind them. Their rage became fear. It became terror and panic. Fighting the press of their fellows, they tried to flee.

  At first, they failed. The creatures advancing from the cave were not yet afraid. They resisted the impulse to retreat. But loud desperation filled the passage. It flooded through the Cavewights, carried away their fury. They turned to run, leaving their piled dead to guard their backs.

  There Covenant flinched to a halt. His eldritch longsword frayed and faded: the krill dangled in his numb clasp. Hellfire, he tried to say. Hell and damnation. But he could not catch his breath. There was no air anywhere. There was only blood.

  Blood and bodies, some still writhing in their last throes.

  If he had been able to speak, he would have asked Branl and the Masters to forgive him. Of the Haruchai guarding the rear, only seven remained; and most of them bore wounds. How many of them had already given their lives? Covenant could not bear to guess.

  Surely he had the
right to defend himself? To fight for the people he loved, and for their world? Surely the Despiser was responsible for all of this blood?

  Of course, Covenant told himself. But the fact of his antagonist’s malevolence did not relieve him of culpability. He had done so much of the actual killing—

  There was a price for such deeds. He intended to pay it—as soon as he could breathe again. As soon as he found his way to Kiril Threndor.

  Without a word, Branl took his arm, urged him into motion. Beyond the krill’s reach, the rest of the company had vanished around a bend in the tunnel. But he could still hear fighting. Muffled by distance, blows and yells echoed out of the darkness. Clearly Handir’s comrades and the Swordmainnir were able to beat back the Cavewights blocking their path. But the creatures had not given up. They contested every step.

  They were not Haruchai. They had no way of knowing what Covenant had done—and could do again.

  Pulled into a trot, Covenant ran after his wife and his friends, stumbling on his numb feet like a man who had never drawn a clean breath.

  Past the bend, he nearly fell when the krill’s light revealed the body of a Swordmain among the strewn corpses of Cavewights.

  Cirrus Kindwind sprawled against the wall, propped at an awkward angle by a spear driven through one eye and out of the back of her skull. Her longsword lay a few paces away, as if she had tried to throw it with her last strength. Her features had closed around the spear: they held it in place like an act of defiance.

  She had been fighting in darkness. Covenant carried the only light.

  Blinded by intolerable tears, he ran again, trusting Branl to guide him.

  Abruptly the sounds of fighting ahead ceased.

  Quiet as the dark, Branl said, “Other Masters have come to assail the Cavewights. The way has been cleared.” After a moment’s pause, he added, “It will not remain so.”

  Covenant tried to clear his vision, but he saw no sign of his companions. He found only bodies and spilled fluids rank as offal.

  The tunnel turned again. It rose steeply. At the top of the incline, he had to clamber over terrible mounds of the dead. He feared to look at them; feared to see some of Handir’s people, another Swordmain, the Cords. Linden or Jeremiah. His friends had been fighting an uphill battle when they were rescued.

  Beyond heaps of Cavewights, he caught up with the company.

  At first, he could not see past Bluff Stoutgirth and his crew. They had spread out in a wider section of the passage: their tall forms blocked his view. But then the sailors stepped aside, and the krill’s silver fell on other survivors.

  In the vanguard, the Voice of the Masters stood with Canrik and Dast, Vortin and Samil. They had been joined by nine or ten of their kinsmen. A quick glance showed Covenant a multitude of wounds and stains. Nevertheless all of the Haruchai bore themselves as if their hurts were superficial; as if they had not lost scores of their people, and had never known sorrow. Closer to Covenant, still heaving to control their breathing, Frostheart Grueburn, Onyx Stonemage, and Halewhole Bluntfist waited with the Ironhand. Gore streaked their cataphracts: their longswords trembled in hands made weak by weariness. But their injuries looked shallow. Only the darkness in their eyes betrayed the loss of Kindwind.

  Stoutgirth’s dismay was more overt. His jaws worked as he tried to summon some sound from his throat, some shout or cry which might relieve his pain. Yet he remained mute: a man for whom all laughter had gone out of the world. At his side, Squallish Blustergale wept openly. The other sailors hung their heads in shock and fatigue.

  Bhapa and Pahni stood apart from the rest of the company as if they had no place in it. They had not fought. Nor had they known any of the fallen except Cirrus Kindwind. And they were Ramen, lost without open skies to unfetter their spirits.

  Among the Giants, Covenant found Linden and Jeremiah with Stave.

  The boy was conscious now; on his feet. He had reclaimed the Staff of Law. Holding it upright, he scowled at his hands as they moved over the shaft, tracing the runes as if he were searching the written wood for the answers to questions which he did not know how to ask. He did not glance up when Covenant arrived. His concentration excluded everyone.

  But Linden’s gaze leapt at once to her husband. Her mouth shaped his name.

  The sight of her made Covenant feel like weeping again. He recognized the complex consternation in her eyes: fear for her son and her friends, and more particularly for him, combined with a flagrant dread which had not yet become resolve. And something else, a kind of horror—

  Until he saw her expression, he did not realize that he was drenched in blood.

  He went to her at once. But he did not touch her; foul her. He did not dare. His hands made truncated gestures, then fell back to his sides. The krill in his grasp cast cavorting shadows that seemed to mock the faces around him.

  Linden’s mouth repeated his name. Thomas. And again, Thomas.

  Handir moved among the Giants toward him. “Ur-Lord,” said the Voice of the Masters, “we must not delay. Two paths to Kiril Threndor are now known.” He must have acquired them from the minds of the newcomers. “One is the more direct. It is also the more perilous. If we must, we will attempt it. We await only your word.”

  Jeremiah stamped the Staff on the stone. His voice cracked. “We don’t have time. Don’t you understand? The whole mountain is coming down.” He did not look up from his hands. “The Worm doesn’t even feel it.”

  Covenant groaned. Melenkurion Skyweir was falling like Kevin’s Watch. Hellfire—

  Linden studied her son. Her face twisted. Then an obstacle within her seemed to break; or perhaps she pushed it aside. She went to Covenant, threw her arms around his neck, pressed all of herself against his soaked T-shirt and jeans as if she ached to embrace his sins, his accused soul.

  “Thomas,” she breathed in his ear. “Oh, Thomas.”

  “Ur-Lord,” Handir repeated more loudly.

  Covenant dropped the krill so that he could wrap his remaining strength around his wife. What else could he do? He had no words for his distress; no language that might soothe his clawed heart. He was going to lose her. The Worm was making his choices for him.

  “Are you sure about this?” Linden asked in an aching whisper. “I mean about Kiril Threndor?” She may have meant, About everything? “Are you sure that Lord Foul is there?”

  Are you sure that you want to face him?

  “Of course he is.” Covenant clung to her acceptance. “Or he will be when I get there. Where else would he be? Sure, he wants us all dead.” All except Jeremiah. The Despiser had probably laid a geas on the Cavewights so that Jeremiah would be spared. “But if that doesn’t work, he wants me to find him. He wants the pleasure of finishing me.”

  So softly that Covenant barely heard her, Linden murmured, “Then help me. I can’t do this.”

  He wanted to tell her, You can. You’re the only one who can. But he did not. She had heard his professions of faith often enough.

  “Ur-Lord!” insisted Handir; but Covenant was not listening. He was already covered in blood. It was too late to count the cost. Maybe someday he would be forgiven.

  He released Linden. When she loosened her arms, he stepped away from her to confront Jeremiah. Deliberately he placed himself in front of the boy, braced his empty fists on his hips.

  “Can you hear me?” he demanded. “I need you. You have to hear me. I need your help.”

  Linden might rally if he could show her that her son was not as lost as he looked.

  Jeremiah did not glance up from the Staff. Shadows seemed to redefine his face. In a caustic tone, as if he were speaking for the croyel, he snarled, “Then you might as well give up. I can’t even see you. I can’t see anything. The Worm is under that mountain. That’s all there is.”

  Thinking, Forgive me, Covenant barked, “Jeremiah! Snap out of it! You think this is bad? It’s going to get worse. Have you forgotten? Foul wants to use you. He’s going to do you more d
amage than you can imagine.”

  The boy flinched as if Covenant had struck him. Darkness writhed across his visage.

  “Thomas!” Linden objected.

  Covenant ignored her.

  “Right now, he’s just softening you up. Soon he’ll get serious. He’ll try to tear you apart, turn you inside out, hurt you so much you’ll be eager to do what he wants. If you don’t help me, he wins.”

  Linden tried to come between Covenant and Jeremiah. Stave held her back. The spurned Haruchai seemed to understand—

  Jeremiah looked like he wanted to weep. In a different voice, abused and abject, he whimpered, “I can’t—”

  As if he had lost patience, Covenant retorted, “You can. You have that right. You were born with it. All you have to do is choose,” must or cannot. He pushed his fingers through his hair, tried to harden his heart. Deliberately harsh, he rasped, “Otherwise you might as well go back into hiding. You’ll be useless.”

  Slowly Jeremiah’s silted gaze settled into focus on Covenant. He seemed to return from some other dimension of reality; some private hell. When it came, his answer was distinct.

  “I don’t want to go back there.”

  Covenant felt like cheering. Grimly he stifled the impulse. “Then trust yourself. Trust the Staff. There’s a way to fight back. You just have to find it.

  “And remember I need you. You might do something better than surprising the Despiser. You might surprise yourself.”

  “Ur-Lord,” Handir demanded, peremptory as a cudgel. “Do you not hear me? Every delay is fatal. You must select a path.”

  Still Covenant ignored the Voice of the Masters. He had to face Linden.

  She was glaring at him, furious and bitter. Her hands clenched as if she wanted to hit him. He had hurt her son.

  Before she could speak, he said harshly, “Maybe I’m wrong.” With the fingers of his halfhand, he massaged the scar on his forehead. “Maybe I’m not. Look at him. What do you see?”

  For a moment longer, her indignation raked Covenant; but she could not refuse him.