White Gold Wielder

  Covenant shrugged. He seemed to think that he had become immune to ordinary forms of peril. But he waved his acceptance; and the First strode away at a brisk gait.

  Pitchwife shook his head, bemused by his wife’s sources of strength. Linden saw a continuing disquiet in the unwonted tension of his countenance; but most of his unhappiness had sunk beneath the surface, restoring his familiar capacity for humor. “Stone and Sea!” he said to Covenant and Linden. “Is she not a wonder? Should ever we encounter that which can daunt her, then will I truly credit that the Earth is lost. But then only. For the while, I will study the beauty of her and be glad.” Turning, he started down the watercourse as if he wished his friends to think he had left his crisis behind.

  Hollian smiled after them. Softly Sunder said, “We are fortunate in these Giants. Had Nassic my father spoken to me of such beings, mayhap I would have laughed—or mayhap wept. But I would not have believed.”

  “Me neither,” Covenant murmured. Doubt and fear cast their shadows across the background of his gaze; but he appeared to take no hurt from them. “Mhoram was my friend. Bannor saved my life. Lena loved me. But Foamfollower made the difference.”

  Linden reached out to him, touched her palm briefly to his clean cheek to tell him that she understood. The ache of the Sunbane was so strong in her that she could not speak.

  Together they started after Pitchwife.

  The riverbed was a jumble of small stones and large boulders, flat swaths of sand, jutting banks, long pits. But it was a relatively easy road. And by midafternoon the west rim began casting deep shade into the channel.

  That shade was a balm to Linden’s abraded nerves—but for some reason it did not make her any better able to put one foot in front of another. The alternation of shadow and acid heat seemed to numb her mind, and the consequences of two days without rest or sleep came to her as if they had been waiting in the bends and hollows of the watercourse. Eventually she found herself thinking that of all the phases of the Sunbane the desert sun was the most gentle. Which was absurd: this sun was inherently murderous. Perhaps it was killing her now. Yet it gave less affront to her health-sense than did the other suns. She insisted on this as if someone had tried to contradict her. The desert was simply dead. The dead could inspire grief, but they felt no pain. The sun of rain had the force of incarnate violence; the malign creatures of the sun of pestilence were a pang of revulsion; the fertile sun seemed to wring screams from the whole world. But the desert only made her want to weep.

  Then she was weeping. Her face was pressed into the sand, and her hands scrubbed at the ground on either side of her head because they did not have the strength to lift her. But at the same time she was far away from her fallen body, detached and separate from Covenant and Hollian as they called her name, rushed to help her. She was thinking with the precision of a necessary belief, This can’t go on. It has got to be stopped. Every time the sun comes up, the Land dies a little deeper. It has got to be stopped.

  Covenant’s hands took hold of her, rolled her onto her back, shifted her fully into the shadows. She knew they were his hands because they were urgent and numb. When he propped her into a sitting position, she tried to blink her eyes clear. But her tears would not stop.

  “Linden,” he breathed. “Are you all right? Damn it to hell! I should’ve given you a chance to rest.”

  She wanted to say, This has got to be stopped. Give me your ring. But that was wrong. She knew it was wrong because the darkness in her leaped up at the idea, avid for power. She could not hold back her grief.

  Hugging her hard, he rocked her in his arms and murmured words which meant nothing except that he loved her.

  Gradually the helplessness faded from her muscles, and she was able to raise her head. Around her stood Sunder, Hollian, the First, and Pitchwife. Even Findail was there; and his yellow eyes yearned with conflicts, as if he knew how close she had come—but did not know whether he was relieved or saddened by it. Only Vain ignored her.

  She tried to say, I’m sorry. Don’t worry. But the desert was in her throat, and no sound came.

  Pitchwife knelt beside her, lifted a bowl to her lips. She smelled diamondraught, took a small swallow. The potent liquor gave her back her voice.

  “Sorry I scared you. I’m not hurt. Just tired. I didn’t realize I was this tired.” The shadow of the west bank enabled her to say such things.

  Covenant was not looking at her. To the watercourse and the wide sky, he muttered, “I ought to have my head examined. We should’ve stayed in Revelstone. One day wouldn’t have killed me.” Then he addressed his companions. “We’ll camp here. Maybe tomorrow she’ll feel better.”

  Linden started to smile reassurance at him. But she was already asleep.

  That night, she dreamed repeatedly of power. Over and over again, she possessed Covenant, took his ring, and used it to rip the Sunbane out of the Earth. The sheer violence of what she did was astounding: it filled her with glee and horror. Her father laughed blackness at her. It killed Covenant, left him as betrayed as her mother. She thought she would go mad.

  You have committed murder. Are you not evil?

  No. Yes. Not unless I choose to be. I can’t help it.

  This has got to be stopped. Got to be stopped. You are being forged as iron is forged. Got to be stopped.

  But sometime during the middle of the night she awoke and found herself enfolded by Covenant’s sleeping arms. For a while, she clung to him; but he was too weary to waken. When she went back to sleep, the dreams were gone.

  And when dawn came she felt stronger. Stronger and calmer, as if during the night she had somehow made up her mind. She kissed Covenant, nodded soberly in response to the questioning looks of her friends. Then, while the Stonedownors and Giants defended themselves against the sun’s first touch by standing on rock, she climbed a slope in the west bank to get an early view of the Sunbane. She wanted to understand it.

  It was red and baleful, the color of pestilence. Its light felt like disease crawling across her nerves.

  But she knew its ill did not in fact arise from the sun. Sunlight acted as a catalyst for it, a source of energy, but did not cause the Sunbane. Rather it was an emanation from the ground, corrupted Earthpower radiating into the heavens. And that corruption sank deeper every day, working its way into the marrow of the Earth’s bones.

  She bore it without flinching. She intended to do something about it.

  Her companions continued to study her as she descended the slope to rejoin them. But when she met their scrutiny, they were reassured. Pitchwife relaxed visibly. Some of the tension flowed out of the muscles of Covenant’s shoulders, though he clearly did not trust his superficial vision. And Sunder, who remembered Marid, gazed at her as if she had come back from the brink of something as fatal as venom.

  “Chosen, you are well restored,” said the First with gruff pleasure. “The sight gladdens me.”

  Together Hollian and Pitchwife prepared a meal which Linden ate ravenously. Then the company set itself to go on down the watercourse.

  For the first part of the morning, the walking was almost easy. This sun was considerably cooler than the previous one; and while the east bank shaded the riverbottom, it remained free of vermin. The ragged edges and arid lines of the landscape took on a tinge of the crimson light which made them appear acute and wild, etched with desiccation. Pitchwife joined the First as she ascended the hillside again to keep watch over the company. Although Hollian shared Sunder’s visceral abhorrence of the sun of pestilence, they were comfortable with each other. In the shade’s protection, they walked and talked, arguing companionably about a name for their son. Initially Sunder claimed that the child would grow up to be an eh-Brand and should therefore be given an eh-Brand’s name; but Hollian insisted that the boy would take after his father. Then for no apparent reason they switched positions and continued contradicting each other.

  By unspoken agreement, Linden and Covenant left the Stonedownors to t
hemselves as much as possible. She listened to them in a mood of detached affection for a time; but gradually their argument sent her musing on matters that had nothing to do with the Sunbane—or with what Covenant hoped to accomplish by confronting the Despiser. In the middle of her reverie, she surprised herself by asking without preamble, “What was Joan like? When you were married?”

  He looked at her sharply; and she caught a glimpse of the unanswerable pain which lay at the roots of his certainty. Once before, when she had appealed to him, he had said of Joan, She’s my ex-wife, as if that simple fact were an affirmation. Yet some kind of guilt or commitment toward Joan had endured in him for years after their divorce, compelling him to accept responsibility for her when she had come to him in madness and possession, seeking his blood.

  Now he hesitated momentarily as if he were searching for a reply which would give Linden what she wanted without weakening his grasp on himself. Then he indicated Sunder and Hollian with a twitch of his head. “When Roger was born,” he said, overriding a catch in his throat, “she didn’t ask me what I thought. She just named him after her father. And her grandfather. A whole series of Rogers on her side of the family. When he grows up, he probably won’t even know who I am.”

  His bitterness was plain. But other, more important feelings lay behind it. He had smiled for Joan when he had exchanged his life for hers.

  And he was smiling now—the same terrible smile that Linden remembered with such dismay. While it lasted, she was on the verge of whispering at him in stark anguish. Is that what you’re going to do? Again? Again?

  But almost at once his expression softened; and the thing she feared seemed suddenly impossible. Her protest faded. He appeared unnaturally sure of what he meant to do; but, whatever it was, it did not reek of suicide. Inwardly shaken, she said, “Don’t worry. He won’t forget you.” Her attempt to console him sounded inane, but she had nothing else to offer. “It’s not that easy for kids to forget their parents.”

  In response, he slipped an arm around her waist, hugged her. They walked on together in silence.

  But by midmorning sunlight covered most of the riverbed, and the channel became increasingly hazardous. The rock-gnarled and twisted course, with its secret shadows and occasionally overhanging banks, was an apt breeding place for pestilential creatures which lurked and struck. From Revelstone Hollian had brought an ample store of voure; but some of the crawling, scuttling life that now teemed in the riverbottom seemed to be angered by the scent or immune to it altogether. Warped and feral sensations scraped across Linden’s nerves. Every time she saw something move, a pang of alarm went through her. Sunder and Hollian had to be more and more careful where they put their bare feet. Covenant began to study the slopes where the Giants walked. He was considering the advantages of leaving the channel.

  When a scorpion as large as Linden’s two fists shot out from under a rock and lashed its stinger at the side of Covenant’s boot, he growled a curse and made his decision. Kicking the scorpion away, he muttered, “That does it. Let’s get out of here.”

  No one objected. Followed mutely by Vain and Findail, the four companions went to a pile of boulders leaning against the east bank and climbed upward to join the First and Pitchwife.

  They spent the rest of the day winding through the hills beside the empty riverbed. Periodically the First strode up to a crest that gave her a wider view over the region; and her fingers rubbed the hilt of her longsword as if she were looking for a chance to use it. But she saw nothing that threatened the company except the waterless waste.

  Whenever the hills opened westward, Linden could see the Westron Mountains sinking toward the horizon as they curved away to the south. And from the top of a rocky spine she was able to make out the distant rim of Revelstone, barely visible now above the crumpled terrain. Part of her yearned for the security it represented, for stone walls and the guardianship of Haruchai. Red limned the edges of the Land, made the desert hills as distinct as the work of a knife. Overhead the sky seemed strangely depthless. Considered directly, it remained a pale blue occluded with fine dust; but the corners of her vision caught a hue of crimson like a hint of the Despiser’s bloody-mindedness; and that color made the heavens look flat, closed.

  Though she was defended by voure, she flinched internally at the vibrating ricochet of sandflies as big as starlings, the squirming haste of oversized centipedes. But when the First and Covenant started on down the far side of the spine, she wiped the sweat from her forehead, combed her hair back from her temples with her fingers, and followed.

  Late in the afternoon, as shadows returned the sun’s vermin to quiescence, the company descended to the watercourse again so that they could travel more easily until sunset. Then, when the light faded, they stopped for the night on a wide stretch of sand. There they ate supper, drank metheglin lightly flavored with diamondraught, hollowed beds for themselves. And Hollian took out her lianar wand to discover what the morrow’s sun would be.

  Without a word, Sunder handed her the wrapped krill. Carefully, as if Loric’s blade still awed her, she parted the cloth until a clear shaft of argent pierced the twilight. Sitting cross-legged with the knife in her lap, she began to chant her invocation; and as she did so, she raised her lianar into the krill-gem’s light.

  From the wood grew shoots and tendrils of fine fire. They spread about her on the ground like creepers, climbed into the argence like vines. They burned without heat, without harming the wand; and their radiant filigree made the night eldritch and strange.

  Her flame was the precise incarnadine of the present sun.

  Linden thought then that Hollian would cease her invocation. A second day of pestilence was not a surprise. But the eh-Brand kept her power alight, and a new note of intensity entered her chant. With a start, Linden realized that Hollian was stretching herself, reaching beyond her accustomed limits.

  After a moment, a quiet flare of blue like a gentle coruscation appeared at the tips of the fire-fronds.

  For an instant, azure rushed inward along the vines, transforming the flames, altering the crimson ambience of the dark. Then it was quenched: all the fire vanished. Hollian sat with the lianar cradled in her fingers and the light of the krill on her face. She was smiting faintly.

  “The morrow’s sun will be a sun of pestilence.” Her voice revealed strain and weariness, but they were not serious. “But the sun of the day following will be a sun of rain.”

  “Good!” said Covenant. “Two days of rain, and we’ll practically be in Andelain.” He turned to the First. “It looks like we’re not going to be able to build rafts. Can you and Pitchwife support the four of us when the river starts to run?”

  In answer, the First snorted as if the question were unworthy of her.

  Gleaming with pride, Sunder put his arms around Hollian. But her attention was fixed on Covenant. She took a deep breath for strength, then asked, “Ur-Lord, is it truly your intent to enter Andelain once again?”

  Covenant faced her sharply. A grimace twisted his mouth. “You asked me that the last time.” He seemed to expect her to renew her former refusal. “You know I want to go there. I never get enough of it. It’s the only place where there’s any Law left alive.”

  The krill-light emphasized the darkness of her hair; but its reflection in her eyes was clear. “You have told that tale. And I have spoken of the acquaintance of my people with the peril of Andelain. To us its name was one of proven madness. No man or woman known to us entered that land where the Sunbane does not reign and returned whole of mind. Yet you have entered and emerged, defying that truth as you defy all others. Thus the truth is altered. The life of the Land is not what it was. And in my turn I am changed. I have conceived a desire to do that which I have not done—to sojourn among my fears and strengths and learn the new truth of them.

  “Thomas Covenant, do not turn aside from Andelain. It is my wish to accompany you.”

  For a long moment, no one spoke. Then Covenant said in a h
usky voice, “Thanks. That helps.”

  Softly Hollian recovered the krill, let darkness wash back over the company. The night was the color of her hair, and it spread its wings out to the stars.

  The next day, the red sun asserted its hold over the Land more swiftly, building on what it had already done. The company was forced out of the watercourse well before midmorning. Still they made steady progress. Every southward league softened the hills slightly, and by slow degrees the going became easier. The valleys between the rises grew wider: the slopes, less rugged. And Hollian had said that the next day would bring a sun of rain. Severely Linden tried to tell herself that she had no reason to feel so beaten, so vulnerable to the recurring blackness of her life.

  But the Sunbane shone full upon her. It soaked into her as if she had become a sponge for the world’s ill. The stink of pestilence ran through her blood. Hidden somewhere among the secrets of her bones was a madwoman who believed that she deserved such desecration. She wanted power in order to extirpate the evil from herself.

  Her percipience was growing keener—and so her distress was keener.

  She could not inure herself to what she felt. No amount of determination or decision was enough. Long before noon, she began to stumble as if she were exhausted. A red haze covered her mind, blinding her to the superficial details of the terrain, the concern of her friends. She was like the Land, powerless to heal herself. But when Covenant asked her if she wanted to rest, she made no answer and went on walking. She had chosen her path and did not mean to stop.

  Yet she heard the First’s warning. Unsteady on her feet, her knees locked, she halted with Covenant as the Giants came back at a tense trot from a low ridge ahead of the company. Distress aggravated Pitchwife’s crooked features. The First looked apprehensive, like iron fretted with rust. But in spite of their palpable urgency, they did not speak for a moment. They were too full of what they had seen.