Against All Things Ending (74 page)

As soon as their condition satisfied her, she turned to Mahrtiir. Stave, Branl, and Clyme she postponed simply because they were
Haruchai
, inherently hardier than any Raman.

As Linden tended Mahrtiir’s many cuts and the poisons which dirty weapons had left in his wounds, Coldspray’s comrades headed for the stream until only the Ironhand remained. Briefly she scanned the area for something with which she could clean her glaive. Then, growling Giantish epithets under her breath, she dropped the stone sword at her feet.

In spite of her long exertions, and the strain of imposed healing, she went to the litter of boulders bestrewn from Liand’s cairn and began shifting them.

Alone Rime Coldspray labored to raise a smaller grave mound for Anele.

It was for this
.
I have kept faith with my inheritance
. In his madness, Anele had endured more than Linden could imagine.

She was losing her ability to distinguish between grief and failure.

“It is enough, Ringthane.” Mahrtiir’s tone contradicted his words. Blood still seeped from some of his cuts. Nevertheless he took a step backward, plainly asking her to leave him as he was. “Stave has lost a son so that yours might live. And my fear for the Humbled is greater than my distrust. Were I sighted and whole, I could perform no service to equal theirs.” At the edges, his voice frayed into sorrow. “Humbled myself, if in another fashion, I implore your succor for them.”

Linden let her fire fall away. She could not refuse his plea. Just for a moment, she caught him in a tight hug; gave him an embrace which she could not share with Covenant; accepted the responsibility of his blood on her clothes and skin. Then she went to face Stave’s more intimate wounds.

The ur-viles and Waynhim stayed where they were. Having put away their cups, they appeared to study Linden by scent and sound as if they were waiting for her.

Quietly but firmly, Mahrtiir sent Bhapa after Pahni and the rest of the company. But the Manethrall himself did not depart.

Linden was not brave enough for this. Like Anele and Liand, Stave had sacrificed too much in her name. She might have guessed that the passions of fatherhood ran strongly in him.—
a fire in us, and deep
. But nothing in her experience of any
Haruchai
had prepared her to see tears in his eye—

He had slain Esmer without hesitation.

Yet his life was ebbing from him in spite of his preternatural toughness. If she did not intervene, he would eventually perish.

Bracing her Staff on the dirt’s burden of bloodshed, Linden stood in front of him. With her health-sense, she studied his gashed face and blade-bitten shoulders, his arms and torso brutally cut. But when he met her gaze, she bowed her head.

“Does it help,” she asked in a small voice, “if I say that I’m sorry? Stave, I am so sorry. I didn’t see that axe coming. If I had—” With an effort, she caught herself. She had been about to say, I would have tried to stop it. But he deserved better honesty. Wincing, she admitted, “I would have prayed for Galt to do what he did. But I’m still sorry. I didn’t want him to die. I regret everything that’s happened to you.”

For her sake, he had been spurned by the Masters.

“I wouldn’t change anything,” she insisted to the unspoken protest of his injuries. “For the first time since Roger took him, Jeremiah isn’t being tortured. He might even have a chance to come out of himself.” And Covenant was alive, although he no longer wanted her love. “But I wish—”

Stave interrupted her. “Do not, Linden.” His voice was little more than a sigh; yet it silenced her. “Wish for nothing. Regret nothing. Has your long acquaintance with
Haruchai
not taught you that my pride in my son is as great as my bereavement?”

Linden had no answer except the power of the Staff. She had stood on Gallows Howe; had become an incarnation of that benighted mound, barren and bitter. She had refused Elena in Andelain, and had succumbed to the irremediable savagery and suffering of She Who Must Not Be Named. Her only reply was fire.

She scrutinized how his wounds closed as she cared for them, seeking to ensure that she missed no hidden damage, no site of infection. At the same time, she burned blood and grime from his skin, and tried to believe that she was doing enough.

When she was done, she turned away as if she were weeping, although her eyes were parched, as tearless as the landscape.

Now she saw why Mahrtiir had not left. Defying his weakened condition, he was trying to help the Ironhand. His residue of strength was an infant’s beside hers. Yet he moved smaller stones to clear her way; steadied boulders while she lifted them; settled Anele’s limbs to receive the weight of his makeshift tomb.

Rime Coldspray was no longer alone.

While Linden watched, helpless to intervene, Stave raised Galt in his arms. Saying nothing, he moved toward Coldspray and Mahrtiir; placed his son’s body beside Anele’s. Then he, too, joined the Ironhand’s efforts. Stubborn as any of his people, he contributed his own homage to the new cairn.

Damn it, Linden thought. Damn them. They deserved better. The Worm of the World’s End was coming. It would destroy them all. Yet they persisted in being true to their own natures.

Aching for her friends, Linden Avery forced herself to meet the challenge of the Humbled.

Both Clyme and Branl stood like crumbling monuments. When she faced them, Clyme said like the voice of his injuries, “We do not require your aid.” He was close to collapse, to death and the world’s ruin, but there was no fear in his eyes, or in Branl’s.

Their unrequited pain brought back Linden’s anger. “I know,” she retorted. “You would rather just die. That way, you won’t have to resolve any more contradictions. But Covenant needs you, so shut up about it. Either stop me or let me work.”

Neither of them raised a hand against her as she filled them with flame as if Earthpower and Law were her only outlet for ire and shame, the essential components of her despair.

W
hen Linden finally descended to the stream, the ur-viles and Waynhim followed her, a ragged procession better suited to running on all fours than walking upright. In the Lost Deep, nearly a third of them had died. But among the survivors, most of their wounds had already been healed, mended by their uncanny lore.

Ahead of Linden strode Clyme and Branl as though they had never been hurt, never questioned themselves. The shreds of their tunics and the latticework of new scars belied their assurance; yet they held their heads high and gazed about them like men who did not relent. Nearing the stretch of sand where Covenant paced back and forth with storms brewing in his gaze, the Humbled bowed to him as though he had not tarnished their
Haruchai
estimations of rectitude. Then they separated to climb the nearby hills in order to stand watch over the company once more.

Linden saw at a glance that the Swordmainnir had bathed and eaten. Their washed armor lay drying in the sun, and they were visibly stronger. Among them, Jeremiah chewed reflexively on some morsel of food. Pahni or Bhapa had cared for him in his mother’s absence. Nonetheless the silt of his stare remained unreactive, empty, like a wall against the hurts of the world.

“Linden—” Covenant began, then stopped. Conflicting emotions seemed to close his throat. The muscles of his jaw bunched as he fought what he was feeling, but he did not say anything more than her name.

Avoiding his congested gaze, Linden nodded to the concerned faces of the Giants, Bhapa’s more troubled expression, Pahni’s numbed mien. Hoarse with weariness and too many needs, she explained, “Coldspray is building a cairn for Anele and Galt. Mahrtiir and Stave are helping her. They’ll be here soon.”

Even their strength and determination would not last much longer.

Then she strode past her companions. At the edge of the water, she dropped her Staff as though it entailed more responsibilities than she could bear. Empty-handed, she walked out into the stream until it filled her boots, reached her knees, rose to her waist. When it was deep enough, she plunged beneath the surface.

Like a small child, irrationally, she prayed that the water would feel as clean and cleansing as Glimmermere.

But it could not wash away what she had seen and done and felt. The darkness in her was immiscible. No mere spring runoff could dilute it. Like the healing that she had given to her companions, the stream had no power to expunge her sins.

In Andelain, Berek’s spectre had said of Lord Foul,
He may be freed only by one who is compelled by rage, and contemptuous of consequence
. Since then, she had proven herself an apt instrument. If Jeremiah had not been rescued from the
croyel
—

But her son had been set free. If the current’s gentle urging did not ease her heart, she had other answers. For years, she had made a study of despair: as a physician, she knew it intimately. In addition, she could still hope that Jeremiah would emerge from his graves, if he were given time. And the imponderable implications of Covenant’s instinct for redemption might somehow counteract the lessons that she had absorbed from Gallows Howe; the horror that she had shared within She Who Must Not Be Named.

Underwater she scrubbed at her hair, tried to claw the disgust and lamentation off of her arms and face. Gradually she grew calmer. When she broke the surface and wiped the water from her eyes, she was able to meet the anxious glances of her companions without flinching.

Sodden, and glad of it, she left the stream to reclaim her Staff and the rest of her burdens.

As she approached, Bhapa held out food for her: bread that had not had time to grow stale, grapes and a little cheese, some cured beef. He offered her a bulging waterskin. She accepted his care and thanked him. Then she began to eat.

She was hungrier than she would have thought possible. In spite of everything that had sickened or appalled her, her body had not forgotten its own needs.

Covenant stopped his pacing to watch her. She sensed the pressure rising in him like a fever, but she did not know how to interpret it. After a moment, he began again, “Linden—We’re running out of time. I know you’ve been through hell. You’ve lost too much. You all have. But we should—”

He seemed eager to get as far away from her as he could.

Chewing, Linden held up a hand to interrupt him. When she had swallowed, she asked, “Have you remembered something that makes a difference? Something that we can understand?”

He shook his head. Shadows like thunderheads complicated his gaze.

“Then we should wait for Stave, Mahrtiir, and Coldspray.” She rebuffed him because she felt rebuffed herself. “They need food and a chance to wash. And they have a right to hear whatever you want to say.”

She expected him to overrule her. He had that authority: he was Thomas Covenant. But he did not. Briefly he scowled at her as if he wished that he could read her heart. Then he resumed his pacing.

The ur-viles and Waynhim had spread out around the Giants, enclosing Linden and her companions in a half-circle. Now they began growling like creatures who wished to be heeded.

Frostheart Grueburn jerked up her head. Surprise lit the features of the Giants: surprise and sudden gladness. While Onyx Stonemage and her comrades whispered excitedly to each other, Grueburn turned to the loremaster and bowed with the formality due to a sovereign among invaluable allies.

“Our ears have been opened,” she said with as much gravity as her eagerness and relief allowed. “We hear you and attend, honoring your great valor and service.”

The loremaster replied in a guttural snarl that conveyed nothing to Linden—or to Covenant and the Cords. But Grueburn bowed again, grinning as if something within her had been set free. Latebirth and Stormpast Galesend laughed softly, full of pleasure. Other Giants beamed, smiling with their whole bodies.

“Linden Giantfriend,” Grueburn said, “do not misapprehend our joy. It is the restoration of our gift of tongues which lifts our hearts, not the words of these brave creatures. Yet there is no hurt or harm in those words. The loremaster merely desires us to comprehend that the ur-viles and Waynhim must depart. For the present, they have fulfilled the dictates of their Weird.” The Swordmain broke off. Aside, she explained, “Among them, ‘Weird’ has several meanings, none of which are plain to me.” Then she resumed. “Now they wish to seek out a deeper understanding, for their deeds here do not content them.

“Ere they depart, however, they will answer any questions that you may choose to ask, if the answers lie within their ken.”

Linden stared. Now? When she and her companions had barely survived Roger’s attack? The list of things that she wanted to know seemed endless. But she was close to exhaustion: she could not think clearly enough to remember them all.

Nevertheless the loremaster’s offer was a precious opportunity. It might not come again.

Covenant’s eyes seemed to catch fire in the sunlight. He turned sharply; strode toward the loremaster as though he meant to hurl a volley of queries. When the black creature sniffed in his direction, however, and proffered an awkward mimicry of a human bow, he did not speak. Instead he bowed in return, then looked at Linden.