Against All Things Ending (91 page)

You
will not
have my son!

She was becoming an adept, elevated by extremity. For a moment, she seemed to hear Joan screaming in the heart of the storm.
I’ve been good!
Against Linden’s onslaught, the
caesure
staggered; flickered.
Make it stop!
Then it lurched backward.
I can’t bear it!

Struck to the core, the time-storm curled into itself and imploded. Scant instants after it appeared, it was gone.

It won’t be much longer.
Roger had promised his mother that.
We’ll make it stop together.

Covenant! Oh, Covenant, watch out. She’s getting stronger.

Jeremiah was still at work as though nothing had happened. Empty of every form of consciousness except concentration on his construct, he sealed phalanges in place, propped crooked bones among them, rested a scapula off-center and left it, imponderably secure. To Linden’s urgent glance, this side of his structure appeared to be an exact mirror of the other. If she had looked more closely, she might have noticed that he had set dozens of details deliberately askew. But she did not have time.

Announced by chiming, Infelice incarnated herself between Linden and Jeremiah as though she had never been absent. Her sendaline murmured of disdain and supplication as it moved, stirred by a breeze that Linden could not feel.

“Oh, good,” Linden panted, shaken by her own exertions and the
caesure
’s inrush. “You haven’t given up. I still have questions.”

In scorn, the
Elohim
retorted, “And I continue to reply, imploring you to set aside your opposition. If you will not permit me to deflect the boy from the path of this atrocity, I pray that you yourself will thwart him, for the sake of the Land and the Earth, since you care naught for the
Elohim
. Remove him from his task. Unmake what he has done. Set him upon his beast and ride hence. If you do so, while they live the
Elohim
will ensure that he does not fall under the Despiser’s dominion a second time. Thus the worst of all evils may be forestalled.”

“Wait a minute,” Linden demanded. She no longer held the Staff aimed at Infelice, but she was ready. “You’re going too fast for me.

“Never mind that Jeremiah probably doesn’t care about you any more than I do. I was about to ask you why getting caught in one of his doors is worse than being eaten by the Worm. They sound about the same to me. Either way, you’re finished. Why is a prison worse than dying?”

The music around Infelice sounded like teeth grinding in frustration. Lordly and contemptuous, she answered, “Wildwielder, the Worm is mere extinction. The prison which the boy will devise is eternal helplessness, fully cognizant and forever futile. It will out-live the ending of suns and stars. Which doom would you prefer? Which would you elect for your son?”

Still Stave stood motionless, like a man who had no part to play in the world’s ruin. Behind Infelice, Jeremiah had used two more heavy bones like huge femurs snapped in half to complete the frame of his second wall: the side of an entryway, or the start of a corridor. Now he was busy filling the space between the uprights with fingers and limbs and lumps and gnarled boughs of bone. And as he worked, without haste or hesitation, Earthpower flowed from his hands like water, binding together the many pieces of his construct.

By degrees, theurgy swelled in the bones. It was still nascent, still tenuous and vague, but Linden sensed that soon it would start to burgeon. His creation was beginning to resemble the numinous box which he had used to reach the depths of
Melenkurion
Skyweir: it was coming to life.

“All right,” Linden said for the third time; perhaps the last time. “I’ll give you that one. It makes sense.

“So tell me. I’m ready to hear it now. What’s ‘the worst evil’? If imprisoning you is worse than the Worm of the World’s End, what could possibly be ‘the worst of all evils’?”

Infelice had become unalloyed wrath, a tintinnabulation too clangorous to be ignored. “The Despiser,” she rang out, “who is called a-Jeroth and Lord Foul and many other names, has placed his mark upon the boy. You claim the boy as your son, but you do not know him. You have not grasped that there is no limit to what he can achieve when he is given suitable aid.

“Assuredly the Despiser desires his escape from the Arch of Time—and to accomplish that end, he does not require the boy. In his secret heart, however, he nurtures a darker intent. He seeks to devise a prison for the Creator, making use of the boy’s gifts when the Arch has fallen. This he means to accomplish in the moment of collapse, when all things have become mutable. As the Despiser has suffered, so he wishes all possible Creation to suffer, in unending emptiness and lamentation.

“This you do not comprehend. Your mortal mind cannot encompass such absolute loss. Yet I beseech you to hear me. You have asked after the shadow on the hearts of the
Elohim
. The eternal end of Creation is shadow enough to darken the heart of any being.”

Linden stared, shocked in spite of her allegiance to her son. Was it possible?
Possible?
Could Lord Foul
do
that? With Jeremiah’s help? The eternal end—

—
but of my deeper purpose I will not speak
.

More power throbbed behind Infelice. Jeremiah appeared to be finishing his second wall, the other side of a doorway or passage. In another moment or two, he would commence the next phase of his construct, whatever that might be.

He needed more time. But Linden was too stunned to think. The eternal end—? Infelice was right about one thing: Linden could not grasp the concept. Lord Foul intended
that
? And she had run out of questions or arguments. Soon she would have no means to delay her antagonist except Earthpower or wild magic.

“Nonetheless,
Elohim
,” Stave said unexpectedly, “your own comprehension is flawed.” He remained standing with his arms closed across his chest, as impassive as Jeremiah, and as unmoved. “I acknowledge that your undying thoughts surpass mine, or the Chosen’s, or indeed those of the Ranyhyn. Yet when you speak of the shadow upon your heart, you speak in contradictions.

“In Andelain, you averred that your spirits are darkened by ‘the threat of beings from beyond Time.’ You cited the Chosen and also the Unbeliever, and I doubt not that you include this boy in your tale of darkness. You described them as ‘beings both small and mortal who are nonetheless capable of utter devastation.’”

Linden remembered.
By his own deeds
, Infelice had said,
the Despiser cannot destroy the Arch of Time
.
He requires your aid, Wildwielder, and that of the man who was once the Unbeliever
.

“To content you,” Stave continued, “I will also acknowledge that the presence in the Land of ‘beings from beyond Time’ has been chiefly caused by Corruption, if not by his own hand then by the efforts of his servants.”

Infelice lifted an elegant eyebrow. The ire of her chiming receded into a more cautious mode. Apparently the
Haruchai
had caught her attention.

At her back, Jeremiah turned away from the walls or sides of his construct. With strength that astonished Linden, far more strength than he should have possessed, he retrieved the largest of his gathered bones, the single intact femur, and raised it over his head. His muddy gaze regarded nothing as he carried the massive bone to his structure and set its length across the tops of the walls like a lintel.

When he had sealed the femur in its position, the vibration of his created magic rose to a higher pitch. Linden felt its hum in her own bones. Waves of power made her skin itch as if every inch were a wound newly healed.

But Stave did not pause; gave no sign that he was aware of Jeremiah or theurgy.

“Yet by your own admission,” he said, “the Chosen did not effect the boy’s release from the
croyel
. Nor was he freed by ur-Lord Covenant’s intervention. And it was neither the Chosen nor the Unbeliever who discovered the boy’s covert in the Lost Deep. Furthermore we were not brought to this place at this time by either the Chosen or the Unbeliever—or by her son, or by his son or mate. We are here only by the will of the Ranyhyn.

“Herein lies your error,
Elohim
. Every essential step along the path of the boy’s purpose has been taken by the natural inhabitants of the Earth. The Chosen and the Unbeliever and perhaps even the Unbeliever’s son have enabled those steps, but have not determined them. Therefore our presence here, and the boy’s present display of lore, do not conform to your description of the shadow upon the hearts of the
Elohim
. If we are now threatened by ‘the worst of all evils,’ it is through no fault or purpose or power of the Chosen’s son.

“Thus,” the
Haruchai
stated as though his logic were unassailable, “it is made plain even to mortal minds that your protestations are spurious. You appear to believe that this boy is no more than a tool wielded by other beings. But the tool cannot be held accountable for the use which is made of it. And here the hands which wield him are those of the Ranyhyn and the Harrow, the first new Stonedownor and the lost son of Sunder and Hollian. They are the hands of beings who live and may perish within the proper confines of Time.

“Thus it follows that you have no cause to oppose the boy. His present efforts cannot achieve Corruption’s designs.”

Yes, Linden thought.
Yes
. It was Stave who had first shown her how to believe that Jeremiah did not belong to Lord Foul. Now the former Master dispelled every doubt that had marred her faith.

Apart from the claiming of your vacant son
—

He’s
belonged
to Foul for years
.

Roger had lied to her. The Despiser had tried to mislead her. From the first, one or both of them had striven to teach her despair. And they had succeeded.

Yet Stave answered them for her. The Ranyhyn and Anele had answered them. Jeremiah himself was answering them now.

Trust.

With as much subtlety as she could manage, Linden began mustering Earthpower in her mind.

As her son added phalanges and tarsal blocks like supports for his lintel, the force implicit in his structure scaled still higher. Soon it felt like the gnashing of dislocated realities, a door between worlds. In contrast, the music of the
Elohim
seemed dim and lusterless; as dulled as the ashen sky.

Over her shoulder, Infelice cast a glance like a blaze of gems at the boy. Then she faced Stave for the first time.

“You are
Haruchai
,” she said in a tone of regal disdain. “Have you forgotten that your strength is as weak as water to the
Elohim
, and as devoid of import? Yet I have heard you, hoping that the Wildwielder will reconsider her folly while you bandy words. Now you have said enough. I will hear no more.

“If the tool cannot be held accountable for its use, it likewise cannot be used if it does not exist. Hold yourselves blameless, if that is your desire. I have spoken of perils which transcend blame. They must be prevented at any cost.”

With a gesture of dismissal, as if she were banishing Stave from her sight, Infelice turned away.

Toward Jeremiah.

Linden was already summoning fire from her Staff when Stave barked harshly, “Chosen!”

Another
caesure
. As soon as Stave called to her, she felt it stinging her flesh, hiving in her guts.

The puissance of Jeremiah’s construct ramified into the grey heavens. He stepped back from it as if his work were done. Gazing blankly at his structure, his marrowmeld sculpture, like an artist who had expended every iota of himself, he extended his halfhand in Linden’s direction like a request for confirmation. But he did not turn his head, or shift his feet, or give any other indication that he wanted something from his mother.

Infelice was about to destroy him. One way or another, the
Elohim
would put an end to every possibility, every hope.

Nevertheless the Fall was more immediate. And Infelice feared it. She feared it at least as much as Linden did. She might hesitate while she was in danger.

Frantically Linden wheeled away to hurl black fury into the migraine storm of hornets and instants.

But she was wrong. As soon as she spotted the
caesure
, she saw that she was wrong. Joan had missed her aim. Her concentration, or
turiya
’s, was fraying. Vicious as a tornado, the Fall seethed on the far rim of the caldera. From where she stood, Linden could not have thrown a piece of bone to hit it. And it was moving away. Awkward as a cripple, it stumbled onto the outer slope of the crater and began to descend, a blind thing forsaken by its guide. If it did not suddenly change directions, it would drift out of sight and do no harm.

Wrong, wrong,
wrong
. Linden had given Infelice a chance—

And Stave was powerless against the
Elohim
. Long ago, Linden had witnessed the negligent ease with which Infelice’s people had refused Brinn and Cail, Hergrom and Ceer, from their demesne.

Swinging the Staff’s howl of Earthpower, she spun back toward Jeremiah—

—and was instantly frozen; stopped where she stood, as if every imaginable motion had been stripped from her. Her arms and legs were paralyzed: her heart seemed to stop beating. Blood congealed in her veins. Her fire vanished as if she knew nothing of Earthpower and had never understood Law.

The air of the caldera was full of stars. They winked and spangled in front of her, around her, between her and her son, as evanescent and irrefusable as sun-dazzles. They were the gems of Infelice’s raiment, the eldritch jewels of her chiming, and they sang a song of immobility that ruled the basin, dominated the bones. Jeremiah still stood facing his construct with his right arm extended toward Linden: for him, nothing had changed. But Stave had been snared in mid-stride. Impossibly balanced on one foot with the other reaching for its step, he remained like a statue carved from stone.