The Last Dark (42 page)

His eyes bled anguish. He made no attempt to pull away.

Briefly Infelice glanced at the Giants, at the Ironhand. “Be warned,” she told them. “
Moksha
Jehannum now rules the
skurj
. He will wield them with cunning and malice. And do not forget that the Chosen-son is precious to a-Jeroth.”

Then she surrendered at last to the imperative of Jeremiah’s construct. Drawing Kastenessen with her, she entered the fane. In an instant, they were gone as if they had stepped out of the world altogether.

“Damnation,” Covenant gasped. “I wasn’t sure I could do that.”

Lowering his arms as if he had been beaten, he tried to approach the Swordmainnir. But his legs failed, and he dropped to his knees.

Overhead Kevin’s Dirt had already begun to dissipate. If more stars perished, they did so beyond the horizons. Jeremiah did not see them die.

But While I Can

As if they were each entirely alone, Linden Avery and Manethrall Mahrtiir rode through hell to save or damn the Earth.

They did not exist for each other. They were mounted on Ranyhyn that did not exist. Immersed in a cyclone of rent instants, they were consumed by the kind of hiving that drove men and women mad. Every nerve was stung beyond endurance, assailed by bitter particles of reality. At the same time, every perception had become white ice, gelid as the gulfs between the stars. Linden and her companion inhabited a frozen wilderland eternally unrelieved in all directions. They had entered a realm in which excruciation defined them. It was all they knew because it was all that they had ever known. It was all that they would ever know. One moment did not lead to the next, and so there was nothing to see or do or understand.

In that perfection of agony, Linden may once have imagined that she and Mahrtiir would be defended by experience. They had endured
caesures
twice before, and had survived. Surely they would be sustained by the knowledge that what they were trying to do was possible? But she was wrong. Memory was meaningless in a place that contained all time and none simultaneously. One instant,
this
instant, was the whole truth of who and what they were.

Yet it was not the whole truth of their plight. The
caesure
imposed other dimensions of torment as well, other forms of futility. She had asked the Ranyhyn to take her and Mahrtiir backward in time, against the current of the Fall’s wild rush; and that effort had consequences. While hornets burrowed into her flesh, and she occupied a bitter wasteland as if it were the summation of all her needs and desires, she also floated inside herself like a spectator, helpless amid the chaos, watching her own desecration as if she were dissociated from it.

Days and days ago, she had once hung suspended like this inside Joan’s mind, observing ruin through Joan’s eyes because she had entered a
caesure
of Joan’s making. But now Linden was the cause of her own suffering. While other tortures failed to tear her apart only because their duration had no meaning, she also bore witness to herself.

She watched the Linden Avery who had always been inadequate to what her life required of her. The Linden who had allowed herself to be misled by Roger Covenant and the
croyel
. The Linden who had defied every Law by resurrecting Thomas Covenant,
compelled by rage
—and had nonetheless failed to resurrect him whole. The Linden who had been consumed by She Who Must Not Be Named, and had not sufficed to raise her precious son from his graves.

The Linden Avery who had roused the Worm of the World’s End.

But there was more. Observing, she was able to recall things which the storm of time denied.

There is no doom so black or deep that c
ourage and clear sight may not find another truth beyond it
.

Covenant had told her that. In the aspect of her anguish that resembled a shadow cast by her own flawed self, she yearned to believe him.

Trust yourself.

Oh, she ached for the ability to believe. But he had also said,
Don’t touch me
, as if he feared that her love would corrupt some essential part of him. She did not know how to trust herself. She was the daughter of her parents, a mother and father who had feared every hurt of living, and had raised her for death. That knowledge endured in her bones. A Raver had confirmed it. Unforgotten and unredeemed, it ruled her even now, in spite of Covenant and Jeremiah and the Land.

In your present state, Chosen, Desecration lies ahead of you. It does not cr
owd at your back
.

It was here. Was it not?

But because she was watching herself as if she were someone else, she was able to recognize that there were other ways to think. Her many friends had been trying to teach her that lesson ever since Liand had first introduced himself in Mithil Stonedown. By their devotion, they had assured her that she did not need to judge herself as if she were defined by her sins. In spite of her concealments and dishonesties, her fury
contemptuous of consequence
, she was not alone.

If
courage and clear sight
exceeded her, they did not surpass her companions. From the first, she had been supported by people whose hearts were bigger than hers; by loyalties more unselfish than hers.
Every essential step along the path
, Stave had assured Infelice,
has been taken by the natural inhabitants of the Earth
. Linden’s friends had urged
trust
until even she had heard them.

Trapped in the savagery of the
caesure
, she found that desperation was indistinguishable from faith.

Attempts must be made
—

Hyn had carried her willingly into the Fall. Mahrtiir on Narunal had accompanied her willingly. She could believe in them.

—even when there can be no hope.

And she had done some things right. Witnessing herself with the detachment of a spectator, she could acknowledge those deeds. She had fought her way through the machinations of Roger and the
croyel
. She had provided for her son’s rescue from the
croyel
’s covert in the Lost Deep. And when every other action had been denied to her, she had given Jeremiah his racecar: the last piece of the portal which had enabled him to step out of his prison.

In those moments, no one else could have taken her place. To that extent, Anele had told the truth about her, as he had about so many things.
The world will not see her like again
.

And there was more.

Nothing ameliorated the extravagant burrow and sting of dismembered moments. Nothing eased the cruelty of the frigid wasteland which would arise from Desecrations like hers. Nothing could. Nevertheless she still held Covenant’s wedding band clasped in her hands. Silver fire still shone from the metal even though she was not a rightful wielder of white gold. It was as vivid to her as Covenant himself. It could be an anchor for her foundering spirit.

Then she was no longer alone. She had always and never been alone. Manethrall Mahrtiir was at her side, holding the Staff of Law for her and looking ahead as if he had nothing to fear; as if he had finally identified the import of his life.

And she was seated on Hyn’s back, as she had always been. Narunal was at her side. The horses were not moving. Movement required causality: it depended on sequence. Yet they ran. Stride for stride, dappled Hyn matched Narunal’s strength, Narunal’s certainty, as the palomino stallion raced from nowhere to nowhere across the white wilderness.

In spite of the
caesure
’s excoriation, Linden clung to Covenant’s ring and endured.

She did not have to wait long. She had been waiting forever, and did not have to wait at all. This moment did not move on to the next because it could not, or because there was no
next
. Nevertheless the hard circle between her hands flared suddenly; and Hyn carried her out of chaos into sunshine under a summer sky.

Sunshine. A slow hillside clad in brittle grey-green grass as thick as bracken. A summer sky as lenitive as hurtloam.

Without transition, Linden was released.

The shock of change made her muscles spasm, made the world reel. Her stomach hurt as if she needed to spend hours puking. Blots of black confusion wheeled around her as though she were under assault by crows or vultures. The continuity of her personal world had been severed from itself. Unable to determine her position in time and space, she tumbled from Hyn’s back, landed hard on the grass.

For a moment, she could not breathe; could not think. While her nerves floundered, she clung to the kind earth and wrestled with her impulse to vomit. She had arrived somewhere. Some when. Hyn had brought her here. She smelled summer in the air, felt an insistence on life in the stiff grass in spite of a prolonged paucity of rain. Straining to inhale, she caught a whiff of distant desiccation, as if she had arrived too close to a desert. The sky held too much dust. She had expected Andelain and lushness. She was unprepared for this baked hillside, this heat, this—

Something had gone wrong.

“Ringthane,” Mahrtiir croaked as if he were retching. “Release the white gold. You must. Accept your Staff.”

She heard him, but the words did not make sense. He sounded like an ur-vile, barking incomprehensibly. Something had gone wrong. The world was wrong: the grass, the sky, the sunshine. Only the writhing ruin of the Fall as it drifted away felt familiar. Narunal trumpeted a warning that she did not know how to interpret. Alarm fretted Hyn’s answering whinny.

“Chosen!” insisted the Manethrall. “Linden Avery! Your
Staff
. You must quench the
caesure
! If it enters among the trees, it will wreak harm which no Forestal will pardon. We will not be heeded if you do not first spare the forest!”

Linden recognized a few sounds. The sigh of an arid breeze. The consternation of birds somewhere in the distance. A few words.

When she remembered to let go of Covenant’s ring, she began to breathe again.

Mahrtiir stumbled to her side. Roughly he rolled her onto her back. “
Ringthane!
” Crouched against a glare of sunlight, he dropped the Staff of Law onto her chest. Then he fumbled at the dried remains of his garland, pinched off one of the last nubs of an
amanibhavam
bloom. Scrubbing the nub between his palms to powder it, he slapped one hand to his nose, clamped the other over Linden’s nose and mouth.

Too many sensations.
Amanibhavam
stung her sinuses as if she had inhaled acid. She had no time to notice that it dispelled her nausea. The sunshine wore a faint patina of dust. Shadows blurred Mahrtiir’s visage.

Then Earthpower flowed into her from the black shaft of the Staff; and she thought, Trees? A Forestal?

Oh, God.

You must quench the
caesure
!

Caesures
destroyed stone. They would tear any forest to shreds. Even a forest defended by a Forestal—

Where
was
she?

Mahrtiir knew Andelain. Surely he would have called that woodland by name?

Reflexively she clutched the Staff. Then she heaved herself into a sitting position; staggered to her feet.

The Fall was already thirty paces away, forty. And it was big, as virulent as a tornado; a rip in the fabric of reality. Seething, it lurched toward a scatter of trees: Gilden, ash, sycamores, thirsty willows. They stood alone and in loose copses, punctuating the browning grass like the out-riders of an army in retreat. Like the grass, they looked parched, stricken by a persistent lack of rain, a dwindling watershed. She could not see past them to the forest itself, but she knew instantly that the forest was there. It seemed to glower in the distance, defying an inexorable drought.

The
caesure
savaged the ground as it moved. It was going to plow a furrow of devastation into the heart of the woods.

“
Melenkurion abatha
,” she gasped as if she were cursing. The burn of
amanibhavam
sent flames like tendrils along the channels of her brain. “
Duroc minas mill
.” She felt as blighted as the trees, wan with thirst.

Where am I?

What have I done?

“
Harad khabaal.
”

One fire led to another; enabled another. As if she were turning her mind inside out, she drew ebon conflagration from the Staff and flung it like outrage into the core of the Fall.

Earthpower and Law, the salvific antitheses of the time-storm. Her flames were as stark as fuligin, as black as the immedicable gulf of a night sky after every star had been devoured. But the darkness was hers: it was not inherent to the Staff’s magicks. And here—wherever
here
might be—she was not hampered by Kevin’s Dirt. Riding the invocative force of the Seven Words, she hit the
caesure
with a deluge of extinction as if she were pouring a lake onto an inferno.

The Fall could not withstand her. As she had done before, she caused the violent miasma to implode. With a sound like thunder, the
caesure
swallowed itself as if it sought to suck her with it into nothingness. Then it was gone.

Its passage had galled the earth—a bitter wound—but the nearest trees had not been touched.

“Mane and Tail, Ringthane!” breathed Mahrtiir. Already he sounded steadier, stronger. Even withered,
amanibhavam
retained the potency to restore him. “That was well done. Another moment, and our quest would have failed. No tale of Forestals told among the Ramen makes mention of forbearance. They do not countenance the ravage of their woods.”

Trembling, Linden extinguished her flames. Well done? she wondered. Really? Mahrtiir was right, of course. She could not expect any Forestal to grant her desires after she had damaged his trees. But now she had no idea how she and her companion would return to their proper time. Too tired to think clearly, she had assumed that she would use the same
caesure
. An impossible idea. It had brought her to the brink of a terrible mistake. Yet the result was that she and Mahrtiir were trapped.