White Gold Wielder (10 page)

For a time, he was conscious only of the current of his power, squeezing heat into the stone but not breaking it, not tearing the fragile granite into rubble. Then suddenly he realized that he could hear Linden coughing. He looked up. She was invisible to him, hidden by the sides of the pot and the steam pluming thickly into the air. But she was coughing, clearing her lungs more strongly with every spasm. And a moment later one of her hands came out of the vapor to clutch at the lip of the pot.

“It is enough,” Pitchwife was saying. “Giantfriend, it is enough. More heat will harm her.”

Covenant nodded dumbly. With a deliberate effort, he released his power.

At once, he recoiled, struck by the vertigo and fear he had been holding at bay. But Pitchwife put an arm around him, kept him on his feet. As the spinning slowed, he was able to watch Seasauce lift Linden dripping from the water. She still looked as pallid and frail as a battered child; but her eyes were open, and her limbs reacted to the people around her. When Mistweave took her from the cook, she instinctively hugged his neck while he wrapped her in a blanket. Then Cail offered her Pitchwife’s flask of
diamondraught
. Still shivering fiercely, she pulled the flask to her mouth. Gradually two faint spots of color appeared on her cheeks.

Covenant turned away and hid his face against Pitchwife’s malformed chest until his relief eased enough to be borne.

For a few moments while the
diamondraught
spread out within her, Linden remained conscious. Though she was so weak that she tottered, she got down from Mistweave’s arms. With the blanket swaddled around her, she stripped off her wet clothing. Then her gaze hunted for Covenant’s.

He met it as bravely as he could.

“Why—?” she asked huskily. Her voice quivered. “Why couldn’t we help them?”

“It was the Soulbiter.” Her question made his eyes blur. Her heart was still torn by what she had seen, “They were illusions. We were damned if we refused to help. Because of how we would’ve felt about ourselves. And damned if we tried. If we brought one of those things aboard.” The Soulbiter, he thought as he strove to clear his vision. It was aptly named. “The only way out was to break the illusion.”

She nodded faintly. She was fading into the embrace of the
diamondraught
. “It was like watching my parents.” Her eyes closed. “If they were as brave as I wanted them to be.” Her voice trailed toward silence. “If I let myself love them.” Then her knees folded. Mistweave lowered her gently to her pallet, tucked more blankets around her. She was already asleep.

By increments, the galley recovered its accustomed warmth. Seasauce and Hearthcoal labored like titans to produce hot food for the hard-pressed crew. As Honninscrave became more confident of the
dromond’
s stance against the gale, be began sending Giants in small groups for aliment and rest: a steady stream of them passed through the galley. They entered with hoar in their hair and strain in their eyes. The same gaunt look of memory marked every face. But the taste of hot food and the comradely bluster of the cooks solaced them; and when they returned to their tasks they bore themselves with more of their wonted jaunty sea-love and courage. They had survived the Soulbiter. Valiantly they went back to their battle with the bitter grue of the sea.

Covenant remained in the galley for a while to watch over Linden. Her slumber was so profound that he distrusted it instinctively. He expected her to slip back into the tallow pallor of frostbite. She looked so small, frail, and desirable lying there nearly under the feet of the Giants. But her form curled beneath the blankets brought back other memories as well; and eventually he found himself falling from relief and warmth into bereavement. She was the only woman he knew who understood his illness and still accepted him. Already, her stubborn commitment to him—and to the Land—had proved itself stronger than his despair. He yearned to put his arms around her, clasp her to him. But he did not have the right. And in her analystic sleep she did not need the loyalty of his attendance. To escape the ache of what he had lost, he sashed his robe tightly about him and went out into the keening wind.

Instantly he stumbled into the swirl of a snowfall as thick as fog. It flurried against his face. Ice crunched under his boots. When he blinked his eyes clear, he saw pinpricks of light around the decks and up in the rigging. The snow veiled the day so completely that the Giants were compelled to use lanterns. The sight dismayed him. How could Honninscrave keep the Giantship running, headlong and blind in such a sea, when his crew was unable to tend the sails without lamps?

But the Master had no choice. While this wind held, the
dromond
could do nothing but grit its teeth and endure.

The matter was out of Covenant’s hands. Braving the flung snow and the ice-knurled decks with Cail’s support, he went looking for the First.

But when he found her in the cabin she shared with Pitchwife, he discovered that he did not know what to say. She was polishing her longsword, and her slow stroking movements had a quality of deliberate grimness which suggested that the survival of Starfare’s Gem was out of her hands as well. She had broken the spell of the Soulbiter; she could do nothing now. For a long moment, they shared a hard stare of determination and helplessness. Then he turned away.

The snowfall continued. It clung to the air, and the wind whipped it forward, darkening the day as if the sky were clogged with ashes.

It brought with it a slight moderation of the temperature; and the fierceness of the blast was softened somewhat. But in reaction the seas grew more tempestuous. And they no longer followed the thrust of the gale. Other forces bent them out of the grasp of the storm, forcing Starfare’s Gem to slog and claw its way across the grain of the current. Honninscrave shifted course as much as he dared to accommodate the seas; but the wind did not give him much latitude. As a result, the massive vessel pounded forward with a wild gait, a slewing pitch-and-yaw with a sickening pause on the wavetops while the
dromond
hung momentarily out of control, followed by a plunge which buried the stern to its taffrail in black water. Only the unfrightened demeanor of the Giants convinced Covenant that Starfare’s Gem was not about to founder.

Shortly before sunset, the snow lifted, letting a little dirty yellow light lick briefly across the battered seas. At once, Honninscrave sent Giants into the tops to scan the horizons before the illumination failed. They reported no landfall in sight. Then a night blinded by clouds closed down over the Giantship, and Starfare’s Gem went running into the pit of an unreadable dark.

In the galley, Covenant rode the storm with his back braced between one wall and the side of a stove and his gaze fixed on Linden. Blank to the vessel’s staggering, she slept so peacefully that she reminded him of the Land before the onset of the Sunbane. She was a terrain which should never have been violated by bloodshed and hate, a place that deserved better. But the Land had men and women—however few—who had fought and would fight for its healing. And Linden was among them. Yet in the struggle against her own inner Sunbane she had no one but herself.

The night stretched out ahead of Starfare’s Gem. After a meal and a cup of thinned
diamondraught
, Covenant tried to rest. Recumbent on his pallet, he let the seas flop him from side to side and strove to imagine that he was being cradled. Fitfully he dozed his way into true sleep.

But almost at once he began to flounder. He was back in the Sandhold, in Kemper’s Pitch, strapped motionless for torture. He had passed, untouched, through knives and fire; but now he was being hurled down into himself, thrown with the violence of greed toward the hard wall of his fate. Then, however, he had been saved by Hergrom; and now Hergrom was dead. There was no one to save him from the impact that broke everything, filled the air with the splintering thunder of a mountain being riven.

His skin slick with sweat, he awakened—and the sound went on. Starfare’s Gem was shattering. Concussions yelled through the hull. His face pressed the wall. A chaos of crockery and utensils burst across the galley. He tried to thrust himself back; but the ship’s momentum pinned him. Stone screams answered the wind—the sound of masts and spars splitting under the strain. The
dromond
had been driven into some kind of collision.

The next instant, Starfare’s Gem heaved to a halt. Covenant rolled out into the broken litter dancing across the floor. Bruising his knees and hands on the shards, he lurched to his feet. Then a tremendous weight hammered down on the prow of the ship; and the floor tilted as if the Giantship were on its way to the depths. The afterdoor of the galley jumped from its mounts. Until Starfare’s Gem stumbled back into a semblance of trim. Covenant had to cling to Cail and let the
Haruchai
uphold him.

The
dromond
seemed to be settling. Cries of breakage retorted along the wind. Outside the galley, the air was frantic with shouts; but over them all rose Honninscrave’s stentorian howl:

“
Pitchwife
!”

Then Hearthcoal stirred in one corner; Seasauce shrugged the remains of a broken shelf off his back; and Covenant started to move. His first thought was for Linden; but a swift glance showed him that she was safe: still clasped in the sopor of
diamondraught
, she lay on her pallet with Mistweave braced protectively over her. Seeing Covenant’s look, Mistweave gave a quick nod of reassurance. Without hesitation, Covenant surged to the ruptured door and charged out into the teeth of the wind.

He could see nothing: the night was as black as Vain. All the lanterns seemed to have been blown out. When he located a point of light hanging near Shipsheartthew, it showed him only that the wheeldeck had been abandoned. But shouts of command and desperation came from the direction of the prow. Gripping Cail’s shoulder because he could not keep his footing on the ice. Covenant labored forward.

At first, he followed the sound of Honninscrave’s bellow, the First’s iron orders. Then lanterns began to appear as Giants called for light so that they could see their way amid the snarled wreckage which crowded the vessel’s foredeck.

In a prodigious tangle of sundered canvas and gear, pulleys and lines, sprawled several thick stone beams—the two upper spars and a section of the foremast. The great trunk of the mast had been broken in half. One of the fallen spars was intact; the other lay in three jagged pieces. At every step, the Giants kicked through slivers of granite.

Four crewmembers were crumpled in the wreckage.

The lantern-light was so wan, cast so many shadows, that Covenant could not see if any of them were still alive.

The First had her sword in her fist. Wielding it as deftly as a dagger, she cut through shrouds and sails toward the nearest of the fallen Giants. Galewrath and several others attacked the same task with their knives.

Sevinhand started into the wreckage. Honninscrave called him back, sent him instead to muster hands at the pumps. Covenant felt the
dromond
sinking dangerously; but he had no time for that fear. Through the din, he shouted at Cail, “Get Linden!”

“She has consumed much
diamondraught
,” the
Haruchai
replied. “She will not be lightly roused.” His tone was impersonal.

“I don’t care!” snapped Covenant. “We’re going to need her!”

Whirling away, he flung himself in the wake of the First.

She was crouched beside a limp form. As Covenant reached her, she surged erect again. Her eyes echoed the lanterns hotly. Darkness lay along her blade like blood. “Come!” she rasped. “We can do nothing here.” Her sword sliced into the piled canvas with a sound like a cry.

Covenant glanced at the Giant she had left. The crewmember was a young woman he remembered—a grinning sailor with a cheerful determination to be always in the forefront of any work or hazard. He recognized half her face: the rest had been crushed by the broken butt of the mast.

For a moment, the dark came over him. Bereft of light, he blundered into the wreckage and could not fight free. But then he felt venom rise like bile in his throat, felt worms of fire begin to crawl down his forearm; and the shock steadied him. He had nearly let the wild destruction slip. Cursing, he stumbled after the First again.

A stolid shout reported that Galewrath had found another of the injured Giants dead. Covenant forced himself to go faster, as if his haste might keep the other crewmembers alive. But the First had already left behind a third corpse, a man with an arm-long splinter of stone driven through the base of his throat In a fever of suppressed fire, Covenant thrashed onward.

Galewrath and the First converged on the last Giant with Honninscrave and Covenant following closely.

The face of this Giant was less familiar to him. She had never been brought specifically to his notice. But that did not matter. He cared only that she was alive.

Her breath came in hoarse wet heaves: black fluid ran from the corner of her mouth, formed a pool under her head. The bulk of the one unsnapped spar lay across her chest, crushing her to the hard deck. Both her forearms were broken.

The First slapped her longsword into its scabbard. Together, she and Galewrath bent to the beam, tried to lift it. But the huge spar was far too heavy for them. Its ends were trapped: one stretched under the fallen mast; the other was snared in a mountain of gear and canvas.

Galewrath went on straining at the beam as if she did not know how to admit defeat. But the First swung upright, and her voice rang out over the deck, demanding help.

Giants were already on their way. Several of them veered toward the mast, fought to clear it so that they could roll it off the spar; others slashed into the wreckage at the far end with their knives.

There was little time. The life was being squeezed out of the pinned Giant: it panted from her mouth in damp shallow gasps. Her face was intense with pain.

No! Covenant panted in response.
No
. Thrusting himself forward, he cried through the clamor, “Get back! I’m going to break this thing off her!”