White Gold Wielder (27 page)

Eventually even Pitchwife was gone. The staggering downpour dragged every vestige of light and vision out of the air. His hands numb with leprosy and cold, Covenant could only be sure of the rope by clamping it under his elbow, leaning his weight on it. Long after he had begun to believe that the ordeal should be given up, that the company should find some shelter and simply huddle there while the storm lasted, the line went on drawing him forward.

But then, as suddenly as the summons which had changed his life, a pressure jerked back on the rope, hauled it to a stop; and he nearly fell. While he stumbled for balance, the line went slack.

Before he recovered, something heavy blundered against him, knocked him into the mire.

The storm had a strange timbre, as if people were shouting around him.

Almost at once, huge hands took hold of him, heaved him to his feet. A Giant: Pitchwife. He was pushed a few steps toward the rear of the formation, then gripped to a halt.

The rain was at his back. He saw three people in front of him. They all looked like Cail.

One of them caught his arm, put a mouth to his ear. Cail’s voice reached him dimly through the roar.

“Here are Durris and Fole of the
Haruchai!
They have come with others of our people to oppose the Clave!”

Rain pounded at Covenant; wind reeled through him. “Where’s Sunder?” he cried. “Where’s Hollian?”

Blurred in the fury of the torrents, two more figures became discernible. One of them seemed to hold out an object toward Covenant.

From it, a white light sprang through the storm, piercing the darkness. Incandescence shone from a clear gem which had been forged into a long dagger, at the cross where blade and hilt came together. Its heat sizzled the rain; but the light itself burned as if no rain could touch it

The
krill
of Loric.

It illuminated all the faces around Covenant: Cail and his kinfolk, Durris and Fole; Mistweave flanked by Vain and Findail; Pitchwife; the First and Honninscrave crowding forward with Linden between them. And the two people who had brought the
krill
.

Sunder, son of Nassic, Graveler from Mithil Stonedown.

Hollian Amith-daughter, eh-Brand.

The torrents came down like thunder. The rain was full of voices Covenant could not hear. Sunder’s lips moved, made no sound. Hollian blinked at the water streaming her face as if she did not know whether to laugh or weep. Covenant wanted to go to them, throw his arms around them in sheer relief that they were alive; but the light of the
krill
held him back. He did not know what it meant. The venom in his forearm ached to take hold of it and burn.

Cail spoke directly into Covenant’s ear again. “The Graveler asks if your quest has succeeded!”

At that, Covenant covered his face, pressed the ring’s imminent heat against the bones of his skull. The rain was too much for him; suppressed weeping knotted his chest. He had been so eager to find Sunder and Hollian safe that he had never considered what the ruin of the quest would mean to them.

The First’s hearing was keener than his. Sunder’s query had reached her. She focused her voice to answer him through the roar. “The quest has failed!” The words were raw with strain. “Cable Seadreamer is slain! We have come seeking another hope!”

The full shout of Sunder’s reply was barely audible. “You will find none here!”

Then the light receded: the Graveler had turned away. Holding the
krill
high to guide the company, he moved off into the storm.

Covenant dropped his hands like a cry he could not utter.

For an instant, no one followed Sunder. Silhouetted against the
krill’s
shining, Hollian stood before Covenant and Linden. He hardly saw what she was doing as she came to him, gave him a tight hug of welcome. Before he was able to respond, she left him to embrace Linden.

Yet her brief gesture helped him pull himself together. It felt like an act of forgiveness—or an affirmation that his return and Linden’s were more important than hope. When Cail urged him after the light, he pushed his numb limbs into motion.

They were in a low place between hills. Gathered water reached almost to his knees. But its current ran in the direction he was going, and Cail bore him up. The
Haruchai
seemed more certain than ever. It must have been the mental communion of his people which had drawn Durris and Fole, with the Stonedownors behind them, toward the company. And now Cail was no longer alone. Mud and streams and rain could not make him miss his footing. He supported Covenant like a figure of granite.

Covenant had lost all sense of his companions; but he was not concerned. He trusted the other
Haruchai
as he trusted Cail. Directing his attention to the struggle for movement, he followed Sunder as quickly as his imbalance and fatigue allowed.

The way seemed long and harsh in the clutches of the storm. At last, however, be and Cail neared an impression of rock and saw Sunder’s
krill
-light reflecting wetly off the edges of a wide entrance to a cave. Sunder went directly in, used the argent heat of the
krill
to set a ready pile of wood afire. Then he rewrapped the blade and tucked it away within his leather jerkin.

The flames were dimmer than the
krill
, but they spread illumination around a larger area, revealing bundles of wood and bedding stacked against the walls. The Stonedownors and
Haruchai
had already established a camp here.

The cave was high but shallow, hardly more than a depression in the side of a hill. The angle of the ceiling’s overhang let rainwater run inward and drizzle to the floor, with the result that the cave was damp and the fire, not easily kept alight. But even that relative shelter was a balm to Covenant’s battered nerves. He stood over the flames and tried to rub the dead chill out of his skin, watching Sunder while the company arrived to join him.

Durris brought the four Giants. Fole guided Linden as if he had already arrogated to himself Mistweave’s chosen place at her side. Vain and Findail came of their own accord, though they did not move far enough into the cave to avoid the lashing rain. And Hollian was accompanied by Harn, the
Haruchai
who had taken the eh-Brand under his care in the days when Covenant had rescued them from the hold of Revelstone and the Banefire.

Covenant stared at him. When Sunder and Hollian had left Seareach to begin their mission against the Clave, Harn had gone with them. But not alone: they had also been accompanied by Stell, the
Haruchai
who had watched over Sunder.

Where was Stell?

No, more than that; worse than that. Where were the men and women of the Land, the villagers Sunder and Hollian had gone to muster? And where were the rest of the
Haruchai
? After the heinous slaughter which the Clave had wrought upon their people, why had only Durris and Fole been sent to give battle?

You will find none here
.

Had the na-Mhoram already won?

Gaping at Sunder across the guttering fire, Covenant moved his jaw, but no words came. In the cover of the cave, the storm was muffled but incessant—fierce and hungry as a great beast. And Sunder was changed. In spite of all the blood his role as the Graveler of Mithil Stonedown had forced him to shed, he had never looked like a man who knew how to kill. But he did now.

When Covenant had first met him, the Stonedownor’s youthful features had been strangely confused and conflicted by the unresolved demands of his duty. His father had taught him that the world was not what the Riders claimed it to be—a punishment for human offense—and so he had never learned to accept or forgive the acts which the rule of the Clave and the stricture of the Sunbane required him to commit. Unacknowledged revulsion had marked his forehead; his eyes had been worn dull by accumulated remorse; his teeth had ground together, chewing the bitter gristle of his irreconciliation. But now he appeared as honed and whetted as the poniard he had once used to take the lives of the people he loved. His eyes gleamed like daggers in the firelight. And all his movements were tense with coiled anger—a savage and baffled rage that he could not utter.

His visage held no welcome. The First had told him that the quest had failed. Yet his manner suggested that his tautness was not directed at the Unbeliever—that even bare relief and pleasure had become impossible to articulate.

In dismay, Covenant looked to Hollian for an explanation. The eh-Brand also showed the marks of her recent life. Her leather shift was tattered in places, poorly mended. Her arms and legs exposed the thinness of scant rations and constant danger. Yet she formed a particular contrast to Sunder.

They were both of sturdy Stonedownor stock, dark-haired and short, though she was younger than he. But her background had been entirely different than his. Until the shock which had cost her her home in Crystal Stonedown—the crisis of the Rider’s demand for her life, and of her rescue by Covenant, Linden, and Sunder—she had been the most prized member of her community. As an eh-Brand, able to foretell the phases of the Sunbane, she had given her people a precious advantage. Her past had contained little of the self-doubt and bereavement which had filled Sunder’s days. And that difference was more striking now. She was luminous rather than angry—as warm of welcome as he was rigid. If the glances she cast at the Graveler had not been so full of endearment, Covenant might have thought that the two Stonedownors had become strangers to each other.

But the black hair that flew like raven wings about her shoulders when she moved had not changed. It still gave her an aspect of fatality, a suggestion of doom.

In shame, Covenant found that he did not know what to say to her either. She and Sunder were too vivid to him; they mattered too much.
You will find none here
. With a perception as acute as intuition, he saw that they were not at all strangers to each other. Sunder was so tight and bitter precisely because of the way Hollian glowed; and her luminescence came from the same root as his pain. But that insight did not give Covenant any words he could bear to say.

Where was Stell?

Where were the people of the Land? And the
Haruchai
?

And what had happened to the Stonedownors?

The First tried to bridge the awkward silence with Giantish courtesy. In the past, the role of spokesman in such situations had belonged to Honninscrave; but he had lost heart for it.

“Stone and Sea!” she began. “It gladdens me to greet you again, Sunder Graveler and Hollian eh-Brand. When we parted, I hardly dared dream that we would meet again. It is—”

Linden’s abrupt whisper stopped the First. She had been staring intensely at Hollian; and her exclamation stilled the gathering, bore clearly through the thick barrage of the rain.

“Covenant. She’s pregnant.”

Oh my God.

Hollian’s slim shape showed nothing. But hardly ninety days had passed since the Stonedownors had left Seareach. Linden’s assertion carried instant conviction; her percipience would not be mistaken about such a thing.

The sudden weight of understanding forced him to the floor. His legs refused to support the revelation.
Pregnant
.

That was why Hollian glowed and Sunder raged. She was glad of it because she loved him. And because he loved her, he was appalled. The quest for the One Tree had failed. The purpose for which Covenant had sent the Stonedownors back to the Upper Land had failed. And Sunder had already been compelled to kill one wife and child. He had nowhere left to turn.

“Oh, Sunder.” Covenant was not certain that he spoke aloud. Eyes streaming, he bowed his head. It should have been covered with ashes and execration. “Forgive me. I’m so sorry.”

“Is the fault yours then that the quest has failed?” asked Sunder. He sounded as severe as hate. “Have you brought us to this pass, that my own failure has opened the last door of doom?”

Yes, Covenant replied—aloud or silent, it made no difference.

“Then hear me, ur-Lord.” Sunder’s voice came closer. Now it was occluded with grief. “Unbeliever and white gold wielder. Illender and Prover of Life.” His hands gripped Covenant’s shoulders. “Hear me.”

Covenant looked up, fighting for self-control. The Graveler crouched before him. Sunder’s eyes were blurred; beads of wet firelight coursed his hard jaws.

“When first you persuaded me from my home and duty in Mithil Stonedown,” he said thickly, “I demanded of you that you should not betray me. You impelled me on a mad search of the desert sun for my friend Marid, whom you could not save—and you refused me the use of my blood to aid you—and you required of me that I eat
aliantha
which I knew to be poison—and so I beseeched of you something greater than fidelity. I pleaded of you meaning for my life—and for the death of Nassic my father. And still you were not done, for you wrested Hollian Amith-daughter from her peril in Crystal Stonedown as if it were your desire that I should love her. And when we fell together into the hands of the Clave, you redeemed us from that hold, restored our lives.

“And still you were not done. When you had taught us to behold the Clave’s evil, you turned your back on that crime, though it cried out for retribution in the face of all the Land. There you betrayed me, ur-Lord. The meaning of which I was in such need you set aside. In its place, you gave me only a task that surpassed my strength.”

That was true. In blood-loss and folly and passion, Covenant had made himself responsible for the truth he had required Sunder to accept. And then he had failed. What was that, if not betrayal? Sunder’s accusations made him bleed rue and tears.

But Sunder also was not done. “Therefore,” he went on hoarsely, “it is my right that you should hear me. Ur-Lord and Unbeliever, white gold wielder,” he said as if he were addressing the hot streaks that stained Covenant’s face, “you have betrayed me—and I am glad that you have come. Though you come without hope, you are the one hope that I have known. You have it in your hands to create or deny whatever truth you will, and I desire to serve you. While you remain, I will accept neither despair nor doom. There is neither betrayal nor failure while you endure to me. And if the truth you teach must be lost at last, I will be consoled that my love and I were not asked to bear that loss alone.