White Gold Wielder (3 page)

“Leaving Seadreamer to the tiller and the management of the boom, I bid him run in as nigh to Salttooth as he dared. All prentices knew such a course to be folly, for the turning would then bear us beyond our way. But I silenced my brother’s protests and went to Foamkite’s prow. Still preserving my secret, hiding my hands from his sight, I freed the anchor and readied its line.”

Abruptly the Master faltered, fell still. One fist lay knotted in his lap; the other twisted roughly into his beard, tugging it for courage. But after a moment, he drew a deep breath, then let the air hiss away through his teeth. He was a Giant and could not leave his story unfinished.

“Such was Seadreamer’s skill that we passed hastening within an arm’s span of Salttooth, though the wind heeled us sharply from the rock and any sideslip might have done Foamkite great harm. But his hand upon the wind was sure, and an instant later I enacted my intent. As we sped, I arose and cast the anchor upon the rock, snagging us there. Then I lashed the line.

“This was my thought for a turning too swift to be matched by any other
tyrscull
, that our speed and the anchor and Salttooth should do the labor for us—though I was uncertain how the anchor might be unsnared when the turn was done. But I had not told Seadreamer my purpose.” His voice had become a low rasp of bitterness in his throat. “He was fixed upon the need to pass Salttooth without mishap, and my act surprised him entirely. He half gained his feet, half started toward me as if I had gone mad. Then the line sprang taut, and Foamkite came about with a violence which might have snapped the mast from its holes.”

Again he stopped. The muscles of his shoulders bunched. When he resumed, he spoke so softly that Covenant barely heard him.

“Any child might have informed me what would transpire, but I had given no consideration to it. The boom wrenched across the stem of Foamkite with a force to sliver granite. And Seadreamer my brother had risen into its path.

“In that wind and my folly, I would not have known that he had fallen, had he not cried out as he was struck. But at his cry I turned to see him flung into the sea.

“Ah, my brother!” A groan twisted his voice. “I dove for him, but he would have been lost had I not found the path of his blood in the water and followed it. Senseless he hung in my arms as I bore him to the surface.

“With the sea thus wind-slashed, I saw little of his injury but blood until I had borne him to Foamkite and wrested him aboard. But there his wound seemed so great that I believed his eyes had been crushed in his head, and for a time I became as mad as my intent had been. To this day, I know nothing of our return to the docks of Home. I did not regain myself until a healer spoke to me, compelling me to hear that my brother had not been blinded. Had the boom itself struck him, mayhap he would have been slain outright. But the impact was borne by a cable along the boom, taking him below the eyes and softening the blow somewhat.”

Once more he fell still. His hands covered his face as if to stanch the flow of blood he remembered. Covenant watched him mutely. He had no courage for such stories, could not bear to have them thrust upon him. But Honninscrave was a Giant and a friend; and since the days of Foamfollower Covenant had not been able to close his heart. Though he was helpless and aggrieved, he remained silent and let Honninscrave do what he willed.

After a moment, the Master dropped his hands. Drawing a breath like a sigh, he said, “It is not the way of Giants to punish such folly as mine, though I would have found comfort in the justice of punishment. And Cable Seadreamer was a Giant among Giants. He did not blame the carelessness which marked his life forever.” Then his tone stiffened. “But I do not forget. The fault is mine. Though I too am a Giant in my way, my ears have not found the joy to hear this story. And I have thought often that perhaps my fault is greater than it has appeared. The Earth-Sight is a mystery. None can say why it chooses one Giant rather than another. Perhaps it befell my brother because of some lingering hurt or alteration done him by the puissance of that blow. Even in their youth, Giants are not easily stricken senseless.”

Suddenly Honninscrave looked upward; and his gaze struck foreboding into Covenant’s maimed empathy. His eyes under his heavy brows were fierce with extremity, and the new-cut lines around them were as intense as scars. “Therefore have I come to you,” he said slowly, as if he could not see Covenant quailing. “I desire a restitution which is not within my power to perform. My fault must be assuaged.

“It is the custom of our people to give our dead to the sea. But Cable Seadreamer my brother has met his end in horror, and it will not release him. He is like the Dead of The Grieve, damned to his anguish. If his spirit is not given its
caamora
”—for an instant, his voice broke—“he will haunt me while one stone of the Arch of Time remains standing upon another.”

Then his gaze fell to the floor. “Yet there is no fire in all the world that I can raise to give him surcease. He is a Giant. Even in death, he is immune to flame.”

At that, Covenant understood; and all his dreads came together in a rush: the apprehension which had crouched in him since Honninscrave had first said,
If you do not release him
; the terror of his doom, to destroy the Earth himself or to surrender it for destruction by ceding his ring to Lord Foul. The Despiser had said,
The ill that you deem most terrible is upon you. Of your own volition you will give the white gold into my hand
. Either that or bring down the Arch of Time. There was no way out. He was beaten. Because he had kept the truth from Linden, seeking to deny it. And Honninscrave asked—!

“You want me to cremate him?” Clenched fear made him harsh. “With my ring? Are you out of your mind?”

Honninscrave winced. “The Dead of The Grieve—” he began.

“No!” Covenant retorted. He had walked into a bonfire to save them from their reiterated hell; but risks like that were too great for him now. He had already caused too much death. “After I sink the ship, I won’t be able to
stop
!”

For a moment, even the sounds of the sea fell still, shocked by his vehemence. The Giantship seemed to be losing headway. The light of the lantern flickered as if it were going out. Perhaps there were shouts like muffled lamentations in the distance. Covenant could not be sure. His senses were condemned to the surface of what they perceived. The rest of the
dromond
was hidden from him.

If the Master heard anything, he did not react to it. His head remained bowed. Moving heavily, like a man hurt in every limb, he climbed to his feet. Though the hammock hung high above the floor, he stood head and shoulders over the Unbeliever; and still he did not meet Covenant’s glare. The lantern was below and behind him as he took one step closer. His face was shadowed, dark and fatal.

In a wan and husky voice, he said, “Yes, Giantfriend.” The epithet held a tinge of sarcasm. “I am gone from my mind. You are the ring-wielder, as the
Elohim
have said. Your power threatens the Earth. What import has the anguish of one or two Giants in such a plight? Forgive me.”

Then Covenant wanted to cry out in earnest, torn like dead Kevin Landwaster between love and defeat. But loud feet had come running down the companionway outside his cabin, had already reached his door. The door sprang open without any protest from Cail. A crewmember thrust her head past the threshold.

“Master, you must come.” Her voice was tight with alarm. “We are beset by
Nicor
.”

Honninscrave left the cabin slowly, like a man responding by habit, unconscious of the urgency of the summons. Perhaps he no longer understood what was happening around him. Yet he did respond to the call of his ship.

When the Master reached the companionway, Cail closed the door behind him. The
Haruchai
seemed to know instinctively that Covenant would not follow Honninscrave.

Nicor!
Covenant thought, and his heart labored. Those tremendous serpentlike sea-beasts were said to be the offspring of the Worm of the World’s End. Starfare’s Gem had passed through a region crowded with them near the Isle of the One Tree. They had been indifferent to the
dromond
then. But now? With the Isle gone and the Worm restive?

And what could one stone vessel do against so many of those prodigious creatures? What could Honninscrave do?

Yet the Unbeliever did not leave his hammock. He stared at the dark ceiling and did not move. He was beaten, defeated. He dared not take the risk of confronting the Giantship’s peril. If Linden had not intervened at the One Tree, he would already have become another Kevin, enacting a Ritual of Desecration to surpass every other evil. The threat of the
Nicor
paled beside the danger he himself represented.

Deliberately he sought to retreat into himself. He did not want to know what transpired outside his cabin. How could he endure the knowledge? He had said,
I’m sick of guilt
—but such protests had no meaning. His very blood had been corrupted by venom and culpability. Only the powerless were truly innocent, and he was not powerless. He was not even honest. The selfishness of his love had brought all this to pass.

Yet the lives at stake were the lives of his friends, and he could not close himself to the
dromond
’s jeopardy. Starfare’s Gem rolled slightly in the water as if it had lost all headway. A period of shouts and running had followed Honninscrave’s departure, but now the Giantship was silent. With Linden’s senses, he would have been able to read what was happening through the stone itself; but he was blind and bereft, cut off from the essential spirit of the world. His numb hands clutched the edges of the hammock.

Time passed. He was a coward, and his dreads swarmed darkly about him as if they were born in the shadows above his head. He gripped himself with thoughts of ruin, held himself still with curses. But Honninscrave’s face kept coming back to him: the beard like a growth of pain from his cheeks, the massive brow knuckled with misery, the hands straining. Covenant’s friend. Like Foamfollower.
My brother has met his end in horror
. It was intolerable that such needs had to be refused. And now the
Nicor
—!

Even a beaten man could still feel pain. Roughly he pulled himself into a sitting position. His voice was a croak of coercion and fear as he called out, “Cail!”

The door opened promptly, and Cail entered the cabin.

The healed wound of a Courser-spur marked his left arm from shoulder to elbow like the outward sign of his fidelity; but his visage remained as impassive as ever. “Ur-Lord?” he asked flatly. His dispassionate tone gave no hint that he was the last
Haruchai
left in Covenant’s service.

Covenant stifled a groan. “What the hell’s going on out there?”

In response, Cail’s eyes shifted fractionally. But still his voice held no inflection. “I know not.”

Until the previous night, when Brinn had left the quest to take up his role as
ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol
, Cail had never been alone in his chosen duty; and the mental interconnection of his people had kept him aware of what took place around him. But now he was alone. Brinn’s defeat of the former Guardian of the One Tree had been a great victory for him personally, and for the
Haruchai
as a people; but it left Cail isolated in a way that no one who had not experienced such mind-sharing could measure. His blunt
I know not
silenced Covenant like an admission of frailty.

Cail—Covenant tried to say. He did not want to leave the
Haruchai
in that loneliness. But Brinn had said,
Cail will accept my place in your service until the word of the Bloodguard Bannor has been carried to its end
. And no appeal or protest would sway Cail from the path Brinn had marked out for him. Covenant remembered Bannor too poignantly to believe that the
Haruchai
would ever judge themselves by any standards but their own.

Yet his distress remained. Even lepers and murderers were not immune to hurt. He fought down the thickness in his throat and said, “I want my old clothes. They’re in her cabin.”

Cail nodded as if he saw nothing strange in the request. As he left, he closed the door quietly after him.

Covenant lay back again and clenched his teeth. He did not want those clothes, did not want to return to the hungry and unassuaged life he had lived before he had found Linden’s love. But how else could he leave his cabin? Those loathed and necessary garments represented the only honesty left to him. Any other apparel would be a lie.

However, when Cail returned he was not alone. Pitchwife entered the chamber ahead of him; and at once Covenant forgot the bundle Cail bore. The deformity which bent Pitchwife’s spine, hunching his back and crippling his chest, made him unnaturally short for a Giant: his head did not reach the level of the hammock. But the irrepressibility of his twisted face gave him stature. He was alight with excitement as he limped forward to greet Covenant.

“Have I not said that she is well Chosen?” he began without preamble. “Never doubt it, Giantfriend! Mayhap this is but one wonder among many, for surely our voyage has been rife with marvels. Yet I do not dream to see it surpassed. Stone and Sea, Giantfriend! She has taught me to hope again.”

Covenant stared in response, stung by an inchoate apprehension. What new role had Linden taken upon herself, when he still had not told her the truth?

Pitchwife’s eyes softened. “But you do not comprehend—as how should you, who have not seen the sea loom with
Nicor
under the stars, not heard the Chosen sing them to peace.”

Still Covenant did not speak. He had no words for the complex admixture of his pride and relief and bitter loss. The woman he loved had saved the Giantship, And he, who had once defeated the Despiser in direct combat—he no longer signified.

Watching Covenant’s face, Pitchwife sighed to himself. In a more subdued manner, he went on, “It was an act worthy of long telling, but I will briefen it. You have heard that the Giants are able to summon
Nicor
upon occasion. Such a summons we wrought on your behalf, when last the venom-sickness of the Raver possessed you.” Covenant had no memory of the situation. He had been near death in delirium at the time. But he had been told about it. “Yet to the
Nicor
we do not speak. They lie beyond our gift of tongues. The sounds which may summon them we have learned from our generations upon the sea. But those sounds we make blindly, uncertain of their meaning. And a Giantship which enters a sea of
Nicor
in their wrath has scant need of summons.”