White Gold Wielder (64 page)

He lay near the center of a large cave with rough walls and a ragged ceiling. The air smelled thickly of rocklight, which burned from special stones set into the walls at careless intervals. The cave was crudely oval in shape: it narrowed at both ends to dark, unattainable tunnels. The odor of the rocklight was tinged with a scent of ancient moldering—rot so old that it had become almost clean again.

It came from a large, high mound nearby. The heap looked like a barrow, as if something revered had been buried there. But it was composed entirely of bones. Thousands of skeletons piled in one place. Most of them had been set there so long ago that they had decomposed to fine gray dust, no longer of interest even to maggots. But the top of the mound was more recent. None of the skeletons were whole: all had been either broken in death or dismembered afterward. Even the newer ones had been cleaned of flesh. However, a few of them still oozed from the marrow.

They were not human bones, or ur-vile. Cavewight, then. Apparently the creatures that the First and Pitchwife had slain had already been added to the mound.

The murmuring went on without let, as if dozens or hundreds of predators were growling to themselves. He felt that sound like the touch of panic in his vitals. Some name was being repeated continuously, whispered or muttered at every pitch and pace; but he could not distinguish it. Heat and sound and rocklight squeezed sweat from the sore bones of his head.

He was surrounded by Cavewights. Most of them squatted near the walls, their knees jutting at their ears, their hot eyes glowing. Others appeared to be dancing about the mound, stork-like and graceless on their long legs. Their hands attacked the air like spades. They all murmured and murmured, incantatory and hypnotic. He had no idea what they were saying, or how much longer he would be lulled, snared.

He was afraid—so afraid that his fear became a kind of lucidity. Not afraid for himself. He had met that particular terror in the Banefire and burned it to purity. These creatures were only Cavewights, the weak-minded and malleable children of Mount Thunder’s gutrock, and Lord Foul had mastered them long ago. They could hardly hope to come between Covenant and the Despiser. Though the way to it was hard, his purpose was safe.

But in a small clear space against one wall sat Linden. He saw her with the precision of his fear. Her right shoulder leaned on the stone. With her arms, she hugged her knees to her chest like a lorn child. Her head was bowed; her hair had fallen forward, hiding her face. But the side of her neck was bare. It gleamed, pale and vulnerable, in the red-orange illumination.

Black against the pallor, dried blood marked her skin. It led in a crusted trail from behind her left ear down to the collar of her shirt.

She, too—! A tremor of grief went through him. She, too, had been made to match the physical condition of the body she had left behind in the woods behind Haven Farm.

They did not have much time left.

He would have cried out, if he had possessed the strength. Not much time—and to spend it like this! He wanted to hold her in his arms, make her understand that he loved her—that no death or risk of ruin could desecrate what she meant to him. Lena had once tried to comfort him by singing,
The soul in which the flower grows survives
. He wanted—

But perhaps the blow she had been struck had been harder than either of them had realized, and she also was about to die. Killed like Seadreamer because she had tried to save him. And even if she did not die, she would believe that she had lost him to despair. In Andelain, Elena had told him to
Care for her. So that in the end she may heal us all
. He had failed at that as at so many other things.

Linden
. He tried to say her name, but no sound came. A spasm of remorse twisted his face, made his bruises throb. Ignoring the pain, the fathomless ache of his exhaustion, he levered his elbows under him and strove to pry his weakness off the stone.

A rough kick pitched him onto his back, closer to the mound of bones. Gasping, he looked up into the leer of a Cavewight.

“Be still, accursed!” the creature spat. “Punishment comes. Punishment and apocalypse! Do not hasten it.”

Cavorting grotesquely on his gangly limbs, he resumed his muttering and danced away.

Covenant wrestled for breath and squirmed onto his side to look toward Linden again.

She was facing him now, had turned toward him when the Cavewight spoke. Her visage was empty of blood, of hope. The gaze she cast at him was stark with abuse and dumb pleading. Her hands clasped each other uselessly. Her eyes seemed as dark and hollow as wounds.

She must have looked like that when she was a child, locked in the attic with her father while he died.

He fought for his voice, croaked her name through the manifold invocation of the Cavewights. But she did not appear to hear him. Slowly she dropped her head, lowered her gaze to the failure of her hands.

He could not go to her. He hardly knew where he might find enough strength to stand. And the Cavewights would not let him move. He had no way to combat them except with his ring—the wild magic he could not use. He and she were prisoners completely. And there was no name that either of them might call upon for rescue.

No name except the Despiser’s.

Covenant hoped like madness that Lord Foul would act quickly.

But perhaps Lord Foul would not act. Perhaps he permitted the Cavewights to work their will, hoping that Covenant would once again be forced to power. Perhaps he did not understand—was incapable of understanding—the certainty of Covenant’s refusal.

The throaty chant of the Cavewights was changing: the incessant various repetitions were shifting toward unison. One creature started a slightly sharper inflection, a more specific cadence; and his immediate neighbors fell into rhythm with him. Cavewight by Cavewight, the unison spread until the invoked name took Covenant by surprise, jolted alarm through him.

He knew that name.

Drool Rockworm
.

More than three millennia ago. Drool Rockworm of the Cavewights had recovered the lost Staff of Law—and had conceived a desire to rule the Earth. But he had been too unskilled in lore to master what he had found. In seduction or folly, he had turned to the Despiser for knowledge. And Lord Foul had used the Cavewight for his own purposes.

Drool Rockworm
.

First he had persuaded Drool to summon Covenant, luring the Cavewight with promises of white gold. Then he had snatched Covenant away, sent the Unbeliever instead to the Council of Lords. And the Lords had responded by challenging Drool’s power. Sneaking into the Wightwarrens, they had taken the Staff from him, had called down the Fire-Lions of Mount Thunder to destroy him.

Thus armed, they had thought themselves victorious. But they had only played into the Despiser’s hands. They had rid him of Drool, thereby giving him access to the terrible bane he desired—the Illearth Stone. And from that time forward the Cavewights had been forced to serve him like puppets.

Drool Rockworm
.

The name vibrated like acid in the air. The rocklight throbbed. All the Cavewights held themselves still. Their laval eyes focused on what they were invoking.

Beside Covenant, an eerie glow began to leak from the mound of bones. Sick red flames licked like swampfire around the pile. Fragments of bone seemed to waver and melt as if they were passing into hallucination.

Suddenly he no longer believed that these creatures served the Despiser.

Drool Rockworm!

“Covenant.” Linden’s voice reached between the beats of the name. She had come out of herself, drawn by what the Cavewights were doing. “There’s something—” Fiercely she struggled to master her despair. “They’re bringing it to life.”

Covenant winced in dismay. But he did not doubt her. The Law that protected the living had been broken. Any horror might now be summoned past the barrier of death, given the will—and the power. The mound squirmed with fires and gleamings like a monstrous cocoon, decay and dust in the throes of birth.

Then one of the Cavewights moved. He strode across the chant toward Covenant. “Rise, accursed,” he demanded. His eyes were as feral as his grin. “Rise for blood and torment.”

Covenant stared whitely up at him, did not obey.

“Rise!” the creature raged. With one spatulate hand, he grabbed Covenant’s arm and nearly dislocated it yanking him to his feet.

Covenant bit down panic and pain. “You’re going to regret this!” He had to shout to make himself heard. The invocation pounded in his chest. “Foul wants me! Do you think you can defy him and get away with it?”

“Ha!” barked the Cavewight as if he were close to ecstasy. “We are too wily! He does not know us. We have learned. Learned. Him so wise.” For an instant, all the voices shared his contempt.
Drool Rockworm!
“He is blind. Believes we have not found you.” The creature spat wildness instead of laughter.

Then he wrenched Covenant around to face the mound. Linden groaned Covenant’s name. He heard a thud as one of the creatures silenced her. His arm was gripped by fingers that knew how to break stone.

Flames began to writhe like ghouls across the mound, casting anguish toward the roof of the cave.

“Witness!” the Cavewight grated. “The Wightbarrow!”

The invocation took on a timbre of lust.

“We have served and served. Forever we have served. Chattel. Fodder. Sacrifice. And no reward. Do this. Do that Dig. Run. Die. No reward. None!

“Now he pays. Punishment and
apocalypse
!”

The Cavewights’ virulence staggered Covenant. The muscles of his arm were being crushed. But he shut his mind to everything else. Groping for a way to save Linden’s life if not his own, he protested hoarsely, “How? He’s the Despiser! He’ll tear your hearts out!”

But the Cavewights were beyond fear. “Witness!” Covenant’s captor repeated. “See it. Fire. Life! The Wightbarrow of Drool Rockworm!”

Drool Rockworm
, hammered the chant.
Drool Rockworm!

“From the dead. We have learned. Bloodshed. Sunbane. Law broken. The blood of the accursed!” He almost capered in his exultation. “You!”

His free hand clasped a long spike of rock like a dagger.

In litany, he shouted, “Blood brings power! Power brings life! Drool Rockworm rises! Drool takes ring! Ring crushes Despiser! Cavewights are free! Punishment and apocalypse!”

Brandishing his spike at Covenant’s face, he added, “Soon. You are the accursed. Bringer of ruin. Your blood shed upon the Wightbarrow.” The side of the spike stroked Covenant’s stiff cheek. “Soon.”

Covenant heard Linden pant as she struggled for breath, “Bones—” He winced, expecting her to be hit again. But still she tried to make him hear her. “The bones—”

Her voice was congested with effort and intention; but he had no idea what she meant.

The flames worming through the mound made his skin crawl; yet he could not look away from them. Perhaps everything he had decided or understood was false, Foul-begotten. Perhaps the Banefire had been too essentially corrupt to give him any kind of trustworthy
caamora
. How could he tell? He could not see.

The pain in his arm made his head reel. The rocklight seemed to yell orange-red heat, stoking the fire in the Wightbarrow. He had lost the First and Pitchwife and Vain, had lost Andelain itself. Now he was about to lose his life and Linden and everything because there was no middle ground, no wild magic without ruin. She was whispering his name, but it no longer made any difference.

His balance drifted, and he found himself staring emptily at the stone on which he barely stood. It was the only part of the floor that had been purposefully shaped. The Cavewight had placed him in the center of a round depression like a basin. Its shallow sides had been rubbed smooth and polished until they reflected rocklight around him like burnished metal.

From between his feet, a narrow trough led straight under the mound. A trough to channel his blood toward what remained of Drool Rockworm’s bones. Fire rose hungrily toward the ceiling.

Abruptly the invocation was cut off, slashed out of the air as if by the stroke of a blade. Its sudden cessation seemed to leave him deaf. He jerked up his head.

The spike was poised to strike like a fang at the middle of his chest. He planted his feet, braced himself to try to twist away, make one last effort for life.

But the blow did not fall. The Cavewight was not looking at him. None of the creatures were looking at him. Around the cave, they surged upright in outrage and fear.

An instant later, he recovered his hearing as the clamor of battle resounded past the Wightbarrow.

Into the cave charged the First and Pitchwife.

They were alone; but they attacked as if they were as potent as an army.

Surprise made them momentarily irresistible. She was battered and weary; but her longsword flashed in her hands like red lightning, hit with the force of thunder. The Cavewights went down before her like wheat in a storm. Pitchwife followed at her back with a battle-axe in each hand and fought as if he were not wounded and scarcely able to draw breath. Bright galls scored her sark where the mail had deflected blows: his dripped blood where cudgels had crushed it into his flesh. Exertion sheened their faces and limbs.

The Cavewights moiled against them in frenzy.

The creatures were too frantic to fight effectively. They hampered each other, blocked their own efforts. The First and Pitchwife were halfway to the Wightbarrow before the sheer pressure of numbers stopped them.

But there the impetus of combat shifted. Desperation rallied the Cavewights. And the widening of the cave allowed the Giants to be surrounded, assailed from all sides. Their attempted rescue was valiant and doomed. In moments, they would be overwhelmed.

Sensing their opportunity, the creatures became less wild. Their mountain-delving strength dealt out blows which forced the First and Pitchwife back-to-back, drove them to fight defensively, for bare survival.

Covenant’s captor faced him again. The Cavewight’s laval eyes burned flame and fury. Rocklight gleamed on his spike as he cocked his arm to stab out Covenant’s life.