White Gold Wielder (7 page)

He had earned the right to be left alone. But Covenant needed an answer. He and Foamfollower had talked about hope. Striving to keep his voice gentle in spite of his own stiff hurt, he asked, “Then why do you go on?”

For a long moment, Honninscrave remained still against the mounting dark as if he had not heard, could not be reached. But at last he said simply, “I am a Giant. The Master of Starfare’s Gem, and sworn to the service of the First of the Search. That is preferable.”

Preferable, Covenant thought with a mute pang. Mhoram might have said something like that. But Findail obviously did not believe it.

Yet Cail nodded as if Honninscrave’s words were ones which even the extravagant
Haruchai
could accept. After all, Cail’s people did not put much faith in hope. They staked themselves on success or failure—and accepted the outcome.

Covenant turned from the darkling sea, left the rail. He had no place among such people. He did not know what was preferable—and could not see enough success anywhere to make failure endurable. The decision he had made in Linden’s name was just another kind of lie. Well, she had earned that pretense of conviction from him. But at some point any leper needed something more than discipline or even stubbornness to keep him alive. And he had too sorely falsified his relationship with her. He did not know what to do.

Around Starfare’s Gem, the Giants had begun to light lanterns against the night. They illuminated the great wheel, the stairs down from the wheeldeck, the doorways to the underdecks and the galley. They hung from the fore- and aftermasts like instances of bravado, both emphasizing and disregarding the gap where the midmast should have been. They were nothing more than small oil lamps under the vast heavens, and yet they made the Giantship beautiful on the face of the deep. After a moment, Covenant found that he could bear to go looking for Linden.

But when he started forward from the wheeldeck, his attention was caught by Vain. The Demondim-spawn stood beyond the direct reach of the lanterns, on the precise spot where his feet had first touched stone after he had come aboard from the Isle of the One Tree; but his black silhouette was distinct against the fading horizon. As always, he remained blank to scrutiny, as though he knew that nothing could touch him.

Yet he had been touched. One iron heel of the old Staff of Law still clamped him where his wrist had been; but that hand dangled useless from the wooden limb which grew like a branch from his elbow. Covenant had no idea why Foamfollower had given him this product of the dark and historically malefic ur-viles. But now he was sure that Linden had been right—that no explanation which did not include the secret of the Demondim-spawn was complete enough to be trusted. When he moved on past Vain, he knew more clearly why he wanted to find her.

He came upon her near the foremast, some distance down the deck from the prow where Findail stood confronting the future like a figurehead. With her were the First, Pitchwife, and another Giant. As Covenant neared them, he recognized Mistweave, whose life Linden had saved at the risk of his own during his most recent venom-relapse. The three Giants greeted him with the same gentle caution Honninscrave and Sevinhand had evinced—the wariness of people who believed they were in the presence of a pain which transcended their own. But Linden seemed almost unconscious of his appearance. In the wan lantern-light, her face looked pallid, nearly haggard; and Covenant thought suddenly that she had not rested at all since before the quest had arrived at the Isle of the One Tree. The energy which had sustained her earlier had eroded away; her manner was febrile with exhaustion. For a moment, he was so conscious of her nearness to collapse that he failed to notice the fact that she, too, was wearing her old clothes—the checked flannel shirt, tough jeans, and sturdy shoes in which she had first entered the Land,

Though her choice was no different than his, the sight of it gave him an unexpected pang. Once again, he had been betrayed by his preterite instinct for hope. Unconsciously he had dreamed that all the shocks and revelations of the past days would not alter her, not impel her to resume their former distance from each other. Fool! he snarled at himself. He could not escape her percipience. Down in his cabin, she had read what he was going to do before he had known it himself.

The First greeted him in a tone made brusque by the sternness of her own emotions; but her words showed that she also was sensitive to his plight. “Thomas Covenant, I believe that you have chosen well.” If anything, the losses of the past days and the darkness of the evening seemed to augment her iron beauty. She was a Swordmain, trained to give battle to the peril of the world. As she spoke, one hand gripped her sword’s hilt as if the blade were a vital part of what she was saying. “I have named you Giantfriend, and I am proud that I did so. Pitchwife my husband is wont to say that it is the meaning of our lives to hope. But I know not how to measure such things. I know only that battle is better than surrender. It is not for me to judge your paths in this matter—yet am I gladdened that you have chosen a path of combat.” In the way of a warrior, she was trying to comfort him.

Her attempt touched him—and frightened him as well, for it suggested that once again he had committed himself to more than he could gauge. But he was given no chance to reply. For once, Pitchwife seemed impatient with what his wife was saying. As soon as she finished, he interposed, “Aye, and Linden Avery also is well Chosen, as I have said. But in this she does not choose well. Giantfriend, she will not rest.” His exasperation was plain in his voice.

Linden grimaced. Covenant started to say, “Linden, you need—” But when she looked at him he stopped. Her gaze gathered up the darkness and held it against him.

“I don’t have anywhere to go.”

The stark bereavement of her answer went through him like a cry. It meant too much: that her former world had been ruined for her by what she had learned; that like him she could not bear to return to her cabin—the cabin they had shared.

Somewhere in the distance, Pitchwife was saying, “To her have been offered the chambers of the
Haruchai
. But she replies that she fears to dream in such places. And Starfare’s Gem holds no other private quarters.”

Covenant understood that also without heeding it. Brinn had blamed her for Hergrom’s death. And she had tried to kill Ceer. “Leave her alone,” he said dully, as deaf to himself as to Pitchwife. “She’ll rest when she’s ready.”

That was not what he wanted to say. He wanted to say, Forgive me. I don’t know how to forgive myself. But the words were locked in his chest. They were impossible.

Because he had nothing else to offer her, he swallowed thickly and said, “You’re right. My friends didn’t expect me to be doomed. Foamfollower gave me Vain for a reason.” Even that affirmation was difficult for him; but he forced it out. “What happened to his arm?”

She went on staring darkness at him as if he were the linch-pin of her exhaustion. She sounded as misled as a sleepwalker as she responded, “Mistweave won’t go away. He says he wants to take Cail’s place.”

Covenant peered at her, momentarily unable to comprehend. But then he remembered his own dismay when Brinn had insisted on serving him; and his heart twisted. “Linden,” he demanded, forlorn and harsh in his inability to help her, “tell me about Vain’s arm.” If he had dared, he would have taken hold of her. If he had had the right.

She shook her head; and lantern-light glanced like supplication out of her dry eyes. “I can’t.” She might have protested like a child, It hurts. “His arm’s empty. When I close my eyes, it isn’t even there. If you took all the life out of the One Tree—took it away so completely that the Tree never had any—never had any meaning at all—it would look like that. If he was actually alive—if he wasn’t just a thing the ur-viles made—he’d be in terrible pain.”

Slowly she turned away as though she could no longer support his presence. When she moved off down the deck with Mistweave walking, deferential and stubborn, behind her, he understood that she also did not know how to forgive.

He thought then that surely his loss and need had become too much for him, that surely he was about to break down. But the First and Pitchwife were watching him with their concern poignant in their faces. They were his friends. And they needed him. Somehow, he held himself together.

Later Mistweave sent word that Linden had found a place to sleep at last, huddled in a corner of the galley near the warmth of one of the great stoves. With that Covenant had to be content. Moving stiffly, he went back to his hammock and took the risk of nightmares. Dreams seemed to be the lesser danger.

But the next morning the wind was stronger.

It might have been a true sailors’ wind—enough to shake the
dromond
out of its normal routine and make it stretch, not enough to pose any threat to the sea-craft of the crew. It kicked the crests of the waves into spume and spray, sent water crashing off the Giantship’s granite prow, made the lines hum and the sails strain. The sides of the vessel moved so swiftly that their moire markings looked like flames crackling from the sea. In the rigging, some of the Giants laughed as they fisted the canvas from position to position, seeking the
dromond
’s best stance for speed. If its midmast had not been lost, Starfare’s Gem would have flown like exuberance before the blow.

However, the day was dull with clouds and felt unnaturally cold. A south wind should have been warmer than this. It came straight from the place where the Isle had gone down, and it was as chill as the cavern of the One Tree. Without the sun to light it, the sea had a gray and viscid hue. Though he wore a robe over his clothes, Covenant hunched his shoulders and could not stop shivering.

Seeking reassurance, he went up to the wheeldeck, where Heft Galewrath commanded the
dromond
. But she greeted him with only a blunt nod. Her normally stolid demeanor held a kind of watchfulness that he had not seen in her before. For the first time since they had met, she seemed accessible to misgiving. Rather than trouble her with his trepidations, he returned to the afterdeck and moved forward, looking for someone who could be more easily questioned.

It’s not that cold, he told himself. It’s just wind. But still the chill cut at him. No matter how he hugged the robe about him, the wind found its way to his skin.

Instinctively he went to the galley, looking for warmth and Linden.

He found her there, seated at one wall near the cheery bustle of the
dromond
’s two cooks, a husband and wife aptly named Seasauce and Hearthcoal. They had spent so much of their lives working over the great stoves that their faces had become perpetually ruddy. They looked like images of each other as they blustered about their tasks, moving with a disingenuous air of confusion which concealed the ease of their teamwork. When they went out on deck, heat overflowed from them; and in their constricted demesne they radiated like ovens. Yet Covenant’s chill persisted.

Linden was awake, but still glazed with sleep. She had paid only a part of the debt of her weariness. Though she acknowledged Covenant, behind her eyes everything was masked in somnolence. He thought at once that he should not bother her with questions until she had rested more. But he was too cold for good intentions.

Hunkering down beside her, he asked, “What do you think of this wind?”

She yawned. “I think,” she said distantly, “that Foul’s in a hurry to get us back.

However, after another day’s rest, Linden was able to look at the weather more percipiently. By then, Covenant had worn himself petulant with aimless anxiety. He felt repeatedly that he had lost the center of his life, that he could no longer hold himself from flying outward in all directions when the vertigo of his fear arose. Nothing had happened to suggest that the
dromond
was in danger: yet his inchoate conviction of peril remained. Snappishly he asked Linden his question a second time.

But long sleep had brought her back to herself, and the gaze she turned toward him was capable of knowledge. She seemed to see without effort that his irritation was not directed at her. She placed a brief touch on his forearm like a promise that she would not forsake him. Then she went out to look at the wind.

After a moment’s assessment, she declared that this blow was not unnatural or ill, not something which the Despiser had whipped up for his own ends. Instead it was a reaction to the fundamental convulsion which had pulled down the Isle of the One Tree. By that violence, the balances of the weather had been disturbed, outraged.

It was conceivable that Lord Foul had known this would happen. But she felt no evidence of his influence on the wind.

When Covenant relayed her verdict to Honninscrave, the Master shrugged, his thoughts hidden behind the buttress of his brows. “No matter,” he muttered as if he were not listening to himself. “Should it worsen, Starfare’s Gem must run before it. Part-masted as we are, I will not hazard resistance to the wind’s path. There is no need. At present, we are borne but a scant span from our true way.”

That should have satisfied Covenant His experience of the sea was trivial compared to Honninscrave’s. Yet the alarm in his guts refused to be eased. Like Galewrath, the Master conveyed an impression of concealed worry.

During the next two days, the wind became more serious.

Blowing with incessant vehemence a few points west of north, it cut into the sea like the share of a plow, whined across the decks of the
dromond
like the ache of its own chill. In spite of its speed, Starfare’s Gem no longer appeared to be moving swiftly: the wind bore the water itself northward, and what little bowwave the prow raised was torn away at once. Clouds hugged the world from horizon to horizon. The sails looked gray and brittle as they heaved the heavy stone along.

And that night the cold began in earnest

When Covenant scrambled shivering out of his hammock the next morning, he found a scum of ice in the washbasin which Cail had set out for him. Faint patches of frost licked the moire-granite as if they had soaked in through the walls. Passing Vain on his way to the warmth of the galley, he saw that the Demondim-spawn’s black form was mottled with rime like leprosy.