White Gold Wielder Read online

  The love in her voice made him groan because he could not go to her and put his arms around her. Not as long as he refused to make the one sacrifice she truly needed.

  At her back, Mistweave had unpacked a pouch of diamondraught. When he handed it to her, she forced her attention away from Covenant and knelt to Cail. Between heaving respirations, the Haruchai took several sips of the tonic liquor.

  After that his condition improved rapidly. While his companions shared the pouch, he recovered enough strength to sit up, then to regain his feet. In spite of its flatness, his expression seemed oddly abashed. His pride did not know how to sustain the fact of defeat. But after his experience with the seduction of the merewives, he appeared to place less importance on his self-esteem. Or perhaps Brinn’s promise—that Cail would eventually be free to follow his heart—had somehow altered the characteristic Haruchai determination to succeed or die. In a moment, Cail’s visage was as devoid of inflection as ever. When he indicated that he was ready to travel again, his word carried conviction.

  No one demurred. At a wry glance from Pitchwife, however, the First announced that the company would eat a meal before going on. Cail appeared to think that such a delay was unnecessary; yet he accepted the opportunity for more rest.

  While the companions ate, Linden remained tense. She consumed her rations as if she were chewing fears and speculations, trying to find her way through them. But when she spoke, her question showed that she had found, not an answer, but a distraction. She asked the First, “How much do you know about those arghuleh?”

  “Our knowledge is scant,” replied the Swordmain. She seemed unsure of the direction of Linden’s inquiry. “Upon rare occasion, Giants have encountered arghuleh. And there are tales which concern them. But together such stories and encounters yield little.”

  “Then why did you risk it?” Linden pursued. “Why did we come this far north?”

  Now the First understood. “Mayhap I erred,” she said in an uncompromising tone. “The southern ice was uncertain, and I sought safer passage. The hazard of the arghuleh I accepted because we are Giants, not readily slain or harmed by cold. It was my thought that four Giants would suffice to ward you.

  “Moreover,” she went on more harshly. “I was misled in my knowledge.

  “Folly,” she muttered to herself. “Knowledge is chimera, for beyond it ever lies other knowledge, and the incompleteness of what is known renders the knowing false. It was our knowledge that arghuleh do not act thus,

  “They are savage creatures, as dire of hate as the winter in which they thrive. And their hate is not solely for the beasts and beings of blood and warmth which form their prey. It is also for their own kind. In the tales we have heard and the experience of our people, it is plain that the surest defense against the assault of one arghule is the assault of a second, for they will prefer each other’s deaths above any other.

  “Therefore,” the First growled, “did I believe this north to be the lesser peril. Against any arghule four Giants must surely be counted a sufficient company. I did not know,” she concluded, “that despite all likelihood and nature they had set aside their confirmed animosity to act in concert.”

  Linden stared across the waste. Honninscrave watched the knot of his hands as if he feared it would not hold. After a moment, Covenant cleared his throat and asked, “Why?” In the Land, the Law of nature was being steadily corrupted by the Sunbane. Had Lord Foul’s influence reached this far? “Why would they change?”

  “I know not,” the First said sourly. “I would have believed the substance of Stone and Sea to be more easily altered than the hate of the arghuleh.”

  Covenant groaned inwardly. He was still hundreds of leagues from Revelstone; and yet his fears were harrying him forward as if he and his companions had already entered the ambit of the Despiser’s malice.

  Abruptly Linden leapt to her feet, faced the east. She gauged the distance, then rasped, “They’re coming. I thought they’d give up. Apparently cooperation isn’t the only new trick they’ve learned.”

  Honninscrave spat a Giantish obscenity. The First gestured him and Mistweave toward the sleds, then helped Pitchwife upright. Quickly the Master and Mistweave packed and reloaded the supplies. Covenant was cursing to himself. He wanted a chance to talk to Linden privately. But he followed her tense example and climbed back into his sled.

  The First took the lead. In an effort to outdistance the pursuit, she set the best pace Pitchwife could maintain, pushing him to his already-worn limits. Yet Cail trotted between Covenant and Linden as if he were fully recovered. Vain and Findail brought up the rear together, shadowing each other across the wind-cut wilderness.

  That night, the company obtained little rest, though Pitchwife needed it urgently. Shortly after moonrise, Cail’s native caution impelled him to rouse Linden; and when she had tasted the air, she sent the company scrambling for the sleds.

  The moon was only three days past its full, and the sky remained clear. The First was able to find a path with relative ease. But she was held back by Pitchwife’s exhaustion. He could not move faster than a walk without her support. And in an effort to shore up his strength, he had consumed so much diamondraught that he was not entirely sober. At intervals, he began to sing lugubriously under his breath, as though he were lunatic with fatigue. Somehow the companions kept a safe distance between themselves and the arghuleh. But they were unable to increase their lead.

  And when the sun rose over the wasted ice, they found themselves in worse trouble. They were coming to the end of the floe. During the night, they had entered a region where the ice to the south became progressively more broken as hunks snapped off and drifted away. Ahead of the First, the west became impassable. And beyond a wide area where icebergs were being spawned lay open water. She had no choice but to force her way up into the ragged ridge which separated the arctic glacier from the crumbling sheet of the floe.

  There Covenant thought that she would abandon the sleds. He and Linden climbed out to make their way on foot; but that did not sufficiently lighten the loads Honninscrave and Mistweave were pulling. Yet none of the Giants faltered. Forging into a narrow valley which breached the ridge, they began to struggle toward the north and west, as if in spite of the exhaustion they now shared with Pitchwife they had not begun to be daunted. Covenant marveled at their hardiness; but he could do nothing to help them except strive to follow without needing help himself.

  That task threatened to surpass him. Cold and lack of sleep sapped his strength. His numb feet were as clumsy as cripples. Several times, he had to catch himself on a sled so that he would not fall back down the valley. But Honninscrave or Mistweave bore the added burden without complaint until Covenant could regain his footing.

  For some distance, the First’s route seemed inspired or fortuitous. As the valley rose into the glacier, bending crookedly back and forth between north and west, its bottom remained passable. The companions were able to keep moving.

  Then they gained the upper face of the glacier and their path grew easier. Here the ice was as rugged as a battleground—pressure-splintered and wind-tooled into high fantastic shapes, riddled with fissures, marked by strange channels and hollows of erosion—and the company had to wend still farther north to find a path. Yet with care the First was able to pick a passage which did not require much strength. And as the companions left the area of the glacier’s run, they were able to head once again almost directly westward.

  Giddy with weariness and cold and the ice-glare of the sun, Covenant stumbled on after the sleds. A pace or two to his side, Linden was in little better condition. Diamondraught and exertion could not keep the faint, fatal hint of blue from her lips; and her face looked as pallid as bone. But her clenched alertness and the stubborn thrust of her strides showed that she was not yet ready to fall.

  For more than a league, with the air rasping his lungs and fear at his back, Covenant followed the lead of the Giants. Somehow he did not collapse.
r />   But then everything changed. The First’s route was neither inspired nor fortuitous: it was impossible. Balanced unsteadily on locked knees, his heart trembling. Covenant looked out from the edge of the cliff where the company had stopped. There was nothing below him but the bare, black sea.

  Without forewarning, the company had reached the western edge of the glacier.

  Off to the left was the jagged ridge which separated the main ice-mass from the lower floe. But elsewhere lay nothing but the endless north and the cliff and the rue-bitten sea.

  Covenant did not know how to bear it. Vertigo blew up at him like a wind from the precipice, and his knees folded.

  Pitchwife caught him. “No,” the deformed Giant coughed. His voice seemed to snag and strangle deep in his throat “Do not despair. Has this winter made you blind?” Rough with fatigue, he jerked Covenant upright. “Look before you. It needs not the eyes of a Giant to behold this hope.”

  Hope, Covenant sighed into the silence of his whirling head. Ah, God. I’d hope if I knew how.

  But Pitchwife’s stiff grasp compelled him. Groping for balance, he opened his eyes to the cold.

  For a moment, they would not focus. But then he found the will to force his gaze clear.

  There he saw it: distinct and unattainable across half a league of the fatal sea, a thin strip of land.

  It stretched out of sight to north and south.

  “As I have said,” Honninscrave muttered, “our charts hold no certain knowledge of this region. But mayhap it is the coast of the Land which lies before us.”

  Something like a madman’s laughter rose in Covenant’s chest “Well, good for us.” The Despiser would certainly be laughing. “At least now we can look at where we want to go while we’re freezing to death or being eaten by arghuleh.” He held the mirth back because he feared it would turn to weeping.

  “Covenant!” Linden said sharply—a protest of empathy or apprehension.

  He did not look at her. He did not look at any of them. He hardly listened to himself. “Do you call this hope?”

  “We are Giants,” the First responded. Her voice held an odd note of brisk purpose. “Dire though this strait appears, we will wrest life from it.”

  Mutely Honninscrave stripped off his sark, packed it into one of the bundles on his sled. Mistweave dug out a long coil of heavy rope, then followed the Master’s example.

  Covenant stared at them. Linden panted, “Do you mean—?” Her eyes flared wildly. “We won’t last eight seconds in water that cold!”

  The First cast a gauging look down the cliff. As she studied the drop, she responded, “Then our care must suffice to ward you.”

  Abruptly, she turned back to the company. Indicating Honninscrave’s sled, she asked Cail, “Does this weight and the Giantfriend’s surpass your strength?”

  Cail’s flat mien suggested disdain for the question as he shook his head.

  “The ice affords scant footing,” she warned.

  He regarded her expressionlessly. “I will be secure.”

  She gave him a firm nod. She had learned to trust the Haruchai. Returning to the rim, she said, “Then let us not delay. The arghuleh must not come upon us here.”

  A prescient nausea knotting his guts, Covenant watched Honninscrave tie one end of the rope to the rear of his sled. The Giant’s bare back and shoulders steamed in the sharp air, but he did not appear to feel the cold.

  Before Covenant could try to stop her, the First sat down on the edge, braced herself, and dropped out of sight Linden’s gasp followed her away.

  Fighting dizziness, he crouched to the ice and crept forward until he could look downward.

  He arrived in time to see the First hit heavily into the sea. For an instant, white froth marked the water as if she were gone for good. Then she splashed back to the surface, waved a salute up at the company.

  Now he noticed that the cliff was not sheer. Though it was too smooth to be climbed, it angled slightly outward from rim to base. And it was no more than two hundred feet high. Honninscrave’s rope looked long enough to reach the water.

  From the edge, Pitcbwife grimaced down at his wife. “Desire me good fortune,” he murmured. Weariness ached in his tone. “I am ill-made for such valors.” Yet he did not falter. In a moment, he was at the First’s side, and she held him strongly above the surface.

  No one spoke. Covenant locked his teeth as if any word might unleash the panic crowding through him. Linden hugged herself and stared at nothing. Honninscrave and Mistweave were busy lashing their supplies more securely to the sleds. When they were done, the Master went straight to the cliff; but Mistweave paused beside Linden to reassure her. Gently he touched her shoulder, smiled like a reminder of the way she had saved his life. Then he followed Honninscrave.

  Covenant ‘and Linden were left on the glacier with Cail, Vain, and the Appointed.

  Gripping the rope, Cail nodded Covenant toward the sled.

  Oh, hell! Covenant groaned. Vertigo squirmed through him. What if his hold failed? And what made the Giants think these sleds would float? But he had no choice. The arghuleh must be drawing nearer. And he had to reach the Land somehow, had to get to Revelstone. There was no other way.

  The Giants had already committed themselves. For a moment, he turned toward Linden. But she had drawn down into herself, was striving to master her own trepidation.

  Woodenly he climbed into the sled.

  As Covenant settled himself, tried to seal his numb fingers to the rails, brace his legs among the bundles. Cail looped his rope around Vain’s ankles. Then he knotted the heavy line in both fists and set his back to the sled, began pushing it toward the cliff.

  When the sled nosed over the edge. Linden panted, “Hold tight,” as though she had just noticed what was happening. Covenant bit down on the inside of his cheek so hard that blood smeared his lips, stained the frost in his beard.

  Slowly Cail let the weight at the end of the rope pull him toward Vain again.

  Vain had not moved a muscle: he seemed oblivious to the line hauling across the backs of his ankles. Reaching the Demondim-spawn, Cail stopped himself against Vain’s black shins.

  Without a tremor, the Haruchai lowered Covenant and the sled hand over hand down the face of the cliff.

  Covenant chewed blood for a moment to control his fear; but soon the worst was over. His dizziness receded. Wedged among the supplies, he was in no danger of falling. Cail paid out the line with steady care. The rope cut small chunks out of the lip of the cliff; but Covenant hardly felt them hit. A shout of encouragement rose from Pitchwife. The dark sea looked as viscid as a malign chrism, but the four Giants swam in it as if it were only water. Pitchwife needed the First’s support, but Honninscrave and Mistweave sculled themselves easily.

  Honninscrave had placed himself in the path of the sled.

  As its tip entered the water, he dodged below it and took the runners onto his shoulders. Rocking while he groped for a point of balance, the sled gradually became level. Then he steadied the runners, and Covenant found that the Master was carrying him.

  Mistweave untied the rope so that Cail could draw it back up. Then Honninscrave started away from the wall of ice. The First said something to Covenant, but the lapping of the low waves muffled her voice.

  Covenant hardly dared turn his head for fear of upsetting Honninscrave’s balance; but peripherally he watched Linden’s descent. The thought that Vain might move hurt his chest. He felt faint with relief as the second sled came safely onto Mistweave’s shoulders.

  At a shout from the First, Cail dropped the rope, then slid down the ice-face to join the company.

  Instinctively Covenant fixed his attention like yearning on the low line of shore half a league away. The distance seemed too great. He did not know where Honninscrave and Mistweave would get the strength to bear the sleds so far. At any moment, the frigid hunger of the sea would surely drag them down.

  Yet they struggled onward, though that crossing appea
red cruel and interminable beyond endurance. The First upheld Pitchwife and did not weaken. Cail swam between the sleds, steadied them whenever Honninscrave or Mistweave wavered. If the seas had risen against them, they would have died. But the water and the current remained indifferent, too cold to notice such stark affrontery. In the name of the Search and Covenant Giantfriend and Linden Avery the Chosen, the Giants endured.

  And they prevailed.

  That night, the company camped on the hard shingle of the shore as if it were a haven.

  SIX: Winter in Combat

  For the first time since he had left the galley of Starfare’s Gem, Covenant thought his bones might thaw. On this coast, the warmer currents which kept the sea free of ice moderated the winter’s severity. The shingle was hard but not glacial. Clouds muffled the heavens, obscuring the lonely chill of the stars. Mistweave’s fire—tended by Cail because all the Giants were too weary to fend off sleep—spread a benison around the camp. Wrapped in his blankets, Covenant slept as if he were at peace. And when he began to awaken in the stiff gloom of the northern dawn, he would have been content to simply eat a meal and then go back to sleep. The company deserved at least one day of rest. The Giants had a right to it.

  But as the dawn brightened, he forgot about rest. The sunrise was hidden behind ranks of clouds, but it gave enough light to reveal the broad mass of the glacier the company had left behind. For a moment, the gray air made him uncertain of what he was seeing. Then he became sure.

  In the water, a spit of ice was growing out from the cliff—from the same point at which the quest had left the glacier. It was wide enough to be solid. And it was aimed like a spear at me company’s camp.

  With an inward groan, he called the First. She joined him, stood staring out at the ice for a long moment. Uselessly he hoped that her Giantish sight would contradict his unspoken explanation. But it did not. “It appears,” she said slowly, “that the arghuleh remain intent upon us.”

  Damnation! Splinters of ice stuck in Covenant’s memory. Harshly he asked, “How much time have we got?”