Against All Things Ending Read online

  Finally she fixed her attention on Liand as if he were the spokesman for all of her friends and uncertainties; as if he were the only one who needed to be convinced. While Covenant wandered in the world’s past, he could not countermand her.

  “It’s time,” she said carefully; almost steadily. “Anele and I are going with the Harrow.” And with the Ardent, presumably. “But we’re going alone.”

  She felt reactions as quick as heartbeats around her; but she kept her gaze on Liand. If she could persuade him—

  Ah, Liand. I wish I could spare you. Hell, I wish any of us could spare you.

  —the others might follow his example.

  His stark eyebrows arched in surprise. Objections crowded into his mouth so swiftly that for the moment he could not articulate any of them. The light of his orcrest faltered briefly. In that instant of wavering, he looked somehow younger and more vulnerable, as though he had been personally spurned.

  Tightening her grip on herself, Linden said, “The rest of you have more important things to do. You’re going to stay here.” Where Andelain would preserve them for a while. “Jeremiah is my son. I can’t abandon him. I’ve already made that bargain. But I won’t risk you for him.

  “And the Land still needs defenders,” she went on, hurrying to forestall Liand’s expostulations. “It needs you and your Sunstone. It needs Covenant and the krill. It needs Giants and Haruchai and Ramen and Ranyhyn. Even if we didn’t have so many enemies and monsters to worry about, someone has to do something about the Worm. Someone has to preserve the Elohim, as many as possible,” to slow or weaken the Worm, “and that someone isn’t me. I don’t have any power now.” No power—and no idea how she might reclaim her son from the croyel. “I’m not the one who saves worlds.

  “I can’t actually imagine what hope is anymore,” she finished, bracing herself for a storm of protests. She had staked her whole heart on Covenant—and she had failed him. “But if there is such a thing—if it still exists—it depends on you. I have to go to Jeremiah. I can’t do anything else. You have to stay here.”

  Her particular intensity seemed to seal Liand’s throat. His mouth opened and closed on stillborn arguments. She saw in his eyes that her assertion had shocked him more profoundly, or more intimately, than Covenant’s resurrection.

  The impassivity of the Masters may have expressed approval: Stave’s did not. Like Liand, Mahrtiir was silent. Behind his bandage, he appeared to weigh Linden’s needs against the Land’s; her desires against his own. Pahni made no attempt to conceal her visceral eagerness, her hope that Liand would be spared. Anxious and torn, Bhapa studied Linden for signs that she might waver.

  But the Giants—

  Rime Coldspray was the first to burst out laughing. Almost immediately, however, her comrades joined her. Stentorian and unconstrained, their loud humor filled the night: it seemed to cast back every darkness. Together they laughed until tears streamed down their faces; laughed as if laughter were another form of caamora, able to purge and cleanse until only wholeness remained. Under the stars, the vale rang with Giantish peals.

  Earlier Linden had ached to hear the Swordmainnir laugh. Now their mirth daunted her: it seemed to defeat her. Once she had been stone. Now she had become as breakable as unfired clay. How could she hold up her head, or insist on protecting her friends, when the Giants found such glee in her arguments; her pleading?

  “Ah, Linden Giantfriend,” the Ironhand chuckled as she subsided. “You are a wonderment in all sooth. Your words resemble a tale of woe, but they are not. They are a flight of fancy. Do you conceive that any Giant would turn aside from such a quest as yours? Ha! The lure of extravagant hazards is too great. And we can do naught to preserve the Elohim. We have no virtue to discover their many coverts—and no wish to do so. Both the World’s End and the Land’s many other perils will await our return from your son’s imprisonment. If they do not, they are too immense to be opposed by any force within our compass.

  “We will accompany you, Linden Giantfriend, with your consent or without it. We cannot do otherwise, lest we lose the gift of joy entirely.”

  The other women chortled their assent as if it were delight.

  Hearing them, Liand’s face cleared. Their laughter banished his dismay. And for Mahrtiir also, the tension of an inner conflict eased. He was palpably relieved to turn away from responsibilities which exceeded his image of himself; and his devotion to Linden was strong. Bhapa’s reaction resembled Mahrtiir’s. As for Pahni, she was a Ramen Cord: she would follow where her Manethrall led, in spite of her fear for Liand.

  Groaning to herself, Linden saw the four of them side with the Giants. She would not be able to dissuade them now. She could only compel them to remain behind by telling the Harrow that her interpretation of his bargain required him to exclude them.

  If she did so, the Ardent would support her. She could draw on his magicks when she had none of her own.

  Yet the Giants had moved her: she felt fundamentally shaken. Their laughter seemed as irrefusable as Jeremiah’s plight.

  Dourly the Humbled nodded. “In this circumstance,” Galt said, “we will regret your departure. It is madness compounded with madness. Beyond question, some better use for your lives and efforts might be found. Understand, then, that neither we nor the ur-Lord will join your folly. Here he and the Wraiths of Andelain and High Lord Loric’s krill may yet provide a bastion against havoc. Mayhap new counsels may now be gained among the Dead. And we do not fear to place our faith in the Unbeliever, though he has been severed from himself, making him less than he was.

  “While the Earth endures, the Masters stand with Thomas Covenant. But we will do so here rather than under the thrall of any Insequent.”

  As Galt spoke, Linden’s heart twisted. Surely this was what she wanted? To keep Covenant safe in Andelain? She owed him at least that much after everything that she had done to damage and misuse him. And yet she did not want to part from him. She did not. Even Jeremiah would not fill Covenant’s place in her heart.

  Like him, she was caught in a flaw within herself. But hers was an emotional fissure, not a broken memory. She wanted—and did not want—and could not choose.

  For his part, the Harrow did not hesitate. In a loud voice, he proclaimed, “Your debates are empty breath, wasted while time crowds against us. You seek to persuade the lady, but I do not heed you. My oath I have given to her alone. I will not accept the burden of her companions.”

  “Aye,” the Ardent interjected, “if that is her interpretation.” Like his assurance, his lisp was fading. “Should she wish to seek her son without accompaniment, her desires will be enforced. But should she find herself loath to proceed both friendless and bereft—” His voice trailed away like the fluttering of his ribbands.

  As if by incantation, Linden’s indecisions were dispelled. The Harrow’s tone enabled her to stand on ground as solid as it was unexpected. In an instant, she discarded her previous resolve. He wished to leave her companions behind—and she did not trust him. His hungers were too extreme: he needed her helplessness. Without it, he could not be confident that she would eventually surrender Jeremiah to his designs.

  The Giants and the Ramen, Liand and Stave: they might be able to aid her son in ways that she could not yet imagine. She believed that Anele would be granted deep rock. And while Covenant remained in Andelain with the Humbled and the krill, she could feel sure that the Land had not been utterly forsaken.

  She could bear to leave Covenant behind if it meant preserving some manner of hope for the Land.

  Turning to the Harrow, she surrendered again; but not to him. Not to him.

  “In that case,” she said distinctly, “I’ve changed my mind. I want my friends with me.”

  All who live share the Land’s plight.

  “And I have said,” the Harrow retorted in fury, “that I do not heed you. This purpose is mine. The knowledge necessary to accomplish it is mine. I will not countenance the corruption of all that I h
ave craved and sought.”

  The Ardent flinched. His eyes rolled. For a moment, he looked like he might turn his back and flee. But then some form of courage or coercion came to his aid. Thickly he intoned, “Lady, it is both my pleasure and my task by the will of the Insequent to inform you that the Harrow’s true name is—”

  The Harrow wheeled on his ribboned opponent. “Silence, fool!” he roared. “If you betray me in this fashion, you betray yourself as well. Revealing my name, you will empower the lady to command me. Thus you will destroy my intent—and you will perish, damned by your own deed.

  “But I will not permit it. Rather than suffer ruin at your hand, I will forsake my design utterly.

  “What then, fat one, fool, meddler? Will you drive me to depart, abandoning the Earth to its end, merely to gratify your gangrel corpulence? Must I leave the lady to grieve for her son while she may? Are you blind to the truth that neither you nor the combined will of the Insequent suffice to alter the world’s doom? You cannot discover the prison of the lady’s son. Without him, you are lost. All is lost.”

  Wreathed in bands of color like anxiety, the Ardent replied, “This outcome some among the Insequent have foreseen. Others disagree. One matter on which all concur, however, is that of the lady’s import. To an extent which you fear to acknowledge, the fate of life rests with her as much as with her son.

  “Yet that is not the substance of our contention. Its crux is this. Do my pronouncements, or the lady’s desires, suffice to daunt you? Is your purpose, or your pride, so fragile that you cannot suffer obstruction? If not, you must concede that your avarice forbids you to turn from your chosen path.”

  “My avarice?” barked the Harrow scornfully. His fingers twitched, eager for the magic of his beads and fringes. “I am not a living embodiment of gluttony. There can be no comparison between us. Where I have hazarded my life assiduously for centuries, you have merely feasted. You cannot out-face me. You prize your gross flesh too highly.”

  Feigning confidence, the Ardent answered, “Thus you display ignorance rather than knowledge. Truly I prize my flesh, as I do all sustenance. But I do not fear death when I am able to spend the last of my days feasting. I will happily perish in surfeit and satiation while the Worm devours the Earth.”

  Then his manner changed. Between one word and the next, sharpness emerged like a knife from the concealment of his garb.

  “However, I also do not scruple to betray you. I fear, but I do not scruple. If I must, I will ensure that you cannot abandon your purpose. Depart if you wish. Forsake your intent. You will gain naught. I need only speak your true name, and the lady will receive from you all that she requires.”

  “And when you have uttered my true name,” countered the Harrow viciously, “I will reveal yours.” He seemed barely able to contain his rage: it congested his voice like alluvial mud.

  But his antagonist did not falter. “Thus the lady will be empowered to compel us both equally. For me, nothing will be lost. As you have observed, I will be damned by my own deed. For you, however, all that you have ever craved will fray and fade.”

  The Ardent may have been bluffing: Linden could not tell. Beneath his flamboyant magicks, he was as mundane as she was; as legible as Liand or the Ramen. But the acquired power of his ribbands obscured aspects of his aura, distracted her senses.

  Nevertheless she was already sure of the outcome. The Harrow would acquiesce. His hungers were as bottomless as his eyes. They ruled him.

  Turning her back on both of the Insequent, she forced herself to face Covenant again. She wanted to find some way to say goodbye, if not to him then to the love that they had once shared.

  Long ago, she had heard Pitchwife singing,

  I know not how to say Farewell,

  When Farewell is the word

  That stays alone for me to say

  Or will be heard.

  She hoped that she would return to Andelain with Jeremiah. But she no longer had any power to impose her will on events: no power apart from the Ardent’s support. Anything might happen after the Harrow fulfilled his part of their bargain.

  Covenant’s attention still wandered the maze of his memories, dissociated and lost. He might not hear her. Nevertheless she had to try. She could too easily imagine that this would be her last chance—

  Hoarse with strain, she began, “Covenant”—oh, Covenant!—“I’m sorry. I’ve done everything wrong,” ever since the Mahdoubt had returned her to her proper time. “I should have trusted you.” She should have at least tried to understand the silence of the Dead. “Now it’s come to this.”

  Her friends hovered around her. Behind them, the Harrow and the Ardent had fallen silent. Bitterly the Harrow chafed at this new delay. In his own fashion, he, too, had surrendered—But Linden had no attention to spare for anyone except Covenant.

  “The only thing that doesn’t scare me is leaving you here. You’re struggling now, but you’ll find your way out of it.” She made a ragged effort to smile. “By the time I get back, you’ll probably know how to save the Land.” The Harrow’s plans she distrusted: intuitively she suspected that he would not be allowed to carry them out. The Land had too many powerful foes. “That wouldn’t surprise me. If you can’t do it, no one can.”

  With a suddenness that startled her, nearly made her flinch, Covenant’s eyes sprang into focus. His chin came up, emphasizing the severity of his features, the exigency of his grey gaze. Before she could react, he answered like a growl, “Oh, hell, no.”

  She seemed to hear gruff affection in his voice.

  “After all the trouble of resurrecting me,” he announced, “the least you can do is take me with you. I may not look like much, but you need me. And God knows I need you. Right now, I’m not coherent enough to do anything on my own. You’re about the only power there is that can actually hold me together. For a few minutes, anyway. And we’ve got time—”

  The response of the Masters was swift. Galt stepped between Linden and Covenant as if to deny her claim on the Unbeliever. One on each side, Branl and Clyme gripped Covenant’s arms.

  “Ur-Lord, no.” An almost subliminal tremor of vehemence marred Galt’s inflexibility. “This we will not permit. We cannot. The Land’s plight precludes it.”

  Tension ran through the Ramen. Protests crowded Liand’s heart. Several of the Swordmainnir clenched their fists. But none of them moved or spoke. Stave did not interfere, although he must have known what the Humbled would do. The rest of Linden’s companions may have been waiting for some sign from him, or from Linden—or from Covenant.

  —you need me. Linden’s pulse thudded in her throat.—I need you. Covenant’s words released a cascade of emotions that threatened to sweep aside her defenses. With equal fervor, she wanted him to accompany her and to remain behind. Please, she tried to say. You don’t have to do this. But her old ache for his presence and his irrefusable courage stopped her.

  “You’re wrong,” Covenant informed Galt. “Weren’t you listening? I told you. If you have to choose, choose her.” He did not struggle; but now his tone held no hint of affection. He sounded raw, rubbed sore by the difficulty of controlling his frangible thoughts. “I know you don’t trust the Insequent. You shouldn’t. But you think you can avoid compromising any more of your commitments if the four of us stay here. Well, I’m sorry. That isn’t possible. Everything is just going to get messier from now on. If you want to have any say in what happens anywhere, you’ll have to get your hands dirty.

  “Can’t you see that I’m broken?” he asked: a sigh of exasperation. “We’re all broken, one way or another. Broken or maimed. Bereft to the marrow of our bones. We can’t heal anything, or stop anything, if we stay here.”

  Galt did not step aside. Clyme and Branl did not release Covenant. But when Galt began to say, “The Masters—” an uncharacteristic hitch in his voice forced him to pause and swallow. “The Masters,” he repeated, “elected to withhold judgment concerning Linden Avery. While they remained
uncertain, it became the task of the Humbled to forestall Desecration. In this we have failed. When our kinsmen are apprised of what has transpired here, they will surely judge us as we judge ourselves. Now we will bear the cost of our failure, as we must.

  “If that cost includes opposition to your will, Unbeliever—” Again his voice seemed to catch in his chest. “If it requires us to act upon our certainty that Linden Avery now serves Corruption, we will do what we must to prevent further Desecration.”

  Uncounted days ago, Lord Foul had assured Linden that the Haruchai serve me, albeit unwittingly.

  “Hellfire, Galt!” Covenant retorted without hesitation. “You should have gone with Cail. You should have let him talk to you.

  “Have you never bothered to wonder why Lord Foul and Kastenessen and the damn Harrow and even my lost son want Jeremiah so badly? Have you never considered the idea that he must be crucial? Hasn’t it occurred to you yet that if he can be hidden from the actual Elohim, there must be powers at work here you don’t understand? Powers you weren’t aware of when you took on the job of being Masters?

  “Hell and blood! You make your commitments, and you stand by them. I respect that. But even the bedrock of the world shifts when it has to. If ordinary stone didn’t have enough wisdom to change, there wouldn’t be anything here for you to stand on.”

  Linden held her breath, hoping or praying or simply wishing that Covenant would be able to persuade the Humbled. Oh, she could have determined the outcome for him. If she told the Ardent that her interpretation of the Harrow’s bargain included Covenant, the two Insequent would have no difficulty separating him from the Masters. Nevertheless she said nothing. She had already imposed her desires on him in ways that now seemed unjustifiable. She still believed that the Land needed the rigid loyalty of the Haruchai. And her years among the mentally and emotionally crippled in her former life had taught her that Covenant’s insistence on what he wanted now might conduce to the healing of his mind; his memories. The longer he remained engaged with his actual circumstances and companions, the stronger his grip on himself might become.