White Gold Wielder Read online

  When their converse was over, Cail looked at the Giants and Linden, then met Covenant squarely. He did not apologize. His people were Haruchai, and the offense to their rectitude went too deep for mere contrition. In a voice entirely devoid of inflection, free of any hint of justification or regret, he said, “It is agreed that such unworth as mine has its uses. Whatever restitution you command we will undertake. But we will not again fall from ourselves in this way.”

  Covenant did not know what to say. He had known the Haruchai for a long time, and the Bloodguard before them; yet he was still astonished by the extravagance of their judgments. And he was certain that he would not be able to bear being served by such people much longer. The simple desire to be deserving of them would make him wild.

  How was it possible that his white fire had become so black in so little time?

  Pitchwife murmured something like a jest under his breath, then grimaced when no one responded. Honninscrave had become too bleak for mirth. In his frustrated desire to prove himself to himself, Mistweave had forgotten laughter. And the First was not mollified by Cail’s speech. The Haruchai had aroused her battle instinct; and her face was like her blade, whetted for fighting.

  Because the sun was setting and Sunder was exhausted, she commanded the Master and Mistweave to prepare a camp and a meal. Yet the decision to rest did not abate her tension. Dourly she stalked around the area, hacking back the brush to form a relatively clear space for the camp.

  Covenant stood and watched her. The blow he had received made everything inside him fragile. Even his truncated senses were not blind to her sore, stern vexation.

  Linden would not come near him. She stayed as faraway from him as the First’s clearing permitted, avoiding him as if to lessen as much as possible his impact on her percipience.

  The glances that Hollian cast toward him over Sunder’s shoulder were argute with fright and uncertainty in the deepening twilight. Only Vain, Findail, and the Haruchai behaved as if they did not care.

  Covenant started to cover his face, then lowered his hands again. Their numbness had become repugnant to him. His features felt stiff and breakable. His beard smelled of sweat; his whole body smelled, he was unclean and rank from head to foot. He feared that his voice would crack; but he forced himself to use it.

  “All right. Say it. Somebody.”

  The First delivered a fierce cut that severed a honeysuckle stem as thick as her forearm, then wheeled toward him. The tip of her blade pointed accusations at him.

  Linden winced at the First’s anger, but did not intervene.

  “Giantfriend,” the leader of the Search rasped as if the name hurt her mouth, “We have beheld a great ill. Is it truly your intent to utter this dark fire against the Clave?”

  She towered over Covenant, and the light of Mistweave’s campfire made her appear dominant and necessary. He felt too brittle to reply. Once he had tried to cut the venom out of his forearm on a ragged edge of rock. Those faint scars spread like fretwork around the fundamental marks of Marid’s fangs. But now he knew better. Carefully he said, “He will not do that to me and get away with it.”

  The First did not waver. “And what of the Earth?”

  Her tone made his eyes burn, but not with tears. Every word of his answer was as distinct as a coal. “A long time ago,” with the blood of half-mindless Cavewights on his head, “I swore I was never going to kill again. But that hasn’t stopped me.” With both hands, he had driven a knife into the chest of the man who had slain Lena; and that blow had come back to damn him. He had no idea how many Bhrathair had died in the collapse of Kemper’s Pitch. “The last time I was there, I killed twenty-one of them.” Twenty-one men and women, most of whom did not know that their lives were evil. “I’m sick of guilt. If you think I’m going to do anything that will destroy the Arch of Time, you had better try to stop me now.”

  At that, her eyes narrowed as if she were considering the implications of running her blade through his throat. Hollian and Linden stared; and Sunder tried to brace himself to go to Covenant’s aid. But the First, too, was the Unbeliever’s friend. She had given him the title he valued most. Abruptly the challenge of her sword dropped. “No, Giantfriend,” she sighed. “We have come too far. I trust you or nothing.”

  Roughly she sheathed her longsword and turned away.

  Firelight gleamed in the wet streaks of Linden’s concern and relief. After a moment, she came over to Covenant. She did not meet his gaze. But she put one hand briefly on his right forearm like a recognition that he was not like her father.

  While that touch lasted, he ached to take hold of her hand and raise it to his lips. But he did not move. He believed that if he did he would surely shatter. And every promise he had made would be lost.

  The next day, the fruits of the verdant sun were worse. They clogged the ground with the teeming, intractable frenzy of a sea in storm. And Sunder’s weariness went too deep to be cured by one night of diamondraught-induced sleep, one swallow of the rare and potent roborant Pitchwife created by combining his liquor with vitrim. But the Clave made no more efforts to take control of the krill or the Haruchai. The shade of the trees held some of the underbrush to bearable proportions. No Grim or other attack came riding out of Revelstone to bar the way. And the travelers had made such good progress during the past two days that they did not need to hurry now. None of them doubted that the Keep of the na-Mhoram was within reach. At infrequent intervals, the distortion of the jungle provided a glimpse of the southwestern sky; and then all the companions could see the hot, feral shaft of the Banefire burning toward the sun like an immedicable scald in the green-hued air.

  Every glimpse turned Linden’s taut, delicate features a shade paler. Memory and emanations of power assaulted her vulnerable senses. She had once been Gibbon-Raver’s prisoner in Revelstone, and his touch had raised the darkness coiled around the roots of her soul to the stature of all night. Yet she did not falter. She had aimed the company to this place by the strength of her own will, had wrested this promise from Covenant when he had been immobile with despair. In spite of her unresolved hunger and loathing for power, she did not let herself hang back.

  The Stonedownors also held themselves firm. They had a score to settle with the Clave, a tally that stretched from the hold of Revelstone and the ruin of the villages down to the Sunbane-shaped foundations of their lives. Whenever Sunder’s need for rest became severe, Hollian took the orcrest and krill herself, though she was unskilled at that work and the path she made was not as clear as his. The silent caterwaul and torment of the vegetation blocked the ground at every step; but the company found a way through it.

  And as the sun began to sag toward the high ridge of the Westron Mountains—still distant to the south and west beyond the region which had once been named Trothgard, but near at hand in the east-jutting promontory of the range—the companions reached the verge of the jungle below the rocky and barren foothills of the high Keep.

  Halting in the last shelter of the trees, they looked up at their destination.

  Revelstone: once the proud bastion and bourne of the ancient, Land-serving Lords; now the home of the na-Mhoram and the Clave.

  Here, at the apex of the promontory, the peaks dropped to form an upland plateau pointing east and sweeping north. All the walls of the plateau were sheer, as effective as battlements; and in the center of the upland lay Glimmermere, the eldritch tarn with its waters untouched by the Sunbane until they cascaded down Furl Falls in the long south face of the promontory and passed beyond the sources of their potency. But the Keep itself stood to the east of Glimmermere and Furl Falls. The Unhomed had wrought the city of the Lords into the eastward wedge of the plateau, filling that outcrop of the Earth’s hard gutrock with habitations and defenses.

  Directly above the company stood the watchtower, the tip of the wedge. Shorter than the plateau, its upper shaft rose free of the main Keep bulking behind it; but its lower half was sealed by walls of native stone to the
rest of the wedge. In that way, Revelstone’s sole entrance was guarded. Long ago, massive gates in the southeast curve of the watchtower’s base had protected a passage under the tower—a tunnel which gave admittance only to the closed courtyard between the tower and the main Keep, where stood a second set of gates. During the last war, the siege of Revelstone had broken the outer gates, leaving them in rubble. But Covenant knew from experience that the inner gates still held, warding the Clave with their imponderable thickness and weight.

  Above the abutment over its opening, the round shaft of the watchtower was marked with battlements and embrasures to the crenellated rim of its crown. They were irregular and unpredictable, shaped to suit the tower’s internal convolutions. Yet the face of the watchtower was as simple as child’s work compared to the dramatic complexity of the walls of the main Keep. For a surprising distance into the plateau, the sheer cliffs had been crafted by the Unhomed—written with balconies and buttresses, parapets and walkways, and punctuated with windows of every description, embrasures on the lower levels, oriels and shaded coigns higher up—a prolific and apparently spontaneous multiplication of detail that always gave Covenant an impression of underlying structure, meaning which only Giants could read. The faint green sunset danced and sheened on the south face, confusing his human ability to grasp the organization of something so tall, grand, and timeless.

  But even his superficial senses felt the tremendous power of the Banefire’s beam as it struck sunward from athwart the great Keep. With one stroke, that red force transgressed all his memories of grandeur and glory, changed the proud habitation of the Lords to a place of malefic peril. When he had approached Revelstone so many days ago to rescue Linden, Sunder, and Hollian, he had been haunted by grief for the Giants and Lords and beauty the Land had lost. But now the knot of his chosen rage was pulled too tight to admit sorrow.

  He intended to tear that place down if necessary to root out the Clave—and the bare thought that he might be forced to damage Revelstone made him savage.

  Yet when he looked at his companions, saw the rapt faces of the Giants, his anger loosened slightly. The Keep had the power to entrance them. Pitchwife’s mien was wide with the glee of appreciation; the First’s eyes shone pride at the handiwork of her long-dead people; Mistweave gazed upward hungrily, all dismay forgotten for a time. Even Honnioscrave had momentarily lost his air of doom, as though he knew intuitively that Revelstone would give him a chance to make restitution.

  Conflicting passions rose in Covenant’s throat. Thickly he asked, “Can you read it? Do you know what it means? I’ve been here three times”—four counting the brief translation during which he had refused Mhoram’s summons—“but no one’s ever been able to tell me what it means.”

  For a moment, none of the Giants answered. They could not step back from the wonder of the Keep. They had seen Coercri in Seareach and marveled at it; but for them Revelstone was transcendent. Watching them. Covenant knew with a sudden pang that now they would never turn back—that no conceivable suasion would induce them to set their Search and their private purposes aside, to leave the Sunbane and Lord Foul to him. The Sunbane had eroded them in fundamental ways, gnawing at their ability to believe that their Search might actually succeed. What could Giants do to aid a Land in which nature itself had become the source of horror? But the sight of Revelstone restored them to themselves. They would never give up their determination to fight.

  Unless Covenant found his own answer soon, he would not be able to save them.

  Swallowing heavily, Pitchwife murmured, “No words. There are none. Your scant human tongue is void—” Tears spread through the creases of his face, mapping his emotion.

  But the First said for him, “All tongues, Giantfriend. All tongues lack such language. There is that in the granite glory of the world’s heart which may not be uttered with words. All other expression must be dumb when the pure stone speaks. And here that speech has been made manifest. Ah, my heart!” Her voice rose as if she wanted to both sing and keen. But for her also no words were adequate. Softly she concluded, “The Giants of the Land were taught much by their loss of Home. I am humbled before them.”

  For a moment, Covenant could not respond. But then a memory came back to him—a recollection of the formal salutation that the people of Revelstone had formerly given to the Giants. Hail and welcome, inheritor of Land’s loyalty. Welcome whole or hurt, in boon or bane—ask or give. To any requiring name we will not fail. In a husky voice, he breathed:

  “Giant-troth Revelstone, ancient ward—

  Heart and door of Earthfriend’s main:

  Preserve the true with Power’s sword,

  Thou ages-Keeper, mountain-reign.”

  At that, the First turned toward him; and for an instant her face was concentrated with weeping as if he had touched her deep Giantish love of stone. Almost immediately she recovered her sternness—but not before he had seen how absolutely she was ready now to serve him. Gruffly she said, “Thomas Covenant, I have titled you Giantfriend, but it is not enough. You are the Earthfriend. No other name suffices.” Then she went and put her arms around her husband.

  But Covenant groaned to himself, Earthfriend. God help me! That title belonged to Berek Halfhand, who had fashioned the Staff of Law and founded the Council of Lords. It did not become a man who carried the destruction of the Arch of Time in his envenomed hands. The man who had brought to ruin all Berek’s accomplishments.

  He glared back up at the Keep. The sun had begun to set behind the Westron Mountains, and its light in his eyes hampered his sight; but he discerned no sign that the watchtower was occupied. He had received the same impression the last time he had been here—and had distrusted it then as he did now. Though the outer gates were broken, the tower could still serve as a vital part of the Keep’s defenses. He would have to be prepared for battle the moment he set foot in that tunnel. If the Clave did not seek to attack him before then.

  His shoulders hunching like anticipations of brutality, he turned away from the Keep and retreated a short distance into the vegetation to an area of rocks where the company could camp for the night.

  Shortly his companions gathered around him. The Giants left their delighted study of Revelstone to clear the ground, start a fire, and prepare food. Sunder and Hollian cast repeated glances like wincing toward the Keep, where the ill of their lives had its center, and where they had once nearly been slain; but they sat with Covenant as if he were a source of courage. The Haruchai arranged themselves protectively around the region. Findail stood like a shadow at the edge of the growing firelight.

  Linden’s disquiet was palpable. Vexation creased her brows; her gaze searched the twilight warily. Covenant guessed that she was feeling the nearness of the Raver; and he did not know how to comfort her. During all the Land’s struggles against Despite, no one had ever found a way to slay a Raver. While Lord Foul endured, his servants clung to life. The Forestal of Garroting Deep, Caer-Caveral’s creator and former master, had demonstrated that Herem or Sheol or Jehannum might be sorely hurt or reduced if the bodies they occupied were killed and they were not allowed to flee. But only the body died; the Raver’s spirit survived. Covenant could not believe that the Land would ever be free of Gibbon’s possessor. And he did not know what else to offer that might ease Linden.

  But then she named the immediate cause of her unease; and it was not the na-Mhoram. Turning to Covenant, she said unexpectedly, “Vain’s gone.”

  Taken aback, he blinked at her for a moment. Then he surged to his feet, scanned the camp and the surrounding jungle.

  The Demondim-spawn was nowhere in sight.

  Covenant wheeled toward Cail. Flatly the Haruchai said, “He has halted a stone’s throw distant.” He nodded back the way the company had come. “At intervals we have watched him, but he does not move. Is it your wish that he should be warded?”

  Covenant shook his head, groping for comprehension. When he and Vain had approached Revelstone looki
ng for Linden, Sunder, and Hollian, the Clave had tried to keep Vain out—and had hurt him in the process. Yet he had contrived his way into the Keep, found the heels of the Staff of Law. But after that he had obeyed the Riders as if he feared what they could do to him. Was that it? Having obtained what he wanted from Revelstone, he now kept his distance so that the Clave would not be able to damage him again?

  But how was it possible that the Demondim-spawn could be harmed at all, when the Sunbane did not affect him and even Grim-fire simply rolled off his black skin?

  “It’s because of what he is,” Linden murmured as though Covenant’s question were tangible in the air. They had discussed the matter at other times; and she had suggested that perhaps the Clave knew more about Vain than the company did. But now she had a different answer. “He’s a being of pure structure. Nothing but structure—like a skeleton without any muscle or blood or life. Rigidness personified. Anything that isn’t focused straight at him can’t touch him.” Slowly as if she were unconscious of what she was doing, she turned toward Revelstone, lifted her face to the lightless Keep. “But that’s what the Sunbane does. What the Clave does. They corrupt Law—disrupt structure. Desecrate order. If they tried hard enough”—she was glowering as if she could see Gibbon waiting in his malice and his glee—“they could take him apart completely, and there wouldn’t be enough of him left to so much as remember why he was made in the first place. No wonder he doesn’t want to come any closer.”

  Covenant held his breath, hoping that she would go on—that in this mood of perception or prophecy she would name the purpose for which Vain had been created. But she did not.

  By degrees, she lowered her gaze. “Damn that bastard anyway,” she muttered softly. “Damn him to hell.”

  He echoed her in silence. Vain was such an enigma that Covenant continually forgot him—forgot how vital he was, to the hidden machinations of the Elohim if not to the safety of the Earth. But here Findail had not hesitated to leave the Demondim-spawn’s side; and his anguished yellow eyes showed no interest in anything except the hazard of Covenant’s fire. Covenant felt a prescient itch run through his forearm. Wincing, he addressed Cail.