6.
Seek Deep Stone
015
Tightly guarded by the Humbled, Thomas Covenant was snatched out of recollections of Cavewights to find himself standing on the wrought span, long and narrow, that bridged the abyss between the imponderable gutrock of Mount Thunder and the portal of the Lost Deep.
The magicks of the Insequent and his fear for Linden had wrenched him out of his memories. It was possible that no one else understood how badly she could be hurt here.
He saw nothing. The darkness was absolute, encased by leagues of complex stone. He was probably days of tortuous ascents below the nearest caves and tunnels of the Wightwarrens. Nonetheless he had no impression of the terrible chasm that stretched beneath his feet: he could hardly taste the ancient dust in the stagnant, dying air. The cold had not reached him yet. He was numb with leprosy, and had no health-sense to identify his circumstances.
Nevertheless the pervasive brume of Kevin’s Dirt was stifling. He was dangerously close to its source; to the living bane that Kastenessen and Esmer and moksha Raver had tapped or harnessed in order to generate the fug which hampered the Staff of Law.
So near that unanswerable evil, Linden and Liand and the Ramen were surely as truncated, as blind and nearly insensate, as he was. Anele’s heritage of Earthpower might preserve him; but even the percipience of the Haruchai and the Giants was likely to fail. In moments, every one of Linden’s companions would be effectively as eyeless as Mahrtiir, as deaf as seas, as unresponsive to touch as bluff rock.
Unaware of the danger—
The absence of light was so complete that the stubborn granite in every direction could no longer recall illumination.
Yet Covenant knew exactly where he was. Of course he did. From the perspective of the Arch, his spirit had visited this place too often to be mistaken. Scant hours ago, he had been painfully familiar with the Lost Deep—and with the fragile reach of stone which provided its only access to or from the outer world. Remembering it now, he remembered also that even the Harrow in his avarice had never passed beyond this span. The Insequent’s claim that he knew where to find Linden’s son was based, not on direct observation, but on other forms of knowledge.
By increments, a dull ache invaded Covenant’s chest. The sensation inspired a kind of panic. Perhaps the source of Kevin’s Dirt had already noticed the intrusion of the Staff of Law and white gold, of orcrest and Loric’s krill, if not the presence of Giants and Haruchai and ordinary humans. But he was human himself now. After a moment, he realized that what he felt was oxygen deprivation, not the dire approach of hate. The icy air was too old to sustain him: he was beginning to suffocate.
No one spoke. No one had spoken. The entire company seemed paralyzed, held motionless by shock or terror. By darkness or cold or anoxia. But then Anele began coughing—and the Giants shifted slightly, making room for the Humbled—and a far more immediate alarm seized Covenant.
“Don’t move!” he wheezed urgently. “Don’t anyone move.”
He wanted to say more. Hellfire! Don’t you know where we are? But a spasm of coughing closed his throat. Every effort to breathe filled his lungs with dust.
The span was narrow. Anyone who fell would plunge long enough to wish for death before the end.
Linden? he tried to call out; tried and could not. He had not coughed for millennia. Freed from the necessities of muscles and irritated tissues, he had forgotten how to manage them. Coughing wracked him until his mind spun as if he had been stricken with vertigo.
Then he heard Linden’s voice. “Liand,” she gasped: a severe effort. “Orcrest.”
For a time that felt interminable, nothing happened. Liand must have been overwhelmed by the suddenness with which he had lost his health-sense; or by simple darkness and alarm. And no one aided him. Blinded, they did not know how.
The Harrow should have taken action. This was his doing. But perhaps he was content to let his companions—his victims—fall. He had not vowed to defend them from the dangers of this journey. Under the circumstances, the prospect of being rid of Linden and her friends probably pleased him.
He had no experience with Linden’s Staff.
In that case, the Ardent—
Damnation, it was cold. Covenant felt a kind of astonished fury at his inability to stop coughing; to open his throat and draw breath and speak. What was the good of his resurrection if he could not control his own body?
The Ardent feared the deep places of the Earth. With ample reason.
One or more of the Ramen retched for air. The Giants moved cautiously away from each other in spite of Covenant’s warning. They did not fear cold or darkness or old stone: they may have wanted a little space in which to clear their lungs. Or perhaps they sought room to protect the people they carried.
“Heed the Unbeliever,” Stave said as if mere suffocation and sightlessness and chill could not impinge upon him. “Stonedownor, heed the Chosen.”
The Giants stopped. Liand made a hoarse sound. Somewhere in the darkness, he struggled to regain his concentration.
Gradually light began to emerge from the young man’s right fist.
By slow degrees at first, the glow swelled. Benighted and heavy, the bulk of the Swordmainnir took shape. The Humbled appeared around Covenant as though they had condensed from the thinner substance of shadows. Linden leaned, panting, on Grueburn’s breastplate. Held by Galesend, Anele had covered his face with his hands in terror.
Then Liand grew stronger. The ramifications of exerted Earthpower purified the air around him, enabling him to breathe more easily.
In a rush, radiance burst out to contradict the dark.
A strangled cry came from Liand. The Ironhand barked, “Stone and Sea!” Her comrades hissed imprecations and oaths. “Oh, God,” Linden repeated like a wail, “oh, God,” but softly, softly, as if she feared the sound of her own voice.
Cold echoes mocked every word.
Like Liand, the rest of the company began to inhale better air. They grew stronger; strong enough to recognize the extremity of their situation.
Covenant and four Haruchai and eight Giants stood near the apex of the bridge, facing their destination. Ahead of them, the Harrow still muttered incantations or invocations. At the rear of the company, the Ardent gagged on protests that choked him. He had withdrawn his ribbands; wrapped them like a form of armor around his corpulence.
Beneath their feet, the smooth span of the bridge traced a shallow arc upward and then down toward the portal of the Lost Deep: a high, arched entryway with nothing beyond it except an impermeable black, a darkness which the Sunstone could not pierce. A host could have entered there, or issued forth; but here the stone was no more than two Giants’ paces wide. It looked too fragile to hold so much weight.
Across this stone, the Viles had left their elaborate demesne in order to measure their lore against the wider world; and so they had learned doubt and then loathing and then doom.
They had not been burdened by flesh. Their makings, the Demondim, had seldom troubled to inhabit bodies. And with the exception of their loremasters, the ur-viles that had once labored in the loreworks were hands shorter than Covenant; more slight than even Pahni. The Waynhim were smaller still. None of them had needed a sturdy bridge.
But the white shining of Liand’s Sunstone reached farther. In spite of his dismay, he extended light into a vast space that made the figures on the bridge seem tiny by comparison.
Overhead a crude dome formed the ceiling of an immense cavern. From the gutrock depended a number of tapering stalactites massive as towers, knaggy as gnarled wood. They glistened with moisture. Among them, spangles of quartz and other crystals cast giddy reflections, as elusive as wheeling stars. None of the stalactites hung directly over the bridge. Yet they looked so ponderous that the mere wind of their passing if they fell might crack the span.
From their tips, streams of water trickled downward, pulling Covenant’s gaze with them.
Downward.
Downward.
Into an abyss that seemed to have no bottom. If those delicate rivulets struck rock somewhere far below the bridge, their plash was too distant to be audible.
The depths called to Covenant. Dizziness clutched at his stomach; his head. Involuntarily he stumbled. Galt’s hands gripped his arms like iron bands, but he did not feel them. Everyone around him seemed to recede until they were beyond reach; unable to aid him. Coldspray rasped questions that had no meaning. His mind whirled, sucking away its own substance.
His spirit had forgotten vertigo: his flesh had not. It urged him to pitch himself into the chasm; to satisfy this whirlpool of nausea by falling and falling like the water, endlessly, until his body redeemed itself in the depths.
If Galt had given him a chance—
“No,” the Ardent wheezed, straining for air. “I cannot. The Harrow has misled himself.” Fright ached in his voice. “The span is warded. We must not fall!”
Like a mirage of himself, the Insequent fled toward the safer rock of Mount Thunder’s roots, away from the portal.
“Withdraw,” Coldspray commanded through her teeth. “Follow the Ardent. Now. With care. This stone is seamed with age, ancient beyond reckoning. Our weight may surpass its endurance.”
The sound of her voice seemed to spread cracks through the rock, flaws like the fissures that riddled Covenant’s thoughts. He imagined bits of granite breaking off from the edges of the span, following threads of moisture down to their eternal end. The bridge had begun to fail. Or it would fail. Vertigo reduced his friable balance, his human awareness, to rubble.
“No,” countered Clyme. “The Harrow will forsake us, as the Ardent has done. This mad endeavor will accomplish only ruin if we permit the holder of Staff and ring to precede us.”
“He won’t,” Linden groaned urgently. “He promised. He’s going to take us to Jeremiah. And bring us back. If he doesn’t, he’ll destroy himself.”
Her voice created an eyot of sanity in Covenant’s reeling mind. Uncounted millennia ago, he had been familiar with vertigo. Occasionally he had been able to manage it. And Linden was right, of course she was. In addition, the Harrow—Like another piece of sanity, Covenant remembered that the Harrow had never opened the portal. Perhaps he did not know how.
Or how to use the Staff of Law.
He did not care about Linden’s pain.
The bridge was a way in; but it was also a snare. A defense. Protected. If the Harrow erred, he would shatter the span.
“Now,” insisted Rime Coldspray. “We will consider other choices when we have attained more trustworthy rock.”
Without waiting for the assent of the Humbled, she began to descend the bridge, stepping as gently as her size permitted.
At once, Frostheart Grueburn followed with Linden.
“Bring Covenant!” Linden ordered; pleaded. She must have been speaking to the Humbled. The rest of the Swordmainnir had already shifted their feet, readying themselves to obey Coldspray one at a time.
Chunks of stone still crumbled and fell from the rims of the span; but now Covenant understood that he was imagining them.
“Faugh!” spat the Harrow. “The Ardent’s alarm does not surprise me. Selecting him, the Insequent have betrayed themselves. But I did not foresee cowardice in those who name themselves the lady’s friends. I will summon you when I have secured the safety of your passage.”
Muttering again, he crossed the crest of the span like a man who had come too far to remember fear.
Past the edges of the stone, the abyss called to Covenant; sang to him like the siren lure of the merewives. But Galt did not release him. Branl and Clyme stood on either side as if to prevent him from breaking away; as if he had ever been strong enough to resist the Haruchai.
He continued to resist the whirl in his head. Arduously he gathered scraps of sanity from the inadequate air, accreting them like shards of iron to a magnet. Liand’s blazing Sunstone cleansed the atmosphere to some extent, dispelling increments of depletion and staleness; but it was not enough. Covenant’s dizziness was old and obdurate—and he had not re-learned the limitations of his carnal life. He had to fight for every shred of self-mastery.
His plight recalled the descent from Kevin’s Watch. Foamfollower had carried him once; but twice he had accomplished that feat by force of will. And the Harrow had never opened the portal to the Lost Deep. Wild magic would betray him there. He would need the Staff of Law. And cunning. And subtlety. Even though he had not had time to learn the Staff’s uses.
The portal was the reason. It explained why the Harrow had transported everyone here, instead of directly to Jeremiah. The defenses which the Viles had woven for their demesne were complex and duplicitous. If he did not enter the Lost Deep correctly, the entire subterranean realm might collapse. Or he and everyone with him might be slain in some more oblique and cruel fashion.
That Covenant understood. Memories might aid him—or they might bring madness. Understanding was sanity. And sanity made an island in the gyre of his flawed consciousness; a clear space in which he could remain himself.
By degrees, he recognized the import of Galt’s grip on his arms; recognized it and was grateful.
In one direction, the Harrow neared the culmination of the bridge. In the other, Giants moved cautiously toward the nearer wall of the cavern. They went in single file ahead of the Humbled and Covenant, carefully removing the stress of their weight from the span. The Ironhand and Grueburn had already reached the foot of the arc. Ignoring Linden’s protests, Stave had accompanied them. Latebirth and Mahrtiir would join them in three or four more strides, followed by Onyx Stonemage and Liand.
Covenant began to recover a measure of stability. Maybe, he thought, refusing his desire to fall: maybe he should ask the Humbled to take him to the Harrow. Like the Insequent, he had never wielded the Staff of Law. And his bandaged hands were almost entirely numb. He did not know how well or thoroughly they had been healed. But he might remember something. Somewhere among the remains of his fading recall, he might find knowledge that the Harrow needed—
He did not want to remember what lived in the abyss below him. Nonetheless his need to rescue Jeremiah was as great as Linden’s, although he no longer knew why.
Yet he feared the Lost Deep instinctively. It was rife with reminders of events and powers so inhuman and old that they might drag him dozens of millennia away from his present; from any possibility of helping Linden. He was not confident that he would be able to stand against his memories: not while the consequences of his resurrection threatened to betray him at every step.
Perhaps the Harrow already knew how to open the portal without precipitating a catastrophe.
Fuming to himself, he urged his guardians to follow the Swordmainnir.
Cirrus Kindwind was the last: she eased her way down the arc after Bluntfist and Bhapa. Trying to secure his tenuous poise, Covenant fixed his gaze straight ahead, past Kindwind’s shoulders toward the ragged stone of the cavern wall. The chasm tugged at his attention, but he refused to glance aside.
In another step, Stormpast Galesend would leave the bridge. Then the weight of five Giants would be gone: Linden, Mahrtiir, Liand, and Anele would safe. And Grueburn and Stonemage had already set down their burdens. With Coldspray, they braced themselves at the edge of the abyss, ready to catch anyone who might be forced to jump.
Their breath steamed in great gusts like intimations of dread.
Beyond them, a crude tunnel twisted away into the sealed midnight of Mount Thunder’s roots. In the light of the Sunstone, Covenant saw that the roof of the tunnel was scarcely high enough to let the Giants stand upright. Before it writhed out of sight, the passage narrowed sharply. Where it debouched into the cavern, however, it opened like a fan formed of relatively level obsidian veined with malachite. The white purity of the orcrest’s illumination accentuated the green hue of the malachite. The branching of the veins through the obsidian gave them an eerie resemblance to the grass stains on Linden’s jeans.
Galesend and then Latebirth gained the mouth of the tunnel. Holding Covenant between them like a prisoner or an invalid, the Humbled matched Kindwind’s pace as she moved down the span.
Now Covenant could believe that the bridge would hold; and his balance improved. With each step, he found it easier to shut out the insistence of the gulf.
Presumably to ensure that Anele would not wander too near the abyss, Galesend put the old man on his feet within the mouth of the tunnel, near the area where the obsidian tapered to an end. Then she turned back to welcome Latebirth.
For reasons that had slumped from Covenant’s shoulders like a garment which he had become too small to wear, he felt a twist of anxiety on Anele’s behalf. Dooms hinged on him, as they did on the Harrow.—remember that he is the hope of the Land. Someone had said that: someone Covenant trusted. When your deeds have come to doom—His memories seemed random, involuntary; impossible to control. Cracks and crevices hemmed him on all sides, cutting him off from ordinary humanity.—as they must—In his own eyes, he would not have been more obviously a leper if the scar on his forehead had been a brand. Yet Linden’s gaze clung to his with the desperation of a woman who believed that he clasped her fate in his insensible hands.
Hell and blood, she must have been freezing—He may have been shivering himself: he was not sure. But the small tears in her shirt were as vivid to him as the bullet hole over her heart. Cold would leak through the red flannel like water. Whenever she exhaled, steam rose like frailty from her lungs.
She had given up so much, and had lost more. Too much.
Holding her gaze, Covenant became stronger for her sake. Every moment that he retained his grip on the present cost him more of his memories; deprived him ineluctably of the ineffable knowledge which had inspired him to speak to her from the Arch of Time. Already his awareness of what he needed to do, and why, had dwindled to indeterminate and unpredictable debris. But Linden needed him. In some fashion that he could no longer define, the Earth and the Land and Jeremiah needed him as much as they needed her. Grimly he increased his pace, drawing the Humbled with him as he crowded closer to Cirrus Kindwind’s back.
At irregular intervals, the krill throbbed ominously against his abdomen; but he ignored it.
As Halewhole Bluntfist carried Bhapa off the bridge, Coldspray, Grueburn, and Stonemage began to relax. Now Kindwind, Covenant, and the Humbled were close to safety.
Lacking percipience, Covenant could not sense the Harrow. Too many of his nerves were dead. He did not doubt that the Insequent had reached the far end of the span. But he had no idea what that avid man might do there, or how his efforts would fare. Nevertheless Covenant did not risk turning his head to look. His balance was still precarious. If he let it, the abyss would renew its grip in an instant.
Like Linden, he had lost and given up too much.
He hoped that her health-sense had not been entirely stifled, despite her proximity to the fierce source of Kevin’s Dirt. If Liand’s exertion of Earthpower could impose a partial cleanliness on the air, it might also preserve a measure of her discernment. And if she could still see, then surely the senses of the Giants and the Haruchai would retain their native vitality. The Ramen, and even Liand himself, might feel as numb as Covenant, but their perceptions would not be entirely superficial.
Yet no effect of orcrest could relieve Covenant’s leprosy, or ease his particular vulnerabilities. As he left the bridge to stand on obsidian and malachite, he felt more useless than he had when Linden had first reclaimed him. He had no idea what to say to her, or to any of her companions. Her relief was unmistakable. The Ramen and even the Giants appeared to breathe more easily now that everyone was safe, at least for the moment. But it was only a matter of time before one of them studied what the Harrow was doing, or not doing, and asked, Now what? And Covenant could not remember what they all needed to know.
It was also only a matter of time before the Earth’s deepest lamentation noticed the intrusion of theurgy in Her dominions. Loric’s krill and Liand’s orcrest would attract attention. Long ages of stupor might continue to hold Her for a while, but then She would respond.
And if or when Linden reached Jeremiah, Kastenessen and Esmer and the Elohim and even the buried bane would know where to look—
Whether Covenant’s companions realized it or not, they had no one to turn to for answers except the Ardent.
The beribboned Insequent stood in the mouth of the tunnel near Anele. He kept his back to the abyss; did not look at anyone. If he had received any benefit from Liand’s exertion of Earthpower, he did not show it. Instead he continued to breathe heavily, as if he had carried his fat and fear for leagues under the mountain. The multitudinous strips of his apparel remained clenched around him as tightly as a fist.
Had the will and power of his people deserted him? He seemed overwhelmed; too daunted to carry out their wishes. As useless as Covenant—
Covenant found everyone except the Ardent and Anele looking at him. Even Linden’s closest friends watched his every movement as though they expected him to perform a miracle of some kind. Take command of the situation. Tell them what to do.
Clearly they retained enough health-sense to see that his mind was present. As he had hoped, the orcrest’s Earthpower resisted the worst effects of Kevin’s Dirt. Linden’s eyes clung to him. She was unutterably precious to him, and wounded past bearing. In some other life—the life that she deserved—he would have wrapped his arms around her and held her until her loneliness eased.
But he had no value to her here: not as he was.
“Hellfire,” he muttered simply to break the silence. “That was fun.” Trying to rub sensations of futility from his face with his bound hands, he asked, “Can any of you see what the Harrow is doing? I’m afraid to look.”
No one glanced away. Even the Humbled regarded him stolidly.
Softly, as if she were reluctant to awaken echoes, Rime Coldspray replied, “The Harrow has gained the archway or portal at the foot of the span. Now he bows on one knee at the verge of an extreme dark which the Stonedownor’s legacy cannot penetrate. Perhaps he prepares incantations. Perhaps not. The white gold ring he holds to his forehead in one fist. The Staff of Law he grips upright before him. To my diminished sight, however, he appears to wield no magicks. Rather he remains merely bowed as in contemplation.”
The rim of the precipice was too near. Trickles and streams of water fell from the tips of the stalactites as if they were draining the life-blood out of the world’s veins drop by drop. The web of malachite that defined or defied the obsidian under Covenant’s boots created the illusion that its strands flowed ceaselessly toward the abysm.
“He’s trying to find the way in.” Covenant was hardly aware of his own voice. The Ardent’s alarm was contagious. It bred vertigo. “Past that blank place is the Lost Deep. The home of the Viles, back when the Viles still existed. That’s where they did their breeding—and the Demondim did—and the ur-viles. But it’s protected. If the Harrow can’t open it, we won’t get in.
“That’s why we’re here. Why we aren’t already with Jeremiah. No one can get in if that portal isn’t opened first.”
The Masters and Stave regarded him as though nothing that he might say could surprise them. The Giants only frowned in concentration, absorbing new information. But Linden stared at Covenant with darkness in her eyes. Her cheeks were pale, drained of blood. And the Ramen and Liand appeared to take their cue from her—or from the Ardent’s labored breathing. Innominate uncertainties and dreads marked their faces like fretwork. Cowed by the mass of immeasurable stone above him, even the Manethrall gave the impression that he could be intimidated.
While he was still able to hold them, Covenant scrambled to articulate his memories. “This chasm. It’s how the Viles guarded themselves. Isolated themselves. It isn’t just a chasm. A terrible power lives here.
“Hell and blood,” he panted through his teeth. “This is hard. I can’t think—” Every word was as dangerous as falling. He spoke in puffs of vapor that became nothing. He could not help Linden. “When the Viles formed that bridge, they called it the Hazard. But translation doesn’t do it justice. When they said ‘Hazard,’ they didn’t just mean that terrible power. And they didn’t just mean they covered the bridge with wards so it would shatter if someone tried to enter the Lost Deep without knowing how. It was their hazard, too.
“Making it, they risked everything. Who they were. What they meant to themselves. It was their only link to the rest of the Land. The rest of the Earth. When they crossed out of the Lost Deep, everything they’d ever done or cared about might be destroyed. While they kept themselves isolated, they could imagine they were perfect. But they were smart enough to know the world is a big place. Even the Land is a big place. They might meet beings and forces that would make them look paltry.
“They created the Hazard because they were too intelligent to be content with ideas of perfection that hadn’t been tested. Compared. Measured.”
The Haruchai would understand that better than anyone.
Behind him, he heard Anele muttering: a babble of agitation. But Linden’s stare held him. He did not want to drop her gaze, even for a moment. If he had been able to look into her eyes—into her heart—during his long participation in the Arch, he might have been content to remain there until all things ended.
“Does the Harrow know how to open the door?”
Linden’s question cut at Covenant: he had no numbness to cover that hurt. His scant memories became more useless whenever he needed them. All that time spent among the millennia, wasted—
Thickly he admitted, “You’ll have to ask the Ardent. I’ve forgotten. If I ever knew.” He had no idea how to open the portal himself. He recalled only that wild magic would shatter the Hazard. For this task, the Harrow had to depend on the Staff of Law.
It belonged to Linden.
Briefly she searched him as if she thought that the sheer force of her yearning would compel remembrance. But the pressure accumulating within her demanded release: he could see that without percipience. While his pulse labored helplessly in his chest, and the cold tightened its grip, she turned away, drawing his attention with her.
Her lips were pallid and chilled as she repeated her question to the Insequent. Covenant drew inferences of shivering from the sound of her voice.
Why else had the Ardent insisted on accompanying Linden and her companions?
The fat man did not reply directly. He did not face her. Perhaps he could not. Instead he released a few of his ribbands in a flutter that suggested negation.
“I cannot aid him here.” His voice was a taut wheeze. “This has been his life’s quest. It is not mine. Nor has it been any other living Insequent’s. I possess no knowledge, either earned or given, to ease his dilemma.”
Hurt by Linden’s desperation, Covenant demanded, “Then why exactly are you here? Your people didn’t pick you just because you happen to like new experiences. They must have had something more constructive in mind. Otherwise what was the point?”
The Ardent flinched as if a lash had licked across his back. His raiment expanded and contracted with every hoarse breath. Nevertheless Covenant’s challenge seemed to strike a spark of indignation or resolve within him. Summoning fortitude as though he had found it hidden within his garish apparel, he lifted his head, straightened his back. Slowly he turned. Strips of cerise and azure wiped the sweat from his forehead and his plump cheeks. They appeared to do so of their own volition.
“It is my task to ensure that the Harrow abides by his oath. That mission I have begun. I will continue it. I will assist him when I am able to do so. For the nonce, however, Timewarden, I have another purpose, one which the conjoined will of the Insequent has urged. I have drawn you hither, to my side rather than to the Harrow’s. Him you cannot succor. Here knowledge which you have forgotten may be restored.
“Among those who assiduously seek out auguries and prescience, there is disagreement concerning the outcome of our present quest. Yet all concur that we must stand in this place at this time. Here we are vouchsafed an opportunity which will not recur, and which is greatly to be desired.”
“What opportunity?” Linden’s voice shook on the verge of hysteria. “How does this help us find my son?”
“It does not—” began the Insequent.
Before he could continue, Rime Coldspray put in, “Stonedownor, this illumination is a great boon.” She sounded studiously nonchalant, casual, like a woman trying to ease the tension of her companions. “Can it be extended to supply warmth as well? Clearly the Ramen are hardy, inured to extremes. The same may be said of Giants and Haruchai. But Linden Giantfriend suffers here, as you also suffer. And it appears that the Timewarden is shielded only by his illness.”
Covenant nodded reflexively. The state of his hands and feet gave him no protection. Fingers of ice had found their way through his clothes into his unfamiliar flesh. He trembled to the rhythm of Linden’s shivering. But he did not care about himself. Even wrapped in vellum, the krill’s heat defended his physical core. And whenever Joan probed the gem, he gained more warmth. Inadvertently she did him good.
Linden was more at risk.
“It does not,” repeated the Ardent. “Nonetheless it is needful.”
Studying Linden, Liand replied to the Ironhand, “I have not made the attempt.” His concern was evident. “Yet at every turn the virtues of orcrest have surpassed my imagination. If it gives light, banishes the effects of Kevin’s Dirt, and cleanses this foul air, perhaps it may also emit heat. I will endeavor—”
“Needful how?” insisted Linden.
“Chosen,” Stave said flatly: a veiled command. “Attend to Anele.”
Linden hardly appeared to hear the former Master. Her attention clung to the Ardent. But Covenant forced himself to glance toward the old man.
How could he not remember this? Surely it was the task for which he had been resurrected? To remember—and give warning?
The marks on Linden’s jeans should have reminded him—
Pahni drew a sharp breath as she followed Covenant’s gaze. Baffled in his efforts to concentrate on the Sunstone, Liand looked momentarily flustered. Then his black brows arched in surprise. Blindly Mahrtiir faced Linden’s first companion.
“Is this possession?” Stormpast Galesend asked, anxious for the man she had been charged to carry. “Is it some new manifestation of his madness? Stone and Sea! The diminishment of my sight vexes me.”
Wincing, Linden wheeled away from the Ardent.
Anele lay facedown on the uneven obsidian with his arms and legs outstretched as if in deliberate prostration. Beneath his scrawny frame, veins of green radiated outward as though they depicted rays of light. Somehow the malachite conveyed the impression that it throbbed to the beat of his pulse.
Those veins resembled the stains which Covenant had once worn after passing through Morinmoss.
To Covenant, Anele looked only frail and beaten, as if he had been felled. But Liand murmured in wonder, “See him, Linden.” And one of the Swordmainnir added, “Aye, behold.”
Covenant wanted to ask, See what? Almost at once, however, Linden breathed, “That’s not possession. It’s Earthpower. He’s on fire with it. His birthright—I’ve never seen it so strong. Or so close to the surface.”
With an air of respect, even of reverence, the Ardent backed away from Anele; cleared a space around the old man.
In a voice like stone and apprehension and sorrow crushed together until they were in danger of crumbling, the old man said distinctly, “It is here.”
The words themselves, or the tone in which Anele spoke them, ignited memories in Covenant—
Seek deep rock.
—memories so recent and explicit that they should have been impossible to forget.
The Harrow had brought Linden’s company to stone so deep that no human capable of interpreting it had ever touched it before.
In Salva Gildenbourne, Anele had tried to explain something to Linden. Who else had heard him? Who else, apart from Covenant before his reincarnation? Stave? Liand?
“Here, Anele?” Linden asked in steam and cold. “What’s here? What is the stone telling you?”
What had awakened the old man’s inherited strength?
“The wood of the world has forgotten.” Anele sounded as harsh as the rock beneath him. “It cannot reclaim itself. It requires aid. Yet this stone remembers.”
Covenant remembered other things instead. A different time. A distant place.
Wood is too brief. All vastness is forgotten.
He expected to see Anele’s limbs straining, fingers clawing at the obsidian. But there was no effort in Anele’s splayed fingers. His whole body looked limp, as if he were slowly melting into the gutrock. Only his voice was tight; wakeful.
“There must be forbidding.”
Without forbidding, there is too little time.
The Giants gathered around Linden and Stave, Liand and the old man. Instinctively they formed a protective cordon, although there was nothing that they could do to ease or aid him. Linden knelt at Anele’s side. Liand held his orcrest high. Its light cast grotesque shadows of the Swordmainnir on the crude walls of the passage. The vapor of their breathing spread out and vanished, inhaled by the surrounding dark.
The Humbled remained close to Covenant. Their halfhands seemed to mock him at the edges of his vision. He suspected that they would stop him if he tried to approach Anele. They had never trusted Anele’s legacy—or any use of Earthpower.
“Anele,” Linden whispered. “Tell me.”
“Even here it is felt,” the old man said as if he were answering her. “Written. Lamented.” But the words were not a reply. Anele’s fixation on the lines of malachite within the obsidian was complete. He responded to the world’s oldest secrets, not to her. “The rousing of the Worm. It devours the magic of the Earth. The life. But its hunger is too great. When it has depleted lesser sustenance, it must come to the Land.”
Lesser sustenance? He must have meant the Elohim. But Covenant could not be sure. His own memories were too fresh.
There is too much. Power and peril. Malevolence. Ruin. And too little time. The last days of the Land are counted.
On some level, however, he knew that Anele was right. The Worm was eating the magic out of the world. But it needed more than it could obtain from any Elohim—or from all of the Elohim.
By its very nature, the Worm would give Lord Foul what the Despiser had always craved.
Covenant did not know how Linden would be able to bear that responsibility.
“Heed him well,” the Ardent advised in a hushed murmur. “This has been foreseen. It is knowledge which has been hidden since the rising of the first dawn within the Arch, shared by none but the Elohim. He must be heeded.”
“We heed him very well,” returned Rime Coldspray in a low growl. She may have wanted to silence the Insequent.
“The Worm will come.” Gradually Anele’s voice took on a ritual cadence, a sound of litany, as if he recited a sacral truth. “It must. Bringing with it the last crisis of the Earth, it will come. Here it will discover its final nourishment.”
Become as trees, the roots of trees. Seek deep rock.
Liand’s upraised arm trembled with cold and effort. The Sunstone shook, stirring shadows like shaken leaves. Stave’s lone eye caught the radiance in a flicker of gleams as if he were gazing into the fiery face of apocalypse.
“Here?” Linden asked, still whispering. Bereft or abandoned: Covenant could not tell the difference. “In the Lost Deep? In that chasm? What nourishment?”
Surely she knew that Anele did not hear her?
—the necessary forbidding of evils—
If the Earth had no hope, there was none for Jeremiah—or for any love.
“If it is not forbidden, it will have Earthpower,” Anele said in tones of rock and woe. “If it is not opposed by the forgotten truths of stone and wood, orcrest and refusal, it will have life. The very blood of life from the most potent and private recesses of the Earth’s heart. When the Worm of the World’s End drinks the Blood of the Earth, its puissance will consume the Arch of Time.”
“Anele!” Linden cried softly. “Are you sure? Anele? What forgotten truths?”
Beyond question the old man did not hear her. He said nothing further. He may have fallen asleep, exhausted by prophecy.
To Melenkurion Skyweir, Covenant thought dumbly. Of course. Not here. Not to the Lost Deep, or to any place within Mount Thunder. The Despiser had buried too much evil in these depths. The Worm needed Earthpower concentrated and pure, the world’s essential chrism.
As pure as orcrest. As pure as the wrath of Forestals, who had possessed the power to refuse—
“It is done,” the Ardent announced with quiet satisfaction. “As it was foreseen, so it has transpired. And I alone among the Insequent bear witness. The Harrow himself has heard no single word. He cares naught for the joy of such epiphanies.”
Some of the Giants closed their fists, glared at the Ardent. Others ignored the Insequent. The Humbled watched impassively as Linden bowed her head over Anele. In Liand’s unsteady light, the Ramen seemed to shrink as though they were being made smaller by the loss of open skies and plains, of sunshine and Ranyhyn.
But Covenant shared none of their reactions. He was slipping again, skidding down a scree of moments into the Land’s past. Losing the present. There was evil in the chasm. It was going to wake up. He could not stop himself.
—the necessary forbidding—
He did not understand how he could have failed to remember.