Against All Things Ending Read online

  But she was wrong about him: he did not mean to comfort her. His tone sharpened as he began to speak. His words seemed to fall on her like stones.

  “Linden Avery, you are scantly known to me. Nonetheless I behold what you have become. You have exceeded the healer who once touched my heart, offering hope amid vast suffering and rue. Now you have made of yourself a Gallows Howe, its soil barren, drenched with fury and recrimination. Therefore you must exceed yourself yet again, while the world awaits its doom. If you do not, the woe of all who live will be both cruel and brief.

  “Are you dismayed by the hurt of your deeds? Then make amends. Do not imagine that you have come to the end of service and healing. The woman who entered my camp to meet death and give battle would not have permitted herself that Desecration.”

  Linden heard him, but she did not listen. Gallows Howe held truths unknown to Berek and his descendants. Ire was only one aspect of what she had learned in Caerroil Wildwood’s demesne—and in her ordeal under Melenkurion Skyweir. By their stature and potency, the ancient Lords had drawn her beyond herself. Now she felt called to the Law-Breakers.

  To Elena, daughter of Lena and Covenant, who had pierced the Law of Death because she had trusted Kevin’s pain—and who, like Linden, had failed to heed the warning of the Ranyhyn.

  Linden herself had become a Law-Breaker. And she could not lay claim to the redemptive mystery which had impelled Caer-Caveral to breach the Law of Life so that Covenant’s spirit would remain to ward the Arch of Time when his body had been slain—and so that Hollian and her unborn son could live again. The Dead Forestal of Andelain would not understand Linden.

  Only Elena could comprehend her now that Linden also had ignored the Ranyhyn, and all of her choices had become calamities.

  Moving around Covenant’s sprawled helplessness and the krill’s compulsory light—leaving her Staff and Covenant’s ring unregarded on the grass—Linden crossed the hollow to approach the last Forestal and the stricken High Lord.

  On some level, she felt Berek’s shade watching her. She sensed his efforts to gauge the condition of her soul—or the direction of her thoughts. But she had no attention to spare for him; and after a moment, he seemed to sigh. Unreassured, he faded as well, following his descendants as if she had dismissed him.

  In the absence of those towering spirits—and of the Wraiths, fled from Linden’s great wrong—her companions began to emerge from their entrancement and shock. Liand and the Ramen became restive, fretted by alarms. The Humbled and even Stave gazed after Linden as though they disapproved of her refusal to acknowledge or answer Berek Halfhand. The Harrow watched Linden avidly while Infelice shed distress like damaged jewels.

  But Linden ignored them as well. A score of paces, or perhaps more, brought her face-to-face with the Law-Breakers, who had escorted Covenant out of Time to meet her uttermost need.

  Elena seemed unable to meet her gaze. Regret and grief twisted the High Lord’s features as she studied the grass at Linden’s feet, the stains on Linden’s jeans. Lit by the krill, torn hair framed Elena’s galled face, her naked self-abhorrence.

  At any other time, Linden might have been moved by empathy to remain silent. Elena was Covenant’s daughter. In simple kindness, if for no other reason, Linden might have tried to show the spectre as much consideration as she had given Joan.

  But Roger also was Covenant’s child. Linden had no patience for Elena. She could not afford to treat Elena’s failings more gently than her own. Linden had committed an absolute crime. Only absolute responses would suffice.

  Berek was right about her: she had become a kind of Gallows Howe. The sorrow that she had felt for Kevin Landwaster was like Caerroil Wildwood’s grief for his trees—and for his future. It remained with her; but its implied vulnerability had already bled away into soil made barren by death. Like the former Forestal of Garroting Deep, she was aghast at the scale of her own inadequacy. But she had none of his fury, and no one to blame. She was too full of dismay to consider Elena’s frailty.

  Perhaps Elena understood the gift which Berek, Damelon, and Loric had given Kevin. Her spirit as she avoided Linden’s gaze seemed to yearn for some forgiving touch. In her, hope was commingled with a raw fear that she would be refused.

  But Linden had gone too far beyond hope and despair to comfort Elena. Covenant’s daughter needed his consolation, not Linden’s.

  In a low voice, taut and bitter, she demanded, “Stop feeling sorry for yourself.” She was speaking to herself as much as to Elena’s woe. “It doesn’t accomplish anything. You’ve suffered enough. Tell me what to do now.”

  Tell me how to bear what I’ve done.

  She needed an answer. But apparently she—like Elena herself—had misjudged the Dead. In a different form, Elena may once have aided Covenant: she had no aid to offer now. Instead an echo of Linden’s dismay twisted her features. Raising her face to the doomed stars, she uttered a wail of desolation: the stark cry of a woman whose wracked heart had been denied.

  Then she flared briefly in the krill’s light and vanished, following the distant ancestors of her High Lordship out of the vale; out of the night.

  From the bottom of the hollow, Linden’s friends gazed at her as if she had smitten their hearts. Infelice’s distress matched the outrage of the Humbled.

  “Elena!” Linden cried urgently. “Come back! I need you!” But her appeal died, forlorn, among the benighted trees, and found no reply.

  Instead Caer-Caveral faced her with severity and indignation in every line of his spectral form.

  “You judge harshly, Wildwielder. The Landwaster himself has been granted solace. Does your heart hold no compassion for Elena daughter of Lena, whose daring and folly compelled her to spend herself in service to the Despiser?”

  “Damnit,” Linden retorted without flinching, “that’s not the point. Compassion isn’t going to save any of us.” There was nothing left to save except Jeremiah. “Somebody has to tell me what to do.”

  The Dead Forestal folded his arms across his chest, holding his scepter in the crook of his elbow; forbidding her. “Cease your protests.” He had set aside every impulse or emotion that might have resembled mercy. “They are bootless. We have no counsel for you.”

  Linden beat her fists on her temples. She would have clutched at Caer-Caveral if he had been anything more than an eidolon. “Then tell me why you won’t help me. When Covenant was here before, you gave him everything,” advice and Vain as well as the location of the One Tree. The Forestal and Covenant’s Dead had prepared every step of his path to death and triumph. “Why didn’t you care about ‘the necessity of freedom’ then? He’s Thomas Covenant. He would have found a way without you. I’m just lost.

  “Why have you forsaken me?”

  Caer-Caveral glowered at her, shedding reminders of his slain song. “Much has been altered since the Unbeliever last walked among the living. You are indeed forsaken, by the Dead as by the Earth’s Creator. How could it be otherwise, when all of your deeds conduce to ruin?”

  Then he said, “In pity, however,” although his tone held no pity, “I will observe that the Unbeliever entered Andelain alone, for no companion dared to stand at his side. He had neither health-sense nor the Staff of Law. The Ranyhyn had not cautioned him. He knew only love and compassion. Thus his need was greater than yours. For that reason, he was given gifts.

  “Yet the Dead shaped none of his choices. He did not come seeking guidance. Nor did he request aid. In sooth, he did not tread any path which he did not determine for himself—or which you did not determine on his behalf.

  “You have companions, Chosen, who have not faltered in your service. If you must have counsel, require it of them. They have no knowledge which you do not share, but their hearts are not consumed by darkness.”

  Abruptly Caer-Caveral unclasped his arms; gripped his scepter in one fist. Whirling the gnarled wood about him as though he were invoking music, a melody which had been silent for millennia, he remo
ved himself from the night, leaving Linden alone on the slope of the vale.

  Beyond her, Andelain’s trees looked chthonic in the light of the krill. Behind her stood the charred stump of the Forestal’s former life, the krill itself, Thomas Covenant’s sprawled unconsciousness. The conflicting concerns and passions of her companions tugged at her nerves like accusations or pleading. And among them on the grass lay the Staff of Law and Covenant’s wild gold ring as if those instruments of power formed the pivot on which the fate of worlds turned.

  For a moment, Linden yearned to simply walk away. She had done something like that once before in Andelain, when her fears for or of Covenant had raised a wall between them. She could stride into the darkness and try to lose herself among the kindly folds of the Hills. There copses and greenswards and beauty might appease her guilt with their lenitive beneficence; soothe her savaged heart. She could walk and walk until there was nothing left of her, and the burden of the Land’s unanswerable needs fell to someone else.

  But to do so would be to forsake Jeremiah, as she herself had been forsaken. And her friends deserved more from her. After what she had done to him, Covenant deserved more.

  Days ago, Manethrall Mahrtiir had told her, Therein lay Kevin Landwaster’s error—aye, and great Kelenbhrabanal’s also. When all hope was gone, they heeded the counsels of despair. Had they continued to strive, defying their doom, some unforeseen wonder might have occurred.

  Linden no longer believed in unforeseen wonders. They were Covenant’s province—and she had crippled him. Nevertheless she turned her back on the surrounding darkness and walked slowly down to rejoin her friends and the Ranyhyn, the Humbled and Infelice and the Harrow.

  None of them attended Covenant’s unconsciousness, although the Humbled stood guard over him. They were chary of him; restrained by awe, or by the fear that they might harm him inadvertently. Nevertheless everyone watching Linden understood too much: she could see that. For those who cared about her, what she had done was an ictus in their hearts. Liand and the Ramen lacked the Harrow’s provocative knowledge, Infelice’s Earth-spanning consciousness, the shared memories of the Haruchai. None of her friends—or her antagonists—could match the strange and singular insight of the Ranyhyn. But they all were gifted with health-sense; percipience. The Elohim’s announcement that Linden had invoked the destruction of the Earth may have sounded abstract to Liand and the Ramen; even to the Humbled and Stave. Still they knew that they had witnessed an irreversible catastrophe; that she had vindicated every warning, fulfilled every dire prophecy—

  When your deeds have come to doom, as they must—

  You have it within you to perform horrors.

  How had the Harrow and even the Viles known how badly she would fail her loves?

  But Linden did not allow herself to hide her head as she approached the krill and Covenant’s limp form. She did not intend to conceal her fatal heart behind a veil of shame. If she had indeed roused the Worm of the World’s End, she meant to bear as much of the cost as her flesh could endure.

  Bhapa and Pahni did not meet her eyes. Apparently they could not. Pahni clung to Liand, hiding her shock and terror against his shoulder. Bhapa studied the grass at his feet as though he feared that Linden’s gaze would make him weep. But the bandage over Mahrtiir’s face was too mundane to conceal the ferocity of his glower.

  Stave had regained his impassivity. Perhaps he had never lost it. His stance was a query, not a repudiation. But the Humbled were not so restrained. Behind their familiar ready poise, they seemed to tremble with the force of their eagerness to strike her down.

  Covenant had told them to choose her. They did not appear inclined to heed him.

  Around the Humbled, the Ranyhyn remained watchful, wary; prepared to defend Linden again. As Linden drew near, Hyn nickered softly. The mare’s call sounded sorrowful and resigned, as if she blamed herself. In spite of what Linden had done, the horses held fast to their fidelity. Perhaps they still trusted her. If they considered Infelice or the Harrow relevant to the fate of the Land—or to their own imperatives—they did not show it.

  Of them all, however, all of Linden’s friends, only Liand looked at her and spoke.

  Every hint of the young dignity which he had displayed upon other occasions was gone. The stature of his Stonedownor heritage had deserted him. He had replaced his Sunstone in its pouch: he did not reach for it now. Linden had never seen him look so small, or so lorn. The raven wings of his eyebrows articulated his uncertainty.

  She expected him to plead for an explanation; a justification. Hell, she half expected him to castigate her. He and everyone else had earned that right. But he did not.

  Instead he asked, hoarse with empathy, “Will you not heal him?” Helplessly he indicated Covenant. “Linden, the pain of his incarnation wracks him. He cannot contain the greatness of his spirit. There is also an illness which I do not comprehend, though it appears paltry by the measure of his rent mind.

  “The Staff of Law lies there.” Liand pointed at the shaft of wood, iron-shod and ebony and runed. “Will you not grant him the benison of its flame? He has suffered beyond my power to imagine it.” His tone held no accusation. “Will you not ease his plight?”

  Linden shook her head. She was too full of dismay to falter. And the first shock of horror had passed. She was beginning to regain her ability to consider what she did.

  “Don’t you think,” she asked Liand precisely, “that I’ve done enough harm already?”

  Covenant was not warded by any power which might repulse her touch. But she could not affect the state of his mind—his spirit—without entering into him with her health-sense. Without possessing him. Long ago, she had done such things: she knew now that they were violations as profound as any rape. In addition, she could not foresee the effects of any change that she might make in Covenant’s truncated transcendence. Years of experience had taught her that any sentience which did not heal itself might be forever flawed. And on this subject, the Ranyhyn had warned her clearly enough. They had shown her the likely outcome if she imposed her will on Covenant. Or on Jeremiah.

  Some evils could not be twisted to serve any purpose but their own. Manipulating Covenant’s condition for her own benefit would make her no better than the vile succubus that feasted on Jeremiah’s neck. Perhaps some obdurate instinct for salvation would enable Covenant to find his way through the maze of his fissured consciousness. Linden would not.

  Liand winced at her answer: at the words themselves, or at their acrid sound in the lush night. Pahni stifled a whimper against his shoulder. Mahrtiir’s fierce silence conveyed the impression that he was mustering arguments to persuade her.

  But Linden moved past them as though she had been indurated to any simple or direct form of compassion. She made no effort to retrieve her Staff or Covenant’s ring. Jeremiah’s ruined toy in her pocket was enough for her: the bullet hole and the small tears in her shirt were enough. Ignoring the grim enmity of the Humbled, she went to confront Infelice.

  Now that the crisis of Linden’s powers had passed, the echo of wild magic from Loric’s krill did not outshine the Elohim’s refulgence. Infelice stood before Linden like a cynosure of loveliness and aghast hauteur. Wreathed about her limbs, her bedizened garment resembled weeping woven of gemstones and recrimination.

  The Mahdoubt had told Linden that There is hope in contradiction. Long ago, Covenant had said the same thing. Before that, High Lord Mhoram had said it.

  But the Mahdoubt had fallen into madness and death for Linden’s sake; and Covenant lay shattered on the grass. Linden had never known Mhoram.

  Without preamble, she said, “The Dead are gone.” She did not doubt that Sunder and Hollian had already bid farewell to their immeasurably bereft son; that Grimmand Honninscrave had left the Swordmainnir to consider all that they had lost. “And Covenant can’t help me. I’ve hurt him too badly.” Nor could the Harrow’s knowledge, the fruit of his long diligence and greed, be compared to the i
mmortal awareness of the Elohim. “That only leaves you.

  “Tell me how to find my son.”

  The Harrow had averred that Infelice would not or could not do so.

  “Wildwielder,” the Elohim retorted sharply: a reprimand. “You yourself have asked if the harm which you have wrought does not suffice. Will you compound ruin with delirancy? Your son is an abomination. His uses are abominable. Did not the first Halfhand say that you must exceed yourself yet again? He wished to convey that you must set aside this mad craving for your son.”

  Linden shook her head again. Infelice’s words slipped past her like shadows, wasted and empty of affect. No objurgation could touch her while she remained deaf to despair.

  And she did not choose to credit the Elohim’s interpretation of High Lord Berek’s insistence—

  “Then tell me,” she said as though Infelice had not spoken, “how to stop the Worm.”

  “Stop the Worm?” The woman’s voice nearly cracked. “Do you imagine that such a being may be hindered or halted in any manner? Your ignorance is as extreme as your transgressions.”

  Behind Linden, the Harrow chuckled softly; but she heard no humor in the sound.

  “So explain it to me,” she demanded. “Cure my ignorance. Why does such a being even exist? What’s it for? What made the Creator think that the Worm of the World’s End was a good idea? Did he want to kill his own creation? Was all of this,” all of life and time, “just some cruel experiment to see how long it would take us to do everything wrong?”

  “Fool!” retorted Infelice. Impatiently she dismissed the worth of Linden’s question. “How otherwise might the Creator have devised a living world? You have named yourself a healer. How do you fail to grasp that life cannot exist without death?”

  Her voice wove a skein of sorrow and repugnance among the trees. “From the smallest blade of grass to the most feral Sandgorgon or skurj, all that lives is able to do so only because it contains within itself the seeds of its own end. If living things did not decline and perish, they would soon crowd out all other life and time and hope. For this reason, every living thing ages and dies. And if its life is long, then its capacity for procreation is foreshortened.”