Against All Things Ending Read online

  “Do you conceive,” countered Infelice, “that your word has worth in such matters? It does not. This is some elaborate chicane to gain your desires. You are mortal, Insequent. Your human mind cannot contain the scale of your doomed intent.”

  Linden braced herself to tell Infelice and the Harrow to shut up. She had had enough of their antagonism: it shed no light on the darkness of her decisions. But before she could demand their silence, she heard Covenant.

  The Wraiths had revived him. Still lying with his head propped on Mahrtiir’s shins, he spoke softly: a mere wisp of sound in the fretted night. Nevertheless his voice carried as though he had the authority to command the very air of the vale.

  “Do any of you have a better idea?”

  Linden wheeled toward him as if he had reached out and snatched at her arm; as if she had no choice.

  The gathering around him had parted: she could see him clearly. He had not risen from the grass into the light of the krill. But Wraiths still danced about him, a penumbra of gentle fires. In spite of the distance between them, Linden saw him with frightening clarity.

  The pallor of his features displayed his weakness. Neither aliantha nor the Wraiths had relieved his fundamental flaws or his illness. He still resembled an invalid, too weak to stand; perhaps too weak to think. With her health-sense, Linden could almost identify the fault-lines along which the bedrock of his mind had cracked.

  Yet the galls of his face retained their compelling severity. He looked like a fallen prophet, brought low before he could proclaim the Land’s fate.

  Beneath the shock of his white hair, the scar on his forehead gleamed like an accusation. See? it seemed to say. This is my mortality. My pain. It’s your doing.

  While Linden studied him, he turned his gaze on everyone around him. But none of them answered him. Even the Humbled did not. Linden expected them to reiterate their denunciations of her; yet Branl, Galt, and Clyme said nothing. Covenant’s authority held them in the same way that it ruled the atmosphere of the hollow.

  “In that case”—he sounded sure in spite of his frailty—“I think we should do this Linden’s way. She can make this kind of decision. The rest of us can’t.” After a moment, he found the strength to add, “Mhoram would approve.”

  At once, Infelice fled like a wail from the hollow. She disappeared as though Covenant had banished her; as though her cause were lost without the Timewarden’s support.

  In the wake of her departure, the Harrow’s air of smug triumph made Linden wish that she could strike him down.

  3.

  Bargaining with Fate

  Hardly conscious of her own movements, Linden turned her back on the Harrow and hastened toward Covenant. With all of her senses, she examined her former lover. Was it possible that the Wraiths had healed his creviced mind? That she had misinterpreted the effects of the eldritch flames? Had they made him whole?

  Did he even know what he was saying when he gave Linden his support? When he horrified Infelice so profoundly that the Elohim fled in despair?

  Unregarded, Giants loomed in front of her. Then they stood behind her. She passed among Ranyhyn and Haruchai without noticing them. Liand and the Cords hovered around Covenant: Mahrtiir supported the Unbeliever’s head. But she did not look at them. All of her attention was fixed on Thomas Covenant.

  For the moment, at least, she had forgotten dismay and shame.

  Braced by the Manethrall, Covenant now sat more upright, leaning against Mahrtiir’s chest. He seemed unaware of Linden’s approach. He may have been unaware that he had spoken. The scar on his forehead was turned away. While she held her breath and bit her lip, he concentrated on accepting treasure-berries one at a time from Pahni’s hands, or from Bhapa’s. In spite of his evident hunger, he ate with slow care. The seeds he gave to Liand, who scattered them gladly around the vale.

  Peering into Covenant as intimately as she could without violating his spirit, Linden confirmed that the Wraiths had not mended the faults which fractured his thoughts. Nor had they ameliorated his leprosy. They could not: Kevin’s Dirt hindered them in spite of the power that they drew from Loric’s dagger. They had only repaired the physical violence of his return to life. They had not restored the man he had once been.

  Linden had forced him too far beyond the bounds of Law. Now he appeared to exist outside any mundane definition of health. The profuse miracles of Andelain and the Land could nurture his flesh, but could not draw him back into the ambit of simple humanity.

  Seeing him like this, alert and damned, and growing stronger in ways that would only enable him to endure more pain, Linden wanted to weep again. But she did not. Perhaps she could not. The consequences of her rage and folly and hope had left her siccant. Within herself, she resembled a wasteland.

  She was only peripherally aware that the Wraiths had begun to drift away, chiming a lucent and inconsolable lament as they bobbed out of the hollow. Apparently they had done what they could. Now they went elsewhere as though they did not wish to witness what came next.

  At the same time, the Ranyhyn turned aside. Alert and sure, they separated themselves from the company, heading south.

  Linden hardly noticed their departure. Covenant, she tried to say. But she had no words for what she needed from him. They had been burned out of her by her own extravagance. Perhaps she could have suffered the awakening of the Worm if she had succeeded at reincarnating him as she remembered him. But her flagrant display of power had achieved something worse than failure. No mere expression of regret would exculpate her.

  Nevertheless her distress caught the attention of her friends. Mahrtiir lifted his head. Pahni looked up at Linden: hope flared suddenly in the young Cord’s eyes and then faded, extinguished by what she saw. Bhapa regarded Linden like a man who had lost faith and now sought to regain it.

  The Humbled appeared to ignore her. Anele had stretched out on the thick grass near Covenant’s feet. There he slept with one hand covering his mouth like a man who feared that he might babble in his dreams. But the Giants turned toward Linden expectantly.

  Liand hesitated for only an instant. Then he moved to stand in front of Linden. The black augury of his eyebrows emphasized the questions thronging in his kind eyes. Yet he reached out and clasped her shoulders gently as if he meant to reassure her.

  “Linden,” he began in a tone of deliberate calm, “it is too much. Too much has transpired. Of these events, too many lie beyond my comprehension. We have been informed that the last crisis of the Earth now approaches, yet such avowals appear empty of meaning before the wonder and terror which you have wrought.

  “Other needs press upon you. It is my intent to respect them, as I have respected you from the first, and will continue to the last. This, however, I must ask.

  “I perceive that your understanding of what has occurred exceeds that of any Stonedownor or Raman. In one form, it surpasses even that of the Masters, whose memories span millennia. In another, it outruns the wide learning of these Giants, though they have journeyed distances and met perils inconceivable to me. Nonetheless I ask this of you. Was it not impossible for you to have foreseen the outcome of your deeds here? Do you not share with each and all of your companions, Masters and Giants and Ramen alike, an inability to scry the future? And if you have no gift of prescience, are you not by that lack rendered blameless?

  “Upon the rocks in Salva Gildenbourne, when we were beset by the skurj, I hazarded our lives by wielding both orcrest and the Staff of Law in an attempt to summon rain—an attempt which exceeded every gift of knowledge and skill and strength within me. That we evaded Kastenessen’s snare is no tribute to my foresight. I was merely foolish, foolish and desperate. Yet my folly was transformed to hope, not by any deed of mine, but through the aid of the Demondim-spawn, and with your own far greater might.

  “Linden—my friend—” Briefly Liand faltered, overcome by compassion. Then he regained a measure of dignity. “May the same not be said of you? Can any being or power ave
r with certainty that your folly will not be transformed to hope by the succor of some lore or theurgy”—he referred to Covenant with a glance—“which we cannot foresee?”

  Linden shook her head. She heard his sincerity. She felt it in the grasp of his hands. Still she rejected it. She had been given too many warnings. The horserite visions of the Ranyhyn may have been difficult to interpret: the images with which Lord Foul had afflicted her during her translation to the Land were not.

  “Not this time,” she replied roughly. “I could have known. I just couldn’t let anything stop me.”

  Under Melenkurion Skyweir, she had learned that she was nothing without Covenant. Her need to rescue Jeremiah demanded more of her than she contained.

  And she did not forgive.

  Her response hurt Liand. It may have pained the Ramen and the Swordmainnir—or vindicated the Humbled. But Covenant distracted them before anyone could protest.

  Unsteadily he pulled away from Mahrtiir, struggled to his feet. Frowning, he considered everyone around him. When he looked at Linden, however, she discerned that his gaze did not entirely focus on her. Instead he gave the impression that he saw someone else in her place: another version of herself, perhaps, or a different woman altogether.

  “Think of the Creator and the Despiser as brothers,” he remarked in an abstract tone. “Or doppelgangers of each other. That isn’t really true. The concepts are too big for words. But it’s a way to try to understand. It’s at least as true as saying the stars are the Creator’s children. Or the Arch of Time is like a rainbow. You could say Creation and Despite are the same thing, but they take such radically different forms they might as well be mysteries to each other. It’s all a paradox. It has to be.”

  In another, more consecutive state of mind, he might have said, There is hope in contradiction.

  “Covenant?” Linden asked as though his name had been wrung from her against her will. Surging upright, the Manethrall inquired like an echo, “Ringthane?”

  Covenant did not respond. He may not have heard them. Instead he turned to Liand.

  “I like your orcrest analogy.” He spoke as if he were continuing a casual conversation that he and the Stonedownor had begun earlier. “It doesn’t really apply. You didn’t risk anybody except yourself. Trying to bring rain didn’t make the danger you were already in worse. Earthpower and Law can’t stop the skurj. Not while Kevin’s Dirt is still there. But you’re still right. There are always surprises. And sometimes they help.”

  Around him, the Giants shuffled their feet. They had heard too many tales about the Unbeliever, the ur-Lord—and none of those stories matched the man who now occupied Covenant’s body.

  Linden tried again. “Covenant? Where are you? In your mind? What are you remembering?”

  “Linden?” He cocked an eyebrow at her as if he were startled to find her near him; as if he had expected her to flee like Infelice. Still his manner remained abstract, almost nonchalant. “Do you remember Diassomer Mininderain?”

  “No.” Her reaction was far more personal than his. “I mean yes. I’ve only heard the name. Sunder told us about her,” when he had led Covenant and her away from Mithil Stonedown into the ravages of the Sunbane millennia ago. “The Rede of the Clave mentioned her.”

  Covenant nodded. “That’s right. It’s almost true.” As if he were quoting lines which he had heard only moments ago, he recited,“Diassomer Mininderain,

  The mate of might, and Master’s wife,

  All stars’ and heavens’ chatelaine,

  With power over realm and strife,

  Attended well, the story tells,

  To a-Jeroth of the Seven Hells.”

  Linden remembered in spite of her confusion. Oh, come, my love, and bed with me—

  Covenant had fallen into a private crevasse. Diassomer Mininderain had nothing to do with Linden, or with the dilemmas of her friends, or with the ending of the Earth. That woman was only a myth promulgated by the Clave for Lord Foul’s malign reasons.

  “Covenant, please,” Linden begged. “Make sense.” She had done this to him. “We need you. I need you. Help us if you can.”

  A shudder ran through him. Briefly he grimaced as if she had twisted his heart. “I’m sorry.” His hands made incomplete gestures like truncated supplications. “There are so many strands. I want to distinguish—But I don’t know how.”

  Then his air of abstraction claimed him again. “If Creation and Despite have some kind of relevance to eternity—if they’re part of what eternity means somehow—other things may be relevant as well. One might be Indifference. Another might be Love. They’re all the same thing. But they’re all different.”

  “Covenant!” Linden could not blunt the edge of desperation in her voice. “Please! We need you here.”

  I think we should do this Linden’s way. Had he been referring to her intention to meet the Harrow’s demands? She can make this kind of decision. The rest of us can’t.

  She had already done so much harm—

  Liand’s earnest face added his appeal to hers. Distinctly Rime Coldspray said, “Covenant Giantfriend,” as if she hoped to remind him of who he was. “You redeemed the Dead of The Grieve from their long sorrow. Will you not now grant some boon or balm to our dolor and gall?”

  But Covenant was trapped in his memories. He gave no sign that he had heard the Ironhand.

  “Old stories—I mean the really old stories, like creation myths—are always true. Not literally, of course. Words aren’t good enough. And people always change the stories to suit themselves. But the stories are still true. Like the Clave’s version of what the Earth and Time are for. Or Diassomer Mininderain.

  “None of this is her fault. She just can’t forgive it.”

  Acute with blandishments and spells

  Spoke a-Jeroth of the Seven Hells.

  Linden found that she could not beseech him further. Helplessly she remembered: she had never been able to break the grip of her past, or of the Land’s.

  With a-Jeroth the lady ran;

  Diassomer with fear and dread

  Fled from the Master’s ruling span.

  On Earth she hides her trembling head,

  While all about her laughter wells

  From a-Jeroth of the Seven Hells.

  “She was—or is—or has always been—an aspect of eternity. Maybe she was Love. The Lover. And maybe she fell when the Despiser did. That’s possible. Despite isn’t the opposite of Love. That’s Indifference. Love has more in common with Despite and Creation than with Indifference.”

  “Forgive!” she cries with woe and pain;

  Her treacher’s laughter hurts her sore.

  “His blandishments have been my bane.

  I yearn my Master to adore.”

  For in her ears the spurning knells

  Of a-Jeroth of the Seven Hells.

  “But being trapped in Time is different for Love than it is for Despite.” Covenant frowned again. “This is all just words.” Then he resumed. “It outraged the Despiser, but it made Diassomer Mininderain insane. The Despiser tricked her. And the Creator can’t free her without dismantling what he created. She’s sort of like Joan, in a way. If words made any sense. If Joan weren’t so human and frail.”

  Wrath is the Master—fire and rage.

  Retribution fills his hands.

  Attacking comes he, sword and gage,

  ’Gainst treachery in all the lands.

  Mininderain he treats with rue;

  No heaven-home for broken trust,

  But children given to pursue

  All treachery to death and dust.

  Thus Earth became a gallow-fells

  For a-Jeroth of the Seven Hells.

  “The Despiser has to cause as much pain as he can while he tries to get free. It helps him fight off his own despair. Diassomer Mininderain feeds off anything that’s still capable of love. She eats—But that’s not all she does. She still hates. She had as much to do with making the merewiv
es as Kastenessen’s mortal lover did. And she’s involved in Kevin’s Dirt somehow.”

  Linden had lost her way. Covenant evoked a host of recollections and bafflements and lost affection. He seemed to have reached the point of what he was trying to say, but she could not guess what it might be. When he fell silent, gazing about him as though he had made everything clear, she asked the first question that she could find in her desiccated heart.

  “So why didn’t I see that old man? The one who told me that ‘There is also love in the world.’ Why didn’t he warn me?”

  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?

  If he had accosted her—if she had caught so much as a glimpse of him—she would have known what his presence meant. She might have been able to save Jeremiah.

  Covenant’s face tightened, drawing his features into lines like strictures. Suddenly, for no reason that she could imagine, he was present in front of her, alert in every sense. Sliding along a flaw or fissure, he had returned to Andelain and night and the brilliance of the krill. The harsh compassion in his voice was so familiar that it made her ache.

  “Maybe he’s given up. Maybe he knows there’s nothing he can do.”

  Forget him in this ecstasy.

  At once, several of the Giants protested, prompted by their instinctive passion for life. “What, abandoned his Creation? The Earth entire?” But their incredulity bypassed Linden, leaving her hollow. Of course the Creator had turned his back. He had looked into her and seen what she was. Now he was done with her.

  She was done with him as well. He had failed her. Ignoring the Giants, and the chagrin among the Ramen, she tried by force of will to keep Covenant from slipping away again.

  “What about Jeremiah? You know everything that’s happened since Lord Foul killed you. Maybe you know everything that’s ever happened. Lord Foul touched him before I came here with you ten years ago. According to Roger, the Despiser owns him.” He’s belonged to Foul for years. And the Mahdoubt had said, a-Jeroth’s mark was placed upon the boy when he was yet a small child—“Is that true?”