White Gold Wielder Part 48

But for a moment Lord Foul did not look away. His eyes searched her for signs of defiance or courage. Then he said, "To you I do not speak." His voice came from the rocklight and the heat, from the reek of attar and the chiaroscuro of the stalact.i.tes*a voice as deep as Mount Thunder's bones and veined with savagery. Orange-red facets glittered and glared in every word. "I have not spoken to you. There was no need*is none. I speak to set the feet of my hearers upon the paths I design for them, but your path has been mine from the first. You have been well bred to serve me, and all your choices conduce to my ends. To attain that which I have desired from you has been a paltry exercise, scarce requiring effort. When I am free"*she heard a grin in the swarming reflections*"you will accompany me, so that your present (361 of 399) [1/19/03 11:38:44 PM]

torment may be prolonged forever. I will gladly mark myself upon such flesh as yours."

With her mouth, the Raver giggled tense and sweating approval. The Despiser's gaze nailed dismay into her. She was as abject as she had ever been, and she tried to wail; but no sound came.

Then she would have let go. But Covenant did not. His eyes were midnight with rage for her; his pa.s.sion refused to be crushed. He looked hardly capable of taking another step *yet he came to her aid.

"Don't kid yourself," he snapped like a jibe. "You're al- Hold Possession 439 ready beaten, and you don't even know it. All these threats are just pathetic."

a.s.suredly he was out of bis mind. But his sarcasm s.h.i.+fted the Despiser toward him. Linden was left to the cunning tortures of her possessor. They slashed and flayed at her, showed her in long whipcuts all the atrocities an immortal could commit against her. But when Lord Foul's gaze left her, she found that she was still able to cling. She was stubborn enough for that.

"Ah," the Despiser rumbled like the sigh of an avalanche, "at last my foeman stands before me. He does not grovel*

but groveling has become needless. He has spoken words which may not be recalled. Indeed, his abas.e.m.e.nt is complete.

though he is blind to it He does not see that he has sold himself to a servitude more demeaning than prostration. He has become the tool of my Enemy, no longer free to act against me. Therefore he submits himself, deeming in his cowardice that here the burden of havoc and ruin will pa.s.s from him." Soft laughter made the rocklight throb; mute Shrieks volleyed from the walls. "He is the Unbeliever in all sooth. He does not believe that the Earth's doom will at last be laid to his charge.

"Thomas Covenant"*he took an avid step forward*"the spectacle of your puerile strivmgs gives me glee to repay my long patience, for your defeat has ever been as certain as my wilL Were I to be foiled, the opportunity belonged to your companion, not to you*and you see how she has availed herself of it." With one strong, blurred arm, he made a gesture toward Linden that nearly unseated her reason. Again, he laughed; but his laughter was devoid of mirth. "Had she seduced you of the ring*ah, then would I have been tested.

But therefore did I choose her, a woman altogether unable to turn aside from my desires.

"You are a fooL" he went on, "for you have known yourself doomed, and yet you have come to me. Now I require your soul." The heat of his voice filled Linden's lungs with suffocation. Moksha Jehannum s.h.i.+vered, hungry for violence and ravage. The Despiser sounded unquestionably sane*but that only made him more terrible. One of his hands*a bare smear across the Raver's sight*seemed to curl into a fist; and (362 of 399) [1/19/03 11:38:44 PM]

Covenant was jerked forward, within Lord Foul's reach. The 440 walls spattered light like sobs, as if Mount Thunder itself were appalled.

As soft as the whisper of death, the Despiser said, "Give the ring to me."

Linden believed that she would have obeyed in Covenant's place. The command of that voice was absolute-But he did not move. His right arm hung at his side. The ring dangled as if it were empty of import*as if his numb finger within the band bad no significance. His left fist closed and unclosed like the aggrieved labor of his heart. His eyes looked as dark as the loneliness of stars. Somehow, he held his head up, his back straight*upright in conviction or madness.

"Talk's cheap. You can say anything you want. But you're wrong, and you ought to know it. This time you've gone too far. What you did to Andelain. What you're doing to Linden*" He swallowed acid. "We aren't enemies. That's just another lie. Maybe you believe it*but it's still a lie. You should see yourself. You're even starting to look like me."

The special gleam of his gaze reached Linden like a gift. He was irremediably insane*or utterly indomitable. "You're Just another part of me. Just one side of what it means to be human. The side that hates lepers. The poisonous side." His certainty did not waver at all. "We are one."

His a.s.sertion made Linden gape at what he had become.

But it only drew another laugh from the Despiser*a short, gruff bark of dismissal. "Do not seek to bandy truth and falsehood with me," he replied. "You are too inane for the task. Lies would better serve the trivial yearning which you style love. The truth d.a.m.ns you here. For three and a half millennia I have mustered my will against the Earth in your absence, groveler. I am the truth. 7. And I have no use for the sophistry of your Unbelief." He leveled his voice at Covenant like the blade of an axe. Fragments of rocklighf shot everywhere but could not bring his intense form into any kind of focus. "Give the ring to me."

Covenant's visage slackened as if he were made ill by the necessity of his plight. But still he withheld submission. Instead, he changed his ground.

"At least let Linden go." His stance took on an angle of pleading. "You don't need her anymore. Even you should be satisfied with how much she's been hurt. I've already offered her my ring once. She refused it Let her go."

Hold Possession 441 In spite of everything, he was still trying to spare her.

Lord Foul's response filled Kiril Threndor. "Have done, groveler." Attar made the Raver ecstatic, wracked Linden.

"You weary my long patience. She is forfeit to me by her own acts. Are you deaf to yourself? You have spoken words which can never be recalled." Concentrated venom dripped from (363 of 399) [1/19/03 11:38:44 PM]

his outlines. As distinct as the breaking of boulders, he demanded a third time, "Give the ring to me."

And Covenant went on sagging as though he bad begun i. to crumble. All his strength was gone. He could no longer pretend to hold himself upright. One by one, his loves had been stripped from him: he had nothing left. After all, he was only one ordinary man, small and human. Without wild magic, he was no match for the Despiser.

When he weakly lifted his half-band, began tugging the ^ ring from his finger. Linden forgave him. No choice but to surrender it. He had done everything possible, everything 'i conceivable, had surpa.s.sed himself again and again in his efforts to save the Land. That he failed now was cause for grief, but not for blame.

Only his eyes showed no collapse. They burned like the final dark, the last deep midnight where no Sunbane shone.

His surrender took no more than three heartbeats. One to raise his hand, take bold of the ring. Another to pull the band from his finger as if in voluntary riddance of marriage, love, humanity. A third to extend the immaculate white gold toward the Despiser.

But extremity and striving made those three moments as long as agony. During them. Linden Avery pitted her ulti- mate will against her possessor.

She forgave Covenant. He was too poignant and dear to be blamed. He had given everything that her heart could ask of him.

But she did not submit.

Gibbon had said. The princ.i.p.al doom of the Land is upon your shoulders. Because no one else had this chance to come between Covenant and his defeat. You are being forged as iron is forged to achieve the ruin of the Earth. Forged to fail here. Because you can see.

Now she meant to determine what kind of metal had been made of her.442 Gibbon-Raver had also told her she was evil. Perhaps that was true. But evil itself was a form of power.

And she had become intimately familiar with her possessor.

From the furthest roots of its past. she felt springing its contempt for all things that had flesh and could be mastered*a contempt bom of fear. Fear of any form of life able to refuse it. The Forests. Giants. The Haruchai. It was unquenchably hungry for immortal control, for the safety of sovereignty.

All refusals terrified it. The logic of its failures led inexorably to death. If it could be refused, then it could also be slain.

She had no way to understand the lost communal mind of the Forests. But Giants and Haruchai were another question.

Though moksha Jehannum ripped and shrieked at her, she (364 of 399) [1/19/03 11:38:44 PM]

picked up the strands of what she knew and wove them to her purpose.

The Giants and Haruchai had always been able to refuse.

Perhaps because they had not suffered the Land's long history of Ravers, they had not learned to doubt their autonomy.

Or perhaps because they used little or no outward expressions of power, they comprehended more fully that true choice was internal. But whatever the explanation, they were proof against possession where the people of the Land were not.

They believed in their capacity to make choices which mattered.

That belief was all she needed.

Moksha was frantic now, savage and brutal. It a.s.sailed every part of her that was able to feel pain. It desecrated her as if she were Andelain. It made every horrifying memory of her life incandescent before her: Na.s.sic's murder and Gibbon's touch; the lurker of the Sarangrave; Kasreyn's malign cunning; Covenant bleeding irretrievably to death in the woods behind Haven Farm. It poured acid into every wound which futility had ever inflicted upon her.

And it argued with her. She could not choose: she had already made the only choice that signified. When she had accepted the legacy of her father and stuffed it in handsful of tissue down her mother's throat, she had declared her crucial allegiance, her definitive pa.s.sion*a pa.s.sion in no way different than her possessor's. Despite had made her what she was, a lost woman as ravaged as the Land, and the Sunbane dawning in her now would never set.

But the sheer intensity of her hurt made her lucid. She saw Hold Possession 443 the Raver's lie. Only once had she tried to master death by destroying life. After that, all her striving had gone to heal those who suffered. Though she had been haunted and afraid, she had not been crueL Suicide and murder were not the whole story. When the old man on Haven Farm had collapsed in front of her, the stink issuing from his mouth had sickened her like the foretaste of Despite; but she had willingly breathed and breathed that fetor in her efforts to save him.

She was eviL Her visceral response to the dark might of her tormentors gave her the stature of a Raver. And yet her instinct for healing falsified moksha.

That contradiction no longer paralyzed her. She accepted it It gave her the power to choose.

Squalling like a butchered thing, the Raver fought her. But she had entered at last into her true estate. Moksha Jehannum was afraid of her. Her will rose up in its shackles. Tested the iron of her possessor's malice. Took hold of the chains.

And broke free.

Lord Foul had not yet grasped the ring. There was still an (365 of 399) [1/19/03 11:38:44 PM]

instant of s.p.a.ce between his hand and Covenant's. Rocklight yowled desire and triumph from the walls.

Linden did not move. She had no time to think of that Motionless as if she were still frozen, she hurled herself forward. With her Land-bora health-sense, she sprang into Covenant, scrambled toward the fiery potential of bis wedding band.

Empowered by wild magic, she drew back his hand.

At that, rage swelled Lord Foul: he sent out a flood of fury which should have washed her away. But she ignored him. She was sure that he would not touch her now*not now, while she held possession of Covenant and the ring. She was suddenly strong enough to turn her back upon the Despiser himself. The necessity of freedom protected her.

The choice of surrender or defiance was hers to make.

In the silent privacy of his mind, she faced the man she loved and took all his burdens upon herself.

He could not resist her. Once before, he had beaten back her efforts to control him. But now he had no defense. With his own strength, she mastered him as completely as ever the Elohim or Kasreyn had mastered him.

No evil! she breathed at him. Not this time. Her previous 444 attempt to possess him had been wrong, inexcusable. She bad read in him his intent to risk the Banefire, and she had reacted as if he meant to commit suicide. Instinctively, she had tried to stop him. But then his life and the risk had been his alone. She had had no right to interfere.

Now, however, he surrendered the Earth as well as himself.

He was not simply risking his own life: he was submitting all life to certain destruction. Therefore she had the responsibility to intervene. The responsibility and the right.

The rig/if! she cried. But he made no answer. Her will occupied him completely.

She seemed to meet him where they had met once before, when she had surrendered herself to save him from the silence of the Elohim*in a field of flowers, under an in- violate sky, a clean sun. But now she recognized that field as one of the rich leas of Andelain, bordered by hills and woods. And he was no longer young. He stood before her exactly as he stood before the Despiser*altogether untouchable, bis face misshaped by bruises he did not deserve, his body nearly prostrate with exhaustion, the old knife-cut in the center of his s.h.i.+rt gaping. His eyes were fixed on her, and they flamed hot midnight, the final extremity of the heavens.

No smile in the world could have softened his gaze.

He stood there as if he were waiting for her to search him, catechize him, leam the truth. But she faued to close the g^ilf between them. She ran and ran toward him, aching to fling her arms around him at last; but the field lay as still as (366 of 399) [1/19/03 11:38:44 PM]

the sunlight, and his eyes shone darkness at her, and all her strength brought her no nearer. She knew that jf she reached him she would understand*that the vision or despair which he had found in the Banefire would be communicated to her *that his certainty would become comprehensible. He was certain, as sure as white gold. But she could not approach him. He met her appeal with the indefeasible Don't touch me of leprosy or ascension, apotheosis.

His refusal made grief well up in her like the wail of a lost child.

Then she wanted to turn and hurl all her newfound force at the Despiser, wanted to call up white fire and scourge him from the face of the Earth, Some infections have to be cut out. Why else do you have all that power? She could do it He had hurt Covenant so deeply that she was no longer able 'Hold Possession 445 to reach him. In her anguish she was greedy for fire. She possessed him heart and limb*and his left hand held the ring, gripped it on the brink of detonation. She was capable of that. If no other hope remained, and she could not touch her love, then let it be she who fought, she who ravaged, she who ruled. Let Lord Foul leam the nature of what he had forged!

Yet Covenant's gaze held her as if she were sobbing, too weak to do anything except weep. He said nothing, offered her nothing. But the purity of his regard did not let her turn. How could he speak, do anything other than repudiate her? She had taken his will from him*had dehumanized him as thoroughly as if she were a Raver and relished his helplessness. And yet he remained human and desirable and stubborn, as dear as life to her. Perhaps he was mad. But was she not something worse?

Are you not evil?

Yes. Beyond question.

But the black flame in his eyes did not accuse her of evil.

He did not despise her in any way. He only refused to be swayed.

You said you trusted me.

And who was she to believe him wrong? If doubt was necessary, why should it be douBt of him rather than of herself? Kevin Landwaster had warned her, and she had felt his honesty. But perhaps after all he did not understand, was blinded by the consequences of his own despair. And Covenant remained before her in suns.h.i.+ne and flowers as if the beauty of Andelain were the ground on which he took his stand. His darkness was as lonely as hers. But hers was like the lightless cunning and violence of the Wightwarrens; his resembled the heart of the true night, where the Sunbane never shone.

Yes, she said again. She had known all along that possession in every guise was evil; but she had tried to believe otherwise, (367 of 399) [1/19/03 11:38:44 PM]

both because she wanted power and because she wanted to save the Land. Destruction and healing: death and life. She could have argued that even evil was Justified to keep the white ring out of Lord Foul's grasp. But now she was truly weeping. Covenant had said, I'm going to find some other answer. That was the only promise which mattered.

Deliberately, she let him go*let love and hope and power 446 go as if they were all one, too pure to be possessed or desecrated. Locking her cries in her throat, she turned and walked away across the lea. Out of suns.h.i.+ne into attar and rockligbt With her own eyes, she saw Covenant lift the ring once more as if his last fears were gone. With her own ears, she heard the savage relief of Lord Foul's laughter as he claimed his triumph. Heat and despair seemed to close over her like the lid of a coffin.

Moksha Jehannum tried to enter her again, cast her down.

But the Raver could not touch her now. Grief crowded upward in her, thronged for utterance. She was hardly aware of moksfw's failure.

The Despiser made Kiril Threndor shudder: "Fooll"

He was crowing over Linden, not Covenant. His eyes bit a trail of venom through her mind.

"Have I not said that all your choices conduce to my ends?

You serve me absolutelyl" The stalact.i.tes threw shards of malice at her head. "It is you who have accorded the ring to me!"

He raised one hand like a smear across her sight In his grasp, the band began to blaze. His shout gathered force until she feared it would shatter the mountain.

"Here at last I hold possession of all life and Time forever!

Let my Enemy look to his survival and be daunted 1 Freed of my gaol and torment, I will rule the cosmosi"

She could not remain upright under the weight of his exaltation. His voice split her hearing, hampered the rhythm of her heart. Kneeling on the tremorous stone, she gritted her teeth, swore to herself that even though she had failed at everything else she would at least breathe no more of this d.a.m.nable attar. The walls threw argent in carillon from all their facets. The Despiser's power scaled toward apocalypse.

Yet she heard Covenant. Somehow, he kept his feet. He did not shout; but every word he said was as distinct as augury.

"Big deal. I could do the same thing*if I were as crazy as you." His certainty was unmatched. "It doesn't take power.

Just delusion. You're out of your mind."

The Despiser swung toward Covenant. Wild magic effaced (368 of 399) [1/19/03 11:38:44 PM]

the rocklight, made Kiril Threndor scream white fire. "Grove"

ler, I will teach you the meaning of my suzerainty!'* His ftold Possession 447.

whole form rippled and blurred with ecstasy, violence. Only his carious eyes remained explicit, as cruel as fangs. They seemed to shred the substance from Covenant's bones. "I am your Masteri"

He towered over Covenant; his arms rose in transport or imprecation. In one fist, he held the prize for which he had craved and plotted. The searing light he drew from the ring should have blinded Linden entirely, scorched her eyes out of their sockets. But from moksha Jehannum she had learned how to protect her senses. She felt that she was peering into the furnace of the desecrated sun; but she was still able to see.

Able to see the blow which Lord Foul hammered down on Covenant as if the wild magic were a dagger.

It made Mount Thunder lurch, snapped stalact.i.tes from the ceiling like a rain of spears which narrowly missed Linden. It dapped Covenant to the floor as if all his limbs had been broken. For an instant, a convulsion of lightning writhed over him. Power and coruscation like the immaculate silver-white of the ring clamored through him, shrilled along the lines of his form. She tried to yell; but the air in her lungs had given out When the blow pa.s.sed, it left white flame spouting from the center of his chest. ^ The wound bled argent: all his bipod was ablaze. Fire fountained from his gaping hurt, spat gouts and plumes of numinous and incandescent deflagration, untainted by any darkness or venom. During that moment, he looked like he was still alive.