spirit had lost all its resilience.
Descending toward the trees, Pitchwife began to sing. His voice was hoarse, as if he had spent too much of his life singing threnodies; yet his song was as heart-lifting as trumpets. His melody was full of wind and waves, of salt and strain, and of triumph over pain. As clearly as the new day, he sang:
'Let breakers crash against the shore -
let rocks be rimed with sea and weed,
cliffs carven by the storm -
let calm becalm the deeps,
or wind appall the waves, and sting -
nothing overweighs the poise of Sea and Stone.
The rocks and water-battery of Home endure.
We are the Giants,
born to live,
and bold for going where the dreaming goes.
“Let world be wide beyond belief,
the ocean be as vast as time -
let journeys end or fail,
seaquests fall in ice or blast,
and wandering be forever. Roam -
and roam -
nothing tarnishes the poise of Sea and Stone.
The hearth and harbourage of Home endure.
We are the Giants,
born to sail,
and bold to go wherever dreaming goes.”
On his song went, on through the trees and the fall-fire of the leaves, on into poignancy and yearning and the eagerness to hear any tale the world told. It carried the quest forward, lightened Seadreamer's gaze; it eased the discomfort of the Stonedownors like an affirmation against the unknown, gave a spring to the dispassionate strides of the
He had been too long under the Sunbane, too long away from the Land he remembered. His eyes drank at the trees and the grasslands, the scapes and vistas, as if such things ended a basic drought, restored to him the reasons for his quest. Beyond the hills, Seareach became a lush profusion of grapes, like a vineyard gone wild for centuries; and in it birds flocked, beasts made their homes. If he had not lacked Linden's vision, he could have spent days simply renewing his sense of health.
But he was condemned to the surface of what he beheld. As the leagues stretched ahead of him, threescore or more to the coast, his urgency returned. At his back, people were dying to pay for every day of his journey. Yet he could not walk any faster. A crisis was brewing within him. Power; venom; rage. Impossible to live with wild magic. Impossible to live without it. Impossible to keep all the promises he had made. He had no answer. He was as mortal as any leper. His tension was futile. Seeking to delay the time of impact, when the storm born of venom and doubt would hit, he cast around for ways to occupy his mind.
Linden was wrapped up in her efforts to recover from the damage the Sunbane and Sarangrave Flat had done to her. Sunder and Hollian shared an air of discomfiture, as if they no longer knew what they were doing. So Covenant turned to the Giants, to Pitchwife, who was as loquacious as the First was stern.
His misshapen features worked grotesquely as he talked; but his appearance was contradicted by his lucid gaze and irrepressible humour. At the touch of a question, he spoke about the ancient Home of the Giants, about the wide seas of the world, about the wonders and mysteries of roaming. When he became excited, his breathing wheezed in his cramped lungs; but for him, even that difficult sound was a form of communication, an effort to convey something quintessential about himself. His talk was long and full of digressions, Giantish apostrophes to the eternal grandeur of rock and ocean; but gradually he came to speak of the Search, and of the Giants who led it.
Cable Seadreamer's role needed no explanation; his Earth-Sight guided the Search. And his muteness, the extravagant horror which had bereft him of voice, as if the attempt to put what he saw into speech had sealed his throat, only made his claim on the Search more absolute.
But being Seadreamer's brother was not the reason for Grimmand Honninscrave's presence. The Giantclave had selected him primarily for his skill as pilot and captain; he was the Master of the
As for the First, she was a Swordmain, one of the few Swordmainnir among the current generation of the Giants, who had maintained for millennia a cadre of such fighters to aid their neighbours and friends at need. She had been chosen because she was known to be as resolute as Stone, as crafty as Sea-and because she had bested every other Swordmain to win a place at the head of the Search.
“But why?” asked Covenant. “Why did she want the job?”
“Why?” Pitchwife grinned. “In good sooth, why should she not? She is a Swordmain, trained for battle. She knows, as do we all, that this wound will grow to consume the Earth unless it is opposed. And she believes that its ill is already felt, even across the land of Home, giving birth to evil seas and blighted crops. And cripples.” His eyes glinted merrily, defying Covenant to pity his deformity.
“All right.” Covenant swallowed the indignation he usually felt whenever he encountered someone whose happiness seemed to be divorced from the hard fact of pain. “Tell me about yourself. Why were you chosen?”
“Ah, that is no great mystery. Every ship, however proud, must have a pitchwife, and I am an adept, cunning to mend both hawser and shipstone. Also, my lesser stature enables me for work in places where other Giants lack space. And for another reason, better than all others.” He lowered his voice and spoke privately to Covenant. “I am husband to the First of the Search.”
Involuntarily, Covenant gaped. For an instant, he believed that Pitchwife was jesting ironically. But the Giant's humour was personal. “To me,” he whispered, so that the First could not hear him, “she is named Gossamer Glowlimn. I could not bear that she should sail on such a Search without me.”
Covenant remained silent, unable to think of any adequate response.
During the evening of the quest's third day in Seareach, Linden borrowed Hollian's dirk to cut the splint away from her leg. Her companions watched as she tentatively flexed her knee, then her ankle. Light twinges of pain touched her face, but she ignored them, concentrating on the inner state of her bones and tissues. After a moment, her features relaxed. “It's just stiff. I'll try walking on it tomorrow.”
A sigh rustled through the company. “That is good,” the First said kindly. Sunder nodded gruff agreement. Hollian stooped to Linden, hugged her. Linden accepted their gladness; but her gaze reached toward Covenant, and her eyes were full of tears for which he had no answer. He could not teach her to distinguish between the good and ill of her health sense.
The next morning, she put weight on her foot, and the bones held. She was not ready to do much walking; so Seadreamer continued to carry her. But the following day she began working to redevelop the strength of her legs, and the day after that she was able to walk at intervals for nearly half the company's march.
By that time, Covenant knew they were nearing the Sea. The terrain had been sloping slowly for days, losing elevation along rumpled hills and wide, wild, hay leas, down fields like terraces cut for Giants. Throngs of grave old woods leaned slightly, as if they were listening to the Sea; and now the crispness of the air had been replaced by moisture and weight, so that every breeze felt like the sighing of the ocean. He could not smell salt yet; but he did not have much time left.
