White Gold Wielder

desecration. Gibbon's touch had reft her of mind and will. But since then she had learned to fight.

In the cavern of the One Tree, she had grasped power for the first time and had used it, daring herself against forces so tremendous-though amoral-that terror of them had immobilized her until Findail had told her what was at stake. And in the Hall of Gifts-There samadhi Sheol's nearness had daunted her, misled her, tossed her in a whirlwind of palpable ill; she had hardly known where she stood or what she was doing. But she had not been stripped of choice.

Not, she insisted, careless of whether the Raver heard her. Because she had been needed. By all her friends. By Covenant before the One Tree. if not in the Hall of Gifts. And because she had experienced the flavour of efficacy, had gripped it to her heart and recognized it for what it was. Power: the ability to make choices that mattered. Power which came from no external source, but only from her own intense self.

She would not give it up Covenant needed her still, though the Raver's mastery of her was complete and she had no way to reach him. I'll give him the ring. She could not stop him. But if she let herself go on down the blind road of her paralysis, there would be no one left to so much as wish him stopped. Therefore she bore the pain. Moksha Jehannum crowded every nerve with nausea, filled every heartbeat with vitriol and dismay, shredded her with every word and movement. Yet she heeded the call of Covenant's fierce eyes and flagrant intent. Consciously, she clung to herself and refused oblivion, remained where the Raver could hurt her and hurt her, so that she would be able to watch.

And try.

“Will you?” chortled her throat and mouth. “You are belatedly come to wisdom, groveller.” She raged at that epithet: he did not deserve it. But moksha only mocked him more trenchantly. 'Yet your abasement has been perfectly prophesied. Did you fear for your life among the Cavewights? Your fear was apt Anile as the Dead, they would have slain you-and blithely would the ring have been seduced from them. From the moment of your summoning, all hope has been folly! All roads have led to the Despiser's triumph, and all struggles have been vain. Your petty- “

“I'm sick of this,” rasped Covenant. He was hardly able to stay on his feet-and yet the sheer force of his determination commanded the Ravers, sent an inward quailing through them. “Don't flatter yourselves that I'm going to break down here.” Linden felt moksha's trepidation and shouted at it, Coward! then gritted her teeth and gagged for bare life as its fury crashed down on her. But Covenant could not see what was happening to her, the price she paid for defiance. Grimly, he went on, “You aren't going to get my ring. You'll be lucky if he even lets you live when he's finished with me.” His eyes flashed, as hard as hot marble. “Take me to him.”

“Most assuredly, groveller,” moksha Jehannum riposted. “I tremble at your will.”

Tearing savagery across the grain of Linden’s clinched consciousness, the Raver turned her, sent her forward along the clear spine of the chasm.

Behind her, the two creatures-both ruled now by moksha’s brother-set themselves at Covenant's back. But she saw with the senses of the Raver that they did not hazard touching him.

He followed her as if he were too weak to do more than place one foot in front of the other-and too strong to be beaten.

The way seemed long: every step, each throb of her heart was interminable and exquisite agony. The Raver relished her violation and multiplied it cunningly. From her helpless brain, moksha drew images and hurled them at her, made them appear more real than Mount Thunder's imponderable gutrock. Marid with his fangs. Joan screaming like a predator for Covenant's blood, wracked by a Sunbane of the soul. Her mother's mouth, mucus drooling at the comers-phlegm as rank as putrefaction from the rot in her lungs. The incisions across her father's wrists, agape with death and glee. There was no end to the ways she could be tortured, if she refused to let go. Her possessor savoured them all.

Yet she held. Stubbornly, uselessly, almost without reason, she clung to who she was, to the Linden Avery who made promises. And in the secret recesses of her heart she plotted moksha Jehannum's downfall Oh, the way seemed long to her! But she knew, had no defence against knowing, that for the Raver the distance was short and eager, little more than a stone's throw along the black gulf. Then the dank light of Covenant's guards picked out a stairway cut into the left wall. It was a rude ascent, roughly hacked from the sheer stone immemorially long ago and worn blunt by use; but it was wide and safe. The Raver went upward with strong strides, almost jaunty in its anticipation. But Linden watched Covenant for signs of vertigo or collapse.

His plight was awful. She felt his bruises aching in the bones of his skull, read the weary limp of his pulse. Sweat like fever or failure beaded on his forehead. An ague of exhaustion made all his movements awkward and imprecise. Yet he kept going, as rigid of intent as he had been on Haven Farm when he had walked into the woods to redeem his ex-wife. His very weakness and imbalance seemed to support him.

He was entirely out of his mind; and Linden bled for him while moksha Jehannum raked her with scorn.

The stairway was long and short. It ascended for several hundred feet and hurt as if it would go on forever without surcease. The Raver gave her not one fragment or splinter of respite while it used her body as if she had never been so healthy and vital. But at last she reached an opening in the wall, a narrow passage-mouth with rocklight reflecting from its end. The stairs continued upward; but she entered the tunnel Covenant followed her, his guards behind him in single file.

Heat mounted against her face until she seemed to be walking into fire; but it meant nothing to moksha. The Raver was at home in dire passages and brimstone. For a while, all the patients she had failed to help, all the medical mistakes she had made beat about her mind, accusing her like furies. In the false name of life, she was responsible for so much death. Perhaps she had employed it for her own ends. Perhaps she had introduced pain and loss to her victims, needing them to suffer so that she would have power and life.

Then the passage ended, and she found herself in the place where Lord Foul had chosen to wield his machinations.

Kiril Threndor. Heart of Thunder.

Here Kevin Landwaster had come to enact the Ritual of Desecration. Here Drool Rockworm had recovered the lost Staff of Law, It was the dark centre of all Mount Thunder's ancient and fatal puissance.

The place where the outcome of the Earth would be decided.

She knew it with moksha Jehannum's knowledge. The Raver's whole spirit seemed to quiver in lust and expectation.

The cave was large, a round, high chamber. Entrances gaped,like mute cries, stretched in eternal pain, around its circumference. The walls glared rocklight in all directions. They were shaped entirely into smooth, irregular facets which cast their illumination like splinters at Linden's eyes. And that sharp assault was whetted and multiplied by a myriad keen reflections from the chamber's ceiling. There the stone gathered a dense cluster of stalactites, as bright and ponderous as melting metal. Among them swarmed a chiaroscuro of orange-red gleamings.

But no light seemed to touch the figure that stood on a low dais in the middle of the time burnished floor. It rose there like a pillar, motionless and immune to revelation. It might have been the back of a statue or a man; perhaps it was as tall as a Giant. Even the senses of the Raver saw nothing certainly. It appeared to have no colour and no clear shape or size. Its outlines were blurred as if they transcended recognition. But it radiated power like a shriek through the echoing rocklight.

The air reeked of sulphur-a stench so acrid that it would have brought tears to her eyes if it had not given such pleasure to her possessor. But under that rank odour lay a different scent, a smell more subtle, insidious, and consuming than any brimstone. A smell on which moksha fed like an addict.

A smell of attar. The sweetness of the grave. Linden was forced to devour it as if she were revelling. The force of the figure screamed into her like a shout poised to bring down the mountain, rip the vulnerable heart of the Land to rubble and chaos.

Covenant stood a short distance away from her now, dissociating his plight from hers so that she would not suffer the consequences of his company. He had no health-sense. And even if his eyes had been like hers, he might not have been able to discern what was left of her-might not have seen the way she cried out to have him beside her. She knew everything to which he was blind, everything that could have made a difference to him. Everything