White Gold Wielder

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 learn 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 sunshine 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, 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 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 sunshine into attar and rocklight 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 moksha's failure.

The Despiser made Kiril Threndor shudder:

“Fool!”

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 absolutely!” The stalactites 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! Freed of my gaol and torment, I will rule the cosmos!”

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 damnable 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 the rocklight, made Kiril Threndor scream white fire. “Groveller, I will teach you the meaning of my suzerainty!” His 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 Master!”

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 stalactites 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 clamoured 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 passed, it left white flame spouting from the centre 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.

But it was transitory. The fire faded rapidly. Soon it flickered and failed. His blasted husk lay on the floor and did not move again.

Too stunned to cry out. Linden hugged her arms around herself and keened in the marrow of her bones.

But Lord Foul went on laughing.

Like a ghoul he laughed, a demon of torment and triumph. His lust riddled the mountain; more stalactites fell. From wall to wall, a crack sprang through the chamber; and shattered stones burst like cries from the fissure. Kiril Threndor shrieked argent. The Despiser became titanic with white fire.

“Ware of me. my Enemy!” His shout deafened Linden in spite of her instinctive self protection. She heard him, not with her overwhelmed ears, but with the tissues and vessels of her lungs. “I hold the keystone of Time, and I will reave it to rubble! Oppose me if you dare!”

Fire mounted around him, whipped higher and higher by his fierce arms. The ring raged like a growing sun in his fist. Already, his power dwarfed the Banefire, outsized every puissance she had ever witnessed, surpassed even the haunted faces of her nightmares.

Yet she moved. Crawling across the agonized lurch and shudder of the stone, she wrestled her weak body toward Covenant. She could not help him. She could not help herself. But she wanted to hold him in her embrace one more time. To ask his forgiveness, though he would never be able to hear her. Lord Foul had become so tremendous that only the edges of his gathering cataclysm were still discernible. She crept past him as if she were ignoring him. Battered arid aggrieved of body and soul, she reached Covenant, sat beside him, lifted his head into her lap, and let her hair fall around his face.

In death, his visage wore a strange grimace of relief and pain. He looked like a man who was about to laugh and weep at the same time.

At least I trusted you, she replied. Whatever else I did wrong. I trusted you in the end.

Then anguish seized her heart.

You didn't even say good bye.

None of the people who had died while she loved them had ever said goodbye.

She did not know how it was possible to continue breathing. Lord Foul's attar had become as intense as the light. The destruction he purposed tore a howl through the stone. Kiril Threndor became the stretched mouth of the mountain's hurt. Her mere flesh seemed to fray and dissolve in the proximity of such power. His blast was nearly ready.

Instinctively, almost involuntarily, she looked up from Covenant's guilt and innocence, impelled by an inchoate belief that there should be at least one witness to the riving of Time. While her mind lasted, she could still watch what the Despiser did, still send her protest to hound him into the heavens.

A maelstrom swept around him and grew as if he meant to break the Earth by consuming it alive. His fire was so extreme that it pulsed through the mountain, made all of Mount Thunder pound. But gradually he pulled the