“Linden.” His emanations were soft and kind; but she felt their urgency growing. “Try to think. I know it's hard-after what you've been through. But try. I need you to save the Land.”
She could not look up at him. His dead face was all that remained to her, all that held her together. If she raised her head to his unbearable beauty, she would be lost as well. With her fingertips, she stroked the gaunt lines of his cheek. In silence, she said, I don't need to. You've already done it.
“No,” he returned at once. “I haven't” Every word made his tension clearer. “All I did was stop him. I haven't healed anything. The Sunbane is still there. It has a life of its own. And the Earthpower's been too badly corrupted. It can't recover by itself.” His tone went straight into her heart. “Linden, please. Pick up the ring.”
Into her heart, where a storm of lamentation brewed. Instinctively, she feared it. It seemed to rise from the same source which had given birth to her old hunger for darkness, I can't, she said. Gusts and rue tugged through her. You know what power does to me. I can't stop hurting the people I want to help. I'll just turn into another Raver.
His spirit shone with comprehension. But he did not try to answer her dread, to deny or comfort it. Instead, his voice took on a note of harsh exigency.
“I can't do it myself. I don't have your hands-can't touch that kind of power anymore. I'm not physically alive. And I can be dismissed. I'm like the Dead. They can be invoked-and they can be sent away. Anybody who knows how can make me leave.” He appeared to believe he was in that danger. 'Even Foul could've done it, if he hadn't tried to use wild magic against me.
“Linden, think.” His sense of peril burned in the cave. “Foul isn't dead. You can't kill Despite. And the Sunbane will bring him back. It'll restore him. He can't get past me to break the Arch. But he'll be able to do anything he wants to the Land-to the whole Earth.
“Linden!” The appeal broke from him. But at once he coerced himself to quietness again. “I don't mean to hurt you. I don't want to demand more than you can do. You've already done so much. But you've got to understand. You're starting to fade.”
That was true. She recognized it with a dim startlement like the foretaste of a gale. His body had become harder and heavier, more real-or else her own flesh was losing definition. She heard winds blowing like the ancient respiration of the mountain. Everything around her-the rocklight, the blunt stone, the atmosphere of Kiril Threndor- sharpened as her perceptions thinned. She was dwindling. Slowly, inexorably, the world grew more quintessential and necessary than anything her trivial mortality could equal. Soon she would go out like a snuffed candle.
“This is the way it usually works,” Covenant went on. “The power that called you here recoils when whoever summoned you dies. You're going back to your own life. Foul isn't dead-but as far as your summons goes, he might as well be. You'll lose your last chance.” His demand focused on her like anger. Or perhaps it was her own diminishment that made him sound so fiercely grieved. “Pick up the ring!”
She sighed faintly. She did not want to move; the prospect of dissolution struck her as a promise of peace. Perhaps she would die from it-would be spared the storm of her pain. That hurt cut at her, presaging the wind which blew between the worlds. She had lost him. Whatever happened now, she had lost him absolutely.
Yet she did not refuse him. She had sworn that she would put a stop to the Sunbane. And her love for him would not let her go. She had failed at everything else.
She was in no hurry. There was still time. The process leeching her away was slow, and she retained enough percipience to measure it. Groaning at the ache in her bones, she unbowed her back, lowered his head tenderly to her thighs. Her fingers fumbled stiffly, as if they were no longer good for anything; but she forced them to serve her-to re-button her shirt, closing at least that much protection over her bare heart. In her nightmare, she had used her shirt to try to stanch the bleeding. But she had failed then as well.
At that moment, a voice as precise as a bell rang in her mind. She seemed to recognize it, though it could not be him, that was impossible. Nothing had prepared her for his desperation.
— Avaunt, shade! Your work is done! Urge me no more dismay!
Commands clamoured through the chamber; revocations thronged against Covenant Instantly, his spectre frayed and faded like blown mist. His power was gone. He had no way to refuse the dismissal.
Crying Linden's name in supplication or anguish, he dissolved and was effaced. His passing left trails of argent across her vision Then they, too, were gone. There was nothing left of him to which she might cling.
At once, the bell rang again, clarion and compulsory. It was so close to frenzy that it nearly deafened her.
— Chosen, withhold! Do not dare the ring!
In the wake of the clangour, Findail and Vain entered Kiril Threndor, came struggling forward as if they were locked in mortal combat.
But the battle was all on one side. Findail thrashed and twisted, fought wildly; Vain simply ignored him. The
Together, they moved toward the ring. Findail's free hand clawed in that direction. His mute voice was a tuneless clatter of distress.
— He has compelled me to preserve him! But he must not be suffered! Chosen, withhold!
Now Vain resisted Findail, exerted himself to hold the
Then Linden thought that she would surely move. She would go to the ring and take it, if for no other reason than because she trusted neither the Appointed nor his ebon counterpart. Vain was either unreachable or utterly violent.
Findail showed alternate compassion and disdain as if both were simply facets of his mendacity. And Covenant had tried to warn her. The abrupt brutality of his dismissal drew anger from her waning heart.
But she had waited too long. The mounting winds blew through her as if she were a shadow Covenant's head had become far more real than her legs; she could not shift them. The ceiling leaned over her like a distillation of itself, stone condensed past the obduracy of diamond. The snapped fragments of the stalactites were as irreducible as grief. This world was too much for her. In the end, it surpassed all her conceptions of herself. Flashes of rocklight seemed to leave lacerations across her sight. Findail and Vain struggled and struggled toward the ring; and every one of their movements was as acute as a catastrophe. Vain wore the heels of the Staff of Law like strictures. She was fading to extinction Covenant's dead weight held her helpless.
She tried to cry out. But she was too insubstantial to make any sound which Mount Thunder might have heard.
Yet she was answered. When she believed that she had wasted all hope, she was answered.
Two figures burst from the same tunnel which had brought her to Kiril Threndor. They entered the chamber, stumbled to a halt. They were desperate and bleeding, exhausted beyond endurance, nearly dead on their feet. Her longsword was notched and gory; blood dripped from her arms and mail. His breathing retched as if he were haemorrhaging. But their valour was unquenchable. Somewhere, Pitchwife found the strength to gasp urgently, 'Chosen! The ring!”
The sudden appearance of the Giants defied comprehension. How could they have escaped the Cavewights? But they were here, alive and half prostrate and willing. And the sight of them lifted Linden's spirit like an act of grace. They brought her back to herself in spite of the gale pulling her away.
Findail was scarcely a step from the ring. Vain could not hold him back.
But the Appointed did not reach it.
Linden grasped Covenant's wedding band with the thin remains of her health-sense, drew fire spouting like an affirmation out of the metal. It was her ring now, granted to her in love and necessity; and the first touch of its flame restored her with a shock at once exquisitely painful and glad, ferocious and blessed Suddenly, she was as real as the stone and the light, as substantial as Findail’s frenzy, Vain's intransigence the Giants' courage. The pressure thrusting her out of existent did not subside; but now she was a match for it. Her lung took and released the sulphur-tinged air as if she had a right to it. With white fire, she repelled the
Leaving him alone there, she went to take the ring.
For an instant, she feared to touch it, thinking its flame might burn her. But she knew better. Her senses were explicit this blaze was hers and would not harm her. Deliberately, she closed her right fist around the fiery
