White Gold Wielder

A pang went through him, threatening his defences. Stiff with sleep and chill, he fumbled erect. “Where-?” he asked weakly. “Where did they go?”

Cail's reply was flat and pitiless. “They have gone to behold the Soulbiter.”

Covenant winced. He did not want to leave the confines of the galley. He feared the return of sensation and pain and responsibility. But Cail's expressionless stare was insistent. Cail was one of the Haruchai. kindred to Brinn and Banner. His comrades Ceer and Hergrom had given their lives. He had the right to make demands. And his gaze was as plain as words:

It is enough. Now you must resume yourself.

Covenant did not want to go. But he adjusted his rumpled attire, made an effort to secure the silence closely about him. When Cail opened the door for him, he took a step over the storm sill and walked blinking into the bright, frigid morning.

After so many days hidden behind the glower of the clouds, the sun alone would have been enough to blind him. But it was not alone. White cold glared around the ship. Light sprang at him from all sides; dazzles as piercing as spears volleyed about his head. His tears froze on his cheeks. When he raised his hands to rub the beads away, small patches of skin were torn from his face.

But slowly his sight cleared. He saw Giants lining the rails, their backs to him. Everyone on board stood at the forward railings somewhere, facing outward.

They were still, as quiet as the sea and the sails hanging empty in then gear. But no hush could silence their expectant suspense. They were watching the Soulbiter. Waiting for it.

Then he recovered enough vision to discern the source of all the dazzling.

Motionless in the water, Starfare's Gem lay surrounded by a flotilla of icebergs.

Hundreds of them in every size and configuration. Some were mere small humps on the flat sea. Others raised jagged crests to the level of the dromond's spars. And they were all formed of the same impeccable ice: ice as translucent and complete as glass, as bard faced as diamonds; ice on which the morning broke, shattering light in all directions.

They were moving. Singly or in squadrons, they bore slowly down on the ship as they floated southward. A few came so close that a Giant could have reached them in one leap. Yet none of them struck the dromond.

Along the deep the flotilla drifted with a wonderous majesty, as bewitching as me cold. Most of the Giants stood as if they had been carved from a muddier ice. They scarcely breathed while their hands froze to the rails and the gleaming burned into their eyes Covenant joined Linden near the First, Pitchwife, and Mistweave. Behind the raw red of cold in her face lay a blue pallor as if her blood had become as milky as frost; but she had stopped shivering, paid no heed to the drops of ice which formed on her parted lips. Pitchwife's constant murmur did not interrupt the trance. Like everyone else, he watched the ice pass stately by as if he were waiting for someone to speak. As if the sun-sharp wonder of this passage were merely a prelude.

Covenant found that he, too, could not look away. Commanded by so much eye piercing glister and beauty, he braced his hands on one of the crossbeams of the railing and at once lost the power of movement. He was calm now, prepared to wait forever if necessary to hear what the cold was going to utter.

Cail's voice reached him distantly. The Haruchai was saying, “Ur-Lord, this is not well. Chosen, hear me. It is not well. You must come away.” But his protest slowly ran out of strength. He moved to stand beside Covenant and did not speak again.

Covenant had no sense of time. Eventually the waiting ended. A berg drifted past the line of spectators, showing everyone a flat space like a platform in its side. And from that space rose cries.

“A ship at last!”

“Help us!”

“In the name of pity!”

“We have been marooned!”

He seemed to hear the same shouts behind him also, from the other side of the Giantship. But that strange detail made no impression on him.

His eyes were the only part of him mat moved. As the iceberg floated southward amid the slow procession, its flat side passed directly below the watchers. And he saw figures emerge from the pellucid ice-human figures. Three or four of them, he could not be sure. The number was oddly imprecise. But numbers did not matter. They were men, and their destitution made his heart twist against its shackles.

They were hollow-eyed, gaunt, and piteous. Their hands, maimed by frostbite, were wrapped in shreds torn from their ragged clothing. Emaciation and hopelessness lined their faces. Their cracked and splintered voices were hoarse with despair.

“Marooned!” they cried like a memory of the wind.

“Mercy!”

But no one on the dromond moved.

“Help them.” Linden's voice issued like a moan between her beaded lips. “Throw them a line. Somebody.”

No one responded. Gripped by cold, volitionless, the watchers only stared as the iceberg drifted slowly by, bearing its frantic victims away. Gradually, the current took the marooned men out of hearing.

“In the name of God.” Her tears formed a gleaming fan of ice under each eye.

Again Covenant's heart twisted. But he could not break free. His silence covered the sea.

Then another berg drew near. It lay like a plate on the unwavering face of the water. Beneath the surface, its bulk lightly touched the ship, scraped a groan from the hushed hull For a moment, the plate caught the sun squarely, and its reflection rang like a knell. Yet Covenant was able to see through the glare.

Poised in the sun's image were people that he knew.

Hergrom. Ceer.

They stood braced as if they had their backs to the Sandwall. At first, they were unaware of the Giantship. But then they saw it. Ceer shouted a hail which fell without echo onto the decks of the dromond. Leaving Hergrom, he sprinted to the edge of the ice, waved his arms for assistance.

Then out of the light came a Sandgorgon. White against the untrammelled background of the ice, the beast charged toward Hergrom with murder outstretched in its mighty arms.

Tremors shook Cail. Strain made steam puff between his teeth. But the cold held him.

For an instant, the implacable structure of Ceer's face registered the fact that the Giantship was not going to help him. His gaze shivered in Covenant's chest like an accusation that could never be answered. Then he sped to Hergrom's defence.

The Sandgorgon struck with the force of a juggernaut. Cracks sprang through the ice. A flurry of blows scattered Hergrom's blood across the floe. Ceer's strength meant nothing to the beast.

And still no one moved. The Giants were ice themselves now, as frigid and brittle as the wilderland of the sea. Linden's weeping gasped in her throat. Droplets of blood ran from Covenant's palms as he tried to rip his bands from the railing. But the grasp of the cold could not be broken.

Ceer. Hergrom.

But the plate of ice slowly drifted away, and no one moved.

After that, the waiting seemed long for the first time since Covenant had fallen under the spell of the Soulbiter.

At last another hunk of ice floated near the Giantship. It was small, hardly a yard wide, its face barely above the water. It seemed too small to be the bringer of so much fear.

For a moment, his vision was smeared with light. He could see nothing past the bright assault of the sun's reflections. But then his eyes cleared.

On that little floe stood Cable Seadreamer. He faced the dromond, stared up at the watchers. His posture was erect; his arms were folded sternly over the gaping wound in the centre of his chest Above his scar, his eyes were full of terrible knowledge.

Stiffly, he nodded a greeting. “My people,” he said in a voice as quiet and extreme as me cold. “you must succour me. This is the Soulbiter. Here suffer all the damned who have died in a false cause, unaided by those they sought to serve. If you will not reach out to me, I must stand here forever in my anguish, and the ice will not