White Gold Wielder

carrying lanterns. Mistweave and Cail were among them. Mistweave bore Linden.

She lay in his arms as if she were still asleep-as if the diamondraught’s hold over her could not be breached by any desperation.

But when he set her on her feet. her eyes fluttered open. Groggily, she ran her fingers through her hair, pulled it back from her face. Shadows glazed her eyes; she looked like a woman who was walking in her dreams. A yawn stretched her mouth. She appeared unaware of the pain sprawling at her feet.

Then abruptly she sank down beside the dying Giant as though her knees had failed. She bowed her head, and her hair swung forward to hide her face again.

Rigid with useless impatience, the First clenched her fists on her hips. Galewrath glared back at the lamps. Honninscrave turned away as if he could not bear the sight, began whispering commands. His tone made the crew obey with alacrity.

Linden remained bowed over the Giant as if she were praying. The noise of the crew in the wreckage, the creaking of the dromond's granite, the muffled crackle of ice made what she was saying inaudible. Then her voice came into clearer focus.

“-but the spinal cord is all right. If you splint her back, strap her down, the bones should mend.”

Galewrath nodded stiffly, glowering as if she knew there was more to be said.

The next moment, a tremor ran through Linden. Her head jerked up.

“Her heart's bleeding. A broken rib- ” Her eyes cast a white blind stare into the dark.

Through her teeth, the First breathed, “Succour her. Chosen. She must not die. Three others have lost life this night. There must not be a fourth.”

Linden went on staring. Her voice had a leaden sound, as though she were almost asleep again. “How? I could open her up, but she'd lose too much blood. And I don't have any sutures.”

“Chosen.” The First knelt opposite Linden, took hold of her shoulders. “I know nothing of these 'sutures.' Your healing surpasses me altogether. I know only that she must die if you do not aid her swiftly.”

In response. Linden gazed dully across the deck like a woman who had lost interest.

“Linden” Covenant croaked at last. 'Try.”

Her sight swam into focus on him, and he saw glints of light pass like motes of vision across the dark background of her eyes. “Come,” she said faintly. “Come here.”

All his muscles were wooden with suppressed dismay; but he forced himself to obey. Beside the dying Giant, he faced Linden. “What do you — ?”

Her expression stopped him. Her features wore the look of dreams. Without a word, she reached out, caught his half-hand by the wrist, stretched his arm like a rod over the Giant's pain.

Before he could react, she frowned sharply; and a blare of violation ripped across his mind.

In a rush, fire poured from his ring. Wild magic threw back the night, washing the foredeck with incandescence.

He recoiled in shock rather than pain; her hold did not hurt him. Yet it bereft him of choice. Without warning, all his preconceptions were snatched apart. Everything changed. Once before, in the cavern of the One Tree, she had exerted his power for herself; but he had hardly dared consider the implications. Now her percipience had grown so acute that she could wield his ring without his bare volition. And it was a violation. Mhoram had said to him. You are the white gold. Wild magic had become a crucial part of his identity, and no one else had the right to use it, control it.

Yet he did not know how to resist her. Her grasp on what she was doing was impenetrable. Already she had set fire to the Giant's chest as if she intended to burn out the woman's heart.

Around the Giantship, every sound fell away, absorbed by fire. The First and Galewrath shaded their eyes against the blaze, watched the Chosen with mute astonishment Linden's mouth formed mumbling shapes as she worked, but no words came. Her gaze was buried deep in the flames Covenant could feel himself dying.

For one moment, the Giant writhed against his thighs. Then she took a heavy, shuddering breath: and the trickle of blood at the comer of her mouth stopped. Her chest rose more freely. In a short time, her eyes opened and stared at the sensation of being healed.

Linden dropped Covenant's wrist. At once, the fire vanished. Night clapped back over the dromond. For an instant, even the lanterns appeared to have gone out. He flinched back against a pile of ruined gear, his face full of darkness. He hardly heard the First muttering. “Stone and Seal” over and over again, unable to voice her amazement in any other way. He was completely blind. His eyes adjusted quickly enough, picking shapes and shadows out of the lantern glow; but that was only sight, not vision: it had no power or capacity for healing.

Before him. Linden lay across the torso of the Giant she had called back from death. She was already asleep.

From his position in the dromond's prow, Findail studied her as if he expected a transformation to begin at any moment Bunking fiercely Covenant fought to keep the hot grief down. After a moment, he descried Pitchwife near the First The lamps made the malformed Giant's face haggard, his eyes red. He was breathing heavily, nearly exhausted. But his voice was calm as he said. “It is done. Starfare's Gem will not run with its wonted ease until it has been granted restoration by the shipwrights of Home. But I have wived the breaches. We will not go down.”

“Run?” Honninscrave growled through his beard. “Have you beheld the foremast? Starfare's Gem will never run. In such hurt, I know not how to make it walk.”

The First said something Covenant did not hear. Cail came toward him, offered a hand to help him to his feet. But he did not react to any of them. He was being torn out of himself by the roots.

Linden had a better right to his ring than he did.

When the cold seeped so far into him that he almost stopped shivering, he made his preterite way to the oven-thick atmosphere of the galley. Seated there with his back to one wall, he stared at nothing as if he were stupefied, unable to register what he beheld. All he saw was the gaunt, compulsory visage of his doom.

Outside, the Giants laboured at the needs of the ship. For a long time, the muffled thud of the pumps rose from below decks. The sails of the aftermast were clewed up to their yards to protect them from any resurgence of the now-diminished Dolewind. The stone of the foremast and its spars was cleared out of the wreckage and set aside. Anything that remained intact in the fallen gear and rigging was salvaged. Either Seasauce or Hearthcoal was away from the stoves constantly, carrying huge buckets of broth to the Giants to sustain them while they worked.

But nothing the crew could do changed the essential fact; the dromond was stuck and crippled. When dawn came, and Covenant went, hollow-eyed and spectral, to look at the Giantship's condition, he was dismayed by the severity of the damage. Aft of the midship housing, nothing had been hurt: the aftermast raised its anus like a tall tree to the blue depths and broken clouds of the sky. But forward Starfare's Gem looked as maimed as a derelict Scant feet above the first yards, which had been stripped to the bone by the collapse of the upper members, the foremast ended in a ragged stump.

Covenant had no sea-craft, but he recognized that Honninscrave was right: without sails forward to balance the canvas aft, Starfare's Gem would never be able to navigate.

Aching within himself, he turned to find out what the vessel had struck.

At first, what he saw seemed incomprehensible. Starfare's Gem lay surrounded to the horizons by a vast flat wilderland of ice. Jagged bunks were crushed against the dromond's sides; but the rest of the ice was unbroken. Its snow blown surface appeared free of any channel which could have brought the Giantship to this place.

But when he shaded his gaze and peered southward, he discerned a narrow band of grey water beyond the ice. And, squinting so hard that his temples throbbed, he traced a line between the dromond's stem and the open sea. There the ice was thinner. It was freezing back over the long furrow which Starfare’s Gem had ploughed into the floe.

The Giantship was trapped-locked here and helpless. With all three masts intact and a favouring wind, it could not have moved. It was stuck where it sat until spring came to its rescue. If this part of the world ever felt the touch of spring.