White Gold Wielder

scimitar relapsed to bone': it splintered when he struck. He would have fallen himself; but hands reached out from the wedge and jerked him back into position.

And there was nothing Covenant could do. The Giants were calling to him, beseeching him for some command. The First shouted imprecations he did not hear. But there was nothing he could do.

Except unleash the wild magic.

Venom thudded in his temples. The wild magic, unquenchable and argent. Every thought of it, every memory, every ache of hunger and yearning was as shrill and frantic as Linden's fervid cry: You're going to break the Arch of Time! This is what Foul wants! Desecration filled each pulse and wail of his heart. He could not call up that much power and still pretend to control it.

But Hamako would be killed. It was as distinct as the declining sunlight on the white plain The Waynhim would be slaughtered like the people of the Land to feed the lust of evil. That same man and those Waynhim had brought Covenant back from delirium once-and had shown him that there was still beauty in the world. The winter of their destruction would never end.

Because of the venom. Its scars still burned, as bright as Lord Foul's eyes, in the flesh of his right forearm, impelling him to power. The Sunbane warped Law, birthed abominations; but Covenant might bring Time itself to chaos.

At no great distance from him, the wedge no longer battled offensively. It struggled simply to stay alive. Several Waynhim had fallen in bonds of ice they could not break. More would die soon as the arghuleh raised their wall. Hamako remained on his feet, but had no weapon, no way to wield the might of the wedge. He was thrust into the centre of the formation, and a Waynhim took his place, fighting with all the fluid force its small blade could channel.

“Giantfriend!” the First yelled. “Covenant!”

The wedge was dying; and the Giants dared not act, for fear that they would place themselves in the way of Covenant's fire.

Because of the venom sick fury pounding like desire between the bones of his forearm. He had been made so powerful that he was powerless. His desperation demanded blood.

Slipping back his sleeve, he gripped his right wrist with his left hand to increase his leverage, then hacked his scarred forearm at the sharpest edges of the rock. His flesh ground against the jagged projections. Red slicked the stone, spattered the snow, froze in the cold. He ignored it. The Clave had cut his wrists to gain power for the soothtell which had guided and misled him. Deliberately, he mangled his forearm, striving by pain to conceive an alternative to venom, struggling to cut the fang marks out of his soul.

Then Linden hit him. The blow knocked him back. Flagrant with urgency and concern, she caught her fists in his robe, shook him like a child, raged at him.

“Listen to me!” she flamed as if she knew he could hardly hear her, could not see anything except the blood he had left on the rock. “It's like the Kemper! Like Kasreyn!” Back and forth she heaved him, trying to wrestle him into focus on her. “Like his son! The arghuleh have something like, his son!”

At that, clarity struck Covenant so hard that he nearly fell.

Winter in Combat The Kemper's son. Oh my God.

The croyel.

Before the thought was finished, he had broken Linden's grasp and was running toward the Giants.

The croyel! — the succubus from the dark places of the Earth which Kasreyn had borne on his back, and with which he had bargained for his arts and his preternaturally prolonged life. And out there was an arghule which looked like one ice-beast crouched on another. That creature had contracted with the croyel for the power to unite its kind and wage winter wherever it willed.

Findail must have known. He must have understood what force opposed the Waynhim. Yet he had said nothing.

But Covenant had no time to spend on the mendacity of the Elohim. Reaching the First, he shouted, “Can them back! Make them retreat! They can't win this way!” His arm scattered blood. 'We've got to tell them about the croyel! She reacted as if he had unleashed her. Whirling, she gave one command that snatched the Giants to her side; and together they charged into the fray.

Covenant watched them go in fear and hope. Still furious for him, Linden came to his side. Taking rough hold of his right wrist, she forced him to bend his elbow and clamp it tightly to slow the bleeding. Then she watched with him in silence.

With momentum, weight, and muscle, the four Giants crashed in among the arghuleh. The First swung her longsword like a bludgeon, risking its metal against the gelid beasts. Honninscrave and Mistweave fought as hugely as titans. Pitchwife scrambled after them, doing everything he could to guard their backs. And as they battled, they shouted Covenant's call in the roynish tongue of the Waynhim.

The reaction of the wedge was almost immediate. Suddenly, an the Waynhim pivoted to the left; and that comer of the formation became their apex. Sweeping Hamako along, they drove for the breach the Giants had made in the attack.

The arghuleh were slow to understand what was happening. The wedge was half free of the fray before the ice beasts turned to try to prevent the retreat.

Pitchwife went down under two arghuleh. Honninscrave and Mistweave sprang to his aid like sledgehammers, yanked him out of the wreckage. A net took hold of the First. The leader of the wedge scored it to shreds. Frenetically, the Waynhim and the Giants struggled toward Covenant.

They were not swift enough to outrun the arghuleh. In moments, they would be engulfed again.

But the Waynhim had understood the Giants. Abruptly, the wedge parted, spilling Hamako and a score of companions in Covenant's direction. Then the rhysh reclosed their formation and attacked again.

With the help of the Giants, the wedge held back the arghuleh while Hamako and his comrades sped toward Covenant and Linden.

Covenant started shouting at Hamako before the Stonedownor neared him; but Hamako stopped a short distance away, silenced Covenant with a gesture. “You have done your part, ring-wielder,” he panted as his people gathered about him. “The name of the croyel is known among the Waynhim.” He had to raise his voice: the creatures were chanting a new invocation. “We lacked only the knowledge that the force confronting us was indeed croyel.” An invocation Covenant had heard before. “What must be done is clear. Come no closer.”

As if to enforce his warning, Hamako drew a stone dirk from his belt.

Recognition stung through Covenant. He was familiar with that knife. Or one just like it. It went with the invocation. He tried to call out, Don't! But the protest failed in his mouth. Perhaps Hamako was right. Perhaps only such desperate measures could hope to save the embattled rhysh.

With one swift movement, the Stonedownor drew a long incision across the veins on the back of his hand.

The cut did not bleed. At once, he handed the dirk to a Waynhim. Quickly, it sliced the length of its palm, then passed the knife to its neighbour. Taking hold of Hamako's hand, the Waynhim pressed its cut to his. While the invocation swelled, the two of them stood there, joined by blood.

When the Waynhim stepped back, Hamako's eyes were acute with power.

In this same way, his rhysh had given Covenant the strength to run without rest across the whole expanse of the Centre Plains in pursuit of Linden, Sunder, and Hollian. But that great feat had been accomplished with the vitality of only eight Waynhim; and Covenant had barely been able to contain so much might There were twenty creatures ranged around Hamako.

The second had already completed its gift.

One by one, his adopted people cut themselves for him, pressed their blood into him. And each infusion gave him a surge of energy which threatened to burst his mortal bounds.

It was too much. How could one human being hope to hold that much power within the vessel of ordinary thew and tissue? Watching, Covenant feared that Hamako would not survive.

Then he remembered the annealed grief and determination he had seen in Hamako's eyes; and he knew the