White Gold Wielder

Vain, and Findail were awake. Pitchwife stirred the fagots of a small fire, watching the flames as if his heart were somewhere else.

Above him loomed a ragged cliff, perhaps two hundred feet high. The sun had not yet reached him; but it shone squarely on the bouldered wall, giving the stones a faint red hue like a reminder that beyond them lay the Sunbane.

While Covenant slept, the company had camped at the foot of Landsdrop.

Still groggy with diamondraught, he climbed out of his blankets, cradling his pain- stiff arm inside his robe next to the scar in the centre of his chest Pitchwife glanced at him absently, then returned his gaze to the fire. For the first time in many long days of exposure, no ice crusted the twisting lines of his visage. Though Covenant's breath steamed as if his life were escaping from him, 'he was conscious that the winter had become oddly bearable-preferable to what lay ahead. The small fire was enough to steady him.

Left dumb by dreams and memories Covenant stood beside the deformed Giant. He found an oblique comfort in Pitchwife's morose silence. Surely Cail's flat mien contained no comfort. The Haruchai were capable of grief and admiration and remorse; but Cail kept whatever he felt hidden. And in their opposite ways Vain and Findail represented the antithesis of comfort. Vain's makers had nearly exterminated the Waynhim. And Findail's yellow eyes were miserable with the knowledge he refused to share.

He could have told Hamako's rhysh about the croyel. Perhaps that would not have altered Covenant's plight-or Hamako's. But it would have saved lives.

Yet when Covenant looked at the Elohim, he felt no desire to demand explanations. He understood Findail's refusal to do anything which might relieve the pressure of his Covenant's, culpability. The pressure to surrender his ring.

He did not need explanations. Not yet. He needed vision. percipience. He wanted to ask the Appointed, Do you think she's up to it? Is she that strong?

However, he already knew the answer. She was not that strong. But she was growing toward strength as if it were her birthright. Only her preterite self-contradictions held her back-that paralysis which gripped her when she was caught between the horror of what her father had done to her and the horror of what she had done to her mother, between her fundamental passions for and against death And she had a better right to the wild magic than he did. Because she could see.

Around him, his companions began to stir. The First sat up suddenly, her sword in her hands: she had been dreaming of battle. As he rose stiffly to his feet, Honninscrave's eyes looked strangely like Hamako's, as if he had learned something grim and sustaining from the example of the Stonedownor. Mistweave shambled upright like an image of confusion, a man baffled by his own emotions. The release and clarity of fighting the arghuleh had met some of his needs, but had not restored his sense of himself.

When Linden awoke, her gaze was raw and aggrieved, as if she had spent half the night unable to stanch her tears, Covenant's heart went out to her, but he did not know how to say so. The previous evening, she had tended his mangled arm with a ferocity which he recognized as love. But the intensity of his self-repudiation had isolated them from each other. And now he could not forget that her right was better than his. That his accumulating falseness corrupted everything he did or wanted to do.

He had never learned how to give up.

His nightmares insisted that he needed the fire he feared.

Mistweave moved woodenly about the task of preparing breakfast; but abruptly Pitchwife stopped him. Without a word, the crippled Giant rose to his feet. His manner commanded the attention of the company. For a moment, he remained motionless and rigid, his eyes damp in the sunrise. Then, hoarsely, he began to sing. His melody was a Giantish plainsong, and his stretched and fraying voice drew a faint echo from the cliff of Landsdrop, an added resonance, so that he seemed to be singing for all his companions as well as for himself.

“My heart has rooms that sigh with dust

And ashes in the hearth.

They must be cleaned and blown away

By daylight's breath.

But I cannot essay the task,

For even dust to me is dear;

For dust and ashes still recall,

My love was here.

“I know not how to say Farewell,

When Farewell is the word

That stays alone for me to say

Or will be heard.

But I cannot speak out that word

Or ever let my loved one go:

How can I bear it that these rooms

Are empty so?

“I sit among the dust and hope

That dust will cover me.

I stir the ashes in the hearth,

Though cold they be.

I cannot bear to close the door,

To seal my loneliness away

While dust and ashes yet remain

Of my love's day.”

When he was done, the First hugged him hard; and Mistweave looked like he had been eased. Linden glanced at Covenant, bit her lips to keep them from trembling. But Honninscrave's eyes remained shrouded, and his jaws chewed gall as though Farewell were not the only word he could not bring himself to utter.

Covenant understood. Seadreamer had given his life as bravely as Hamako, but no victory had been gained to make his death endurable. And no caamora had been granted to accord him peace.

The Unbeliever was bitterly afraid that his own death would have more in common with Seadreamer's than with Hamako's.

While the companions ate a meal and repacked the sleds, Covenant tried to imagine how they would be able to find their way up the harsh cliff. Here Landsdrop was not as imposing as it was nearer the centre of the Land, where a thousand feet and more of steep rock separated the Lower Land from the Upper, Sarangrave Flat from Andelain-and where Mount Thunder crouched like a titan, presiding darkly over the rift. But still the cliff appeared impassable.

But the eyesight of the Giants had already discovered an answer. They towed the sleds southward; and in less than a league they reached a place where the rim of the precipice had collapsed, sending a wide scallop of earth down fan-like across its base. This slope was manageable, though Covenant and Linden had to ascend on foot while the Giants carried the sleds. Before the morning was half gone, the company stood among the snows of the Upper Land.

Covenant scanned the terrain apprehensively, expecting at any moment to hear Linden announce that she could see the Sunbane rising before them. But beyond Landsdrop lay only more winter and a high ridge of mountains which blocked the west and south.

These appeared to be as tall and arduous as the Westron Mountains. However, the Giants were undaunted, wise in the ways of peaks and valleys. Though the rest of the day was spent winding up into the thin air of the heights Covenant and Linden were able to remain in their sleds, and the company made good progress.

But the next day the way was harder, steeper, cramped with boulders and old ice; and wind came slashing