White Gold Wielder

“Before we risk anything else, I'm going to challenge Gibbon. Try to get him to fight me personally. I don't think he'll do it,” though surely the Raver would covet the white ring for itself and might therefore be willing to defy its master's will, “but if he does, I can break the Clave's back without hurting anybody else.” Even though Gibbon held the whole force of the Banefire; Covenant was ready for that as well.

But the First was not content. “And if he does not?” she asked promptly. “If he remains within his fastness and dares us to harm him?”

Abruptly, Covenant lurched to his feet. Linden's gaze followed him with a flare of alarm as she caught a hint of what drove him; but he did not let her speak. Pieces of moonlight filtered through the dense leaves; and beyond the trees the moon was full-stretched to bursting with promises he could not keep. Above him, the walls and battlements of Revelstone held the silver light as if they were still beautiful. He could not bear it Though he was choking, he rasped out, “I'll think of something.” Then he fled the camp, went blundering through the brush until he reached its verge on the foothills.

The great Keep towered there, as silent and moon ridden as a cairn for all the dreams it had once contained. No illumination of life showed from it anywhere. He wanted to cry out at it, What have they done to you? But he knew the stone would not hear him. It was deaf to him, blind to its own desecration-as helpless against evil as the Earth itself. The thought that he might hurt it made him tremble.

Cail attended him like an avatar of the night's stillness. Because he had passed the limit of what he could endure, he turned to the Haruchai and whispered hoarsely, “I'm going to sleep here. I want to be alone. Don't let any of them near me.”

He did not sleep. He spent the night staring up at the city as though it were the last barrier between his hot grief and Lord Foul's triumph. Several times, he heard his friends approach him through the brush. Each time, Cail turned them away. Linden protested his refusal, but could not breach it.

That solitary and intimate fidelity enabled Covenant to hang on until dawn.

He saw the light first on the main Keep's rim beyond the parapets of the watchtower, while the shaft of the Banefire shot toward the east. This daybreak had the hue of deserts, and the sun gave the high grey stone a brown tinge. Once again, Hollian had foretold the Sunbane accurately. As he levered his strain-sore and weary bones upright, he thought of the eh-brand with an odd pang. Married by the child she bore, she and Sunder had grown steadily closer to each other-and Covenant did not know how to heal the wound between himself and Linden.

Behind him, he heard Linden accost Cail a second time. When the Haruchai denied her again, she snapped in exasperation, “He's got to eat. He's still at least that human.” Her voice sounded ragged, as if she also had not slept. Perhaps the air around Revelstone was too full of the taste of Ravers to permit her to sleep. Gibbon had shown her the part of herself which had arisen in hunger to take her mother's life. Yet now, in this fatal place, she was thinking of Covenant rather than of herself. She would have forgiven him long ago-if he had ever given her the chance.

Stiffly, as if all his muscles had been calcified by the night and his long despair, he started up the hill toward Revelstone.

He could not face Linden now, feared to let her look at him almost as much as he feared the massive granite threat of the Keep. Concealment was no longer possible for him; and he dreaded how she would react to what she saw.

The light was on the watchtower, colouring it like a wilderland and dropping rapidly toward the foothills. At the edges of his vision on either side, he saw the treetops start to melt; but the centre of his sight was filled by the tower. Its embrasures and abutments were empty, and the darkness behind them made them look like eyes from which the light of life had been extinguished. Light of life and desecration, he thought vaguely, as if he were too weak with inanition and fear to be troubled by contradictions. He knew how to deal with them: he had found that answer in the thronehall of Foul's Creche, when the impossibility of believing the Land true and the impossibility of believing it false had forced him to take his stand on the still point of strength at the centre of his vertiginous plight. But such comprehension was of no use to him now. All the anger had gone out of him during the night; and he ascended toward the gaping mouth of Revelstone like a husk for burning.

Yet the apparent desertion of the city made him uneasy. Was it possible that the Clave had fled-that his mere approach had driven the Riders into hiding? No. The virulence of the Banefire's beam gave no indication that it had been left untended. And Lord Foul would not have permitted any withdrawal. What better victory for the Despiser than that Covenant should bring down the Arch in conflict with the Clave?

Lord Foul had said. At the last there will be but one choice for you, and you will make it in all despair. He had promised that, and he had laughed.

Something that might have been power stirred in Covenant. His hands curled into fists, and he went on upward.

The sun laid his shadow on the bare dirt in front of him. Its heat gripped the back of his neck, searching for the fiber of his will in the same way that it would reduce all the Upper Land's monstrous verdure to grey sludge and desert. He seemed to see himself spread out for sacrifice on the ground-exposed for the second time to a blow as murderous as the knife which had pierced his chest, stabbed the hope out of his life. An itch like a faint scurry of vermin spread up his right forearm. Unconsciously, he quickened his pace.

Then he reached the level ground at the base of the tower, and the tunnel stood open before him among its mined gates. The passage was as dark as a grave until it met the dim illumination reflecting into the courtyard from the face of the main Keep. Dimly, he saw the inner gates at the far side of the court. They were sealed against him.

Involuntarily, he looked back down toward the place where his companions had camped. At first the sun was in his eyes, and he could descry nothing except the eviscerated grey muck which stretched out to the horizons like a sea as the Sunbane denatured life from the terrain. But when he shaded his sight, he saw the company.

His friends stood in a cluster just beyond the edge of the sludge. The First and two Haruchai were restraining Honninscrave. Pitchwife held Linden back.

Covenant swung around in pain to face the tunnel again.

He did not enter it. He was familiar with the windows in its ceiling which allowed the Keep's defenders to attack anyone who walked that throat. And he did not raise his voice. He was instinctively certain now that Revelstone was listening acutely, in stealth and covert fear. He sounded small against the dusty air, the great city and the growing desert as he spoke.

“I've come for you. Gibbon. For you. If you come out, I'll let the rest of the Riders live.” Echoes mocked him from the tunnel, then subsided. “If you don't, I'll take this place apart to find you.

“You know I can do it. I could've done it the last time-and I'm stronger now.” You are more dangerous now than you've ever been. “Foul doesn't think you can beat me. He's using you to make me beat myself. But I don't care about that anymore. Either way, you're going to die. Come out and get it over with.”

The words seemed to fail before they reached the end of the passage. Revelstone loomed above him like the corpse of a city which had been slain ages ago. The pressure of the sun drew a line of bitter sweat down his spine.

And a figure appeared in the tunnel. Black against the reflection of the courtyard, it moved outward. Its feet struck soft echoes of crepitation from the stone.

Covenant tried to swallow-and could not. The desert sun had him by the throat.

A pair of hot pains transfixed his forearm. The scars gleamed like fangs. An invisible darkness flowed out of the passage toward him, covering his fire with the pall of venom. The sound of steps swelled.

Then sandaled feet and the fringe of a red robe broached the sunshine; and Covenant went momentarily faint with the knowledge that his first gambit had failed. Light ran swiftly up the lines of the stark scarlet fabric to the black chasuble which formalized the robe. Hands appeared, empty of the characteristic rukh, the black iron rod like a sceptre with an open triangle fixed atop it, which a Rider should have held. Yet this was surely a Rider. Not Gibbon: the na-Mhoram wore black. He carried a crozier as tall as himself. The habitual beatitude or boredom of his round visage was punctured only by the red bale of his eyes. The man who came out to meet Covenant was not Gibbon.

A Rider, then. He appeared thick of torso, though his ankles and wrists were thin, and his bearded cheeks had been worn almost to gauntness by audacity or fear. Wisps of wild hair clung like fanaticism to his balding skull.