White Gold Wielder

and there across the floor, scarlet robed and contorted, frantic with death. But worse than anything else were the hacked and broken bodies of those who should never have been sent into battle: cooks and cleaners, herders and gatherers, the innocent servants of the Clave. Among the litter of their inadequate weapons, their cleavers, pitchforks, scythes, clubs, they were scattered like the wreckage which their masters had already wrought upon the villages of the Land.

Now Linden could not stanch her tears-and did not try. Through the blur, she spoke to Durris, sent him and several other Haruchai in search of splints, bindings, a sharp knife, hot water, and all the metheglin they could find to augment the company's scant vitrim and dwindling diamondraught. Then, using percipience instead of sight to direct her, she went looking for Mistweave.

He was at work among the fallen of the Clave as if he were a physician-or could become one by simply refusing to let so much hurt and need lie untended. First he separated the dead from those who might yet be saved Then he made the living as comfortable as possible, covered their wounds with bandages torn from the raiment of the dead. His aura reached out to her as though he, too, were weeping; and she seemed to hear his very thoughts: This one also I slew. Her I broke. Him I crippled. These I took from life in the name of service.

She felt his distress keenly. Self-distrust had driven him to a kind of hunger for violence, for any exertion or blow which might earn back his own esteem. Now he found himself in the place to which such logic led-a place that stank like an abattoir.

In response, something fierce came unexpectedly out of the wilderness of Linden's heart. He had not halted his labour to greet her. She caught him by the arm, by the sark, pulled at him until he bent over her and she was able to clinch her frail strength around his neck. Instinctively, he lifted her from the floor in spite of his broken arm; and she whispered at him as if she were gasping, “You saved my life. When I couldn't save myself. And no Haruchai could save me. You're not responsible for this. The Clave made them attack you. You didn't have any choice.” Mistweave. “You couldn't just let them kill you.” Mistweave, help me. All you did was fight. I tried to possess him.

He's gone, and I'll never get him back. For a moment, Mistweave's muscles knotted with grief. But then slowly his grip loosened, and he lowered her gently to her feet. “Chosen,” he said as if he had understood her, “it will be a benison to me if you will tend my arm. The pain is considerable.”

Considerable, Linden thought. Sweet Christ, have mercy, Mistweave's admission was an appalling understatement. His right elbow had been crushed, and whenever he moved the splinters ground against each other. Yet he had spent the entire day in motion, first fighting for the company, then doing everything he could to help the injured. And the only claim he made for himself was that the pain was considerable. He gave her more help than she deserved.

When Durris and his people brought her the things she had requested, she told him to build a fire to clean the knife and keep the water hot. Then while the sun set outside and night grew deep over the city, she opened up Mistweave's elbow and put the bones back together.

That intricate and demanding task made her feel frayed to the snapping point, worn thin by shared pain. But she did not stop when it was finished. Her work was just beginning. After she had splinted and strapped Mistweave's arm, she turned to the injuries of the Haruchai, to Fole's leg and Harn's hip and all the other wounds dealt out by the Grim and the Coursers, the Riders and the people of Revelstone. Fole's hurt reminded her of Ceer's-the leg crushed by a Sandgorgon and never decently treated-and so she immersed herself in the damage as if restitution could be made in that way, by taking the cost of broken bones and torn flesh upon herself. And after that she began to tend as best she could the Riders and servants of the Clave.

Later, through the riven gates at the end of the forehall, she felt midnight rise like the moon above the Keep. The reek of spilled and drying blood filled the air. Men and women cried out as if they expected retribution when she touched them But still she went weary and unappeased about her chosen work. It was the only answer she had ever found for herself until she had met Covenant. Now it was the only answer she had left.

Yes. It was specific and clean. It had meaning, value; the pain of it was worth bearing. Yes. And it held her in one piece.

As if for the first time: Yes.

She had never faced so many wounds at once, so much bloodshed. But after all, the number of men and women, old and young, who had been able to survive their hurts this long was finite. The consequences of the battle were not like the Sunbane, endless and immedicable. She had nearly finished everything she knew how to ask of herself when Cail came to her and announced that the ur-Lord wished to see her.

She was too tired to feel the true shock of the summons. Even now she could see Covenant standing in the Banefire until his blackness burned away as if he had taken hold of that evil blaze and somehow made it holy. His image filled all the back of her mind. But she was exhausted and had no more fear.

Carefully, she completed what she was doing. As she worked, she spoke to Durris. “When the Banefire goes out, tell Nom to turn the stream back where it belongs. Then I want the dead cleaned out of here. Tell Nom to bury them outside the gates.” They deserved at least that decency. “You and your people take care of these-” She gestured toward the people arrayed around her in their sufferings and bandages. “The Land's going to need them.” She understood poignantly Covenant's assertion that Sunder and Hollian were the Land's future. Freed from the rule of the Clave, these wounded men and women might help serve the same purpose.

Durris and Cail blinked at her, their faces flat in the incomplete torchlight. They were Haruchai, disdainful of injury and failure-not healers. And what reason did they have to obey her? Their commitment was to Covenant, not to her. With Brinn, Cail had once denounced her as a minion of Corruption.

But the Haruchai were not unaffected by their part in the Land's plight. The merewives and the Clave had taught them their limitations. And Brinn's victory over the Guardian of the One Tree had done much to open the way for Cable Seadreamer's death and the Despiser's manipulations. In a strange way, the Haruchai had been humbled. When Linden looked up at Cail, he said as if he were still unmoved, 'It will be done. You are Linden Avery the Chosen. It will be done.”

Sighing to herself, she did what she could for the last of the wounded-watched him die because she was only one woman and had not reached him in time. Then she straightened her stiff knees and went with Can out of the forehall!

As she turned, she glimpsed a perfect ebony figure standing at the verge of the light near the gates. Vain had returned. Somehow, he had recognized the end of the Clave and known that he could safely rejoin the company. But Linden was past questioning anything the Demondim-spawn did. She lost sight of him as she entered the passages beyond the forehall; and at once she forgot him.

Cail guided her deep into a part of Revelstone which was new to her. The movement and confusion of the past day had left her sense of direction so bewildered that she had no idea where she was in relation to the Hall of Gifts; and she could barely discern the sacred enclosure in the distance as the Banefire declined toward extinction. But when she and Cail reached a hall that led like a tunnel toward the source of a weird silver illumination, she guessed their destination.

The hall ended in a wide, round court. Around the walls were doorways at intervals, most of them shut. Above the doors up to the high ceiling of the cavity were coigns which allowed other levels of the Keep to communicate with this place. But she recognized the court because the polished granite of its floor was split from wall to wall with one sharp crack, and the floor itself shone with an essential argence like Covenant's ring. He had damaged and lit that stone in the excess of his power when he had emerged from the soothtell of the Clave. Here had been revealed to him enough of the truth to send him on his quest for the One Tree-but only enough to ensure the outcome Lord Foul intended. In spite of her exhaustion. Linden shivered, wondering how much more had been revealed to him now.

But then she saw him standing in one of the doorways; and all other questions vanished. Her eyes were full of silver; she felt she could hardly see him as he dismissed Cail, came out into the light to meet her.

Mute with shame and longing, she fought the inadequacy of her vision and strove to anele her sore heart with the simple sight of him.

Luminous in silver and tears, he stood before her. All the details were gone, blinded by the pure glow of the floor, his pure presence. She saw only that he carried himself as if he had not come to berate her. She wanted to