White Gold Wielder

say in a rush before she lost her sight altogether. Oh, Covenant, I'm so sorry, I was wrong, I didn't understand, forgive me, hold me, Covenant. But the words would not come. Even now, she read him with the nerves of her body; her percipience tasted the timbre of his emanations. And the astonishment of what she perceived stopped her throat.

He was there before her, clean in every limb and line, and strong with the same stubborn will and affirmation which had made him irrefusable to her from the beginning. Alive in spite of the Banefire; gentle toward her regardless of what she had tried to do to him. But something was gone from him. Something was changed. For a moment while she tried to comprehend the difference, she believed that he was no longer a leper.

Blinking furiously, she cleared her vision.

His cheeks and neck were bare, free of the unruly beard which had made him look as hieratic and driven as a prophet. The particular scraped hue of his skin told her that he had not used wild magic to burn his whiskers away: he had shaved himself with some kind of blade. With a blade instead of fire, as if the gesture had a special meaning for him. An act of preparation or acquiescence. But physically that change was only superficial.

The fundamental alteration was internal. Her first guess had been wrong; she saw now that his leprosy persisted. His fingers and palms and the soles of his feet were numb. The disease still rested, quiescent, in his tissues. Yet something was gone from him. Something important had been transformed or eradicated.

“Linden.” He spoke as if her name sufficed for him-as if he had called her here simply so that he could say her name to her.

But he was not simple in any way. His contradictions remained, defining him beneath the surface. Yet he had become new and pure and clean. It was as if his doubt were gone-as if the self-judgments and repudiation which had tormented him had been reborn as certainty, clarity, acceptance in the Banefire.

It was as if he had managed to rid himself of the Despiser's venom.

“Is it-?” she began amazedly. “How did you-?” But the light around him seemed to throng with staggering implications, and she could not complete the question.

In response, he smiled at her-and for one stunned instant his smile seemed to be the same one he had given Joan when he had exchanged his life for hers, giving himself up to Lord Foul's malice so that she would be free. A smile of such valour and rue that Linden had nearly cried out at the sight of it.

But then the angles of his face shifted, and his expression became bearable again. Quietly, he said, “Do you mind if we get out of this light? I'm not exactly proud of it.” With his half-hand, he gestured toward the doorway from which he had emerged.

The cuts on his fingers had been healed.

And there were no scars on his forearm. The marks of Marid's fangs and of the injuries he had inflicted on himself had become whole flesh.

Dumbly, she went where he pointed. She did not know what had happened to him.

Beyond the door, she found herself in a small suite of rooms clearly designed to be someone's private living quarters. They were illuminated on a more human scale by several oil lamps and furnished with stone chairs and a table in the forechamber, a bare bed in one back room and empty pantry-shelves in another. The suite had been unused for an inestimably long time, but the ventilation and granite of Revelstone had kept it clean Covenant must have set the lamps himself-or asked the Haruchai to provide them.

The centre of the table had been strangely gouged, as though a knife had been driven into it like a sharp stick into clay.

“Mhoram lived here,” Covenant explained. “This is where I talked to him when I finally started to believe that he was my friend that he was capable of being my friend-after everything I'd done.” He spoke without gall, as if he had reconciled himself to the memory. 'He told me about the necessity of freedom.”

Those words seemed to have a new resonance for him; but almost immediately he shrugged them aside. Indicating the wound in the tabletop, he said, “I did that. With the krill. Elena tried to give it to me. She wanted me to use it against Lord Foul. So I stabbed it into the table and left it there where nobody else could take it out. Like a promise that I was going to do the same thing to the Land.” He tried to smile again; but this time the effort twisted his face like a grimace. “I did that even before I knew Elena was my daughter. But he was still able to be my friend.” For a moment, his voice sounded chipped and battered; yet he stood tall and straight with his back to the open door and the silver lumination as if he had become unbreakable. “He must've removed the krill when he came into his power.”

Across the table, he faced her. His eyes were gaunt with knowledge, but they remained clear. “It's not gone,” he said softly. “I tried to get rid of it, but I couldn't.”

“Then what-?” She was lost before him, astonished by what he had become. He was more than ever the man she loved-and yet she did not know him, could not put one plain question into words.

He sighed, dropped his gaze briefly, then looked up at her again. “I guess you could say it's been fused I don't know how else to describe it. Ifs been burned into me so deeply that there's no distinction. I'm like an alloy- venom and wild magic and ordinary skin and bones melted together until they're all one. All the same. I'll never be free of it.”

As he spoke, she saw that he was right. He gave her the words to see that he was right. Fused. An alloy. Like white gold itself, a blend of metals. And her heart gave a leap of elation within her.

“Then you can control it!” she said rapidly, so rapidly that she did not know what she was about to say until she said it. “You're not at Foul's mercy anymore!” Oh, beloved. “You can beat him!”

At that, sudden pain darkened his visage. She jerked to a halt, unable to grasp how she had hurt him. When he did not reply, she took hold of her confusion, forced it to be still. As carefully as she could, she said, “I don't understand. I can't. You've got to tell me what's going on.”

“I know,” he breathed. “I know.” But now his attention was fixed on the gouged centre of the table as if no power had ever been able to lift the knife out of his own heart; and she feared that she had lost him.

After a moment, he said, “I used to say I was sick of guilt. But not anymore.” He took a deep breath to steady himself. “It's not a sickness anymore. I am guilt. I'll never use power again.”

She started to protest; but his certainty stopped her. With an effort, she held herself mute as he began to quote an old song.

“There is wild magic graven in every rock,

contained for white gold to unleash or control -

gold, rare metal, not born of the Land,

nor ruled, limited, subdued

by the Law with which the Land was created -

but keystone rather, pivot, crux

for the anarchy out of which Time was made:

wild magic restrained in every particle of life,

and unleashed or controlled by gold

because that power is the anchor of the arch of life

that spans and masters Time.”

She listened to him intently, striving for comprehension. But at the same time her mind bifurcated, and she found herself remembering Dr. Berenford. He had tried to tell her about Covenant by describing one of Covenant's novels. According to the older doctor, the book argued that innocence is a wonderful thing except for the fact that it's impotent. Guilt is power. Only the damned can be saved. The memory seemed to hint at the nature of Covenant's new certainty.

Was that it? Did he no longer doubt that he was damned? He paused, then repeated, “Keystone, The Arch of Time is held together at the apex by wild magic. And the Arch is what gives the Earth a place in which to exist. It's what imprisons Foul. That's why he wants my ring. To break Time so he can escape.

“But nothing's that simple anymore. The wild magic has been fused into me. I am wild magic. In a sense, I've become the keystone of the Arch. Or I will be-if I let what I am loose. If I ever try to use power.

“But that's not all. If it were, I could stand it. I'd be willing to be the Arch forever, if Foul could be beaten that way. But I'm not just wild magic. I'm venom, too. Lord Foul's venom. Can you imagine what the Earth would be