White Gold Wielder

That night, she dreamed repeatedly of power. Over and over again, she possessed Covenant, took his ring, and used it to rip the Sunbane out of the Earth. The sheer violence of what she did was astounding; it filled her with glee and horror. Her father laughed blackness at her. It killed Covenant, left him as betrayed as her mother. She thought she would go mad.

You have committed murder. Are you not evil?

No. Yes. Not unless I choose to be. I can't help it.

This has got to be stopped. Got to be stopped. You are being forged as iron is forged- Got to be stopped.

But sometime during the middle of the night she awoke and found herself enfolded by Covenant's sleeping arms. For a while, she clung to him; but he was too weary to waken. When she went back to sleep, the dreams were gone.

And when dawn came she felt stronger. Stronger and calmer, as if during the night she had somehow made up her mind. She kissed Covenant, nodded soberly in response to the questioning looks of her friends. Then, while the Stonedownors and Giants defended themselves against the sun's first touch by standing on rock, she climbed a slope in the west bank to get an early view of the Sunbane. She wanted to understand it.

It was red and baleful, the colour of pestilence. Its light felt like disease crawling across her nerves.

But she knew its ill did not in fact arise from the sun. Sunlight acted as a catalyst for it, a source of energy, but did not cause the Sunbane, Rather, it was an emanation from the ground, corrupted Earthpower radiating into the heavens. And that corruption sank deeper every day, working its way into the marrow of the Earth's bones.

She bore it without flinching. She intended to do something about it.

Her companions continued to study her as she descended the slope to rejoin them. But when she met their scrutiny, they were reassured. Pitchwife relaxed visibly. Some of the tension flowed out of the muscles of Covenant's shoulders, though he clearly did not trust his superficial vision. And Sunder, who remembered Marid, gazed at her as if she had come back from the brink of something as fatal as venom.

“Chosen, you are well restored,” said the First with gruff pleasure. “The sight gladdens me.”

Together, Hollian and Pitchwife prepared a meal which Linden ate ravenously. Then the company set itself to go on down the watercourse.

For the first part of the morning, the walking was almost easy. This sun was considerably cooler than the previous one; and while the east bank shaded the river bottom, it remained free of vermin. The ragged edges and arid lines of the landscape took on a tinge of the crimson light which made them appear acute and wild, etched with desiccation. Pitchwife joined the First as she ascended the hillside again to keep watch over the company. Although Hollian shared Sunder's visceral abhorrence of the sun of pestilence, they were comfortable with each other. In the shade's protection, they walked and talked, arguing companionably about a name for their son. Initially, Sunder claimed that the child would grow up to be an eh-brand and should therefore be given an eh-Brand's name; but Hollian insisted that the boy would take after his father. Then for no apparent reason they switched positions and continued contradicting each other.

By unspoken agreement. Linden and Covenant left the Stonedownors to themselves as much as possible. She listened to them in a mood of detached affection for a time; but gradually their argument sent her musing on matters that had nothing to do with the Sunbane-or with what Covenant hoped to accomplish by confronting the Despiser. In the middle of her reverie, she surprised herself by asking without preamble, 'What was Joan like? When you were married?”

He looked at her sharply; and she caught a glimpse of the unanswerable pain which lay at the roots of his certainty. Once before, when she had appealed to him, he had said of Joan, She's my ex- wife, as if that simple fact were an affirmation. Yet some kind of guilt or commitment toward Joan had endured in him for years after their divorce, compelling him to accept responsibility for her when she had come to him in madness and possession, seeking his blood.

Now he hesitated momentarily as if he were searching for a reply which would give Linden what she wanted without weakening his grasp on himself. Then he indicated Sunder and Hollian with a twitch of his head. “When Roger was born,” he said, overriding a catching his throat, “she didn't ask me what I thought She just named him after her father. And her grandfather. A whole series of Rogers on her side of the family. When he grows up, he probably won't even know who I am.”

His bitterness was plain. But other, more important feelings lay behind it. He had smiled for Joan when he had exchanged his life for hers.

And he was smiling now-the same terrible smile that Linden remembered with such dismay. While it lasted, she was on the verge of whispering at him in stark anguish. Is that what you're going to do? Again? Again?

But almost at once his expression softened; and the thing she feared seemed suddenly impossible. Her protest faded. He appeared unnaturally sure of what he meant to do; but, whatever it was, it did not reek of suicide. Inwardly shaken, she said, “Don't worry. He won't forget you.” Her attempt to console him sounded inane, but she had nothing else to offer. “It's not that easy for kids to forget their parents.”

In response, he slipped an arm around her waist, hugged her. They walked on together in silence.

But by mid-morning sunlight covered most of the riverbed, and the channel became increasingly hazardous. The rockgnarled and twisted course, with its secret shadows and occasionally overhanging banks, was an apt breeding place for pestilential creatures which lurked and struck. From Revelstone Hollian had brought an ample store of voure; but some of the crawling, scuttling life that now teemed in the river bottom seemed to be angered by the scent or immune to it altogether. Warped and feral sensations scraped across Linden's nerves; every time she saw something move, a pang of alarm went through her. Sunder and Hollian had to be more and more careful where they put their bare feet Covenant began to study the slopes where the Giants walked. He was considering the advantages of leaving the channel.

When a scorpion as large as Linden's two fists shot out from under a rock and lashed its stinger at the side of Covenant's boot, he growled a curse and made his decision. Kicking the scorpion away, he muttered, 'That does it. Let's get out of here.”

No one objected. Followed mutely by Vain and Findail, the four companions went to a pile of boulders leaning against the east bank and climbed upward to join the First and Pitchwife.

They spent the rest of the day winding through the hills beside the empty riverbed. Periodically, the First strode up to a crest that gave her a wider view over the region; and her fingers rubbed the hilt of her longsword as if she were looking for a chance to use it. But she saw nothing that threatened the company except the waterless waste.

Whenever the hills opened westward, Linden could see the Westron Mountains sinking toward the horizon as they curved away to the south. And from the top of a rocky spine she was able to make out the distant rim of Revelstone, barely visible now above the crumpled terrain. Part of her yearned for the security it represented, for stone walls and the guardianship of Haruchai. Red limned the edges of the Land, made the desert hills as distinct as the work of a knife. Overhead, the sky seemed strangely depthless. Considered directly, it remained a pale blue occluded with fine dust; but the comers of her vision caught a hue of crimson like a hint of the Despiser's bloody-mindedness; and that colour made the heavens look fiat, closed.

Though she was defended by voure, she flinched internally at the vibrating ricochet of sandflies as big as starlings, the squirming haste of oversized centipedes. But when the First and Covenant started on down the far side of the spine, she wiped the sweat from her forehead, combed her hair back from her temples with her fingers, and followed.

Late in the afternoon, as shadows returned the sun's vermin to quiescence, the company descended to the watercourse again so that they could travel more easily until sunset. Then, when the light faded, they stopped for the night on a wide stretch of sand. There they ate supper, drank metheglin lightly flavoured with diamondraught, hollowed beds for themselves. And Hollian took out her lianar wand to discover what the morrow's sun would be.

Without a word. Sunder handed her the wrapped krill. Carefully, as if Loric's blade still awed her, she parted the cloth until a clear shaft of argent pierced the twilight. Sitting cross legged with the knife in her lap, she began to chant her invocation; and as she did so, she raised her