White Gold Wielder

Too late, Covenant shouted, “No!” and leaped after Sunder.

The Giants could not move. The music held them fascinated and motionless. Linden was not certain that they were truly able to see what was happening.

She could have moved. She felt the same stasis which enclosed the First and Pitchwife; but it was not strong enough to stop her. Her percipience could grasp the melody and make it serve her. With the slow instantaneousness of visions or nightmares, she knew she was able to do it. The music would carry her after Sunder so swiftly that he might never reach the Forestal.

Yet she did not. She had no way to measure the implications of this crisis. But she had seen the pain shining in HoIIian's eyes, the eh-brand's recognition of necessity. And she trusted the sum, brave woman. She made no effort to stop Sunder as he hammered the point of the krill between Caer-Caveral's shoulder blades with the last force of his life.

From the blow burst a deflagration of pearl flame which rent away immobility, sent Linden and the Giants sprawling, hurled Covenant to the grass. At once, all the music became fire and raced toward the Forestal, sweeping around him-and Sunder and Hollian with him-so that they were effaced from sight, consumed in an incandescent whirlwind that spouted into the heavens, reached like the ruin of every song toward the bereft stars. A cacophony of fear clashed and wept around the flame; but the flame did not hear it. In a rush of ascension, the blaze burned its hot, mute agony against the night as if it fed on the pure heart of Andelain, bore that spirit writhing and appalled through the high dark.

And as it rose, Linden seemed to hear the fundamental fabric of the world tearing.

Then, before the sight became unendurable, the fire began to subside. By slow stages, the conflagration changed to an ordinary fire, yellow with heat and eaten wood, and she saw it burning from the black and blasted stump of a tree trunk which had not been there when Caer-Caveral was struck.

Stabbed deep into the charred wood beyond any hope of removal was the krill. Only the flames that licked the stump made it visible: the light of its gem was gone.

Now the fire failed swiftly, falling away from the stricken trunk. Soon the blaze was extinguished altogether. Smoke curled upward to mark the place where the Forestal had been slain.

Yet the night was not dark. Other illuminations gathered around the stunned companions.

From beyond the stump, Sunder and Hollian came walking hand-in-hand. They were limned with silver like the Dead; but they were alive in the flesh-human and whole. Caer-Caveral's mysterious purpose had been accomplished. Empowered and catalyzed by the Forestal's spirit, Sunder's passion had found its object; and the krill had severed the boundary which separated him from Hollian. In that way, the Graveler, who was trained for bloodshed and whose work was killing, had brought his love back into life.

Around the two of them bobbed a circle of Wraiths, dancing a bright cavort of welcome. Their warm loveliness seemed to promise the end of all pain.

But in Andelain there was no more music.

Fifteen: Enactors of Desecration

IN the lush, untrammelled dawn of the Hills, Sunder and Hollian came to say farewell to Covenant and Linden.

Linden greeted them as if the past night had been one of the best of her life. She could not have named the reasons for this; it defied expectation. With Caer-Caveral's passing, important things had come to an end. She should have lamented instead of rejoicing. Yet on a level too deep for language she had recognized the necessity of which the Forestal had spoken. This Law also- Andelain had been bereft of music, but not of beauty or consolation. And the restoration of the Stonedownors made her too glad for sorrow. In a paradoxical way, Caer-Caveral's self-sacrifice felt like a promise of hope.

But Covenant's mien was clouded by conflicting emotions. With his companions, he had spent the night watching Sunder and Hollian revel among the Wraiths of Andelain-and Linden sensed that the sight gave him both joy and rue. The healing of his friends lightened his heart; the price of that healing did not. And surely he was hurt by his lack of any health-sense which would have enabled him to evaluate what the loss of the Forestal meant to Andelain.

However, there were no clouds upon the Graveler and the eh-Brand. They walked buoyantly to the place where Linden and Covenant sat; and Linden thought that some of the night's silver still clung to them, giving them a numinous cast even in daylight, like a new dimension added to their existence. Smiles gleamed from Sunder's eyes. And Hollian bore herself with an air of poised loveliness. Linden was not surprised to perceive that the child in the eh-brand's womb shared her elusive, mystical glow.

For a moment, the Stonedownors gazed at Covenant and Linden and smiled and did not speak. Then Sunder cleared his throat. “I crave your pardon that we will no longer accompany you.” His voice held a special resonance that Linden had never heard before in him, a suggestion of fire. “You have said that we are the future of the Land. It has become our wish to discover that future here. And to bear our son in Andelain.

“I know you will not gainsay us. But we pray that you find no rue in this parting. We do not-though you are precious to us. The outcome of the Earth is in your hands. Therefore we are unafraid.”

He might have gone on; but Covenant stopped him with a brusque gesture, a scowl of gruff affection. “Are you kidding?” he muttered. “I'm the one who wanted you to stay behind. I was going to ask you- ” He sighed, and his gaze wandered the hillside. “Spend as much time here as you can,” he breathed. “Stay as long as possible. That's something I've always wanted to do.”

His voice trailed away; but Linden was not listening to its resigned sadness. She was staring at Sunder. The faint silver quality of his aura was clear-and yet undefinable. It ran out of her grasp like water. Intuition tingled along her nerves, and she started speaking before she knew what she would say.

“The last time Covenant was here, Caer-Caveral gave him the location of the One Tree.” Each word surprised her like a hint of revelation. “But he hid it so Covenant couldn't reach it himself. That's why he had to expose himself to the Elohim, let them work then plots-” The bare memory brought a tremor of anger into her voice. “We should never have had to go there in the first place. Why did Caer-Caveral give him that gift-and then make it such a secret?”

Sunder looked at her. He was no longer smiling. A weird intensity filled his gaze like a swirl of sparks. Abruptly, he said, “Are you not now companioned by the Appointed of the Elohim? How otherwise could that end have been achieved?”

The strangeness of the Graveler's tone snatched back Covenant's attention. Linden felt him scrambling after inferences; a blaze of hope shot up in him. “Are you-?” he asked. “Is that it? Are you the new Forestal?”

Instead of answering. Sunder looked to Hollian, giving her the opportunity to tell him what he was.

She met his gaze with a soft smile. But she answered quietly, kindly, “No.” She had spent time among the Dead and appeared certain of her knowledge. “In such a transferral of power, the Law which Caer-Caveral sought to rend would have been preserved. Yet we are not altogether what we were. We will do what we may for the sustenance of Andelain-and for the future of the Land.”

Questions thronged in Linden. She wanted a name for the alteration she perceived. But Covenant was already speaking.

“The Law of Life.” His eyes were hot and gaunt on the Stonedownors. “Elena broke the Law of Death-the barrier that kept the living and the dead from reaching out to each other. The Law Caer-Caveral broke was the one that kept the dead from crossing back into life.”

“That is sooth,” replied Hollian. “Yet it is a fragile crossing withal, and uncertain. We are sustained, and in some manner defined, by the sovereign Earthpower of the Andelainian Hills. Should we depart this region, we would not long endure among the living.”

Linden saw that this was true. The strange gleam upon the Stonedownors was the same magic which had given Caer-Caveral's music its lambent strength. Sunder and Hollian were solid, physical, and whole. Yet in a special sense they had become beings of Earthpower-and they might easily die if they were cut off from their source.