White Gold Wielder

wants. I know better. After what I've been through, I know better. He's wrong.”

His certainty made him impossible to refute. The only arguments she knew were the ones she had once used to her father, and they had always failed. They had been swallowed in darkness-in self pity grown to malice and hosting forth to devour her spirit. No argument would suffice.

Vaguely, she wondered what account of her flight he had given the Giants.

But to herself she swore, I'm going to stop you. Somehow. No evil was as great as the ill of his surrender. The Sunbane had risen into Andelain. It could never be forgiven.

Somehow.

Later that day, as the company wended eastward among the Hills, Linden took an opportunity to drift away from Covenant and the First with Pitchwife. The malformed Giant was deeply troubled. His grotesque features appeared aggrieved, as if he had lost the essential cheer which preserved his visage from ugliness. Yet he was plainly reluctant to speak of his distress. At first, she thought that this reluctance arose from a new distrust of her. But as she studied him, she saw that his mood was not so simple.

She did not want to aggravate his unhappiness. But he had often shown himself willing to be pained on behalf of his friends. And her need was exigent Covenant meant to give the Despiser his ring.

Softly, so that she would not be overheard, she breathed, “Pitchwife, help me. Please.”

She was prepared for the dismal tone of his reply, but not for its import. “There is no help,” he answered. “She will not question him.”

“She-?” Linden began, then caught herself. Carefully, she asked, “What did he say to you?”

For an aching moment, Pitchwife was still. Linden forced herself to give him time. He would not look at her. His gaze wandered the Hills morosely, as if already they had lost their lustre. Without her senses, he could not see that Andelain had not yet been damaged Ay the Sunbane. Then, sighing, he mustered words out of his gloom.

“Rousing us from sleep to hasten in your pursuit, he announced your belief that it is now his intent to destroy the Land. And Gossamer GIowlimn my wife will not question him.

“I acknowledge that he is the Earthfriend-worthy of all trust But have you not again and again proven yourself alike deserving? You are the Chosen, and for the mystery of your place among us we have been accorded no insight. Yet the Elohim have named you Sun-Sage. You alone possess the sight which proffers hope of healing. Repeatedly the burdens of our Search have fallen to you-and you have borne them well. I will not believe that you who have wrought so much restoration among the Giants and the victims of the Clave have become in the space of one night mad or cruel. And you have withdrawn trust from him. This is grave in all sooth. It must be questioned. But she is the First of the Search. She forbids.

“Chosen-” His voice was full of innominate pleading, as if he wanted something from her and did not know what it was. “It is her word that we have no other hope than him. If he has become untrue, then all is lost. Does he not hold the white ring? Therefore we must preserve our faith in him-and be still. Should he find himself poised on the blade-edge of his doom, we must not over-push him with our doubt.

“But if he must not be called to an accounting, what decency or justice will permit you to be questioned? I will not do it, though the lack of this story is grievous. If you are not to be equally trusted, you must at least be equally left in silence.”

Linden did not know how to respond. She was distressed by his troubled condition, gratified by his fairness, and incensed by the First's attitude. Yet would she not have taken the same position in the Swordmain's place? If Kevin Landwaster had spoken to someone else, would she not have been proud to repose her confidence in the Unbeliever? But that recognition only left her all the more alone. She had no right to try to persuade Pitchwife to her cause. Both he and his wife deserved' better than that she should attempt to turn them against each other-or against Covenant. And yet she had no way to test or affirm her own sanity except by direct opposition to him.

Even in his fixed weariness and determination, he was so dear to her that she could hardly endure the acuity of her desire for him.

A fatigue and defeat of her own made her stumble over the uneven turf. But she refused the solace of Pitchwife's support. Wanly, she asked him, “What are you going to do?”

“Naught,” he replied. “I am capable of naught.” His empathy for her made him acidulous. “I have no sight to equal yours. Before the truth becomes plain to me, the time for all necessary doing will have come and gone. That which requires to be done, you must do.” He paused; and she thought that he was finished, that their comradeship had come to an end. But then he gritted softly through his teeth, “Yet I say this. Chosen. You it was who obtained Vain Demondim-spawn's escape from the snares of Elemesnedene. You it was who made possible our deliverance from the Sandhold. You it was who procured safety for all but Cable Seadreamer from the Worm of the World's End, when the Earthfriend himself had fallen nigh to ruin. And you it was who found means to extinguish the Banefire. Your worth is manifold and certain.

“The First will choose as she wishes. I will give you my life, if you ask it of me.”

Linden heard him. After a while, she said simply, “Thanks.” No words were adequate. In spite of his own baffled distress, he had given her what she needed.

They walked on together in silence.

The next morning, the sun's red aura was distinct enough for all the company to see.

Linden's open nerves searched the Hills, probing Andelain's reaction to the Sunbane. At first, she found none. The air had its same piquant savour, commingled of flowers and dew and tree sap. Aliantha abounded on the hillsides. No discernible ill gnawed at the wood of the nearby Gildens and willows. And the birds and animals that flitted or scurried into view and away again were not suffering from any wrong. The Earthpower treasured in the heart of the region still withstood the pressure of corruption.

But by noon that was no longer true. Pangs of pain began t to run up the tree trunks, aching in the veins of the leaves. The birds seemed to become frantic as the numbers of insects increased; but the woodland creatures 'had grown frightened and gone into hiding. The tips of the grass blades turned brown; some of the shrubs showed signs of blight. A distant fetor came slowly along the breeze. And the ground began to give off faint, emotional tremors-an intangible quivering which no one but Linden felt. It made the soles of her feet hurt in her shoes.

Muttering curses Covenant stalked on angrily eastward. In spite of her distrust, Linden saw that his rage for Andelain was genuine. He pushed himself past the limits of his strength to hasten his traversal of the Hills, his progress toward the crisis of the Despiser. The Sunbane welded him to his purpose. Linden kept up with him doggedly, determined not to let him get ahead of her. She understood his fury, shared it: in this place, the red sun was atrocious, intolerable. But his ire made him appear capable of any madness which might put an end to Andelain's hurt, for good or ill.

Dourly, the Giants accompanied their friends Covenant's best pace was not arduous for Pitchwife; the First could have travelled much faster. And her features were sharp with desire for more speed, for a termination to the Search, so that the question which had come between her and her husband would be answered and finished. The difficulty of restraining herself to Covenant's short strides was obvious in her. While the company paced through the day, she held herself grimly silent Her mother had died in childbirth; her father, in the Soulbiter. She bore herself as if she did not want to admit how important Pitchwife's warmth had become, to her.

For that reason, Linden felt a strange, unspoken kinship toward the First. She found it impossible to resent the Swordmain's attitude. And she swore to herself that she would never ask Pitchwife to keep his promise.

Vain strode blankly behind the companions. But of Findail there was no sign. She watched for him at intervals, but he did not reappear.

That evening Covenant slept for barely half the night; then he went on his way again as if he were trying to steal ahead of his friends. But somehow through her weary slumber Linden felt him leave. She roused herself, called the Giants up from the faintly throbbing turf, and went after him.

Sunrise brought an aura of fertility to the dawn and a soughing rustle like a whisper of dread to the trees and brush. Linden felt the leaves whimpering on their boughs, the greensward aching plaintively. Soon the Hills would be reduced to the victimized helplessness of the rest of the Land. They would be scourged to wild growth, desiccated to ruin, afflicted with rot, pummelled by torrents. And that thought made her as fierce as Covenant, enabled her to keep up with him while he exhausted himself. Yet the mute pain of green and tree was not the worst effect of the Sunbane. Her senses had been scoured to raw sensitivity: she knew that beneath the sod, under the roots of the woods, the fever Of Andelain's bones had become so argute that it was almost physical. A nausea of revulsion was