White Gold Wielder

culmination and defeat of all his power in the Banefire. “You need every doubt you can find. I want you to doubt I'm hardly human anymore.”

Each flare and wince of his eyes contradicted itself. Stop me. Don't touch me. Doubt me. Doubt Kevin. Yes. No. Please.

Please.

His inchoate supplication drew her to him. He did not appear strong or dangerous now, but only needy, appalled by himself. Yet he was as irrefusable as ever. She touched her hand to his scruffy cheek; her arms hurt with the tenderness of her wish to hold him.

But she would not retreat from the commitments she had made, whatever their cost. Perhaps her years of medical training and self abnegation had been nothing more than a way of running away from death; but the simple logic of that flight had taken her in the direction of life, for others if not for herself. And in the marrow of her bones she had experienced both the Sunbane and Andelain. The choice between them was as clear as Covenant's pain.

She had no answer for his appeal. Instead, she gave him one of her own. “Don't force me to do that” Her love was naked in her eyes. “Don't give up.”

A spasm of grief or anger flinched across his face. His voice sank to a desert scraping in the back of his throat. “I wish I could make you understand.” He spoke flatly, all inflection burned away. “He's gone too far. He can't get away with this. Maybe he isn't really sane anymore. He isn't going to get what he wants.”

But his manner and his words held no comfort for her. He might as well have announced to the Giants and Vain and the ravaged world that he still intended to surrender his ring.

Yet he remained strong enough for his purpose, in spite of little food, less rest, and the suffering of Andelain. Dourly, be faced the First and Pitchwife again as if he expected questions or protests. But die Swordmain held herself stem. Her husband did not look up from his flute.

To their silence Covenant replied, “We need to go north for a while. Until we get to the river. That's our way into Mount Thunder.”

Sighing, Pitchwife gained his feet. He held his flute in both hands. His gaze was focused on nothing as he snapped the small instrument in half. With all his strength, he hurled the pieces toward the Hills.

Linden winced. An expostulation died on the Firsts lips.

Covenant's shoulders hunched.

As grim as a cripple, Pitchwife raised his eyes to the Unbeliever. “Heed me well,” he murmured clearly. “I doubt”

“Good!” Covenant rasped intensely. Then he started moving again, picking a path for himself among the boulders.

Linden followed with old cries beating against her heart Haven't you even got the guts to go on living? You never loved me anyway. But she knew as surely as vision that he did love her. She had no means by which to measure what had happened to him in the Banefire. And Gibbon’s voice answered her, taunting her with the truth. Are you not evil?

The foothills of Mount Thunder, ancient Gravin Threndor, were too rugged to bear much vegetation. And the light of the desert sun advanced rapidly past the peak now, wreaking dissolution on the ground's residual fertility. The company was hampered by strewn boulders and knuckled slopes, but not by the effects of the previous sun. Still the short journey toward the Soulsease was arduous. The sun's loathsome corruption seemed to parch away the last of Linden's strength. Heatwaves like precursors of hallucination tugged at the edges of her mind. A confrontation with the Despiser would at least put an end to this horror and rapine. One way or the other. As she panted at the hillsides, she found herself repeating the promise she had once made in Revelstone-the promise she had made and broken. Never. Never again. Whatever happened, she would not return to the Sunbane.

Because of her weakness Covenant's exhaustion, and the difficulty of the terrain, the company did not reach the vicinity of the River until mid-morning.

The way the hills baffled sound enabled her to catch a glimpse of the swift water before she heard it. Then she and her companions topped the last rise between them and the Soulsease; and the loud howl of its rush slapped at her. Narrowed by its stubborn granite channel, the river raced below her, white and writhing in despair toward its doom. And its doom towered over it, so massive and dire that the mountain filled all the east. Perhaps a league to Linden's right, the river flumed into the gullet of Mount Thunder and was swallowed away-ingested by the catacombs which mazed the hidden depths of the peak. When that water emerged again, on the Lower Land behind Gravin Threndor, it would be so polluted by the vileness of the Wightwarrens, so rank with the waste of charnels and breeding-dens, the spillage of forges and laboratories, the effluvium of corruption, that it would be called the Denies Course-the source of Sarangrave Flat's peril and perversion.

For a crazy moment. Linden thought Covenant meant to ride that extreme current into the mountain. But then he pointed toward the bank directly below him; and she saw that a roadway had been cut into the foothills at some height above the River. The River itself was declining: six days had passed since the last sun of rain; and the desert sun was rapidly drinking away the water which Andelain still provided. But the markings on the channel's sheer walls showed that the Soulsease virtually never reached as high as the roadway.

Along this road in ages past, armies had marched out of Mount Thunder to attack the Land. Much of the surface was ruinous, cracked and gouged by time and the severe alternation of the Sunbane, slick with spray; but it was still traversable. And it led straight into the dark belly of the mountain.

Covenant gestured toward the place where the walls rose like cliffs to meet the sides of Mount Thunder. He had to shout to make himself heard, and his voice was veined with stress. “That's Treacher's Gorge! Where Foul betrayed Kevin and the Council openly for the first time! Before they knew what he was! The war that broke Kevin's heart started there!”

The First scanned the thrashing River, the increasing constriction of the precipitate walls, then raised her voice through the roar. “Earthfriend, you have said that the passages of this mountain are a maze! How then may we discover the lurking place of the Despiser?”

“We won't have to!” His shout sounded feverish. He looked as tense and strict and avid as he had when Linden had first met him-when he had dammed the door of his house against her. “Once we get in there, all we have to do is wander around until we run into his defences. He’ll take care of the rest. The only trick is to stay alive until we get to him!”

Abruptly, he tamed to his companions. “You don't have to come! I’ll be safe. He won't do anything to me until he has me in front of him.” To Linden, he seemed to be saying the same things he had said on. Haven Farm, You don't know what's going on here. You couldn't possibly understand it. Go away. I don't need you. “You don't need to risk it”

But the First was not troubled by such memories. She replied promptly, “Of what worth is safety to us here? The Earth itself is at risk. Hazard is our chosen work. How will we bear the songs which our people will sing of us. if we do not hold true to the Search? We will not part from you.”

Covenant ducked his head as though he were ashamed or afraid. Perhaps he was remembering Saltheart Foamfollower. Yet his refusal or inability to meet Linden's. gaze indicated to her that she had not misread him. He was stilt vainly trying to protect her, spare her the consequences of her choices-consequences she did not know how to measure. And striving also to prevent her from interfering with what he meant to do.

But he did not expose himself to what she would say if he addressed her directly. Instead, he muttered, “Then let's get going.” The words were barely audible. “I don't know how much longer I can stand this.”

Nodding readily, me First at once moved ahead of him toward an erosion gully which angled down to the roadway. With one hand, she gripped the hilt of her longsword. Like her companions, she had lost too much in this quest. She was a warrior and wanted to measure out the price in blows.

Covenant followed her stiffly. The only strength left in his limbs was the stubbornness of his will.

Linden started after him, then turned back to Pitchwife. He still stood on the rim of the hill, gazing down into the Into the Wightwarrens River's rush as if it would carry his heart away. Though he was half again as tall as Linden, his deformed spine and grotesque features made him appear old and frail. His mute aching was as tangible as tears. Because of it, she put everything else aside for a moment.

“He was telling the truth about that, anyway. He doesn't need you to fight for him. Not anymore.” Pitchwife lifted his eyes like pleading to her. Fiercely, she went on, “And if he's wrong, I can stop him.” That also was true: