Stave"s flat mien betrayed no sign of doubt. But Esmer regarded Linden as if her ailment were his.
Climbing higher, the Waynhim had ascended past a bulge in the fissure"s wall. Below them on the slope, Stonemage waited with Liand, beckoning urgently. In the illumination of his Sunstone and her Staff, Linden saw that Kindwind and the Humbled had also stopped. They must have felt Coldspray and Grueburn halt.
Linden studied Covenant long enough to confirm that he remained lost in the world"s past. Then she turned to gauge her other companions.
Anele"s fright cried out to her nerves. Galesend"s alarm mounted as her comrades gathered at her back. Nevertheless Linden ignored them; forced herself to cast her senses farther.
Beyond the Giants, she tasted the rank vitriol of the ur-viles in rabid bursts. Among them, the feverish gibber of the Ardent"s incantations added his support against the baleful gnash of teeth and pain- She Who Must Not Be Named was too close.
Fresh panic stung Linden. "Oh, G.o.d." She had taken too much time for herself. "We have to go go."
"Aye," growled the Ironhand. She needed no urging. Bearing Jeremiah and his doom and the eldritch threat of the krill krill, she headed for the slope. In spite of her long weariness and her exigent burdens, she managed a brief sprint.
Grueburn followed immediately, hurrying over the damp grit and scree of the crevice floor. At her back came Galesend and the rest of the Swordmainnir.
As Grueburn heaved her bulk up the loose surface of the ascent, Linden felt the Ardent squeeze out of the canted split. She perceived him clearly now. His wheeze of effort sc.r.a.ped along her nerves as he lifted himself into the air on strips of fabric that clung to the crude walls. Rising, he made way for the ur-viles below him.
Then Linden smelled burning- -from the Insequent. His raiment had lost many of its colors. Scores of his ribbands had been charred black, or scorched to brittle threads. She tasted his sweating frenzy like iron on her tongue; his sharp fear and fraying resolve; his desperation. Yet he did not flee ahead of the ur-viles. Instead he braced himself high above them, guarding their retreat.
As they straggled out of the split, the creatures seemed ragged and unsteady; routed. The narrowing of the pa.s.sage had forced them to disperse their wedge: they had been unable to combine their theurgies. As a result, some of them had been horribly damaged. Linden sensed creatures with cleft hands or feet, missing limbs. She felt a few ur-viles collapse on the damp dirt and fail to rise. Through the bane"s ferocity, she smelled the acrid pulse of unnatural blood.
They were the last of their kind. One by one, they were being decimated.
Floundering, they formed a new wedge in the crevice. She could not guess how many of them had been lost. Ten? More? Nevertheless they prepared to continue fighting. After a long moment, their loremaster appeared out of the split, wielding its ruddy jerrid. As the largest and strongest of the creatures reclaimed its position at the point of the wedge, the power of the whole formation snapped into focus.
A turmoil of screaming faces thrust into the crevice. It filled the fault from wall to wall.
The ur-viles responded with a spray of fluid force, bitter and corrosive. Their magicks were too puny to injure the bane; but they made the faces pause- While She Who Must Not Be Named summoned Her many selves in pursuit, the creatures backed away.
The bane must have been certain of Her victims. She did not deign to hasten. The Demondim-sp.a.w.n were able to put a little distance between themselves and their chosen foe.
Distracted by alarm, Linden"s concentration slipped. Her fire faltered.
At once, she felt renewed squirming inside her boots, along the waist of her jeans, across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Nightmare spiders and centipedes as avid as rapine resumed their interrupted feast.
She heard herself whimpering: a thin frail sound like the cry of a dying child. She tried to stop, tried to close her throat against a surge of hysteria as sour as bile, and could not. She was an unburied corpse ripe with rot, helpless to refuse any dire appet.i.te.
Abruptly a different scream shocked the air: a howl of such extremity that it seemed to draw blood from the Ardent"s throat. In a display of strength that staggered Linden, his ribbands wrenched huge chunks of rock out of the walls.
No, he did more than that. He did not merely tear boulders loose. Somehow he pulled the walls themselves toward each other, heaved on them until they shattered.
In an instant, an avalanche destroyed the entire opening of the crevice. The sheer ma.s.s of the rockfall shook the standing walls. Moist grit and debris slid under the feet of the Giants, poured them downward. The very gutrock groaned like an echo of the Ardent"s scream.
Tons of granite and malachite, schist and travertine, crashed onto the bane. Rubble buried every raving face.
In panic, Linden forgot the Ardent and the ur-viles; forgot the bane and insects and gnawing; forgot her failing grasp on Earthpower. Without transition, she became an eruption of flame. If the slope slipped too far, it might bury the Giants. Certainly it would make the ascent impossible. Unless she caught it with fire and Law, forced it to hold- The earth slide should have been too heavy for her; but she ignored its fatal weight, its impending rush. Hardly aware of what she did, she anch.o.r.ed the slope until the convulsion of the avalanche pa.s.sed.
Mahrtiir tried to shout Linden"s name, but air thick with new dust clogged his throat. Gasping, Latebirth called upward, "We are unharmed! As are the ur-viles!" A tattered breath. "I cannot discern the Ardent!"
More strongly, Stonemage responded, "We also are unharmed!"
The bane was not gone. She had not perished or suffered. She had only been thwarted. Already Her puissance reached through the rockfall; yowled against Linden"s abraded nerves. In moments, She would force open a pa.s.sage- Crawling things in the privacy of Linden"s flesh brought her back to herself. Oh, G.o.d, they were everywhere! They did not exist. Nevertheless they relished her dead flesh as if she had perished long ago. Dozens of devoured faces raged to consume her, uncounted women in limitless torment.
Somehow she held on until the slope settled. Then she withdrew her power. Weakly she called out for the Ardent.
The company could not escape these depths without him. The ur-viles and Waynhim obviously knew the way. But the Lost Deep was too far below the lowest reaches of the Wightwarrens. None of Linden"s companions could climb so far, or follow the paths of the Demondim-sp.a.w.n. They needed the Ardent"s ability to translate them elsewhere.
In the distance, an exhausted voice replied, "I am spent. Naught remains."
"Are you capable of movement?" shouted the Ironhand. "If we must, we will contrive to retrieve you!"
"Nay." The Ardent"s response was a sigh of utter weariness. "Your strength is required for flight. I will follow as I can."
"We will not forsake you!" Coldspray countered.
"Nor do I wish to be forsaken." He sounded too frail to go on living. "You must flee. Therefore I must follow. I cannot confront She Who Must Not Be Named again." A moment later, he added, "If the lady will but cleanse the air-"
Choking down revulsion for her own body-her own existence-Linden swept dust aside; burned away stagnation. Then she wrapped theurgy around herself until she was sheathed in cerements of flame. Whimpering again, she tried to root roaches and centipedes out of her revolted flesh.
That was as much as she could do.
Ahead of and behind her, Giants flung themselves at the climb, fighting for purchase on the weakened slope. Raggedly Grueburn staggered upward. Above the Swordmainnir, the Waynhim chittered encouragements or reprimands. At the rear of the company, the ur-viles hurried to ascend.
Lights tried to fill the s.p.a.ce: Liand"s Sunstone in the lead, Loric"s krill krill, Linden"s personal fire, the dour glow of the loremaster"s jerrid. But they were too small to cast back the dark. Midnight and vast stone crowded around them; threatened to smother them. Within the crevice, the slope appeared to climb indefinitely, as if here dirt and damp and stale air clawed for an unattainable sky.
Linden clung to her concern for the Ardent until she felt hints of his presence, brittle as desiccated twigs, trailing after the Giants and the ur-viles. He was indeed spent, too tired for terror. Nonetheless he still supported himself on his ribbands, bracing them against knuckles and knags in the old rock. Some vestige of fear or determination impelled him onward.
When she was sure of him, Linden closed her attention tightly around herself and tried not to moan aloud. She needed all of her resources to fend off abhorrence and crawling. Behind her, the bane burst through the rockfall: a rupture that stained the air; made the walls tremble. Ahead the slope seemed to strive toward inconceivable heights. But she did not want to know such things. Wrapped in flame, and crooning to herself so that she would not groan or mewl, she struggled against the sensations of biting and pinching; the seductions of despair.
She could not defeat them. At the bottom of her heart writhed the conviction that she deserved this. The bane was right. She had killed her mother and failed her son. There was nothing left for her to do except wait to be eaten.
By slow degrees, however, the rich benison of Earthpower permeated her. Implied denunciations receded from her nerves. The core of her distress remained unrelieved; incurable. But using her Staff granted her a degree of superficial remission.
Tentatively she began to look outward again.
Now she heard Grueburn"s exhausted breathing rattle in her chest; felt Grueburn"s muscles quiver. Ahead of them, the Ironhand ascended, steady as granite, holding Jeremiah and the croyel croyel and the and the krill krill; but her steps had slowed to a grim plod. Between Rime Coldspray and Onyx Stonemage-between the krill krill"s gem and Liand"s orcrest orcrest-Cirrus Kindwind floundered like a woman who had never fully recovered from her maiming. She seemed to batter her way along, lurching from wall to wall to thrust herself and Covenant higher.
The surface underfoot might not have supported the Giants at all if the shale and scree and dirt had not been damp, clotted by moisture oozing incessantly down the crevice.
Yet Esmer strode easily at Kindwind"s back. The slope seemed to require nothing from him. Stave kept pace with Grueburn as if he were impervious to fatigue. Around Kindwind and Covenant, the Humbled moved like men who could not be daunted.
Behind Linden, the other Swordmainnir followed in succession: Stormpast Galesend cradling Anele, Cabledarm holding Pahni, Halewhole Bluntfist with Bhapa, Latebirth with Mahrtiir. Then came the ur-viles in a dark surge, ravaged and scrambling. Above them, the Ardent rose between the walls. Too weary to walk, he wedged his way upward with his ribbands.
In the distance, She Who Must Not Be Named raved and glowered. The mad roil of faces followed without haste, as slow as a rising tide, and as inexorable. The evil that had consumed Dia.s.somer Mininderain and Emereau Vrai and countless others was certain of its prey.
The bane"s unhurried stalking seemed to imply that the company was trapped; that the Waynhim were leading Linden and her companions into a cul-de-sac. Linden wanted to believe that the grey creatures knew what they were doing. They are not without cunning They are not without cunning. But she did not know how to rea.s.sure herself.
She had been pa.s.sive too long; had allowed herself to feel too badly beaten. Now she needed to become something more than just another victim. Attempts must be made, even when there can be no hope Attempts must be made, even when there can be no hope. Transformations were possible. It was time.
Risking maggots and worms, Linden reached out with Earthpower; spread her fire up and down the crevice until it touched all of the Giants. As fully as possible under the bane"s bale, and without endangering the ur-viles, she shared the Land"s essential bounty with women who struggled to surpa.s.s themselves so that she and Covenant and Jeremiah and the Earth might not perish.
The croyel croyel"s abhorrence and Jeremiah"s vacancy impeded her, but she did not let them stop her. When vile things resumed their avid feast inside her clothes, she strove to ignore them, at least for a few moments. They were not real real. They were only a disturbance in her mind, or in her soul: a spiritual disease. Gritting her teeth, she refused to heed them.
Briefly-too briefly-she bathed each of the Swordmainnir in light and flame, washing some of the fatigue from their muscles, cleaning some of the gall from their sore hearts. While she was still able to resist the noxious biting of centipedes and spiders, she extended a small touch of renewal toward the Ardent: a gift which he accepted with fearful eagerness.
Then she heard herself whimpering again, and her self-command crumbled. Frantically she turned her fire against beetles and worms and pinchers which did not exist.
Bit by bit, she was being driven closer to Joan"s madness. Her Staff was losing its effectiveness-or she was losing her ability to wield it. Transformations were impossible. Soon she would be crept upon and stung beyond endurance, pushed past the point of sanity. Eventually she might begin to crave the bane"s cruel embrace.
But not yet. G.o.d, please. Not yet.
Then she heard Liand"s voice echo down the fault. "Here the ascent ends! The walls open! Beyond them our pa.s.sage appears less effortful!"
A rustle of tightened resolve scattered along the crevice. "And not before time," gasped Cabledarm or Latebirth. "Stone and Sea! Am I not a Giant? Aye, and also a fool. I had credited myself with greater hardiness."
"Fool indeed," someone else responded hoa.r.s.ely. "Have you numbered the days during which we have run for Longwrath"s life, or for our own? Truly, it appears that we have persisted in this exertion for an age of the Earth."
Hang on, Linden told herself as if she were trying to encourage a cowed child. Hang on.
Somewhere above her, the light of Liand"s Sunstone vanished.
"It is a cavern"-the Ardent"s voice was a frayed groan-"immense, damp, and cluttered. I discern naught else."
"Aye," Kindwind answered, struggling for breath. "Immense. Damp. Cluttered. A pool, long stagnant." She may have said more; but her voice was cut off as she left the crevice.
Linden writhed against the intrusion of spiders, the intimacy of centipedes. She Who Must Not Be Named rose like floodwaters.
"Linden Giantfriend is beset!" Frostheart Grueburn announced between fervid gulps of air. "I descry no ill, yet she suffers."
"Mayhap," suggested Stave stolidly, "it is an effect of the bane. I also perceive no bodily hurt, though her distress is plain. It is my thought that the strengths which have enabled her to exceed us time and again are also a weakness. Her discernment exposes her to the bane"s evil."
Linden tightened her grip on herself. Involuntarily she tried to twist away from heinous things that scurried and nipped. Stave was mistaken. She had never exceeded her companions. She was weak because she was wrong wrong. She belonged among the bane"s excruciated fodder. Each spider and insect and worm was an accusation. Good cannot be accomplished by evil means Good cannot be accomplished by evil means. She felt like carrion because she had committed Desecrations.
Ahead of her, Coldspray lurched out of the crevice, taking the krill krill"s argence with her. A moment later, Grueburn reached the opening of the walls; stumbled through it.
A sudden impression of imponderable s.p.a.ce spread out around Linden. Stagnation seemed to clog her way as though Grueburn had carried her into a quagmire. And at every distance, water dripped and splashed and ran, an immeasurable mult.i.tude of droplets and trickling so extensive that it sounded like rain within the mountain. In Grueburn"s arms, Linden entered a drizzle devoid of boundaries. Simple reflex caused her to fling her fire upward.
The cavern was indeed immense. To Linden"s abused sight, it looked large enough to contain all of Revelstone, although surely it was not. The company"s lights reached the ceiling dimly, but failed to find the far wall: she had no way to gauge the scale of the cavity. However, her immediate vicinity resembled a shallow basin tipped slightly to one side, so that the lowest point of the curve lay somewhat to her left. There eons of dripping water had gathered into a pool so old and unrelieved that it no longer held any possibility of life. Across the millennia, the water had gone beyond mere brackish-ness to a toxic mineral concentration.
The pool seemed small because the cavern was so broad. In some other setting, it might have been considered a lake.
From its center outward, it trembled to the pulse of the bane"s approaching hunger. Ripples fled in circles, sloshing timorously onto the travertine sides of the basin.
The water fell from the tips of stalact.i.tes the size of Revelstone"s watchtower. And below each pending taper of stone rose a stalagmite. Cluttered-In some places, the stalagmites had met and melded with their sources, forming misshapen columns with constricted waists. In others, the calcified residue of ages appeared to strain for union, yearning upward drop by incessant drop, and infinitely patient. And everywhere around the monolithic deposits, water fell like light rain from lesser flaws in the porous ceiling. Within the reach of the company"s illuminations, every wet surface had been cut or sculpted into scallops and whorls delicate as filigree, and keen as knives.
Grueburn stuck out her tongue to catch a few falling drops, then spat in disgust. To the Giants around her, she shook her head sourly.
Rain splashed onto Linden"s forehead; ran into her eyes and stung. Blinking rapidly, she searched the cavern for some sign of egress or hope.
To her left, the basin narrowed. Beyond the pool there, at least a Giant"s stone"s throw distant, a concave wall of granite too obdurate to be eroded by mere moisture formed the lower end of the tremendous cavity. But she could not descry the cavern"s limit opposite her. As far as she knew, it reached forever into darkness. To her right, however, the side of the basin rose slowly, and continued to rise in gradual increments, until it was swallowed by midnight.
In the crevice behind the company, the bane still poured upward without haste, confident of Her craved prey. Heartbeats agitated the surface of the pool more and more. Nevertheless the Giants paused to gasp for breath, straining to imagine endurance which they no longer possessed. At the same time, the noxious crawling on Linden"s skin intensified. She needed every sc.r.a.p and fragment of her remaining will to refuse the torment of small creatures that did not exist. Hundreds of them, or thousands, crept everywhere to savor her illimitable faults.
Under Esmer"s scornful gaze, the Waynhim had halted off to Linden"s right, apparently waiting for the Ardent and the ur-viles. But now all of the Swordmainnir stood on the slope of the basin, fighting to breathe and looking urgently around them. Soon three or four score ur-viles arrived in a black torrent. Limping badly, the Ardent tottered toward Coldspray and Grueburn. Strips of his raiment dragged after him like beaten things, and his head hung down as if he had lost the will to meet anyone"s gaze.
At once, the grey Demondim-sp.a.w.n ran at the slope, beckoning and barking for Linden"s company to follow. Without delay, the ur-viles joined the Waynhim. Led by their loremaster, the black creatures snarled demands like curses. Esmer trailed after them as though as he a.s.sumed that everyone else would do the same.
But the Giants did not move. Perhaps they could not.
Among them, the Humbled and Stave stood, patient and implacable. Perhaps Linden"s crumbling defenses troubled them. Or perhaps not. If they debated decisions that they might need to make for themselves, they did so in silence.
"Now what must we do?" asked the Ironhand thinly. "The bane"s evil is itself a mountain. We have beheld no more than hints of its true extent. It was for what must we do?" asked the Ironhand thinly. "The bane"s evil is itself a mountain. We have beheld no more than hints of its true extent. It was for this this"-she gestured around her-"that it has pursued us at such leisure. Here it will expand to consume us.
"We will run again, if run we must. But we cannot run far, or swiftly. And this cavern appears to have no end. Surely She Who Must Not Be Named will pounce upon us at Her pleasure."
Her voice fell flat in the cavern, echoless and defeated.
From Latebirth"s arms, Manethrall Mahrtiir rasped, "It is said that the Ramen have an instinct for open sky. That is sooth. But our gifts will not serve us here. This stone is too great. It thwarts our hearts. If we would flee farther, we must trust to the Waynhim.
"Their fidelity is certain. And Esmer mere mere-son has averred that they are cunning. I will believe that they have guided us. .h.i.ther-aye, and that they now urge us onward-to some worthy purpose. I cannot think otherwise."
Moisture trickled like insects down the sides of Linden"s neck. She had as much reason as anyone-more-to put her faith in the Waynhim. But she was too distracted to speak.
"Attend!" commanded Branl abruptly. "The bane is not our only peril."
He and the other Haruchai Haruchai had turned. They were gazing with something akin to alarm at the lower end of the cavern, beyond the pool. had turned. They were gazing with something akin to alarm at the lower end of the cavern, beyond the pool.
Through Jeremiah, the croyel croyel sneered, "You aren"t paying attention, Mom. The real fun"s about to start." sneered, "You aren"t paying attention, Mom. The real fun"s about to start."
With the krill krill, Rime Coldspray drew a thin line of pain across the creature"s throat. Through her teeth, she hissed, "While I live, beast, I will have your silence."
Jeremiah made a small mewing sound like an echo of the croyel croyel"s fright. Then his jaw dropped, and his mouth hung open.
Dumbly Linden peered down the side of the basin. Water dripped onto her head, trickled hideously through her hair. A light rain spattered the features of her companions. When she contrived to focus her attention on the curving granite, she saw that Branl was right.
In at least half a dozen places, wrongness wrongness had already begun to suppurate in the stubborn stone. With appalling celerity, a thick reek like the stench of gangrene bruited its way through the stagnant air. had already begun to suppurate in the stubborn stone. With appalling celerity, a thick reek like the stench of gangrene bruited its way through the stagnant air.
She recognized what was happening as if beetles and maggots had whispered the truth in her ears.
"Mane and Tail!" cried Bhapa.
"Linden!" Liand called fearfully. His grasp on the orcrest orcrest wavered. " wavered. "Linden."
Linden ignored them. Sicknesses that crawled and stung demanded her attention. One way or another, she would be to blame for the deaths of her friends, all of them.
"Ringthane!" Mahrtiir barked once. Then he shouted at the Giants, "Set us upon our feet! Coldspray Ironhand, hear me! We must do what we can to conserve the last of your strength. We are useless here. Only your weapons and valor may hope to ward us. Release your burdens! Free us to run unaided! I do not fear that we will outpace you."