The Last Dark (21 page)

ut trust was still trust. It was earned, or it was not. As faithful as the
Haruchai
, who remembered everything, Rallyn cantered out of the dusk in Naybahn’s place, answering Branl’s summons. And the palomino stallion brought the Ardent’s mulish beast with him. When the Humbled had checked Mishio Massima’s tack, he announced that the horses were ready.

With leaves to protect his hands, Covenant uncovered the
krill
. Then he removed Joan’s ring from around his neck. As he had done before, he pushed the ring onto the stub-end of the last finger of his left hand; closed his fist around the chain to secure the band. As before, he struck the dagger’s gem with the ring until his body blazed with wild magic. After that, he concentrated on pressing the point of the blade into the grass while Branl carried him around Rallyn and Mishio Massima.

When Branl lifted him into his saddle, he nearly fell off the far side. A second Humbled should have been there to catch him. But he managed to steady himself on the saddle horn.

While his line of silver lingered in the turf, the horses surged into motion, bearing him farther from his heart’s desire.

fter a blink of darkness which seemed to deny any possible passage, either through time or across distance, Covenant and Branl arrived galloping in a region that looked indistinguishable from the place which they had left. The hillside may have leaned at a slightly different angle. The slope ahead may have been less even. Conceivably Sarangrave Flat had receded to the west. But Covenant could not be sure. Beyond the
krill
’s reach, the unnatural dusk masked details, and his vision was fading.

Branl took Loric’s dagger and covered it, giving Covenant’s eyes a chance to adjust to the universal grey. The horses ran on as if they were determined to reach the edge of the world.

Before Covenant could swallow enough of his vertigo to frame a question, the Humbled pointed ahead. After a few moments, Covenant made out a deeper gloom like a clump of shadows in the rumpled ground: a small copse in a hollow. Soon he caught the faint glint of water. A stream purled over the contours of the hillside, hastening in the direction of the Sarangrave.

As the horses slowed, Branl stated with quiet satisfaction, “The Land is provident—as is Rallyn. Here we will find both water and sustenance. Corruption’s wars did not extend into this region. Nor do the blights of Sarangrave Flat.”

Covenant did not doubt his companion, but he had other concerns. While he scrambled for balance, he asked, “How far have we come?”

“A score of leagues, ur-Lord. Perhaps somewhat more.”

Covenant winced. Only a score?

“Did we lose much time?”

“No other mount could have borne us so swiftly,” Branl replied with uncharacteristic asperity. He seemed to hear a complaint in Covenant’s tone. But then he continued more flatly, “Yet it is plain that our passages are not immediate. Though the sun no longer measures the day, I gauge that mid-morning is nigh.”

Covenant frowned, thinking hard. To some extent, at least, the distances that he and Branl could cover appeared to be controlled as much by Rallyn’s instincts as by the size or even the precision of his argent enclosures. Nevertheless the abilities of the Ranyhyn clearly had limits. Otherwise they would not have needed two attempts to reach the Sarangrave the previous day.

Still he was losing chunks of time. Where did the hours go? Where—if anywhere—did he and Branl and their horses exist during the interval?

The lag may have been inherent to his specific use of wild magic; or it may have been an outcome of his relationship with Joan’s ring, a ring which was not his. After all, Linden had experienced something similar. When she had saved herself and Anele from the collapse of Kevin’s Watch, she had done more than pass from one place to another. She had also moved through time: in effect, she had fallen more slowly than the broken remains of the Watch.

As soon as the horses halted near the stream, Mishio Massima jerked the reins away from Covenant and began cropping grass. Branl slid down from Rallyn’s back; offered to help Covenant. But Covenant dismounted on his own. For a few moments, he braced himself against the Ardent’s steed while the last sensations of vertigo faded, giving himself a chance to accept the returning numbness of his feet and the loss of sensation in his finger-tips. Kevin’s damn Dirt—Then he left the beast’s side.

With Branl, he considered the nearby trees.

They were wattle, fast-growing and resilient. In sunlight, they would have been a verdant green, fresh and promising. Now they resembled shadows cast by a different version of reality, although they swayed in the tumble of a growing breeze. Certainly they appeared to offer nothing that Covenant could eat.

Nevertheless the Humbled seemed sure of his own perceptions. Firmly he beckoned Covenant to accompany him among the trees.

The copse was thick. Pushing his way between the trunks, Covenant soon tripped. When he looked down, he found that he had caught one of his boots on the thick stem of a vine.

In fact, vines twisted all over the ground among the trees. The whole stand was tangled with them.

“Do you recall this, ur-Lord?” Branl sounded subtly amused. “You were once familiar with it.”

“Huh?” Covenant had lost ages of memories, but he was sure that he had never heard one of the
Haruchai
sound amused. “When?”

“During the time of the Sunbane,” answered Branl, “it provided nourishment when Corruption’s evil spawned no edible growth, and
aliantha
were scarce. It is
ussusimiel
.”

For a moment, Covenant groped inwardly. Then he spotted the darker knob of a melon in the gloom; and he remembered. Long ago under a desert sun, Sunder had invoked vines and their fruit from parched, barren dirt.
At need it will sustain life
—

It did not taste as piquant as treasure-berries. And it lacked their extraordinary vitality. But it would be enough.

“Well, damn,” Covenant muttered. “If that isn’t providence, I don’t know what is.” He felt unexpectedly cheered, as if an old friend had taken him by surprise. “Hell, I don’t even know what the word means.”

“Then, ur-Lord”—Branl held up the wrapped
krill
—“if you do not deem it an incondign use, I will harvest melons. While you break your fast, I will weave a net of smaller vines to carry a supply of the fruit.”

Covenant found that he was too hungry to argue. “Do it. Somehow I’m sure Loric wouldn’t object, even if he did spend damn decades sweating over that knife.”

But he did not stay to watch Branl work. Instead he turned away, sparing his eyes the stab of the gem’s shining. Lit by slashes of silver, he withdrew from the copse and went to the stream to drink.

Providence in all sooth. Even here, so many leagues away from the wonders of the Land that he had known in life, there were still gifts—

Now he prayed that food and water would sustain him well enough for what lay ahead.

second self-contained violation of time or space took him and Branl nearly thirty leagues closer to their destination. As Rallyn and Mishio Massima galloped out of theurgy onto a long facet of exposed rock, Covenant clung frantically to his saddle horn, straining to contain a gyre of dizziness. But Branl rode as though he and Rallyn were more dependable than stone. Over one shoulder, the Humbled carried a net sack filled with enough melons to keep Covenant fed for a day or two.

A wind out of the east buffeted the riders like the presage of a gale, but it was useless to Covenant. It did not stop the spin that sickened him, or lessen the blurring of his sight.

According to Branl, one more passage of comparable length would convey them to the bluffs between the Sunbirth Sea and Lifeswallower, the headland which bordered the delta of the Great Swamp. From that vantage, they would be able to watch for the Worm without precluding contact with the Feroce.

Unfortunately noon had already passed. Each translation by wild magic washed away time as well as balance. In some sense, the linear certainty of causality and sequence formed the ground on which Covenant’s mind stood. His thoughts were moments; bits of bedrock. When he blinked from one location to the next, the change staggered him as if every nerve in his body had misfired.

For that reason, and because each exertion of Joan’s ring drained him, he had to rest in spite of an accumulating sense of urgency. When the horses had slowed to a halt, he half fell out of Mishio Massima’s saddle and lurched away like a wounded animal looking for a place to hide.

He yearned to be alone, at least for a little while; to soothe his vulnerability in isolation. But Branl followed him. After a silence, the Humbled pronounced, “This frailty is an effect of Kevin’s Dirt, ur-Lord.”

Instead of speaking, Covenant gritted his teeth and waited.

Inflexibly Branl added, “The distress which results will fade more readily if I am permitted to hold High Lord Loric’s
krill
.”

Covenant blinked at the knife bright in his grasp. Damnation. It’s getting worse. Like the encroaching deadness of leprosy, vertigo was tightening its noose around him. In his confusion, the injured whirl of disorientation, he had not realized that he was still holding the dagger. He had not felt its heat—

With a jerk of his arm, he surrendered the
krill
.

As Branl covered the gem, dusk flooded over the region. Under other circumstances, the sun’s absence would have galled Covenant. Now, however, it felt like an act of kindness. Twilight was a kind of privacy. He needed it to recover his balance.

The lurker wanted counsel, but he had no idea what he could possibly say. If the Worm caught Kastenessen’s scent, it would head toward Mount Thunder—and toward She Who Must Not Be Named. Nothing would survive that encounter.

To prevent that outcome, Covenant might have to ask Horrim Carabal to sacrifice itself. But the monster would surely refuse. No alliance would persuade it to surrender its life voluntarily.

He had to hope that the Worm’s approach to Lifeswallower was a coincidence; that it would ignore Mount Thunder. Otherwise he would have to think of a better answer for the lurker.