The Last Dark (22 page)

Hampered by Kevin’s Dirt and vertigo, he could hardly think at all.

ortunately a third passage brought him to the headland. His mount hammered up a slope of saw-edged grass between bare juts of granite and basalt: a narrowing wedge of rising ground. To the north stood the bluffs which restricted the spread of Lifeswallower. In the east were the low cliffs bordering the Sunbirth Sea. Beyond the gap-toothed horizon ahead was nothing except grey sky and stars. They seemed to mark the edge of existence.

This time, the wind hit Covenant hard. Heavy as a torrent, it knocked him askew. When he tried to dismount, he toppled backward; landed on the grass with a jolt that stopped his breathing. The ground tilted from side to side, forward and back, in a sequence devoid of reason, as unpredictable and dangerous as dreaming. Gusts swept past him, sucking air out of his mouth. Blots marred his vision like the mottling of disease.

But then Branl took the
krill
. With a suddenness that resembled fainting, Covenant began to breathe again.

While the stains faded from his sight, and the canting of the horizons eased, he was content to lie still and let the impact of his fall ebb. The troubled labor of his heart suggested that he had undergone an obscure ordeal. Nevertheless it reassured him. It confirmed that time endured, unbroken; that one thing led to another. The Law that constrained and enabled life held true.

When he felt ready, he rolled onto one side, forced his arms and knees under him, pushed himself upright.

God, the wind—He could barely stand against it; had to squint at the sting of tears. Without Branl’s support, he might not have been able to move.

Blinking, he scanned his surroundings. He had the visceral impression that he was standing on the highest peak of the world. But of course that was nonsense: this was not a mountain. Rather he had arrived downhill from the wedge-tip of the headland. To the east, the sea thrashed at the Land’s last rock. He smelled salt on the blast. If he could find the vantage he sought, he would be able to see the surge of waves.

Around him, the headland was a jumble of protruding stone, granite and basalt weathered smooth; gnawed across the millennia into shapes that resembled anguish and intransigence. Some of the rocks wore fringes of moss in the lee of the wind. Others had acquired threadbare cloaks of lichen.

Peering behind him, he thought at first that the slope sank lower indefinitely. But when he squeezed the wind from his eyes and looked harder, he realized that the westward hillside was cut off by a line of darkness in the distance. There lay the Great Swamp, sweeping around the headland toward the sea. He could not smell Lifeswallower. The wind tore away the swampland’s complex fetors. But below him the waters of the delta reflected a faint shimmer.

After a moment, he spotted the horses. They were cantering down the slope, keeping their distance from the wetland as they descended. Apparently Rallyn believed that the riders had no immediate need of their mounts. And naturally both Rallyn and Mishio Massima wanted water as well as forage.

Then Covenant noticed the emerald fires, small as dots, ascending slowly toward him.

He watched the creatures briefly. But they were still far away; and he had nothing to say to them. Turning back toward the tip of the promontory, he went upward with Branl’s aid until he glimpsed the darker grey of the sea beyond the headland’s rim. There he stopped.

The waves heaved frantically against their own weight, hacking across each other, rising into sudden breakers, erupting in spume. Some mighty pressure disrupted the normal scend and recession of tides. The seas were flung in frenzy at the cliffs, where they rebounded, smashed together, became chaos. The wind assailed Covenant’s ears with their clamor as if the headland were under siege.

Gripping his companion’s arm, he asked, “Can you see anything?”

Branl studied the sea. “I do not doubt that the Worm comes, as the Feroce have declared. In turmoil, the waves contradict themselves. Some cataclysm goads these waters. But its source is too distant for my discernment.”

“How much time did we lose?”

A slight frown of concentration or surprise disturbed Branl’s mien. After a moment, he replied, “It appears that our final passage was prolonged. Mayhap the Worm’s approach misleads my senses. Nonetheless I gauge that evening is nigh. Ere long, this dusk will turn toward true night.”

The coming of night after a second sunless day felt like a bad omen. Covenant had no power against the World’s End.

Nonetheless he had made promises—

“In that case,” he told Branl, “I need to get out of this wind. Can you find a place where I can watch the sea and Lifeswallower? A place with some shelter?”

Nodding, Branl drew him toward the stones which cluttered the corner of the headland. In the lee of a blunted fang as tall as Covenant, the Humbled urged him to sit and rest. Then Branl left. Still bearing his net of melons as well as Loric’s
krill
, he disappeared among the twisted shapes of basalt and granite, the motley of lichen and moss.

Covenant sagged against the fang; rubbed his stiff cheeks with his insensate fingers; wiped away residual tears. Reflexively he confirmed that Joan’s ring still hung under his T-shirt. The wind moaned miserably past the rocks, a raw sound like keening, but he tried to ignore it. Tried to think. Wind was only air in motion, he told himself. It merely reacted to forces beyond its control. If he heard lamentation in it, or auguries of havoc, he was misleading himself. The world did not
care
: the natural order of things did not grieve or grow glad. Only the sentient beings who inhabited time wept and struggled and loved.

There was a kind of comfort in the notion that the Earth neither understood nor feared its own peril. Its life was not a reflection of himself. But such consolation was too abstract to touch him—or his dying nerves did not feel it. Ultimately nothing ever mattered, except to the people who cared about it. To them, however, the import of the stakes was absolute.

Covenant grimaced ruefully at his thoughts. Long ago, he had insisted that the Land did not exist, except as a form of self-contained delirium. In that sense, it
was
a reflection of himself. And he was powerless in it because he could not change his own image in the mirror: it only showed him who he was. Therefore he could not be blamed for his actions; or for the Land’s fate. Now he found himself arguing that the world was really nothing more than an impersonal mechanism inhabited by self-referential beings. Therefore no failure, here or anywhere, could be held against him.

After so many years, he had changed very little. He was still looking for a way to forgive himself for being human and afraid.

But in fact he did not believe that the Land and its world were simply parts of a mechanism. They formed a living creation. And like all living things, they yearned for continuance. If he failed them, the world’s woe would be as vast as the heavens.

While it lasted.

There were hints of travail in the wind; suggestions of iniquity. But he did not know how to interpret them—or he was not ready.

He was still wrestling with himself when Branl returned, no longer carrying his supply of
ussusimiel
.

“By good fortune, ur-Lord,” the Humbled announced, “there is a covert which I deem apt for your purpose. The wind is obstructed, yet views to the east and north are accessible. Will you accompany me?”

Briefly Covenant considered what he could see of his companion. Then he muttered, “Well, hell. Why else are we here?” Extending his arm, he asked for help.

True to his commitments, the Master lifted Covenant upright. And he kept his hand on Covenant’s arm for support and guidance. His grasp may have been meant as reassurance.

Covenant glanced downhill to check on the progress of the Feroce. Their noxious fires shone more clearly now; but they were still no more than halfway up the slope. Trusting their uncanny ability to find him wherever he was, he turned away.

As Branl drew him among the stones, the Humbled asked, “Ur-Lord, have you determined how you will counsel the lurker?”

Bracing himself on contorted plinths and tall slabs, Covenant picked his way forward. “It’s like I said. I need to know where the Worm is headed. If it comes from the north, or the northeast, and doesn’t turn, it’s probably going straight for
Melenkurion
Skyweir. In that case, the lurker isn’t in danger. It doesn’t need advice. But if the Worm comes from anywhere south of us, it’s ignoring its direct line to the EarthBlood. That means it wants Kastenessen—or She Who Must Not Be Named. Then I’ll have to tell Horrim Carabal
some
thing.”

“To what purpose?” countered Branl. “That you desire to determine the Worm’s immediate path, I comprehend. But what will any counsel avail? The lurker will not hazard its life at your word.”

Covenant stumbled to the left around one thrust of basalt, to the right past another. The cry of the wind was louder here. It pummeled him in forlorn gusts. But as he went farther among the stones, he was spared more and more of the wind’s force.

“I’m still thinking,” he answered through his teeth. “There has to be something we can do.” To accomplish what? Slow the Worm?
Stop
it? He told himself not to be absurd. “I just don’t know what it is.”

The Humbled may have shrugged. He did not argue.

His path twisted like a maze. It seemed long. But eventually Covenant came to a small patch of grass just wide enough to sit in. Branl’s net of melons rested there in a notch between stones the size of Giants. Standing in the center of the grass, Covenant found that he had a clear line of sight northward. Through a gap in the jumble, he could see the rim of the bluffs perhaps ten paces away. And beyond the precipice—

There the Sunbirth Sea assailed Lifeswallower with the mindless fury of a berserker.

At one time, perhaps only a few hours earlier, the waters of the Great Swamp had drained eastward in ramified channels like the branches of an immense tree. Among them had stood islands of unpalatable grass, tormented eyots of brush, clusters of hoary cypresses and other marsh-trees like sentinels watching over a sargasso. But such things were gone now. Indeed, every feature of the delta had been inundated or swept away. The mounting seas flailed in all directions, tearing apart or dragging under everything that defined this region of Horrim Carabal’s realm. The portion of Lifeswallower that Covenant could see had become indistinguishable from the ocean’s violence.

The sight made him shiver as if vertigo had already wrapped its cold fingers around his heart. Grinding his teeth, he turned to the east.

At first, he could not gain a view of the sea. Too many protruding rocks rose too high. But when he leaned to one side of his covert, he found an opening. There ages of wind and weather had scalloped the sides of several stones. And one slab of basalt had lost a substantial section of its center: it resembled a cripple hunching over a collapsed chest. The result was a window like an oriel, a gap that revealed an arc of the Sunbirth Sea.

Through the window came flicks and slaps of wind, occasional stings of spray; but Covenant was able to endure them for a few moments at a time.

At that distance, he could not discern any specific swell or cross-current. The whole ocean looked like a darker and more troubled iteration of the sunless sky. Even the horizon was no more than a smear of grey. If the Worm were coming from that direction, he saw no sign of it.

Blinking hard, he moved back into shelter. With a gesture, he asked Branl to watch for him. Then he lowered himself to the grass and tried to believe that he had not come so far for nothing: that when the Worm arrived, he would know what to say.

Branl scrutinized the east for a while; turned his attention briefly to the ruined delta in the north. Then he shook his head.

“Ur-Lord, I judge that the Worm is not imminent. I know nothing of its speed, but I will believe that a span of time remains to us. We are granted a respite.” He removed the
krill
from his tunic. “Should you wish it, I will prepare
ussusimiel
.”