White Gold Wielder by Stephen Donaldson

Author:Stephen Donaldson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-02-23T07:03:44.843000+00:00

PART II

Apotheosis

Eleven: Aftermath

HELD upright and active only by the fierce pressure of her need. Linden Avery walked numbly down through the ways of Revelstone, following the mounting stream of water inward. She had Just left Nom on the upland plateau, where the Sandgorgon tended the channel it had brunted through sheer rock and dead soil from the outflow of Glimmermere to the upper entrance of the Keep; and the tarn's untainted waters now ran past her along a path prepared for it by the First, Pitchwife, and a few Haruchai.

Pure in spite of the harsh ages of the Sunbane, those waters shone blue against the desert of the late afternoon sun until they began to tumble like rapids into Revelstone. Then torchlight glinted across their splashing rush so that they looked like the glee of mountains as they washed passages, turned at closed doors and new barricades, rolled whitely down stairways. The Giants were adept at stone, and they read the inner language of the Keep. The route they had designed led with surprising convolution and efficiency to Linden's goal.

It was an open door at the base of the sacred enclosure, where the Banefire still burned as if Thomas Covenant had never stood within its heart and screamed against the heavens.

In rage and despair she had conceived this means of quenching the Clave's power. When Covenant had turned away from the Hall of Gifts and his friends, she had seen where he was going; and she had understood him- or thought she understood. He meant to put an end to his life, so that he would no longer be a threat to what he loved. Like her father, possessed by self-pity. But, standing so near to Gibbon-Raver, she had learned that her own former visceral desire for death was in truth a black passion for power, for immunity from all death forever. And the way that blackness worked upon her and grew showed her that no one could submit to such hunger without becoming a servant of the Despiser Covenant's intended immolation would only seal his soul to Lord Foul.

Therefore she had tried to stop him.

Yet somehow he had remained strong enough to deny her. In spite of his apparently suicidal abjection, he had refused her completely. It made her wild.

In the Hall, the First had fallen deep into the grief of Giants. Nom had begun to belabour a great grave for Honninscrave, as if the gift the Master had given Revelstone and the Land belonged there. Call had looked at Linden, expecting her to go now to aid the rest of the company, care for the wounded. But she had left them all in order to pursue Covenant to his doom. Perhaps she had believed that she would yet find a way to make him heed her. Or perhaps she had simply been unable to give him up.

His agony within the Banefire had nearly broken her. But it had also given her a focus for her despair. She had sent out a mental cry which had brought Nom and Cail running to her with the First between them.

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