Deliberately, he sought to retreat into himself. He did not want to know what transpired outside his cabin. How could he endure the knowledge? He had said, I'm sick of guilt — but such protests had no meaning. His very blood had been corrupted by venom and culpability. Only the powerless were truly innocent, and he was not powerless. He was not even honest The selfishness of his love had brought all this to pass.
Yet the lives at stake were the lives of his friends, and he could not close himself to the dromond's jeopardy. Starfare's Gem rolled slightly in the water as if it had lost all headway. A period of shouts and running had followed Honninscrave's departure, but now the Giantship was silent. With Linden's senses, he would have been able to read what was happening through the stone itself; but he was blind and bereft, cut off from the essential spirit of the world. His numb hands clutched the edges of the hammock.
Time passed. He was a coward, and his dreads swarmed darkly about him as if they were born in the shadows above his head. He gripped himself with thoughts of ruin, held himself still with curses. But Honninscrave’s face kept coming back to him: the beard like a growth of pain from his cheeks, the massive brow knuckled with misery, the hands straining Covenant's friend. Like Foamfollower. My brother has met his end in horror. It was intolerable that such needs had to be refused. And now the Nicor — !
Even a beaten man could still feel pain. Roughly, he pulled himself into a sitting position. His voice was a croak of coercion and fear as be called out, "Cail”
The door opened promptly, and Cail entered the cabin.
The healed wound of a Courser spur marked his left arm from shoulder to elbow like the outward sign of his fidelity; but his visage remained as impassive as ever. “Ur-Lord?” he asked flatly. His dispassionate tone gave no hint that he was the last Haruchai left in Covenant's service.
Covenant stifled a groan. "What the hell's going on out there?”
In response. Cail's eyes shifted fractionally. But still his voice held no inflection. “I know not.”
Until the previous night, when Brinn had left the quest to take up his role as ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol, Cail had never been alone in his chosen duty; and the mental interconnection of his people had kept him aware of what took place around him. But now he was alone. Brinn's defeat of the former Guardian of the One Tree had been a great victory for him personally, and for the Haruchai as a people; but it left Cail isolated in a way that no one who had not experienced such mind sharing could measure. His blunt I know not silenced Covenant like an admission of frailty.
Cail Covenant tried to say. He did not want to leave the Haruchai in that loneliness. But Brinn had said, Cail will accept my place in your service until the word of the Bloodguard Banner has been carried to its end. And no appeal or protest would sway Cail from the path Brinn had marked out for him Covenant remembered Banner too poignantly to believe that the Haruchai would ever judge themselves by any standards but their own.
Yet his distress remained. Even lepers and murderers were not immune to hurt. He fought down the thickness in his throat and said, “I want my old clothes. They're in her cabin.”
Cail nodded as if he saw nothing strange in the request. As he left, he closed the door quietly after him.
Covenant lay back again and clenched his teeth. He did not want those clothes, did not want to return to the hungry and unassuaged life he had lived before he had found Linden's love. But how else could he leave his cabin? Those loathed and necessary garments represented the only honesty left to him. Any other apparel would be a lie.
However, when Cail returned he was not alone. Pitchwife entered the chamber ahead of him; and at once Covenant forgot the bundle Cail bore. The deformity which bent Pitchwife's spine, hunching his back and crippling his chest, made him unnaturally short for a Giant: his head did not reach the level of the hammock. But the irrepressibility of his twisted face gave him stature. He was alight with excitement as he limped forward to greet Covenant “Have I not said that she is well Chosen?” he began without preamble. “Never doubt it, Giantfriend! Mayhap this is but one wonder among many, for surely our voyage has been rife with marvels. Yet I do not dream to see it surpassed. Stone and Sea, Giantfriend! She has taught me to hope again.”
Covenant stared in response, stung by an inchoate apprehension. What new role had Linden taken upon herself, when he still had not told her the truth?
Pitchwife's eyes softened. “But you do not comprehend as how should you, who have not seen the sea loom with Nicor under the stars, not heard the Chosen sing them to peace.”
Still Covenant did not speak. He had no words for the complex admixture of his pride and relief and bitter loss. The woman he loved had saved the Giantship, And he, who had once defeated the Despiser in direct combat he no longer signified.
Watching Covenant's face, Pitchwife sighed to himself. In a more subdued manner, he went on, “It was an act worthy of long telling, but I will briefen it. You have heard that the Giants are able to summon Nicor upon occasion. Such a summons we wrought on your behalf, when last the venom-sickness of the Raver possessed you.” Covenant had no memory of the situation. He had been near death in delirium at the time. But he had been told about it. "Yet to the Nicor we do not speak. They lie beyond our gift of tongues. The sounds which may summon them we have learned from our generations upon the sea. But those sounds we make blindly, uncertain of their meaning. And a Giantship which enters a sea of Nicor in their wrath has scant need of summons.”
A small smile quirked his mouth; but he did not stop. “It was Linden Avery the Chosen who found means to address them for our survival. Lacking the plain might of arm for her purpose, she called Galewrath Storesmaster with her and went below, down to the bottommost hull of the dromond. There through the stone she read the ire of the Nicor- and gave it answer. With her hands she clapped a rhythm which Galewrath echoed for her, pounding it with hammers upon the hull.”
Then for a moment the Giant's enthusiasm resurged. “And she was heeded!” he crowed. “The Nicor parted about us, bearing their anger into the south. We have been left without scathe!” His hands gripped the edge of the hammock, rocked it as if to make Covenant hear him. “There is yet hope in the world. While we endure, and the Chosen and the Giantfriend remain among us, there is hope!”
But Pitchwife's claim was too direct Covenant flinched from it. He had wronged too many people and had no hope left for himself. A part of him wanted to cry out in protest. Was that what he would have to do in the end? Give Linden his ring, the meaning of his life, when she had never seen the Land without the Sunbane and did not know how to love it? Weakly, he muttered, “Tell that to Honninscrave. He could use some hope.”
At that, Pitchwife's eyes darkened. But he did not look away. “The Master has spoken of your refusal. I know not the good or ill of these matters, but the word of my heart is that you have done what you must-and that is well. Do not think me ungrieved by Seadreamer’s fall or the Master's hurt. Yet the hazard of your might is great. And who can say how the Nicor would answer such fire, though they have passed us by? None may Judge the doom which lies upon you now. You have done well in your way.”
Pitchwife's frank empathy made Covenant's eyes burn. He knew acutely that he had not done well. Pain like Honninscrave's should not be refused, never be refused. But the fear and the despair were still there, blocking everything. He could not even meet Pitchwife's gaze.