But Hollian lay twisted on her back, her cut and heat-mangled palms open to the mounting dark. Her black hair framed the pale vulnerability of her face, pillowed her head like the cupped hand of death. Between her lost lips trickled a delicate trail of blood.
Scrambling wildly across the dirt. Linden dove for the eh-brand, plunged her touch into HoIlian and tried to call back her spirit before it Bed altogether. But it was going fast; Linden could not hold it. Hollian had been damaged too severely. Linden's fingers clutched at the slack shoulders, tried to shake breath back into the lungs; but there was nothing she could do. Her hands were useless. She was just an ordinary woman, incapable of miracles-able to see nothing dearly except the extent of her failure.
As she watched, the life ran out of the eh-brand. The red rivulet from her mouth slowed and stopped.
Power: Linden had to have power. But grief closed her off from everything. She could not reach the sun. The Earth was desecrated and dying. And Covenant had changed. At times in the past, she had tapped wild magic from him without his volition; but that was no longer possible. He was a new being, an alloy of fire and person. His might was inaccessible without possession. And if she had been capable of doing that to him, it would have taken time-time which Hollian had already lost.
The eh-Brand looked pitifully small in death, valiant and fragile beyond endurance. And her son also, gone without so much as a single chance at life. Linden stared blindly at the failure of her hands. The krill-gem glared into her face.
From all directions at once, the rain ran forward, hissing like flame across the dirt.
Drops of water splashed around her as Covenant took hold of her, yanked her toward him. Unwillingly, she felt the feral thrust of his pain. “I told you to watch!” he raged, yelling at her because he had asked the Stonedownors to take this risk in spite of his inability to protect them from the consequences. “I told you to watch.”
Through the approaching clamour of the rain, she heard Sunder groan.
He took an unsteady breath, raised his head. His eyes were glazed, unseeing, empty of mind. For an instant, she thought he was lost as well. But then his hands opened, stretching the cramps from his fingers and forearms, and he blinked several times. His eyes focused on the krill. He reached out to it stiffly, wrapped it back in its cloth, tucked it away under his jerkin.
Then the drizzle caught his attention. He looked toward Hollian.
At once, he lurched to his feet. Fighting the knots in his muscles, the ravages of power, he started toward her.
Linden shoved herself in front of him. “Sunder!” she tried to say. It's my fault. I'm so sorry. From the beginning, failure had dogged her steps as if it could never be redeemed.
He did not heed her. With one arm, he swept her out of his way so forcefully that she stumbled. A blood-ridden intensity glared from his orbs. He had lost one wife and son before he had met Linden and Covenant. Now they had cost him another. He bent over Hollian for a moment as if he feared to touch her. His arms hugged the anguish in his chest. Then, fiercely, he stooped to her and rose again, lifting her out of the new mud, cradling her like a child. His howl rang through the rain, transforming the downpour to grief:
“Hollian!”
Abruptly, the First hove out of the thickening dark with Pitchwife behind her. She was panting hugely. Blood squeezed from the wide wound in her side where the lore of the ur-viles had burned her. Pitchwife's face was aghast at the things he had done.
Neither of them seemed to see Hollian. “Come!” called the First. “We must make our way now! Vain yet withholds the ur-viles from us. If we flee, we may hope that he will follow and be saved!”
No one moved. The rain belaboured Linden's head and shoulders Covenant had covered his face with his hands. He stood immobile in the storm as if he could no longer bear the cost of what he had become. Sunder breathed in great, raw hunks of hurt, but did not weep. He remained hunched over Hollian, concentrating on her as if the sheer strength of his desire might bring her back.
The First gave a snarl of exasperation. Still she appeared unaware of what had happened. Aggravated by her injury, she brooked no refusal. “Come, I say!” Roughly, she took hold of Covenant and Linden, dragged them toward the watercourse.
Pitchwife followed, tugging Sunder.
They scrambled down into the riverbed. The water racing there frothed against the thick limbs of the Giants, Linden could hardly keep her feet. She clung to the First. Soon the river rose high enough to carry the company away.
Rain hammered at them as if it were outraged by its untimely birth. The riverbanks were invisible. Linden saw no sign of the ur-viles or Vain. She did not know whether she and her friends had escaped.
But the lightning that tore the heavens gave her sudden glimpses around her. One of them revealed Sunder. He swam ahead of Pitchwife. The Giant braced him with one hand from behind.
He still bore Hollian in his arms. Carefully, he kept her head above water as if she were alive.
At intervals through the loud rain and the thunder. Linden heard him keening.
Fourteen: The Last Bourne
AT first, the water was so muddy that it sickened Linden. Every involuntary mouthful left sand in her throat, grit on her teeth. Rain and thunder fragmented her hearing. At one moment, she felt totally deaf; the next, sound went through her like a slap. Dragged down by her clothes and heavy shoes, she would have been exhausted in a short time without the First's support. The Swordmain's wound was a throbbing pain that reached Linden in spite of the chaos of water, the exertion of swimming. Yet the Giant bore both Covenant and the Chosen through the turmoil.
But as the water rose it became clearer, less conflicted-and colder. Linden had forgotten how cold a fast river could be with no sunlight on it anywhere. The chill leeched into her, sucking at her bones. It whispered to her sore nerves that she would be warmer if she lowered herself beneath the surface, out of the air and the battering rain. Only for a moment, it suggested kindly. Until you feel warmer. You've already failed. It doesn't matter anymore. You deserve to feel warmer.
She knew what she deserved. But she ignored the seduction, clung instead to the First-concentrated on the hurt in the Giant's side. The cleaner water washed most of the sand and blood from the burn; and the First was hardy. Linden was not worried about infection. Yet she poured her percipience toward that wound, put herself into it until her own side wailed as if she had been gored, then, deliberately, she numbed the sensation, reducing the First's pain to a dull ache.
The cold frayed her senses, sapped her courage. Lightning and thunder blared above her, and she was too small to endure them. Rain nailed the face of the river. But she clinched herself to her chosen use and did not let go while the current bore the company hurtling down the length of the long afternoon.
At last the day ended. The torrents thinned; the clouds rolled back. Legs scissoring, the First laboured across to the west bank, then struggled out of the water and stood trembling on the sodden ground. In a moment, Pitchwife joined her. Linden seemed to feel his bones rattling in an ague of weariness.
Covenant looked as pale as a weathered tombstone, his lips blue with cold, gall heavy on his features. “We need a fire,” he said as if that, too, were his fault.