Covenant's throat worked. “I don't- ” he started to say. I don't understand. Then, with a wrench of will, he stepped out of the Forestal's way.
Stately and grave, Caer-CaveraI went down the hillside toward Sunder.
The Graveler stood as if he did not see the tall, white figure, heard no song. Hollian he held upright against his heart, her face pressed to his chest. But his head was up: his eyes watched the slope down which Caer-CaveraI had come. A cry that had no voice stretched his visage.
Slowly, like an action in a dream, Linden turned to look in the direction of Sunder's gaze.
As Covenant did the same, a sharp pang sprang from him.
Above the company, moonshine and Forestal fire condensed to form a human shape. Pale silver, momentarily transparent, then more solid, like an incarnation of evanescence and yearning, a woman walked toward the onlookers A smile curved her delicate mouth; and her hair swept a suggestion of dark wings and destiny past her shoulders; and she shone like loss and hope.
Hollian eh-Brand. Sunder's Dead, come to greet him.
The sight of her made him breathe in fierce, shuddering gasps, as if she had set a goad to his heart.
She passed by Covenant, Linden, and the Giants without acknowledging them. Perhaps for her they did not exist. Erect with the dignity of her calling, the importance of her purpose, she moved to the Forestal's side and stopped, facing Sunder and her own dead body.
“Ah, Sunder, my dear one,” she murmured. “Forgive my death. It was my flesh that failed you, not my love.”
Helpless to reply. Sunder went on gasping as if his life were being ripped out of him.
Hollian started to speak again; but the Forestal raised his staff, silencing her. He did not appear to move, to take any action. Yet music leaped around Sunder like a swirl of moonsparks, and the Graveler staggered. Somehow, Hollian was taken from him. She was enfolded tenderly in the crook of the Forestal’s left arm. Caer-CaveraI claimed her stiff death for himself. The song became keener, whetted by loss and trepidation.
Wildly, Sunder snatched the krill from its resting place against his burned belly. Its argent passion pierced the music. All reason was gone from him. Wracked for air, he brandished Loric's blade at the Forestal, mutely demanding that Hollian be given back to him.
The restraint Hile Troy had asked of Covenant made him shudder.
“Now it ends,” fluted Caer-Caveral. The singing which conveyed his words was at once exquisitely beautiful and unbearable. “Do not fear for me. Though it is severe, this must be done. I am weary, eager of release and called to rest. Your love supplies the power, and none other may take the burden from you. Son of Nassic-” the music contained no command now, but only sorrow- “you must strike me.”
Covenant flinched as if he expected Sunder to obey. The Graveler was desperate enough for anything. But Linden watched him with all her senses and saw his inchoate violence founder in dismay. He lowered the krill. His eyes were wide with supplication. Behind the mad obsession which had ruled him since HoIIian's death still lived a man who loathed killing-who had shed too much blood and never forgiven himself for it. His soul seemed to collapse inward. After days of endurance, he was dying.
The Forestal struck the turf with his staff, and the Hills rang. “Strike!”
His demand was so potent that Linden raised her hands involuntarily, though it was not directed at her. Yet some part of Sunder remained unbroken, clear. The comers of his jaw knotted with the old obduracy which had once enabled him to defy Gibbon. Deliberately, he unbent his elbow, let the krill dangle from his weak hand. His head slumped forward until his chin rested on his chest. He no longer made any effort to breathe.
Caer-Caveral sent a glare of phosphorescence at the Graveler. “Very well,” he trilled angrily. “Withhold-and be lost. The Land is ill served by those who will not pay the price of love.” Turning sharply away, he strode back through the company in the direction from which he had come. He still bore HoIIian's physical form clasped in his left arm.
And the Dead eh-brand went with him as if she approved. Her eyes were silver and grieving.
It was too much. A strangled cry tore Sunder's refusal. He could not let Hollian go; his desire for her was too strong. Raising the krill above his head in both fists, he ran at the Forestal's back.
Too late, Covenant shouted, “No!” and leaped after Sunder.
The Giants could not move. The music held them fascinated and motionless. Linden was not certain that they were truly able to see what was happening.
She could have moved. She felt the same stasis which enclosed the First and Pitchwife; but it was not strong enough to stop her. Her percipience could grasp the melody and make it serve her. With the slow instantaneousness of visions or nightmares, she knew she was able to do it. The music would carry her after Sunder so swiftly that he might never reach the Forestal.
Yet she did not. She had no way to measure the implications of this crisis. But she had seen the pain shining in HoIIian's eyes, the eh-brand's recognition of necessity. And she trusted the sum, brave woman. She made no effort to stop Sunder as he hammered the point of the krill between Caer-Caveral's shoulder blades with the last force of his life.
From the blow burst a deflagration of pearl flame which rent away immobility, sent Linden and the Giants sprawling, hurled Covenant to the grass. At once, all the music became fire and raced toward the Forestal, sweeping around him-and Sunder and Hollian with him-so that they were effaced from sight, consumed in an incandescent whirlwind that spouted into the heavens, reached like the ruin of every song toward the bereft stars. A cacophony of fear clashed and wept around the flame; but the flame did not hear it. In a rush of ascension, the blaze burned its hot, mute agony against the night as if it fed on the pure heart of Andelain, bore that spirit writhing and appalled through the high dark.
And as it rose, Linden seemed to hear the fundamental fabric of the world tearing.
Then, before the sight became unendurable, the fire began to subside. By slow stages, the conflagration changed to an ordinary fire, yellow with heat and eaten wood, and she saw it burning from the black and blasted stump of a tree trunk which had not been there when Caer-Caveral was struck.
Stabbed deep into the charred wood beyond any hope of removal was the krill. Only the flames that licked the stump made it visible: the light of its gem was gone.
Now the fire failed swiftly, falling away from the stricken trunk. Soon the blaze was extinguished altogether. Smoke curled upward to mark the place where the Forestal had been slain.
Yet the night was not dark. Other illuminations gathered around the stunned companions.
From beyond the stump, Sunder and Hollian came walking hand-in-hand. They were limned with silver like the Dead; but they were alive in the flesh-human and whole. Caer-Caveral's mysterious purpose had been accomplished. Empowered and catalyzed by the Forestal's spirit, Sunder's passion had found its object; and the krill had severed the boundary which separated him from Hollian. In that way, the Graveler, who was trained for bloodshed and whose work was killing, had brought his love back into life.
Around the two of them bobbed a circle of Wraiths, dancing a bright cavort of welcome. Their warm loveliness seemed to promise the end of all pain.
But in Andelain there was no more music.
Fifteen: Enactors of Desecration
IN the lush, untrammelled dawn of the Hills, Sunder and Hollian came to say farewell to Covenant and Linden.