They came slowly, rising forward like a tide.
Linden fought to scream, and could not.
The arm swung back again, slamming Ceer aside.
Then Honninscrave passed Covenant, charging toward Linden.
Covenant strove with all his strength to follow the Giant. But Brinn and Hergrom did not release him.
Instantly, he was livid with fury. A flush of venom pounded through him. Wild magic burned.
His power hurled the Haruchai away as if they had been kicked aside by an explosion.
The arm of the lurker struck. Honninscrave dove against it, deflected it. His weight bore it to the ground in a chiaroscuro of white sparks. But he could not master it. It coiled about him, heaved him into the air. The pain of its clutch seemed to shatter his face. Viciously, the arm hammered him down. He hit the hard dirt, bounced, and lay still.
The arm was already reaching toward Linden.
Blazing like a torch, Covenant covered half the distance to her. But his mind was a chaos of visions and vertigo. He saw Brinn and Hergrom blasted, perhaps hurt, perhaps killed. He saw fangs crucifying his forearm, felt venom committing murders he could not control.
The shining arm sprang on its fingers at Linden.
For one lurching beat of his heart, horror overcame him. All his dreads became the dread of venom, of wild magic he could not master, of himself. If he struck at the arm now, he would hit Linden. The power ran out of him like a doused flame.
The lurker's fingers knotted in her hair. They yanked her toward the lake. Her broken ankle remained caught in the root fork. The arm pulled, excruciating her bones. Then her foot twisted free.
Linden!
Covenant surged forward again. The howling had broken his lungs. He could not breathe.
As he ran, he snatched out Loric's krill, cast aside the cloth, and locked his fingers around the haft. Bounding to the attack, he drove the blade like a spike of white fire into the arm.
The air became a detonation of pain. The arm released Linden, wrenched itself backward, almost tore the krill out of his grasp. Argent poured from the wound like moon flame, casting arcs of anguish across the dark sky.
In hurt and fury, the arm coiled about him, whipping him from the ground. For an instant, he was held aloft in a crushing grip; the lurker clenched him savagely at the heavens. Then it punched him into the water.
It drove him down as if the lake had no bottom and no end. Cold burned his skin, plugged his mouth; pressure erupted in his ears like nails pounding into his skull; darkness drowned his mind. The lurker was tearing him in half.
But the gem of the krill shone bright and potent before him. Loric's krill, forged as a weapon against ill. A weapon.
With both hands, Covenant slammed the blade into the coil across his chest.
A convulsion loosened the grip. Lurker blood scoured his face.
He was still being dragged downward, forever deeper into the abysm of the lurker's demesne. The need for air shredded his vitals. Water and cold threatened to burst his bones. Pressure spots marked his eyes like scars of mortality and failure, failure, the Sunbane, Lord Foul laughing in absolute triumph.
No!
Linden in her agony.
No!
He twisted around before the lurker's grasp could tighten again, faced in the direction of the arm. Downward forever. The krill blazed indomitably against his sight.
With all the passion of his screaming heart-with everything he knew of the krill, wild magic, rage, venom-he slashed at the lurker's arm.
His hot blade severed the flesh, passed through the appendage like water.
Instantly, all the deep burned. Water flashed and flared; white coruscations flamed like screams throughout the lake. The lurker became tinder in the blaze. Suddenly, its arm was gone, its presence was gone.
Though he still held the krill, Covenant could see nothing. The lurker's pain had blinded him. He floated alone in depths so dark that they could never have held any light.
He was dying for air.
Twenty Five: “In the name of the Pure One”
MISERABLY, stubbornly, he locked his teeth against the water and began to struggle upward. He felt power-seared and impotent, could not seem to move through the rank depths. His limbs were dead for lack of air. Nothing remained to him except the last convulsion of his chest which would rip his mouth open-nothing except death, and the memory of Linden with her ankle shattered, fighting to scream.
In mute refusal, he went on jerking his arms, his legs, like a prayer for the surface.
Then out of the darkness, a hand snagged him, turned him. Hard palms took hold of his face. A mouth clamped over his. The hands forced his jaws open; the mouth expelled breath into him. That scant taste of air kept him alive.
The hands drew him upward.
He broke the surface and exploded into gasping. The arms upheld him while he sobbed for air. Time blurred as he was pounded in and out of consciousness by his intransigent heart.
In the distance, a voice-Hollian's? — called out fearfully, “Brinn? Brinn?”
Brinn answered behind Covenant's head. “The ur-Lord lives.”
Another voice said, “Praise to the Haruchai” It sounded like the First of the Search. “Surely that name was one of great honour among the Giants your people have known.”
Then Covenant heard Linden say as if she were speaking from the bottom of a well of pain, “That's why the water looked so deadly.” She spoke in ragged bursts through her teeth, fighting to master her hurt with words. “The lurker was there. Now it's gone.” In the silence behind her voice, she was screaming.
Gone. Slowly, the burn of air starvation cleared from Covenant's mind. The lurker was gone, withdrawn though certainly not dead; no, that was impossible; he could not have slain a creature as vast as the Sarangrave. The lake was lightless. The fires started by the spilling of skest acid had gone out for lack of fuel. Night covered the Flat. But somehow he had retained his grip on the krill. Its shining enabled him to see.
Beyond question, the lurker was still alive. When Brinn swam him to the shore and helped him out onto dry ground, he found that the atmosphere was too thick for comfort. Far away, he heard the creature keening over its pain; faint sobs seemed to bubble in the air like the self-pity of demons.
On either hand, skest gleamed dimly. They had retreated; but they had not abandoned the lurker's prey.
He had only injured the creature. Now it would not be satisfied with mere food. Now it would want retribution.
A torch was lit. In the unexpected flame, he saw Hergrom and Ceer standing near Honninscrave with loads of wood which they had apparently foraged from the trees along the hill crest. Honninscrave held a large stone firepot, from which Ceer lit torches, one after another. As Hergrom passed brands to the other Haruchai, light slowly spread over the company.
Dazedly, Covenant looked at the krill.
Its gem shone purely, as if it were inviolable. But its light brought back to him the burst of fury with which he had first awakened the blade, when Elena was High Lord. Whatever else Loric had made the krill to be, Covenant had made it a thing of savagery and fire. Its cleanliness hurt his eyes.
In silent consideration, Brinn reached out with the cloth Covenant had discarded. He took the krill and wrapped its heat into a neat bundle, as if thereby he could make the truth bearable for Covenant. But Covenant went on staring at his hands.