That was the truth of the Sunbane. It could never be stanched. She was a fool to make the attempt.
But she held wild magic clenched like bright passion in her right fist; and her left hand gripped the living Staff. Both were hers to wield. Guided by her health-sense- by the same vulnerability which let the Sunbane run through her like a riptide, desecrating every thew of her body, every ligament of her will-she stood within her mind on the high slopes of Mount Thunder and set herself to do battle with perversion.
It was a strange battle, weird and terrible. She had no opponent. Her foe was the rot Lord Foul had afflicted upon the Earthpower; and without him the Sunbane had neither mind nor purpose. It was simply a hunger which fed on every form of nature and health and life. She could have fired her huge forces blast after blast and struck nothing except the ravaged ground, done no hurt to anything not already lost. Only scant moments after dawn, green sprouts of vegetation stretched like screams from the soil.
And beyond this fertility lurked rain and pestilence and desert in erratic sequence, waiting to repeat themselves over and over again, always harder and faster, until the foundations of the Land crumbled. Then the Sunbane would be free to spread.
Out to the rest of the Earth.
But she had learned from Covenant-and from the Raver's possession. She did not attempt to attack the Sunbane. Instead, she called it to herself, accepted it into her personal flesh.
With white fire she absorbed the Land's corruption.
At first, the sheer pain and horror of it excruciated her hideously. One shrill cry as hoarse as terror ripped her throat, rang like Kevin's despair over the wide landscape below her, echoed and echoed in Kiril Threndor until the Giants were frantic, unable to help her. But then her own need drove her to more power.
The Staff named so intensely that her body should have been burned away. Yet she was not hurt. Rather, the pain she had taken upon herself was swept from her-cured and cleansed, and sent spilling outward as pure Earthpower. With Law she healed herself.
She hardly understood what she was doing: it was an act of exaltation, chosen by intuition rather than conscious thought. But she saw her way now with the reasonless clarity of Joy. It could be done: the Land could be redeemed. With all the passion of her thwarted heart, all the love she had learned and been given, she plunged into her chosen work.
She was a storm upon the mountain, a barrage of determination and fire which no eyes but hers could have witnessed. From every league and hill and gully and plain of the Land, every slope of Andelain and cliff of the peaks, every southern escarpment and northern rise, she drew ruin into herself and restored it to wholeness, then sent it back like silent rain, analystic and invisible.
Her spirit became the medicament that cured. She was the Sun-Sage, the Healer, Linden Avery the Chosen, altering the Sunbane with her own life.
It fired green at her like the sickness of emeralds. But she understood intimately the natural growth and decay of plants. They found their Law in her, their lush or hardy order, their native abundance or rarity; and then the green was gone.
Blue volleyed thunderously at her head, then lost the Land as she accepted every drop of water and flash of violence.
The brown of deserts came blistering around her, scorched her skin. But she knew the necessity of heat-and the restriction of climate. She felt in her bones the rhythm of rise and fall, the strict and vital alternation of seasons, summer and winter. The desert fire was cooled to a caress by the Staff and emitted gently outward again.
And last, the red of pestilence, as scarlet as disease, as stark as adders. It swarmed against her like a world full of bees, shot streaks of blood across her vision. In spite of herself, she was fading, could not keep from being hurt. But even pestilence was only a distortion of the truth. It had its clear place and purpose. When it was reduced, it fit within the new Law which she set forth.
Sun-Sage and ring-wielder, she restored the Earthpower and released it upon the wracked body of the Land.
She could not do everything. Already, she had made herself faint with self-expenditure, and the ground sprawling below her to the horizons reeled. She had nothing left with which she might bring back the Land's trees and meadows and crops, its creatures and birds. But she had done enough. She knew without questioning the knowledge that seeds remained in the soil-that even among the wrecked treasures of the Waynhim were things which might yet produce fruit and young-that the weather would be able to find its own patterns again. She saw birds and animals still nourishing in the mountains to the west and south, where the Sunbane had not reached: they would eventually return. The people who stayed alive in their small villages would be able to endure.
And she saw one more reason for hope, one more fact that made the future possible. Much of Andelain had been preserved. Around its heart, it had mustered its resistance-and had prevailed.
Because Sunder and Hollian were there.
In their human way, they contained as much Earthpower as the Hills; and they had fought-Linden saw how they had fought. The loveliness of what they were-and of what they served-was lambent about them. Already, it had begun to regain the lost region.
Yes, she breathed to herself. Yes.
Across the wide leagues, she spoke a word to them that they would understand. Then she withdrew.
She feared the dismissal would take her while she was still too far from her body to bear the strain. As keen as a gale, the wind reached toward her. Too weary even to smile at what she had accomplished, she went wanly back through the rock toward Kiril Threndor and dissolution.
When she gained the cave, she saw in the faces of the" Giants that she had already faded beyond their perceptions. Grief twisted Pitchwife's visage; the First's eyes streamed. They had no way of knowing what had happened-and would not know it until they found their way out of the Wightwarrens to gaze upon the free Land. But Linden could not bear to leave them hurt. They had given her too much. With her last power, she reached out and placed a silent touch of victory in their minds. It was the only gift she had left.
But it, too, was enough. The First started in wonder: unexpected gladness softened her face. And Pitchwife threw back his head to crow like a clean dawn, “Linden Avery! Have I not said that you are well Chosen?”
The long wind pulled through Linden. In moments, she would lose the Giants forever. Yet she clung to them. Somehow, she lasted long enough to see the First pick up the Staff of Law.
Linden still held the ring; but at the last moment she must have dropped the Staff beside the dais. The First lifted it like a promise. “This must not fall to ill hands,” she murmured* Her voice was as solid as granite: it nearly surpassed Linden's hearing. “I will ward it in the name of the future which Earthfriend and Chosen have procured with their lives. If Sunder or Hollian yet live, they will have need of it”
Pitchwife laughed and cried and kissed her. Then he bent, lifted Covenant into his arms. His back. was strong and straight. Together, he and the First left Kiril Threndor. She strode like a Swordmain, ready for the world. But he moved at her side with a gay hop and caper, as if he were dancing.
There Linden let go. The mountain towered over her, as imponderable as the gaps between the stars. It was heavier than sorrow, greater than loss. Nothing would ever heal what it had endured. She was only mortal; but Mount Thunder's grief would go on without let or surcease, unambergrised for all time.
Then the wind took her, and she felt herself go out.
Out into the dark.