Stephen Donaldson - White Gold Wielder

Covenant understood that also without heeding it. Brinn had blamed her for Hergrom's death. And she had tried to kill Ceer. “Leave her alone,” he said dully, as deaf to himself as to Pitchwife. “She'll rest when she's ready.”

That was not what he wanted to say. He wanted to say, Forgive me. I don't know how to forgive myself. But the words were locked in his chest. They were impossible.

Because he had nothing else to offer her, he swallowed thickly and said, “You're right. My friends didn't expect me to be doomed. Foamfollower gave me Vain for a reason.” Even that affirmation was difficult for him; but he forced it out. “What happened to his arm?”

She went on staring darkness at him as if he were the linchpin of her exhaustion. She sounded as misled as a sleepwalker as she responded, “Mistweave won't go away. He says he wants to take Cail's place.”

Covenant peered at her, momentarily unable to comprehend. But then he remembered his own dismay when Brinn had insisted on serving him; and his heart twisted. “Linden,” he demanded, forlorn and harsh in his inability to help her, “tell me about Vain's arm.” If he had dared, he would have taken hold of her. If he had had the right.

She shook her head; and lantern-light glanced like supplication out of her dry eyes. “I can't.” She might have protested like a child. It hurts. “His arm's empty. When I close my eyes, it isn't even there. If you took all the life out of the One Tree — took it away so completely that the Tree never had any — never had any meaning at all-it would look like that. If he was actually alive — if he wasn't just a thing the ur-viles made-he'd be in terrible pain.”

Slowly, she turned away as though she could no longer support his presence. When she moved off down the deck with Mistweave walking, deferential and stubborn, behind her, he understood that she also did not know how to forgive.

He thought then that surely his loss and need had become too much for him, that surely he was about to break down. But the First and Pitchwife were watching him with their concern poignant in their faces. They were his friends. And they needed him. Somehow, he held himself together.

Later, Mistweave sent word that Linden had found a place to sleep at last, huddled in a comer of the galley near the warmth of one of the great stoves. With that Covenant had to be content. Moving stiffly, he went back to his hammock and took the risk of nightmares. Dreams seemed to be the lesser danger.

But the next morning the wind was stronger.

It might have been a true sailors' wind-enough to shake the dromond out of its normal routine and make it stretch, not enough to pose any threat to the sea craft of the crew. It kicked the crests of the waves into spume and spray, sent water crashing off the Giantship's granite prow, made the lines hum and the sails strain. The sides of the vessel moved so swiftly that their moiré markings looked like flames crackling from the sea. In the rigging, some of the Giants laughed as they fisted the canvas from position to position, seeking the dromond 's best stance for speed. If its midmast had not been lost, Starfare's Gem would have flown like exuberance before the blow.

However, the day was dull with clouds and felt unnaturally cold. A south wind should have been warmer than this. It came straight from the place where the Isle had gone down, and it was as chill as the cavern of the One Tree. Without the sun to light it, the sea had a grey and viscid hue. Though he wore a robe over his clothes Covenant hunched his shoulders and could not stop shivering.

Seeking reassurance, he went up to the wheeldeck, where Heft Galewrath commanded the dromond . But she greeted him with only a blunt nod. Her normally stolid demeanour held a kind of watchfulness that he had not seen in her before. For the first time since they had met, she seemed accessible to misgiving. Rather than trouble her with his trepidations, he returned to the afterdeck and moved forward, looking for someone who could be more easily questioned.

It's not that cold, he told himself. It's Just wind. But still the chill cut at him. No matter how he hugged the robe about him, the wind found its way to his skin.

Instinctively, he went to the galley, looking for warmth and Linden, He found her there, seated at one wall near the cheery bustle of the dromond 's two cooks, a husband and wife aptly named Seasauce and Hearthcoal. They had spent so much of their lives working over the great stoves that their faces had become perpetually ruddy. They looked like images of each other as they blustered about their tasks, moving with a disingenuous air of confusion which concealed the ease of their teamwork. When they went out on deck, heat overflowed from them; and in their constricted demesne they radiated like ovens. Yet Covenant's chill persisted.

Linden was awake, but still glazed with sleep. She had paid only a part of the debt of her weariness. Though she acknowledged Covenant, behind her eyes everything was masked in somnolence. He thought at once that he should not bother her with questions until she had rested more. But he was too cold for good intentions.

Hunkering down beside her, he asked, “What do you think of this wind?”

She yawned. “I think,” she said distantly, “that Foul's in a hurry to get us back.”

However, after another day's rest. Linden was able to look at the weather more percipiently. By then, Covenant had worn himself petulant with aimless anxiety. He felt repeatedly that he had lost the centre of his life, that he could no longer hold himself from flying outward in all directions when the vertigo of his fear arose. Nothing had happened to suggest that the dromond was in danger: yet his inchoate conviction of peril remained. Snappishly, he asked Linden his question a second time.

But long sleep had brought her back to herself, and the gaze she turned toward him was capable of knowledge. She seemed to see without effort that his irritation was not directed at her. She placed a brief touch on his forearm like a promise that she would not forsake him. Then she went out to look at the wind.

After a moment's assessment, she declared that this blow was not unnatural or ill, not something which the Despiser had whipped up for his own ends. Instead, it was a reaction to the fundamental convulsion which had pulled down the Isle of the One Tree. By that violence, the balances of the weather had been disturbed, outraged.

It was conceivable that Lord Foul had known this would happen. But she felt no evidence of his influence on the wind.

When Covenant relayed her verdict to Honninscrave, the Master shrugged, his thoughts hidden behind the buttress of his brows. “No matter,” he muttered as if he were not listening to himself. “Should it worsen. Star fare's Gem must run before it. Part-masted as we are, I will not hazard resistance to the wind's path. There is no need. At present, we are borne but a scant span from our true way.”

That should have satisfied Covenant His experience of the sea was trivial compared to Honninscrave's. Yet the alarm in his guts refused to be eased. Like Galewrath, the Master conveyed an impression of concealed worry.

During the next two days, the wind became more serious.

Blowing with incessant vehemence a few points west of north, it cut into the sea like the share of a plough, whined across the decks of the dromond like the ache of its own chill. In spite of its speed, Starfare's Gem no longer appeared to be moving swiftly: the wind bore the water itself northward, and what little bowwave the prow raised was torn away at once. Clouds hugged the world from horizon to horizon. The sails looked grey and brittle as they heaved the heavy stone along.