Stephen Donaldson - White Gold Wielder

And that night the cold began in earnest.

When Covenant scrambled shivering out of his hammock the next morning, he found a scum of ice in the washbasin which Cail had set out for him. Faint patches of frost licked the moiré-granite as if they had soaked in through the walls. Passing Vain on his way to the warmth of the galley, he saw that the Demondim-spawn's black form was mottled with rime like leprosy.

Yet the Giants were busy about their tasks as always. Impervious to fire if not to pain, they were also proof against cold. Most of them laboured in the rigging, fighting the frozen stiffness of the lines. For a moment while his eyes watered, Covenant saw them imprecisely and thought they were furling the sails. But then he saw clouds blowing off the canvas like steam, and he realized that the Giants were beating the sails to prevent the frost on them from building into ice. Ice might have torn the canvas from the spars, crippling Starfare's Gem when the dromond 's life depended upon its headway.

His breathing crusted in his beard as he let the wind thrust him forward. Without Cail's help, he would have been unable to wrestle open the galley door. Slivers of ice sprang from the cracks and vanished inward as the Haruchai broke the seal caused by the moisture of cooking. Riding a gust that swirled stiffly through the galley Covenant jumped the storm sill and nearly staggered at the concussion as the door slammed behind him.

“Stone and Sea!” Hearthcoal barked in red faced and harmless ire. “Are you fools, that you enter aft rather than forward in this gale?” With a dripping ladle, she gestured fiercely at the other seadoor. Behind her, Seasauce clanged shut his stove's firebox indignantly. But a moment later, all vexation forgotten, he handed Covenant a steaming flagon of diluted diamondraught , and Hearthcoal scooped out a bowl of broth for him from the immense stone pot she tended. Awkward with self-consciousness, he sat down beside Linden against one wall out of the way of the cooks and tried to draw some warmth back into his bones.

In the days that followed, he spent most of his time there, sharing with her the bearable clangour and heat of the galley. In spite of his numbness, the cold was too fierce for him; and for her it was worse because her senses were so vulnerable to it. He made one more attempt to sleep in his cabin; but after that he accepted a pallet like hers in the galley. The wind mounted incrementally every day, and with it the air grew steadily more frigid. Starfare's Gem was being hurled like a Jen id toward the ice gnawed heart of the north. When Giants entered the galley seeking food or warmth, their clothing was stiff with grey rime which left puddles of slush on the floor as it melted. Ice clogged their beards and hair, and their eyes were haggard Covenant made occasional forays out on deck to observe the state of the ship; but what he saw-the thick, dire sea, the lowering wrack, the frozen knurs of spume which were allowed to chew at the railings because the crew was too hard pressed to clear them away-always drove him back to the galley with a gelid knot in his chest.

Once he went far enough forward to look at Findail. When he returned, his lips were raw with cold and curses. “That bastard doesn't even feel it,” he muttered to no one in particular, although Pitchwife was there with Linden, Mistweave, the two cooks, and a few other Giants. “It goes right through him.” He could not explain his indignation. It simply seemed unjust that the Appointed should be untouched by the plight of the dromond .

But Linden was not looking at him: her attention was fixed on Pitchwife as if she wanted to ask him something important. At first, however, she had no opportunity to interpose her question. Pitchwife was teasing Hearthcoal and Seasauce like a merry child and laughing at the concealed humour of their rebuffs. He had a Giant's tall spirit in his bent frame, and more than a Giant's capacity for mirth. His japing dissipated some of Covenant's acid mood.

At last Pitchwife wrung an involuntary laugh from the cooks; and with that he subsided near Covenant and Linden, the heat of the stoves gleaming on his forehead Covenant was conscious of Linden's tautness as she mustered her inquiry. "Pitchwife, what're we getting into?”

The Giant looked at her with an air of surprise which might have been feigned. “Nobody wants to talk about it,” she pursued. “I've asked Galewrath and Sevinhand, but all they say is that Starfare's Gem can go on like this indefinitely. Even Mistweave thinks he can serve me by keeping his mouth shut.” Mistweave peered studiously at the ceiling, pretending he did not hear what was said. “So I'm asking you. You've never held anything back from me.” Her voice conveyed a complex vibration of strain. “What're we getting into?”

Outside the galley, the wind made a peculiar keening sound as it swept through the anchor-holes. Frost snapped in the cracks of the doors. Pitchwife did not want to meet her gaze; but she held him. By degrees, his good cheer sloughed away; and the contrast made him appear older, eroded by an unuttered fear. For no clear reason, Covenant was reminded of a story Linden had told him in the days before the quest had reached Elemesnedene- the story of the role Pitchwife had played in the death of the First's father. He looked now like a man who had too many memories.

“Ah, Chosen,” he sighed, “it is my apprehension that we have been snared by the Dolewind which leads to the Soulbiter.”

The Soulbiter.

Pitchwife called it an imprecise sea, not only because every ship that found it did so in a different part of the world, but also because every ship that won free of it again told a different tale. Some vessels met gales and reefs in the south; others, stifling calms in the east; still others, rank and impenetrable beds of sargasso in the west. In spite of this, however, the Soulbiter was known for what it was; for no craft or crew ever came back from it unscathed. And each of those ships had been driven there by a Dolewind that blew too long without let or variation.

Linden argued for a while, vexed by the conflicting vagueness and certainty of Pitchwife's explanations. But Covenant paid no heed to either of them. He had a name now for his chill anxiety, and the knowledge gave him a queer comfort. The Soulbiter. It was not Lord Foul's doing. Neither could it be avoided. And the outcome of that sea might make all other fears unnecessary. Very well. The galley was too warm; but outside cried and groaned a cold which only Giants could endure for any length of time. Eventually, even the din of the cooks became soothing to him, and he passed out of trepidation into a kind of waking somnolence-a stupefied inner silence like an echo of the emptiness which the Elohim had imposed upon him in Elemesnedene .

That silence comprised the only safety he had known in this world. It was a leper's answer to despair, a state of detachment and passivity made complete by the deadness of every nerve which should have conveyed import. The Elohim had not invented it: they had simply incarnated in him the special nature of his doom. To feel nothing and die.

Linden had once redeemed him from that fate. But now he was beaten. He made decisions, not because he believed in them, but because they were expected of him. He did not have the heart to face the Soulbiter.

In the days that followed, he went through the ordinary motions of being alive. He drank enough diamondraught to account for his mute distance to the people who watched him. He slept in the galley, took brief walks, acknowledged greetings and conversations like a living man. But inwardly he was becoming untouchable. After years of discipline and defiance, of stubborn argument against the seduction of his illness, he gave the effort up.