Stephen Donaldson: White Gold Wielder

“Why did you force me to bring you back?”

In response, she flared as if he had struck a ragged nerve. “Because I couldn't help you the way you were!” Suddenly, she was shouting at him. “Your body was there, but you weren't! Without you, it was just so much dying meat! Even if I'd had you in a hospital-even if I could've given you transfusions and surgery right then-I could not have saved you!

“I needed you to come back with me. How else was I supposed to get your attention?”

Her pain made him look at her again; and the sight went through him like a crack through stone, following its flaws to the heart. She stood below him with her face hot and vivid in the light and her fists clenched, as intense and uncompromising as any woman he had ever dreamed. The fault was not hers, though surely she blamed herself. Therefore he could not shirk telling her the truth.

At one time, he had believed that he was sparing her by not speaking, that he was withholding information so that she would not be overwhelmed. Now he knew better. He had kept the truth to himself for the simple reason that he did not want it to be true. And by so doing be had falsified their relationship profoundly.

“I should've told you,” he murmured in shame. “I tried to tell you everything else. But it hurt too much.”

She glared at him as if she felt the presence of something horrible between them; but he did not look away.

“It's always been this way. Nothing here interrupts the physical continuity of the world we came from. What happens here is self-contained. It's always the same. I go into the Land hurt-possibly dying. A leper. And I'm healed. Twice my leprosy disappeared. I could feel again, as if my nerves- ” His heart twisted at the memory-and at the poignant distress of Linden's stare. “But before I left the Land, something always happened to duplicate the shape I was in earlier. Sometimes my body was moved. I stopped bleeding-or got worse. But my physical condition was always exactly what it would've been if I'd never been to the Land. And I'm still a leper. Leprosy doesn't heal.

“So this time that knife hit me-and when we got to the Land I healed it with wild magic. The same way I healed those cuts the Clave gave me.” They had slashed his wrists to gain blood for their soothtell; yet already the scars had faded, were nearly invisible. “But it doesn't make any difference. What happens here doesn't change what's going on there. All it does is change the way we feel about it.”

After that, his shame was too great to hold her gaze. “That's why I didn't tell you about it. At first-right at the beginning-I thought you had enough to worry about. You would learn the truth soon enough. But after a while I changed. Then I didn't want you to know. I didn't think I had the right to ask you to love a dead man.”

As he spoke, her shock boiled into anger. The moment he stopped, she demanded, “Do you mean to say that you've been planning to die all along?” Her voice was abruptly livid against the quiet background of the ship and the sea. “That you haven’t even been trying to find a way to survive?”

“No!” In despair, he sought to defend himself. “Why do you think I wanted a new Staff of Law — needed it so badly? It was my only hope. To fight for the Land without risking wild magic. And to send you back. You’re a doctor, aren’t you? I Wanted you to save me.” But the anguish of her stare did not waver; and he could not meet it, could not pretend that what he had done was justified. “I’ve been trying,” he pleaded. But no appeal was enough. “I didn’t tell you because I wanted to love you for a while. That’s all.”

He heard her moving; and the fear that she would walk out of the cabin, turn her back on him forever, wrenched at him. But she was not leaving. She retreated to the chair, seated herself there as if something in her had broken. Her hands covered her face as she hunched forward, and her shoulders jerked. Yet she made no sound. At her mother’s death-bed, she had learned to keep her weeping to herself. When she spoke, her voice shook.

“Why do I end up killing everybody I care about?”

Her grief hurt him like the raw acid of his guilt. This, too, was on his head. He wanted to descend from the hammock, go to her, take her in his arms; but he had forfeited that privilege. There was nothing he could do but fight back his own rue and protest, “It’s not your fault, You tried. I should’ve told you. You would’ve saved me if you could.”

The vehemence of her reaction took him by surprise. “ Stop that!” she spat. “I’ve got eyes! A mind of my own! I’m not some innocent kid you can protect.” The sun flashed on her face. “You’ve been lying down here ever since we came back aboard as if you were to blame for everything. But you’re not. Foul set this up. He manipulated you into it. What’re you trying to do now? Prove him right?”

“I can’t help it!” he retorted, stung by the salt she rubbed into his futility. “Of course he’s right. Who do you think he is? He’s me. He’s just an externalization of the part of me that despises. The part that- “

“No.” Her contradiction cut him off, though she did not shout. She had become too clenched and furious for shouting, too extreme to be denied. “He’s not you. He’s not the one who’s going to die.” She might have said, I’m the one who kills-The words were plain in every line of her visage. But her passion carried her past that recognition as if she could not bear it in any other way. “Everybody makes mistakes. But all you’ve done is try to fight for what you love. You have an answer. I don’t.” The heat of her assertion contained no self-pity. “I haven’t had one since this thing started. I don’t know the Land the way you do. I haven’t got any power. All I’ve been able to do is follow you around.” Her hands rose into fists. “If you’re going to die, do something to make it count!”

Then like a quick touch of ice he realised that she had not come here to question him simply because the First desired a destination. She wants to know where we’re going . Her father had killed himself and blamed her for it; and she had killed her mother with her own hands; and now his, Covenant’s death seemed as certain as the Desecration of the Earth. But those things served only to give her the purpose he had lost. She was wearing her old severity now — the same rigid self-punishment and determination with which she had defied him from the moment of their first meeting. Yet the fierce fire in her eyes was new. And he recognised it. It was the unanswered anger of her grief, and it swept all costs aside in its desire for battle.

You’ve decided to give up?

Her demand made his failure as acute as agony. He could have shouted, I don’t have any choice! He beat me! There’s nothing I can do!

But he knew better. He was a leper and knew better. Leprosy itself was defeat, complete and incurable. Yet even lepers had reasons to go on living. Atiaran had told him that it was the task of the living to give meaning to the sacrifices of the dead; but now saw that the truth went further: to give meaning to his own death. And to the prices the people he loved had already paid.

In the name of Linden’s harsh insistence, he sat up in the hammock and asked hoarsely, “What do you want?”

His response seemed to steady her. The bitter pressure of her loss eased somewhat. In a hard voice, she said, “I want you to go back to the Land. To Revelstone. And stop the Clave. Put out the Banefire.” He drew a hissing breath at the sheer audacity of what she required; but she went on without heeding him, “If you do that, the Sunbane'll slow down. Maybe it'll even recede. That'll give us time to look for a better answer.”