Against All Things Ending Read Online Free PDF Page B

World’s End was coming. It was holocaust incarnate. He seemed to feel its hot breath on the nape of the Earth’s neck.
    The Haruchai he knew, and the Ranyhyn, and the Ramen, although their names had fled from him. Of the people who had once been the Bloodguard, and once his friends, he remembered only sorrow. In the name of their ancient pride and humiliation, they had made commitments with no possible outcome except bereavement. Now three of them had been maimed so that their right hands resembled his: the fourth had lost his left eye. Recognizing them, Covenant wanted to cry out against their intransigence. They should have obeyed the summons of their Dead ancestors.
    But he did not. Instead he found solace in the company of the Ranyhyn and the Ramen—although he could not have explained in any mortal language why they comforted him. He knew only that they had never striven to reject the boundaries of themselves. And that the Ranyhyn had warned Linden as clearly as they could.
    Like the Ramen, the horses appeared to study the Haruchai warily, as if the halfhand warriors posed a threat which Covenant could not recall.
    The Stonedownor he identified more by the orcrest in his hand and the fate on his forehead than by his features or devotion. The young man had chosen his doom when he had first closed his fingers on the Sunstone. He could not alter his path now without ceasing to be who he was.
    Everyone who had remained near Linden in this place, this transcendent violation, watched Covenant with shock or consternation or bitterness. However, he was not yet fully present among them. He was only conscious of them dimly, like figures standing at the fringes of a dream. His first frail instants of concrete awareness were focused on Linden.
    The anguish on her face, loved and broken, held him. It kept him from losing his way among the cracks of his mind.
    She stood defenseless a few paces in front of him. His ring and her Staff had fallen from her stricken fingers. In the silver glare of the krill , the traced stains on her jeans looked as black as accusations. The red flannel of her shirt was snagged and torn as though she had made her way to him through a wilderness of thorns. She seemed empty of resolve or hope, fundamentally beaten, as if he had betrayed her.
    The sight of her, unconsoled and inconsolable, magnified the stresses which damaged him. But it also anchored him to his mortality. The fault of her plight was his. He had ignored too much of the Law which had bound and preserved him.
    Moments or lifetimes ago, he had said, Oh, Linden. What have you done?—but not in horror. Rather she had filled him with awe. He had loved her across the entire span of the Arch of Time, and she had become capable of deciding the outcome of worlds.
    Done, Timewarden? Infelice had answered. She has roused the Worm of the World’s End . But he cared nothing for Infelice herself: only the fate of her people concerned him.— every Elohim will be devoured . Involuntarily he was remembering his own sins. They seemed more real than the people or beings around him.
    Trust yourself , he had told Linden when he should not have spoken to her at all, not under any circumstance. He had said, You need the Staff of Law , and Do something they don’t expect . He had even addressed her friends through Anele, although their names and exigencies were lost among the cracks of his sentience. And he had pleaded with her to find him—
    Defying every necessity that sustained the Earth and the Land, he had pointed her toward the ineffable catastrophe of his resurrection.
    Still he could not grasp what Linden’s companions were doing. He had not known an illucid instant since his passing; but now people were in motion for reasons which bewildered him.
    Shouting, “Desecrator!” one of the Haruchai rushed to strike her. A single blow of his fist would crush her skull. But another Haruchai , the man who had lost an eye, opposed her attacker; flung him