Against All Things Ending by Stephen R. Donaldson Read Free Book Online

of us could.” He meant the Dead around him. “The necessity of freedom—It’s absolute. You have to make your own choices. Everything hinges on that. If I told you where to find your son—or warned you what might happen if you used the krill the way you did—I would have changed your decisions. I would have changed the nature of what you had to choose.”
    The nature of the risks that she had to take.
    “That’s what Lord Foul does. He changes your choices. He wasn’t trying to stop you when you were attacked on your way here. His allies fought you because he wanted to make you more determined. So you would think you were doing the right thing.”
    “His servants have their own desires,” Infelice told Linden. Her tone was acid, gemmed in gall. “Some among them do not believe that they serve him. In folly, they imagine that their aspirations exceed his, or that they act in their own names. But they cannot conceive the height and breadth of his intent. Like yours, all of their deeds conduce to his ends.
    “Did we not caution you to beware the halfhand? Did we not speak to the peoples of the Land, seeking to ensure that you were forewarned?”
    “Enough, Elohim ,” Berek’s shade demanded. “Your plight is not forgotten. Permit the Timewarden to speak while he remains able to do so.”
    Covenant ignored Infelice; ignored Berek. “I couldn’t treat you that way,” he went on, imploring Linden to understand him. “No matter what happened. I couldn’t tamper with anything you decided to do. I’ve already taken too many chances. If you need to blame someone, blame me.
    “But if the Earth has any hope—any hope at all—it depends on you. It has ever since Joan brought you here. And it still does. Freedom isn’t just a condition for using wild magic. It’s a condition for life . Without it, everything eventually turns into Despite.”
    Abruptly Linden pushed herself to her feet; distanced herself from him. He saw a fresh storm of tears gather in her, but she closed herself against it. “ No .” Her protest was a rough scrape of sound, bloody and betrayed. “That isn’t right. It doesn’t work that way. You’re the one who saves the world. I just want to save my son.”
    He ached for her through the clamor of his own dismay: the heavy labor of his pulse, needless for millennia; the gasp of air in his lungs; the burning of his face where she had struck him; the excruciation of Time as it bled away. She had every reason to feel betrayed. She had believed that he loved her—
    He did love her. He had loved her during every instant that the Arch had ever contained. If he had not loved her, he would never have found the strength to sacrifice himself against the Despiser. But for that very reason, he shied away from the sight of her outrage and grief. Slipping again, he fell like debris into fissured memories where his mind and his volition could be ground to powder.
    For reasons that eluded him, he found himself regarding the ornately clad figure of the Harrow.
    The Insequent still sat his destrier as though he had no part to play in what transpired around him. But the deep voids of his eyes were fixed hungrily on the ring and the Staff that Linden had dropped as if in abandonment.
    The Harrow had known the Vizard. Of course he had. And the Vizard had possessed knowledge which the Harrow lacked. Inspired by some leap of imagination, or by his own assiduous study, the Vizard had grasped the almost mystical significance, the potential use, of Jeremiah’s talent for constructs. And he had craved that resource for himself. He had seen in it the possibility that he might one day hold sway over the entire race of the Elohim . By that means, he would show himself greater than any of his people.
    But he had made a damning mistake: he had tried to eliminate the implied threat of the Harrow. By their very nature, the Harrow’s intentions would obliquely thwart the Vizard’s. If the Harrow attained his goal,