White Gold Wielder by Stephen R. Donaldson Read Free Book Online Page A

Naturally you couldn’t condescend to explain anything before she freed me.” With all the sarcasm he could muster, be tried to force the Appointed to look at him, release Linden. “After what you people did, you knew she’d never give you my ring if she understood how much you want it. But later—before we got to the One Tree. Why didn’t you tell us what kind of danger we were in?”
    The
Elohim
sighed; but still he did not relinquish Linden. “Perhaps in that I erred,” he said softly, “Yet I could not turn aside from hope. It was my hope that some access of wisdom or courage would inspire the ring-wielder to step back from the precipice of his intent.”
    Covenant continued groping. But now he saw that Linden had begun to rally. She shook her head, struggled internally for some way to refute or withstand Findail’s accusation. Her mouth tightened: she looked like she was chewing curses. The sight lit a spark of encouragement in him, made him lean forward to aim his next challenge at the
Elohim
.
    “That doesn’t justify you,” he grated. “You talk about silencing me as if that was the only decent alternative you had. But you know goddamn well it wasn’t. For one thing, you could’ve done something about the venom that makes me so bloody dangerous.”
    Then Findail did look at Covenant. His yellow gaze snapped upward with a fierceness which jolted Covenant. “
We dared not
.” His quiet passion left trails of fire across Covenant’s brain. “The doom of this age lies also upon me, but I dare not. Are we not the
Elohim
, the Würd of the Earth? Do we not read the truth in the very roots of the Rawedge Rim, in the shape of the mountainsides and in the snows which gild the winter peaks? You mock me at your peril. By means of his venom this Despiser attempts the destruction of the Arch of Time, and that is no little thing. But it pales beside the fate which would befall the Earth and all life upon the Earth. were there no venom within you. You conceive yourself to be a figure of power, but in the scale of worlds you are not. Had this Despiser’s lust for the Illearth Stone not betrayed him, enhancing you beyond your mortal stature, you would not have stood against him so much as once. And he is wiser now, with the wisdom of old frustration, which some name madness.
    “Lacking the venom, you would be too small to threaten him. If he did not seek you out for his own pleasure, you would wander the world without purpose, powerless against him. And the Sunbane would grow. It would grow, devouring every land and sea in turn until even
Elemesnedene
itself had fallen, and still it would grow, and there would be no halt to it. Seeing no blame for yourself, you would not surrender your ring. Therefore he would remain trapped within the Arch. But no other stricture would limit his victory. Even we, the
Elohim
, would in time be reduced to mere playthings for his mirth. While Time endured, the Desecration of the world would not end at all.
    “Therefore,” the Appointed articulated with careful intensity, “we bless the frustration or madness which inspired the gambit of this venom. Discontented in the prison of the Earth, the Despiser has risked his hope of freedom in the venom which gives you such might. It is our hope also. For now the blame is plain. Since you are blind in other ways, we must pray that guilt will drive you to the surrender which may save us.”
    The words went through Covenant like a shot. His arguments were punctured, made irrelevant. Findail admitted no alternative to submission except the Ritual of Desecration—the outright destruction of the Earth to spare it from Lord Foul’s power. This was Kevin Landwaster’s plight on a scale which staggered Covenant, appalled him to the marrow of his bones. If he did not give up his ring, how could he bear to do anything but ruin the world himself in order to foil the eternal Sunbane of the Despiser?
    Yet he could not surrender his ring. The simple