Thomas Covenant 8 - The Fatal Revenant (46 page)

Revelstone with Masters and

Jeremiah.

Spectres and ghouls. Tormented spirits.

Esmer had tried to warn her. Instead of answering her most necessary questions, he had described the history of the Viles and Demondim.

Her former lover hungered for wild magic: he craved it to repay some of

this pain, although he had not said so.

Fragments of the One Forest’s lost soul. Creatures of miasma, evanescent and dire.

Do you not know, Esmer had asked her, that the Viles were once a lofty and admirable race?

It must be extinguished. The voices spoke to themselves, wisps and tendrils of elusive, impermeable

darkness, using words which Linden could see but not hear, feel but not smell or taste.

It does not concern us. In the swirl of shadow, she recognized hebetude, condescension, disdain. It does not interest us.

New possibilities are coming to life. Old powers are changing.

It interests us intimately, an image

or sensation argued. She is a lover of trees.

She is. Still she does not concern

US.

Deliracy possessed her, a whirl of memory and confusion as lurid as fever, gravid as nightmare. Eidolons spoke so vividly that she winced. I can’t do it without you. At the same time, Esmer continued his remembered impatient peroration. For an age of the

Earth, they spurned the heinous evils buried among the roots of Gravin Threndor

“Damnation, Linden!” Covenant’s fury crawled down her spine. I can’t help you unless you find me. “Give me my ring!”

-and even in the time of Berek Lord-Fatherer no ill was known of them.

Ravers did this, she thought

disjointedly. Esmer had told her so. Sounds danced around the desperate fingers of stone. Just be wary of me. Remember that I’m dead. She could not escape the rampant blurring discontinuity in her nerves, the disorder of her mind. The Ravers began cunningly to twist the hearts of the sovereign and isolate Viles.

Still words effloresced in the hollow. She does. She must be

extinguished. Her power must be extinguished.

With whispers and subtle

blandishments, and by slow increments, the Ravers obliquely taught the Viles to loathe their own forms.

Other shapes and images agreed. We will not survive her presence.

Their transformation had begun with

mistrust and contempt toward the surviving mind of the One Forest, and toward the Forestals.

Somewhere beyond or beneath perception, Jeremiah replied, “She can’t hear you. They’ve overwhelmed her. She’s lost.”

Linden, find me.

Lost, she echoed. Oh, yes. Nothing in her life had equipped her to disentangle

such chaos. If she could have lifted her fingers to the ring hanging from its chain around her neck, she might have drawn it over her head and tossed it aside, abdicating its indelible responsibility. But even that effort surpassed her. Her grasp on the Staff of Law was all that preserved her from tentacles of twilight, and she clung to it with both hands.

Survive her presence-? That made no sense. She posed no threat to such

creatures. Even Covenant’s plans would not affect the fate of the Viles. Heeding the Ravers, they had decided their own doom.

Is that cause for regret? multifarious voices countered in visions, pictographs, as ultimate as ebony. It is not. We are not what we were.

And she is a lover of trees. Another Vile-or the same Vile in another avatar. Let her destroy them as she

does us. She will reproach herself hereafter. We will be spared.

Spared? Linden saw indignation. Do you name extinction “spared”?

We do. Existence is tedium. Naught signifies. What are we, that we should seek to prolong it?

A lover of trees. In spite of her fragmentation, the reiteration of that accusation touched something deep

within her, some delitescent capacity for passion and choice. She was Linden Avery, a lover of trees in all sooth. Long ago, her health-sense had opened her to the vital loveliness of the woods and blooms and greenswards of Andelain. Their beauty had exalted her when she had taken hold of Vain and Findail with wild magic in order to fashion a new Staff of Law. Now she grasped that Staff in her mortal hands.

Because she was who she was, and

did not mean to fail, she opened her mouth so that a shape could emerge into the swirling, interwoven gloom. It formed a yellow moire, oneiric and tenuous.

“Why?”

In response, she smelled surprise. As it bled across her senses, its tang was unmistakable.

She speaks, one or all of the Viles

displayed across her vision. And one or several replied, What of it? It is not lore. And again: Ignorance and falsehood guide her kind. Their boredom reeked. It was ever so. They are a pestilence which the Earth endures solely because their lives are brief.

Were the Viles lofty and admirable? Perhaps they had once been. Perhaps they remained so. In the texture and hue of their voices, however, Linden

discerned the black urgings of moksha, turiya, and samadhi.

They also do not concern us.

Under other circumstances, she might have been appalled. Now she was not. She had uttered a single word-and the Viles had heard her.

“Why?” she repeated. Her voice was fulvous in the imposed twilight; tinged with brimstone. “Why are you here?

Why do you care? This doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

Another scend of surprise stung her nose, her eyes. Tears ran like stridulation down her cheeks.

She does not merely speak. She speaks to us. She desires to be heard.

What of it? they answered themselves in knots and coils of darkness. She

holds great powers without lore. No word of hers has meaning here.

Have done with this, several Viles urged at once. Extinguish her. Her life does not profit us.

Others disagreed. She saw their severity as they answered, When power speaks, it is wisdom to give heed.

And still others: When have we ever

done otherwise? And others, contemptuously: In what fashion does unexercised power imply wisdom?

Their debate made her stronger. She held the Staff of Law. And they were divided in their desires. They were Viles, on the cusp of learning to despise themselves.

The Elohim considered her the Wildwielder. If they were right, the

Viles should have feared her. She might bring Time and all existence to an end.

You can hear me,” she pronounced, speaking now in lambent chrysoprase and jacinth rather than saffron blots. “I deserve an answer. If you think that you have the right to destroy me, you owe me an explanation. I haven’t done anything to you. I wouldn’t harm you if I could.

“Why are you here?”

Semiprecious gems winked and hinted among the streaming tendrils. Then they were gone.

We will not heed her. Disdain and scruples crept over her skin. We must.

Before she could insist on a reply, all or several or one of the Viles stated in stark obsidian, Lover of trees, we are here because the others exert

hazardous theurgies-and you permit them, holding powers which have no need of theirs. Your folly compels us. The wood that you claim must defy them, yet it does not.

Simultaneously other avatars

proclaimed, You strive toward Melenkurion Skyweir and the Power of Command. But the master of white gold has no use for the EarthBlood, and its Power cannot

Command wild magic.

You serve a purpose not your own, and have no purpose.

The voices daunted her. Her

commingled senses confounded her. The Viles knew too much; and yet they did not know enough to recognize their true peril. Nor could they comprehend her love for her son. They were not mortal.

We will not survive—

The wood that you claim must defy them—

They had answered her. Yet they had not told her what she wanted to know.

Shaping her bafflement into a form of persistence, she said. “No. Not that.” Now the words emerged as emerald and malachite; reified consternation. “I’ve already told you. That doesn’t have

anything to do with you.

“Why are you here? In this part of the Land? You live in the Lost Deep.” In caverns as ornate and majestic as castles. “If you weren’t so far from where you belong, you wouldn’t know or care about us.”

There they devoted their vast power and knowledge to the making of beauty and wonder, and all of their works were filled with loveliness.

Covenant and Jeremiah may have continued calling to her, but she could not feel their voices.

This time, the surprise of the Viles smelled of decay and old rot; moldering. She has lore. To assume ignorance misleads us.

She does not, they declared scornfully. No mere human knows of our demesne.

Separately and in unison, one at a time, together, they announced, She has been taught. Advised. Therefore she hazards devastation.

Therefore, they concluded, she must be answered.

Therefore, they also decided, she must not.

Their darkness gathered until it threatened to blot out the sun. Are we

not Viles? Do we fear her? If they chose to extinguish her, they would be able to do so. The bewilderment of her senses left her vulnerable.

When she fell, they might claim Covenant’s ring—

Yet she saw them pronounce clearly, We do not.

We do not, they agreed. We also have been advised.

Their ire and assent as they answered her smelled as mephitic as a charnel. Lover of trees, they flared like a plunge into a chasm, lightless and unfathomable, we have learned that this remnant of forest despises us. Its master considers us with disdain. We have come to discover the cause of his contumely. We have done naught to merit opprobrium among the woodlands.

Linden might have been horrified;

incapable of argument. But Esmer had prepared her for this. That which appears evil need not have been so from the beginning, and need not remain so until the end. Hidden among his betrayals were gifts as precious as friendship.

In shapes as ready as knives, colors as obdurate as travertine, she countered. “That’s a lie. You were ‘advised.’ You said so. By the Ravers. But they didn’t tell you the truth. These trees don’t

despise you. They’re too busy grieving. It’s humans they hate. My kind. Not yours.”

“Damnation,” said Covenant in a visceral mutter, a sensation of squirming across Linden’s defenseless skin. “She’s trying to reason with them.”

“I told you.” Jeremiah’s voice made no sound, but she could see it. It was crimson, the precise hue of blood;

bright with disgust and grudging admiration. “I remember her. She doesn’t give up.”

“Then we’ll have to do it.” Covenant’s reply itched like swarming ants. “Get ready.”

Linden’s heart yearned for her companions. But she ignored them. She could not reach them now. Surrounded by Viles and implicit death, she had brought herself to a precipice,

and could only keep her balance or die.

The makers of the Demondim might resolve their hermetic debate by snuffing out her life. But the risks if she swayed them were no less extreme. Contradicting the seductions of the Ravers, she might irretrievably alter the Land’s history. A cascade of

consequences might spread throughout time. If the Viles did not learn to loathe themselves, they would not create the Demondim-who would

in turn not create—

With every word, she risked the Arch of Time.

Nevertheless she did not allow herself to hesitate or falter. Here, at least, she believed that calamity was not inevitable. The Law of Time opposed its own disintegration. And the effects of what she did might well prove temporary. Her arguments might do nothing more than delay the gradual

corruption of the Viles.

The wood that you claim must defy them, yet it does not.

“Sure,” she continued as though her companions had not spoken, the Forestal is angry. His trees have been slaughtered. But his rage isn’t aimed at you. If you don’t threaten Garroting Deep, he won’t even acknowledge that you’re here.”

Risking everything, uttering sulfur and incarnadine to the gloom, she averred, “You’ve been lied to. You’re being manipulated. The Ravers hate trees. They want you to do the same. Not because they care about you. Not because you’re in any danger. They just want you to start hating.” Extinguishing. “If you do that enough, you’ll end up just like them.”

All contempt turns upon the contemptuous, as it must.

For an immeasurable time, the Viles were silent. Linden felt serpentine darkness coil and twist around her, a nest of snakes and self-dissent; smelled subterranean stone and dust, caves so old and deeply buried that they may have been airless. Get ready. Jeremiah and Covenant had reached a decision, but it lay beyond her discernment. Sensory confusion cut her off from everything except the hollow and the dusk.

Then all or some of the black tendrils repeated, She has lore. And others insisted, It is not lore. It is given knowledge. She has been taught. She merely holds powers which surpass her.

They debated among themselves, gathering vehemence with every assertion. Then the others must concern us.

They do not. They are no mystery to

US.

This contention is foolish. The fierceness of the voices blinded Linden. She no longer saw sounds: she felt them. They scraped along her skin like the teeth of a rasp. We cannot accuse her. She has spoken sooth. We also are moved by given knowledge. Have we not heeded those who report that we are despised?

[

We have. What of that? We seek only comprehension. The intent of her companions is far otherwise. And she consents by withholding her strength. For that reason, we confront her.

Unrestrained anger. For that reason, she must be extinguished.

Stern contradiction. For that reason, she must be understood. Her inaction requires justification.

As one, the voices turned against Linden. Give answer, lover of trees. Why do you permit the purposes of the others, when you have no need of it?

There her determination stumbled. The Viles’ question was more fatal than their ire. In this circumstance, her mind cannot be distinguished from the Arch of Time. How could she explain herself without violating the strictures of history? Her choices could only be