Thomas Covenant 8 - The Fatal Revenant (56 page)

the first glimmer of stars, she hardly recognized that the extravagant energies which had enabled her to fight and survive had remade the shaft. Its smooth wood had become a blackness as deep as ebony or fuligin. With the Seven Words and the EarthBlood, she had gone beyond herself; and so she had transformed her Staff as well.

Like her son, the natural cleanliness of the wood was lost.

But she did not concern herself with such things. Nor did she fear the cold night, or the prospect of prostration, or the Forestal’s coming. Her own frailty and the likelihood of death had lost their meaning. Her stone heart still beat: the tears were gone from her eyes. Therefore she walked on with her doom wrapped around her.

She traveled beside the Black River because she had no other guide. In the deeper twilight of the riverbed, a slow

trickle of water remained. She caught glimpses of it when it rippled over rocks or twisted in hollows and caught the burgeoning starlight. It looked as unilluminable as blood.

The Ranyhyn had tried to caution her. At the horserite which she had shared with Hyn and Hynyn, and with Stave, she had been warned. Hyn and Hynyn had shown her Jeremiah possessed, in torment; made vile. They had revealed what would happen if she tried to

rescue him, heal him, as she had once redeemed Thomas Covenant from his imprisonment by the Elohim. And they had compelled her to remember the depth to which she herself had been damaged. They had caused her to relive the maiming heritage of her parents as well as the eager brutality of moksha Raver.

It was possible that she should have known

If your son serves me, he will do so in your presence.

But her fears had been fixed on Ravers and the Despiser. She had failed to imagine the true implications of Hyn and Hynyn’s warning. Or she had been distracted by Roger’s glamour and manipulations; by the croyets intolerable use of Jeremiah. Ever since they had forbidden her to touch them-ever since they had turned her love and woe against her-she had

foundered in confusion; and so she had been made to serve Despite.

You’ve done everything conceivable to help us become gods.

She did not surrender. She would not. But she could not think beyond doggedly placing one foot in front of the other, walking lightless and unassoiled into Garroting Deep.

She did not imagine that she might

reach her proper time by creating a caesure. You’ll shatter the world. And even if she did not, she would still be lost. Without the Ranyhyn, she could not navigate the chaos of a Fall.

Nor could she save herself with the Staff of Law. No power available to her would transcend the intervening centuries.

The Theomach had recognized Roger and the croyel, and had said nothing.

While they abided by the restrictions which he had placed upon them, he had left her to meet her fate in ignorance.

-her mind cannot be distinguished from the Arch of Time.

In her own way, she chose to keep faith with the Land’s past.

Therefore she stumbled on into Caerroil Wildwood’s angry demesne,

guiding herself by the darkness of the watercourse on her left and the star-limned branches of trees on her right. When she tripped, she caught herself with the Staff, although the jolt caused the scabbing of her wounded hand to break open and bleed. She had nowhere else to go.

Roger had called the Forestal an out-and-out butcher.

On his own ground, with the full force

of Garroting Deep behind him, nothing could stand against him.

Why had he not already slain her?

Perhaps he had discerned her weakness and knew that there was no need for haste. If a badger took umbrage at her encroachment, she would be unable to defend herself. A single note of Caerroil Wildwood’s multifarious song would overwhelm her.

Some things she knew, however. They did not require thought. She could be sure that Roger and the croye/-and Kastenessen and Joan-had not yet accomplished the Despiser’s desires. The Arch of Time endured. Her boots still scuffed and tripped one after the other along the riverbank. Her heart still beat. Her lungs still sucked, wincing, at the edged air. And above her the cold stars became multitudinous glistening swaths as the last daylight faded behind the western

peaks. Even her exhaustion confirmed that the strictures of sequence and causality remained intact.

Therefore the Land’s tale was not done.

Her confrontation with Roger had rubbed the truth like salt into a wound: for her, everything came back to Thomas Covenant. He was her hope when she had failed all of her loves.- help us become gods. In his own way,

and for his own reasons, he himself had become a kind of god. While his spirit endured, she could refuse to believe that the Despiser would achieve victory.

The Earth held mysteries which she could not begin to comprehend. Even Jeremiah might someday be released. As long as Thomas Covenant remained-He might guide her friends to rouse the Elohim from their hermetic self-contemplation; or to thwart Roger

and Lord Foul in some other fashion.

For that reason, she continued walking when she should not have been able to stay on her feet. She had failed utterly, and been filled with despair; but she no longer knew how to break.

Around her, full night gathered until the ancient ire of the trees seemed to form a palpable barrier. Aside from the soft liquid chatter of water in the riverbed, the whisper of wind among the wrathful

boughs, and the unsteady plod of her boots, she heard only her own respiration, ragged and faltering. She might have been alone in the wide forest. Still her heart sustained its dark labor. Intransigent as the Masters, she let neither weakness nor the approach of death stop her.

Some time later, she saw a small blink

of light ahead of her. It was too vague to be real: she could more easily believe that she had fallen into dreams. But gradually it gained substance; definition. Soon it resembled the caper of flames, yellow and flickering.

A will-o’-the-wisp, she thought. Or a hallucination induced by fatigue and loss. Yet it did not vanish and reappear, or shift from place to place. In spite of its allusive dance, it remained stationary, casting a faint illumination

on the nearby tree trunks, the arched bare branches.

A fire, she realized dully. Someone had set a fire in this protected forest.

She did not hasten toward it. She could not. Her pulse did not quicken. But her uneven trudge took on a more concrete purpose. She was not alone in Garroting Deep. And whoever had lit that fire was in imminent peril: more so than Linden herself, who could not

have raised any hint of flame from her black Staff.

The distance defied her estimation. By slow increments, however, she began to discern details. A small cookfire burned within a ring of stones. A pot that may have been iron rested among the flames. And beside the fire squatted an obscure figure with its back to the river. At intervals, the figure reached out with a spoon or ladle to stir the contents of the pot.

Linden seemed to draw no closer. Nonetheless she saw that the figure wore a tatterdemalion cloak against the winter. She saw a disregarded tangle of old hair, a plump shape. To her depleted senses, the figure appeared female.

Then she entered the fringes of the light; and the figure turned to gaze at her; and she stopped. But she was unaware of her own surprise. She still swayed from side to side, precariously

balanced, as if she were walking. Her muscles conveyed the sensations of steps. In her dreams, her legs and the Staff carried her forward.

The fire was small, and the pot shrouded its light. Linden blinked and stared for several moments before she recognized the woman’s blunt and skewed features, her patchwork robe under her open cloak, her mismatched eyes. Briefly those eyes spilled shifting reflections. Then Linden saw that the

left was a dark and luminous blue, the right a disconcerting, unmistakable orange.

The woman’s air of comfortable solicitude identified her as readily as her appearance. She was the Mandoubt. Linden had last seen her in Revelstone ten thousand years from now, when the older woman had warned her to Be cautious of love.

The Mandoubt was here.

That was impossible.

But Linden did not care about impossibilities. She had left every endurable aspect of her existence behind. At that moment, the only fact which held any significance for her was the Mandoubt’s cookfire.

The kindly woman had dared to ignite flames in Caerroil Wildwood’s demesne.

Staring, Linden meant to say, You’ve got to put that out. The fire. This is Garroting Deep. She thought that she would speak aloud. She ought to speak urgently. But those words failed her. Her mouth and tongue seemed incapable of them. Instead she asked, faint as a whisper. “Why didn’t they just kill me?”

At any other time in her life, under any other circumstances, there would have been tears in her eyes and weeping in

her voice. But all of her emotions had been melted down, fused into a lump of obsidian. She possessed only anger for which she had no strength.

“Across the years,” the woman replied, “the Mandoubt has awaited the lady.” She sounded complacent, untroubled. “Oh, assuredly. And once again she offers naught but meager fare. The lady will think her improvident. Yet here are shallots in a goodly broth”-she waved her ladle at the pot-“with winter

greens and some few aliantha. And she has provided as well a flask of springwine. Will the lady not sup with her, and take comfort?”

Linden smelled the savor of the stew. She had eaten nothing, drunk nothing, for a long time. But she did not care. Wanly she tried again.

That fire-The Forestal- “Why didn’t they just kill me?”

Useless screaming had left her hoarse. She hardly heard her own voice.

The Mandoubt sighed. For a moment, her orange eye searched Linden while her right regarded the flames. Then she turned her head away. With a hint of sadness, she said. The Mandoubt may answer none of the lady’s sorrows. Time has been made fragile. It must not be challenged further. Of that she gives assurance. Yet she is grieved to behold the lady thus, weary,

unfed, and full of woe. Will she not accept these small comforts?’ Again she indicated her pot; her fire. “Here are aliment, and warmth to nurture sleep, and the solace of the Mandoubt’s goodwill. Refusal will augment her grief.”

Sleep? A dim anger at herself made Linden frown. At one time, she had ached to speak with the Mandoubt. There is a glamour upon it which binds the heart to destruction. That, at least,

had been the truth.

She made another effort to say what the woman’s kindness required of her. “Please-” she began weakly, still swaying; still unsure that she had stopped moving. “Your fire. The Forestal. He’ll see it.” Surely he had already done so? “We’ll both die.

“Why didn’t they kill me?”

Roger and the croyel could have slain

her whenever she slept.

“Pssht, lady,” responded the Mandoubt. “Is the Mandoubt disquieted? She is not. In her youth, such concerns may perchance have vexed her, but her old bones have felt their full measure of years, and naught troubles her now.”

Calmly she added, “Hear her, lady. The Mandoubt implores this. Be seated within her warmth. Accept the sustenance which she has prepared.

Her courtesy merits that recompense.”

Again the Mandoubt lifted her strange gaze to Linden’s face. “There is much in all sooth of which she must not speak. Yet the Mandoubt may speculate without hazard-yes, assuredly-if she speaks only of that which the lady has properly heard, or which she might comprehend unaided, were she whole in spirit.”

Linden blinked vacantly. She had heard

or tasted Caerroil Wildwood’s song: she knew its power. Surely she should have protested? She would have owed that much to a total stranger. The Mandoubt deserved more—

But the balm of the Mandoubt’s voice overcame her. She could not refuse that blue eye, or the orange one. As if she were helpless, she took one step toward the fire, then sank to the ground.

It was thickly matted with fallen leaves. They must once have been frozen to the dirt, but they had thawed to a soggy carpet in the heat of the cookfire. Gripping the Staff with her scabbed and seared fist, Linden struggled to sit cross-legged near the ring of stones.

Abruptly the Mandoubt’s orange eye appeared to flare. The lady must release the Staff. How otherwise will she sup?”

Linden could not let go. Her cramped grasp would not unclose. And she would need the Staff. She had no other defense.

Nevertheless it slipped from her fingers and dropped soundlessly to the damp leaves.

Nodding with apparent satisfaction, the Mandoubt produced a wooden bowl from a pocket or satchel under her cloak. As she ladled stew from the pot,

she spoke to the cookfire and the louring night as though she had forgotten Linden’s presence.

“Assuredly the lady’s treachers

required her absence from her condign time, lest she be succored by such powers as they could not lightly oppose-by ur-viles and Waynhim, and perchance by others as well. Also they feared-and rightly-that which lies hidden within the old man whom the lady has befriended.”

Without glancing at Linden, she reached into her cloak for a spoon. When she had placed the spoon in the stew, she handed the bowl to Linden.

Like a bidden child, Linden began to eat. On some inchoate level, she must have understood that the older woman was saving her life-at least

temporarily-but she was not conscious of it. Her attention was fixed on the Mandoubt’s voice. Nothing existed for her while she ate except the

woman’s words, and the looming threat of melody.

“Yet when she had been removed from all aid,” the Mandoubt informed the trees placidly. “the lady’s death would serve no purpose. Indeed, her foes have never desired her death. They wish her to bear the burden of the Land’s doom. And the virtue of white gold is lessened when it is not freely ceded.

“Nor could she be engaged willingly in such combat as would endanger Time. With the Staff of Law, she might perchance have healed any harm. And she might have slain her betrayers with wild magic. That they assuredly did not desire. Nor could they assail the Arch directly, for the lady would then have surely destroyed them. Such errant evil craves its own preservation more than it desires the ruin of Life and Time.”