Thomas Covenant 8 - The Fatal Revenant (59 page)

That she would never find without the Mandoubt’s help.

When she was ready-as ready as she would ever be-she arose and took her bowl to the edge of the watercourse. There she searched by the dim glitter of the stars until she located a manageable descent. Moving cautiously through mud that reached the ankles of her boots, she approached the small stream. There she rinsed out the bowl; and as she did so, the Earthpower pulsing along the current restored her further. Then, heedless of the damp and dirt that

besmirched her clothes, she clambered back up the bank and returned to the Mandoubt.

Handing the bowl to the older woman, she bowed with as much grace as she could muster. “I should thank you,” she said awkwardly. “I can’t imagine how you came here, or why you care. None of this makes sense to me.” Obliquely the Mandoubt had already refused Linden’s desire for a passage through time. “But you’ve saved my life when I

thought that I was completely alone.” Alone and doomed. “Even if there’s nothing more that you can do to help me, you deserve all the thanks I have.”

The woman inclined her head. “You are gracious, lady. Gratitude is always welcome-oh, assuredly-and more so when the years have become long and wearisome. The Mandoubt has lived beyond her time, and now finds gladness only in service. Aye, and in such gratitude as you are able to

provide.”

For a moment longer, Linden remained standing. Gazing down on her companion might give her an advantage. But then, deliberately, she set such ploys aside. They were unworthy of the Mandoubt’s kindness. When she had resumed her seat beside the fire, and had picked up the Staff to rest it across her lap, she faced the challenge of finding answers.

Carefully, keeping her voice low and her tone neutral, she said, “You’re one of the Insequent.”

The Mandoubt appeared to consider the night. “May the Mandoubt reply to such a query? Indeed she may, for she relies on naught which the lady has not gleaned from her own pain. For that reason, no harm will ensue.”

Then she gave Linden a bright glimpse of her orange eye. “It is sooth, lady.

The Mandoubt is of the Insequent.”

Linden nodded. “So you know the Theomach. And-” She paused momentarily, unsure whether to trust what the croyel had told her through Jeremiah. “And the Vizard?”

The Mandoubt returned her gaze to the shrouded darkness of Garroting Deep. “Lady, it is not so among us.” She spoke with apparent ease, but her manner hinted at caution as if she

were feeling her way through a throng of possible calamities. “When the Insequent are young, they join and breed and make merry. But as their years accumulate, they are overtaken by an insatiable craving for knowledge. It compels them. Therefore they turn to questings which consume the remainder of their days.

“However, these questings demand solitude. They must be pursued privately or not at all. Each of the

Insequent desires understanding and power which the others do not possess. For that reason, they become misers of knowledge. They move apart from each other, and their dealings are both infrequent and cryptic.”

The older woman sighed, and her tone took on an uncharacteristic bleakness. “The name of the Theomach is known to the Mandoubt, as is that of the Vizard. Their separate paths are unlike hers, as hers is unlike theirs. But the

Insequent have this loyalty to their own kind, that they neither oppose nor betray one another. Those who transgress in such matters-and they are few, assuredly so-descend to a darkness of spirit from which they do not return. They are lost to name and knowledge and purpose, and until death claims them naught remains but madness. Therefore of the Theomach’s quests and purposes, or of the Vizard’s, the Mandoubt may not speak in this time.

All greed is perilous,” concluded the woman more mildly. “Hence is the Mandoubt wary of her words. She has no wish for darkness.”

Linden heard a more profound refusal in the Mandoubt’s reply. The older woman seemed to know where Linden’s questions would lead-and to warn Linden away. Nevertheless Linden persevered, although she approached her underlying query indirectly.

“Still,” she remarked, “it seems strange that I’ve never heard of your people before. Covenant-” She stumbled briefly, tripped by grief and rage. “I mean Thomas Covenant, not his sick son-” Then she squared her shoulders. “He told me a lot, but he didn’t say anything about the Insequent. Even the Giants didn’t, and they love to explore.” As for the Elohim, she would not have expected them to reveal anything that did not suit their self-absorbed machinations. “Where

have you all been’?”

The Mandoubt smiled. The divergent colors of her eyes expressed a fond appreciation for Linden’s efforts. “It does not surpass conception,” she said easily, “that the lady-aye, and others as well, even those who will come to be named Lords-know naught of the Insequent because apt questions at the proper time have not been asked of those who might have given answer.”

Linden could not repress a frown of frustration. The woman’s response revealed nothing. Floundering, she faced the Mandoubt with her dirt-smeared clothes and her black Staff and her desolation. “All right. You said that you can’t answer my questions. I think I understand why. But there must be some other way that you can help me.” Why else had the older woman awaited her here?

Abruptly she gave up on indirection.

She had recovered some of her strength, and was growing frantic. The Theomach told me that I already know his ‘true name.”’ Therefore she assumed that true names had power among the Insequent. “How is that possible’?”

If you won’t rescue me, tell me how to make him do it.

Slowly the older woman’s features sagged, adding years to her visage and

sadness to her mien. Linden’s insistence seemed to pain her.

“Lady, it is not the Mandoubt’s place to inform you of that which is known to you. Assuredly not. She may confirm your knowledge, but she may neither augment nor explain it. Also she has spoken of the loyalty of the Insequent, to neither oppose nor betray. Long and long has she spurned such darkness.” She shook her head with an air of weary determination. “Nay, that which

you seek may be found only within yourself.

“The Mandoubt has urged rest. Again she does so. Perchance with sleep will come comprehension or recall, and with them hope.”

Linden swallowed a sarcastic retort. She was confident that she had never heard the Theomach’s true name. And she was certain that she had not forgotten some means to bypass

centuries safely. But she also

recognized that no bitterness or supplication would sway the Mandoubt. After her fashion, the woman adhered to an ethic as strict as the rectitude of the Haruchai. It gave meaning to the Mandoubt’s life. Without it, she might have left Linden to face Garroting Deep and Caerroil Wildwood and despair alone.

For that reason, Linden stifled her rising desperation. As steadily as she

could, she said, “I’m sorry. I don’t believe it. You didn’t go to all of this trouble just to feed and comfort me. If you can’t tell me what I need to know, there must be some other way that you can help. But I don’t know what it is.”

Now her companion avoided her gaze. Concealing her eyes behind the hood of her cloak, the Mandoubt studied the night as if the darkened trees might offer her wisdom. “The lady holds all knowledge that is necessary to her,”

she murmured. “Of this no more may be said. Yet is the Mandoubt saddened by the lady’s plight? Assuredly she is. And does her desire to provide succor remain? It does, again assuredly. Perchance by her own quest for knowledge she may assist the lady.”

Without shifting her contemplation of the forest, the older woman addressed Linden.

“Understand, lady, that the Mandoubt

inquires with respect, seeking only kindness. What is your purpose? If you obtain that which you covet here, what will be your path?”

Linden scowled. “You mean if I can get back to the time where I belong? I’m going to rescue my son.”

“Oh, assuredly,” assented the

Mandoubt. “As would others in your place. The Mandoubt herself might do so. But do you grasp that your son has

known the power of a-Jeroth? He that is imprisoned, a-Jeroth of the Seven Hells?”

Linden winced. Long ago, the Clave had spoken of a-Jeroth. Both she and Covenant had taken that as another name for Lord Foul: an assumption which Roger had confirmed.

“He’s Lord Foul’s prisoner,” she replied through her teeth. Tell her that I have her son. “I’ve known that since I first

arrived. One of the croyel has him now, but that doesn’t change anything.”

The older woman sighed. “The Mandoubt does not speak of this. Rather she observes that a-Jeroth’s mark was placed upon the boy when he was yet a small child, as the lady recalls.”

Her statement stuck Linden’s heart like iron on stone; struck and shed sparks. The bonfire, she thought in sudden

anguish. Jeremiah’s hand. He had been in Lord Foul’s power then, hypnotized by eyes like fangs in the savage flames; betrayed by his natural mother. He had borne the cost ever since. And when his raceway construct freed him to visit the Land, he may have felt the Despiser’s influence, directly or indirectly.

The Mandoubt seemed to suggest that Jeremiah had formed a willing partnership with the croyel. That his

sufferings had distorted and corrupted him within the secrecy of his dissociation.

If Linden’s heart had not been fused—

The older woman seemed unaware of Linden’s shock; or she chose to ignore it. “Respectfully the Mandoubt inquires again. What is your purpose’?”

Anchoring herself on stone, Linden answered. “That doesn’t change

anything. Even if you’re right. I have to get him back.” Somehow. “If he’s been marked”-claimed?-“I’ll deal with that when he’s safe.”

“Assuredly,” countered the woman. “This the Mandoubt comprehends. Yet her query remains unmet. What will be your path to the accomplishment of your purpose?”

If her questions and assertions were kindly meant, their benignance had

become obscure.

“All right.” Linden gripped the Staff with both hands as if she intended to lash out at the Mandoubt. But she did not; would not: she clenched the Staff only because she could not close her fingers around the hardness that filled her chest. “Assuming that I’m not stuck in this time, I’ll go to Andelain. Maybe the Dead are still there.” Maybe Covenant himself would be there: the real Thomas Covenant rather than his

son’s malign simulacrum. Her need for him increased with every beat of her heart. They might help me.” Even the spectre of Kevin Landwaster had once counseled her according to the dictates of his torment. “But even if they aren’t-“

When Linden fell silent, holding back ideas that she had kept to herself for days, the Mandoubt prompted her. “Lady’?”

Oh, hell, Linden muttered to herself. What did she have left to lose? An idea that she had concealed from Roger and the croyel could not hurt her now.

Harshly she told her companion. “Maybe I can find Loric’s krill.” She had heard that there were no limits to the amount of force which could be expressed through the eldritch dagger. “Covenant and I left it in Andelain.” Millennia hence, it would enable the breaking of the Law of Life. And the

clear gem around which it had been forged had always responded to white gold. She was counting on that. “If it’s still there, I’ll have a weapon that might let me use wild magic and my Staff at the same time.”

Had the Mandoubt asked her why she wanted to wield power on that scale, she would have had difficulty answering. Certainly she needed all the puissance she could muster against foes like Roger, Kastenessen, and the

Despiser. But she had begun to consider other possibilities as well; choices which she hardly knew how to articulate. She had already demonstrated that she was inadequate to the Land’s plight. Now every effort to envision some kind of hope brought her back to Covenant.

But the older woman did not pursue her questions. Wrapping her cloak more tightly about her, she shrank into herself.

“Then the Mandoubt may say no more.” Her voice emerged, muffled and saddened, from her shrouded shape. “The lady is in possession of all that she requires. And her purpose exceeds the Mandoubt’s infirm contemplation. It is fearsome and terrible. The lady embraces devastation.”

A moment later, she spoke to Linden more directly. “Nonetheless her years have taught the Mandoubt that there is hope in contradiction. Upon occasion,

ruin and redemption defy distinction. Assuredly they do. She will trust to that when every future has become cruel.

“Lady, if you will permit the Mandoubt to guide you, you will set such thoughts aside until you have rested. Sleep comforts the wracked spirit. Behold.” The woman’s hand emerged from her cloak to indicate her flask. “Springwine has the virtue to compel slumber. Allow ease to soften your thoughts. This she implores of you. If you make haste

toward the Earth’s doom, it will hasten to meet you.”

When her hand withdrew, she became motionless beside her steady cookfire as though she herself had fallen asleep.

Like her advice, her statements conveyed nothing.-in possession of all that she requires. Such assertions left Linden unillumined; or she could not hear them. As far as she was

concerned, her own ignorance and helplessness were all that gave meaning to words like doom.

Nevertheless she did not protest or beg. She made no demands. The Mandoubt had come to this time to rescue her: she was certain of that. The Mandoubt’s desire to accomplish something good here was

unmistakable, in spite of the obfuscation imposed by her peculiar morality. She had traveled an

inconceivable distance in order to meet Linden’s simpler needs. She had spoken for Linden when Caerroil Wildwood might have slain her. The woman’s human aura, her presence, her manner-everything about her that was accessible to Linden’s percipience-elicited conviction.

And she had insisted that Linden was not ignorant. The lady is in possession of all that she requires.

When Linden could no longer contain the pressure of her caged passions, she rose to her feet. Taking the Staff with her, she began to pace out her futility on the cold-hardened ground of the riverbank.