“Well,” he snorted, “Joan is the rightful wielder of her ring. But she isn’t choosing anything. All she’s really trying to do is scream. Turiya has her. He feeds her pain. But that only aggravates her craziness. He can’t make her choose because she’s already lost. Oh, he could force her to hand her ring to someone else. But it wouldn’t be her choice. And the ring wouldn’t belong to whoever got it.”
Covenant drank again, and his manner resumed its drift toward somnolence. “For what Foul really wants, Joan and her ring are pretty much useless. They’re just a gambit. A ploy. The danger is real enough, but it won’t set him free. Or help him accomplish any of his other goals. He’s counting on you for that. It’s all about manipulating you so you’ll serve him.”
The idea made Linden wince. His other goals—Through Anele, the Despiser had suggested that he did not merely wish to escape the Arch of Time. There is more, he had said, but of my deeper purpose I will not speak.
“Serve him how?” Fear which she could not suppress undermined her voice.
“You’ll have to ask him,” Covenant said through a yawn. “He hides from me in all kinds of ways. I can’t tell where he’s keeping Jeremiah, or where he is himself, or what he thinks you’re going to do. All I know for sure is, the danger’s real. And I can stop it.”
In spite of her concern, Linden recognized her cue: she was supposed to ask him how. He had blamed her for everything that had happened since she had formed her Staff. Now he would offer to ease her guilt and responsibility.
She assumed that he wanted his ring. How else could he possibly intervene in the Despiser’s designs? Surely he needed his instrument of power? It belonged to him.
Like Joan, he could not exert wild magic without his ring.
With it a master may form perfect works and fear nothing.
But she was not ready for that. Not yet. She could not rid herself of the sensation that he was speaking off-key; that his attitude or his drinking obliquely falsified whatever he said. And the fact that he had not already asked for his ring—or demanded it—troubled her. So far, he had given her explanations which made sense. Nevertheless, instinctively, she suspected him of misdirection. In spite of her relief, her apprehension was growing.
Instead of following his lead, she said, “Wait a minute. You’re getting ahead of me. I think I understand why the caesures haven’t destroyed everything. But are you also saying that they won’t? That they can’t break the Arch?”
Covenant’s head lolled toward Jeremiah. “I told you she was going to do this,” he remarked. “Didn’t I tell you she was going to do this?”
Jeremiah grinned at him. “That’s my Mom.”
Nodding, the Unbeliever faced Linden again. “You’re just like I remember you. You never let anything go.”
He spread his hands as if to show her that he was helpless. “Oh, eventually they’ll destroy everything. You’ve been through two of them now. You know what they’re like. Part of what they do is take you inside the mind of whoever created them. You’ve been in Joan’s mind. You should ask that callow puppy who follows you around what it’s like being in your mind.”
Before she could react to his sarcasm, he added, “Another part, the part that feels like hornets burrowing into your skin, is time itself. It’s all those broken moments being stirred together.
“And another part—the part that’s just freezing cold emptiness forever—” Covenant made a visible effort to appear earnest. “Linden, that’s the future. The eventual outcome of Joan’s craziness. Even that probably won’t bring down the Arch. But there won’t be anything left inside it. No Land, no Earth, no beings of any kind, no past or present or future. No life. Just freezing cold emptiness that can’t escape to consume eternity because it’s still being contained.”
Involuntarily Linden shivered. She remembered too well the featureless wasteland within the Falls, gelid and infinitely unrelieved. She herself had created an instance of that future—and she could not claim the excuse that she had not known what she was doing.
“All right,” she acceded. “I think I understand.” Instead of probing him further, she gave him the question that he had tried to prompt from her. “But how can you stop any of this? You said that you know what to do. What do you mean?”
Wild magic was the keystone of the Arch of Time. How could he step out of his position within its structure—exist in two places at once—and wield power, any kind of power, without causing that structure to crumble?
Earlier in the day, Esmer had said, That which appears evil need not have been so from the beginning, and need not remain so until the end. Had he intended his peroration about the Viles and their descendants as a kind of parable? An oblique commentary on the discrepancy between who Covenant was and how he behaved?
“Hell and blood, Linden,” Covenant slurred. “Of course I know what to do. Why else do you suppose I’m here? You can’t possibly believe I’m putting myself through all this”—he gestured vaguely around the room—“not to mention everything I have to do to protect the Arch—just because I want to watch you try to talk yourself out of trusting me.”
“Then tell me.” Tell me that you want your ring. Tell me what I can do to rescue my son. “Tell me how you’re going to save the Land.”
She wanted to speak more strongly; ached for the simple self-assurance to jar him out of his lethargy. But he baffled her. And the eroded look in Jeremiah’s eyes seemed to leach away her determination. She had no firm ground under her: yearning weakened her wherever she tried to place her feet.
Covenant squinted, apparently trying to bring his glazed vision into focus. “That depends on you.”
“How?” She gripped the Staff with both hands so that they would not quaver. “All I have is questions. I don’t have any answers.”
“But you have this one,” he said like a sigh. His gaze drifted to the hearth; filled itself with reflected flames. “That ring under your shirt belongs to me. Are you going to give it to me or not?”
Linden lowered her head to hide her sudden chagrin. She had expected his request; had practically demanded it. But now she realized that she did not know how to respond. How could she make such a choice? His ring was all that she had left of the man whom she had loved: it meant too much to her. And she wanted it; wanted every scrap of power or effectiveness that she could obtain. Through Anele, Covenant himself had told her that she would need it.
But if Covenant had indeed been perfected in death, so that he could wield wild magic without fear, she had no right to refuse him. He might be capable of recreating the entire Earth in any image that he desired. If she kept his wedding band, she would bear the blame for all of the Land’s peril and Jeremiah’s suffering and her own plight.
“Just hand it over,” Covenant continued as reasonably as his sleepy voice allowed. “Then you can stop worrying about everything. Even Jeremiah. I’m already part of the Arch. With my ring, there won’t be anything I can’t do. Send the Demondim back where they belong? No problem. Finish off Kastenessen so he and the skurj and Kevin’s Dirt can’t bother us anymore? Consider it done. Create a cyst in time around Foul to make him helpless forever? I won’t even break a sweat.
“All you have to do,” he insisted with more force, “is stop dithering and give me the damn ring. You’ll get your son back, and your troubles will be over.”
He held out his halfhand, urging her to place his ring in his palm.
The Thomas Covenant who had spoken to her in her dreams would not have asked for his ring in that way. He would have explained more and demanded less; would have been more gentle—
Almost involuntarily, she looked to Jeremiah for help, guidance. But his attention was focused on Covenant: he did not so much as glance at her.
And in the background of Covenant’s voice, she heard Roger saying outside Joan’s room in Berenford Memorial, It belongs to me. I need it.
Once before, Linden had restored a white gold ring. Directly or indirectly
, that mistake had led her to her present straits. It had made possible her son’s imprisonment in agony.
“Covenant, this is hard for me.” A tremor of supplication and dread marred her voice: she could not control it. “I need to know more about what it means.
“You swore to me. After the Banefire. You swore that you were never going to use power again.”
“That was then.” His brief intensity faded as the springwine seemed to renew its numbness. “This is now. In case you haven’t noticed, everything’s changed. Just being here uses staggering amounts of power. And how do you suppose I stopped Foul after I surrendered my ring? For something like forever, I’ve done nothing but use power.”
Linden could not argue with him. But his response was not enough. “Then tell me this,” she said, groping for knowledge that might shed light on her dilemma. “Where did Jeremiah get the force to push me away?” As far as she knew, her son had no lore—and no instrument of theurgy. His only inherent magic was his need for her; his ability to inspire her love. “When did he become powerful?”
“Oh, that.” Covenant flapped his halfhand dismissively. “He has talents you can’t imagine. All he needs is the right stuff to work with. In this case, folding time—being in two places at once—I’m bending a lot of Laws. There’s bound to be a certain amount of leakage. Think of it like blood from a wound. Your kid is using it. As long as I can keep him here—as long as you don’t erase us”—for an instant, his eyes flickered redly—“he’s pretty strong.”
Again his voice conveyed the impression that it was out of tune; that he could not find the right notes for what he said.
Without looking away from Covenant, Jeremiah put in, “I’ve been visiting the Land for a long time, Mom. I learned a lot about magic. But it didn’t do me any good until Covenant brought me here.” His smile was not for Linden. “I mean to Revelstone. Until he gave me my mind back.
“I can’t make something out of nothing. But when I have the right materials, I can build all kinds of doors. And walls.”
Both of them were trying to reassure her, but her alarm increased nonetheless. She could not doubt them, and did not know how to believe them. Her son had become a kind of mage, incomprehensible to her. And Covenant sounded—
Doom seemed to ride on all of her choices, and she had not been convinced.
“So what happens,” she asked, still trembling, “if I don’t give up your ring? What will you do if I refuse? Take it?”
Had he changed that much?
If she spurned Covenant’s aid, she might spend days or weeks or months hunting for Jeremiah’s prison. She would almost certainly fail to reach him in time to save his tortured mind.
Covenant dropped his hand; looked down to drink from his flagon, then turned his head to meet Jeremiah’s silted gaze. “I told you that, too, didn’t I?” His voice was full of dreary bitterness. “I told you she wouldn’t trust me.”
Jeremiah nodded. “Yes, you did.”
Still facing the boy, Covenant informed Linden sourly, “Of course I’m not going to take it. I can’t get that close to you. But I know you, so I came prepared. I still know what to do.”
Slowly he swung back toward her; but he did not meet her gaze. His head hung at a defeated angle, and the firelight cast shadows across his eyes. A faint red heat like embers glowed in the depths of his darkened eyes.
“If you won’t let me have my ring, what will you do? What do you think you can accomplish? You’ve got Esmer and a hundred or so ur-viles on one side, and the Demondim with the Illearth Stone on the other. Kevin’s Dirt is going to blind you over and over again. You don’t know where to look for Jeremiah. Joan will keep making caesures. Kastenessen and the skurj are out there, not to mention the Elohim and who knows how many other powers. The Masters don’t like you, and your only friends are three Ramen, a crazy old man, a kid who’s as ignorant as a stone, and one outcast Haruchai.
“What exactly do you propose to do about all that?”
Linden hardly knew how to face him; yet she did not fall or falter. Instead she held up her head, drew back her shoulders. If Covenant thought to daunt her with his recitation of dangers, he had forgotten their time together, forgotten who she had become. And he could not weaken her by disdaining her friends. She knew them better than he did.
He was asking her about decisions which she had already made.
Searching his hidden eyes for embers, she announced as though she were certain, “I’ll put a stop to the Demondim. Then I’m going to take my friends and ride like hell to Andelain. I want to talk to the Dead. They helped you once when you had no idea how to save the Land. Maybe they’ll do the same for me.”
And it was conceivable that the krill of Loric still remained where Sunder had left it, stabbed deep into the blasted tree stump of Caer-Caveral’s body. Such a weapon might enable her to channel the combined force of Covenant’s ring and the Staff of Law safely.
Groaning, Jeremiah buried his face in his hands as if he were ashamed of his mother.
“Hellfire!” Abruptly Covenant slammed the front legs of his stool down onto the floor. With his halfhand, he covered his eyes as if to mask a burst of flame. Then he dragged his touch down his features; and as he did so, every vestige of his drunkenness was pulled away. Almost without transition, he became the man who had ridden a failing horse into the forehall of Revelstone: commanding and severe, beyond compromise.
Through his teeth, he rasped, “Linden Avery, you damn idiot, that is a truly terrible idea.”
“Is it?” She held his glare without flinching; did not let her son’s reaction diminish her. “Tell me why.”
Vehemently Covenant flung his flagon against the wall. The wood cracked: chips and splinters fell to the floor: springwine splashed across the rug. “Oh, I’ll tell you,” he growled. “Bloody damnation, Linden! And I won’t even mention the fact that you have no idea how powerful the Demondim really are, or what you’ll have to go through just to slow them down. And I won’t talk about the Dead because they don’t really exist anymore. Not the way you remember them. Too many Laws have been broken. The definitions are blurred. Spirits as vague as the Dead can’t hold themselves together. They certainly can’t give you advice.
“No, ignore all that.” With both hands, he seemed to ward off wasted explanations. “Going to Andelain is a terrible idea because that’s where Kastenessen is. And he commands the skurj.”
Linden stared at him, stricken mute by the force of his revelations. Every solution that she had imagined for her dilemma—and for Jeremiah’s—
“You’ll recognize them when you see them,” continued Covenant trenchantly. “Foul showed you what they’re like.” Dire serpents of magma with the crushing jaws of krakens and the destructive hunger of kresh: monsters which emerged from chancres to devour the earth. “But he didn’t tell you they serve Kastenessen now because that sonofabitch set them free.
“He hasn’t brought very many of them down from the north yet. But he can get more whenever he wants them. And he always knows where you are. He can feel you through that loony old man. So no matter what you try to do, the skurj will be in your way. He’ll send them wherever you are, and they’ll eat you alive. You may think you’re powerful enough to take care of yourself, but you’ve never fought those monsters before. And your friends don’t have any magic. They don’t have any lore. You’ll lose them all.”
Harshly Covenant finished, “Going to Andelain right now is just about the only purely suicidal thing you could do.”
Without lifting his face from his hands, Jeremiah muttered in a muffled voice, “He’s telling the truth, Mom. I swear to God, I don’t know why you have so much trouble believing him. He’s the only real friend I’ve ever had. Can’t you understand that?”
He had called Covenant the best—For that alone, Linden owed Covenant a debt too vast to be repaid.
Now it seemed that all of her choices and desires had been wrong from the beginning. Misguided and
fatal.
And yet—
Her heart could not be torn in so many directions and remain whole.
—her impression of disharmony persisted. Covenant was like a man who knew the words but could not remember the song. Her nerves were unable to discern truth or falsehood. And she trusted Jeremiah. Nevertheless her instincts cried at her that she was being misled in some way.
Her Staff was the only thing that still belonged to her beyond question. Holding it tightly, she asked in a small voice, “What should we do instead?”
Covenant sighed as though he had gained an important concession; and his ire seemed to fall away. More quietly, he answered, “Like I said, I know another way to make this mess turn out right.” Again his eyes gave out a brief red glint like a glimpse of ready embers. “But I don’t exactly enjoy being treated this way. Like I’m some damn Raver in disguise. Sure, I’m not how you remember me. But I deserve better than this. I’ve given you a lot here, even if you don’t realize it.
“I need something in return. A little bit of trust.
“Meet us up on the plateau tomorrow. Maybe an hour after dawn. Over on the south edge, near Furl Falls. Then I won’t have to explain what I’m going to do. I can show you.”
Studying him for some hint of what had caused that momentary molten gleam in his eyes, Linden observed cautiously, “You don’t think that I’ll approve of what you’re planning.”
He sighed again. “I don’t know. You might. You might not. It depends on how badly you want to get your son back in one piece.”
There Linden found a small place of clarity in the wide landscape of her hurt and self-doubt. She recognized emotional blackmail when she heard it. Perhaps Covenant was as benign as Jeremiah believed, and as necessary; but to suggest that her love for her son could be measured by her acquiescence to Covenant’s desires was patently manipulative.
No doubt inadvertently, he restored her conviction that there was something wrong with him; or in him.
Jeremiah had raised his head to watch her in the firelight as though his life depended on her. He seemed to plead with her mutely, beseeching her to let Covenant prove himself.
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