Fatal Revenant

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  While her companions settled themselves, poured water or springwine into flagons, took a little food, Linden gathered her resolve. Facing the wall beside the hearth, nearly resting her forehead on the blunt stone, she said uncomfortably, “There’s something that I have to know. And I need the truth. Please don’t hold anything back.

  “It’s about the caesures. About what you felt going through them. I’ve already asked Liand about the first one.” In the cave of Waynhim, he had told her only that he had felt pain beyond description; that he would have broken if the black lore of the ur-viles had not preserved him. “Is there anything else that any of you can tell me? I mean about being in that specific Fall?”

  A moment of fretted silence seemed to press against her back. Then the Manethrall replied stiffly, “Ringthane, the pain was too great to permit clear perception. Within the caesure was unspeakable cold, a terrible whiteness, agony that resembled being flayed, and fathomless despair. As the Stonedownor has said, we were warded by the theurgy of the ur-viles. But the Ranyhyn also played a part in our endurance. That they did not lose their way in time diminished a measure of our suffering.”

  Linden heard the faint rustle of bodies as her friends looked at each other and nodded. With her health-sense, she recognized that Liand, Pahni, and Bhapa agreed with Mahrtiir’s assessment.

  “What about you, Stave?” she asked. He had emerged from the Fall apparently unscathed. “What was it like for you?”

  The Haruchai did not hesitate. “As the Manethrall has said, both the ur-viles and the Ranyhyn served us well. We rode upon a landscape of the purest freezing while our flesh was assailed as though by the na-Mhoram’s Grim. Also there stood a woman among rocks, lashing out in anguish with wild magic. Toward her I was drawn to be consumed. However, turiya Herem held her. He is known to me, for no Haruchai has forgotten the touch of any Raver. Therefore I remained apart from her, seeking to refuse the doom which befell Korik, Sill, and Doar.”

  Remained apart—Linden thought wanly. Damn, he was strong. From birth, he had communicated mind to mind; and yet he had retained more of himself in the Fall than anyone except Anele. Even she, with the strength of the ur-viles in her veins, had been swept into Joan’s madness.

  Stave’s severance from his people must have hurt him more than Linden could imagine.

  But she could not afford to dwell on the prices that her friends paid to stand at her side: not now, under these circumstances. She had her own costs to bear.

  “All right,” she said after a moment of silence. “That was the first one. What about the second?” The caesure which she had created, bringing herself and her companions back to their proper time—and displacing the Demondim. “It must have been different. I need to know how it was different.”

  Mahrtiir spoke first. “For the Ramen, the distinction was both subtle and profound. Again we were assailed by a white and frozen agony which we were unable to withstand. The ur-viles no longer warded us. We lack the strength of the Haruchai. And we did not bear the Staff of Law on your behalf.” Liand had served Linden in that way, freeing her to concentrate on wild magic. “Yet the certainty of the Ranyhyn seemed greater, and their assurance somewhat diminished our torment. This, we deem, was made possible by the movement of time within the caesure, for we did not seek to oppose the current of the whirlwind.”

  Linden nodded to herself. Yes, that made sense. Days ago, she had chosen to believe that the temporal tornado of any Fall would tend to spin out of the past toward the future. Mahrtiir confirmed what she had felt herself during her passage from the foothills of the Southron Range three thousand years ago to the bare ground before the gates of Revelstone.

  Cautiously, approaching by increments the question which Covenant had advised her to ask, she said. “What about you, Stave? Can you offer anything more?”

  The former Master did not respond immediately. Behind his apparent dispassion, he may have been weighing risks, striving to gauge the effect that his answer might have on her. When he spoke, however, his tone revealed none of his calculations.

  “To that which the Manethrall and I have described, I will add one observation. Within the second Fall, the woman possessed by despair and madness was absent. Rather I beheld you mounted upon Hyn. Within you blazed such wild magic that it was fearsome to witness. As in the first passage, I was drawn toward the mind of the wielder. But again I remained apart.”

  So. Twice Stave had preserved his separate integrity. Like the Ramen, he could not tell Linden what she needed to know.

  —ask that callow puppy—

  Liand did not deserve Covenant’s scorn.

  She continued to face the wall as though she wished to muffle her voice; conceal her heart. “And you, Liand? You were carrying the Staff. That must have made a difference.”

  By its very nature, the Staff may have imposed a small pocket of Law on the swirling chaos of the caesure.

  “Linden—” the young man began. But then he faltered. His reluctance scraped along the nerves of her back and scalp, the skin of her neck. But percipience alone could not tell her why he was loath to speak, or what he might reveal.

  “Please,” she said softly, almost whispering. “I need to know.”

  She felt him gather himself—and felt the Ramen regard him with a kind of apprehension. Stave gazed steadily at the Stonedownor. Only Anele continued to eat and drink as though he were oblivious to his companions.

  “Then I must relate,” Liand answered unsteadily, “that within the caesure I rode Rhohm upon an endless plain of the most bitter emptiness and cold. About me, I felt a swarm of stinging hornets, each striving to pierce and devour me, though they were not visible to my sight. And at the same time—” Again he faltered. But the underlying bedrock of his dignity and courage supported him. “At the same time,” he repeated more firmly. “it appeared to me that I was contained within you—that I sat upon Hyn rather than Rhohm, and that from my heart arose a conflagration such as I have never known. There none of my desires or deeds was my own. In some form, I had ceased to exist, for my thoughts were your thoughts, my pain was yours, and no aspect of Liand son of Fostil remained to me.”

  Before Linden could press him, he added, “You need not name your query. You wish to hear what it is that I beheld within you.

  “Our conjoining was severed when we emerged from the Fall, and I became myself again. Yet while we were one, I participated in your love for your son, and for Thomas Covenant. I was filled with your fear and pain, your extremity and desperation. I shared your resolve, which is greater than valor or might.” Liand did not hesitate now, or hold back. “And I saw that you have it within you to perform horrors. You have known the blackest cruelty and despair, and are able to inflict your full dismay upon any who may oppose you.

  “This is the knowledge that you seek,” he concluded. “is it not?”

  Facing the unwritten stone, Linden groaned to herself: she may have groaned aloud. Was Covenant Jeremiah’s puppet? Were they both puppets? Or did the fault lie in her? Liand, she believed, had answered those questions. In Covenant’s name, she had prevailed against moksha Jehannum and the Sunbane; but Liand seemed to say that she had never truly healed the capacity for evil which Lord Foul’s servants had exposed in her. Her inability to understand or trust Covenant and Jeremiah now was her failure, not theirs.

  Softly, speaking more to the wall than to Liand, she breathed, “And yet you’re still my friend.”

  “How could I be otherwise?” returned the Stonedownor. “It is possible that your loves will bind your heart to destruction, as the Mahdoubt has warned. It may be that you will repeatedly seek to accomplish good through evil means, as you have done before. But I am myself now, and I am not afraid. I no longer retain all that I have known of you. Yet I have known your loves, and in their name, I am proud to be both your companion and your friend.”

  Helplessly Linden sagged forward, bracing her forehead against the cool stone. A cloudburst of weeping advanced on
her across the convoluted terrain of her confusion; and she could not bear it. Covenant had as much as said that he did not trust her—and Liand had told her that the Unbeliever had good reason for his caution—and yet she heard nothing in Liand’s tone except unalloyed candor. He was proud—

  She might not have been able to fend off her grief; but abruptly Anele spoke. “Anele has been made free of them,” the old man announced with unmistakable satisfaction. “And”—he turned his head from side to side in a way that suggested surprise—“the dark things, the creatures lost and harsh, demanding remembrance—Anele no longer fears them. He has been spared much.”

  The unexpected sound of his voice helped her to step back once more from her clamoring emotions.

  He sat on wrought stone, with his bare feet on the polished granite of the floor. As a result, he was in one of the more coherent phases of his madness. He may have understood more than he appeared to grasp. Indeed, he may have been trying in his distorted fashion to reassure Linden.

  To some extent, at least, he had already demonstrated the truth of his assertion that he was the Land’s last hope. He had made possible the recovery of the Staff.

  “For my part,” Mahrtiir put in while Linden mastered herself, “I aver that there is no surprise in the knowledge which the Stonedownor has gleaned.” The Manethrall’s voice was gruff with unaccustomed tenderness. “Breathes there a being in the Land, or upon the wide Earth, who does not nurture some measure of darkness? Surely Esmer would not be drawn to you as he is, did he not behold in you an aspect of his own torment. And has it not been repeated endlessly of the white gold wielder that he will save or damn the Land? That which Liand has witnessed in you alters nothing.”

  Bracing herself on the strength of her friends, Linden set aside her bewilderment and loss; her self-doubt. She could not forget such things. They would affect all of her choices and actions. But the faith of her friends restored her ability to contain herself; to say what needed to be said.

  When she had wiped her face once more with the sleeve of her shirt, she turned back toward Stave, Liand, Anele, and the Ramen.

  “Thank you,” she said quietly. “All of you. The things that I have to tell you are hard for me.” And she still needed to hear what had happened to her companions while she had been with Covenant and Jeremiah. “But I think I can do it now”—she attempted a smile—“without being too messy about it.”

  Summoning her frayed courage, she pulled a chair close to the table so that she would be able to reach the tray of food. When she had seated herself, poured a flagon of springwine, and taken a few swallows, she met the expectant stares of her friends and began.

  She said nothing about Esmer: she trusted that Mahrtiir had told the tale of Esmer’s recent appearance. Embarrassed on Covenant’s behalf, she made no mention of his drinking. And she glossed over his apparently aimless comments about Berek Halfhand and Kevin Landwaster. In retrospect, Covenant’s description of Kevin seemed whetted with foreboding. With so much peril crowding around her and her companions, Linden heard prophecy in Kevin’s plight. He wanted to be punished—But on that subject, she swallowed her fears.

  Everything else, however, she conveyed with as much clarity as she could command: Covenant’s strangeness, and Jeremiah’s; the self-absorbed and stilted relationship between them; the discrepancy between them and her memories of them; the oblique inadequacy and occasional scorn of their answers. Hugging the Staff to her chest, she admitted that Covenant had asked for his ring—and that she had not complied. With difficulty, she acknowledged that the blame for her reluctance and distress might lie in her. And she finished by telling her friends that Covenant had asked her for something in return. A little bit of trust.

  Then I won’t have to explain what I’m going to do. I can show you.

  “There’s only one other thing that I can tell you,” she concluded thinly. “They don’t love me anymore. They’ve changed too much. That part of them is gone.”

  Finally a wash of lassitude seemed to carry away her last strength. The effort of holding her emotions at bay had wearied her; and she found that she needed the sustenance of aliantha in springwine—and needed as well at least a modicum of numbness. When she had emptied half of her flagon, she took a little fruit and chewed it listlessly. As she did so, she kept her head down, avoiding the uncertainty and trepidation of her friends.

  For a long moment, they faced her in silence. They had stopped eating: they seemed almost to have stopped breathing. Then Liand asked cautiously, “If the Unbeliever seeks your aid in his intent, will you give it?”

  Linden jerked up her head. She had not considered the possibility—But of course Liand’s question made sense. Why else had Covenant come here, bringing Jeremiah with him? Certainly he wanted his ring. However, he was prepared for the chance—the likelihood?—that she would refuse: he had said so. Then why had he asked for a show of trust? I know another way to make this mess turn out right. He and Jeremiah could have simply dismissed her and put his other plans into effect—unless those plans required her participation.

  Meet us up on the plateau tomorrow.

  “I have to,” she answered slowly. “I already know that I won’t like what they want me to do. But if I don’t cooperate, I’ll never learn the truth. About either of them.”

  In fact, she could not imagine refusing them. They wanted her aid in some way. They had reason to be afraid of her. And they would not let her touch them.

  The truth had become as vital to her as her son’s life.

  Liand nodded. Although he frowned darkly, he accepted her reasoning.

  After another moment, Stave unfolded his arms if he were readying himself for combat. “You have informed the ur-Lord that you intend to make use of the Staff. What will you attempt?”

  Linden pressed her cheek against the comforting strictures of the Staff. “I’ll tell you,” she promised. “Before you go,” before she was left alone with her mourning, “we’ll make our own plans. But this whole day”—she grimaced—“has taken a lot out of me. I need a little time.”

  Across the table, she faced Liand and the Ramen. “And you have something to tell me. I can feel it. Something happened to you—something more than Glimmermere. If you’re willing to talk about it, I want to hear what it was.”

  At once, as if she had prodded a forgotten worry, Mahrtiir, Bhapa, Pahni, and Liand became restless. Anele appeared unaware that Linden had spoken, and Stave betrayed no reaction. But hesitation clouded the eyes of the others. None of them looked at her directly. Liand studied his hands, Bhapa frowned at the hearth as though the flames puzzled him, and Pahni focused her attention anxiously on Liand. Only Mahrtiir conveyed a sense of anticipation; but he closed his eyes and scowled fiercely, apparently attempting to conceal what he felt.

  Then, however, the Manethrall opened his eyes to meet Linden’s gaze. “We scruple to reply,” he said roughly. “because we have no wish to augment the burdens which you must bear. Yet I deem it false friendship to withhold what has transpired. Therefore I will answer.

  “When I parted from you, some time passed while I gathered together the Cords, the Stonedownor, and Anele so that I might guide them to Glimmermere. Together we traversed the impending stone until at last we regained the open sky of the plateau.

  “There we beheld rainfall upon the mountains, and a storm gathering. But we have no fear of the world’s weather. Rather we rejoiced that we were freed from stone and constraint. And we had grown eager for the sight of Glimmermere. Therefore we made haste among the hills, that we might gain the eldritch tarn swiftly.

  “As we did so, Anele appeared to accompany us willingly”—Liand and Pahni nodded in confirmation—“though you had informed us that he would eschew the waters. He spoke constantly to himself as we hastened—” For a moment, Mahrtiir dropped his gaze as if he felt a touch of chagrin. “It may be that we should have attended to his words. You have informed us that his madness is altered by that which lies beneat
h his feet. Some insight might have been gleaned from him.” Then the Manethrall looked at Linden again. “But we have grown accustomed to his muttering, which is largely incomprehensible to us. And our eagerness distracted us. We were grateful only that he kept pace without urging.”

  Linden stared at him. The grass. Damn it, she thought, the grass. The region above Revelstone was not as lush as the Verge of Wandering, but its emerald and fertile greensward resembled the tall grass of that valley. And she had given not one moment’s consideration to how walking across the upland might affect the old man. She had been so shaken by her meeting with Esmer—and so apprehensive about talking to Covenant and Jeremiah—

  “I made the same mistake,” she admitted to assuage her own chagrin. “We’ve all had a lot on our minds. Please go on.”

  “Nonetheless,” Mahrtiir asserted severely, “the old man was altered. Failing to observe him clearly, we failed both him and you.

  “I will not prolong my preamble. Together we gained the shores of the tarn. There we cast no reflection upon the waters, although Anele’s image was plainly visible. True to your word, he would not partake of Glimmermere’s benison. When we drank, however—when we had bathed and been transformed—”

  Abruptly the Manethrall stopped, caught by a resurgence of his earlier reluctance.

  Leaning forward earnestly, Liand explained on Mahrtiir’s behalf, “Linden, Anele spoke to us. He has not done so ere now. Always his moments of clear speech have been directed to you, or have been uttered in your name.” Bewilderment filled the Stonedownor’s face. “Upon the verges of Glimmermere, however, he addressed each of us in turn. And his manner of speaking—”

  When Liand stumbled, Mahrtiir forced himself to resume. His voice was husky as he said, “Ringthane, it appeared to us that his voice resembled his fashion of speech when he accosted you in the Verge of Wandering, before fire and fury possessed him, and he was struck down for your preservation. And his words held such gentleness and sorrow that our hearts were wrung to hear him.”