Those words seemed to have a new resonance for him; but almost immediately he shrugged them aside. Indicating the wound in the tabletop, he said, “I did that. With the krill. Elena tried to give it to me. She wanted me to use it against Lord Foul. So I stabbed it into the table and left it there where nobody else could take it out. Like a promise that I was going to do the same thing to the Land.” He tried to smile again; but this time the effort twisted his face like a grimace. “I did that even before I knew Elena was my daughter. But he was still able to be my friend.” For a moment, his voice sounded chipped and battered; yet he stood tall and straight with his back to the open door and the silver lumination as if he had become unbreakable. “He must've removed the krill when he came into his power.”
Across the table, he faced her. His eyes were gaunt with knowledge, but they remained clear. “It's not gone,” he said softly. “I tried to get rid of it, but I couldn't.”
“Then what-?” She was lost before him, astonished by what he had become. He was more than ever the man she loved-and yet she did not know him, could not put one plain question into words.
He sighed, dropped his gaze briefly, then looked up at her again. “I guess you could say it's been fused I don't know how else to describe it. Ifs been burned into me so deeply that there's no distinction. I'm like an alloy-venom and wild magic and ordinary skin and bones melted together until they're all one. All the same. I'll never be free of it.”
As he spoke, she saw that he was right. He gave her the words to see that he was right. Fused. An alloy. Like white gold itself, a blend of metals. And her heart gave a leap of elation within her.
“Then you can control it!” she said rapidly, so rapidly that she did not know what she was about to say until she said it. “You're not at Foul's mercy anymore!” Oh, beloved. “You can beat him!”
At that, sudden pain darkened his visage. She jerked to a halt, unable to grasp how she had hurt him. When he did not reply, she took hold of her confusion, forced it to be still. As carefully as she could, she said, “I don't understand. I can't. You've got to tell me what's going on.”
“I know,” he breathed. “I know.” But now his attention was fixed on the gouged centre of the table as if no power had ever been able to lift the knife out of his own heart; and she feared that she had lost him.
After a moment, he said, “I used to say I was sick of guilt. But not anymore.” He took a deep breath to steady himself. “It's not a sickness anymore. I am guilt. I'll never use power again.”
She started to protest; but his certainty stopped her. With an effort, she held herself mute as he began to quote an old song.
“There is wild magic graven in every rock,
contained for white gold to unleash or control -
gold, rare metal, not born of the Land,
nor ruled, limited, subdued
by the Law with which the Land was created -
but keystone rather, pivot, crux
for the anarchy out of which Time was made:
wild magic restrained in every particle of life,
and unleashed or controlled by gold
because that power is the anchor of the arch of life
that spans and masters Time.”
She listened to him intently, striving for comprehension. But at the same time her mind bifurcated, and she found herself remembering Dr. Berenford. He had tried to tell her about Covenant by describing one of Covenant's novels. According to the older doctor, the book argued that innocence is a wonderful thing except for the fact that it's impotent. Guilt is power. Only the damned can be saved. The memory seemed to hint at the nature of Covenant's new certainty.
Was that it? Did he no longer doubt that he was damned? He paused, then repeated, “Keystone, The Arch of Time is held together at the apex by wild magic. And the Arch is what gives the Earth a place in which to exist. It's what imprisons Foul. That's why he wants my ring. To break Time so he can escape.
“But nothing's that simple anymore. The wild magic has been fused into me. I am wild magic. In a sense, I've become the keystone of the Arch. Or I will be-if I let what I am loose. If I ever try to use power.
“But that's not all. If it were, I could stand it. I'd be willing to be the Arch forever, if Foul could be beaten that way. But I'm not just wild magic. I'm venom, too. Lord Foul's venom. Can you imagine what the Earth would be like if venom was the keystone? If everything in the world, every particle of life, was founded on venom as well as wild magic? That would be as bad as the Sunbane.” Slowly, he lifted his head, met Linden with a glance that seemed to pierce her. “I won't do it.”
She felt helpless to reach him; but she could not stop trying. She heard the truth as he described it; he had named the change in himself for her. In the Banefire he had made himself as impotent as innocence. The power to resist Despite, the reason of his life, had been burned out of him. Aching for him, she asked, “Then what? What will you do?”
His lips drew taut, baring his teeth; for an instant, he appeared starkly afraid. But no fear marked his voice. “When I saw Elena in Andelain, she told me where to find Foul. In Mount Thunder-a place inside the Wightwarrens called Kiril Threndor. I'm going to pay him a little visit.”
“He'll kill you!” Linden cried, immediately aghast. “If you can't defend yourself, he'll just kill you and it'll all be wasted,” everything he had suffered, venom-relapses, the loss of Seadreamer and Honninscrave, of Ceer, Hergrom, and Brinn, the silence of the Elohim, his caamora for the Unhomed of Seareach, the tearing agony and fusion of the Banefire,
“Wasted! What kind of answer is that”
But his certainty was unshaken. To her horror, he smiled at her again. Until it softened, his expression wrung her out of herself, made her want to scream at him as if he had become a Raver. Yet it did soften. When he spoke, he sounded neither desperate nor doomed, but only gentle and indefeasibly resigned.
“There are a few things Foul doesn't understand. I'm going to explain them to him.”
Gentle, yes, and resigned; but also annealed, fused to the hard metal of his purpose. Explain them to him? she thought wildly. But in his mouth the words did not sound like folly. They sounded as settled and necessary as the fundament of the Earth.
However, he was not untouched by her consternation. More urgently, as if he also wanted to bridge the gulf between them, he said, "Linden, think about it. Foul can't break the Arch without breaking me first. Do you really think he can do that? After what I've been through?”
She could not reply. She was sinking in a vision of his death-of his body back in the woods behind Haven Farm pulsing its last weak life onto the indifferent stone. The old man whose life she had saved before she had ever met Covenant had said to her like a promise. You will not fail, however he may assail you. There is also love in the world. But she had already failed when she had let Covenant be struck by that knife, let him go on dying. All love was gone.
But he was not done with her. He was leaning on the table now, supporting himself with his locked arms to look at her more closely; and the silver glow of the floor behind him limned his intent posture, made him luminous. Yet the yellow lamplight seemed human and needy as it shone on his face, features she must have loved from the beginning-the mouth as strict as a commandment, the cheeks lined with difficulties, the hair greying as if its colour were the ash left by his hot mind. The kindness he conveyed was the conflicted empathy and desire of a man who was never gentle with himself. And he still wanted something from her. In spite of what she had tried to do to him. Before he spoke, she knew that he had come to his reason for summoning her here-and for selecting this particular place, the room of a compassionate, dangerous, and perhaps wise man who had once been his friend.
In a husky voice, he asked, “What about you? What're you going to do?”
He had asked her that once before. But her previous response now seemed hopelessly inadequate. She raised her hands to her hair, then pushed them back down to her side
. The touch of her unclean tresses felt so unlovely, impossible to love, that it brought her close to tears. “I don't know,” she said. “I don't know what my choices are.”
For a moment, his certitude faded. He faced her, not because he was sure, but because he was afraid. “You could stay here,” he said as if the words hurt him. “The lore of the old Lords is still here. Most of it, anyway. Maybe the Giants could translate it for you. You might find a way out of this mess for yourself. A way back.” He swallowed at an emotion that leaked like panic past his resolve. Almost whispering, he added, “Or you could come with me.”
Come with-? Her percipience flared toward him, trying to read the spirit behind what he said. What was he afraid of? Did he dread her companionship, fear the responsibility and grief of having her with him? Or was he dismayed to go on without her?
Her legs were weak with exhaustion and desire, but she did not let herself sit down. A helpless tremor ran through her. "What do you want me to do?”
He looked like he would have given anything to be able to turn his head away; yet his gaze held. Even now, he did not quail from what he feared.
“I want what you want. I want you to find something that gives you hope. I want you to come into your power. I want you to stop believing that you're evil-that your mother and father are the whole truth about you. I want you to understand why you were chosen to be here.” His visage pleaded at her through the lamplight. “I want you to have reasons.”
She still did not comprehend his apprehension. But he had given her an opportunity she coveted fervidly, and she was determined to take it at any cost. Her voice was thick with a kind of weeping she had suppressed for most of her life; but she no longer cared how much frailty or need she exposed. All the severity and detachment to which she had trained herself had fled, and she did not try to hail them back. Trembling fiercely to herself, she uttered her avowal.
“I don't want hope. I don't want power. I don't care if I never go back. Let Foul do his worst-and to hell with him. I don't even care if you're going to die.” That was true. Death was later: he was now. “I'm a doctor, not a magician. I can't save you unless you go back with me-and if you offered me that, I wouldn't take it. What's happening here is too important. It's too important to me.” And that also was true; she had learned it among the wounded in the forehall of the Keep. “All I want is a living love. For as long as I can get it.” Defying her weakness, she stood erect before him in the lamplight as if she were ablaze. “I want you.”
At that, he bowed his head at last; and the relief which flooded from him was so palpable that she could practically embrace it. When he looked up again, he was smiling with love-a smile which belonged to her and no one else. Tears streaked his face as he went to the door and closed it, shutting out the consequences of wild magic and venom. Then from the doorway he said thickly, “I wish I could've believed you were going to say that. I would've told Cail to bring us some blankets.”
But the safe gutrock of Revelstone enclosed them with solace, and they did not need blankets.
Twelve: Those Who Part
THEY did not sleep at all that night Linden knew that Covenant had not slept the previous night, on the verge of the jungle outside Revelstone; she had been awake herself, watching the stretched desperation of his aura with her percipience because Cail had refused to let her approach the ur-Lord. But the memory no longer troubled her; in Covenant's place, she might have done the same tiling. Yet that exigent loneliness only made this night more precious too precious-to be spent in sleep. She had not been in his arms since the crisis of the One Tree; and now she sought to impress every touch and line of him onto her hungry nerves.
If he had wanted sleep himself, she would have been loath to let him go. But he had resumed his certainty as if it could take the place of rest; and his desire for her was as poignant as an act of grace. From time to time, she felt him smiling the smile that belonged solely to her; and once he wept as if his tears were the same as hers. But they did not sleep.
At the fringes of her health-sense, she was aware of the great Keep around her. She felt Cail's protective presence outside the door. She knew when the Banefire went out at last, quenched by the sovereign waters of Glimmermere. And as the abused stone of the sacred enclosure cooled, the entire city let out a long granite sigh which seemed to breathe like relief through every wall and floor. Finally she felt the distant flow of the lake stop as Nom restored the stream to its original channel. For the remainder of this one night, at least, Revelstone had become a place of peace.
Before dawn, however, Covenant arose from Mhoram's intimate bed. As he dressed, he urged Linden to do the same. She complied without question. The communion between them was more important than questions. And she read him clearly, knew that what he had in mind pleased him. That was enough for her. Shrugging her limbs back into the vague discomfort of her grimy clothes, she accepted the clasp of his numb hand and climbed with him through the quiet Keep to the upland plateau.
At Revelstone's egress, they left Cail behind to watch over their privacy. Then, with a happy haste in his strides Covenant led her west and north around the curve of the plateau toward the eldritch tarn which she had used against the Banefire without ever having seen it.
Toward Glimmermere, where Mhoram had hidden the krill of Loric for the Land's future. Where sprang the only water outside Andelain Earthpowerful enough to resist the Sunbane. And where, Linden now remembered Covenant had once gone to be told that his" dreams were true.
She felt he was taking her to the source of his most personal hope.
From the east, a wash of grey spread out to veil the stars, harbingering dawn. A league or two away in the west, the Mountains strode off toward the heavens; but the hills of the upland were not rugged. In ages past, their grasses and fields had been rich enough to feed all the city at need. "Now, however, the ground was barren under Linden's sensitive feet; and some of her weariness, a hint of her wastelanded mood, returned to her, leeching through her soles. The sound of the water, running unseen past her toward Furl Falls, seemed to have a hushed and uncertain note, as if in some way the outcome of the Earth were precariously balanced and fragile about her. While the Sunbane stalked the Land, she remembered that Covenant's explanation of his new purpose made no sense.
There are a few things Foul doesn't understand. I'm going to explain them to him.
No one but a man who had survived an immersion in the Banefire could have said those words as if they were not insane.
But the dry coolness of the night still lingered on the plateau; and his plain anticipation made doubt seem irrelevant, at least for the present. Northward among the hills he led her, angling away from the cliffs and toward the stream. Moments before the sun broached the horizon, he took her past the crest of a high hill; and she found herself looking down at the pure tarn of Glimmermere, It lay as if it were polished with its face open to the wide sky. In spite of the current flowing from it, its surface was unruffled, as flat and smooth as burnished metal. It was fed by deep springs which did not stir or disturb it. Most of the water reflected the fading grey of the heavens; but around the rims of the tam were imaged the hills which held it, and to the west could be seen the Westron Mountains, blurred by dusk and yet somehow precise, as faithfully displayed as in a mirror. She felt that if she watched those waters long enough she would see all the world rendered in them.
All the world except herself. To her surprise, the lake held no echo of her. It reflected Covenant at her side; but her it did not heed. The sky showed through her as if she were too mortal or insignificant to attract Glimmermere's attention.
“Covenant-?” she began in vague dismay. “What-?” But he gestured her to silence, smiled at her as if the imminent morning made her beautiful. Half running, he went down the slope to the tarn's edge. There he pulled on" his T-shirt, removed his boots and pants. For an instant, he looked back up at her, waved his arm to call her after him. Then he dove out into Glimmermere. His
pale flesh pierced the water like a flash of joy as he swam toward the centre of the lake.
She followed half involuntarily, both moved and frightened by what she saw. But then her heart lifted, and she began to hurry. The ripples of his dive spread across the surface like promises. The lake took hold of her senses as if it were potent enough to transform her. Her whole body ached with a sudden longing for cleanliness. Out in the lake, Covenant broke water and gave a holla of pleasure that carried back from the hills. Quickly, she unbuttoned her shirt, kicked her shoes away, stripped off her pants, and went after him.
Instantly, a cold shock flamed across her skin as if the water meant to burn the grime and pain from her. She burst back to the surface, gasping with a hurt that felt like ecstasy. Glimmermere's chill purity lit all her nerves.
Her hair straggled across her face. She thrust the tresses aside and saw Covenant swimming underwater toward her. The clarity of the lake made him appear at once close enough to touch and too far away to ever be equalled.
The sight burned her like the water's chill. She could see him-but not herself. Looking down at her body, she saw only the reflection of the sky and the hills. Her physical substance seemed to terminate at the waterline. When she raised her hand, it was plainly visible-yet her forearm and elbow beneath the surface were invisible. She saw only Covenant as he took hold of her legs and tugged her down to him.
Yet when her head was underwater and she opened her eyes, her limbs and torso reappeared as if she had crossed a plane of translation into another kind of existence.
His face rose before her. He kissed her happily, then swung around behind her as they bobbed back upward. Breaking water, he took a deep breath before he bore her down again. But this time as they sank he gripped her head in his hands, began to scrub her scalp and hair. And the keen cold water washed the dirt and oil away like an atonement.
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