Fatal Revenant

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “But you didn’t tell anyone about all this?” That, too, might have healed them. If nothing else, it might have eased their loneliness. “Anyone at all? Didn’t you think that someone might need to know your story?”

  Her protest was addressed to the Mahdoubt as well.

  The Humbled had moved closer, following the light as it shrank and faltered. They stood around Linden, Stave, and the Mahdoubt like sentinels or accusers, stiff with wariness or reproach.

  “Until this moment,” Stave acknowledged, “no Haruchai has spoken of these matters aloud, saving only Brinn during your approach to the One Tree. In the time of the Lords, the Bloodguard would have answered if any Lord or Giant had inquired. But none knew of the Insequent. There were no queries. Even in the approach to the One Tree, neither you nor the Unbeliever nor any Giant questioned Brinn and Cail concerning ak-Haru Kenaustin Ardenol, though you were informed that our knowledge was older than the time of the Bloodguard.

  “As you have confirmed, Berek Halfhand knew of the Theomach, as did Damelon Giantfriend. Yet that tale was transformed at its birth. It was told to suit the Theomach’s purpose. This also you have confirmed. No mention was made of the Insequent in Berek Heartthew’s presence, or in his son’s. Rather the first Halfhand’s thoughts were guided along other paths.

  “Nor have we deemed it needful to reveal our ancient shame. Though it remains fresh from generation to generation among us, the Insequent played no part in the stratagems of Corruption or the perils of the Land. We could not state with certainty that the Vizard’s kind had not ceased to exist. Why then should we speak of our humiliation?”

  Little more than embers remained in Stave’s eye as he said to Linden. “Perhaps now you will grasp the import of Brinn’s victory over the Guardian of the One Tree. It inspired the Haruchai to believe themselves equal to the Mastery of the Land, for it redeemed us to ourselves.”

  Linden grasped too much: she could not absorb it all. The acquiescence of the Humbled when the Mahdoubt had contradicted their wishes made sense to her now. But she did not know why the Mahdoubt had insisted on Stave’s tale. How was it needful, except as a farewell?

  When Stave was done, the Insequent seemed to call up old reserves of fortitude or determination. Straightening her shoulders arduously, she raised her chin to the advancing night.

  “Accept the Mahdoubt’s thanks,” she said to Stave, quavering. “She desires to end her days with kindness. On her behalf, you have granted my lady a precious boon.”

  In an instant, the woman’s utter frailty snatched away Linden’s other concerns. “My friend,” she murmured, bending close to the Mahdoubt. “Please. Isn’t there anything I can do? I’ve been trained to heal people. And I have the Staff of Law, for God’s sake. Surely I can—?”

  “My lady, no.” The old woman sounded sure in spite of her weakness. “The Mahdoubt’s knowledge does not partake of Law. It has preserved her far beyond her mortality. Assuredly. Now her end cannot be undone.

  “Her last boon,” she went on before Linden could protest, “is meant as solace. It is her wish to lessen your fears and sorrows. She desires you to be assured that you may trust this spurned Master. He has named his pain. By it he may be invoked.”

  Stave lifted his eyebrow, but did not respond.

  Damn it! Linden tried to protest. I know I can trust him. You don’t have to do this. But her grief remained trapped in her chest. She did not have the heart to plead, Please don’t leave me.

  Instead she said, “Thank you.” She was able to summon that much grace. “You’ve been my friend in more ways than I can count. I can’t honestly say that I understand you, but I know your kindness. And you’ve saved me—” For a moment, her throat closed. “If I ever manage to do something good,” by evil means or otherwise. “it will be because you believed in me.”

  The Mahdoubt lowered her head. “Then Quern Ehstrel is content.”

  There Linden nearly lost the clenched wrath that defended her. Trembling with imminent bereavement, she whispered, “Now please. Let me at least try to stop what’s happening to you. There are a lot of things that I can do, if you’ll let me.” Stave and Anele had refused her healing. They had that right. “I might find something—”

  “Forbear, my lady.” The Insequent’s voice held a desperate severity. “Permit to the Mahdoubt the dignity of departure.”

  “I know your true name,” countered Linden hoarsely. “Can’t I compel you?”

  The woman nodded. “Assuredly. The Mahdoubt begs that you do not.”

  With a tremulous effort, she detached one arm from Stave’s support. Tears blurred the discrepancy of her eyes, urging Linden to release her.

  When Linden let go at last, the Mahdoubt turned slowly from the dying embers of the campfire and began to walk away, tottering into the night. The Humbled bowed as they watched her pass. And Stave also bowed, according her the stern respect of the Haruchai.

  Linden could not match their example. Instead she hugged her Staff and bore witness.

  As the Mahdoubt reached the failing edge of the light, she tried to chant. “A simple charm will master time.” But her voice broke after a few words; shattered into giggling. And with every step, she lost substance, macerated by darkness. Dissolving from sight, she left a mad mirth behind her, laughter pinched with hysteria.

  But Linden closed her heart to the sound. As if in defiance, she concentrated instead on the salvific unction of the verses which had retrieved her from the Land’s past.

  The silent mind does not protest

  The ending of its days, or go

  To grief in loss and futile pain,

  But rather knows the healing gain

  Of time’s eternity at rest.

  The cause of sequence makes it so.

  No, she thought. I do not forgive. I will not.

  She knew no other way to say goodbye.

  5.

  Departure from Revelstone

  The walk back to Lord’s Keep seemed unnaturally long to Linden. She had gone farther from herself than she realized. Neither Stave nor the escorting Humbled spoke: she did not speak herself. The night was mute except for the sound of her boots on the hard ground. Yet the Mahdoubt’s broken giggling seemed to follow every step. In retrospect, Linden felt that she had wasted her friend’s life.

  Behind her, the Harrow’s campfire died at last. And the lamps and torches in Revelstone had been extinguished. The Masters may have been reluctant to proclaim the fact that the Keep’s gates remained open. Only the cold stars and the moon remained to light her way; but now she found no comfort in them.

  Stave would have directed her, of course, but she did not need that kind of help. She required an altogether different guidance. First she found her way by the limned silhouette of Revelstone. Then she headed toward the notched black slit where the gates under the watchtower stood partway open.

  When she entered the echoing passage beneath the tower—when she heard the massive granite thud as the gates were sealed behind her—and still the Masters offered her no illumination, she brought up flame from the end of the Staff, a small fire too gentle and dim to dazzle her. Earthpower could not teach her to accept the Mahdoubt’s passing, but it allowed her to see.

  Growing brighter and more needy with every stride, she paced the tunnel to the courtyard between the tower and the main Keep. Memories of giggling harried her as she approached the gap of the inner gates and the fraught space within them.

  There also the lamps and torches had been quenched. And they were not relit as the gates were sealed behind her. The darkness told her as clearly as words that the Masters had reached a decision about her.

  Defiantly she drew more strength from her Staff until its yellow warmth reached the ceiling of the forehall. With fire, she seemed to render incarnate the few Masters who awaited her. Then she turned to consider Stave and the Humbled.

  She could not read the passions that moved like the eidolons of their ancient past behind their uny
ielding eyes; but she saw clearly that their injuries were not severe. Doubtless their bruises and abrasions were painful. In places, blood continued to seep from their battered flesh. Stave’s wrists had been scraped raw by the Harrow’s grasp, and the bones were cracked. But he and the Humbled were Haruchai: their wounds would soon heal.

  After a brief scrutiny, Linden ignored Galt, Clyme, and Branl. Speaking only to Stave, she tried to emulate his unswayed demeanor.

  “I know that you’ll mend. I know that you don’t mind the pain.” His tale had taught her that the Haruchai were defined by their hurts. “And I know that you haven’t asked for help. But we’ll be in danger as soon as we leave here.” She was confident that Kastenessen and Roger—and perhaps Esmer as well—would attempt to prevent her from her goal. “It might be a good idea to let me heal you.” Stiffly she added, “I’ll feel better.”

  She had lost the Mahdoubt. She wanted to be able to succor at least one of her friends.

  Stave glanced from the Humbled to the other Masters. He may have been listening to their thoughts; their judgments. Or perhaps he was simply consulting his pride, asking himself whether he was willing to appear less intractable than his kinsmen. Cracked bones broke easily: they might hinder his ability to defend her.

  “Chosen,” he remarked. “the days that I have spent as your companion have been an unremitting exercise in humility.” He spoke without inflection; but his expression hinted that he had made the Haruchai equivalent of a joke.

  He extended his hands to her as if he were surrendering them.

  His decision—his acceptance—touched her too deeply to be acknowledged. She could not afford her own emotions, and had no reply except fire.

  With Law and Earthpower and percipience, she worked swiftly. While the men who had spurned Stave watched, rigid in their disdain, she honored his sacrifice; his abandoned pride. Her flame restored his flesh, sealed his bones. His gift to her was also a bereavement: it diminished him in front of his people. Thousands of years of Haruchai history would denounce him. Still she received his affirmation gladly. It helped her bear the loss of the Mahdoubt.

  When she was done, she turned her senses elsewhere, searching Revelstone’s ambience for some indication of how much of the night remained. She was not ready for dawn—or for whatever decision the Masters had reached. She needed a chance to think; to absorb what she had seen and heard, and to ward away her grief.

  After a moment, Stave asked as though nothing profound had occurred, “Will you return to your rooms, Chosen? There is yet time for rest.”

  Linden shook her head. The Keep’s vast bulk muffled her discernment, but she felt that sunrise was still a few hours away. She might have enough time to prepare herself—

  “If you don’t mind,” she said quietly. “I want to go to the Hall of Gifts.”

  She wished to visit Grimmand Honninscrave’s cairn. Old wounds were safer company: she had learned how to endure them. And remembering them might enable her to forget the Mahdoubt’s fading, shattered laughter. She had failed the older woman. Now she sought a reminder that great deeds could sometimes be accomplished by those who lacked Thomas Covenant’s instinct for impossible victories.

  Fortunately Stave did not demur. And the Masters made no objection. If they had ignored the Aumbrie since the fall of the Clave, they had probably given even less attention to the Hall of Gifts. Indeed, Linden doubted that any of them had entered the Hall for centuries, except perhaps to retrieve the arras which she had seen hanging in Roger’s and Jeremiah’s quarters. Her desire would not threaten them: they had made up their minds about her.

  At Stave’s side, she left the forehall, escaping from new sorrows to old, and lighting her steps with the ripe corn and sunshine comfort of Staff-fire.

  Her destination was deep in Revelstone’s gutrock: she remembered that. But she had not been there for ten years. And Revelstone’s size and complexity still surprised her. She and Stave descended long stairways and followed unpredictable passages until the air, chilled by the tremendous mass of impending granite, grew too cool for comfort; cold enough to remind her of winter and bitterness. She warmed herself with the Staff, however, and did not falter.

  Like the cave of the EarthBlood, the Hall of Gifts was a place where Lord Foul’s servants had suffered defeat.

  At last, Stave brought her to a set of wide doors standing open on darkness. From beyond them came an impression of broad space and old dust. As far as she knew, they had not been closed for three and a half thousand years.

  Lifting her flame higher, Linden entered with her companion into the Hall.

  It was a cavern wider than Revelstone’s forehall, and its ceiling rested far above her on the shoulders of massive columns. Here the Giants who had fashioned Lord’s Keep had worked with uncharacteristic crudeness, smoothing only the expanses of the floor, leaving raw stone for the columns and walls. Nevertheless the rough rock and the distant ceiling with its mighty and misshapen supports held a reverent air, clean in spite of the dust; an atmosphere as hushed and humbling as that of a cathedral.

  She had never beheld this place as its makers had intended. It had been meant as a kind of sanctuary to display and cherish works of beauty or prophecy fashioned by the folk of the Land. Long ago, paintings and tapestries hung on the walls. Sculptures large and small were placed around the floor or affixed to the columns on ledges and shelves. Stoneware urns and bowls, some plain, others elaborately decorated, were interspersed with works of delicate wooden filigree. And a large mosaic entranced the floor near the center of the space. In colors of viridian and anguish, glossy stones depicted High Lord Kevin’s despair at the Ritual of Desecration.

  Until the time of the Clave, the Hall of Gifts had been an expression of hope for the future of the Land. That was the mosaic’s import: Revelstone had survived the Ritual with its promise intact.

  For Linden, however, the cavern was a place of sacrifice and death.

  When she had followed Covenant here to challenge Gibbon Raver, she had been full of battle and terror. Instead of looking around, she had watched the Giant Grimmand Honninscrave and the Sandgorgon Nom defeat Gibbon. Honninscrave’s death had enabled Nom to destroy samadhi Sheol. For the first time since their birth in a distant age, one of the three Ravers had been effectively slain, rent; removed from Lord Foul’s service. Yet samadhi had not entirely perished. Rather Nom had consumed the fragments of the Raver, achieving a manner of thought and speech which the Sandgorgons had never before possessed.

  In gratitude, it seemed, Nom had raised a cairn over Honninscrave’s corpse, using the rubble of battle to honor the Master of Starfare’s Gem.

  Linden had come here now to remember her loves.

  The mound of broken stone which dominated the center of the cavern was Honninscrave’s threnody. It betokened more than his own sacrifice: it expressed his brother’s death as well. And it implied other Giants, other friends. The First of the Search. Her husband, Pitchwife. Ready laughter. Open hearts. Life catenulated to life.

  Link by link, Nom’s homage to Honninscrave brought Linden to Sunder and Hollian, whom she had loved dearly—and whom she did not intend to heed.

  They beg of you that you do not seek them out. Doom awaits you in the company of the Dead. But where could she turn for insight or understanding, if not to the people who had enabled her to become who she was?

  Everything came back to Thomas Covenant.

  As she began to move slowly around the cairn, studying old losses and valor by the light of Law, brave souls accompanied her, silent as reverie, and generous as they had been in life. And Stave, too, walked with her. If he wondered at her purpose here—at the strangeness of her response to the Mahdoubt’s fate—he kept his thoughts to himself.

  He could not know what she sought among the legacies of those who had died.

  When she had completed two circuits of the mound and begun a third, she murmured, musing, “You and the Masters talked about the Mahdoubt. ‘She serves R
evelstone,’ you told me. ‘Naught else is certain of her.’” And Galt had said, She is a servant of Revelstone. The name is her own. More than that we do not know. “Looking back, it’s hard to imagine that none of you even guessed who she was.”

  Her mind was full of slippage and indirect connections. She was hardly aware that she had spoken aloud until Stave stiffened slightly at her side. “Chosen? I do not comprehend.” Subtle undercurrents perplexed his tone. “Are you troubled that you were not forewarned?”

  “Oh, that.” Linden’s attention was elsewhere. “No. The Mahdoubt could have warned me herself. You all had your reasons for what you did.”

  Honninscrave had died in an agony of violation far worse than mere physical pain. Like him, she had once been possessed by a Raver: she knew that horror. But the Giant had gone further. Much further. He had held Sheol; had contained the Raver while Nom killed him. In its own way, Honninscrave’s end daunted her as profoundly as Covenant’s surrender to Lord Foul.

  She would not hesitate to trade her life for Jeremiah’s. Of course. He was her son: she had adopted him freely. But for that very reason, her willingness to die for him seemed trivial compared to Honninscrave’s self-expenditure, and to Covenant’s.

  “What then is your query?” asked Stave.

  She groped for a reply as if she were searching through the rubble of the cairn. “Everything seems to depend on me, but I’m fighting blind. I don’t know enough. There are too many secrets.” Too many conflicted intentions. Too much malice. “Your people don’t trust me. I’m trying to guess how deep their uncertainty runs.”

  How badly did it paralyze the Masters? How vehemently would they react against it?

  Stave studied her for a long moment. “I have no answer,” he said finally. “Your words suggest an inquiry, but your manner does not. If you wish it, I will speak of the Masters. Yet it appears that your desire lies elsewhere. What is it that you seek in this place?”