The Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Book One

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “However, the greatest accusation is this. She has a son who has been captured by Corruption. Her desire to redeem him is both proper and seemly. Yet her actions in his name have threatened the destruction of the Arch of Time.”

  Mahrtiir muttered imprecations under his breath. Softly Liand asked Linden, “Why do you suffer this? What manner of men advocate the sacrifice of threatened children?”

  Placing her hand on the young man’s arm, she gripped him hard to quiet him. She already knew what Stave would say.

  The Master ignored her companions. “For the sake of her son,” he proclaimed, “she entered a Fall of Esmer’s summoning, daring the past to seek for the Staff of Law. There she forged an alliance between the Waynhim and the ur-viles, which have ever opposed each other. And when we were beset by the Demondim, as well as by the power of the Illearth Stone, she herself caused the Fall which has delivered both them and us to Revelstone. Doing so, she has inflicted yet another dire bane upon the Land.

  “I am Haruchai and fear nothing. Yet I fear to inquire what else she may attempt in her son’s name.”

  Mahrtiir breathed an obscenity, but did not interrupt.

  “Now she has entered Revelstone holding both white gold and the Staff of Law.” At last, Stave turned to gaze at Linden. His face held no expression, but shadows which she could not interpret haunted his single eye like ghosts. “I do not doubt that she is a woman of honor, and that all of her purposes are benign. Indeed, she has spoken eloquently of her love for the Land. Nevertheless she is mortal, and her powers surpass the strictures of mortal flesh and desire. If ever she knows a moment of despair—which is surely Corruption’s intent—she will wreak such ruin as the Earth has never known.”

  Then he looked away. “Thus she reenacts the error which destroyed the fidelity of the Bloodguard. As did Korik, Sill, and Doar, she commands powers which exceed her. Yet none will question that those Bloodguard were men of honor.

  “The first principle of our Mastery,” he told his people, “is that the uses of such power must ultimately serve Corruption. Is it not therefore certain that Linden Avery the Chosen will in the end become a servant of the Despiser?

  “She will perhaps reply that she is warded from doom by the purity of her purpose. Her desire, she may assert, is merely to redeem her son rather than to defeat Corruption. Yet her own deeds gainsay her. Twice she has imposed healing upon me against my desires. Thus she has demonstrated that she cares nothing for the honor of those who do not share her purpose.

  “Beyond question she has already begun to tread the path of Corruption’s service.”

  There he stopped, leaving Linden daunted in spite of herself. His recitation eroded her detachment; her certainty. In his own way, he had told the truth about her. If she accepted his assumptions, she could not contest his conclusion. It was as ineluctable as loss.

  Good cannot be accomplished by evil means.

  After Esmer had almost beaten Stave to death, she believed that the Haruchai had given her permission to treat him. But she could not say the same for her actions the previous day. In the forehall, she had reached out with the Staff reflexively; had responded to Stave’s wounds simply because he was hurt.

  Again you have shamed me—There she had violated her own convictions as well as his. If power could corrupt, then it had already begun to corrupt her.

  Now she clutched Mahrtiir’s forearm as well, holding both men to keep them from speaking—and to assure herself that she was not alone. She could not answer Stave’s charges directly. She had already sacrificed her right to do so. And the Masters would not yield to simple contradiction. She had to go further.

  She had to show them that their fundamental assumptions were false. That good could come of deeds and risks and even purposes which appeared evil.

  “Are you done?” she asked grimly. “Is it my turn yet?”

  She was angry at herself; but she knew that anger would not serve her. She could not undo her mistakes. And her ire was merely a defense against pain and fear. Deliberately she put such things aside. Surgeries were full of bleeding which could not be staunched, wounds which resisted repair, deaths which defied refusal. Anger and grief only prevented the surgeon from accomplishing as much as possible.

  When Handir replied with a severe nod, she said more gently, “I’m not going to contradict anything Stave told you. It’s the truth. Instead I’ll give you a better answer. In fact, I’ll give you three.

  “But just so you’ll know—” she added to Stave. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask your permission yesterday. You’re right. I should have done that.”

  And accepted his answer.

  Her accuser faced her regret without a word. He had already gone too far to be turned aside.

  Sighing, she released her grasp on her friends, wrapped her hands around the Staff, and rose to her feet. As Stave withdrew from the center of the floor, she took a few steps over the twisted stone, then stopped to plant the heel of the Staff between her feet and hold up her head.

  Briefly she considered revealing the advice that she had received from Covenant in her dreams. No doubt Stave had already told his kinsmen what Anele had said when he had spoken for her dead love. And Covenant’s name might carry weight with the Masters. But she did not know what to make of his messages—if in fact they were messages at all, and not the by-products of her dreaming dreads.

  Whatever happened, she needed to withstand the Masters on her own terms.

  Still facing Stave as if he were the only one of his people who mattered, she said quietly, “We’re wasting time here. The Demondim will be back,” she was sure of that. “We should be deciding what to do, not blaming each other.

  “But you’re the Masters of the Land. You’ve done me the courtesy of explaining what you think I’ve done wrong,” when they could have simply left her to the horde, or taken Covenant’s ring and the Staff from her. “You deserve the same from me.”

  Only then did she shift her attention to Handir. Obliquely her words were still addressed to Stave. But she had already contradicted and defied him enough. He might hear her more clearly now if she spoke to the Voice of the Masters.

  “Tell me something,” she asked abruptly. “How do they do it?”

  Handir lifted an eyebrow. “Chosen?”

  “The Demondim. How do they use the Illearth Stone? You can sense them.” And the discernment of the Haruchai exceeded hers. “Explain it to me.

  “At first I thought they must have found some lost fragment of the original Stone. But now I don’t think so. They have too much power—and too many of them have it at once. And we all know that the Illearth Stone was destroyed.

  “So how do they do it?”

  The older Haruchai paused for a moment, apparently considering his response. He may have thought that the capabilities of the Demondim were irrelevant to Stave’s accusations. Still he decided to answer.

  “The Demondim wield a Fall. Among them they both command and sustain it, causing it to serve them. This Fall spans time to a distant age when the Illearth Stone remained intact. Similarly it extends deep among the roots of Gravin Threndor, to the place where the Stone lay hidden until Drool Rockworm discovered it. Therefore the might which the Demondim employ is great. It arises unhindered from its source.”

  Linden frowned. He might be right—Like the Lost Deep, where the Demondim had bred their descendants, the Illearth Stone had once been buried far beneath Mount Thunder. The Vile-spawn could conceivably have known the Stone’s location centuries or millennia before Drool Rockworm uncovered it.

  But she needed confirmation. “Are you sure? If they can do that, why don’t they just shatter Time and be done with it? Instead they’re toying with us. Why do they even bother?”

  “If Corruption were able to destroy the Arch,” replied Handir, “he would have done so ere now. Some Law or power constrains him, and his servants with him.

  “Observe that the Fall violates the Law of Time, but that the use of
the Illearth Stone which the Fall enables does not. The Demondim have not altered the past. In some fashion, the Law of Time intervenes to preserve itself.

  “This we do not comprehend. We know only that the Falls are perilous and terrible. We cannot say why their evil does not suffice to undo the Arch. The Lords spoke of restrictions inherent to the nature of power. They named ‘the necessity of freedom,’ among others. However, such lore is beyond our ken. It is only plain to us that the Demondim act as they do because their power extends no further.”

  “All right.” Linden nodded, accepting the idea. “For some reason, they have limits.” Obviously something prevented Lord Foul from using Joan’s ring directly. “That might help us. But it’s not enough. Here’s the important question.

  “Can you beat them? All of you together?” Every living Haruchai? “Can you prevent them from turning this whole place into a pile of rubble?”

  Handir faced her as if nothing she might say could disturb him. “We cannot.”

  Trying to pierce his impassivity, Linden made a show of surprise. “And you don’t think you need me? You don’t think you need power? You admit you can’t save Revelstone, much less the Land, but you don’t want help?”

  From the edge of the floor, Liand nodded vigorous approval. Mahrtiir watched her with encouragement gleaming in his eyes.

  But the Voice of the Masters was not swayed. “Kevin Landwaster heeded such concerns,” he countered. “We do not. Our worth and our purposes are measured by the forces arrayed against us, but we are not judged by victory or defeat, life or death. Rather we value ourselves according to our honor and steadfastness. That the Demondim are able to wield the might of the Illearth Stone does not require us to abandon who we are.

  “Knowing this, we do not choose to emulate the Landwaster’s despair.”

  Linden stifled a groan. In Handir’s response, she recognized the passion of the Haruchai for absolute judgments. Even Cail, who had served the Search for the One Tree with an almost limitless valor and fidelity: even he had not questioned the final denunciation of the Haruchai. His fault was not that he had succumbed to the merewives, but that he had lived on after his seduction. She did not doubt that the Masters would rather die as a race than retract their chosen form of service.

  But she was not prepared to simply strive and fail and die. Not while her son needed her. Not while the Land was in such peril.

  And she knew that Handir had not told her the whole truth. He had said nothing of his people’s fear that they would be taken by the passion which had overcome Cail as well as Korik, Sill, and Doar. Liand was right about the Masters. They feared to grieve.

  Tightening her grasp on the Staff, she frowned at Handir. “I think I understand,” she said slowly. “You’re mortal. You can’t afford to judge yourselves by standards that transcend your limitations. That was Korik’s mistake. It may even have been Kevin’s.”

  There her detachment faltered. Anger began to throb in her voice as she continued.

  “But that doesn’t explain why you don’t want help. It doesn’t explain your so-called Mastery of the Land.

  “It’s one thing to give your best and then accept what happens. You do that. You’ve always done it. But this time you’ve gone further. This time you think you have the right to prevent other people from doing the same. Isn’t that true? As far as I can tell, you didn’t become Masters because you want to save the Land. You did it because you want to stop anyone else from saving it.

  “Am I wrong?” she demanded. “Then say so. Tell me why.”

  The Voice of the Masters remained relaxed in front of her; apparently untouched. But his nostrils flared slightly with each breath, and a small muscle clenched and released at the corner of his jaw.

  Linden thought that she heard indignation in his tone as he retorted, “That is unjust. We prevent nothing except the use of power.”

  “No, you don’t,” she insisted. “You’ve gone much further than that. Stave accused me of healing him without giving him a choice. You’ve prevented anyone from having the choice to use power. In effect, you’ve decided in advance that there hasn’t ever been and won’t ever be anyone in the Land wise enough to use Earthpower well. You’ve prejudged every person and every decision and every action since the day you became Masters. And that just doesn’t make sense.

  “Look at it this way,” she said, hurrying so that she would not be interrupted. “You know what’s going to happen when the Demondim come back. You’ll fight them with everything you’ve got, and you’ll be slaughtered. But you don’t know what would happen if you trusted me to help you. Or if you helped me find my son.”

  Then Linden shook her head. “But that’s not a good example. I’m not ignorant. And so far you haven’t done anything to get in my way. Here’s a better one.

  “You can’t possibly know what the result would be if Liand had the training and resources to be a Graveler.” She did not glance at the Stonedownor, although she felt his surprise. “Sunder did. You know that. And you also know that Covenant would not have lived long enough to save your people from the Clave if Sunder hadn’t helped him. So how can you believe that Liand doesn’t have the right to know as much as Sunder did?”

  Abruptly she stopped, nearly panting with the force of her assertion.

  Handir raised an eyebrow; but he did not pause to consult with the other Masters. “Linden Avery,” he replied flatly, “we act as we do because the alternative is plainly impossible. We cannot intervene in decisions and actions after their effects have become known. The opportunity to prevent them has passed. And we are too few. All the Haruchai who have ever lived would not suffice to ward from evil every person who might seek to make use of Earthpower.

  “Yet we have determined that we cannot stand aside. The evil is too great. And Brinn has become the Guardian of the One Tree. Are we less than he? Must we do less than serve as the guardians of the Land? No. You cannot ask it of us. But if we will serve, how otherwise may our task be accomplished? We must prevent the use of Earthpower. No other way is possible for us.”

  Linden did not hesitate. She could not. And in her chambers she had prepared herself for this moment. Handir had given her the opening she needed.

  Breathing hard, she glared at him. “Then look at it this way,” she continued, carried on a rising wave of anger. “There stand the Humbled.” With the back of her hand, she slapped a gesture toward the Masters holding Anele. “Galt and—”

  Momentarily she stumbled. She did not know their names.

  “The Humbled,” Handir informed her, “are Galt, Clyme, and Branl.”

  “Fine,” she returned. “The Humbled. They’re supposed to be living reminders that you can’t master evils like the Illearth Stone and Ravers and Corruption. Which sounds good, I have to admit. But how did they get the job? How did you choose them?”

  Again she did not grant their Voice a chance to interrupt her. “Christ, Handir, they fought for the privilege.” Her words were flames. They leaped and burned as she uttered them. “They think it’s an honor to be maimed like that. They beat the shit out of each other for the status of reminding you that you need humility.”

  Responding to her passion, the Staff began to burn in her grasp. Its fire reached higher with every utterance. If she did not restrain it, the rush of power would light the unharmed ceiling of the Close.

  She would be able to see what the love of the Giants had crafted there.

  For a moment, she let her fire rise. Then, deliberately, she swallowed her ire until the Staff was quenched. The force of her emotions served only to remind her that she was not helpless. It would not increase her credibility.

  Quietly now, she said, “I think you’ve missed the point of what happened on the Isle of the One Tree. I don’t know how Cail told the story, but I was there. I saw it.

  “Brinn didn’t win that fight. He lost. In fact, he surrendered,” just as Covenant had surrendered to Lord Foul in Kiril Threndor. “He let the Guard
ian kill him. And he became the new Guardian by taking the old one with him when he died.

  “I’m sorry, Handir,” she finished as calmly as she could. “If you and the Humbled and the rest of the Masters are trying to follow Brinn’s example, you’re going about it the wrong way. You haven’t just denied everyone else the right to make their own choices. You’ve missed the point.”

  Handir held up his hand. In spite of his apparent relaxation, however, his gesture had the certainty of a blow. With one small motion, he dominated the Close as if the rectitude and indignation of all his people were invested in him. Even the light seemed to concentrate on him, focused by his underlying authority.

  The Cords and Liand stared at him in chagrin. Mahrtiir swore under his breath.

  “It is enough,” the Voice of the Masters pronounced like a knell. “We have heard you. Now you will desist. Because you are the Chosen, we have suffered the challenge of your words. But you fault us to no purpose.

  “Perhaps you have described us justly. Perhaps not. It alters nothing. Your recriminations do not pertain to the hazard of your actions in the Land. The truth remains that you have dared the destruction of all the Earth for the sake of your son. And now you do not assure us that the danger is past. Rather you seek to disguise your actions by diminishing ours.

  “Yet this answer I will grant to you.” The muscles at the corners of his jaw knotted and released to the beat of his words. “It is true that we have placed ourselves foremost in the Land’s defense. For this we might claim to merit respect rather than accusation. But if we fall, the Land will remain, and all who wish to strive against Corruption may do so in any fashion which seems good to them.”

  “No, Handir,” Linden retorted at once. “Now you’re just being dishonest.” She had come too far to hold back. “You’ve done everything you can to erase that possibility. You’ve kept the people of the Land from knowing anything about Earthpower, or their own history, or the evils they’ll have to face. I tell you, it’s wrong. You’ve made too many decisions for other people, and you never had the right.