Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant 02 - Fatal Revenant

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “And do you not fear that I will reveal you?” answered a light voice.

  Cupping her free hand over her eyes, Linden began blinking furiously, trying to accustom herself to the cold white glare so that she could see. She had never heard that voice before.

  “You,” Covenant snorted. “You wouldn’t dare. You’ll be caught in the cross-fire. You’ll lose everything.”

  “Perhaps you speak sooth—” the stranger began.

  Covenant insisted. “So what the hell are you doing? Damn it, we’re not supposed to be here.”

  “—yet my knowledge suffices,” the other voice continued calmly, “to intervene in your designs. As you have seen.”

  Linden fought the stricken numbness of her senses; and after a moment, she found that she could discern the new arrival. He stood a few paces beyond Covenant. Even through the confusion of cold and dazzling, he appeared to be an ordinary man. If he moved, his steps did not crunch as Covenant’s did. Nevertheless his aura seemed comparatively human.

  And yet—And yet—

  Something about the man conveyed an impression of slippage, as if in some insidious, almost undetectable fashion he was simultaneously in front of and behind himself; and on both sides—

  Perhaps he had simply stepped out of hiding when Covenant demanded it.

  “You didn’t have to show me,” retorted Covenant bitterly. “I already know what you can do. Hellfire, I already know what you’re going to do. What I don’t know is why you put me here. This is the wrong time. Not to mention the wrong damn place.”

  “The Elohim would have done so, if I did not.” The stranger sounded amused.

  The Elohim—? Still blinking urgently, Linden made slits of her fingers; tried to force herself to see through the hurtful brilliance. By slow degrees, her health-sense adjusted to the changed world. Spring had inexplicably become winter—

  Covenant swore between his teeth. “No, they wouldn’t. That’s why I brought her. As long as they think she’s the Wildwielder, she protects me.

  “Anyway,” he growled. “you hate them. You people might as well be that ‘darkness’ they keep talking about, that shadow on their hearts. So why are you doing their dirty work?”

  “It pleases me to usurp them, when I may.” Now the man’s tone suggested satisfaction; smugness. “Also I do not desire the destruction of the Earth. The peril of your chosen path I deemed too great. Therefore I have set you upon another. It is equally apt for your purpose. And its hazards lie within the scope of my knowledge. It will serve me well.”

  Covenant, Linden tried to say, listen to me. Where is Jeremiah? What have you done to my son? But the cold scraped at her throat with every breath, making the muscles clench. She was involuntarily mute; helpless.

  “No,” Covenant snapped, “it isn’t equally damn apt. It’s a bloody disaster. You people are such infernal meddlers. I wish you would find something else to do. Go start a war with somebody, leave the rest of us alone.”

  The stranger laughed. “When such powers are joined in the hands of one who is constrained by mortality, unable to wield both together?” His tone was ambiguous, a mixture of scorn and regret. “When the Elohim as a race gnash their teeth in frustration and fear? My gratification is too great to be denied. If ever she obtains that which will enable her to bear her strengths, your chagrin will provide my people with vast amusement.”

  He did not sound amused.

  “Amusement, hell,” growled Covenant. “If that ever happens—which it won’t—your people will be frantically trying to stop her, just like everybody else. Only in their case, it’ll be sheer greed. They’ll want all that power for themselves.

  “Oh, that’s right,” he added suddenly, mocking the newcomer. “I forgot. Your people hardly ever agree on anything. Half of them will be after her power. Half of them will be busy at something completely loony, like trying to make friends with the damn Worm of the World’s End. And half of them will be doing the only thing they’re really good at, which is watching the rest of the world go by and wishing they were Elohim.”

  At last, the stabbing glare was blunted enough to let Linden make out blurred details through the slits between her fingers. Gradually her health-sense approached clarity. The sun shone hard on a wide field of snow; snow so pristine and untrampled that it reflected and concentrated the light cruelly. At one time, she guessed, it would have covered her knees. But it had fallen some time ago. Days of hard sunshine had melted its surface often enough to compact the snow and form an icy crust. As her vision improved, she could see the scars which Covenant’s boots had gouged in the snow, leading away from her. But he and his companion or antagonist remained indistinct: they were no more than blots on her straining sight.

  The surrounding silence was sharper than the chill, and more ominous.

  She did not know where she was. She could be sure only that she was still in the Land. Even through the snow and her freezing boots, she felt its characteristic life-pulse, its unique vitality. But this place was not familiar in any other way.

  “Covenant.” Her voice was a hoarse croak, raw with cold. “Where’s Jeremiah?”

  Instead of responding to Covenant’s gibes, the stranger said, “She requires your consolation.” Now he sounded impatient with Covenant. “Doubtless your merciful heart will urge you to attend to her. I will abide the delay.”

  The imprecise stain of Covenant’s shape appeared to gesture in Linden’s direction. “Ignore her. She always thinks what she wants is more important than what anybody else is doing. She’s lost here without me. We’re too far from her time. And she can’t get back without me. She can wait until I’m done with you.”

  Too far—

  She should have been shocked.

  —from her time.

  Covenant had removed her from Revelstone, from the upland plateau, from her friends—and from the time in which she belonged.

  And she can’t get back—

  But the incomprehensible jolt of her dislocation was fading as her senses reasserted themselves. She could not be shocked again, or paralyzed: not while Jeremiah was missing. At that moment, nothing else mattered.

  Don’t you understand that you can still erase me?

  Covenant had cause to fear her. She could compel answers—

  Squeezing her eyes shut to dismiss tears of pain, Linden opened them again; dropped her hand. “Covenant!” she gasped harshly as she took a couple of unsteady steps toward him. Her boots broke through the stiff crust and plunged into snow deep enough to reach her shins. “Catch!”

  In desperation and dismay, she flung the Staff of Law straight at him.

  Panic flared in his eyes. Cursing, he jumped aside.

  As he stumbled away, one heel of the Staff jabbed through the ice two or three paces beyond him. Then the wood fell flat. Almost immediately, its inherent warmth melted the crust. In a small flurry of snow, the shaft sank out of sight.

  “Hellfire!” Covenant panted. “Hellfire. Hellfire.”

  Linden stamped forward another step, then stopped as she saw the newcomer clearly for the first time.

  He was moving over the fierce whiteness of the snow. And he was closer to the Staff than she was. When he stooped to retrieve it, she could not stop him. Helplessly she watched him lift it in both hands, examine it from end to end.

  With her heart hammering, she clutched at the cold circle of Covenant’s ring: her only remaining instrument of power.

  A moment later, the stranger moved again. She feared that he would withdraw, but he did not. Instead he came toward her as if he were gliding over the surface of the ice.

  He was wrapped from head to foot in russet cloth: it covered him like a winding sheet. His hands and feet were bound. Even his head was bound, even his eyes, so that only the blunt protrusion of his nose and the hollow of his mouth indicated that his face had any features at all. Soon he stood before Linden, holding the Staff in shrouded hands.

  “Lady,” he said, “that was f
oolish. Yet it was also clever. Already the wisdom of my intervention is manifest.” He paused, obviously studying the Staff. Then he announced, “Sadly, it is incomplete. Your need is great. You will require puissance. I return this implement of Law to you with my thanks for the knowledge of its touch.”

  Formally he proffered the Staff to Linden.

  With her pulse pounding, Linden released the ring and snatched up her Staff.

  Then the stranger touched the spot where Covenant’s ring lay hidden under her clothes. “That is another matter altogether. I have dreamed of such might—” The light voice softened with awe and envy—and with compassion. “It is a heavy burden. It will become more so. And it is not for me. Therefore I am grieved. Yet I am also gladdened to learn that I have not dreamed in vain.”

  Linden ignored him. She had no attention to spare for anything except Jeremiah’s absence. And she had seen Covenant’s fright. She still had power over him.

  Driving her boots into the ice and snow, she surged toward her former lover.

  “Understand this!” she shouted as she floundered closer to him. “You want something. I don’t know what it is, but you want it bad. And I can keep you from getting it. You need me.” Her hands itched, eager for fire, where they gripped the Staff. “So answer the damn question. Where is my son?”

  For an instant, crimson glinted in Covenant’s eyes. Then it vanished, replaced by an expression that may have been alarm. “You’ll be lost—” he began.

  “I don’t care! Without Jeremiah, nothing that you do means anything to me!”

  He flinched; looked away. “Oh, well. He’ll be here.” His tone may have been intended to placate her. “Esmer helped us get away, but now he’s trying to hold onto your kid. Life would be so much easier if he would just make up his mind. But we were ready for him. And the ur-viles have regrouped. That’s lucky for us. Esmer can’t fight them and keep his grip on your kid at the same time.” Covenant appeared to study the air. “He’ll show up pretty soon. The power we used to slip past time ties us together.”

  Aid and betrayal.

  Linden was not sure that she believed him. Nevertheless his reply seemed to drain the strength from her limbs; the anger. At the same time, her overwrought nerves finally awoke to the cold. Her cloak had been drenched, and her clothes were wet. God, she was freezing—Winter and ice surrounded her. Wherever she was—and when—this was the coldest time of the year; too cold even for snow.

  She had no idea what was going on, or how to understand it. Pretty soon—Deliberately she looked around, hoping to see something that she could recognize; something that would make sense of her situation.

  But there was nothing familiar here except Covenant. She stood in ice and snow in the flat bottom of a wide valley surrounded by steep, snow-clad hills, all so white and bright and difficult to gaze upon that they might have been featureless. Sunlight as bitter and cutting as the snow poured down on her from a sky made pale by cold. And the sky held no suggestion of Kevin’s Dirt, or of any other taint. Nothing defined this place except the marks of her boots, and of Covenant’s, and the pain in her lungs. Without her health-sense, she would not have known north from south.

  Covenant had told the truth. She was too far from her time.

  If she did not find a source of heat soon, she would start to die. She was already shivering. That would grow worse; become uncontrollable. Then would come drowsiness. Soon the cold itself would begin to feel like warmth, and she would be lost.

  “All right,” she said, trembling. “Assume that I believe you. I can’t survive this. If I don’t use the Staff—” Her voice shook. “As far as I can see, the cold doesn’t bother you,” either Covenant or the stranger. “But it’s going to kill me.”

  I can’t do it without you.

  “Oh, that.” Covenant had recovered his air of superiority. “I’m doing so many things here, I forget how frail you are. Of course I don’t want you to freeze.”

  With his right hand, he made a quick gesture that seemed to leave a memory of fire in the air; and at once, Linden felt warmth wash through her. In an instant, her clothes and her cloak were dry: even her socks and the insides of her boots were dry. Almost without transition, she rebounded from harsh cold to a sustaining anger like an aftertaste of the gift which the Waynhim and the loremaster had given her.

  “Better?” asked Covenant with mordant sweetness. “Can I finish my conversation now?”

  Linden blinked—and found the stranger standing nearby. The swaddled man’s head shifted from side to side, directing hidden eyes back and forth between Covenant and Linden. When he was satisfied with the sight, he said. “There is no need for haste. I mean to accompany you for some little while. We may converse at leisure. And”—now the light voice was arch, almost taunting—“we have not been introduced.”

  “You don’t need a damn introduction,” growled Covenant. “You know who she is. And you sure as hell know who I am.”

  “But she does not know us,” said the stranger, chuckling. “Would you prefer that I speak on your behalf?”

  “Hellfire!” Covenant snapped at once. “Don’t even try it. I’ve already warned you.” Then he sighed. Apparently trying to mollify the newcomer, he began, “Linden, this is—”

  “Proceed with caution, Halfhand,” the man interrupted sharply. “If you step aside from the path which I have offered to you, the Elohim will assuredly intervene.”

  “Why?” Covenant demanded in surprise. “Why the hell would they bother? She’s here, isn’t she? That’s all they care about. And you’re going to humiliate them. Eventually, anyway. Why should they give a damn if I mess with you? Hell, I’d expect them to thank me.”

  He was part of the Arch of Time. And he had suggested that he knew—or could know—everything that had ever happened. Could he see the future as well? Or was his vision constrained by the present in which he had reified himself?

  Now it was the stranger who sighed. “The Elohim are haughty in all sooth. They decline to profit by the knowledge which may be gleaned from humiliation. Yet among them there are matters which outweigh even their own meritless surquedry. They will act to preserve the integrity of Time. They must.”

  “But they haven’t been humiliated yet,” countered Covenant. “How does what I tell her about you threaten Time?”

  With a show of patience, the newcomer explained. “Because she is here. In this circumstance, her mind cannot be distinguished from the Arch of Time. Do you dare to acknowledge that you do not comprehend this? Her place lies millennia hence. She has experienced the distant outcome of events which transpire in this present. If she is given knowledge which she cannot possess by right of that experience—knowledge which may alter her understanding of her own past—a paradox akin to the paradox of wild magic will ensue. Her every deed will have the power of wild magic to undo Time.

  “Yet if she acts freely, without incondign comprehension or suasion, her deeds will do no harm. That I will ensure. Therefore you must permit her to command—aye, and to make demands—as she chooses.” Again the man sighed. “I have said that I do not desire the destruction of the Earth. If you are wise—if wisdom is possible for one such as you—you also will not desire it.”

  Linden’s impatience for Jeremiah mounted. She could not understand what Covenant and the wrapped man were talking about; and she was sure that they would not explain themselves. They both had something to gain by mystifying her.

  Nonetheless their attitudes confirmed that they had reason to fear her. That was a form of power which she could use.

  Covenant was saying sourly. “Of course I don’t desire it. Hell and blood! Why didn’t you just say so? All this beating around the bush is giving me a headache.”

  Turning to Linden, he indicated the stranger with an exasperated gesture. “Linden, he’s the Theomach. That’s really all I can tell you about him. Except you’ve probably noticed that he’s crazy. His whole damn race is crazy.”

  Linden nodded
to herself. The stranger, the Theomach, had challenged Covenant to introduce him as a kind of test.

  “I don’t care,” she replied with her own acid sweetness. “None of this makes sense to me. And you both know that. I want you to stop treating me as if I weren’t here.

  “While we’re waiting for Jeremiah—” She faltered. “He is coming, isn’t he?” Both Covenant and the Theomach nodded. Tightening her grip on herself, she continued, “Then tell me. How did you do that? I didn’t feel a caesure.” She would not have failed to recognize any disruption of time that arose from white gold. “How did we get here?”

  Give me something that I can understand.

  Perhaps Covenant was free to go wherever he wished. But surely the fact that he had brought her with him endangered Time?

  Covenant muttered an obscenity under his breath. “You’re right. We didn’t break through time. We didn’t threaten the Arch. Instead we sort of slipped between the cracks. It’s like folding time. But it takes a lot more power. That’s why I couldn’t do it alone. Being in two places at once is hard enough. Moving us this far into the past really ought to be impossible.”

  “Indeed,” remarked the Theomach casually.

  “But your kid has his own magic now,” Covenant continued. “I told you that.” Think of it like blood from a wound. “When we work together, we can do some pretty amazing things. Like slip through cracks in time. Or make doors from one place to another.”

  I can build all kinds of doors. And walls. In the Land, Jeremiah’s talent for constructs had taken an entirely new form.

  “All right.” Linden shook her head in astonishment at what her son had become. “All right. I’ll assume that that makes sense.” What choice did she have? “I’ll try, anyway. So where are we? And when?”

  And why? What could Covenant—or Jeremiah—possibly do here that would save the Land?

  Scowling, Covenant looked around. Then he said, “Let’s go up there.” He nodded toward one of the hills bordering the valley on the south. “Right now, we’re in the middle of nowhere. If we want to accomplish anything, we have a lot of ground to cover.” He glared at the Theomach. “We might as well get started. You’ll understand better when you can see farther.”