Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant 02 - Fatal Revenant

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “And since they’re the fucking Elohim,” he sneered, “they might not bother to put you back where you belong. They don’t approve of messing around with Time.”

  “All right.” In spite of her visceral distrust, Linden accepted his assertion. Both he and the Theomach had made the same point days ago. If they agreed with each other, she could assume that they were telling the truth—or some aspect of the truth. “I can live with a certain amount of ignorance.

  “But it would help me to know more about what we’re trying to accomplish. Can you tell me why you wanted to reach the EarthBlood when Damelon first discovers it?” The Theomach had said, The peril of your chosen path I deemed too great. And he had explained his reasons to Linden privately. “How would that have been better? You have so much power—Wouldn’t Damelon notice us? Wouldn’t that cause all kinds of trouble?”

  Covenant seemed inclined to humor her. “You should stop obsessing about the Theomach,” he said easily. “He likes to talk, but most of what he said was bullshit. He just wanted your help.

  “I could have kept Damelon from catching even a whiff of us. And Jeremiah has talents the Theomach can’t grasp.” With embers for eyes, Covenant gazed at the opposite wall. “What we had in mind was better because we wouldn’t have had to come this far back. The closer we stayed to your ‘present,’ the safer we would have been.” For a moment, his voice held a splash of acid. “And we wouldn’t have had to cope with this winter, or the distance, or Berek, or any of the other problems we have now.

  “Personally, I’m going to be delighted when the bloody Theomach finally gets what he deserves.”

  “All right,” Linden said again, sighing inwardly. “I’ve been confused for so long that I’m getting used to it.” From her perspective, the difference between being nine and a half instead of ten thousand years away from her proper time was too vague to have any significance. Impelled by a growing sense of alarm, she edged closer to her more fundamental questions. “But there’s something that I really do need to know.

  “Tell me if I have this right. We’re trying to find the Blood of the Earth. You want to use the Power of Command to trap Lord Foul and Kastenessen. Then I can use the same Power to free Jeremiah. And get back to where I belong.”

  She would never leave the Land. She was already dead in her natural reality. But Jeremiah was not: she had seen his chest unmarked by bullets.

  Covenant nodded, shedding shadows and reflected fire. “That’s the general idea. But you’ll have to think of a way to do everything you want with one Command. The EarthBlood is more powerful than you can imagine. No one survives tasting it twice.”

  “In that case—” Linden faced her son squarely, although he still did not look at her. The emanations of the cairn felt like fever on her cheeks. “Jeremiah, honey. I have to ask you what you want from me.

  “I assume that Joan will die as soon as Lord Foul stops keeping her alive. When that happens”—her throat closed for an instant—“you’ll leave the Land.” She no longer cared that Covenant had lied about this. “The EarthBlood might let me do something about that.

  “I might be able to protect your mind. Keep it the way it is now,” although she could not be confident that any Command of Earthpower would survive the translation between realities. “Or I can concentrate on rescuing you from wherever you’re hidden. I can try to free you so that you’ll be able to live the life you want here.” If she could phrase her Command to accomplish such things. “But I can’t do both. And I can’t make that choice for you. It’s up to you.”

  She did not believe that any single act of will would affect both her and her son. She would not be able to save herself as well as him. Aiding him would doom her: she would remain where she was now. And no caesure would help her. Neither the Law of Death nor the Law of Life had been broken yet. If she succeeded at creating a Fall, the Arch would surely be destroyed.

  When—or if—Covenant succeeded in his designs, Jeremiah would be lost to her forever.

  Covenant turned his head to look at her. Slowly he rubbed his cheeks. As he did so, the echoes of heat faded from his gaze. His eyes held only darkness.

  She thought that she was ready to accept her bereavement until Jeremiah said without hesitation. “I want to stay here. With Covenant.” Then tears burst from her, as hot as the stones, and as impossible to console. She was barely able to keep herself from sobbing aloud.

  She had been obsessed by her desire to save Jeremiah from the Despiser, consumed by images of his torment: she had hardly considered the outcome of Covenant’s designs. Now she saw what would happen.

  Her desire to put her arms around her son was so acute that it cut her heart.

  Stop, she told herself.

  Stop.

  It doesn’t help.

  Cold seemed to creep up her back even though the furnace of stones retained its fierce radiance.

  We still have to get there.

  And she did not trust Covenant.

  I want to repay some of this pain.

  The peril of your chosen path I deemed too great.

  And I won’t even mention how stone ignorant Berek is.

  This version of Thomas Covenant had lied to her about Jeremiah’s circumstances as well as her own: a revealing mistake.

  Deeply shaken, Linden strove to master her tears. She could not meet Covenant’s scrutiny, and did not try. Instead she clung to her Staff with her head bowed until the first torrents of her dismay had passed.

  She meant to ask him how he intended to reach Melenkurion Skyweir against The kind of opposition that might damage the Arch. But when she had swallowed her grief and scrubbed away her tears, she did not raise that subject immediately. Instead she asked in a raw voice. “What about Roger?”

  Glowering suddenly, Covenant turned away.

  With a visible effort, Jeremiah met her gaze. The muscles at the corner of his left eye clenched and released erratically. “What about him, Mom?”

  “I don’t know where he is, or what he wants, or what he’s doing.” Linden was pitifully grateful to have this much of her son’s attention. “I’m pretty sure that Lytton’s deputies killed him. But Anele told us that he’s here. In the Land.” Seeking such havoc that the bones of mountains tremble to contemplate it. “Shouldn’t we be worried about him?”

  Someone must have healed him during his translation, as she had healed herself with wild magic. Lord Foul? Or Kastenessen? Was the enraged Elohim sane enough for such a task? Joan certainly was not—

  Reluctance seemed to erode Jeremiah’s eyes until they slipped away from hers. “I don’t see why,” he murmured uncomfortably. “When Covenant stops Foul, there won’t be anything left for Roger to do. He’s just a man. He doesn’t have any power.”

  He will if he can get his hands on Joan’s ring, Linden thought. But she kept that fear to herself. Joan’s white gold did not belong to Roger: he was not its rightful wielder. If Covenant had told her the truth about anything, Roger’s ability to unleash wild magic would be limited.

  But even limited wild magic—

  Grimly Linden strove to appear calm. She did not want what she was thinking to show on her face.

  —might be enough to release Lord Foul after Covenant snared him.

  And if Roger failed or died, some other dark being might make the attempt.

  Covenant’s design for the salvation of the Land did not take Joan’s ring into account. Another revealing mistake; one which might prove fatal.

  Abruptly Covenant surged to his feet. Keeping his back toward Linden, he moved to stand over the small cairn as if he felt a need for heat; more heat than ordinary flesh should have been able to endure. Then he gestured along the barranca. For no apparent reason, he announced, “This place is called Bargas Slit. Or it will be, when somebody gets around to discovering it.” He sounded strangely cheerful, despite his glower earlier. “It has a name because it’s unique. It goes all the way through. In fact, it’s the only place north of the
Black River where you can walk into Garroting Deep without having to climb the Last Hills.”

  He may have sensed the direction of Linden’s thoughts. Once again, his manner conveyed an impression of disharmony: it seemed poorly tempered, slightly off pitch.

  “We can leave the horses here. We won’t need them anymore. If we get an early start, we can be at the edge of the Deep by mid-morning.”

  Linden stared at his back, but he ignored her. When she looked at Jeremiah, she found him playing with his racecar, concentrating intently as the toy tumbled back and forth among his fingers.

  She cleared her throat, hoping that Covenant would face her. When he did not, however, she said carefully, “I don’t understand. Didn’t you say that we can’t go into Garroting Deep?”

  “That’s right.” His tone was amiable. The heat of the rocks seemed to give him an obscure pleasure. “And we can’t go over it either. It’s Caerroil Wildwood’s domain. On his own turf, his power is absolute. Every bird and breeze in the whole forest needs his permission just to move from one branch to another. If we try to get past him, we’ll all three of us be dead before your heart can beat twice.

  “And I don’t mean banished,” he said with an odd timbre of satisfaction. “sent back where we came from. I mean stone cold absolutely by hell dead. The only good part is, it’ll happen so fast we won’t have time to feel bad about it.”

  Baffled, Linden asked. “Then why do you want to go there? What’s the point?”

  “Because,” he told her without hesitation, “there are times when it’s useful to be stuck between a rock and a hard place.”

  He sounded unaccountably proud of himself.

  Before Linden could think of a response, he added. “You should get some sleep. I’m serious about an early start.”

  Still without looking at her, he picked up one of the blankets, returned to the place where he had been sitting, and wrapped the blanket around his head and shoulders as if to conceal himself from her questions. Hidden by the dirty fabric, he seemed to blend into the wall of the ravine. The dull laval glow of the mound barely revealed his shape against the inaudible rock.

  Jeremiah promptly followed his example. In moments, her son, too, was little more than an extrusion of the stone.

  Linden had not seen either of them sleep; not once since they had entered Revelstone ten thousand years in the Land’s future. Doubtless they would not slumber now. But they made it plain that they would not answer if she spoke.

  Esmer had told her, You must be the first to drink of the EarthBlood, but she did not know what would happen to Covenant and Jeremiah if she did as Cail’s son had instructed; if she tried to save her boy before Covenant could act on behalf of the Land.

  Jeremiah was lost to her, no matter what she did. Nevertheless she loved him—and the Land. And she had no intention of forgetting about Roger. Or Joan’s ring.

  10. Tactics of Confrontation

  As Covenant had promised, they emerged from Bargas Slit by mid-morning; and Linden saw Garroting Deep clearly for the first time. After a long cold trudge through the constricted dusk of the barranca, she and her companions regained open sunlight no more than a stone’s throw from the verge of the great forest. Behind them, the Last Hills formed a ragged, crumbling wall against the Center Plains and the rest of the Land. Ahead of them spread the vast expanse of Caerroil Wildwood’s demesne, dark and forbidding as far as she could see.

  Standing under the sun on the bare hillside beside the ravine’s small rivulet, she felt that she was in the presence of something ancient, ineffable, and threatening.

  Although she stretched her health-sense, she could discern no sign of theurgy or peril; no hint of anything that resembled the numinous music which she had last heard in Andelain. She saw only trees and more trees: majestic cedars and firs interspersed with pines, occasional lambent Gilden, and other evergreens clinging stubbornly to their leaves and needles; oaks, elms, and sycamores, aspens and birches denuded by winter, their boughs stark and skeletal in the sunshine. A few scrub juniper, desiccated ferns, and aliantha lived between the trunks, but for the most part uncounted centuries of fallen leaves formed a rich carpet of decay and sustenance.

  Nonetheless Garroting Deep seemed irreducibly ominous. Its dark foliage and naked branches whispered warnings in the morning breeze. For millennia, the trees of the Land had suffered slaughter; and here, in their potent and baleful heart, they nurtured outrage.

  Linden had hoped to catch a glimpse of the Westron Mountains, and perhaps even of Melenkurion Skyweir. But Garroting Deep was too wide, and too many of its trees were giants, towering monoliths as mighty as sequoias: they hid what lay beyond them.

  Before dawn that morning, she had left the horses behind, as Covenant had instructed. An unavoidable decision: one of the mounts, the beast that he had ridden last, had perished during the night; and the two remaining animals could not bear three riders. Instead of using one or both of them to carry supplies, she had spilled what was left of the grain and hay to the ground, and had abandoned the horses to fend for themselves. There was nothing more that she could do for them. When she had packed as much food as she could lift comfortably into a bundle which she slung over her shoulder, she had followed Covenant and Jeremiah deeper into the gloom and the scraping wind, rough as a strigil, of Bargas Slit.

  Their passage along the ravine had seemed interminable and bitter; fundamentally doomed. Covenant had called Garroting Deep the most dangerous of the old forests. He had said that Caerroil Wildwood is an out-and-out butcher. Yet now he sought out that fell place and its fatal guardian. There are times when it’s useful to be stuck between a rock and a hard place.

  Standing at last in sunlight near the edge of the trees, she understood him no better than she had the previous evening. Garroting Deep was impassable. And the slopes of the Last Hills here looked even more rugged than those facing the Center Plains. Over the ages, the forest had lapped against them like a sea; had broken them into cliffs and gouges as though they had been raked by claws. Finding a route along them would be far more difficult than she had imagined.

  Fortunately the atmosphere here was warmer than the winter of the Center Plains. The trees absorbed and held more of the sun’s heat; or Caerroil Wildwood exerted himself to moderate the aftereffects of Lord Foul’s long shadow. There was no snow within the Deep itself. And the small scarps and fans of ice clinging to the hills looked porous, vaguely rotten; made frangible by evaporation and old resentment.

  The journey ahead may have been impossible. Nonetheless Linden was grateful to escape the worst of the cold.

  She dropped her burden so that she could rest her shoulder and arms. “All right,” she remarked to Covenant. “this is definitely ‘a rock and a hard place.’ How does it help us?”

  “Well,” he drawled without meeting her gaze, “that’s not exactly what I meant.” He was studying the line of hills to the northwest. “But it’s a step in the right direction. For one thing, the Theomach won’t be able to keep an eye on us anymore. The Last Hills have soaked up a lot of rage from the Deep. And of course,” he added sardonically. “the stone of the Land has always sympathized with trees. All that rock and indignation will shield us pretty thoroughly.

  “Which means,” he said with harsh satisfaction. “we can finally start to travel faster.”

  “But you—” Linden began, alarmed in spite of her determination to maintain a calm facade. Then she caught herself. Taking a deep breath, she asked more casually, “Won’t we be noticed? You said something about ‘opposition.’”

  “It’s a risk,” he admitted. “We’ll try to minimize it. Stay below the radar.” Abruptly he glanced at Jeremiah. “What do you think? That ridge?” He pointed. “The one with the crescent of obsidian? Looks like about three leagues to me.”

  Jeremiah considered the distance for a moment. Then he suggested, “What about the next one? It looks like somebody took a bite out of it. I think it’s a bit more than four le
agues.”

  “Fine.” Covenant nodded decisively. “Your eyes are better than mine. As long as you can see it—”

  At last, he turned to Linden. “We want to do this with as little fanfare as possible.” His eyes seemed empty, devoid of embers; almost lifeless. “The more effort we put into it, the more attention we’ll attract. So we’re going to move in short hops. Strictly line-of-sight. And we’ll stay as close to the Deep as we can. The way the Forestal and his trees talk to each other emits a lot of background noise. Ordinary people can’t hear it, but it’s there. It’ll make us harder to spot.”

  “What are they saying?” Linden asked impulsively.

  Covenant shrugged. “How should I know? I’m not a piece of wood.”

  He had claimed that he was The keystone of the Arch of Time—I know everything. Or I can, if I make the effort.

  Jeremiah looked at her, but she could not read his expression. His soiled gaze may have held reproach or commiseration. “Actually, Mom,” he said uneasily. “they’re talking about us.” The muscle at the corner of his left eye twitched. “They hope we’ll go into the forest. They like the taste of human blood.”

  Before she could respond, he asked Covenant with his familiar diffidence, “You’re ready, aren’t you?”

  “Hell, yes,” muttered Covenant. “I’ve been ready for days.”

  Like the taste—And if they liked it so much that Caerroil Wildwood reached out past the borders of his demesne? What then?

  “Just tell me one more thing,” Linden said, hurrying. “The Theomach can’t see us anymore. Having me with you is supposed to placate the Elohim. Whose ‘opposition’ are you worried about?”

  Covenant seemed too impatient to answer. Instead Jeremiah said, “It’s better if we don’t tell you, Mom.” His tone reminded her of his anger when she had insisted on seeing whether he had been shot. “They’re more likely to notice us if we say their names.”

  Ah, hell, Linden sighed. In this circumstance, her mind cannot be distinguished from the Arch of Time. Perhaps that made sense. In the wrong time and place, unearned knowledge could be more dangerous than ignorance. She was acutely aware of the manner in which her companions manipulated her. Nevertheless she had come too far, and had accepted too much, to infuriate Covenant and threaten her son with protests.