Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant 02 - Fatal Revenant

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  For an instant, a burst of light appeared in the Mahdoubt’s eyes; a brief reflection from the flames, perhaps, or an intensification of her unpredictable solidity and evanescence. Then she climbed slowly to her feet, unbending one joint at a time: an old woman grown frail, too plump for her strength, and unable to stand without effort. While she labored upright, however, she seemed to blush with pleasure.

  Facing Linden over the heat of her cookfire, she shrugged off her cloak so that Linden could behold the full ugliness of her piecemeal gown.

  It had been made haphazardly, with a startling lack of concern for harmonious colors, similar fabrics, or even careful stitches. Some scraps were the size of Linden’s hand, or of both hands: others, as long and narrow as her arm. Some were brilliant greens and purples, as bright as when they were newly dyed. Others had the duller hues of ochre and dun, and showed long years of wear. The threads sewing the patches together varied from hair-fine silk to crude leather thongs.

  If the garment had been worn by anyone other than the Mahdoubt, no one who saw it would have discerned love or gratitude.

  Considering her task, Linden murmured with an indefinable mixture of bafflement and certainty. “My friend, I hope that you don’t mind standing. This is going to take a while.”

  “The Mahdoubt is patient,” the woman replied. “Oh, assuredly. Has she not awaited the lady for many of her long years? And is she not pleased—aye, both pleased and gratified—by the lady’s offer of thanks? How then should she grow weary?”

  Half to herself, Linden promised. “I’ll be as quick as I can.” Then she went to work.

  She could not think about what she meant to do. It made no sense, and might paralyze her. Instead she concentrated on the practical details, the small things: matters as simple as the Mahdoubt’s gifts of food and drink and warmth and company.

  So: cloth first. Then a needle of some sort. After that, she would confront the conundrum of thread.

  She had no knife; no sharp edge of any kind. That was a problem. Yet she did not pause to doubt herself, or consider that she might fail. Nor did she waste her attention on embarrassment. Putting down the Staff, she unbuttoned her shirt and removed it.

  The shirttail seemed the best place to tear the fabric. But the red flannel had been tightly hemmed: she would not be able to rend it with her fingers. And she lacked any implement to pick the stitches.

  Lifting the edge of the material to her mouth, she began trying to chew through the hem.

  The flannel proved tougher than she had expected. She gnawed and plucked at it until her jaws ached and her teeth hurt, but it refused to rip.

  For a moment, she studied the area around the cookfire, hoping to find a rock with a jagged edge. However, every stone in sight was old and weathered; water-rounded.

  Oh, hell, she thought; but again she did not pause. Instead she took up a dead twig and poked it at the bitten fabric. Then she used the twig to thrust that small section of hem into the fire.

  When the flannel began to blacken and char, she withdrew it from the flames; blew on the material to extinguish it. Knotting her fists in her shirt, she pulled against the weakened hem.

  The cloth was sturdy: it did not tear easily. But when she dropped her shirt over a stone, stood on it, and heaved at the shirttail with both hands, she was able to make a rent longer than a hand span.

  The Mahdoubt watched her avidly, nodding as if in encouragement. But Linden paid no heed. Her task consumed her. Her palms and fingers were sore, her arms throbbed, she was breathing hard—and she had to rip another part of the hem.

  This time, she did not expend effort chewing: she turned immediately to the fire. With her twig, she held the hem in the flames until the cloth and even the twig began to burn. Then she stamped on her shirt to quench the charred fibers.

  Now the material tore more easily. One fierce tug sufficed to rip a sizable scrap from the shirttail.

  More out of habit than self-consciousness, Linden donned her shirt and buttoned it, although it was filthy, caked with mud and dead leaves. For a moment while she caught her breath, she reminded herself, One step at a time. Just one. That’s all. She had procured a patch. Next she needed a needle.

  Trusting that Caerroil Wildwood would not take offense, she went to the nearest evergreen—a scrub fir—and broke off one straight living twig. She wanted wood that still held sap; wood that would not be brittle.

  Beside the cookfire, she rubbed her twig on the stones until it was as smooth as possible. Then she held one end in the small blaze, hoping to harden it. Before it could catch fire, she pulled it out to rub it again.

  When she had repeated the process several times, her rubbing began to produce a point at the end of the twig.

  “The lady is resourceful,” remarked the Mahdoubt in a voice rich with pride. “Must the Mahdoubt dismiss her fears? Assuredly she must. The lady has foiled her foes under great Melenkurion Skyweir. How then may it be contemplated that the Earth’s doom will exceed her cunning?”

  Briefly Linden stopped to massage her tired face, stroke her parched eyes. All right, she told herself. Cloth. A needle. Now thread.

  As far as she knew, the forest offered nothing suitable. Its thinnest vines and most supple fibers would eventually rot away, invalidating her gratitude.

  Sighing, she spread out her scrap of flannel and began trying to pick threads from its torn edge with the point of her twig.

  This was difficult work, close and meticulous. It brought back her weariness in waves until she could hardly keep her eyes open. Her world seemed to contract until it contained nothing except her hands and needle and a stubborn scrap of red. The weave of the flannel resisted her efforts. She had to be as careful and precise as her son when he worked on one of his constructs. She had watched him on occasions too numerous to count. His raceway in his bedroom may have enabled him to reach the Land, for good or ill. And she had seen him build a cage of deadwood to enter the depths of Melenkurion Skyweir. She knew his exactitude intimately; his assurance. Time and again, her needle separated stubby threads too short to serve any purpose. Nevertheless she persevered. Now or never, she repeated to herself like a mantra. Now or never.

  In her exhaustion, she believed that if she put her task down to rest or sleep, she might give her enemies the time they needed to achieve the Earth’s end.

  Finally she had obtained five red threads nearly as long as her hand. That, she decided, would have to suffice. Cloth. A needle. Thread. Now she lacked only a method of attaching thread to her twig.

  While she groped for possibilities, she picked up the flask of springwine and drank. For a moment, she blinked rapidly, trying to moisten eyes that felt as barren as Gallows Howe. Then she took her sharpened twig and broke it in half.

  The wood snapped unevenly, leaving small splits in the blunt end of her needle.

  On her knees, she approached the Mahdoubt.

  “Be at peace, lady,” the Insequent said softly. “There is no need for haste.”

  Linden hardly heard her. The world had become cloth and thread, a wooden needle and the hanging edge of the Mahdoubt’s robe. When she was near enough to work, Linden laid her few threads out on a stone and examined the woman’s gown until she located a place where her patch could be made to fit. Still kneeling, and guided only by her memories of Jeremiah, she took one fragile thread, wedged it gently into a split at the end of her needle, and began sewing.

  As she worked, she held her breath in an effort to steady her weariness.

  Her needle did not pierce the fabric easily. And when it passed through her scrap of flannel and the edge of the gown, it made a hole much too large for her thread. But she knotted the thread as well as she could with her sore fingers, then forced her twig through the material a second time.

  While she labored, she felt the Mahdoubt touch her head. The older woman stroked Linden’s hair, comforting her with caresses. Then, softly, the Mahdoubt began to chant.

  Her voice was low, as i
f she were reciting a litany to herself. Nevertheless her tone—or the words of her chant—or Linden’s flagrant fatigue—cast a trance like an enchantment, causing the world to shrink further. Garroting Deep ceased to impinge on Linden’s senses: the raw teeth of winter and the kindly flames of the cookfire lost their significance: darkness and stars were reduced to a vague brume that condensed and swirled, empty of meaning. Only Linden’s hands and the Mahdoubt’s gown held any light, any purpose. And only the Mahdoubt’s chant enabled Linden to continue sewing.

  “A simple charm will master time,

  A cantrip clean and cold as snow.

  It melts upon the brow of thought,

  As plain as death, and so as fraught,

  Leaving its implications’ rime,

  For understanding makes it so.

  “The secret of its spell is trust.

  It does not change or undergo

  The transformations which it wreaks—

  The end in silence which it seeks—

  But stands forever as it must,

  For cause and sequence make it so.

  “Such knowing is the sap of life

  And death, the rich, ripe joy and woe

  Ascending in vitality

  To feed the wealth of life’s wide tree

  Regardless of its own long strife,

  For plain acceptance makes it so.

  “This simple truth must order time:

  It simply is, and all minds know

  The way of it, the how, the why:

  They must forever live and die

  In rhythm, for the metered rhyme

  Of growth and passing makes it so.

  “The silent mind does not protest

  The ending of its days, or go

  To loss in grief and futile pain,

  But rather knows the healing gain

  Of time’s eternity at rest.

  The cause of sequence makes it so.”

  Linden did not understand—and neither knew nor cared that she did not. While she worked, she set all other considerations aside. With her abused fingers and her blurring vision, she concentrated solely and entirely on completing her gratitude; her homage.

  But when she came to the end of her thread, and the scrap of her shirt was loosely stitched to the Mahdoubt’s robe—when the older woman removed her hand, ceasing her chant—Linden thought that she heard a familiar voice shout with relief and gladness. “Ringthane! The Ringthane has returned!”

  At the same time, she seemed to feel sunrise on her back and smell spring in the air. She appeared to kneel on dewy grass at the Mahdoubt’s feet with the sound of rushing water in her ears and the Staff of Law as black as a raven’s wing beside her.

  And she heard other voices as well. They, too, were known to her, and dear. They may have been nickering.

  As she toppled to the grass, she fell out of her ensorcelled trance. She had a chance to think, Revelstone. The plateau.

  The Mahdoubt had restored her to her proper time and place.

  Then exhaustion claimed her, and she was gone.

  2. In the Care of the Mahdoubt

  Linden awoke slowly, climbing with effort and reluctance through the exhaustion of millennia. The years that she had bypassed or slipped between seemed to multiply her natural age; and her attempts to open her eyes, confirm the substance of her surroundings, felt hampered by caducity. She did not know where she was. She had told herself that she had reached the plateau above Revelstone in her proper time. She had believed that, trusted it; and slept. But the surface on which she lay was not fresh grass in springtime. Linen rather than soiled garments covered her nakedness, and her feet were bare. The light beyond her eyelids was too dim to be morning.

  And she was diminished, truncated, in some fashion that she could not identify.

  Yet she was warm, comfortably nestled. The unremitting clench of winter had released her. Her bed supported her softly. Like her eyes, her mouth and throat were too dry for ease, but those small discomforts were the normal consequences of unconsciousness. They did not hamper her.

  For a moment like an instant of panic in a dream, quickly forgotten, she imagined that she had been taken to a hospital; that paramedics had rushed her, sirens wailing, to a place of urgent care. Had the bullet missed her heart? But the deeper levels of her mind knew the truth.

  Gradually she recognized how she had been reduced.

  Her skin felt nothing except the tactile solace of linen and softness and warm weight. She smelled nothing except the faint tang of wood smoke and the precious scent of cleanliness; heard nothing except the subtle effort of her own breathing. None of her senses extended beyond the confines of her body.

  She did not know where she was, or how, or why—she hardly knew who—because her health-sense was gone. She had grown accustomed to its insights. Its absence diminished her.

  Nonetheless she was paradoxically comforted by the realization that Kevin’s Dirt had regained its hold. Now she could be certain that the Mahdoubt had brought her near to her rightful time.

  In any case, her benevolent rescuer would not have stranded her earlier than she belonged. Then she would still have posed a threat to the integrity of the Arch. Nor had the Mahdoubt greatly overshot the day of Linden’s disappearance in rain from the upland plateau. She seemed to recall that she had heard Bhapa’s voice announcing her presence. If that were true, then she had also heard Manethrall Mahrtiir and Cord Pahni answer Bhapa’s call.

  Surely they would not have awaited her return indefinitely? Not while their choices were constrained by the Masters—and the Demondim. At some point, they would have left Revelstone to rejoin their people, or to seek out a defense against the Land’s foes.

  Linden had not been absent long enough to exhaust her friends’ hopes. And she had felt spring in the air—

  When she was sure that the Mahdoubt had delivered her to the proper season in the proper year, a few of her numberless fears faded. At last, she allowed herself to remember why she was here.

  Jeremiah. The croyel. Roger Covenant. Purpose and urgency.

  Heavy with sleep, she raised her hands to confirm that Covenant’s ring still hung from its chain around her neck. Then she lifted them higher to rub her face. But she was not yet ready to sit up. She needed a moment to acknowledge that she had done Thomas Covenant the shameful injustice of permitting herself to be misled by his son.

  She should have known better. Her dead love had earned more than her loyalty: he had earned her faith. Recalling the long tally of her mistakes, she was grieved that she let Roger tarnish her memories of the man who had twice defeated Lord Foul for the Land’s sake.

  Grieved and angered.

  Jeremiah’s presence had accomplished Roger’s intentions perfectly: it had distorted her judgment, leaving her vulnerable.

  No more, she vowed. Not again. She had fallen in with the Despiser’s machinations once. She would not repeat that mistake.

  Instead she meant to exact a price for Jeremiah’s torment.

  But she was getting ahead of herself. Her night with the Mahdoubt in Garroting Deep had taught her—or retaught her—an important lesson. One step at a time. Just one. First she needed to absorb the details of her present situation. And she had to retrieve her Staff so that she could cast off the pall of Kevin’s Dirt. She would determine other actions later, after her true strength was restored.

  Blinking against the smear of nightmares and regret, she looked around.

  Strange, she thought. She was in a small room which she knew well enough, although it seemed vaguely unreal, dislocated by the passage of too much time; too much cold and desperation, battle and loss. She lay under blankets in a narrow bed. A pillow cradled her head. A shuttered window in the smooth stone wall above her admitted a dull grey light that could have been dawn or dusk. A doorway in the opposite wall past the foot of the bed held a soft illumination, yellow and flickering, which suggested lamps or a fire. Near her head, a second doorway led to a bathroo
m.

  The chamber appeared to be the same one in which she had spent two nights before Roger and the croyel had translated her out of her time. She remembered it as though she had visited it in dreams rather than in life.

  Yet she was here. As if to demonstrate the continuity of her existence, the Staff of Law leaned like a shaft of midnight against the wall at the head of the bed. And in a chair at its foot sat the Mahdoubt, watching Linden with a smile on her lips and gloaming in her mismatched eyes.

  When Linden raised her head, the Mahdoubt left her chair, moved into the next room, and returned with an oil lamp and a clay goblet. The little flame, soothing in spite of its unsteadiness, accentuated her orange eye while it dimmed her blue one. The lurid patchwork of her robe blurred into a more harmonious mélange.

  “Forbear speech, lady,” she murmured as she approached the bed. “Your slumber has been long and long, and you awaken to confusion and diminishment. Here is water fresh from the eldritch wealth of Glimmermere.” She offered the goblet to Linden. “Has its virtue declined somewhat? Assuredly. Yet much of its healing lingers.

  “Drink, lady,” the Mahdoubt urged. “Then you may speak, and be restored.”

  But Linden needed no encouragement. As soon as she caught sight of the goblet, she became conscious of an acute thirst. Propping herself up on one elbow, she accepted the goblet and drained it eagerly.

  In the absence of any health-sense, she could not gauge how much of the water’s potency had been lost. Nevertheless it was bliss to her mouth and throat, balm to her thirst. And it awakened her more fully. A numinous tingling sharpened her senses, reminding her of a more fundamental discernment.

  At once, she dropped the goblet on the bed, sat up, and reached for the Staff.

  As soon as she closed her hands on the necessary warmth of the wood, and read with her fingers the deft precision of the Forestal’s runes, she felt the return of a more complete life. In the space between her heartbeats, the stone of the chamber ceased to be blind granite, inert and unresponsive: it became a vital and breathing aspect of Lord’s Keep. She recognized warmth and fire in the hearth of the larger room beyond her bedroom; smelled water poised to flow in the bathroom. Every inch of her skin and scalp became aware of its cleanliness. And the comfortable ease of the Mahdoubt’s aura washed over her like a baptism.