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 paralysed: 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 foolish. 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 recognise; 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. A
nd”- 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 recognise 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.”
Before Linden could ask about Jeremiah, the Theomach put in, “Your son will appear at the Halfhand’s side. No movement in this time will delay him.”
Swearing to himself again, Covenant began to pound through the ice and snow. The Theomach followed without waiting for Linden to make up her mind. As the stranger stepped lightly over the crust, he said to Covenant, “If you will but consider the path which I have opened to you, you will recognise that you have no cause for anger. True, I have presented new obstacles. But others I have removed. And my path is indeed less perilous.”
When Covenant did not respond, the Theomach said sharply. “I do not speak of her peril, Halfhand. I speak of yours.”
— the perils which have been prepared for you.
Behind them, Linden straggled into motion. She did not intend to be left behind when Jeremiah might rejoin Covenant at any moment. Bracing herself on the Staff, she fought the crust and the cloying snow in an effort to keep pace.
“Fuck that,” Covenant rasped. “Fuck you and your fake concern. I can handle my perils. But it galls the hell out of me that you think you have the right to interfere.”
“Now you are dishonest,” replied the Theomach with a mocking laugh. “It is not my interference that ‘galls’ you. It is your powerlessness to prevent me.”
Again his movements conveyed an eerie sense of slippage. He seemed to accompany himself across the dazzling field as if the theurgy which kept him from breaking through the ice caused him to shift subtly between different places in time and space.
“Believe that if you can,” Covenant retorted. “What I have in mind for you is going to be worse than ‘the destruction of the Earth.’ I’m going to make you and all your people and even the damn Elohim irrelevant.”
Lightly the Theomach answered. “You are welcome to the attempt.”
“What, you think I can’t do it? Hellfire. You aren’t paying attention. I know more about what’s going to happen to you than you do. And I guarantee you won’t like it.”
For some reason, the Theomach did not respond. Covenant may have surprised or shaken him.
Linden floundered after them. The soles of her boots gripped the buried snow well enough; but each step was an awkward hesitation-and-plunge as the ice held her weight for an instant and then broke. Soon she had to pant for air, and each breath drew scalding cold deeper into her lungs. Only the warmth of Covenant’s magic and her desire for Jeremiah kept her going.
If her son appeared, as she had been promised-
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br /> The first slopes of the hills seemed far away. And they would not be easy to climb. The pale uninterrupted blue of the sky felt as wide as her incomprehension, and as empty. The white glitter of the field was empty as well, undefined by any trees or shrubs. Even aliantha did not grow in this place. She saw no birds anywhere. If animals had ever crossed this valley, the crust retained no sign of their passage.
There should have been aliantha. Those life-giving shrubs had survived the Sunbane. Surely they could endure this winter? But Linden thought that she knew why the valley was so lifeless. Her health-sense grew steadily stronger in the absence of Kevin’s Dirt; and as she trudged across the iced expanse, she began to feel that she trod on graves. The whole valley held a muffled sensation of death, as if the snow cloaked shed blood and slaughter. The ground had absorbed too much violence to nurture treasure-berries.
Perhaps Covenant or the Theomach would condescend to tell her what had happened here.
Before she could speak, however, a brief flare of energy like an after-flash of lightning shredded the air near Covenant; and Jeremiah staggered to his knees as though he had been created-or re-created- from the raw stuff of emptiness and cold.
He was gasping as if he had survived a fight for his life.
She forgot everything else in her rush to reach him. Instinctively she reached for Earthpower. If Esmer or some other foe still harried her son-
At once, however, the Theomach stepped or appeared in her way. She collided with him hard; stumbled backward.
“God damn it!”
“Do not!” he commanded sharply. His cerement-clad figure confronted her across the trampled snow. “Do not invoke the Staff. And do not attempt to place your hands upon them, neither the Halfhand nor your son. If you err in this, your losses will be greater than you are able to conceive. That I cannot prevent. My purpose lies elsewhere.”
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