There they devoted their vast power and knowledge to the making of beauty and wonder, and all of their works were filled with loveliness.
Covenant and Jeremiah may have continued calling to her, but she could not feel their voices.
This time, the surprise of the Viles smelled of decay and old rot; mouldering. She has lore. To assume ignorance misleads us.
She does not, they declared scornfully. No mere human knows of our demesne.
Separately and in unison, one at a time, together, they announced, She has been taught. Advised. Therefore she hazards devastation.
Therefore, they concluded, she must be answered.
Therefore, they also decided, she must not.
Their darkness gathered until it threatened to blot out the sun. Are we not Viles? Do we fear her? If they chose to extinguish her, they would be able to do so. The bewilderment of her senses left her vulnerable.
When she fell, they might claim Covenant’s ring-
Yet she saw them pronounce clearly, We do not.
We do not, they agreed. We also have been advised.
Their ire and assent as they answered her smelled as mephitic as a charnel. Lover of trees, they flared like a plunge into a chasm, lightless and unfathomable, we have learned that this remnant of forest despises us. Its master considers us with disdain. We have come to discover the cause of his contumely. We have done naught to merit opprobrium among the woodlands.
Linden might have been horrified; incapable of argument. But Esmer had prepared her for this. That which appears evil need not have been so from the beginning, and need not remain so until the end. Hidden among his betrayals were gifts as precious as friendship.
In shapes as ready as knives, colours as obdurate as travertine, she countered. “That’s a lie. You were “advised”. You said so. By the Ravers. But they didn’t tell you the truth. These trees don’t despise you. They’re too busy grieving. It’s humans they hate. My kind. Not yours.”
“Damnation,” said Covenant in a visceral mutter, a sensation of squirming across Linden’s defenceless skin. “She’s trying to reason with them.”
“I told you.” Jeremiah’s voice made no sound, but she could see it. It was crimson, the precise hue of blood; bright with disgust and grudging admiration. “I remember her. She doesn’t give up.”
“Then we’ll have to do it.” Covenant’s reply itched like swarming ants. “Get ready.”
Linden’s heart yearned for her companions. But she ignored them. She could not reach them now. Surrounded by Viles and implicit death, she had brought herself to a precipice, and could only keep her balance or die.
The makers of the Demondim might resolve their hermetic debate by snuffing out her life. But the risks if she swayed them were no less extreme. Contradicting the seductions of the Ravers, she might irretrievably alter the Land’s history. A cascade of consequences might spread throughout time. If the Viles did not learn to loathe themselves, they would not create the Demondim-who would in turn not create-
With every word, she risked the Arch of Time.
Nevertheless she did not allow herself to hesitate or falter. Here, at least, she believed that calamity was not inevitable. The Law of Time opposed its own disintegration. And the effects of what she did might well prove temporary. Her arguments might do nothing more than delay the gradual corruption of the Viles.
The wood that you claim must defy them, yet it does not.
“Sure,” she continued as though her companions had not spoken, the Forestal is angry. His trees have been slaughtered. But his rage isn’t aimed at you. If you don’t threaten Garroting Deep, he won’t even acknowledge that you’re here.”
Risking everything, uttering sulphur and incarnadine to the gloom, she averred, “You’ve been lied to. You’re being manipulated. The Ravers hate trees. They want you to do the same. Not because they care about you. Not because you’re in any danger. They just want you to start hating.” Extinguishing. “If you do that enough, you’ll end up just like them.”
All contempt turns upon the contemptuous, as it must.
For an immeasurable time, the Viles were silent. Linden felt serpentine darkness coil and twist around her, a nest of snakes and self-dissent; smelled subterranean stone and dust, caves so old and deeply buried that they may have been airless. Get ready. Jeremiah and Covenant had reached a decision, but it lay beyond her discernment. Sensory confusion cut her off from everything except the hollow and the dusk.
Then all or some of the black tendrils repeated, She has lore. And others insisted, It is not lore. It is given knowledge. She has been taught. She merely holds powers which surpass her.
They debated among themselves, gathering vehemence with every assertion. Then the others must concern us.
They do not. They are no mystery to us.
This contention is foolish. The fierceness of the voices blinded Linden. She no longer saw sounds: she felt them. They scraped along her skin like the teeth of a rasp. We cannot accuse her. She has spoken sooth. We also are moved by given knowledge. Have we not heeded those who report that we are despised?
We have. What of that? We seek only comprehension. The intent of her companions is far otherwise. And she consents by withholding her strength. For that reason, we confront her.
Unrestrained anger. For that reason, she must be extinguished.
Stern contradiction. For that reason, she must be understood. Her inaction requires justification.
As one, the voices turned against Linden. Give answer, lover of trees. Why do you permit the purposes of the others, when you have no need of it?
There her determination stumbled. The Viles’ question was more fatal than their ire. In this circumstance, her mind cannot be distinguished from the Arch of Time. How could she explain herself without violating the strictures of history? Her choices could only be justified by events which had not yet occurred; events which would not occur for thousands of years. If she answered, the repercussions would exceed any hope of containment.
Desperately she countered the challenge of the Viles with one of her own.
“You aren’t thinking clearly. You’ve got it backward. Before you question me, you have to question yourselves. Why do you listen to Ravers? Don’t you realise that they’re lying? Beings like you?” — lofty and admirable- “I can’t answer you if you aren’t able to recognise the difference between truth and lies.”
Instantly the twilight grew darker. She saw only stark ebony as if it were the benighted hearts of the Viles. The scents of offal and new blood and repudiation were flung into her face. The ground under her boots thrummed as though the bones of the Last Hills had begun to vibrate. The taste of dead branches and twigs filled her mouth, as bright as brass.
Voices clawed at her skin. She dares to speak so. To us. When they replied to themselves, they spoke in fangs. Yet she speaks sooth. We have heeded that which desires only slaughter.
We seek comprehension.
We seek meaning. Our lives are sterile.
Nonetheless their vehemence no longer threatened Linden. Their conflict did not include her. If she felt savaged by it, that was a side effect of their black theurgy.
They uttered falsehood. What of that? they countered. They also spoke sooth.
Truth may mask lies. It may mislead.
Yet it was indeed sooth. Was it not? Have we not acknowledged that it was?
We have. We were informed without chicane that we are self-absorbed spectres, affectless and wasted. The loveliness we devise and adore is without meaning or purpose. Our lore is great, and our strength dire, yet we are but playthings for ourselves. This is sooth. We have acknowledged it.
Linden groaned. She flinched at the touch of every claw and tooth. There could be no question about it: the Ravers had been at work. She recognised their malignancy, their acid gall.
And have we not also acknowledged that therefore we may be deemed paltry by the wider world? Have we not come to this place seeking tru
th? Is not our first purpose to determine if the Forestal indeed views us with scorn? Only when that is known can we consider the cause of his scorn.
Yet is not our reasoning flawed, as the lover of trees has proclaimed?
She is specious. Unjustified. Her own reasoning is flawed.
No, she wanted to protest. No. Everything that you heard from those Ravers was a lie. Even if it sounded like the truth. You can’t listen-
But she had no voice and no will: she hardly seemed to think. The mounting debate left her mute as well as blind; nearly insensate. She had come to the end of words as though it were the end of worlds.
Agreed, the Viles continued, scoring her flesh, rending her courage. Yet our reasoning is also flawed. We acknowledge that we are self-absorbed and affectless. But we mislead ourselves if we conclude that therefore we are deemed paltry. The attitude of the wider world cannot be inferred from the disdain of those whom she names Ravers.
No. We have not erred in that fashion. We have come to this woodland that we might distinguish truth from falsehood.
We have erred in precisely that fashion. We have come to this woodland expecting to discover that we are scorned. We have been taught scorn for ourselves. Is this wisdom? Is it just? Do we merit disdain because we have clung to loveliness, ignoring the concerns of the Earth?
That’s it! Linden fought to say; to confirm. That’s what the Ravers want. -scorn for ourselves. But still she could not speak. Somehow the Viles had silenced her. They would not permit her to intrude on their dissension.
When she felt Covenant’s voice roar through her clothes, “Now, Linden! Run!” she did not hesitate, although she could not tell where she was and had no idea where she was going.
She feared a collision with the upthrust stones; feared falling; feared the outrage of the Viles. She could hardly be certain that she still held the Staff of Law. Every step carried her from nothing to nothing. Under her feet, the packed dirt sounded as unsteady as water: it felt as suffocating as a cave-in. Nevertheless she attempted to flee, seeking the tone or scent of higher ground.
For an instant, she thought that she heard the Viles muster black madness against her. But then a gap opened in her writhing paresthesia. Through it, she felt Covenant hurl a torrent of heat and fire down into the hollow, power as liquid as magma, and as destructive. At the same time, Jeremiah’s unexplained magic gathered until it seemed to tower over the forest. Then it crashed like a shattered wall down onto the trees of the Deep.
Chaos erupted among the Viles: rage and force virulent enough to strip flesh from bones. Simultaneously, however, the disruption faded from Linden’s senses, swept aside by Covenant’s fire, or by the horrendous response of the Demondim-makers. In that swift rush of clarification, time and her frantic breathing and even the urgent throb of her heart: all seemed to stop at once.
In tiny increments, minuscule fragments of infinity, she saw the hillside under her feet; saw herself striving to run diagonally up the slope toward Covenant and Jeremiah; saw the Staff clenched in her urgent fist. Above her, Covenant faced the Viles with heat spouting viciously from his halfhand. While she watched, the creatures parted like mist to evade his attack, then swirled together to concentrate their corrosive theurgy.
A mere shard of an instant later, she saw Jeremiah standing near Covenant with his back to the Viles, flinging repulsion like frenetic blows into Garroting Deep. Exposed. Defenceless-
The sides of the hollow blocked Linden’s view of the Deep. Nevertheless she felt as well as heard an abrupt cavalcade of music among the trees.
It shocked her; held her nearly immobile in mid-stride while slivers of time accumulated to create a single moment. The leaves sang a myriad-throated melody of ineffable loveliness while the twigs and boughs contributed chords of aching harmony and the trunks added a chaconne as poignant as a lament. Each note seemed as pristine and new as the first dew of springtime, dulcet as daisies, thorny as briars. Together the thousands upon thousands of notes fashioned a song of such heartbreaking beauty that Linden would have wept to hear it if she had not been trying feverishly to run-and if her companions had not stood in the path of havoc.
Within the profound glory of the music lay a savage power. Her nerves were stunned by the sheer magnitude of the magic which the singing summoned. It was not merely beauty and grief: it was also a tsunami of rage. Somewhere beyond the hillside, Caerroil Wildwood must have come to the verge of the Deep; and there he sang devastation for every living being that opposed him.
Separately the Viles and the Forestal were potent enough to banish Covenant and her son, her son. Together their energies would rend both of her loves. Jeremiah and Covenant would not simply disappear: they would perish utterly.
Without Covenant’s support, the Arch of Time itself might be undone.
Then we’ll have to do it. Get ready.
She could not reach them; could do nothing to protect them.
She had scarcely finished one stride and begun the next, however, when Covenant and Jeremiah turned away from their peril. Running headlong, they sprinted down the slope toward her. Again Covenant yelled. “Now, Linden!”
Behind them, a tremendous explosion shook the hills as focused serpentine vitriol struck lucent melody. The impact seemed to jolt the sky, jarring the sun, spilling winter brightness back into the hollow: it made the ground under Linden’s boots pitch and heave. At once, time began to race like Covenant and Jeremiah, like Linden herself, as if opposing forces had knocked the interrupted moments loose to bleed and blur. The Viles released an unremitting gush of black unnatural puissance. Caerroil Wildwood sang in response, using the given lore of the Elohim and the sentient Earthpower of trees by the millions. Suddenly Linden and her companions were able to close the gap between them.
“Now!” Covenant panted yet again. “While they’re fighting each other!”
She stopped as if he had commanded her; as if she understood him.
Scrambling to a halt, he and Jeremiah positioned themselves on either side of her, front and back. They flung up their arms. Against a background of incompatible magicks as flagrant as an avalanche, she felt their powers rise. She had time to think, They did this, they tricked-
There are times when it’s useful to be stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Then thunder or lightning arched over her head, and everything vanished as though her existence had been severed with an axe. During the immeasurable interval between instants, she and her companions fled.
Without transition, the acrid midnight of the Viles and the angry music of the Forestal sprang into the distance. Unbalanced by the shifting ground, Linden stumbled; flung out her arms to catch herself. Then, still reeling, she looked wildly around her.
Covenant and Jeremiah had brought her to the ridge of another twisted rib among the Last Hills. On one side, the slopes rose into intransigent bluffs and crags: with each translocation, their resemblance to nascent mountains increased. On the other, Garroting Deep lapped against the hills as though the trees had been caught by winter and cold in the act of encroaching on their boundaries. With her first unsteady glance, Linden saw no significant change in the forest. Slight variations in the textures of the woodland: trees differently arranged. Nothing more. Yet she sensed that the intentions of the Deep had been altered at their roots.
The forest no longer hungered for human flesh. Instead Garroting Deep’s mood had become outrage, and its appetite was focused elsewhere.
In the southeast, at least two or three leagues away, the Viles and Caerroil Wildwood made war on each other. Their might was so intense that Linden could descry each scourging strike of scorn and blackness-and each extravagant note, each instance of pure fury, in the Forestal’s vast song.
Rampant obsidian and glory were plainly visible, hectic and unappeased, against the horizon of the hills. Even here, the ground trembled at the forces which the combatants hurled at each other.
Both Covenant and Jeremiah had dropped to the
ir knees to avoid Linden’s floundering. But Jeremiah still held his arms high. From them, energies poured upward as if he sought to ward away or channel the collapse of the sky. The muscles at the corner of his eye sent out messages which she could not interpret.
A heartbeat later, wood began to rain from the empty air. Deadwood, twisted and knaggy: leafless twigs and branches of every size and shape, all broken by weather or theurgy from what must once have been a majestic oak. Linden and her companions could have been beaten bloody or killed by the sudden downpour. But Jeremiah’s power covered them. Twigs as slender as her fingers and boughs as thick as a Giant’s leg rebounded in mid-plunge and toppled to the dirt in a crude circle around the rim of Jeremiah’s protection.
Unbalanced by shock and surprise, Linden braced herself on the Staff. Too much had happened too quickly: her nerves could not accommodate it. She still seemed to see the speech of the Viles blooming darkly in her vision, clawing at her skin. All of that wood had fallen from the featureless sky, and she had done her utmost to sway the makers of the Demondim from their doom.
But she had failed. -a rock and a hard place. The Viles would never forgive the forests of the Land now. They had learned the loathing of trees-
Almost at once, Covenant jumped to his feet. “Get to it,” he snapped at Jeremiah. “We don’t have much time.” Then he faced Linden. “Do what I tell you,” he demanded harshly. “Don’t ask questions. Don’t even think. We’re still in danger. We need you.”
She did not think. When she said, “You tricked them,” she was surprised to hear herself speak aloud. “The Viles and the Forestal.” Like Covenant, Jeremiah had leapt upright. In a rush, he gathered the deadwood, tossing or tugging the heavier branches into a pile, throwing twigs by the handful among them. “You made them think that they were attacking each other.”
And she had helped him. Her attempts to reason with the Viles had distracted them-
“Damnation, Linden!” yelled Covenant. “I told you-!” But then he made an obvious effort to control himself. Lowering his voice, he rasped, “We don’t have time for this. I know you feel overwhelmed. But we can’t afford a discussion right now.
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