The rocklight grew pale and faltered as the damage to the cavern increased.
Screaming, “Melenkurion abatha!” she tuned her fire to the pitch of granite and made powder of every crashing stone that came near her. “Duroc minas mill!” Hardly conscious of what she did, she shaped the mountain’s collapse to her needs; formed pillars to support the Skyweir’s inconceivable mass; dashed debris from her path so that she could strike at Roger and the croyel. “Harad khabaal!” Striding through havoc, she pursued her son’s doom amid the earthquake.
But the titanic convulsion took too much of her strength. More and more, she was forced to ward off her own ruin. And she had lost the direct use of the EarthBlood. She could not reach Roger and Jeremiah; could not strike hard enough, swiftly enough, to penetrate her betrayers’ defences.
In the Staffs flame and the last of the rocklight, she saw lightning arch between Roger’s arms and Jeremiah’s. She saw them vanish.
Then the earthquake took her; the river took her; and she was swept from the cavern.
PART II. “victims and enactors of Despite”
Chapter One: From the Depths
When Linden Avery emerged from the base of Rivenrock into Garroting Deep, the sun was setting behind Melenkurion Skyweir and the Westron Mountains. The trees here had fallen into shadow, and with the loss of the sun, the air had grown cold enough to bite into her bereaved throat and lungs. Winter held sway over the Deep in spite of Caerroil Wildwood’s stewardship. And she had been soaked by frigid springs as well as by diluted EarthBlood during her long struggle through the guts of the mountain. She was chilled to the marrow of her bones, weak with hunger, exhausted beyond bearing.
But she did not care.
Her son was dead, as doomed as she was, shot down when she and Roger had been slain. He belonged to Lord Foul and the croyel: they would never let him go. And she had no hope of reaching him. Too much time separated her arms and his; her love and his torment.
She had become a stillatory of pain, and her heart was stone.
She did not know how she was still alive, or why. After Roger and Jeremiah’s escape, she had somehow preserved herself with Earthpower and instinct, shaping the stone to her will: knocking aside thunderous slabs of granite; plunging in and out of the lashed river; following water and fire as the earthquake shook Melenkurion Skyweir. The upheaval had split the plateau as well as the vast mountain, buried the edges of the forest under a torrent of rubble, sent a vehement fume of dust skyward, but she was aware of none of it. Nor did she notice how much time passed before the roots of the Skyweir no longer trembled. The watercourse was nearly empty now. Deep springs slowly filled the spaces which she had formed under the peak. But she could not tell how long she scrambled and stumbled through the wreckage until she found her way out of the world of ruin.
When she clambered at last over the new detritus along the south bank of the Black River, and saw the fading sky above her, she knew only that she had lost her son-and that some essential part of her had been extinguished, burned away by battles which surpassed her strength. She was no longer the woman who had endured Roger’s cruelties for Jeremiah’s sake.
She had suffered enough; had earned the right to simply lie down and die. Yet she did not surrender. Instead she trudged on into Garroting Deep. Here the Forestal would surely end her travails, if sorrow and privation did not. Nevertheless she continued to plod among the darkening trees. Her right hand remained cramped to the Staff, unhealed and unheeded. In her left, she held Jeremiah’s crumpled racecar. At the core, she had been annealed like granite. The dross of restraint and inadequacy and acceptance had been consumed in flame. Like granite, she did not yield.
The Staff no longer lit her way. She had lost its fire when she left the mountain. In the evening gloom and the first glimmer of stars, she hardly recognised that the extravagant energies which had enabled her to fight and survive had remade the shaft. Its smooth wood had become a blackness as deep as ebony or fuligin. With the Seven Words and the EarthBlood, she had gone beyond herself; and so she had transformed her Staff as well.
Like her son, the natural cleanliness of the wood was lost.
But she did not concern herself with such things. Nor did she fear the cold night, or the prospect of prostration, or the Forestal’s coming. Her own frailty and the likelihood of death had lost their meaning. Her stone heart still beat: the tears were gone from her eyes. Therefore she walked on with her doom wrapped around her.
She travelled beside the Black River because she had no other guide. In the deeper twilight of the riverbed, a slow trickle of water remained. She caught glimpses of it when it rippled over rocks or twisted in hollows and caught the burgeoning starlight. It looked as unilluminable as blood.
The Ranyhyn had tried to caution her. At the horserite which she had shared with Hyn and Hynyn, and with Stave, she had been warned. Hyn and Hynyn had shown her Jeremiah possessed, in torment; made vile. They had revealed what would happen if she tried to rescue him, heal him, as she had once redeemed Thomas Covenant from his imprisonment by the Elohim. And they had compelled her to remember the depth to which she herself had been damaged. They had caused her to relive the maiming heritage of her parents as well as the eager brutality of moksha Raver.
It was possible that she should have known
If your son serves me, he will do so in your presence.
But her fears had been fixed on Ravers and the Despiser. She had failed to imagine the true implications of Hyn and Hynyn’s warning. Or she had been distracted by Roger’s glamour and manipulations; by the croyel’s intolerable use of Jeremiah. Ever since they had forbidden her to touch them-ever since they had turned her love and woe against her-she had foundered in confusion; and so she had been made to serve Despite.
You’ve done everything conceivable to help us become gods.
She did not surrender. She would not. But she could not think beyond doggedly placing one foot in front of the other, walking lightless and unassoiled into Garroting Deep.
She did not imagine that she might reach her proper time by creating a caesure. You’ll shatter the world. And even if she did not, she would still be lost. Without the Ranyhyn, she could not navigate the chaos of a Fall.
Nor could she save herself with the Staff of Law. No power available to her would transcend the intervening centuries.
The Theomach had recognised Roger and the croyel, and had said nothing.
While they abided by the restrictions which he had placed upon them, he had left her to meet her fate in ignorance.
— her mind cannot be distinguished from the Arch of Time.
In her own way, she chose to keep faith with the Land’s past.
Therefore she stumbled on into Caerroil Wildwood’s angry demesne, guiding herself by the darkness of the watercourse on her left and the star-limned branches of trees on her right. When she tripped, she caught herself with the Staff, although the jolt caused the scabbing of her wounded hand to break open and bleed. She had nowhere else to go.
Roger had called the Forestal an out-and-out butcher.
On his own ground, with the full force of Garroting Deep behind him, nothing could stand against him.
Why had he not already slain her?
Perhaps he had discerned her weakness and knew that there was no need for haste. If a badger took umbrage at her encroachment, she would be unable to defend herself. A single note of Caerroil Wildwood’s multifarious song would overwhelm her.
Some things she knew, however. They did not require thought. She could be sure that Roger and the croyel- and Kastenessen and Joan-had not yet accomplished the Despiser’s desires. The Arch of Time endured. Her boots still scuffed and tripped one after the other along the riverbank. Her heart still beat. Her lungs still sucked, wincing, at the edged air. And above her the cold stars became multitudinous glistening swaths as the last daylight faded behind the western peaks. Even her exhaustion confirmed that the strictures of sequence and causality r
emained intact.
Therefore the Land’s tale was not done.
Her confrontation with Roger had rubbed the truth like salt into a wound: for her, everything came back to Thomas Covenant. He was her hope when she had failed all of her loves. -help us become gods. In his own way, and for his own reasons, he himself had become a kind of god. While his spirit endured, she could refuse to believe that the Despiser would achieve victory.
The Earth held mysteries which she could not begin to comprehend. Even Jeremiah might someday be released. As long as Thomas Covenant remained-He might guide her friends to rouse the Elohim from their hermetic self-contemplation; or to thwart Roger and Lord Foul in some other fashion.
For that reason, she continued walking when she should not have been able to stay on her feet. She had failed utterly, and been filled with despair; but she no longer knew how to break.
Around her, full night gathered until the ancient ire of the trees seemed to form a palpable barrier. Aside from the soft liquid chatter of water in the riverbed, the whisper of wind among the wrathful boughs, and the unsteady plod of her boots, she heard only her own respiration, ragged and faltering. She might have been alone in the wide forest. Still her heart sustained its dark labour. Intransigent as the Masters, she let neither weakness nor the approach of death stop her.
Some time later, she saw a small blink of light ahead of her. It was too vague to be real: she could more easily believe that she had fallen into dreams. But gradually it gained substance; definition. Soon it resembled the caper of flames, yellow and flickering.
A will-o’-the-wisp, she thought. Or a hallucination induced by fatigue and loss. Yet it did not vanish and reappear, or shift from place to place. In spite of its allusive dance, it remained stationary, casting a faint illumination on the nearby tree trunks, the arched bare branches.
A fire, she realised dully. Someone had set a fire in this protected forest.
She did not hasten toward it. She could not. Her pulse did not quicken. But her uneven trudge took on a more concrete purpose. She was not alone in Garroting Deep. And whoever had lit that fire was in imminent peril: more so than Linden herself, who could not have raised any hint of flame from her black Staff.
The distance defied her estimation. By slow increments, however, she began to discern details. A small cookfire burned within a ring of stones. A pot that may have been iron rested among the flames. And beside the fire squatted an obscure figure with its back to the river. At intervals, the figure reached out with a spoon or ladle to stir the contents of the pot.
Linden seemed to draw no closer. Nonetheless she saw that the figure wore a tatterdemalion cloak against the winter. She saw a disregarded tangle of old hair, a plump shape. To her depleted senses, the figure appeared female.
Then she entered the fringes of the light; and the figure turned to gaze at her; and she stopped. But she was unaware of her own surprise. She still swayed from side to side, precariously balanced, as if she were walking. Her muscles conveyed the sensations of steps. In her dreams, her legs and the Staff carried her forward.
The fire was small, and the pot shrouded its light. Linden blinked and stared for several moments before she recognised the woman’s blunt and skewed features, her patchwork robe under her open cloak, her mismatched eyes. Briefly those eyes spilled shifting reflections. Then Linden saw that the left was a dark and luminous blue, the right a disconcerting, unmistakable orange.
The woman’s air of comfortable solicitude identified her as readily as her appearance. She was the Mahdoubt. Linden had last seen her in Revelstone ten thousand years from now, when the older woman had warned her to Be cautious of love.
The Mahdoubt was here.
That was impossible.
But Linden did not care about impossibilities. She had left every endurable aspect of her existence behind. At that moment, the only fact which held any significance for her was the Mahdoubt’s cookfire.
The kindly woman had dared to ignite flames in Caerroil Wildwood’s demesne.
Staring, Linden meant to say, You’ve got to put that out. The fire. This is Garroting Deep. She thought that she would speak aloud. She ought to speak urgently. But those words failed her. Her mouth and tongue seemed incapable of them. Instead she asked, faint as a whisper. “Why didn’t they just kill me?”
At any other time in her life, under any other circumstances, there would have been tears in her eyes and weeping in her voice. But all of her emotions had been melted down, fused into a lump of obsidian. She possessed only anger for which she had no strength.
“Across the years,” the woman replied, “the Mahdoubt has awaited the lady.” She sounded complacent, untroubled. “Oh, assuredly. And once again she offers naught but meagre fare. The lady will think her improvident. Yet here are shallots in a goodly broth”- she waved her ladle at the pot- “with winter greens and some few aliantha. And she has provided as well a flask of springwine. Will the lady not sup with her, and take comfort?”
Linden smelled the savour of the stew. She had eaten nothing, drunk nothing, for a long time. But she did not care. Wanly she tried again.
That fire-The Forestal-
“Why didn’t they just kill me?”
Useless screaming had left her hoarse. She hardly heard her own voice.
The Mahdoubt sighed. For a moment, her orange eye searched Linden while her right regarded the flames. Then she turned her head away. With a hint of sadness, she said. The Mahdoubt may answer none of the lady’s sorrows. Time has been made fragile. It must not be challenged further. Of that she gives assurance. Yet she is grieved to behold the lady thus, weary, unfed, and full of woe. Will she not accept these small comforts?” Again she indicated her pot; her fire. “Here are aliment, and warmth to nurture sleep, and the solace of the Mahdoubt’s goodwill. Refusal will augment her grief.”
Sleep? A dim anger at herself made Linden frown. At one time, she had ached to speak with the Mahdoubt. There is a glamour upon it which binds the heart to destruction. That, at least, had been the truth.
She made another effort to say what the woman’s kindness required of her. “Please-” she began weakly, still swaying; still unsure that she had stopped moving. “Your fire. The Forestal. He’ll see it.” Surely he had already done so? “We’ll both die.
“Why didn’t they kill me?”
Roger and the croyel could have slain her whenever she slept.
“Pssht, lady,” responded the Mahdoubt. “Is the Mahdoubt disquieted? She is not. In her youth, such concerns may perchance have vexed her, but her old bones have felt their full measure of years, and naught troubles her now.”
Calmly she added, “Hear her, lady. The Mahdoubt implores this. Be seated within her warmth. Accept the sustenance which she has prepared. Her courtesy merits that recompense.”
Again the Mahdoubt lifted her strange gaze to Linden’s face. “There is much in all sooth of which she must not speak. Yet the Mahdoubt may speculate without hazard-yes, assuredly-if she speaks only of that which the lady has properly heard, or which she might comprehend unaided, were she whole in spirit.”
Linden blinked vacantly. She had heard or tasted Caerroil Wildwood’s song: she knew its power. Surely she should have protested? She would have owed that much to a total stranger. The Mahdoubt deserved more-
But the balm of the Mahdoubt’s voice overcame her. She could not refuse that blue eye, or the orange one. As if she were helpless, she took one step toward the fire, then sank to the ground.
It was thickly matted with fallen leaves. They must once have been frozen to the dirt, but they had thawed to a soggy carpet in the heat of the cookfire. Gripping the Staff with her scabbed and seared fist, Linden struggled to sit cross-legged near the ring of stones.
Abruptly the Mahdoubt’s orange eye appeared to flare. The lady must release the Staff. How otherwise will she sup?”
Linden could not let go. Her cramped grasp would not unclose. And she would need the Staff. She had no o
ther defence.
Nevertheless it slipped from her fingers and dropped soundlessly to the damp leaves.
Nodding with apparent satisfaction, the Mahdoubt produced a wooden bowl from a pocket or satchel under her cloak. As she ladled stew from the pot, she spoke to the cookfire and the louring night as though she had forgotten Linden’s presence.
“Assuredly the lady’s treachers required her absence from her condign time, lest she be succoured by such powers as they could not lightly oppose-by ur-viles and Waynhim, and perchance by others as well. Also they feared-and rightly-that which lies hidden within the old man whom the lady has befriended.”
Without glancing at Linden, she reached into her cloak for a spoon. When she had placed the spoon in the stew, she handed the bowl to Linden.
Like a bidden child, Linden began to eat. On some inchoate level, she must have understood that the older woman was saving her life-at least temporarily-but she was not conscious of it. Her attention was fixed on the Mahdoubt’s voice. Nothing existed for her while she ate except the woman’s words, and the looming threat of melody.
“Yet when she had been removed from all aid,” the Mahdoubt informed the trees placidly. “the lady’s death would serve no purpose. Indeed, her foes have never desired her death. They wish her to bear the burden of the Land’s doom. And the virtue of white gold is lessened when it is not freely ceded.
“Nor could she be engaged willingly in such combat as would endanger Time. With the Staff of Law, she might perchance have healed any harm. And she might have slain her betrayers with wild magic. That they assuredly did not desire. Nor could they assail the Arch directly, for the lady would then have surely destroyed them. Such errant evil craves its own preservation more than it desires the ruin of Life and Time.”
Linden nodded to herself as she slowly lifted stew into her mouth. She did not truly grasp what the woman was saying: her fatigue ran too deep. But she understood that Roger’s and the croyel’s actions could be explained. The Mahdoubt’s unthreatened tranquillity gave her that anodyne.
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