Fatal Revenant t3cotc-2

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Stave would have directed her, of course, but she did not need that kind of help. She required an altogether different guidance. First she found her way by the limned silhouette of Revelstone. Then she headed toward the notched black slit where the gates under the watchtower stood partway open.

  When she entered the echoing passage beneath the tower-when she heard the massive granite thud as the gates were sealed behind her-and still the Masters offered her no illumination, she brought up flame from the end of the Staff, a small fire too gentle and dim to dazzle her. Earthpower could not teach her to accept the Mahdoubt’s passing, but it allowed her to see.

  Growing brighter and more needy with every stride, she paced the tunnel to the courtyard between the tower and the main Keep. Memories of giggling harried her as she approached the gap of the inner gates and the fraught space within them.

  There also the lamps and torches had been quenched. And they were not relit as the gates were sealed behind her. The darkness told her as clearly as words that the Masters had reached a decision about her.

  Defiantly she drew more strength from her Staff until its yellow warmth reached the ceiling of the forehall. With fire, she seemed to render incarnate the few Masters who awaited her. Then she turned to consider Stave and the Humbled.

  She could not read the passions that moved like the eidolons of their ancient past behind their unyielding eyes; but she saw clearly that their injuries were not severe. Doubtless their bruises and abrasions were painful. In places, blood continued to seep from their battered flesh. Stave’s wrists had been scraped raw by the Harrow’s grasp, and the bones were cracked. But he and the Humbled were Haruchai: their wounds would soon heal.

  After a brief scrutiny, Linden ignored Galt, Clyme, and Branl. Speaking only to Stave, she tried to emulate his unswayed demeanour.

  “I know that you’ll mend. I know that you don’t mind the pain.” His tale had taught her that the Haruchai were defined by their hurts. “And I know that you haven’t asked for help. But we’ll be in danger as soon as we leave here.” She was confident that Kastenessen and Roger-and perhaps Esmer as well-would attempt to prevent her from her goal. “It might be a good idea to let me heal you.” Stiffly she added, “I’ll feel better.”

  She had lost the Mahdoubt. She wanted to be able to succour at least one of her friends.

  Stave glanced from the Humbled to the other Masters. He may have been listening to their thoughts; their judgments. Or perhaps he was simply consulting his pride, asking himself whether he was willing to appear less intractable than his kinsmen. Cracked bones broke easily: they might hinder his ability to defend her.

  “Chosen,” he remarked. “the days that I have spent as your companion have been an unremitting exercise in humility.” He spoke without inflection; but his expression hinted that he had made the Haruchai equivalent of a joke.

  He extended his hands to her as if he were surrendering them.

  His decision-his acceptance-touched her too deeply to be acknowledged. She could not afford her own emotions, and had no reply except fire.

  With Law and Earthpower and percipience, she worked swiftly. While the men who had spurned Stave watched, rigid in their disdain, she honoured his sacrifice; his abandoned pride. Her flame restored his flesh, sealed his bones. His gift to her was also a bereavement: it diminished him in front of his people. Thousands of years of Haruchai history would denounce him. Still she received his affirmation gladly. It helped her bear the loss of the Mahdoubt.

  When she was done, she turned her senses elsewhere, searching Revelstone’s ambience for some indication of how much of the night remained. She was not ready for dawn-or for whatever decision the Masters had reached. She needed a chance to think; to absorb what she had seen and heard, and to ward away her grief.

  After a moment, Stave asked as though nothing profound had occurred, Will you return to your rooms, Chosen? There is yet time for rest.”

  Linden shook her head. The Keep’s vast bulk muffled her discernment, but she felt that sunrise was still a few hours away. She might have enough time to prepare herself-

  “If you don’t mind,” she said quietly. “I want to go to the Hall of Gifts.”

  She wished to visit Grimmand Honninscrave’s cairn. Old wounds were safer company: she had learned how to endure them. And remembering them might enable her to forget the Mahdoubt’s fading, shattered laughter. She had failed the older woman. Now she sought a reminder that great deeds could sometimes be accomplished by those who lacked Thomas Covenant’s instinct for impossible victories.

  Fortunately Stave did not demur. And the Masters made no objection. If they had ignored the Aumbrie since the fall of the Clave, they had probably given even less attention to the Hall of Gifts. Indeed, Linden doubted that any of them had entered the Hall for centuries, except perhaps to retrieve the arras which she had seen hanging in Roger’s and Jeremiah’s quarters. Her desire would not threaten them: they had made up their minds about her.

  At Stave’s side, she left the forehall, escaping from new sorrows to old, and lighting her steps with the ripe corn and sunshine comfort of Staff-fire.

  Her destination was deep in Revelstone’s gutrock: she remembered that. But she had not been there for ten years. And Revelstone’s size and complexity still surprised her. She and Stave descended long stairways and followed unpredictable passages until the air, chilled by the tremendous mass of impending granite, grew too cool for comfort; cold enough to remind her of winter and bitterness. She warmed herself with the Staff, however, and did not falter.

  Like the cave of the EarthBlood, the Hall of Gifts was a place where Lord Foul’s servants had suffered defeat.

  At last, Stave brought her to a set of wide doors standing open on darkness. From beyond them came an impression of broad space and old dust. As far as she knew, they had not been closed for three and a half thousand years.

  Lifting her flame higher, Linden entered with her companion into the Hall.

  It was a cavern wider than Revelstone’s forehall, and its ceiling rested far above her on the shoulders of massive columns. Here the Giants who had fashioned Lord’s Keep had worked with uncharacteristic crudeness, smoothing only the expanses of the floor, leaving raw stone for the columns and walls. Nevertheless the rough rock and the distant ceiling with its mighty and misshapen supports held a reverent air, clean in spite of the dust; an atmosphere as hushed and humbling as that of a cathedral.

  She had never beheld this place as its makers had intended. It had been meant as a kind of sanctuary to display and cherish works of beauty or prophecy fashioned by the folk of the Land. Long ago, paintings and tapestries hung on the walls. Sculptures large and small were placed around the floor or affixed to the columns on ledges and shelves. Stoneware urns and bowls, some plain, others elaborately decorated, were interspersed with works of delicate wooden filigree. And a large mosaic entranced the floor near the centre of the space. In colours of viridian and anguish, glossy stones depicted High Lord Kevin’s despair at the Ritual of Desecration.

  Until the time of the Clave, the Hall of Gifts had been an expression of hope for the future of the Land. That was the mosaic’s import: Revelstone had survived the Ritual with its promise intact.

  For Linden, however, the cavern was a place of sacrifice and death.

  When she had followed Covenant here to challenge Gibbon Raver, she had been full of battle and terror. Instead of looking around, she had watched the Giant Grimmand Honninscrave and the Sandgorgon Nom defeat Gibbon. Honninscrave’s death had enabled Nom to destroy samadhi Sheol. For the first time since their birth in a distant age, one of the three Ravers had been effectively slain, rent; removed from Lord Foul’s service. Yet samadhi had not entirely perished. Rather Nom had consumed the fragments of the Raver, achieving a manner of thought and speech which the Sandgorgons had never before possessed.

  In gratitude, it seemed, Nom had raised a cairn over Honninscrave’s corpse, using the rubble of battle to
honour the Master of Starfare’s Gem.

  Linden had come here now to remember her loves.

  The mound of broken stone which dominated the centre of the cavern was Honninscrave’s threnody. It betokened more than his own sacrifice: it expressed his brother’s death as well. And it implied other Giants, other friends. The First of the Search. Her husband, Pitchwife. Ready laughter. Open hearts. Life catenulated to life.

  Link by link, Nom’s homage to Honninscrave brought Linden to Sunder and Hollian, whom she had loved dearly-and whom she did not intend to heed.

  They beg of you that you do not seek them out. Doom awaits you in the company of the Dead. But where could she turn for insight or understanding, if not to the people who had enabled her to become who she was?

  Everything came back to Thomas Covenant.

  As she began to move slowly around the cairn, studying old losses and valour by the light of Law, brave souls accompanied her, silent as reverie, and generous as they had been in life. And Stave, too, walked with her. If he wondered at her purpose here-at the strangeness of her response to the Mahdoubt’s fate-he kept his thoughts to himself.

  He could not know what she sought among the legacies of those who had died.

  When she had completed two circuits of the mound and begun a third, she murmured, musing, “You and the Masters talked about the Mahdoubt. “She serves Revelstone”, you told me. “Naught else is certain of her”. And Galt had said, She is a servant of Revelstone. The name is her own. More than that we do not know. “Looking back, it’s hard to imagine that none of you even guessed who she was.”

  Her mind was full of slippage and indirect connections. She was hardly aware that she had spoken aloud until Stave stiffened slightly at her side. “Chosen? I do not comprehend.” Subtle undercurrents perplexed his tone. “Are you troubled that you were not forewarned?”

  “Oh, that.” Linden’s attention was elsewhere. “No. The Mahdoubt could have warned me herself. You all had your reasons for what you did.”

  Honninscrave had died in an agony of violation far worse than mere physical pain. Like him, she had once been possessed by a Raver: she knew that horror. But the Giant had gone further. Much further. He had held Sheol; had contained the Raver while Nom killed him. In its own way, Honninscrave’s end daunted her as profoundly as Covenant’s surrender to Lord Foul.

  She would not hesitate to trade her life for Jeremiah’s. Of course. He was her son: she had adopted him freely. But for that very reason, her willingness to die for him seemed trivial compared to Honninscrave’s self-expenditure, and to Covenant’s.

  “What then is your query?” asked Stave.

  She groped for a reply as if she were searching through the rubble of the cairn. “Everything seems to depend on me, but I’m fighting blind. I don’t know enough. There are too many secrets.” Too many conflicted intentions. Too much malice. “Your people don’t trust me. I’m trying to guess how deep their uncertainty runs.”

  How badly did it paralyse the Masters? How vehemently would they react against it?

  Stave studied her for a long moment. “I have no answer,” he said finally. Your words suggest an inquiry, but your manner does not. If you wish it, I will speak of the Masters. Yet it appears that your desire lies elsewhere. What is it that you seek in this place?”

  Linden heard him. She meant to answer. But her thoughts slipped again, seeking links and meaning which she could not have named. Distracted, she veered away toward the pillars near one end of the Hall, where the Gifts had not suffered from Gibbon Raver’s struggles. Bearing her light with her, she walked between the columns until an odd statue caught her eye. It stood alone, thickly layered with dust, on an open stretch of the floor.

  At first glance, it appeared to be a random assortment of rough rocks balanced on top of each other to form a distorted shape nearly as tall as she was. Because it was riddled with gaps, it resembled the framework for a sculpture more than a finished piece. Puzzled, she looked at it from all sides, but could not make sense of it. But then she took several steps backward, and saw that the stones outlined a large head. After a moment, she realised that the statue was the bust of a Giant.

  The stones had been cunningly set so that the gaps between them suggested an expression. There was the mouth in a wide grin: there, the heavy bulge of the nose. And there, the holes of the eyes seemed to have crinkles of laughter at their corners.

  Linden could almost have believed that the rocks had been selected and placed to convey an impression of Pitchwife’s visage. But clearly the bust had been fashioned long before Pitchwife’s sojourn in the Land.

  “Who do you suppose this is?” she asked.

  Stave appeared to consider his memories. The Haruchai do not recall the Stonedownor who crafted this countenance, or the name of the Giant here revealed, or indeed the name given to this Gift. The craft itself, however, is suru-pa-maerl. In the ages of the Lords, artisans among the Stonedowns sought long and patiently to discover unwrought stones which might be combined and balanced to form such depictions.”

  “When you stand back,” Linden murmured. “it’s pretty impressive.” If Jeremiah had been free, he might have constructed works like this one. Distantly she added. “I’m trying to put the pieces together myself. There’s one thing that I’m sure of now.

  “I know why Roger didn’t want me to go to Andelain. Or Esmer either, for that matter.” After she had spoken of her intentions, Cail’s son had left the cave of the Waynhim in apparent vexation or distress. “It’s not just that they don’t want me to meet the Dead. They don’t want me to find the krill. They’re afraid of what I might be able to do with it.”

  She had seen how its gem answered to the presence of white gold. According to Thomas Covenant, High Lord Loric had formed the krill so that it would be strong enough to bear any might.

  Stave considered her flatly. “Then what is it that you seek to comprehend? You have not yet named your true query.”

  Linden turned from the suru-pa-maerl Giant as if she were shying away. Aimlessly she carried the flame of her Staff among the columns, describing in fire slippages and connections which she did not want to put into words. She should have obtained an answer from the Mahdoubt-and had missed her only opportunity.

  After a few steps, she asked, still indirectly, “How many times was Covenant summoned to the Land? I mean, before he and I came here together?”

  “Four of which the Bloodguard had knowledge,” answered Stave.

  “Who summoned him?”

  Her companion had apparently accepted her fragmented state. He replied without hesitation, “The first summoning was performed by the Cavewight Drool Rockworm at Corruption’s bidding. The second, by High Lord Elena. The third, by High Lord Mhoram. In each such call, the necessary power was drawn from the Staff of Law. But the fourth was accomplished by the Giant Saltheart Foamfollower and the Stonedownor Triock, enabled only by their own desperation, and by a rod of lomillialor, of High Wood, gifted to Triock by High Lord Mhoram.”

  Momentarily distracted, Linden asked, “Lomillialor”?” Stave had mentioned that name once before.

  He shrugged. “These are matters of lore, beyond the devoir of the Haruchai. I know only that lomillialor was to the wood-lore of the lillianrill as orcrest was to the stone-lore of the rhadhamaerl. With it, Hirebrands and Lords invoked the test of truth, spoke across great distances, and wrought other acts of theurgy.”

  She nodded as though she understood. Wandering, she recovered the thread of what she had been saying.

  “But when Covenant and I came here together, we were summoned by Lord Foul. Back then, I didn’t wonder about that. But now I think he made a mistake. It may have been his biggest mistake.” Like Covenant before her, Linden had been freed when her summoner was defeated. “He tied our lives to his.

  “That’s why he used Joan this time. Roger’s mother.”

  Roger had made that possible. And he had kidnapped Jeremiah. Directly or indirectly,
he had delivered Jeremiah to Lord Foul-and to the croyel.

  “Was it not Corruption who summoned the ur-Lord’s former wife?” Stave may have been trying to help Linden think.

  “Oh, sure.” She shook her head to dismiss the implications. “But she was already lost. What I’m trying to understand is ‘the necessity of freedom.’ I don’t know what that means.”

  “Chosen?”

  She turned at a column, headed in a different direction. But she clung to her musing. It protected her from a deeper fear.

  “Before I came here the first time,” she said. “Lord Foul went after Covenant by attacking Joan. He pushed Covenant to sacrifice himself by threatening her. And Covenant did it. He traded his life for hers.

  “The part that I don’t understand-” Linden searched for words. What she sought was only related by inference to what she asked. “When he saved her, did he give up his freedom? Was that why he could only defeat Lord Foul by surrendering? Because in effect he had already surrendered? Did saving Joan cost him his ability to fight?”

  Would Linden doom the Land if she sold herself for Jeremiah?

  Stave appeared to study the question. “This also is a matter of lore, beyond my ken. Yet I deem that it is not so. The Unbeliever’s surrender was his own, coerced by love and his own nature, not by Corruption’s might. Sacrificing himself, he did not sacrifice his freedom. Rather his submission was an expression of strength freely wielded. Had he been fettered by his surrender in your world, Corruption’s many efforts to mislead and compel him would have been needless.”

  Honninscrave also had spent himself to win a precious victory.

  Linden sighed as if she were baffled, although she was not. The Mahdoubt’s giggling had receded into the background of her thoughts, but she had not forgotten what she had lost. She understood the importance of choice.

  Veering again, she found her attention fixed on a statuette poised on a ledge in one of the columns. It caught her notice because it represented a horse, clearly a Ranyhyn-and because it reared like the beasts ramping across Jeremiah’s pyjamas. It was perhaps as tall as her arm, and charged with an air of majesty, mane and tail flowing, muscles bunched. When she blew away its coat of dust, she saw that it was fashioned of bone. Over the millennia, it had aged to the hue of ivory.