The Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Book One (92 page)

Mahrtiir stiffened at Linden's side, but did not retort. He had committed himself to her service, and remained silent.

Linden faced the Voice of the Masters squarely. “You know why I'm here. Anele is under my protection. I want you to let him go. And I hope I can convince you to help me. The Land needs you. What you've done so far isn't enough anymore—if it ever was.

“As for your welcome, the Mahdoubt took good care of me. And she did the same for Liand.” The Stonedownor nodded. “We have no complaints.”

Handir held her gaze. “Then I bid you a further welcome to the Close of Revelstone, where in ages long past the Council of Lords gathered to consider the perils of their times. We have selected this to be our meeting place because it has been harmed by despair and Earthpower.

“When the first Staff of Law had been destroyed, the former Bloodguard Bannor sojourned to Revelstone to discover what had befallen the Lords. From his tales of that time, the
Haruchai
learned that here Trell Atiaran-mate performed a Ritual of Desecration which nearly brought about the ruin of Lord's Keep. The outcome of his mad grief is written in this wounded stone.

“Here you may behold clearly the reasons which have led us to assume the Mastery
of the Land. You stand upon the consequences of mortal power and passion. Here you may see explained the purposes of the Masters, if your eyes are open, and your heart is not inured to pain.

“It is here,” Handir concluded inflexibly, “that you will be accused. Here you will make answer as you are able. And here the judgment of the Masters will be rendered.”

“ ‘Accused'?” Liand objected in surprise. “Do you jest?”

“It is as I have said, Ringthane,” snarled Mahrtiir. “The sleepless ones have grown too haughty to be endured. Do they welcome us? Then let us depart, that they may no longer be constrained. We have no need of their judgment.”

But Linden gestured both of them to silence. Behind her chosen detachment, she seethed with indignation; yet she exposed none of it. She had expected something like this. Stave had promised her a reckoning. And in some sense she was ready for it.

“All right,” she told Handir quietly. “Accuse away. I'm eager to hear what you think I should have done differently.” Then she let a flick of anger into her voice. “But make no mistake about it. I am going to answer you. And when I'm done, you will by God answer
me.
”

She had earned that right.

The Voice of the Masters studied her for a moment. Then he pronounced, “Let it be so.”

At his word, most of his people left the bottom of the pit to position themselves like sentinels or judges around the lower slopes. Only Handir, Stave, and the Humbled, with Anele among them, remained facing Linden.

Firmly she turned her back on the Masters and stepped aside to sit on a bulge of stone at the edge of the bottom. Placing the Staff across her knees, she beckoned for her companions to join her.

Reluctantly Mahrtiir and Liand sat on either side of her, while the Cords placed themselves behind her. “Linden,” Liand whispered at once, “I mislike this. The Masters do not relent. Permitting them to accuse you, you grant them a credence which they do not merit.”

“The Stonedownor speaks truly,” Mahrtiir put in more loudly. “You are beyond these Bloodguard. Your heed does them too much honor.”

“And there is no fault in what you have done,” added Liand. “Why then should they be suffered to speak against you?”

Linden did not glance at either of them. Nor did she meet Handir's gaze. Instead she focused her attention on Stave.

“Trust me,” she answered softly. “This has to be done.” Anele's plight required it—as did Jeremiah's. “They may call themselves Masters, but they're still
Haruchai,
” men so moved by the grandeur of the Old Lords that they had surrendered love and sleep and death to their Vow of service. “They can be persuaded.”

Somehow High Lord Kevin had persuaded them—

The Manethrall glared about him, but did not protest further. After a squirming moment, Liand subsided as well.

Linden went on watching Stave and waited for the accusations to begin. Handir was the Voice of the Masters; yet she did not expect him to recite her crimes. Every question that mattered lay between her and Stave. He had traveled with her, aided her; had been badly injured in her name. And she had shamed him—She was intuitively sure that he would be her accuser.

“In courtesy,” Handir announced, “we will speak as do the folk of the Land, though it is not natural to us. The Chosen should hear all that is said of her.”

With a grave nod, Stave stepped into the center of the contorted floor. Ignoring Linden's gaze, he addressed the Close as though his entire race were in attendance.

“She is Linden Avery the Chosen,” he said stolidly, “the companion of ur-Lord Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever during the time of the Sunbane. So much is certain. I have ascertained it beyond doubt. She accompanied the Unbeliever on his quest for the One Tree. She shared his return to Revelstone, putting an end to the evils of the Clave and the Banefire. At his side in Kiril Threndor, she formed the new Staff of Law—the Staff which was then lost, and has now been regained.

“From him she received the white gold ring which is at once the Land's greatest boon and its most fatal bane.”

At least, Linden thought as she listened to him, he plays fair. He was willing to acknowledge who she was and what she had done, if Handir and the Humbled were not.

“When I had learned that she is indeed the Chosen,” Stave continued without pausing, “I sought to do her honor by explaining the convictions and purposes of the Masters. I described the harm which attends inevitably upon any use of Earthpower. And I offered the support and aid of the Masters in any condign quest which might oppose Corruption.

“She has responded with unfailing defiance. At every turn, she has acted against my counsel. At every turn, she has striven to deny Anele from us, though his madness only accentuates the peril of his Earthpower.”

Feigning calm, Linden helped herself to some of Liand's bread and cheese; ate as if her own heart and Jeremiah's life were not at stake. Yet inwardly she squirmed with frustration and yearning, and she could barely swallow.

“I grant,” Stave declared, “that her defiance has yielded unforeseen boons. Because she fled from me, we now know that the Ranyhyn and their Ramen yet live. That is a benison which all who serve the Land must acknowledge.

“And the Staff of Law has been reclaimed. That is of inestimable worth. In itself, it is not a use of power. Yet it is a bastion of Law, and its nature sustains the life of the
Land. Unused, its presence among us may hamper the proliferation of Falls, or diminish the pall of Kevin's Dirt.”

The Master was still trying to be fair.

But then he resumed his accusations. “By the same defiance, however, she has admitted new perils. I have spoken of Esmer, who professes to be the son of Cail and the Dancers of the Sea, and whose dark puissance concerns and dismays even the ur-viles, despite their ancient loathing for the Land. And there are the Demondim, of which I will say more.

“However, the greatest accusation is this. She has a son who has been captured by Corruption. Her desire to redeem him is both proper and seemly. Yet her actions in his name have threatened the destruction of the Arch of Time.”

Mahrtiir muttered imprecations under his breath. Softly Liand asked Linden, “Why do you suffer this? What manner of men advocate the sacrifice of threatened children?”

Placing her hand on the young man's arm, she gripped him hard to quiet him. She already knew what Stave would say.

The Master ignored her companions. “For the sake of her son,” he proclaimed, “she entered a Fall of Esmer's summoning, daring the past to seek for the Staff of Law. There she forged an alliance between the Waynhim and the ur-viles, which have ever opposed each other. And when we were beset by the Demondim, as well as by the power of the Illearth Stone, she herself caused the Fall which has delivered both them and us to Revelstone. Doing so, she has inflicted yet another dire bane upon the Land.

“I am
Haruchai
and fear nothing. Yet I fear to inquire what else she may attempt in her son's name.”

Mahrtiir breathed an obscenity, but did not interrupt.

“Now she has entered Revelstone holding both white gold and the Staff of Law.” At last, Stave turned to gaze at Linden. His face held no expression, but shadows which she could not interpret haunted his single eye like ghosts. “I do not doubt that she is a woman of honor, and that all of her purposes are benign. Indeed, she has spoken eloquently of her love for the Land. Nevertheless she is mortal, and her powers surpass the strictures of mortal flesh and desire. If ever she knows a moment of despair—which is surely Corruption's intent—she will wreak such ruin as the Earth has never known.”

Then he looked away. “Thus she reenacts the error which destroyed the fidelity of the Bloodguard. As did Korik, Sill, and Doar, she commands powers which exceed her. Yet none will question that those Bloodguard were men of honor.

“The first principle of our Mastery,” he told his people, “is that the uses of such power must ultimately serve Corruption. Is it not therefore certain that Linden Avery the Chosen will in the end become a servant of the Despiser?

“She will perhaps reply that she is warded from doom by the purity of her purpose.
Her desire, she may assert, is merely to redeem her son rather than to defeat Corruption. Yet her own deeds gainsay her. Twice she has imposed healing upon me against my desires. Thus she has demonstrated that she cares nothing for the honor of those who do not share her purpose.

“Beyond question she has already begun to tread the path of Corruption's service.”

There he stopped, leaving Linden daunted in spite of herself. His recitation eroded her detachment; her certainty. In his own way, he had told the truth about her. If she accepted his assumptions, she could not contest his conclusion. It was as ineluctable as loss.

Good cannot be accomplished by evil means.

After Esmer had almost beaten Stave to death, she believed that the
Haruchai
had given her permission to treat him. But she could not say the same for her actions the previous day. In the forehall, she had reached out with the Staff reflexively; had responded to Stave's wounds simply because he was hurt.

Again you have shamed me
—There she had violated her own convictions as well as his. If power could corrupt, then it had already begun to corrupt her.

Now she clutched Mahrtiir's forearm as well, holding both men to keep them from speaking—and to assure herself that she was not alone. She could not answer Stave's charges directly. She had already sacrificed her right to do so. And the Masters would not yield to simple contradiction. She had to go further.

She had to show them that their fundamental assumptions were false. That good could come of deeds and risks and even purposes which appeared evil.

“Are you done?” she asked grimly. “Is it my turn yet?”

She was angry at herself; but she knew that anger would not serve her. She could not undo her mistakes. And her ire was merely a defense against pain and fear. Deliberately she put such things aside. Surgeries were full of bleeding which could not be staunched, wounds which resisted repair, deaths which defied refusal. Anger and grief only prevented the surgeon from accomplishing as much as possible.

When Handir replied with a severe nod, she said more gently, “I'm not going to contradict anything Stave told you. It's the truth. Instead I'll give you a better answer. In fact, I'll give you three.

“But just so you'll know—” she added to Stave. “I'm sorry I didn't ask your permission yesterday. You're right. I should have done that.”

And accepted his answer.

Her accuser faced her regret without a word. He had already gone too far to be turned aside.

Sighing, she released her grasp on her friends, wrapped her hands around the Staff, and rose to her feet. As Stave withdrew from the center of the floor, she took a few steps
over the twisted stone, then stopped to plant the heel of the Staff between her feet and hold up her head.

Briefly she considered revealing the advice that she had received from Covenant in her dreams. No doubt Stave had already told his kinsmen what Anele had said when he had spoken for her dead love. And Covenant's name might carry weight with the Masters. But she did not know what to make of his messages—if in fact they were messages at all, and not the by-products of her dreaming dreads.

Whatever happened, she needed to withstand the Masters on her own terms.

Still facing Stave as if he were the only one of his people who mattered, she said quietly, “We're wasting time here. The Demondim will be back,” she was sure of that. “We should be deciding what to do, not blaming each other.

“But you're the Masters of the Land. You've done me the courtesy of explaining what you think I've done wrong,” when they could have simply left her to the horde, or taken Covenant's ring and the Staff from her. “You deserve the same from me.”