Thomas Covenant 8 - The Fatal Revenant (12 page)

a lump of distress. “I can’t take the chance that they’ll get in my way.”

Stave faced her stolidly. “No

forgiveness is needful. I do not question you. The Masters are indeed able to hear my thoughts-should they deign to do so. Speak to me of nothing which may foster their opposition.”

Mutely Mahrtiir gave the former Master a deep Ramen bow. And Linden squeezed his shoulder. She wanted to

hug him-to acknowledge his

understanding as well as his losses-but she did not trust herself. Her emotions gathered like the coming storm. If she could not emulate his stoic detachment when she confronted Covenant and her son-and if they still refused her touch-she would be routed like a scatter of dry leaves.

Millennia ago, Covenant had promised that he would never use power again. But he was using power now: he was

folding time. He might ask for his ring. Why else had he come so unexpectedly? He might demand—

And somehow Jeremiah had obtained his own magic.

If either of them accepted Linden’s embrace now, she would certainly lose control of herself. And she feared the costs of her vulnerability.

At the end of the long tunnel down into the ramified convolutions of Revelstone, Linden, Stave, and Mahrtiir were met by Galt of the Humbled. He greeted them with a small inclination of his head, hardly a nod, and announced that he would guide the Chosen to speak with ur-Lord Thomas Covenant.

Linden paused to address Mahrtiir and Stave again. “I have to do this alone.” Her voice was tight with trepidation.

“But I hope that you’ll stay nearby, Stave.

“Mahrtiir, it might be a good idea to take Liand and the others to Glimmermere. Drink the water. Go swimming. Anele won’t, but the rest of you will be better off.” Unnecessarily she added, “There’s a storm coming, but it doesn’t feel like the kind of weather that can hurt you.”

When the Manethrall had bowed to her

and walked away, she returned her attention to Galt.

“All right,” she said softly. “Let’s do this. I’m tired of waiting.”

Saying nothing, the Humbled led her and Stave into the intricate gutrock of Revelstone’s secrets.

The way had been prepared for her, by the Masters if not by Revelstone’s servants. Torches interspersed with oil

lamps lit the unfamiliar halls, corridors, stairs. Some of the passages were blunt stone: others, strangely ornate, elaborated by Giants for reasons entirely their own. But the inadequate illumination left the details caliginous, obscure.

As Galt guided her downward and inward, she sensed that he was taking her toward the Keep’s outer wall where it angled into the northwest from the watchtower. The complications of his

route-abrupt turns, ascents instead of descents, corridors that seemed to double back on themselves-might have confused her; but her refreshed percipience protected her from disorientation. Concentrating acutely, she felt sure that she was nearing her destination when the Humbled steered her into a plain hallway where there were no more lamps or torches after the first score or so paces.

Beside the last lamp, a door

indistinguishable from the one to Linden’s quarters defined the wall of the corridor. She wanted to pause there, rally her courage, before she faced the uncertain possibilities behind the door. But when Galt knocked, a stone-muffled voice called promptly, “Come in.”

Even through the barrier of rock, she seemed to recognize Covenant’s stringent tone; his harsh commandments.

Without hesitation, Galt pressed the door open and gestured for Linden to enter.

Even then she might have faltered. But from beyond the doorway, she heard the faint crackle and snap of burning wood, saw firelight reflect redly off the stone. And there was another glow as well: not the flame of lamps or torches, but the tenebrous admixture of the fading day.

Such homely details steadied her. Very well: Thomas Covenant and her son were still human enough to want a fire against the residual chill of the stone, and to leave their windows open for the last daylight. She would be able to bear seeing them again.

Even if they still refused her touch—

For a brief moment, she braced herself on Stave’s inflexible aura. Then she left him in the corridor. Biting her lip, she

crossed the threshold into the chambers that the Masters had made available to Covenant and Jeremiah.

As she did so, Galt shut the door. He remained outside with Stave.

She found herself in a room larger than her own small quarters. A dozen or more people could have seated themselves comfortably around the walls: she saw almost that many stone chairs and wooden stools. Among

them, a low table as large as the door held the remains of an abundant repast-bread and dried fruit, several kinds of cured meat, stew in a wide stoneware pot, and clay pitchers of both water and some other drink which smelled faintly of aliantha and beer. The floor was covered to the walls by a rough flaxen rug raddled to an ochre like that of the robe of the old man who should have warned her of her peril.

A large hearth shining with flames

occupied part of the wall to her left. Above it hung a thick tapestry woven predominantly in blues and reds which must have been bright until time had dimmed their dyes. The colors depicted a stylized central figure surrounded by smaller scenes; but Linden recognized nothing about the arras, and did not try to interpret it.

Four other doors marked the walls. Three of them apparently gave access to chambers that she could not see:

two bedrooms, perhaps, and a bathroom. But the fourth stood open directly opposite her, revealing a wide balcony with a crenellated parapet. Beyond the parapet, she could see a sky dimmed by late afternoon shadows.

On this side, Revelstone faced somewhat east of north. Here the cliffs which protected the Keep’s wedge and the plateau cut off direct sunshine. From the balcony, the fields that fed

Revelstone’s inhabitants would be visible. And off to the right, along the wall toward the southeast, would be at least a glimpse of the massed horde of the Demondim.

Then Thomas Covenant said her name, and she could no longer gaze anywhere except at him-and at her son.

Her pulse hammered painfully in her chest as she stared at Covenant and

Jeremiah. They were much as she had seen them in the forehall; too explicitly themselves to be anyone else despite their subtle alterations. Jeremiah

sprawled with the unconsidered gracelessness of a teenager in one of the stone chairs, grinning with covert pleasure or glee. Although Lord Foul must have tortured him-must have been torturing him at this moment-his features retained their half-undefined youth. But the imminent drooling which had marked his slack mouth for years

was gone. An insistent tic at the corner of his left eye contradicted his relaxed posture.

His eyes themselves were the same muddy color that they had always been: the hue of silted water. But now they focused keenly on his adoptive mother. He watched her avidly, as if he were studying her for signs of acceptance, understanding, love.

If Linden had seen him so in their lost

life together, she would have wept for utter joy; would have hugged him until her heart broke apart and was made new. But now her fears-for him, of him-burned in her gaze, and the brief blurring of her vision was not gladness or grief: it was trepidation.

Tell her that I have her son.

He was closed to her, more entirely undecipherable than the Haruchai. Her health-sense could discern nothing of

his physical or emotional condition. Past his blue pajamas with their rearing horses, she searched his precious flesh for some sign of the fusillade which had ended her normal life. But the fabric had been torn in too many places, and his exposed skin wore too much grime, to reveal whether or not he had been shot.

Shot and healed.

To her ordinary sight, he looked well;

as cared for and healthy as he had been before Roger Covenant took him. She did not know how that was possible. During their separation, he had been in the Despiser’s power. She could not imagine that Lord Foul had attended to his needs.

Covenant claimed that he had folded time, that he and Jeremiah were in two places at once. Or two realities. But she had no idea how such a violation of Time had restored her son’s physical

well-being. Or his mind.

Covenant himself was sitting on a stool near Jeremiah. Her former lover had tilted the stool back on two legs so that he could lean against the wall. Lightly held by his left hand, a wooden flagon rested in his lap.

He, too, was smiling: a wry twist of his mouth etiolated by an uncharacteristic looseness in his mouth and cheeks. His gaze regarded her with an

expression of dull appraisal. He was exactly the same man whom she had known for so long in the Land: lean to the point of gauntness; strictly formed; apt for extreme needs and catastrophes. The pale scar on his forehead suggested deeper wounds, hurts which he had borne without flinching. And yet he had never before given her the impression that he was not entirely present; that some covert aspect of his mind was fixed elsewhere.

His right arm hung, relaxed, at his side. Dangling, the fingers of his halfhand twitched as though they felt the absence of the ring that he had worn for so long.

“I’m sorry, Mom,” Jeremiah said, grinning. “You still can’t touch us.” He seemed to believe that he knew her thoughts. “You’ve changed. You’re even more powerful now. You’ll make us vanish for sure.”

But he had misinterpreted her clenched frown, her deep consternation. She had forgotten nothing: his prohibition against contact held her as if she had been locked in the manacles of the urŹviles. Nevertheless her attention was focused on Covenant. The smaller changes in him seemed less comprehensible than her son’s profound restoration.

Covenant nodded absently.

“Glimmermere,” he observed. “fm

pretty damn strong, but I can’t fight that.” His tongue slurred the edges of his words. “Reality will snap back into place. Then were all doomed.”

Was he-?

In a flat voice, a tone as neutral as she could make it, Linden asked, “What are you drinking’?”

Covenant peered into his flagon. “This?” He took a long swallow, then

set the flagon back in his lap. “Springwine. You know, I actually forgot how good it tastes. I haven’t been”-he grimaced-“physical for a long time.” Then he suggested, “You should try it. It might help you relax. You’re so tense it hurts to look at you.”

Jeremiah started to giggle; stopped himself sharply.

Linden stepped to the edge of the table, bent down to a pitcher that

smelled of treasure-berries and beer. The liquid looked clear, but its fermentation was obvious. Somehow the people of the Land had used the juice of aliantha to make an ale as refreshing as water from a mountain spring.

The Ramen believed that No servant of Fangthane craves or will consume aliantha. The virtue of the berries is too potent.

Facing Covenant again, she said stiffly, “You’re drunk.”

He shrugged, grimacing again.

“Hellfire, Linden. A man’s got to unwind once in a while. With everything I’m going through right now, I’ve earned it.

“Anyway,” he added, “Jeremiah’s had as much as I have-“

“I have not,” retorted Jeremiah cheerfully.

“-and he’s not drunk,” Covenant continued. “Just look at him.” As if to himself, he muttered, “Maybe when he swallows it ends up in his other stomach. The one where he’s still Foul’s prisoner.”

Linden shook her head. Covenant’s behavior baffled her. For that very reason, however, she grew calmer. His strangeness enabled her to reclaim a measure of the professional detachment with which she had for

years listened to the oblique ramblings of the psychotic and the deranged: dissociated observations, warnings, justifications, all intended to both conceal and expose underlying sources of pain. She did not suddenly decide that Covenant was insane: she could not. He was too much himself to be evaluated in that way. But she began to hear him as if from a distance. As if she had erected a wall between him and her denied anguish-or had hidden her distress in a room like the

secret place where her access to wild magic lurked.

Her tone was deliberately impersonal as she replied, “You said that you wanted to talk to me. Are you in any condition to explain things?”

“What,” Covenant protested, “you think a little alcohol can slow me down? Linden, you’re forgetting who I am. The keystone of the Arch of Time, remember? I know everything. Or I

can, if I make the effort.”

He seemed to consider the air, trying to choose an example. Then he turned his smeared gaze toward her again.

“You’ve been to Glimmermere. And you’ve talked to Esmer. Him and something like a hundred ur-viles and Waynhim. Tell me. Why do you think they’re here? I don’t care what he said. He was just trying to justify himself. What do you think’?”

Disturbed by his manner, Linden kept her reactions to herself. Instead of answering, she said cautiously, “I have no idea. He took me by surprise. I don’t know how to think about it.”

Covenant snorted. “Don’t let him confuse you. It’s really pretty simple. He likes to talk about ‘aid and betrayal,’ but with him it’s mostly betrayal. Listening to him is a waste of time.”

While Covenant spoke, Jeremiah took

his racecar from the waistband of his pajamas and began to roll the toy over and around the fingers and palm of his halfhand as if he were practicing a conjuring trick; as if he meant to make the car vanish like a coin from the hand of a magician.

Covenant’s awareness of her

encounter with Esmer startled Linden; but she clung to her protective detachment. You know what he said to me?”

You must be the first to drink of the EarthBlood. Did Covenant understand what Esmer meant?

“Probably,” Covenant drawled. “Most of it, anyway. But it’s better if you tell me.”

He was Thomas Covenant: she did not question that. But she did not know how to trust him now. Carefully she replied, He said that the ur-viles and Waynhim want to serve me.”