Thomas Covenant 8 - The Fatal Revenant (66 page)

Suddenly Liand stopped. Easing his grip on the Sunstone, he let its light fade. Then he sat up straight, tucked the orcrest away in its pouch, and faced Linden with his hands braced on his thighs. An unexpected anger sharpened his tone.

“Linden, the proscriptions of the Masters no longer appear arrogant to me. Now I deem them madness. I comprehend that the Haruchai eschew weapons, trusting solely to strength

and skill. This they deem necessary to their vision of themselves. And the Ramen are the servants of the Ranyhyn. They find no use in the exercise of theurgy, for the great horses do not require it of them. Yet the sheer waste of that which the Aumbrie contains staggers me. I discern no conscience in the denial-“

Linden interrupted him. Defending herself as much as Stave and the Masters, she stated heavily, “It isn’t

that simple. You don’t just need the instrument. You have to know how to use it.”

“Yet-” the Stonedownor tried to protest.

She did not let him go on. “Liand, what happened to you in that room? How many of those things did you have to examine before you found what you were looking for?”

“Many,” he admitted uncomfortably. Some felt inert to my touch, though their power was visible. Others refused my hand entirely. The markings upon the scrolls conveyed no meaning, and the radiance of the caskets forbade me to open them. For a time, I craved a sword or a staff, but they proffered no response.”

“You see?” said Linden more gently. “Maybe the Masters were wrong. I think they were. But it doesn’t matter

now. All of the old knowledge, the lore of the Lords, even the Rede of the Clave. Its gone. Its been lost. And without it-” She lifted her shoulders in a stiff shrug. “I can use the Staff of Law because I made it. But I can only call up wild magic because Covenant left me his ring.” In a sense, she had inherited it from him. “fm surprised you found even one thing that felt right to you.”

Although he seemed unconvinced,

Liand nodded. “And all that the Aumbrie contained bewildered me. The orcrest I would have ignored without Stave’s counsel. When I beseeched his aid, however, he observed that I am a Stonedownor, and that therefore some object of stone might serve me.”

Glancing around at her friends, Linden saw that Mahrtiir’s impatience was growing, and even Bhapa appeared restless. Pahni held herself motionless with her hand on Liand’s shoulder and

her body stiff. Only Stave remained impassive, studying Linden with his single eye. And only Anele ignored the tension in the room.

Linden sighed. She could not postpone her own explanations much longer.

“But you found it,” she said to hasten Liand. “As soon as you touched it, you were sure. It makes you feel like you’ve come to life. We can all see what it means to you.” His heritage glowed

within him as though the blood in his veins had taken light. Now I need you to skip ahead.

“Tell me why the Masters didn’t stop you. From their point of view, it was a major concession when they let me keep my Staff and Covenant’s ring. And they remember orcrest. They remember everything. Why didn’t they take it away from you’?”

Liand glanced at Stave. When we

returned to the door of theurgy,” the Stonedownor told Linden, “Branl of the Humbled awaited us, barring our passage. He demanded of me that I must replace the orcrest in the Aumbrie.” Then the young man’s grave eyes met hers again. “Stave dissuaded him.”

Linden caught her breath. Staring at Stave, she asked softly. “Did you fight him’?”

The Haruchai shook his head. “There was no need. To some small extent, the indulgence which the Masters have granted to you, and to Anele also, wards the Stonedownor as well. But that alone-” Stave shrugged.

“However, an uncertainty has been sown in the hearts of the Masters. They have not forgotten your words when you argued for their aid. In addition, the ur-Lord Thomas Covenant urged the Voice of the Masters to

persuade you from your purpose against the Demondim. Yet it is apparent even to the least tractable of my kinsmen that only your quenching of the Fall, and thus of the Illearth Stone, has enabled Revelstone to withstand the horde.

“Afterward”-again Stave shrugged- “the Unbeliever took you from among us in a manner which encouraged doubt. And when the Unbeliever and your son had removed you, the siege

remained. The unremitting attacks of the Demondim demonstrated that the ur-Lord had not accomplished his purpose-or that his purpose was not as he had avowed.

“Therefore the Masters have become uncertain. They do not yet question their own service. But they inquire now if they have justly gauged your worth. For that reason, Branl was reluctant to strike down even the least esteemed of your companions.”

Between her teeth, but quietly, Pahni exclaimed, “He is not the least. He is the first of the Ringthane’s friends, and the foremost.”

Involuntarily Liand blushed; but Linden kept her attention on Stave. “Are you telling me,” she asked, “that Branl let him keep something as Earthpowerful as orcrest because the Masters are uncertain?”

“No, Chosen,” replied Stave. “I have

said only that Branl felt reluctance because the Masters have become uncertain. He did not reclaim the orcrest from Liand because I challenged him to the rhadhamaerl test of truth.”

Linden’s mien must have exposed her incomprehension. Without pausing, Stave explained, “In your sojourn with the ur-Lord, you knew only the Clave and the Sunbane. Your knowledge of the Land does not extend to the time of

the Lords, when the stone-lore of the rhadhamaerl was the life and blood of every Stonedown, just as the

lore enriched and preserved every Woodhelven. You are unacquainted with the test of truth.

“It was performed with orcrest, or with lomillialor, to distinguish honesty from falsehood, fealty from Corruption. Such testing was known to be imperfect. At one time, Corruption himself accepted the challenge, and was not exposed.

Among such lesser beings as the Ravers, however, or those who are mortal, the test of truth did not fail.

“I observed to Branl that Liand himself had met the test, though the lore of the rhadhamaerl has been lost for millennia. He held orcrest in his hand and suffered no hurt. And I proposed to endure the test as well, if Branl would do likewise.”

Liand nodded. In his face, Linden could

see that Stave had surprised him then. He was not accustomed to thinking of any Haruchai as a friend.

“That challenge he refused,” Stave continued. “He did not doubt its outcome for himself. But such matters have too much import to be decided by a single Master when the Masters together have become uncertain. They have spurned me. In their sight, I have betrayed their chosen service. If I failed the test of truth, I would confirm their

judgment. But if I did not, much would be altered. Therefore Branl permitted us to pass unopposed.

“Now Liand is suffered to hold the orcrest just as Anele is suffered to move freely, and your own actions have not been hindered. We are warded by the uncertainty of the Masters.”

Linden shook her head. “I’m sorry, Stave. I don’t understand. What would

be altered?’

“Chosen,” Stave answered without impatience, “the Haruchai have not forgotten their ancient esteem for those dedicated to the rhadhamaerl and lillianrill lore. My kinsmen recall that the Bloodguard honored the test of truth. If the orcrest did not reject me, the Masters would be compelled to consider that mayhap they had erred when I was made outcast. Thereafter other doubts would necessarily ensue.

Then would their uncertainty burgeon rather than decline.

“The Masters in conclave might perchance have accepted the hazard. Branl alone could not. And the extremity of Revelstone’s defense precluded careful evaluation.”

“All right,” Linden said slowly. “Now I get it. I think.” She could never be certain that she grasped the full stringency of the Masters. But her own

circumstances demanded all of her conviction. And she had already made her companions wait too long. “Thank you.”

She suspected that the doubts of the Masters would eventually make them more intransigent rather than less. And she did not know how to tell her friends that she had become as rigid and unyielding as Stave’s kindred.

Instead of standing to meet her own

test, she allowed herself one last distraction. With as much gentleness as she could summon, she said. “Pahni.”

Quickly the young Cord lifted her troubled gaze to meet Linden’s, then dropped her eyes again. “Ringthane?”

With that one brief look, Pahni seemed to bare her soul.

Linden caught her breath; held it for a

moment. Then she murmured like a sigh, “Liand has what Covenant told him to find,” Thomas Covenant himself, not some malign imitation. “Now you’re afraid of what’s going to happen to him.”

Pahni nodded without raising her head. Her grip on Liand’s shoulder looked tight enough to hurt; but he only reached up to rest one of his hands on hers, and did not flinch.

At last, Linden rose to her feet. For her own sake as much as for Pahni’s, she said, “What you’ll have to face is going to be harder.” Covenant had said so through Anele. “I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what’s going to happen to any of us. But I know that you and Liand need each other.” She was intimately familiar with the cruelty of being forced to face her doom unloved. “Try to understand his excitement. For the first time in his life, he has something that you’ve never lacked,”

something comparable to the way in which the Ramen served the Ranyhyn. “A reason to believe that what he does matters.” The Masters had taken that away from all of the Land’s people. “A reason to believe in himself.”

Covenant had given Linden’s friends a message for her. She can do this. Tell her I said that. She did not believe him-or disbelieve. She could only promise that she would let nothing stop her.

She had also made a promise to Caerroil Wildwood, which she meant to keep.

Standing, Linden looked around at her companions: at Mahrtiir’s champing frustration and Stave’s impassivity, Bhapa’s conflicted desire to hear and not hear her tale, Anele’s

inattentiveness, Liand’s growing concern; at Pahni’s surprise and appreciation. Then, for the first time since the Humbled had left the room,

she let her underlying wrath rise to the surface.

“As it turns out,” she said like iron. “the Elohim told the truth.” He or she had given warning of croyel as well as skurj. And both the Ramen and the people of the Land had been urged to Beware the halfhand. “If they hadn’t been so damn cryptic about it, they might have actually done us some good.”

Had you not suffered and striven as you did, you would not have become who you are.

“Liand, would you put more wood on the fire? It’s going to get colder in here.”

Before anyone could react, she walked away into her bedroom.

Temporarily, at least, she had moved past her reluctance. First she opened

the shutters over the window so that the comparative chill of the spring night could flow in unhindered. She wanted that small reminder of grim winter and desperation. For a moment, she breathed the air as if she were filling her lungs with darkness. Then she retrieved her Staff and carried its rune-carved ebony back to her waiting friends.

As they caught sight of it, Liand and the Cords winced. They were not

surprised: they had seen the Staff when they had brought her here from the plateau. But they did not understand its transformation.

“What has transpired’?” Bhapa’s voice was husky with alarm. “Is this some new Staff’?”

“Gaze more closely, Cord,” growled the Manethrall. “This is alteration, not replacement. Some lorewise being has constrained the Ringthane’s Staff, or

exalted it. And she has wielded her power in battle greater and more terrible than any we have witnessed. She has met such foes-“

Abruptly he turned to Stave. “Perhaps now we must speak of the Mandoubt, who has retrieved the Ringthane from the most dire peril.”

Stave studied Linden closely. “The Chosen will speak as she wills. However, I am loath to address such

matters. We may consider them with greater assurance when more is known.”

“Anele sees this,” Anele remarked, peering blindly past or through the Staff. “He cannot name it. Yet he sees that it is fitting.”

Linden shook her head. “The Mandoubt is beside the point.” She had no idea why Stave wanted to avoid the subject; but she did not wish to discuss

the Insequent without the older woman’s permission. For reasons of her own-perhaps to evade questions like Mahrtiir’s-the Mandoubt had avoided encountering Linden’s companions a short time ago. Whatever those reasons were, Linden intended to respect them. Lightly she tapped one shod end of her Staff on the floor. “Even this isn’t the point. I just wanted you to look at it. I don’t know how to describe everything that happened, but I wanted to give you

some idea of the scale.”

Now everyone except Anele regarded her intently. While the old man mumbled a disjointed counterpoint, she tried to put what she had experienced into words.

She could not do it. The stone in the center of her chest left no room for sorrow or regret, or for the urgent bafflement and need which had compelled her actions. She still felt

those things, but she could not articulate them. They had melted and joined to form the igneous amalgam of her purpose. Any language except deeds would have falsified her to herself.

Instead of the truth, she told her friends the bare skeleton of her story; bones stripped of passion and necessity. While the night air from her bedroom blew softly on the back of her neck, she recited the facts of her time

with Roger and the croyel as if she had heard them from someone else. Although she glossed over a number of details, she skipped nothing essential-until she came to her time with the Mandoubt in Garroting Deep. Then she spoke only of Caerroil Wildwood and runes, leaving unexplained her rescue from the Land’s past.

If her companions had asked about her return to Revelstone, she would have

deflected their inquiries until she understood Stave’s disinclination to discuss the Mandoubt-or until she could seek the Mandoubt’s consent. But they did not. Various aspects of her narrative snagged their attention, and they had too many other questions.