The Fatal Revenant Part 36

In the Care of the Mandoubt Linden awoke slowly, climbing with effort and reluctance through the exhaustion of millennia. The years that she had bypa.s.sed or slipped between seemed to multiply her natural age; and her attempts to open her eyes, confirm the substance of her surroundings, felt hampered by caducity. She did not know where she was. She had told herself that she had reached the plateau above Revelstone in her proper time. She had believed that, trusted it; and slept. But the surface on which she lay was not fresh gra.s.s in springtime. Linen rather than soiled garments covered her nakedness, and her feet were bare. The light beyond her eyelids was too dim to be morning.

And she was diminished, truncated, in some fas.h.i.+on that she could not identify.

Yet she was warm, comfortably nestled. The unremitting clench of winter had released her. Her bed supported her softly. Like her eyes, her mouth and throat were too dry for ease, but those small discomforts were the normal consequences of unconsciousness. They did not hamper her.

For a moment like an instant of panic in a dream, quickly forgotten, she imagined that she had been taken to a hospital; that paramedics had rushed her, sirens wailing, to a place of urgent care. Had the bullet missed her heart? But the deeper levels of her mind knew the truth.

Gradually she recognized how she had been reduced.

Her skin felt nothing except the tactile solace of linen and softness and warm weight. She smelled nothing except the faint tang of wood smoke and the precious scent of cleanliness; heard nothing except the subtle effort of her own breathing. None of her senses extended beyond the confines of her body.

She did not know where she was, or how, or why-she hardly knew who-because her health-sense was gone. She had grown accustomed to its insights. Its absence diminished her.

Nonetheless she was paradoxically comforted by the realization that Kevin's Dirt had regained its hold. Now she could be certain that the Mandoubt had brought her near to her rightful time.

In any case, her benevolent rescuer would not have stranded her earlier than she belonged. Then she would still have posed a threat to the integrity of the Arch. Nor had the Mandoubt greatly overshot the day of Linden's disappearance in rain from the upland plateau. She seemed to recall that she had heard Bhapa's voice announcing her presence. If that were true, then she had also heard Manethrall Mahrtiir and Cord Pahni answer Bhapa's call.

Surely they would not have awaited her return indefinitely? Not while their choices were constrained by the Masters-and the Demondim. At some point, they would have left Revelstone to rejoin their people, or to seek out a defense against the Land's foes.

Linden had not been absent long enough to exhaust her friends' hopes. And she had felt spring in the air- When she was sure that the Mandoubt had delivered her to the proper season in the proper year, a few of her numberless fears faded. At last, she allowed herself to remember why she was here.

Jeremiah. The croyel. Roger Covenant. Purpose and urgency.

Heavy with sleep, she raised her hands to confirm that Covenant's ring still hung from its chain around her neck. Then she lifted them higher to rub her face. But she was not yet ready to sit up. She needed a moment to acknowledge that she had done Thomas Covenant the shameful injustice of permitting herself to be misled by his son.

She should have known better. Her dead love had earned more than her loyalty: he had earned her faith. Recalling the long tally of her mistakes, she was grieved that she let Roger tarnish her memories of the man who had twice defeated Lord Foul for the Land's sake.

Grieved and angered.

Jeremiah's presence had accomplished Roger's intentions perfectly: it had distorted her judgment, leaving her vulnerable.

No more, she vowed. Not again. She had fallen in with the Despiser's machinations once. She would not repeat that mistake.

Instead she meant to exact a price for Jeremiah's torment.

But she was getting ahead of herself. Her night with the Mandoubt in Garroting Deep had taught her-or retaught her-an important lesson. One step at a time. Just one. First she needed to absorb the details of her present situation. And she had to retrieve her Staff so that she could cast off the pall of Kevin's Dirt. She would determine other actions later, after her true strength was restored.

Blinking against the smear of nightmares and regret, she looked around.

Strange, she thought. She was in a small room which she knew well enough, although it seemed vaguely unreal, dislocated by the pa.s.sage of too much time; too much cold and desperation, battle and loss. She lay under blankets in a narrow bed. A pillow cradled her head. A shuttered window in the smooth stone wall above her admitted a dull grey light that could have been dawn or dusk. A doorway in the opposite wall past the foot of the bed held a soft illumination, yellow and flickering, which suggested lamps or a fire. Near her head, a second doorway led to a bathroom.

The chamber appeared to be the same one in which she had spent two nights before Roger and the croyel had translated her out of her time. She remembered it as though she had visited it in dreams rather than in life.

Yet she was here. As if to demonstrate the continuity of her existence, the Staff of Law leaned like a shaft of midnight against the wall at the head of the bed. And in a chair at its foot sat the Mandoubt, watching Linden with a smile on her lips and gloaming in her mismatched eyes.

When Linden raised her head, the Mandoubt left her chair, moved into the next room, and returned with an oil lamp and a clay goblet. The little flame, soothing in spite of its unsteadiness, accentuated her orange eye while it dimmed her blue one. The lurid patchwork of her robe blurred into a more harmonious melange.

"Forbear speech, lady," she murmured as she approached the bed. "Your slumber has been long and long, and you awaken to confusion and diminishment. Here is water fresh from the eldritch wealth of Glimmermere." She offered the goblet to Linden. "Has its virtue declined somewhat? a.s.suredly. Yet much of its healing lingers.

"Drink, lady," the Mandoubt urged. "Then you may speak, and be restored."

But Linden needed no encouragement. As soon as she caught sight of the goblet, she became conscious of an acute thirst. Propping herself up on one elbow, she accepted the goblet and drained it eagerly.

In the absence of any health-sense, she could not gauge how much of the water's potency had been lost. Nevertheless it was bliss to her mouth and throat, balm to her thirst. And it awakened her more fully. A numinous tingling sharpened her senses, reminding her of a more fundamental discernment.

At once, she dropped the goblet on the bed, sat up, and reached for the Staff.

As soon as she closed her hands on the necessary warmth of the wood, and read with her fingers the deft precision of the Forestal's runes, she felt the return of a more complete life. In the s.p.a.ce between her heartbeats, the stone of the chamber ceased to be blind granite, inert and unresponsive: it became a vital and breathing aspect of Lord's Keep. She recognized warmth and fire in the hearth of the larger room beyond her bedroom; smelled water poised to flow in the bathroom. Every inch of her skin and scalp became aware of its cleanliness. And the comfortable ease of the Mandoubt's aura washed over her like a baptism.

Hugging the Staff to her bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s, Linden retrieved the goblet and handed it back to the older woman, mutely asking for more of Glimmermere's benison.

With a nod of approval, the Mandoubt complied. When she returned from the sitting room this time, however, she brought a large wooden pitcher as well as the replenished goblet. The goblet she gave to Linden: the pitcher she placed on the floor beside the bed, where Linden could reach it easily. Then she retreated to her chair.

Until Linden had emptied the goblet again, she did not remember that she was naked.

Instinctively self-conscious, although she knew that she had no reason to be, she pulled up the sheet to cover herself. With a grimace of embarra.s.sment, she found her voice at last.

"Who bathed me?"

Now the Mandoubt grinned broadly. "The lady's questions are endless. And some may be answered. Aye, a.s.suredly, for there can be no peril in them.

"Lady, you and the Mandoubt were chanced upon by Ramen beside the falls of Glimmermere. Their Manethrall himself bore you hither, and here-with pleasure the Mandoubt proclaims it-you have slumbered for two days and a night. Was such rest needful? Beyond all doubt it was. But when she discerned the depth of your slumbers, she saw that other care was needful as well.

"It was the wish of all who have claimed your friends.h.i.+p, the flattering Stonedownor youth among them, and also he who was once a Master, to stand in vigil at your side. a.s.suredly. Are you not worthy of their attendance? Yet the Mandoubt dismissed them, permitting only the Ramen girl to remain. Together she and the girl bathed you. Your raiment as well they cleansed and in part mended, though the marks of fecundity and long gra.s.s remain-as they must. Oh, a.s.suredly.

"When these small services had been accomplished, the Mandoubt dismissed the girl also. The Mandoubt is aged," she explained lugubriously, in apparent playfulness, "and finds only brief ease in the accompaniment of the young. They remind her of much that she has left behind." She sighed, but her tone held no regret. "Therefore the Mandoubt has watched over you alone, taking satisfaction in your rest."

The older woman's gentle voice filled the room with a more ordinary and humane solace than the relief of urgent thirst, the Earthpower in Glimmermere's waters, the recovery of percipience, the stubborn protectiveness of Revelstone, or the confirmed strictures of the Staff. Listening, Linden found that she could accept the sound and relax somewhat, despite the hard clench of her heart.

She wanted to see her friends. But the Mandoubt's reply implied that Liand, Stave, Anele, and the three Ramen were well. Indeed, it seemed to indicate that they had not been harmed by the violence surrounding Linden's disappearance, or threatened by the siege of the Demondim. And if Linden's resolve remained as unmistakable as a fist, her utter extremity had pa.s.sed, sloughed off by sleep and the Mandoubt's astonis.h.i.+ng succor. She could afford to take her steps one at a time-and to take them slowly.

"When you washed my clothes," she asked, holding images of Jeremiah's plight at bay, "did you find a piece of red metal?" She could not recall what she had done with her son's ruined racecar; his only reminder of her love. "It would have looked unfamiliar, but you could tell that it was twisted out of shape."

The older woman nodded. "Aye, lady." Her expression became unexpectedly grave, as though she grasped the significance of the racecar. "It lies beneath your pillow."

Reaching under her pillow, Linden drew out the crumpled toy. Her fingers recognized it before she looked at it. It had been warmed while she slept, yet the croyels touch lingered in it, palpable and malign; and for an instant, she could not understand why she did not weep. But of course she knew why: all of her tears had been fused into the igneous rock of her purpose.

Closing the car in her fingers, she met the Mandoubt's sympathetic gaze. "My friend," she said, trying to soften her voice so that she would not sound angry. "I don't know how to thank you. I can't even imagine how to begin. I don't understand how you helped me, or how you even knew that I needed help. And I certainly don't understand why you went to all of that trouble. But you saved me when everything that I could have hoped for was gone." Ever since we got you away from your present, there haven't been any possible outcomes that don't give us exactly what we want. "Now I hope that someday I'll be worthy of you."

She was not one of the Land's great heroes. Her many inadequacies had almost given Lord Foul his ultimate victory. But the Mandoubt had done more than restore her to her proper time: the Insequent had given her a new opportunity to fight for her son.

Linden did not mean to waste it.

"Pssht, lady," replied the Mandoubt. "Are your thanks pleasing to the Mandoubt? a.s.suredly. Yet they are sufficient-nay, more than sufficient. Already you have surpa.s.sed her own hopes. And you have enabled her to gaze more deeply into the peril of these times. That which she has seen teaches her that she is not yet done with service.

"Lady," she went on briskly. one of those who is named the Humbled has discerned your awakening. Summons have been sent to your companions. a.s.suredly they will gather in haste, clamoring to attend upon you." The woman smiled with evident affection. "Ere their coming, the Mandoubt must depart, for she will not submit to their queries. Yet she is cognizant of your need for knowledge which none here possess. Perchance some few of your questions may now be sated. If there is aught that the Mandoubt may reveal to you, she urges you to speak of it without qualm."

Linden sat up straighter. She had not expected the Mandoubt's offer. And her mind was still clogged by long sleep as well as by the croyets cruel spoor on Jeremiah's toy. Half reflexively, she called up a small tongue of flame from the Staff to lick away the disturbing residue in the metal. Then she scrambled to catch up with her circ.u.mstances.

She wanted details about the condition of her friends and the state of the siege. But Liand and the others would soon arrive to answer such questions in person. And the Mandoubt was one of the Insequent. She had rescued Linden-but she had also permitted Roger's and the croyets treachery.

While Linden tried to a.s.semble her thoughts into some kind of order, she asked the first question that occurred to her.

"Before I left-" At first, words came awkwardly to her, as though she had to drag them across a vast gulf of years. "When the ur-viles tried to stop Roger and the croyel from taking me. There weren't any Waynhim." According to Esmer, he had imposed peace between the ur-viles and the Waynhim. Together they had helped her weaken the Demondim so that Revelstone might survive. "Why didn't they join the ur-viles? Did they want me to get lost in the past?"

Her companion looked away.

Apparently speaking to the rock of the Keep, she mused, "Does the Mandoubt comprehend the lady's concern in this? Oh, a.s.suredly. The lady cannot grasp the speech of the Waynhim. Therefore she cannot inquire of them directly. And the sole interpreter known to her is betimes unworthy of credence. Do these reasons suffice to prompt a reply? They do."

Then the woman faced Linden again. "Lady, the Waynhim absented themselves because they foresaw peril to those who now deem themselves Masters. The esteem between the Waynhim and the mountain race of the Haruchai is both old and earned. The Waynhim do not desire your loss. They would do much to preserve you. Yet they declined to share in deeds which hazarded their olden allies."

Not for the first time, Linden felt that she had wasted a question. Nevertheless she was glad to have an answer. It relieved a nagging doubt. And it gave her time to decide what she most needed to know.

"All right," she murmured. "That makes sense."

Clenching Jeremiah's racecar, she asked. Can you tell me how to save my son? Is he already lost'?"

A-Jeroth's mark was placed upon the boy when he was yet a small child- The Insequent regarded Linden with one eye and then the other. "Sadly," she said, "the Mandoubt has no knowledge of this. It transcends her. In some measure, she has made of herself an adept of Time-as did the Theomach as well, a.s.suredly, though in another form. But she beholds only the time in which she manifests herself, neither its past nor its future. Thus she is unable to witness her own future. Her present is here. Beyond this moment, she may estimate intentions and perils, but she cannot observe deeds and outcomes which lie ahead.

"The Theomach's powers were greater than the Mandoubt's."

Linden winced involuntarily; but she did not protest. She trusted the Mandoubt. And Lord Foul had promised her through Anele, In time you will behold the fruit of my endeavors. If your son serves me, he will do so in your presence. If I slaughter him, I will do so before you. If you discover him, you will only hasten his doom. Roger had a.s.sured her that he and the Despiser still had plans for Jeremiah.

I do not reveal my aims to such as you.

For that reason, she chose to believe that her son was not beyond redemption. While Lord Foul still had a use for him, he would not be irreparably damaged-and she could hope to reach him.

Steadying herself on the stone of her heart, Linden said, "In that case, tell me why you didn't expose Roger and the croyel when they first arrived. In Garroting Deep, you said that you aren't wise enough to interfere with what you considered 'needful.' But that was ten thousand years ago. You had to be careful. This is now. How could what Roger and that monster did to me be needful?"

The Mandoubt could have spared herIn response, chagrin and sorrow closed the woman's features. She lowered the contradiction of her eyes: for a moment, she seemed to fumble within herself. When she replied, her voice was thick with sadness.

"Lady, the Mandoubt comprehends your pain. a.s.suredly she herself must appear to be your treacher, for she stood aside while betrayal was wrought against you. If you choose condemnation, she cannot gainsay you."

The Insequent knotted her fingers together. Her hands twisted at each other. "But if in aught the Mandoubt has won your regard, then she observes-with respect, aye, and mourning also-that you have gained knowledge which you did not formerly possess. And had you not suffered and striven as you did, you would not have become who you are. The Mandoubt could not foresee such an outcome when you were taken by your foes. She was able only to perceive that you were not then equal to the Land's plight.

"Lady, you have become greater. That the Mandoubt deemed needful."

Linden scowled at her companion; but her anger was for herself, not the Mandoubt. "Forgive me. I didn't mean that to sound like an accusation." It was certainly true that she knew more now. "I'm proud to call you my friend. I'm just trying to understand as much as I can."

She had not become greater. She had simply been made harder and more certain.

Slowly the Mandoubt raised her head. Her blue eye was damp with relief or grat.i.tude, but the orange one glared like a promise of ferocity. "Pssht, my lady," she said again. "You have no need of the Mandoubt's forgiveness. It is given before it is asked. a.s.suredly so. Your grat.i.tude"-she indicated her robe-"has claimed her old heart.

"Inquire what you will. The Mandoubt will attempt better answers."

Now it was Linden who looked away. While she prepared herself, she muttered. "My real problem with what you did is that I feel so d.a.m.n stupid. I should have seen the truth for myself. About Roger, anyway." Jeremiah's presence had confounded her utterly. "But he did things- "How could he drink springwine?" she blurted. "How could either of them? It has aliantha in it."

That was only one of the many means by which Covenant's son had confused her. The Ramen believed that No servant of Fangthane craves or will consume aliantha.

"Ah." The Mandoubt nodded in recognition. "a.s.suredly. That chicane arose from the halfhand's portion of the nature of the Elohim. The Elohim are not hampered by mortal distastes. With the cursed gift of such a hand, your betrayer received both the power of glamour, of seeming, and the capacity to set aside his revulsion for the goodly health of the Land. These given strengths he also employed to veil and ward the cruel beast which rules your son. Thus his loathing, and your son's, for aliantha in springwine was hidden.

"Your wits did not fail you, my lady," she added kindly. "Think no ill of yourself. Your foes' deeds and appearances were prepared one and all for your consternation. You were hastened from event to event to a.s.sure that you found no occasion to imagine their concealment." The woman nodded again. "There was no fault in you."

"Then-" With an effort, Linden dragged her attention away from Roger's and the croyer s manipulations. If she considered them too closely, she might founder in outrage. They have done this to my son. For a moment, she closed her eyes, gathered herself. When she opened them again, she faced her companion squarely.

"The Theomach told me that he would protect history from what I did, but I don't know whether I can trust him. I don't know how that's even possible."

How had she not set in motion ripples which would change everything?

The Mandoubt shook her head, turning it from side to side so that first her orange eye and then her blue one regarded Linden brightly. "My lady," she said with an air of intention, urging Linden to believe her, "you may be a.s.sured that the Theomach did not neglect such matters. Does your heart not beat? Do your words not convey their meaning? And do these simple truths not proclaim that the Law of Time endures? It is manifest that you have not broken faith with the past.

"Yet the Mandoubt may observe," she added as if Linden had expressed doubt, "that Law seeks its own path. Diverted, it strives to return. Your exertion of Earthpower among Berek Heartthew's warriors was easily trans.m.u.ted to serve the Theomach's purpose. You have not forgotten-a.s.suredly not-that the Theomach found a place as the Lord-Fatherer's tutor. Thus he was able to account for your presence and deeds in any manner which conformed to his own intentions-and to his knowledge of Time.

"My lady, he made of you the first of the Unfettered, those who in the time of the Lords sought lore and wisdom solitarily, as do the Insequent, according to their private natures. At the Theomach's word, a tradition and a legend began from the wonderment of your aid, and all that has since transpired in the Land has confirmed it.

II.

Linden listened in surprise and gradual comprehension. She had heard of the Unfettered-Covenant had told her a little about them after Sunder's half-mad father had called himself a descendant of the Unfettered One.

"Understand, my lady," the Mandoubt continued, "that the Theomach did not require your presence or your aid. He merely made use of you. Had you not appeared, he would have contrived to win the Heartthew's trust by other means. And he would have proposed the legend of the Unfettered to justify his own knowledge and power. Such ploys were needful to preserve the Arch.

"Nor did the visitation of your betrayers challenge the Theomach's cleverness." The older woman sighed heavily. "Among the Lords of later ages, there endured a belief that the Halfhand, the Lord-Fatherer, would one day return to meet the Land's need. As events befell, the Theomach was not greatly troubled to bring forth such a tale from the form of those who accompanied you."

For a moment, her voice held an edge of disapproval. "His purposes were his own, and selfish. All that he did conduced to his own aggrandizement. Therefore he did not scruple upon occasion to offer the Lord-Fatherer instruction which was either flawed or incomplete. a.s.suredly, however, he would have drawn upon the full depth of his knowledge to preserve the wholeness of that which ensued from his desires.

"The Insequent and the Elohim share only this, my lady, that we do not desire the destruction of the Earth."

The Theomach had said virtually the same thing. Even Roger had said it.

And Linden had seen for herself how little Berek had known or understood in the aftermath of his encounter with the FireLions. The Theomach could have told him anything, and he would have had no choice except to credit it.

As she drank more of Glimmermere's waters, her mind grew sharper. There were so many things that she wanted to know. Because the Mandoubt had said that she would depart soon, Linden began to hurry.

All right," she said. "I don't really understand how the Theomach knew what his own future required. But if you explained it, I probably still wouldn't understand.

"What can you tell me about that box? The way the croyel transported us into the mountain?" She winced at the memory. "Or used my son to do it. Is Jeremiah really capable of making portals? Doors through time and distance? And if he is, what does that have to do with the Elohim?"

Had Roger told her the truth about Jeremiah's deadwood construct?

The Mandoubt spread her hands to suggest a warning. "Is the lady's query condign?" she asked herself. "The Mandoubt deems it so. Yet there is peril here. She must display great care.

"My lady," she said to Linden. "your son's gifts are certain. The Mandoubt can estimate neither their extent nor their uses. However, their worth is beyond question. Both the Vizard's interest and a-Jeroth's machinations proclaim that there is power concealed within your chosen child."

According to Jeremiah-or the croyel-the Vizard had coveted a gaol for the Elohim.

"The Mandoubt," she continued, "has averred that neither Insequent nor Elohim desire the destruction of the Earth. a.s.suredly such havoc was the intent of your treachers. But they outdistanced the Theomach's perception, as he selfishly permitted them to do, relying upon your strength to oppose them. Therefore your companions saw no further threat in him. And they conceived that your defeat was certain. For that reason, they feared only the Elohim.