The Fatal Revenant Part 43

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 honored 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 Mandoubt.

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 m.u.f.fled 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 Mandoubt'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 suns.h.i.+ne 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 pa.s.sages until the air, chilled by the tremendous ma.s.s 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 s.p.a.ce 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 ma.s.sive columns. Here the Giants who had fas.h.i.+oned 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 fas.h.i.+oned 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 center of the s.p.a.ce. In colors 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 grat.i.tude, it seemed, Nom had raised a cairn over Honninscrave's corpse, using the rubble of battle to honor the Master of Starfare's Gem.

Linden had come here now to remember her loves.

The mound of broken stone which dominated the center 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 valor 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 Mandoubt'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 Mandoubt. '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 Mandoubt 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 paralyze 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 a.s.sortment 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 realized 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 fas.h.i.+oned 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 Mandoubt-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 Mandoubt'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 pajamas. 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 fas.h.i.+oned of bone. Over the millennia, it had aged to the hue of ivory.

Like all of the Land's knowledge and secrets, the statuette had become an emblem of antiquity and neglect.

Unlike the suru-pa-maerl bust, however, the Ranyhyn did not appear to be something that Jeremiah could have made. Although it had been formed from many pieces, its components had been fused in some way, melded to create an integral whole.

"Can you tell me anything about this, Stave?" she asked in a tone of reverie. "Who worked with bone?"

Who among all of the people that had perished from the Land?

Watching her, he said. "It is perhaps the most ancient of the Gifts in the Hall. It exemplifies a Ramen art, called by them marrowmeld, bone-sculpting, and anundivian yajna. I know naught of its history, for the Ramen do not speak of it. In the ages of the Lords, they said only that the art had been lost. Mayhap the loss occurred during their flight with the Ranyhyn to escape the Ritual of Desecration, for much that was treasured did not survive the Landwaster's despair. Or mayhap the truth lies hidden in some other tale.

"The Manethrall may give answer, if you inquire. He may refuse. Yet still you have not named your true query."

Linden could not face him. The image of the Ranyhyn, in old and dusty bone before her, and in dyed threads on Jeremiah's ruined pajamas, seemed to demand more of her than Stave did. But the sculpted horse could not look into her eyes and see her fear.

G.o.d, she needed Covenant! His unflinching acceptance might have enabled her to envision a path which was not laid out by wrath and bitterness. Honninscrave's cairn counseled sacrifice-but it was not enough. Gallows Howe made more sense to her.

By degrees, she reduced the flame of the Staff to a small flicker that scarcely illuminated Stave's visage. Isolated by darkness, Linden tried to name the search which had brought her to this place of bloodshed and remembrance.

"She said-" she began, faltering. "The Mandoubt. She reminded me-" For a moment, pain closed her throat. The Harrow had shown her that she could still be made helpless, in spite of everything which she had learned and endured. Because of her paralysis ten years ago, Covenant had been slain-and Jeremiah had been compelled to maim himself in the Despiser's bonfire. "Roger said that Lord Foul has owned my son for a long time. Ever since Covenant and I first came to the Land. That Jeremiah belongs to the Despiser," and all of Linden's love and devotion meant nothing. "The Mandoubt seemed to think that might be true."

Every word hurt, but she articulated them without weeping. In her eyes burned fires which she withheld from the Staff.

Stave appeared to examine her for a moment. Then he said as if he could not be moved, "I know naught of these matters. I do not know your son. Nor do I know all that he has suffered. But it is not so among the children of the Haruchai. They are born to strength, and it is their birthright to remain who they are.

Are you certain that the same may not be said of your son'?"

Linden took a deep breath; released it, shuddering. No, she was not certain. She had always believed Jeremiah's dissociation to be a defense as much as a prison, a barricade against hurt.

That it walled him off from her was almost incidental. And the Mandoubt had not averred that Jeremiah belonged to the Despiser. She had only observed that a-Jeroth's mark was placed upon the boy when he was yet a small child- Lord Foul had marked Jeremiah: that was true enough. In their separate ways, both Linden and Covenant had been marked. And perhaps the Despiser conceived that his mark const.i.tuted owners.h.i.+p. He had acted on similar convictions in the past-and had been proven wrong.

If her son had not willingly joined himself to the croyel Slowly she turned to meet Stave's gaze; and as she did so, she restored the brightness of the Staff. She could not read his spirit: no doubt she would never be able to see past his physical presence. Nonetheless she suspected that his pa.s.sions ran to depths which she could hardly fathom. Like Jeremiah's dissociation, his stoicism might be a defense-and a prison.

"Thank you," she said softly. "That helps. He isn't my son because I gave him birth. He's my son because I chose him. I don't know what the truth is. I may never know. But I can still choose. I'm going to believe that he has the right," every child's right. "to be himself."

To her surprise, Stave responded with a deep Haruchai bow. "Chosen," he replied, unexpectedly formal. "thus would I speak of my own sons, though they remain among the Masters, and with the Masters have spurned me."

Linden stared at him in chagrin. His sons-? She had known in the abstract that his people had wives and children. How could they not? But she had never considered the possibility that he might have sons who had turned their backs on him.

His determination to stand with her had cost him more than she had ever imagined.

You didn't-She wanted to say, You didn't tell me. You never even hinted-According to the Mandoubt, He has named his pain. But he had not truly done so until now.

Before she could find her voice, however, he went on more sternly. "Now I comprehend your query. And you have answered it. Here the Giant Grimmand Honninscrave accepted possession by samadhi Sheol and remained himself. You will not think less of your son than of any Giant whom you have known."

His manner forbade questions. He would not think less of his own sons- Trust yourself.

At last, the Mandoubt's voice fell to silence in Linden's mind.

With an effort, she swallowed her protests. When she felt ready to respect his privacy-and his loneliness-she said. "All right. I don't know how long we've been here, but it must be time to go. Mahrtiir will wonder where we are. And if he doesn't, Liand will." For Stave's sake, she attempted a smile. "In any case, they're probably as ready as they'll ever be." Glancing around to locate the doors, she added uncomfortably, "There's just one more thing."

The rejected Master faced her as though nothing had pa.s.sed between them. "Chosen?"

"I don't know how much of your story you want to tell. It's your story. I won't say anything. But the others," Liand and the Ramen, "should at least know that the Mandoubt and the Harrow are Insequent," linked to the Theomach. "It might help them understand what were up against."

Stave shrugged slightly. "As you say." With that she had to be content.

Sighing, she started toward the doors. Walking together in spite of his acute separation, she and Stave left the Hall of Gifts.

There may have been thousands of stairs. It was conceivable. The Hall lay a considerable distance below the level of Revelstone's gates, and her rooms were high in the Keep's south-facing wall. By the time she and Stave gained the corridor outside her quarters, her legs were trembling with strain, and she had to pant for breath. Only the coolness of the air spared her from sweating through her s.h.i.+rt.

Outside her door, Liand, the Ramen, and Anele awaited her. With the exception of Anele, they radiated varying degrees of anxiety and frustration. On the floor around their feet lay a number of bedrolls, bundles, and sacks: supplies for an unpredictable journey. Whatever the Masters may have decided, the servants of Revelstone had been generous.

In spite of his sc.r.a.pes and bruises, Galt guarded her door. Clearly he had refused admittance to Linden's companions. His stance may have been intended as courtesy toward her. Or it may have been a foretaste of the Masters' att.i.tude.