Thomas Covenant 8 - The Fatal Revenant (48 page)

Abruptly he resumed his task.

Trying to think, Linden wondered, Torches? Campfires?

But Jeremiah had broken enough boughs for a full bonfire-and most of them were too large to be carried as torches.

She gave it up: it was beyond her comprehension. The aftereffects of synesthesia left her in disarray. Her synapses seemed to misfire randomly, afflicting her with instants of distortion and bafflement. Sighing, she made an effort to stand without the support of the Staff.

“All right,” she murmured to Covenant. “We don’t have time. This makes me sick. What do you want me to dor

She could not imagine how she might impede the pursuit of the Viles.

“Finally!” Covenant growled.

“Go down there,” he told her at once, indicating the southeastward slope of the ridge. “Twenty or thirty paces. That should give us enough room. Use the

Staff. Make a Forbidding. As big as you can. That won’t stop them, but it’ll slow them down. They’ll want to understand it.”

Linden peered at him, blinking vaguely. “What’s a Forbidding?”

“Hell and blood!” Now his anger was not directed at her. “I keep forgetting how ignorant-” Grimly he stopped himself. For a moment, he appeared to study the air: he may have been

searching through his memories of time. Then his gaze returned, smoldering, to hers. “Don’t worry about that. What we need is a wall of power. Any kind of power. It just has to be dangerous. And it has to cover that whole hillside.

“Go,” he insisted, gesturing her away. “Do it now.”

Linden watched her son piling wood. In some sense, Covenant was telling her

the truth. She felt the garish battle in the distance shift as the Viles adjusted their tactics to counter Caerroil Wildwood’s clinquant melodious onslaught. The creatures might soon break free. She took a step or two, still gazing at Jeremiah with supplication in her eyes. Please, she had tried to urge him earlier. Don’t betray me.

She did not understand why he needed so much wood.

And she could not conceive of any barrier except fire.

Fire on the verge of Garroting Deep.

Hardly aware of what she did, she trudged downward. Her mind was full of flames. Flames at the edge of the forest. Flames which might leap in an instant to dried twigs and boughs. If she did not tend them constantly, keep them under control, any small gust of wind might

Lover of trees.

Still she descended the hillside, trying to find her way through memories of twisted blackness, solid irruptions of sound, music that should have been as bright and beautiful as dew. What choice did she have? They’re going to figure out what happened. They’ll know who to blame. She had baited a trap by trying to reason with the Viles. They would attempt to kill Covenant. They would certainly kill her son. Moment by

moment, Caerroil Wildwood was teaching them to share his taste for slaughter.

But fire—? So close to Garroting Deep? The Forestal would turn his enmity against her. If any hint of flame touched the trees, she would deserve his wrath.

As she moved, however, she grew stronger. That simple exertion reaffirmed the interconnections of

muscles and nerves and choice: with each pace, she sloughed away her confusion. And when she had taken a dozen steps, she began to sip sustenance from the Staff, risking the effect of Law on Covenant and Jeremiah. That strengthened her as well.

By degrees, she became herself again. She began to think.

What would happen if she raised a wall

of fire here?

Caerroil Wildwood would see it. Of course he would. And he would respond-For the sake of his trees, he would forego his struggle with the Viles in an instant.

Then the Viles would be released to pursue the people who had tricked them. Linden and her companions would be assailed by both forces. It was even conceivable that the Forestal

and the Viles would form an alliance—

If that happened, what she knew and understood of the Land’s history would be shattered. The ramifications would expand until they became too fundamental to be contained.

Covenant was urging her to hazard the Arch of Time.

You serve a purpose not your own, and have no purpose.

He and Jeremiah had decided to set Caerroil Wildwood and the Viles against each other before they had entered Bargas Slit. They may have decided it days ago. And they had kept it from her.

In the distance, the battle raged on. The Viles may have been trying to disengage, but they had not succeeded.

“No.” Linden did not shout. She did not

care whether or not Covenant heard her. “I won’t do it. I won’t. It’s too dangerous.” Turning sharply, she began to stride back up the slope. “You’ll have to think of something else.”

Quenching the Staff so that it would not imperil her companions, she approached them with her refusal plainly written on her face.

“Linden, God damn it!” Covenant raged down at her. Wailing like a child,

Jeremiah protested. “Moms’

She ignored them until she was near enough to meet Jeremiah’s stricken stare, Covenant’s hot ire. Then she stopped.

“It’s too dangerous,” she repeated as if she were as resolute as Stave, as certain as Mahrtiir. “Fire is the only barrier that I know how to make. I won’t risk the trees.

“If you can’t outrun the Viles, you’ll have to come up with another plan,” another trick.

God, she missed Thomas Covenant: the man he had once been. Her disappointment in her companions was too profound for indignation.

They froze, poised on the brink of eruptions. Briefly their disparate faces mirrored each other. In them, Linden saw, not alarm or dismay, but naked

anger and frustration. Jeremiah’s eyes were as dark as blood. Ruddy heat shone from Covenant’s gaze. She had time to think, They don’t care about the Deep. Or Caerroil Wildwood. Or me. Maybe they don’t even care about the Arch. They just want to do what they’ve been planning all along.

Then together Covenant and Jeremiah wheeled and ran, rushing to collect the last twigs and branches.

A moment later, they were done: their pile of deadwood was complete. In the distance, music and vitriol vied for harm. Quickly Covenant and Jeremiah moved to stand facing each other, leaving space between them for Linden and the Staff.

Grieving, she entered the ready arch of their arms.

According to Jeremiah, their next dislocation took them four leagues farther along the Last Hills. Another burst of power crossed five. Then three. Then five again. Indirectly they violated time rather than space: they excised the hours and effort necessary to travel such distances.

Their mound of broken wood accompanied them through every imponderable leap. Somehow they

drew it with them without enclosing it in their arc of power.

Eventually they stopped. While Linden stumbled to her knees, utterly disoriented by the shifting ground and the veering horizons, the unsteady stagger of the world, Covenant and Jeremiah retreated from her. “This should be far enough.” Covenant seemed to struggle for breath. “We can rest here. At least for a few minutes.”

The anger in his voice was as raw as his respiration.

Linden’s head reeled: her entire sensorium foundered. She could not discern any sign of the distant battle.

“Covenant,” Jeremiah gasped. He sounded more tired than irate. “This isn’t a surprise.” He may have been warning his only friend. “She is who she is. She’s never going to trust us. Not until we prove ourselves.”

Breathing deeply, Linden lifted her head; focused her eyes on the Staff of Law and refused to blink until it no longer yawed from side to side. Through her teeth, she insisted. “It was too dangerous.”

“Dangerous how?” asked Covenant. His tone had become level despite his hard breathing. Apparently he had decided to curb his anger. “All you had to do was give me my ring.”

When she was sure of the ground under her, she climbed to her feet. “Not that,” she said, trembling. “Fire. The only barrier that I know how to make. I might have broken the Arch.”

Jeremiah did not look at her. His face was slick with sweat, flushed with intense exertion. His tic signaled feverishly. But Covenant faced her. Apart from his ragged respiration, he now seemed completely blank, sealed off; as severe as one of the Masters.

The sporadic embers in his eyes were gone, extinguished or shrouded. In spite of her resolve to avoid challenging him, she had made him wary.

“I don’t see how.”

She forced herself to hold his gaze. “Flames would have spread to the trees. I couldn’t prevent that unless I stayed behind.” Surely she was still Covenant’s and Jeremiah’s only protection against the Elohim? “But

even if they didn’t,” even if she had remained to control her conflagration. the Forestal would have forgotten about the Viles as soon as I raised fire that close to the Deep. Or he would have joined them. They had a common enemy.” That was Covenant’s doing, and Jeremiah’s. “They might have come after us together.” Cold seeped through her cloak, her robe. It oozed into her clothes. “Then-“

Covenant cut her off. “Oh, that. That

was never going to happen.”

In a tone of enforced patience, he said. “I know I haven’t given you all the explanations you want. And you obviously don’t like it. But we didn’t have time. I couldn’t afford to spend a few hours teaching you other ways to use the Staff. And I didn’t know I needed to tell you why the Arch wasn’t in danger.

“The Viles aren’t stupid. They’re

capable of alliances. But Wildwood isn’t. I don’t mean he’s stupid. He just doesn’t think that way.

“He’s a Forestal. He doesn’t think like people-or even Viles. He thinks like trees. And for them, life is pretty simple. Soil and roots. Wind and sun and leaves. Birds and seeds. Sap. Growth. Decay.” Just for an instant, Covenant’s deliberate restraint cracked. “Vengeance.” Then he flattened the emotion in his voice. “As

far as they’re concerned, there’s no distinction between sentience and fire or axes. Anything that’s mobile and has a mind can kill them. The Viles are just like us. We’re already Wildwood’s enemies. By definition.

“Trust me,” he concluded heavily. “There was never any chance he would join the Viles.”

Never any chance that the logic of the Land’s past might be severed

“He’s right, Mom,” Jeremiah offered. His gaze had paled to the hue of sand. “We couldn’t make Wildwood team up with the Viles even if we wanted to. Which of course we don’t. All we want is to get to Melenkurion Skyweir. So Covenant can save the Land-and you can save me.”

Linden could not argue; not with her boy. But she was not appeased. She had been used.-a rock and a hard place. Covenant and Jeremiah had

deliberately exposed her to the VilesŹand for what? So that she would surrender Covenant’s ring? And when she ignored him in order to argue with the Viles, he and Jeremiah had created a conflict between them and Caerroil Wildwood.

What would he have done if she had complied? Would he have abandoned her to the debate of the Demondim-makers?

His design for the salvation of the Land made no provision for his ex-wife’s wedding band-or for their fatal son.

“What about the battle’?” she asked in anger and misery. “Doesn’t that affect history?”

“Hell, no,” Covenant snorted as if he had come to the end of his forbearance. It confirms what was going to happen anyway. Now the Viles

despise Wildwood. They despise Garroting Deep. They’re ready to listen to the Ravers. And nobody else knows they ever fought. We didn’t change anything.”

He made the statement sound like an accusation.

A moment later, he and Jeremiah prepared their next arch so that they could move on. As she stepped between them, Linden felt like

weeping. But she refused her tears; her intensifying bereavement. They had become useless to her.

11.

Melenkurion Skyweir

Sickened by disorientation and doubt, Linden Avery arrived with her companions on the broad plateau of Melenkurion Skyweir high above Garroting Deep early in the afternoon of that same day.

Safe from the Viles, Covenant and Jeremiah moved in longer and longer jumps, carrying their jumble of wood

with them. But they continued to respect the threat of Caerroil Wildwood’s power. Instead of crossing over the forest, they followed the line of the Last Hills until they gained the packed snow and ice of the Westron Mountains at the northwestern limit of the Deep. Then they turned toward the south among the crags, devouring distance in instantaneous bursts of twenty or thirty leagues.

The intervening crests and tors blocked

Linden’s first sight of Melenkurion Skyweir until Covenant and Jeremiah paused to rest before opening their final portal. While they recovered from their exertions, however, she was given a brief opportunity to study the mighty peak; see it for what it was.

The effects of dislocation and the hard cold of the mountains, the air as sharp and pointed as augury, had already left her gasping. Otherwise Melenkurion Skyweir might have taken her breath

away.

Made brilliant by sunshine, it

dominated the south. Indeed, it seemed to command the entire range. Although the neighboring peaks and spires-mottled by endless ice and snow, defined by raw granite against the pale cold depth of the sky-were gigantic in themselves, they resembled children beside the towering head of the Skyweir, with its crown and chin raised to the heavens as if in defiance.

As it presented its nearly sheer front to the east, it created the impression that it had been frozen in the act of striding massively toward Landsdrop and the Sunbirth Sea, drawing with it like acolytes or escorts all of the other mountains.

But while its eastern face fell precipitously for fifteen or twenty thousand feet, its other slopes were more gradual. On the north and west, they blended with the lower peaks in

scalloped cols and coombs, or in ragged moraines. Those sides held centuries or millennia of impacted ice like glacial fragments; scraps and swaths of ice so old and deep that in sunlight they were more blue than the winter sky.