Thomas Covenant 8 - The Fatal Revenant (55 page)

“I’m sure that’s fascinating,” she said through her teeth. “You’ll enjoy it. But there are a few things you don’t understand.”

His eyes widened in amusement; false surprise. “Like what’?”

Linden bowed her head as though she intended to prostrate herself. Past the concealment of her hair, she muttered. “Like who I am.”

Then she drew lightning as pure as charged sunlight from the upraised iron heel of the Staff and hurled it simultaneously at both Roger and the croyel.

While her blast flared and echoed in the constriction of the tunnel, she surged to her feet. Unable still to uncramp her pierced hand from the Staff, she used her left to shift the shaft so that she could brace its length under her left arm, hold it like a lance.

Her attack was abrupt and brief; yet it should have damaged her foes. But it did not. It failed to reach them. Reeling backward, Roger flung out an eruption of magma to intercept the Staffs blaze.

Swift as prescience, the croyel emitted a vehement wall which blocked and dispersed Linden’s blow.

Roger caught himself; roared with fury. Aiming his fist at her, he unleashed a scend of fire and lava. At the same time, the creature sent waves of force toward her like crashing breakers in a storm. Together he and the croyel strove to drive her back against the lode-face of the EarthBlood.

If she fell there, the Blood itself would incinerate her.

She responded with untarnished Earthpower and Law; threw pure flame against the corrupted theurgy of Kastenessen’s hand and the savage unnatural coercion of the croyel. Shouting her son’s name as though it were a war cry, she met the ferocity of her enemies with power that filled the depths of the mountain like daylight.

Yet Roger and his companion were not damaged or daunted: they hardly seemed to feel her assault. Grinning as if he could taste triumph and delight, Roger poured out magic to cast down her fire; tried to melt her flesh. And the creature raised Jeremiah’s arms to invoke invisible forces. Pressures grated in the air like grinding teeth as they mounted against her; against the lash of flame which was her only defense.

The Staff bucked in Linden’s grasp. It seemed to burn. Its limitations were hers: it could not channel more force than her human blood and bone could summon or contain. She stumbled half a step toward the trough. Her flame no longer flooded the cave. The croyets barricade held it back. Crimson and sulfur tainted her sunfire as Roger’s eagerness probed into it; reached through it.

Abruptly the deadwood piercing her

hand caught fire and burned away, searing the inside of her wound; sealing it. She was scourged backward again.

For an instant, she seemed to see herself falter and fail, see her flesh scorched like charcoal, see the Staff turn black as Roger’s heat devoured it. Then she rallied.

They have done this to my son.

With a wordless shout, she thrust the Staff behind her so that its end plunged into the trough of EarthBlood.

At once, fresh strength galvanized her. A torrent of Earthpower rushed through the Staff and became incandescence. Her conflagration spurned the stain of brimstone: it pounded heavily against the repulsion of the croyel. Light that should have blinded her and could not washed through the cave and along the tunnel as the brilliance of Law scaled

higher; expanded until it appeared to transcend Melenkurion S kywei r’s constricting rock.

The wall emanating from Jeremiah’s enslaver receded. Eldritch dazzling effaced the croyets eyes: she could no longer see them, or they had been liquefied in the creature’s skull. Briefly Roger’s flail of scoria lost a portion of its virulence. Kastenessen’s might and pain contracted around Roger’s quivering fist.

But he seemed able to draw on limitless power as though he siphoned it from the magma of the Earth’s core. Even as Linden’s fire grew and grew, claiming more and more puissance from the mountain’s ichor, his ruddy heat swelled again. A furnace spilled from his hand. Heat like liquid granite drove back her bright flame.

Again the creature pressed its strength against hers. Its eyes emerged from the flood of sunfire. The Staff

thrummed and twisted in her hands, against her ribs. Concussions ran unsteadily along its shaft: she felt the wood’s desperation pulse like a stricken heart. Every iota of force that she could summon spouted and flared from the iron which bound her Staff-and it was not enough.

Yet even then she was not defeated. They have done this to my son! Instead of recognizing that she was lost, she remembered.

I do not desire the destruction of the Earth.

She did not believe that the Theomach had aided her entirely for his own ends. He had given her as many hints has he could without violating the integrity of the Land’s history.

In this circumstance—

And he had risked revealing secrets to Berek Halfhand in her presence;

secrets which she would never have known otherwise.

-her mind cannot be distinguished from the Arch of Time.

She accepted the danger. She was Linden Avery, and did not choose to be defeated.

Bracing her Staff in the trough of EarthBlood, she shouted in her son’s name. “Melenkurion abatha! Duroc

minas mill! Harad khabaalr

Instantly her fire was multiplied. It seemed to increase a hundredfold; a thousand-She herself became stronger, as if she had received a transfusion of vitality. The fear-even the possibility-that she might fall and perish dropped from her. The Staff steadied itself in her clasp. The whole mountain sang in her veins.

They have done this to my son!

She shouted and shouted, and did not stop. “Melenkurion abathal’ And as she pronounced the Seven Words, both Roger’s pyrotic fury and the croyels invisible repulsion were driven back. “Duroc minas mill!” Roger gaped in sudden fright. The abominable gaze of the creature wavered, considering retreat. “Harad khabaar Flames like a volcanic convulsion staggered her foes.

And the Skyweir’s deepest roots answered her.

From Rivenrock, she had felt the imminence of an earthquake. Roger had confirmed it. It’ll be massive. I rrefusable pressures were accumulating in the gutrock; natural forces so cataclysmic that they would split the tremendous peak. But it won’t happen for years and years.

He had not expected her to fight so fiercely. Their battle must have triggered a premature tectonic shift; loosed a rupture before its time.

She did not care. The granite’s visceral groan meant nothing to her. She fought for her son, and went on shouting; invoking Earthpower on a scale that staggered her foes. When the floor of the cave lurched as though the whole of Melenkurion Skyweir had shrugged, she gave no heed.

But Roger and the croyel cared. Consternation twisted his blunt features: he feared the mountain’s violence. And the creature turned away

from her, apparently seeking escape. They assailed her for a moment longer. Then the stone lurched again, and abruptly they fled.

“Melenkurion abatha!”

Pausing only to retrieve Jeremiah’s crumpled racecar, Linden followed them; harried them with fire. As she pursued them along the tunnel, she continued to shout with all of her strength. And she trailed the end of her

Staff in the rivulet so that she would not lose the Earth Blood’s imponderable might.

“Duroc minas mill!”

Roger and the croyel did not strike at her now: they fought to preserve themselves. He sent gouts and gobbets of laval ire to hinder the impact of her sunflame. His companion filled the tunnel with a yammer of force, striving to slow her onslaught.

“Harad khabaalr

Her power was constrained by the tunnel; concentrated by it. But theirs was also. Although she strode after them wreathed in fury, unleashing a continuous barrage of magic and Law, she could not break through their brimstone and repulsion swiftly enough to outpace their retreat. In spite of the EarthBlood and the Seven Words and the Staff of Law-in spite of the extravagance of her betrayed heart

they reached the subterranean

waterfall unscathed.

The falls erupted in steam as Roger passed through it; but the croyets barrier warded off the scalding detonation. For a moment, no more than a heartbeat or two, Linden lost sight of them as they rushed down the piled rocks. Then the stone shuddered again, harder this time. She lost her footing, fell against the wall of the tunnel. At once, she sprang up again,

borne by fire. With Earthpower, she parted the crushing waters and began to hasten perilously over the slick stones. But her foes were already halfway down the length of the cavern, limned in rocklight.

The mountain’s tremors repeated themselves more frequently. Their ferocity mounted. Soon they became an almost constant seizure. As Linden skidded to the cavern floor and tried to race after Roger and her helpless son,

slabs of granite and schist the size of houses sheared off from the ceiling and collapsed on all sides.

Thunder filled the air with catastrophe. It seemed as loud as the ruin of worlds.

Now she had to fight for Jeremiah’s life as well as her own. She knew what Roger and the croyel would do. Given any respite from her assault, any relief at all, they would combine their lore to transport themselves out of the

mountain. They might fail in the presence of so much Earthpower, but they would certainly make the attempt. She had to do more than compel them to defend themselves. She had to drive them apart, fill the space between them with a ravage of flame. Otherwise her son would be snatched away. She was ten millennia from her proper time, and would never find him again.

But the ceiling was falling. Even the sides of the cavern were falling.

Massive stone columns and monoliths toppled as the roots of Melenkurion Skyweir shook. The river danced in its course; overran its rims amid the hail of shattered menhirs and rubble. Orogenic thunder detonated through the cavern.

The croyel repelled the rock. Despite the magnitude of the quake, the creature protected Jeremiah and Roger. But Linden had no defense except Earthpower; no lore except the Seven Words.

The rocklight grew pale and faltered as the damage to the cavern increased.

Screaming, “Melenkurion abatha f’ she tuned her fire to the pitch of granite and made powder of every crashing stone that came near her. “Duroc minas milli’ Hardly conscious of what she did, she shaped the mountain’s collapse to her needs; formed pillars to support the Skyweir’s inconceivable

mass; dashed debris from her path so that she could strike at Roger and the croyel. “Harad khabaalr Striding through havoc, she pursued her son’s doom amid the earthquake.

But the titanic convulsion took too much of her strength. More and more, she was forced to ward off her own ruin. And she had lost the direct use of the EarthBlood. She could not reach Roger and Jeremiah; could not strike hard enough, swiftly enough, to

penetrate her betrayers’ defenses.

In the Staffs flame and the last of the rocklight, she saw lightning arch between Roger’s arms and Jeremiah’s. She saw them vanish.

Then the earthquake took her; the river took her; and she was swept from the cavern.

Part Two

“victims and enactors of Despite”

1.

From the Depths

When Linden Avery emerged from the base of Rivenrock into Garroting Deep, the sun was setting behind Melenkurion Skyweir and the Westron Mountains. The trees here had fallen into shadow, and with the loss of the sun, the air had grown cold enough to bite into her bereaved throat and lungs. Winter held sway over the Deep in spite of Caerroil Wildwood’s

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stewardship. And she had been soaked by frigid springs as well as by diluted EarthBlood during her long struggle through the guts of the mountain. She was chilled to the marrow of her bones, weak with hunger, exhausted beyond bearing.

But she did not care.

Her son was dead, as doomed as she was, shot down when she and Roger had been slain. He belonged to Lord

Foul and the croyel: they would never let him go. And she had no hope of reaching him. Too much time separated her arms and his; her love and his torment.

She had become a stillatory of pain, and her heart was stone.

She did not know how she was still alive, or why. After Roger and Jeremiah’s escape, she had somehow preserved herself with Earthpower and

instinct, shaping the stone to her will: knocking aside thunderous slabs of granite; plunging in and out of the lashed river; following water and fire as the earthquake shook Melenkurion Skyweir. The upheaval had split the plateau as well as the vast mountain, buried the edges of the forest under a torrent of rubble, sent a vehement fume of dust skyward, but she was aware of none of it. Nor did she notice how much time passed before the roots of the Skyweir no longer

trembled. The watercourse was nearly empty now. Deep springs slowly filled the spaces which she had formed under the peak. But she could not tell how long she scrambled and stumbled through the wreckage until she found her way out of the world of ruin.

When she clambered at last over the new detritus along the south bank of the Black River, and saw the fading sky above her, she knew only that she had lost her son-and that some essential

part of her had been extinguished, burned away by battles which surpassed her strength. She was no longer the woman who had endured Roger’s cruelties for Jeremiah’s sake.

She had suffered enough; had earned the right to simply lie down and die. Yet she did not surrender. Instead she trudged on into Garroting Deep. Here the Forestal would surely end her travails, if sorrow and privation did not. Nevertheless she continued to plod

among the darkening trees. Her right hand remained cramped to the Staff, unhealed and unheeded. In her left, she held Jeremiah’s crumpled racecar. At the core, she had been annealed like granite. The dross of restraint and inadequacy and acceptance had been consumed in flame. Like granite, she did not yield.

The Staff no longer lit her way. She had lost its fire when she left the mountain. In the evening gloom and