Thomas Covenant 8 - The Fatal Revenant (61 page)

Finally she had obtained five red threads nearly as long as her hand. That, she decided, would have to suffice. Cloth. A needle. Thread. Now she lacked only a method of attaching thread to her twig.

While she groped for possibilities, she picked up the flask of springwine and drank. For a moment, she blinked rapidly, trying to moisten eyes that felt as barren as Gallows Howe. Then she took her sharpened twig and broke it in

half.

The wood snapped unevenly, leaving small splits in the blunt end of her needle.

On her knees, she approached the Mandoubt.

“Be at peace, lady,” the Insequent said softly. “There is no need for haste.”

Linden hardly heard her. The world had

become cloth and thread, a wooden needle and the hanging edge of the Mandoubt’s robe. When she was near enough to work, Linden laid her few threads out on a stone and examined the woman’s gown until she located a place where her patch could be made to fit. Still kneeling, and guided only by her memories of Jeremiah, she took one fragile thread, wedged it gently into a split at the end of her needle, and began sewing.

As she worked, she held her breath in an effort to steady her weariness.

Her needle did not pierce the fabric easily. And when it passed through her scrap of flannel and the edge of the gown, it made a hole much too large for her thread. But she knotted the thread as well as she could with her sore fingers, then forced her twig through the material a second time.

While she labored, she felt the

Mandoubt touch her head. The older woman stroked Linden’s hair, comforting her with caresses. Then, softly, the Mandoubt began to chant.

Her voice was low, as if she were reciting a litany to herself. Nevertheless her tone-or the words of her chant-or Linden’s flagrant fatigue-cast a trance like an enchantment, causing the world to shrink further. Garroting Deep ceased to impinge on Linden’s senses: the raw teeth of winter and the

kindly flames of the cookfire lost their significance: darkness and stars were reduced to a vague brume that condensed and swirled, empty of meaning. Only Linden’s hands and the Mandoubt’s gown held any light, any purpose. And only the Mandoubt’s chant enabled Linden to continue sewing.

“A simple charm will master time,

A cantrip clean and cold as snow. It melts upon the brow of thought,

As plain as death, and so as fraught,

Leaving its implications’ rime,

For understanding makes it so.

“The secret of its spell is trust.

It does not change or undergo

The transformations which it wreaks-The end in silence which it seeks

But stands forever as it must,

For cause and sequence make it so.

“Such knowing is the sap of life

And death, the rich, ripe joy and

woe

Ascending in vitality

To feed the wealth of life’s wide tree Regardless of its own long strife, For plain acceptance makes it so.

This simple truth must order time:

It simply is, and all minds know The way of it, the how, the why: They must forever live and die

In rhythm, for the metered rhyme Of growth and passing makes it so.

[

“The silent mind does not protest The ending of its days, or go To loss in grief and futile pain,

But rather knows the healing gain

Of time’s eternity at rest.

The cause of sequence makes it so.”

Linden did not understand-and neither knew nor cared that she did not. While she worked, she set all other considerations aside. With her abused fingers and her blurring vision, she concentrated solely and entirely on

completing her gratitude; her homage.

But when she came to the end of her thread, and the scrap of her shirt was loosely stitched to the Mandoubt’s robe-when the older woman removed her hand, ceasing her chant-Linden thought that she heard a familiar voice shout with relief and gladness. “Ringthane! The Ringthane has returned!”

At the same time, she seemed to feel

sunrise on her back and smell spring in the air. She appeared to kneel on dewy grass at the Mandoubt’s feet with the sound of rushing water in her ears and the Staff of Law as black as a raven’s wing beside her.

And she heard other voices as well. They, too, were known to her, and dear. They may have been nickering.

As she toppled to the grass, she fell out of her ensorcelled trance. She had

a chance to think, Revelstone. The plateau.

The Mandoubt had restored her to her proper time and place.

Then exhaustion claimed her, and she was gone.

2.

In the Care of the Mandoubt

Linden awoke slowly, climbing with effort and reluctance through the exhaustion of millennia. The years that she had bypassed 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 grass 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 fashion 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 passage 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 mélange.

“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? Assuredly. 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 space 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 breasts, 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

embarrassment, 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, assuredly, 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 friendship, the flattering

Stonedownor youth among them, and also he who was once a Master, to stand in vigil at your side. Assuredly. 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 grass remain-as they must. Oh, assuredly.

“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.”