Thomas Covenant 8 - The Fatal Revenant (8 page)

capable of commanding me?”

Around Linden, the ur-viles and Waynhim yowled and snarled like wolves contending over a carcass. She could hardly recognize her own thoughts. As if to ready a threat of her own, she clenched her fists. “I said, stop it.”

She wanted to be furious at him. Ire would have made her stronger. But her writhen nausea described his

underlying plight explicitly. He could not reconcile his conflicting legacies, and behind his disdain was a rending anguish.

More in exasperation than anger, she continued, “I don’t care whether I actually summoned you or not. If you aren’t going to answer my questions,” if he himself did not constitute an answer, “go away. Let your new allies do whatever they came to do.”

Neither Esmer’s expression nor his manner changed. In the same mordant tone, he responded, “There speaks more ignorance, Wildwielder. These makings are not my ‘allies.’ Indeed, their mistrust toward me far surpasses your own.”

He heaved a sarcastic sigh. You have heard me account for my actions, and for those of the ur-viles and Waynhim as well. Still you do not comprehend. I have not garnered these surviving

remnants of their kind from the abysm of time in order to serve me. Nor would they accept such service for any cause. I have enabled their presence here, and they have accepted it, so that they may serve you.”

“Serve me’?” Linden wanted to plead with the Demondim-spawn to lower their voices. Their shouting forced her to bark as roughly as they did. “How’?”

Did they believe that less than a

hundred Waynhim and ur-viles would suffice to drive back the Demondim? When that horde could draw upon the immeasurable bane of the II!earth Stone?

“Wildwielder,” Esmer rasped, “it is my wish to speak truly. Yet I fear that no truth will content you.

“Would it suffice to inform you, as I have done before, that these creatures perceive the peril of my nature, and are

joined in their wish to guard against me? Would it appease you to hear that they now know their kindred accompanying you have discovered a purpose worthy of devoir, and that therefore they also desire to stand with you’?”

“Oh, I can believe that,” she retorted. The ur-viles at her back had already shown more selfless devotion than she would have believed possible from the Despiser’s former vassals. The

Waynhim had demonstrated that they were willing to unite with their ancient enemies for her sake. And none of the creatures on the hillside had raised anything more than their voices against each other. “But you’re right. I’m not ‘content.’

“Why did you bring them here? What do you gain? Is this something that Cail would have done, or are you listening to Kastenessen?”

In response, a brief flinch marred Esmer’s disdain. For an instant, he gave her the impression that he was engaged in a fierce battle with himself. Then he resumed his scorn.

God, she wished that the DemondimŹspawn would shut up—

“It is your assertion that I am in your debt,” Esmer said as if he were jeering. “I concur. Therefore I have gathered these makings from the past, for their

kind has perished, and no others exist in this time. They retain much of the dark lore of the Demondim. They will ward you, and this place”—he nodded in the direction of Revelstone—”with more fidelity than the Haruchai, who have no hearts.”

Covenant had said that he did not expect the horde to attack for another day or two. Could so many ur-viles and Waynhim working together contrive a viable defense? If she ended the threat

of the II!earth Stone?

She had already made her decision about the Stone. Its powers were too enormous and fatal: she could not permit them to be unleashed. Nonetheless she shook her head as though Esmer had not affected her.

That tells me what they can do,” she replied through the tumult of barking. It doesn’t tell me why you brought them here. With you, everything turns

into a betrayal somehow. What kind of harm do you have in mind this time?”

He gave her another exaggerated sigh. “Wildwielder, it is thoughtless to accuse me thus. You have been informed that ‘Good cannot be accomplished by evil means,’ yet you have not allowed the ill of your own deeds to dissuade you from them. Am I not similarly justified in all that I attempt? Why then do you presume to weigh my deeds in a more exacting

scale?”

Linden was acutely aware that the “means” by which she had reached her present position were questionable at best: at worst, they had been actively hurtful. She had used Anele as if he were a tool; had violated Stave’s pride by healing him; had endangered the Arch of Time simply to increase her chances of finding her son. But she did not intend to let Esmer deflect her.

She met his disdain with the fierceness of Glimmermere’s cold and strength. “All right,” she returned without hesitation. “We’re both judged by what we do. I accept that. But I take risks and make mistakes because I know what I want, not because I can’t choose between help and hurt. If you want me to believe you, answer a straight question.”

She needed anything that he could reveal about Covenant and Jeremiah;

needed it urgently. But first she had to break down his scorn. It protected his strange array of vulnerabilities. He would continue to evade her until she found a way to touch his complex pain.

“You don’t want to talk about what you’ve just done,” she said between her teeth. “That’s pretty obvious. Tell me this instead.

“Who possessed Anele in the Verge of Wandering? Who used him to talk to

the Demondim? Who filled him with all of that fire? Give me a name.”

Covenant and Jeremiah had been herded—If she knew who wished them to reach her, she might begin to grasp the significance of their arrival.

The abrupt silence of the Waynhim and ur-viles seemed to suck the air from her lungs: it nearly left her gasping. Their raucous clamor was cut off as if they were appalled. Or as if

Trying to breathe again, she swallowed convulsively.

—as if she had finally asked a question that compelled their attention.

Now Esmer did not merely flinch. He almost appeared to cower. In an instant, all of his hauteur fled. Instead of sneering, he ducked his head to escape her gaze. His cymar fluttered about him, independent of the breeze, so that its sunset gilding covered him in

disturbed streaks and consternation.

Together all of the Demondim-spawn, those behind him as well as those with Linden, advanced a few steps, tightening their cordon. Their wide nostrils tasted the air wetly, as though they sought to detect the scent of truth; and their ears twitched avidly.

When Esmer replied, his voice would have been inaudible without the silence.

“You speak of Kastenessen.” He may have feared being overheard. “I have named him my grandsire, though the Dancers of the Sea were no get of his. Yet they were formed by the lore and theurgy which he gifted to the mortal woman whom he loved. Therefore I am the descendant of his power. Among the Elohim, no other form of procreation has meaning.”

The ur-viles and Waynhim responded with a low mutter which may have

expressed approval or disbelief. Like them, if in an entirely different fashion, the merewives were artificial beings, born of magic and knowledge rather than of natural flesh.

Kastenessen, Linden thought. New fears shook her. She believed Esmer instinctively. Kastenessen had burned her with his fury in the open center of the Verge of Wandering. And yesterday he had influenced the Demondim, persuading them to alter their

intentions.

“That’s why you serve him,” she murmured unsteadily.
serve him utterly. You inherited your power from him.”p>

His power—and his hunger for destruction.

“As I also serve you,” he told her for the second time.

Kastenessen. The name was a knell; a funereal gong adumbrating echoes in all directions. Her nausea was growing worse. The Elohim had forcibly Appointed Kastenessen to prevent or imprison a peril in the farthest north of the world. But now he had broken free of his Durance. When Lord Foul had said, I have merely whispered a word of counsel here and there, and awaited events, he may have been speaking of Kastenessen.

She knew how powerful the Elohim could be, any of them

Kastenessen had provided for her escape from the horde. Had he also enabled Covenant and Jeremiah to reach her? Did he want all three of them alive?

Still scrambling to catch up with the implications of Esmer’s revelation, she mused aloud, “So when Anele talks about skurj—”

He names the beasts”—Esmer shook his head—”nay, the monstrous creatures of fire which Kastenessen was Appointed to contain. They come to assail the Land because he has severed or eluded the Durance which compelled him to his doom.”

Behind the Mithil’s Plunge, Anele had referred to Kastenessen. I could have preserved the Durance! he had cried. Stopped the skurj. With the Staff! If I had been worthy.

Did you sojourn under the Sunbane with Sunder and Hollian, and learn nothing of ruin?

According to Anele—or to the native stone that he had touched behind the Plunge—the Elohim had done nothing to secure Kastenessen’s imprisonment.

Aching for Anele’s pain, and for her own peril, Linden asked Esmer softly, “What about this morning? The Demondim let Covenant and my son

reach Revelstone.” Covenant had given her an explanation. She wanted to know if he had told the truth. “Was that Kastenessen’s doing too?’

“You do not comprehend,” Esmer protested dolefully; as regret-ridden as the wind that drove seafarers into the Soulbiter. “Your ignorance precludes it. Do you not know that the Viles, those beings of terrible and matchless lore, were once a lofty and admirable race? Though they roamed the Land widely,

they inhabited the Lost Deep in caverns as ornate and majestic as castles. There they devoted their vast power and knowledge to the making of beauty and wonder, and all of their works were filled with loveliness. For an age of the Earth, they spurned the heinous evils buried among the roots of Gravin Threndor, and even in the time of Berek Lord-Fatherer no ill was known of them.”

Esmer’s ambiguous conflicts had

grown so loud that Linden could not shut them out. They hurt her nerves like the carnage before Revelstone’s gates, when the Demondim had slaughtered so many Masters and their mounts.

She had asked about KastenessenŹabout Covenant—and Esmer talked of Viles.

“Yet a shadow had already fallen upon them,” Cail’s son continued, “like and

unlike the shadow upon the hearts of the Elohim. The corruption of the Viles, and of their makings, the Demondim, transpired thus.”

Wait, she wanted to insist. Stop. That isn’t what I need to know. But the accentuation of Esmer’s manner held her. He was right: her ignorance precluded her from asking the right questions—and from recognizing useful answers.

“Many tales are told,” said Esmer, “some to conceal, some to reveal. Yet it is sooth that long before the Despiser’s coming to the littoral of the Land, he had stretched out his hand to awaken the malevolence of Lifeswallower, the Great Swamp, as it lurked in the heart of Sarangrave Flat, for he delights in cruel hungers. And from that malevolence—conjoined with the rapacity of humankind—had emerged the three Ravers, moksha, turiya, and samadhi. By such means

was the One Forest decimated, and its long sentience maimed, until an Elohim came to preserve its remnants.

“Awakened to themselves,” Esmer explained as though the knowledge grieved him, “the trees created the Forestals to guard them, and bound the Elohim into the Colossus of the Fall as an Interdict against the Ravers, repulsing them from the Upper Land.

“Later the Despiser established Ridjeck

Thome as his seat of power, though he did not then declare himself to human knowledge. There he gathered the Ravers to his service when the Colossus began to wane. And with his guidance, they together, or some among them, began cunningly to twist the hearts of the sovereign and isolate Viles. Forbidden still by the Colossus, the Ravers could not enter the Lost Deep. Instead they met with Viles that roamed east of Landsdrop, exploring the many facets of the Land. With

whispers and subtle blandishments, and by slow increments, the Ravers obliquely taught the Viles to loathe their own forms.

“Being Ravers, the brothers doubtless began by sharing their mistrust and contempt toward the surviving mind of the One Forest, and toward the Forestals. From that beginning, however, the Viles were readily led to despise themselves, for all contempt turns upon the contemptuous, as it

must.”

Esmer had raised his head: he faced Linden as steadily as he could. But his eyes were the fraught hue of heavy seas crashing against each other, and his raiment gusted about him in the throes of a private storm.

“In that same age,” he went on, “as the perversion of the Viles progressed, samadhi Raver evaded the Interdict by passing beyond the Southron Range to

taint the people who gave birth to Berek Lord-Fatherer. By his influence upon their King, samadhi instigated the war which led Berek through terrible years and cruel bloodshed to his place as the first High Lord in the Land.

“Among the crags of Mount Thunder, Berek had sworn himself to the service of the Land. But he was new to power, and much of his effort was turned to the discovering of the One Tree and the forming of the Staff of Law. He

could not halt all of humankind’s depredations against the forests. And as the trees dwindled, so the strength of the Colossus was diminished.

“Nonetheless in the time of High Lord Damelon the Interdict endured. When the Viles turned their lore and their self-loathing to the creation of the Demondim in the Lost Deep, the Ravers were precluded from interference.”

Esmer nodded as if to himself. His gaze drifted away from Linden. He may have been too absorbed in his tale, in rue and old bitterness, to remember that he was not answering her. Nevertheless the Waynhim and ur-viles heeded him in utter silence, as if their Weird hinged on his words. For their sake, and because she could not evaluate his reasons for speaking, she swallowed her impulse to interrupt him.