Part 25 (2/2)

”It's a risk,” he admitted. ”We'll try to minimize it. Stay below the radar.” Abruptly he glanced at Jeremiah. ”What do you think? That ridge?' He pointed. ”The one with the crescent of obsidian? Looks like about three leagues to me.”

Jeremiah considered the distance for a moment. Then he suggested, ”What about the next one? It looks like somebody took a bite out of it. I think it's a bit more than four leagues.”

”Fine.” Covenant nodded decisively. ”Your eyes are better than mine. As long as you can see it-”

At last, he turned to Linden. ”We want to do this with as little fanfare as possible.” His eyes seemed empty, devoid of embers; almost lifeless. ”The more effort we put into it, the more attention we'll attract. So we're going to move in short hops. Strictly line-ofsight. And we'll stay as close to the Deep as we can. The way the Forestal and his trees talk to each other emits a lot of background noise. Ordinary people can't hear it, but it's there. It'll make us harder to spot.”

”What are they saying?” Linden asked impulsively.

Covenant shrugged. ”How should know? I'm not a piece of wood.”p> know? I'm not a piece of wood.”p> He had claimed that he was The keystone of the Arch of Time*I know everything. Or I can, if I make the effort.

Jeremiah looked at her, but she could not read his expression. His soiled gaze may have held reproach or commiseration. ”Actually, Mom,” he said uneasily. ”they're talking about us.” The muscle at the corner of his left eye twitched. ”They hope we'll go into the forest. They like the taste of human blood.”

Before she could respond, he asked Covenant with his familiar diffidence, ”You're ready, aren't you'?”

”h.e.l.l, yes,” muttered Covenant. ”I've been ready for days.”

Like the taste-And if they liked it so much that Caerroil Wildwood reached out past the borders of his demesne? What then?

”Just tell me one more thing,” Linden said, hurrying. ”The Theomach can't see us anymore. Having me with you is supposed to placate the Elohim. Whose 'opposition' are you worried about'?”

Covenant seemed too impatient to answer. Instead Jeremiah said, ”It's better if we don't tell you, Mom.” His tone reminded her of his anger when she had insisted on seeing whether he had been shot. ”They're more likely to notice us if we say their names.”

Ah, h.e.l.l, Linden sighed. In this circ.u.mstance, her mind cannot be distinguished from the Arch of Time. Perhaps that made sense. In the wrong time and place, unearned knowledge could be more dangerous than ignorance. She was acutely aware of the manner in which her companions manipulated her. Nevertheless she had come too far, and had accepted too much, to infuriate Covenant and threaten her son with protests.

All right,” she said warily. ”Just tell me what to do.”

”It's simple, really.” Jeremiah recovered his equanimity quickly. ”All you have to do is stand still. And make sure you don't touch either of us. We'll do the rest.

”We'll be using as little magic as possible, so we don't need much preparation. And we won't have to worry about wearing ourselves out. I know four leagues doesn't sound like much. But if nothing goes wrong, you'll be amazed how much progress we can make.”

Covenant kicked at the dirt with the toe of his boot, lifted his palms to the morning breeze, turned his head from side to side as if he were studying the conditions for travel. Then he said brusquely. ”Let's do it. I'm not getting any younger.”

Obeying gestures from her son, Linden retrieved her bundle, braced the severe comfort of the Staff against her chest. Reflexively she used her free hand to confirm that she still bore the unyielding circle of Covenant's ring. Then she pulled her robe more tightly around her cloak and moved to stand near Covenant.

Jeremiah positioned himself at her back: Covenant faced her. Now she seemed to see sparks or glowing coals in the deep background of the Covenant's gaze. But he did not appear angry. Instead his mien suggested antic.i.p.ation or fear. His strict features were distorted by a grin like a snarl.

Slowly he raised his arms until they pointed into the air above Linden's head. As he did so, he began to radiate heat as if he had eased open the door of a furnace: the conflagration of his true nature. Glancing behind her, she saw that Jeremiah had lifted his arms also. From him, she felt a mounting pressure, warm and solid; a force which would drive her to her knees if it became too strong.

In some fas.h.i.+on, Covenant and Jeremiah were creating a portal- To her right, the Last Hills rose bluff and uncaring, too enwrapped in their slow contemplations to heed beings as brief as Linden and her companions. But on her left, Garroting Deep seemed to glower avidly, hungry for the taste of flesh. The cold sky and the comfortless sun covered her with their disregard.

Softly she breathed. ”I'm trusting you, Jeremiah, honey.”

She meant, Don't betray me. Don't let Covenant betray me. Please.

Then the divergent forces arching over her head combined and gathered to form a concussion as lurid as lightning, as bleak and disruptive as thunder. In that instant, everything around her ceased to exist- -and was instantly recreated as though nothing had occurred. Covenant's arms, and Jeremiah's, held no power. The sky and the hills and the trees seemed unaltered; untouchable. The sun had not moved.

Nevertheless Linden stumbled, disoriented by the unexpected angle of the ground under her feet. Covenant and Jeremiah jumped away to avoid her as she floundered for balance. A second ago, less than a heartbeat, she had been standing on a hillside that sloped downward toward Garroting Deep. Now she found herself on a surface which tilted in the opposite direction.

She and her companions must have gained the ridge that Jeremiah had suggested: she appeared to be standing on the treeward side of a notch or gouge in one of the granite ribs of the hills. Somehow Covenant and Jeremiah had avoided arriving amid a cl.u.s.ter of shattered rocks nearby. Those jagged shards would surely have caused her to fall.

A sharp veering sensation unsettled her: the visceral effect of movement without transition. For a moment, she had difficulty remaining on her feet. But the hills here were distinctly themselves; beyond question not the slopes and crags which had risen above her when she had emerged from Bargas Slit. As she concentrated on their uncompromised shapes, she slowly regained her stability.

Breathing deeply, almost gasping for calm, she panted. ”Just like that.”

She felt vaguely appalled, even though she had known what would happen. As far as she could determine, no harm had been done, either to her surroundings or to any aspect of Law. The mundane physical exertion of movement had simply been replaced by an effort of theurgy. Surely she had no cause for chagrin? Yet she felt unaccountably distressed, as if she had been aided by an act of violence.

”Just like that,” agreed Covenant. Behind his apparent satisfaction, Linden heard an undercurrent of acid. ”It isn't much. But every little bit helps.

And once we reach the mountains”- he gestured toward the northwest-”we won't have to be so careful. That d.a.m.n Forestal won't be able to get at us.”

His distaste for Garroting Deep was unmistakable. Yet he had chosen to come near the forest- -between a rock and a hard place.

Linden remembered, aching, that Thomas Covenant had viewed the woodland beauty of Andelain with a boundless love. He had treated CaerCaveral with respect and honor. And she herself was only frightened by the Deep's clenched anger: she understood it too well, and saw too much loveliness hidden in the heart of the forest, to be repulsed by it.

She did not comprehend the man who claimed that he was leading her to the Land's salvation.

I want to repay some of this pain.

Yet his sore ribs-like Jeremiah's battered face-had healed with remarkable celerity. And he must have known that his hurt would be brief. Under the circ.u.mstances, he might have considered it trivial. In his previous incarnation, he would certainly have done so. He had allowed Joan to hurt him repeatedly; had sacrificed himself for her The Thomas Covenant who had twice defeated Lord Foul would not have sought to punish Inbull.

Linden missed her former lover as sorely as she grieved for her son. Nevertheless she was forced to acknowledge that he was gone. There was no portal to that past.

Four ”short hops” later, Linden and her companions had covered fifteen more leagues-according to Jeremiah's estimates-and she found that her imbalance, her almost metaphysical sense of dislocation, was growing worse. Each succeeding rupture weakened her. More and more, the energy which Covenant and Jeremiah invoked appeared to resemble Lord Foul's iterated lightning when the Despiser had taken Joan's life. Linden had seen eyes like fangs among the savage blasts of the storm. Now she saw-or seemed to see-the Despiser's carious malice in each detonation of theurgy which bore her along the marge of Garroting Deep.

She may have been hallucinating; imagining nightmares to account for her disorientation and weakness, her loss of perceptual coherence. Nonetheless a sense of crepitation gathered in her nerves like an acc.u.mulation of static, primed for a discharge which would shred her flesh.

She had also seen Lord Foul's eyes in the bonfire which had maimed Jeremiah- Struggling to manage her mounting paresthesia, she begged. Can we take a break? Something's wrong. I need-”

”No!” snapped Covenant. ”They're aware of us now. We have to keep going.”

The strain in his voice-the strident admixture of exultation and dread-s.n.a.t.c.hed at her attention.

He was sweating profusely, as if the cost of carrying his many burdens had finally begun to break down his unnatural endurance. The whites of his eyes glistened with incipient panic. His hands shook.

Wheeling to face her son, Linden saw that he, too, was sweating as though he had run for leagues. Alarm or concentration darkened the muddy hue of his gaze. And his mouth hung open, as slack as she remembered it: he looked like he might start to drool at any moment, lost in his personal dissociation.

The subliminal mutter of Garroting Deep's many voices had grown louder. A kind of aural brume filled the forest, ominous and inchoate, confusing Linden's percipience.

”What's happening?' she asked her son urgently. ”They're aware of us? What does that mean?”

”They're fighting us.” His chest heaved. ”Putting up barriers. We have to push our way through. If we can't outrun them-”

”Come on,” Covenant demanded.

”They're going to catch us.”

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