Part 39 (1/2)

Quickly the young Cord lifted her troubled gaze to meet Linden's, then dropped her eyes again. ”Ringthane?”

With that one brief look, Pahni seemed to bare her soul.

Linden caught her breath; held it for a moment. Then she murmured like a sigh, ”Liand has what Covenant told him to find,” Thomas Covenant himself, not some malign imitation. ”Now you're afraid of what's going to happen to him.”

Pahni nodded without raising her head. Her grip on Liand's shoulder looked tight enough to hurt; but he only reached up to rest one of his hands on hers, and did not flinch.

At last, Linden rose to her feet. For her own sake as much as for Pahni's, she said, ”What you'll have to face is going to be harder.” Covenant had said so through Anele. ”I don't know what it is. I don't know what's going to happen to any of us. But I know that you and Liand need each other.” She was intimately familiar with the cruelty of being forced to face her doom unloved. ”Try to understand his excitement. For the first time in his life, he has something that you've never lacked,”

something comparable to the way in which the Ramen served the Ranyhyn. ”A reason to believe that what he does matters.” The Masters had taken that away from all of the Land's people. ”A reason to believe in himself.”

Covenant had given Linden's friends a message for her. She can do this. Tell her I said that. She did not believe him-or disbelieve. She could only promise that she would let nothing stop her.

She had also made a promise to Caerroil Wildwood, which she meant to keep.

Standing, Linden looked around at her companions: at Mahrtiir's champing frustration and Stave's impa.s.sivity, Bhapa's conflicted desire to hear and not hear her tale, Anele's inattentiveness, Liand's growing concern; at Pahni's surprise and appreciation. Then, for the first time since the Humbled had left the room, she let her underlying wrath rise to the surface.

”As it turns out,” she said like iron. ”the Elohim told the truth.” He or she had given warning of croyel as well as skurj. And both the Ramen and the people of the Land had been urged to Beware the halfhand. ”If they hadn't been so d.a.m.n cryptic about it, they might have actually done us some good.”

Had you not suffered and striven as you did, you would not have become who you are.

”Liand, would you put more wood on the fire? It's going to get colder in here.”

Before anyone could react, she walked away into her bedroom.

Temporarily, at least, she had moved past her reluctance. First she opened the shutters over the window so that the comparative chill of the spring night could flow in unhindered. She wanted that small reminder of grim winter and desperation. For a moment, she breathed the air as if she were filling her lungs with darkness. Then she retrieved her Staff and carried its rune-carved ebony back to her waiting friends.

As they caught sight of it, Liand and the Cords winced. They were not surprised: they had seen the Staff when they had brought her here from the plateau. But they did not understand its transformation.

”What has transpired'?” Bhapa's voice was husky with alarm. ”Is this some new Staff'?”

”Gaze more closely, Cord,” growled the Manethrall. ”This is alteration, not replacement. Some lorewise being has constrained the Ringthane's Staff, or exalted it. And she has wielded her power in battle greater and more terrible than any we have witnessed. She has met such foes-”

Abruptly he turned to Stave. ”Perhaps now we must speak of the Mandoubt, who has retrieved the Ringthane from the most dire peril.”

Stave studied Linden closely. ”The Chosen will speak as she wills. However, I am loath to address such matters. We may consider them with greater a.s.surance when more is known.”

”Anele sees this,” Anele remarked, peering blindly past or through the Staff. ”He cannot name it. Yet he sees that it is fitting.”

Linden shook her head. ”The Mandoubt is beside the point.” She had no idea why Stave wanted to avoid the subject; but she did not wish to discuss the Insequent without the older woman's permission. For reasons of her own-perhaps to evade questions like Mahrtiir's-the Mandoubt had avoided encountering Linden's companions a short time ago. Whatever those reasons were, Linden intended to respect them. Lightly she tapped one shod end of her Staff on the floor. ”Even this isn't the point. I just wanted you to look at it. I don't know how to describe everything that happened, but I wanted to give you some idea of the scale.”

Now everyone except Anele regarded her intently. While the old man mumbled a disjointed counterpoint, she tried to put what she had experienced into words.

She could not do it. The stone in the center of her chest left no room for sorrow or regret, or for the urgent bafflement and need which had compelled her actions. She still felt those things, but she could not articulate them. They had melted and joined to form the igneous amalgam of her purpose. Any language except deeds would have falsified her to herself.

Instead of the truth, she told her friends the bare skeleton of her story; bones stripped of pa.s.sion and necessity. While the night air from her bedroom blew softly on the back of her neck, she recited the facts of her time with Roger and the croyel as if she had heard them from someone else. Although she glossed over a number of details, she skipped nothing essential-until she came to her time with the Mandoubt in Garroting Deep. Then she spoke only of Caerroil Wildwood and runes, leaving unexplained her rescue from the Land's past.

If her companions had asked about her return to Revelstone, she would have deflected their inquiries until she understood Stave's disinclination to discuss the Mandoubt-or until she could seek the Mandoubt's consent. But they did not. Various aspects of her narrative snagged their attention, and they had too many other questions.

Stave and the Ramen understood more than Liand did. In their separate fas.h.i.+ons, their people had preserved their knowledge of the Land's history. Perhaps for that reason, Mahrtiir was caught and held by everything that Linden chose to say about the Insequent: it was entirely new to him. Bhapa stumbled over her description of the Viles and seemed unable to recover his balance. Pahni listened wide-eyed until Linden related how she had entered Melenkurion Skyweir in Jeremiah's deadwood cage. Then confusion dulled her expression as if she had reached the limit of what she could hear and absorb. And Stave attended with a slight frown that slowly deepened into a scowl as Linden talked about Roger Covenant and the croyel. But he only evinced surprise when she spoke of Caerroil Wildwood. Apparently he found more wonder in the Forestal's forbearance and aid than in anything else.

In contrast, Liand concentrated on Linden herself rather than on the substance of her story. As she talked, he radiated a mounting and entirely personal distress; a concern for her which outweighed everything that he could not grasp. And when she had put in place the last bones of her denatured tale, his alarm swept him to his feet.

”Linden-” he began, groping for words that would not come until he clenched his fists and punched them against each other to break the logjam of his emotions. ”Chosen. Wildwielder. He was your son. And the man whom you have loved. Yet you say nothing of yourself. How do you bear it? How are you able-?”

”No.” Linden silenced him with sudden vehemence. His caring cut her too deeply. ”We don't talk about me. We aren't going to talk about me at all.” How could she hope to explain her essential transformation? ”I can try to answer practical questions. And I know what I have to do.” Within her she holds the devastation of the Earth- ”But Lord Foul took my son and gave him to the croyel. That I do not forgive. I do not forgive.”

The Ranyhyn had tried to warn her, but she had failed to heed them. She had not understood- Liand fell back a step, shocked by her ferocity. All of her friends stared at her, their eyes wide. Even Stave seemed to wince. Anele's head flinched from side to side as if he sought to shake her words from his ears.

Thomas Covenant had urged her to find him. He had told her to trust herself.

For a long moment, no one moved. Linden heard no breathing but her own. The logs that Liand had tossed into the hearth seemed to burn without a sound. But then Bhapa shuddered as if he were chilled by the cool air from the bedroom. Raising his head, he looked directly into the mute fury of Linden's gaze.

”Ringthane,” he said unsteadily. ”you have spoken of your son's plight, but you have said little else of him. How does it chance that he, too, is a halfhand?”

A-Jeroth's mark was placed upon the boy when he was yet a small child.

She might have taken offense if she had not recognized what lay behind his question. It was a form of misdirection which she had used often herself. He did not mean to imply that Jeremiah was a danger to the Land. Instead Bhapa was trying to slip past her defenses. He thought that if she began to talk about Jeremiah, she might be able to release some of her grief, and so find a measure of relief.

He did not know that she was stone and could not bend: she could only shatter.

But the Manethrall intervened at once.

”Be still, Cord,” he snapped harshly. ”Where is your sight? Are you blind to the fetters which bind her heart? We are Ramen, familiar with treachery and loss. We do not reply thus to suffering. The Ringthane will reveal more when more is needed. Sufficient here is the knowledge which we have gained-and the depth to which both she and the Land have been betrayed.”

Bhapa gave a bow of compliance to his Manethrall. Then he lowered his head and remained silent.

Liand made no protest. He may have been stricken dumb by the sight of Linden's pain. An ache of misery filled his eyes, but he accepted her refusal.

No one spoke until Stave said stolidly, ”You do not forgive.” He had recovered his flat composure. ”This we comprehend. The Masters also do not. And they bear the cost of it, as you do.”

Then he added in a more formal tone. ”Linden Avery, Chosen and Wildwielder. Tell us of your intent, that we may make ready. If you would seek out and confront the Land's foes, we mean to accompany you. Doubtless, however, some preparation is needful.”

He sounded like a man who saw the necessity of risk and death, and was not afraid.

Privately Linden had feared that her friends would flinch away when they heard her story. She had given them a host of reasons to question her judgment-and would give them more. But Stave's a.s.sertion affirmed their fidelity. They had given her no cause to believe that they would ever spurn her.

Whether she went to salvation or doom, she would not be alone; not as she had been in Roger's company, and the croyets.

All right,” she replied when she meant, Thank you. Simple grat.i.tude was beyond her: telling her tale had expended too much of her self-possession. ”This is what I have in mind.”

The Mandoubt had called Linden's intentions fearsome and terrible. The Viles had spoken of the devastation of the Earth-Liand himself had said, You have it within you to perform horrors. But Linden did not pause to doubt herself.

”First,” she began, ”I'll have to end the siege somehow.” She could not leave Revelstone to the depredations of the Demondim. ”But then I'm going to Andelain. If I can, I want to find Loric's krill. It's supposed to be able to channel any amount of power. It might let me use white gold and my Staff at the same time.”

Stave nodded as if to himself; but she did not stop.

”And I want to meet the Dead.” Before anyone could object, she continued grimly, ”I know what Anele said. I heard him as well as you did. But I need answers, and there's no one else that I can ask.”