“Don’t worry about it.” Linden’s tone resembled Stave’s stoicism. “It’s going to be a long night, and there isn’t much that we can do until morning.” She might not be able to leave Revelstone until she found a way to help the Masters defeat the Demondim. “We don’t need to hurry.”
Liand’s countenance revealed his gratitude—as well as his alarm at her manner—as he resumed his explanation.
“On the fourth day from your disappearance, Stave approached me to announce that the time had come. He had learned to conceal his thoughts from the Masters. And the Masters themselves were heavily engaged by the Demondim. He conceived that we might therefore approach the Aumbrie without opposition. His kinsmen were too few to guard us closely.
“I accepted at once, though Pahni protested. I required some task or deed which might offer meaning to my days.
“Leaving Anele with the Ramen, we descended into the depths of Revelstone, where no lamps burned except that which Stave bore, and the neglected dust of many and many years had gathered heavily. There we entered a passage which appeared to serve no purpose, for it ended in blank stone. Glimmermere had refreshed my discernment, however, and when I had studied the wall for a time, I perceived a faint residue of glamour or theurgy.
“Though it was veiled from simple sight, a tracing of red outlined the shape of a portal. I have no knowledge of such matters, as you are aware. Yet to my senses, the tracing flowed toward a place of accentuation in the center of the lintel. Testing me, perhaps, Stave offered no counsel. Nonetheless I dared to set my hand upon that accentuation. And when I had done so, a door became evident within the pattern of the lines.”
Linden listened closely, trying to prepare herself; bracing her resolve on Liand’s story. Some of its details begged for examination. Surely the Masters knew that he now held a piece of Sunstone? And they must have sensed Liand’s entrance into the Aumbrie. Why had they not taken the orcrest from him as soon as he found it?
His tone intensified as he continued. “Moved by an ancient magic beyond my ken, the door opened of its own accord, admitting us to corridors thick with dust and dank air. Thereafter Stave resumed his guidance, for the passages gave no hint of their design or intent. Soon the air grew nigh too foul to breathe, and Stave’s lamp faltered. Ere it failed, however, we came upon an iron door, heavy and dark, lying discarded upon the floor. And from the chamber which the door had once sealed shone the lumination of the moon at its full. Also I discerned an aura of eldritch vitality as poignant as Glimmermere’s, but immeasurably more complex. Indeed, I recognized nothing except that the atmosphere was compounded of Earthpower in a multitude of forms.
“To my inquiries,” Liand said, “Stave replied only that the chamber was the Aumbrie of the Clave, that the door had been wrested from its mounts by the ur-vile–made man or creature named Vain, and that none had seen a need to repair the door, guarded as it was by its outer theurgy. Then he did not speak for a time. Rather he appeared to listen for the inward speech of the Masters so that we might be forewarned if we were threatened. In silence, we entered the Aumbrie together.”
His effort to contain the wonder of what he had seen was plain: it showed in his grasp on the orcrest. As his fingers tightened, the stone began to glow softly, white as washed cotton, and clean as his heart.
“The chamber was large, perhaps twice the size of your quarters taken together, and clearly a storehouse for implements and talismen of aged puissance. Indeed, I was hardly able to advance against the radiance of Earthpower on every side.
“Tables crowded the floor as shelves covered the walls, their surfaces laden. Everywhere I saw scrolls and casks, amulets and torcs, periapts beyond my naming of them, swords of many shapes and fashions, staffs which compelled me to imagine that they had once been clasped by Lords. The light itself was emitted by three munificent caskets upon the shelves, as well as by some few objects upon the tables. Yet wherever I turned my senses, I beheld potencies of such transcendence that my spirit was dazzled by them.”
Suddenly Liand stopped. Easing his grip on the Sunstone, he let its light fade. Then he sat up straight, tucked the orcrest away in its pouch, and faced Linden with his hands braced on his thighs. An unexpected anger sharpened his tone.
“Linden, the proscriptions of the Masters no longer appear arrogant to me. Now I deem them madness. I comprehend that the Haruchai eschew weapons, trusting solely to strength and skill. This they deem necessary to their vision of themselves. And the Ramen are the servants of the Ranyhyn. They find no use in the exercise of theurgy, for the great horses do not require it of them. Yet the sheer waste of that which the Aumbrie contains staggers me. I discern no conscience in the denial—”
Linden interrupted him. Defending herself as much as Stave and the Masters, she stated heavily, “It isn’t that simple. You don’t just need the instrument. You have to know how to use it.”
“Yet—” the Stonedownor tried to protest.
She did not let him go on. “Liand, what happened to you in that room? How many of those things did you have to examine before you found what you were looking for?”
“Many,” he admitted uncomfortably. “Some felt inert to my touch, though their power was visible. Others refused my hand entirely. The markings upon the scrolls conveyed no meaning, and the radiance of the caskets forbade me to open them. For a time, I craved a sword or a staff, but they proffered no response.”
“You see?” said Linden more gently. “Maybe the Masters were wrong. I think they were. But it doesn’t matter now. All of the old knowledge, the lore of the Lords, even the Rede of the Clave. It’s gone. It’s been lost. And without it—” She lifted her shoulders in a stiff shrug. “I can use the Staff of Law because I made it. But I can only call up wild magic because Covenant left me his ring.” In a sense, she had inherited it from him. “I’m surprised you found even one thing that felt right to you.”
Although he seemed unconvinced, Liand nodded. “And all that the Aumbrie contained bewildered me. The orcrest I would have ignored without Stave’s counsel. When I beseeched his aid, however, he observed that I am a Stonedownor, and that therefore some object of stone might serve me.”
Glancing around at her friends, Linden saw that Mahrtiir’s impatience was growing, and even Bhapa appeared restless. Pahni held herself motionless with her hand on Liand’s shoulder and her body stiff. Only Stave remained impassive, studying Linden with his single eye. And only Anele ignored the tension in the room.
Linden sighed. She could not postpone her own explanations much longer.
“But you found it,” she said to hasten Liand. “As soon as you touched it, you were sure. It makes you feel like you’ve come to life. We can all see what it means to you.” His heritage glowed within him as though the blood in his veins had taken light. “Now I need you to skip ahead.
“Tell me why the Masters didn’t stop you. From their point of view, it was a major concession when they let me keep my Staff and Covenant’s ring. And they remember orcrest. They remember everything. Why didn’t they take it away from you?”
Liand glanced at Stave. “When we returned to the door of theurgy,” the Stonedownor told Linden, “Branl of the Humbled awaited us, barring our passage. He demanded of me that I must replace the orcrest in the Aumbrie.” Then the young man’s grave eyes met hers again. “Stave dissuaded him.”
Linden caught her breath. Staring at Stave, she asked softly. “Did you fight him?”
The Haruchai shook his head. “There was no need. To some small extent, the indulgence which the Masters have granted to you, and to Anele also, wards the Stonedownor as well. But that alone—” Stave shrugged.
“However, an uncertainty has been sown in the hearts of the Masters. They have not forgotten your words when you argued for their aid. In addition, the ur-Lord Thomas Covenant urged the Voice of the Masters to persuade you from your purpose against the Demondim. Yet it is apparent even to the least tractable of my kinsmen that only your que
nching of the Fall, and thus of the Illearth Stone, has enabled Revelstone to withstand the horde.
“Afterward”—again Stave shrugged—“the Unbeliever took you from among us in a manner which encouraged doubt. And when the Unbeliever and your son had removed you, the siege remained. The unremitting attacks of the Demondim demonstrated that the ur-Lord had not accomplished his purpose—or that his purpose was not as he had avowed.
“Therefore the Masters have become uncertain. They do not yet question their own service. But they inquire now if they have justly gauged your worth. For that reason, Branl was reluctant to strike down even the least esteemed of your companions.”
Between her teeth, but quietly, Pahni exclaimed, “He is not the least. He is the first of the Ringthane’s friends, and the foremost.”
Involuntarily Liand blushed; but Linden kept her attention on Stave. “Are you telling me,” she asked, “that Branl let him keep something as Earthpowerful as orcrest because the Masters are uncertain?”
“No, Chosen,” replied Stave. “I have said only that Branl felt reluctance because the Masters have become uncertain. He did not reclaim the orcrest from Liand because I challenged him to the rhadhamaerl test of truth.”
Linden’s mien must have exposed her incomprehension. Without pausing, Stave explained, “In your sojourn with the ur-Lord, you knew only the Clave and the Sunbane. Your knowledge of the Land does not extend to the time of the Lords, when the stone-lore of the rhadhamaerl was the life and blood of every Stonedown, just as the lillianrill lore enriched and preserved every Woodhelven. You are unacquainted with the test of truth.
“It was performed with orcrest, or with lomillialor, to distinguish honesty from falsehood, fealty from Corruption. Such testing was known to be imperfect. At one time, Corruption himself accepted the challenge, and was not exposed. Among such lesser beings as the Ravers, however, or those who are mortal, the test of truth did not fail.
“I observed to Branl that Liand himself had met the test, though the lore of the rhadhamaerl has been lost for millennia. He held orcrest in his hand and suffered no hurt. And I proposed to endure the test as well, if Branl would do likewise.”
Liand nodded. In his face, Linden could see that Stave had surprised him then. He was not accustomed to thinking of any Haruchai as a friend.
“That challenge he refused,” Stave continued. “He did not doubt its outcome for himself. But such matters have too much import to be decided by a single Master when the Masters together have become uncertain. They have spurned me. In their sight, I have betrayed their chosen service. If I failed the test of truth, I would confirm their judgment. But if I did not, much would be altered. Therefore Branl permitted us to pass unopposed.
“Now Liand is suffered to hold the orcrest just as Anele is suffered to move freely, and your own actions have not been hindered. We are warded by the uncertainty of the Masters.”
Linden shook her head. “I’m sorry, Stave. I don’t understand. What would be altered?”
“Chosen,” Stave answered without impatience, “the Haruchai have not forgotten their ancient esteem for those dedicated to the rhadhamaerl and lillianrill lore. My kinsmen recall that the Bloodguard honored the test of truth. If the orcrest did not reject me, the Masters would be compelled to consider that mayhap they had erred when I was made outcast. Thereafter other doubts would necessarily ensue. Then would their uncertainty burgeon rather than decline.
“The Masters in conclave might perchance have accepted the hazard. Branl alone could not. And the extremity of Revelstone’s defense precluded careful evaluation.”
“All right,” Linden said slowly. “Now I get it. I think.” She could never be certain that she grasped the full stringency of the Masters. But her own circumstances demanded all of her conviction. And she had already made her companions wait too long. “Thank you.”
She suspected that the doubts of the Masters would eventually make them more intransigent rather than less. And she did not know how to tell her friends that she had become as rigid and unyielding as Stave’s kindred.
Instead of standing to meet her own test, she allowed herself one last distraction. With as much gentleness as she could summon, she said. “Pahni.”
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 impassivity, 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 damn 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 Mahdoubt, 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 assurance when more is known.”
“Anele sees this,” An
ele remarked, peering blindly past or through the Staff. “He cannot name it. Yet he sees that it is fitting.”
Linden shook her head. “The Mahdoubt 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 Mahdoubt 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 passion 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 Mahdoubt 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 Mahdoubt—or until she could seek the Mahdoubt’s consent. But they did not. Various aspects of her narrative snagged their attention, and they had too many other questions.