Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant 02 - Fatal Revenant

  His eyes themselves were the same muddy color that they had always been: the hue of silted water. But now they focused keenly on his adoptive mother. He watched her avidly, as if he were studying her for signs of acceptance, understanding, love.

  If Linden had seen him so in their lost life together, she would have wept for utter joy; would have hugged him until her heart broke apart and was made new. But now her fears—for him, of him—burned in her gaze, and the brief blurring of her vision was not gladness or grief: it was trepidation.

  Tell her that I have her son.

  He was closed to her, more entirely undecipherable than the Haruchai. Her health-sense could discern nothing of his physical or emotional condition. Past his blue pajamas with their rearing horses, she searched his precious flesh for some sign of the fusillade which had ended her normal life. But the fabric had been torn in too many places, and his exposed skin wore too much grime, to reveal whether or not he had been shot.

  Shot and healed.

  To her ordinary sight, he looked well; as cared for and healthy as he had been before Roger Covenant took him. She did not know how that was possible. During their separation, he had been in the Despiser’s power. She could not imagine that Lord Foul had attended to his needs.

  Covenant claimed that he had folded time, that he and Jeremiah were in two places at once. Or two realities. But she had no idea how such a violation of Time had restored her son’s physical well-being. Or his mind.

  Covenant himself was sitting on a stool near Jeremiah. Her former lover had tilted the stool back on two legs so that he could lean against the wall. Lightly held by his left hand, a wooden flagon rested in his lap.

  He, too, was smiling: a wry twist of his mouth etiolated by an uncharacteristic looseness in his mouth and cheeks. His gaze regarded her with an expression of dull appraisal. He was exactly the same man whom she had known for so long in the Land: lean to the point of gauntness; strictly formed; apt for extreme needs and catastrophes. The pale scar on his forehead suggested deeper wounds, hurts which he had borne without flinching. And yet he had never before given her the impression that he was not entirely present; that some covert aspect of his mind was fixed elsewhere.

  His right arm hung, relaxed, at his side. Dangling, the fingers of his halfhand twitched as though they felt the absence of the ring that he had worn for so long.

  “I’m sorry, Mom,” Jeremiah said, grinning. “You still can’t touch us.” He seemed to believe that he knew her thoughts. “You’ve changed. You’re even more powerful now. You’ll make us vanish for sure.”

  But he had misinterpreted her clenched frown, her deep consternation. She had forgotten nothing: his prohibition against contact held her as if she had been locked in the manacles of the ur-viles. Nevertheless her attention was focused on Covenant. The smaller changes in him seemed less comprehensible than her son’s profound restoration.

  Covenant nodded absently. “Glimmermere,” he observed. “I’m pretty damn strong, but I can’t fight that.” His tongue slurred the edges of his words. “Reality will snap back into place. Then we’re all doomed.”

  Was he—?

  In a flat voice, a tone as neutral as she could make it, Linden asked, “What are you drinking?”

  Covenant peered into his flagon. “This?” He took a long swallow, then set the flagon back in his lap. “Springwine. You know, I actually forgot how good it tastes. I haven’t been”—he grimaced—“physical for a long time.” Then he suggested, “You should try it. It might help you relax. You’re so tense it hurts to look at you.”

  Jeremiah started to giggle; stopped himself sharply.

  Linden stepped to the edge of the table, bent down to a pitcher that smelled of treasure-berries and beer. The liquid looked clear, but its fermentation was obvious. Somehow the people of the Land had used the juice of aliantha to make an ale as refreshing as water from a mountain spring.

  The Ramen believed that No servant of Fangthane craves or will consume aliantha. The virtue of the berries is too potent.

  Facing Covenant again, she said stiffly, “You’re drunk.”

  He shrugged, grimacing again. “Hellfire, Linden. A man’s got to unwind once in a while. With everything I’m going through right now, I’ve earned it.

  “Anyway,” he added, “Jeremiah’s had as much as I have—”

  “I have not,” retorted Jeremiah cheerfully.

  “—and he’s not drunk,” Covenant continued. “Just look at him.” As if to himself, he muttered, “Maybe when he swallows it ends up in his other stomach. The one where he’s still Foul’s prisoner.”

  Linden shook her head. Covenant’s behavior baffled her. For that very reason, however, she grew calmer. His strangeness enabled her to reclaim a measure of the professional detachment with which she had for years listened to the oblique ramblings of the psychotic and the deranged: dissociated observations, warnings, justifications, all intended to both conceal and expose underlying sources of pain. She did not suddenly decide that Covenant was insane: she could not. He was too much himself to be evaluated in that way. But she began to hear him as if from a distance. As if she had erected a wall between him and her denied anguish—or had hidden her distress in a room like the secret place where her access to wild magic lurked.

  Her tone was deliberately impersonal as she replied, “You said that you wanted to talk to me. Are you in any condition to explain things?”

  “What,” Covenant protested, “you think a little alcohol can slow me down? Linden, you’re forgetting who I am. The keystone of the Arch of Time, remember? I know everything. Or I can, if I make the effort.”

  He seemed to consider the air, trying to choose an example. Then he turned his smeared gaze toward her again.

  “You’ve been to Glimmermere. And you’ve talked to Esmer. Him and something like a hundred ur-viles and Waynhim. Tell me. Why do you think they’re here? I don’t care what he said. He was just trying to justify himself. What do you think?”

  Disturbed by his manner, Linden kept her reactions to herself. Instead of answering, she said cautiously, “I have no idea. He took me by surprise. I don’t know how to think about it.”

  Covenant snorted. “Don’t let him confuse you. It’s really pretty simple. He likes to talk about ‘aid and betrayal,’ but with him it’s mostly betrayal. Listening to him is a waste of time.”

  While Covenant spoke, Jeremiah took his racecar from the waistband of his pajamas and began to roll the toy over and around the fingers and palm of his halfhand as if he were practicing a conjuring trick; as if he meant to make the car vanish like a coin from the hand of a magician.

  Covenant’s awareness of her encounter with Esmer startled Linden; but she clung to her protective detachment. “You know what he said to me?”

  You must be the first to drink of the EarthBlood. Did Covenant understand what Esmer meant?

  “Probably,” Covenant drawled. “Most of it, anyway. But it’s better if you tell me.”

  He was Thomas Covenant: she did not question that. But she did not know how to trust him now. Carefully she replied, “He said that the ur-viles and Waynhim want to serve me.”

  “How?” Suddenly he was angry. “By joining up with all those Demondim? Hell and blood, Linden. Use your brain. They were created by the Demondim, for God’s sake. Even the Waynhim can’t forget that, no matter how hard they try. They were created evil. And the ur-viles have been Foul’s servants ever since they met him.”

  “They made Vain,” she countered as if she were speaking to one of her patients. Without the ur-viles, her Staff of Law would not exist.

  “And you think that’s a good thing?” Covenant demanded. “Sure, you stopped the Sunbane. But it would have faded out on its own after a while. It needed the Banefire. And since then mostly what that thing you insist on carrying around has done is make my job a hell of a lot harder.

  “Damn it, Linden, if you hadn’t taken my ring and made that Staff, I would have been a
ble to fix everything ages ago. I could have stopped time around Foul right where he was when you left the Land. Then Kastenessen would still be stuck in his Durance, and the skurj would still be trapped, and Kevin’s Dirt wouldn’t exist, and Foul wouldn’t have been able to find that chink in Joan’s mind, and we wouldn’t have caesures and Demondim and ur-viles and Esmer and the bloody Illearth Stone to worry about. Not to mention some of the other powers that have noticed what’s happening here and want to take advantage of it.

  “Hellfire, I know you like that Staff. You’re probably even proud of it. But you have no idea what it’s costing me.” He glanced over at Jeremiah. “Or your son.”

  Jeremiah nodded without raising his eyes from the racecar tumbling in his halfhand.

  “What do you think I’m doing here?” Covenant finished. “I’m still trying to clean up your mess.”

  Linden flinched in spite of her self-discipline. He held her responsible—? She wanted to protest, But you said—!

  In her dreams, he had told her, You need the Staff of Law.

  And through Anele, he had urged her to find him. I can’t help you unless you find me.

  Yet he was the one who had found her.

  “It’s awful, Mom,” Jeremiah said softly as if he were talking to his car. “There aren’t any words for what it feels like. Words aren’t strong enough. The Despiser is ripping me to pieces. And I can’t stop him. Covenant can’t stop him. He just keeps hurting me and laughing like he’s never had so much fun.”

  Oh, my son!

  Linden bit her lip and forced herself to face Covenant again. She was beginning to understand why he had warned her to be wary of him. The man whom she had loved would never have held her accountable for consequences which she could not have foreseen.

  Nevertheless the discrepancy between her recollections and his attitudes helped her to regain her balance. In a moment, the impact of his recrimination was gone; hidden away. She would consider it later. For the present, she stood her ground.

  As she had so often with her patients, she responded to his ire by trying to alter the direction of their interaction, attempting to slip past his defenses. She hoped to surprise some revelation from him which he could or would not offer voluntarily.

  Instead of defending herself, she asked mildly, as if he had not hurt her, “How did you get that scar on your forehead? I don’t think you ever told me.”

  Covenant’s manner or his mood was as labile as Esmer’s. His anger seemed to fade into a brume of springwine. Rubbing at his forehead with his halfhand, he grinned sheepishly. “You know, I’ve forgotten. Isn’t that weird? You’d think I’d remember what happened to my own body. But I’ve been away from myself for so long—” His voice faded to a sigh. “So full of time—” Then he seemed to shake himself. Emptying his flagon with one long draught, he refilled it and set it in his lap again. “Maybe that’s why this stuff tastes so much better than I remember.”

  Linden paid no attention to his reply: she heeded only his manner. Deliberately casual, she changed the subject again.

  “Esmer mentioned manacles.”

  His response was not what she expected. “Exactly,” he sighed as if he were drowsy with drink. “And who do you think they’re for? Not you. Of course not. Those ur-viles are here to serve you.” His tone scarcely hinted at sarcasm. “No, Linden, the manacles are for me. That’s why Esmer brought his creatures here. That’s how they’re going to help their makers. And Foul. By stopping me before we can do what we have to do to save the Land.”

  Although she tried to conceal her reaction, she flinched. What she knew of the ur-viles and Waynhim led her to believe that they were her allies, that she could rely on them. But what she knew of Esmer urged doubt. The creatures that had enabled her to retrieve the Staff of Law and reach Revelstone had clearly accepted the newcomers. But if both groups wished to serve her because they felt sure that she would fail the Land—if their real purpose, and Esmer’s, hinged on stopping Covenant—

  She could not sustain her detachment in the face of such possibilities. They were too threatening; and the truth was beyond her grasp. She had no sortilege for such determinations. The Demondim-spawn had done so much to earn her trust—If she had not witnessed Esmer’s conflicted treachery, she might have concluded that Covenant was lying.

  Trembling inside, she turned away from her former lover. Her lost son was here as well. Even if he, too, blamed her for the Land’s plight, she yearned to talk to him.

  He had regained his mind at the cost of more torment than he could describe.

  Carefully she leaned the Staff against the wall near the hearth. Although she craved its comforting touch, she wanted to show Jeremiah that he was in no danger from her. Then she took one of the stools and placed it so that she could sit facing him. Leaning forward with her elbows braced on her knees, she focused all of her attention on him; closed her mind to Thomas Covenant.

  “Jeremiah, honey,” she asked quietly, intently, “were you shot?”

  Jeremiah wrapped his hand around his toy. For a moment, he appeared to consider trying to crush the racecar in his fist; and the pulse at the corner of his eye became more urgent. But then he returned the car to the waistband of his pajamas. Lifting his head, he faced Linden with his soiled gaze.

  “You really should ask him, Mom.” Her son nodded toward Covenant. “He’s the one with all the answers.” He shrugged uncomfortably. “I’m just here.”

  As if he were speaking to himself, Covenant murmured, “You know, that tapestry is pretty amazing. I think it’s the same one they had in my room the first time I came here. Somehow it survived for seven thousand years. Not to mention the fact that it must have been old when I first saw it.”

  Linden ignored the Unbeliever. “Jeremiah, listen to me.” Intensity throbbed in her voice: she could not stifle it. “I need to know. Were you shot?”

  Could she still attempt to save his former life? Was it possible that he might return to the world in which he belonged?

  “Maybe they didn’t keep it in the Hall of Gifts,” Covenant mused. “There was a lot of damage when we fought Gibbon. Maybe they stored the tapestry in the Aumbrie. That might explain why it hasn’t fallen apart.”

  Jeremiah hesitated briefly before he replied, “I’m not sure. Something knocked me down pretty hard, I remember that. But there wasn’t any pain.” Reflexively he rubbed at the muscle beating in the corner of his eye. “I mean, not at first. Not until Lord Foul started talking—

  “It’s strange. Nothing here”—he pressed both palms against his chest—“hurts. In this time—or this version of reality—I’m fine. But that only makes it worse. Pain is worse when you have something to compare it to—”

  Covenant was saying, “That’s Berek there in the center. The o-rigi-nal Halfhand. He’s doing his ‘beatitude and striving’ thing, peace in the midst of desperate struggle. Whatever that means. And the rest tells his story.”

  Linden’s gaze burned. If she could have lowered her defenses—if she could have borne the cost of her emotions, any of them—she would have wept. Jeremiah conveyed impressions which made her want to tear at her own flesh for simple distraction, so that she would feel some other suffering than his.

  Her voice threatened to choke her as she asked, “Do you know where you are? In that other reality?”

  “That Queen there,” Covenant explained, “turned against her King when she found out he was human enough to actually like power. And Berek was loyal to her. He fought on her side until the King beat him. Cut his hand in half. After which Berek tried to escape. He ran for Mount Thunder. That scene shows his despair. Or maybe it was just self-pity. And in that one, the Fire-Lions come to his rescue.”

  Jeremiah shook his head. “It’s dark.” Like Linden, he seemed to ignore Covenant. “Sometimes there’s fire, and I’m in the middle of it. But there isn’t really anything to see. It could be anywhere.”

  “So you don’t know where Lord Foul is?” she insisted
. “You can’t tell me where to look for you?”

  Until she found him, she could do nothing to end his torture.

  “It all started there,” Covenant went on, “the whole history of the Lords with their grand ideals and their hopeless mistakes. Even Foul’s plotting started there—in the Land, anyway. Not directly, of course. Oh, he sent out a shadow to help the King against Berek. But he didn’t show himself then. For centuries, the Lords were too pure to feel Berek’s despair. Just remembering Berek’s victories was enough to protect Damelon—and Loric too, at least for a while. Foul couldn’t risk anything overt until Kevin inherited a real talent for doubt from his father. But even that was Foul’s doing. He used the Viles and the Demondim to undermine Loric’s confidence, plant the seeds of failure. By the time Kevin became High Lord, he was already doomed.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom.” Jeremiah’s tone was like his eyes: it suggested solid earth eroded by the irresistible rush of his plight. “I want to help you. I really do. I want you to make it stop. But as far as I know, I just fell into a pit, and I’ve been there ever since. It could be anywhere. Even Covenant doesn’t know where I am.”

  Linden clenched herself against the distraction of Covenant’s obscure commentary. She needed all of her strength to withstand the force and sharpness of her empathy for her son.

  “Poor Kevin,” Covenant sighed unkindly. “He didn’t recognize Foul because no one in the Land knew who the Despiser was. No one told Berek, and his descendants didn’t figure it out for themselves. While Foul was hard at work in Ridjeck Thome and Kurash Qwellinir, the Lords didn’t even know he existed. Kevin actually let him join the Council, and still no one saw the truth.