“Just remember. Pretend you can’t taste it.”
Stave was right, of course: when Linden studied the steaming tuber, she saw that it was safe to eat. More than that, it would strengthen her if she ate enough of it. Swallowing hard to clear the discomfiture from her throat, she took a bite.
“Dirt,” she answered Jeremiah’s expectant gaze. “Just like dirt.” In fact, the crisp plant was bland at first; but it had a sour after-taste that made her yearn for the cleanliness of aliantha. Nevertheless she ate it while Jeremiah cooked another root for himself. She had no choice. She was facing a future which might never contain another meal.
fter Jeremiah had finished preparing all of the roots, and he and Linden had eaten as much as their stomachs could tolerate, Stave left again to search farther for water.
He was gone for what seemed like a long time. While he was absent, the Ranyhyn withdrew from the edge of the wetland, putting a little distance between themselves and the disturbing seethe of the waters. But they did not go far. Linden felt them clearly enough, resting between her and the Sarangrave.
When the former Master returned, he announced that he had located safe water in an eddy cast by the turbid seethe of the Flat. It was admittedly brackish and tainted, but not so foul that it would make Linden and Jeremiah ill. There they were able to quench their thirst before the impulse to gag became too strong to suppress.
Returning to the place where they had eaten, Linden urged her son to get some sleep while he could. Then she searched out a relatively level patch of ground for herself. With the Staff clasped across her chest, and her eyes closed against the dying of the stars, she tried to take her own advice.
But her fears nagged at her. They seemed to crawl over her skin under her clothes. Soon, she knew, events might compel her to forsake her son. She had it in her to imagine a source of malachite, and the aid of the Giants, and a portal which would summon the Elohim. Those ideas only asked her to believe in the Ranyhyn and her friends and Jeremiah. But guarding the portal against the Worm would require a miracle, and she had none to offer. Therefore—
Ah, God. Therefore she would have to go in search of a power great enough to accomplish what she could not. She would have to leave Jeremiah to the care of her friends. If she did not, everything that he hoped to accomplish would indeed be wasted.
The fact that she lacked the courage was no longer relevant. Like Jeremiah, she would have to try.
Only Covenant’s return might spare her. She yearned for that. But she could not suppose that he would come. The task which he had undertaken was too dangerous, and he was too far away. No, the burden of preserving Jeremiah’s construct was hers to bear in spite of her weakness. She could not hope to be spared. The Worm of the World’s End was coming. Nothing that lived would be spared.
Gradually she found a kind of resignation. It felt like defeat, but it allowed her to drift into a sleep too stunned and shallow for dreams.
ynyn’s shrill whinny awakened her with the suddenness of a knife. Even before Stave said her name, she began drawing black fire from her Staff.
Reflexively she glanced at the sky to gauge the time. Dawn was near, although it did not promise a sunrise. Nevertheless a certain amount of light was coming. Without it, the air would have been colder. Soon the darkness would become gloaming.
Then she felt the Ranyhyn running. Urgently they fled from the vicinity of the Sarangrave.
Why did they not pause for their riders? They could have taken her and her companions to safety.
But she had no time to think about such things. At Stave’s command, she surged to her feet.
Jeremiah was ahead of her. He stood squinting in the direction of the Sarangrave. Before she could speak, he pointed.
“The Feroce. They’re coming this way.” A heartbeat later, he added, “I can practically smell the lurker.”
“Indeed, Chosen.” Stave sounded as calm as a clear day. “Now you must release the Staff of Law to me. I will ward it.”
Like her son, Linden stared at the crouching malevolence of the wetland. At first, she discerned nothing except the movement of small bodies. As they bobbed past obstructions, they appeared to fade in and out of existence. But then they passed the last islets of trees and brush, and emerald flames the precise hue of the Illearth Stone opened in the darkness. At the same time, the air became thicker: more humid, rank with moisture.
“How many?” She wanted confirmation. She counted six flames, therefore only three Feroce. But somewhere behind them she felt the bitter aura of the lurker. Surely the monster would not challenge her without more support?
“Three,” Stave stated as if he could not be mistaken. “Also I sense but one tentacle. More may come, but the one lingers a stone’s throw behind its minions.”
“Mom?” Jeremiah asked anxiously. “Shouldn’t you give Stave the Staff? You said those things can mess with your mind.”
Linden ignored him. “This doesn’t make sense,” she muttered. “The last time, there were a lot more. And now I’m braced for them. What does that monster think three Feroce can do?”
“Who can declare the lurker’s thoughts?” Stave responded. “Yet the peril remains. And it will be directed at you, Chosen. The monster covets the Staff of Law.”
“Then be ready.” Linden tightened her grip on the ebon wood. “If they’re going to say anything, I want to hear it while I can still defend myself.”
“Mom!” Jeremiah protested. But Stave did not remonstrate.
Leaving the marsh, the creatures approached with an air of hesitation or timidity. They were still some distance away, but her nerves read them clearly. They were hairless and naked, apparently frail. In their large round eyes, green glints reflected like threats. Only their flames implied any force. But their magicks were strange to her, nameless and unrecognizable. The capering fires could have been desecrated Wraiths, captured and cruelly transformed. Or—
Hell, they could have been anything.
Why had the Ranyhyn fled without their riders?
The question suggested possibilities that nearly staggered her. Perhaps it was deliberate. Perhaps the horses had taken her close to Sarangrave Flat once before precisely so that the lurker’s acolytes could draw her into the monster’s reach—
The Ranyhyn feared the lurker: she knew that. Mahrtiir had accounted for their terror clearly enough. But she could not believe that they had betrayed their own devotion. So maybe they had risked attracting their ancient foe—then and now—for a reason. A reason that had nothing to do with shelter or weariness.
What reason? she asked herself wildly. Did they want her to lose her Staff? Did they want the lurker to have it?
They were the Ranyhyn. They would not forsake their riders without a compelling reason.
The Feroce were drawing near, still timorously, but still coming—and Linden was out of her depth; foundering.
“Chosen,” Stave said like the night. “If you do not attend, I must claim the Staff without your consent.”
“Give it to him, Mom!” Jeremiah demanded. “Do it now. You aren’t paying attention!”
She gripped the Staff as though her life depended on it. She was paying attention to too many things at once.
The Feroce stopped ten paces away. Instead of spreading out, they stood close together. “We are the Feroce,” they announced as if Linden had never faced them before. They all spoke, yet they seemed to share one voice: a voice as moist and malleable as mud. But they did not continue. In silence, they awaited a response.
“What is it this time?” retorted Linden. “You’ve already attacked us once. Isn’t that enough? What do you want now?”
The creatures flinched. Their voice quavered. “Our High God commands. We must speak.”
Again they fell silent.
Linden trembled with remembered distress and pain. Covenant’s farmhouse erupting in flame around her. Recursive memories looping back on themselves, blocking her escape. She Who Must Not Be Nam
ed. “Then speak,” she snapped. “But don’t think that you can hurt me again. I know you now. I won’t leave any of you alive.”
The Feroce recoiled a step. They needed a moment to rally their resolve. When they replied, their voice was faint, squeezed out of them by pressures which they could not refuse.
“We speak for our High God. We bear a message from the Pure One.”
The Pure One? Where had Linden heard that term before?
“I’m listening.”
Her manner must have appalled the creatures. They quailed as though they might dissolve at any moment.
“Our High God has offered an alliance with the Pure One. It has been accepted. No harm will come to you that our High God or the Feroce can prevent. You will be given aid at need.”
Linden stared, reeling inwardly. She could hardly understand what she heard. Who would form an alliance with the lurker? Who was that crazy?
Given aid—?
Panting at the viscid air, she asked involuntarily, “The Pure One?”
In a tone like a sheet of basalt, Stave said, “The sur-jheherrin spoke of the ur-Lord as the Pure One. They esteemed him by that title, though he deemed the Pure One to be Saltheart Foamfollower.”
“Covenant!” Jeremiah crowed. “He must have done something to that monster. It’s afraid of him!”
Now Linden remembered. In the Sarangrave with Covenant, Sunder, and Hollian. A few Haruchai. Her first meeting with the Giants. The lurker’s attack. Then the rescue by the sur-jheherrin.
The Pure One.
Covenant was alive? Alive?
The Feroce reacted as though Jeremiah had offended them. Their posture stiffened. The fires in their hands grew brighter, shedding green light like malice. Their voice gained strength.
“Afraid? Our High God fears the cruel metal. He does not fear the Pure One. Nor does he fear the wielder of the stick of power. Blades and burning he withstands. Yet a havoc which he cannot withstand approaches. He must live. Failing to obtain the stick of power, he sought alliance with the Pure One. The terms were agreed.”
Then the creatures appeared to remember that they were little and frightened. They shrank within themselves. Their tone suggested awe or dismay. It may have held gratitude.
“The Pure One has exceeded the terms. This our High God acknowledges. The alliance is sealed.”
“All right!” Jeremiah exulted. “All right!”
Covenant was alive. He had to be. Linden clung to that. She had only encountered the Feroce two nights ago, and Covenant had turned away from her two days before that, rushing to meet the crisis of caesures and turiya Raver and Joan. But he had so far to go—He must have met with the lurker, or the Feroce, after Linden did, but before he found his ex-wife. Indirectly Infelice had confirmed it. In Muirwin Delenoth, she had said that the lurker’s minions were aiding him. Yet when could he have fulfilled—exceeded—his promises to the lurker? He would not have allowed any agreement to distract him from Joan. Therefore he must have sealed his incomprehensible alliance after that confrontation. He must have survived it.
But Stave’s demeanor did not soften. “Continue,” he said, implacable as a force of nature. “You bear a message from the Pure One. When was it given to you? Where was it given?”
The Feroce made placating gestures. “The Pure One named his wishes in the early hours of this same night. Our High God was lost. Then he was redeemed. Far to the east, the Pure One made his desires known.”
This same night? Covenant had stopped Joan. He had lived through the ordeal. There was no other explanation. Linden wanted to fling herself at the creatures; hug them in gratitude. Covenant had redeemed the lurker? But she could not move. The extremity of her relief held her.
This was what the Ranyhyn had done to her. For her. For the Earth. They had exposed her to their worst nightmares and fled so that she might inspire an alliance with the evil which had slain great Kelenbhrabanal, Father of Horses.
From the first, they had trusted her—
“Then deliver his message,” Stave commanded.
Bobbing and cowering, the creatures complied. “The Pure One has exceeded the terms,” they repeated. “Therefore our High God commands us to convey words from the Pure One. They are meant for the wielder of the stick of power. The words are these.”
Waved flames left emerald cuts across the darkness. “Remember forbidding.”
Like a sovereign enchantment, that utterance altered the conditions of Linden’s existence. Realities veered around her or within her, effacing the tangible world where she gripped her Staff; transforming the causes and sequences which ruled her known life. The night and the Feroce vanished. Stave and Jeremiah were gone. Every vestige of Sarangrave Flat passed away.
For one sickening instant, she understood that the creatures had done it to her again. They had imposed their glamour on her memories. Her belief that she was ready to resist was an illusion.
Then that knowledge was swept away in a moil of altered revelations. It was forgotten as if it had no meaning.
Without transition, she stood on a fan of obsidian marked like her jeans with green stains; with streaks of malachite crooked as veins. The light of Liand’s orcrest defined the stone. Utter darkness filled the rest of the world. Imponderable leagues of stone stretched overhead, held in place by their preserved recollections. Other figures clustered nearby, but she could not see them. Before her, Anele lay prone on the fan with his arms splayed as if in crucifixion. Grief and enduring pain marked every line of his emaciated form, the mute woe of Mount Thunder’s foundations.
“It is here.” The words were etched in Linden’s mind. “The wood of the world has forgotten. It cannot reclaim itself. It requires aid. Yet this stone remembers. There must be forbidding.” His voice sounded harsh as rock. In Salva Gildenbourne, he had referred to the necessary forbidding of evils. Now he insisted, “If it is not forbidden, it will have Earthpower. If it is not opposed by the forgotten truths of stone and wood, orcrest and refusal, it will have life.
“When the Worm of the World’s End drinks the Blood of the Earth, its puissance will consume the Arch of Time.”
The forgotten truths? Linden wanted to ask. What truths? But Anele’s distress kept her silent.
Then he lifted his head, looked directly at her with his blind eyes. As if he were speaking for someone else, he said precisely, “Everybody concentrates on stone, but that’s not the whole story. Wood is important, too.”
Forgotten, she thought. Forbidding.
It requires aid.
Like an affirmation or a denial, reality veered again. In silence that battered her like the clamor of mighty bells, she was driven deeper, farther. Anele and stone vanished. Mount Thunder’s betrayed sorrow evaporated as though it had never existed.
Linden feared the bitterness of killing her mother, the horror of watching her father’s suicide. Instead she felt the barren dirt of Gallows Howe under her feet, bereft by the knowledge of endless slaughter, and crowded with wrath; avid to repay the cost of so much death. She sensed recrimination and the long butchery of trees. Music had brought her here, the fraught melody of Caerroil Wildwood’s singing. Again she was not alone, but she could not see her companion. She saw only the Forestal.
He stood beside the dead trunks of his gibbet with song streaming from his robe as if the fabric were woven from threnodies and dirges. The silver vivid in his eyes hinted at wild magic, although he had no white gold. His beard had the luster of age and vigor and unending travail.
“While humans and monsters remain to murder trees,” he mused, angry and doleful, “there can be no hope for any Forestal. Each death lessens me.”
Showing more restraint than Linden had any right to expect, he sang, “I have granted boons, and may do so again. But you have not requested that which you most require. Therefore I will exact no recompense. Rather I ask only that you accept the burden of a question for which you have no answer.”
He enthralled and terrified her
. Her own anger was fresh from her failure to rescue Jeremiah; from the carnage of stone under Melenkurion Skyweir. Her heart was as hard as the mountain’s, and as flawed.
“How may life endure in the Land,” inquired Caerroil Wildwood, “if the Forestals fail and perish, as they must, and naught remains to ward its most vulnerable treasures? Must it transpire that beauty and truth shall pass utterly when we are gone?”
“I don’t know.” What else could she say?
Another voice, the voice of her companion, said, “He does not require that which the lady cannot possess. He asks only that she seek out knowledge, for its lack torments him. The fear that no answer exists multiplies his long sorrow.”
And because she stood on Gallows Howe—and because her spirit burned for Thomas Covenant after her failure to redeem her son—and because Caerroil Wildwood could still wring her heart in spite of all that she had endured—she made a promise that she did not know how to keep.
“I will.”
Then the Forestal took the Staff of Law, black as fuligin after her battle—and she lay on her back on the hard ground with the night sky above her like the abyss that awaited all striving. A sensation of impact throbbed in her forehead, a shock too sudden to bring instant pain. The hurt would come later; soon. Her neck felt wrenched and torn. Dying stars filled her eyes, consumed one after another in slow sequence by the Worm’s unappeasable hunger.
“Damn it, Stave!” Jeremiah yelped. He plunged to his knees beside her. “Did you have to hit her so hard?”
Stave replied without inflection. “She fell under the glamour of the Feroce. I could not scry what might transpire. And her grip on the Staff was urgent.”
Linden thought, You hit me?
She had told him to do so.
She could not look away from the ruin of the heavens; the inexorable depredations. Too many things had been made clear to her. The actions of the Ranyhyn were only the most immediate of her new insights—and the least cruel.