Fatal Revenant

“Was it not Corruption who summoned the ur-Lord’s former wife?” Stave may have been trying to help Linden think.

“Oh, sure.” She shook her head to dismiss the implications. “But she was already lost. What I’m trying to understand is ‘the necessity of freedom.’ I don’t know what that means.”

“Chosen?”

She turned at a column, headed in a different direction. But she clung to her musing. It protected her from a deeper fear.

“Before I came here the first time,” she said. “Lord Foul went after Covenant by attacking Joan. He pushed Covenant to sacrifice himself by threatening her. And Covenant did it. He traded his life for hers.

“The part that I don’t understand-” Linden searched for words. What she sought was only related by inference to what she asked. “When he saved her, did he give up his freedom? Was that why he could only defeat Lord Foul by surrendering? Because in effect he had already surrendered? Did saving Joan cost him his ability to fight?”

Would Linden doom the Land if she sold herself for Jeremiah?

Stave appeared to study the question. “This also is a matter of lore, beyond my ken. Yet I deem that it is not so. The Unbeliever’s surrender was his own, coerced by love and his own nature, not by Corruption’s might. Sacrificing himself, he did not sacrifice his freedom. Rather his submission was an expression of strength freely wielded. Had he been fettered by his surrender in your world, Corruption’s many efforts to mislead and compel him would have been needless.”

Honninscrave also had spent himself to win a precious victory.

Linden sighed as if she were baffled, although she was not. The Mahdoubt’s giggling had receded into the background of her thoughts, but she had not forgotten what she had lost. She understood the importance of choice.

Veering again, she found her attention fixed on a statuette poised on a ledge in one of the columns. It caught her notice because it represented a horse, clearly a Ranyhyn-and because it reared like the beasts ramping across Jeremiah’s pyjamas. It was perhaps as tall as her arm, and charged with an air of majesty, mane and tail flowing, muscles bunched. When she blew away its coat of dust, she saw that it was fashioned of bone. Over the millennia, it had aged to the hue of ivory.

Like all of the Land’s knowledge and secrets, the statuette had become an emblem of antiquity and neglect.

Unlike the suru-pa-maerl bust, however, the Ranyhyn did not appear to be something that Jeremiah could have made. Although it had been formed from many pieces, its components had been fused in some way, melded to create an integral whole.

“Can you tell me anything about this, Stave?” she asked in a tone of reverie. “Who worked with bone?”

Who among all of the people that had perished from the Land?

Watching her, he said. “It is perhaps the most ancient of the Gifts in the Hall. It exemplifies a Ramen art, called by them marrowmeld, bone-sculpting, and anundivian yajna. I know naught of its history, for the Ramen do not speak of it. In the ages of the Lords, they said only that the art had been lost. Mayhap the loss occurred during their flight with the Ranyhyn to escape the Ritual of Desecration, for much that was treasured did not survive the Landwaster’s despair. Or mayhap the truth lies hidden in some other tale.

“The Manethrall may give answer, if you inquire. He may refuse. Yet still you have not named your true query.”

Linden could not face him. The image of the Ranyhyn, in old and dusty bone before her, and in dyed threads on Jeremiah’s ruined pajamas, seemed to demand more of her than Stave did. But the sculpted horse could not look into her eyes and see her fear.

God, she needed Covenant! His unflinching acceptance might have enabled her to envision a path which was not laid out by wrath and bitterness. Honninscrave’s cairn counselled sacrifice-but it was not enough. Gallows Howe made more sense to her.

By degrees, she reduced the flame of the Staff to a small flicker that scarcely illuminated Stave’s visage. Isolated by darkness, Linden tried to name the search which had brought her to this place of bloodshed and remembrance.

“She said-” she began, faltering. “The Mahdoubt. She reminded me-” For a moment, pain closed her throat. The Harrow had shown her that she could still be made helpless, in spite of everything which she had learned and endured. Because of her paralysis ten years ago, Covenant had been slain-and Jeremiah had been compelled to maim himself in the Despiser’s bonfire. “Roger said that Lord Foul has owned my son for a long time. Ever since Covenant and I first came to the Land. That Jeremiah belongs to the Despiser,” and all of Linden’s love and devotion meant nothing. “The Mahdoubt seemed to think that might be true.”

Every word hurt, but she articulated them without weeping. In her eyes burned fires which she withheld from the Staff.

Stave appeared to examine her for a moment. Then he said as if he could not be moved, “I know naught of these matters. I do not know your son. Nor do I know all that he has suffered. But it is not so among the children of the Haruchai. They are born to strength, and it is their birthright to remain who they are.

Are you certain that the same may not be said of your son’?”

Linden took a deep breath; released it, shuddering. No, she was not certain. She had always believed Jeremiah’s dissociation to be a defence as much as a prison, a barricade against hurt. That it walled him off from her was almost incidental. And the Mahdoubt had not averred that Jeremiah belonged to the Despiser. She had only observed that a-Jeroth’s mark was placed upon the boy when he was yet a small child-

Lord Foul had marked Jeremiah: that was true enough. In their separate ways, both Linden and Covenant had been marked. And perhaps the Despiser conceived that his mark constituted ownership. He had acted on similar convictions in the past-and had been proven wrong.

If her son had not willingly joined himself to the croyel-

Slowly she turned to meet Stave’s gaze; and as she did so, she restored the brightness of the Staff. She could not read his spirit: no doubt she would never be able to see past his physical presence. Nonetheless she suspected that his passions ran to depths which she could hardly fathom. Like Jeremiah’s dissociation, his stoicism might be a defence-and a prison.

“Thank you,” she said softly. “That helps. He isn’t my son because I gave him birth. He’s my son because I chose him. I don’t know what the truth is. I may never know. But I can still choose. I’m going to believe that he has the right,” every child’s right. “to be himself.”

To her surprise, Stave responded with a deep Haruchai bow. “Chosen,” he replied, unexpectedly formal. “thus would I speak of my own sons, though they remain among the Masters, and with the Masters have spurned me.”

Linden stared at him in chagrin. His sons-? She had known in the abstract that his people had wives and children. How could they not? But she had never considered the possibility that he might have sons who had turned their backs on him.

His determination to stand with her had cost him more than she had ever imagined.

You didn’t-She wanted to say, You didn’t tell me. You never even hinted-According to the Mahdoubt, He has named his pain. But he had not truly done so until now.

Before she could find her voice, however, he went on more sternly. “Now I comprehend your query. And you have answered it. Here the Giant Grimmand Honninscrave accepted possession by samadhi Sheol and remained himself. You will not think less of your son than of any Giant whom you have known.”

His manner forbade questions. He would not think less of his own sons-

Trust yourself.

At last, the Mahdoubt’s voice fell to silence in Linden’s mind.

With an effort, she swallowed her protests. When she felt ready to respect his privacy-and his loneliness-she said. “All right. I don’t know how long we’ve been here, but it must be time to go. Mahrtiir will wonder where we are. And if he doesn’t, Liand will.” For Stave’s sake, she attempted a smile. “In any case, they’re probably as ready