Fatal Revenant

— as if she had finally asked a question that compelled their attention.

Now Esmer did not merely flinch. He almost appeared to cower. In an instant, all of his hauteur fled. Instead of sneering, he ducked his head to escape her gaze. His cymar fluttered about him, independent of the breeze, so that its sunset gilding covered him in disturbed streaks and consternation.

Together all of the Demondim-spawn, those behind him as well as those with Linden, advanced a few steps, tightening their cordon. Their wide nostrils tasted the air wetly, as though they sought to detect the scent of truth; and their ears twitched avidly.

When Esmer replied, his voice would have been inaudible without the silence.

“You speak of Kastenessen.” He may have feared being overheard. “I have named him my grandsire, though the Dancers of the Sea were no get of his. Yet they were formed by the lore and theurgy which he gifted to the mortal woman whom he loved. Therefore I am the descendant of his power. Among the Elohim, no other form of procreation has meaning.” The ur-viles and Waynhim responded with a low mutter which may have expressed approval or disbelief. Like them, if in an entirely different fashion, the merewives were artificial beings, born of magic and knowledge rather than of natural flesh.

Kastenessen, Linden thought. New fears shook her. She believed Esmer instinctively. Kastenessen had burned her with his fury in the open centre of the Verge of Wandering. And yesterday he had influenced the Demondim, persuading them to alter their intentions.

“That’s why you serve him,” she murmured unsteadily. I serve him utterly. You inherited your power from him.” His power-and his hunger for destruction.

“As I also serve you,” he told her for the second time.

Kastenessen. The name was a knell; a funereal gong adumbrating echoes in all directions. Her nausea was growing worse. The Elohim had forcibly Appointed Kastenessen to prevent or imprison a peril in the farthest north of the world. But now he had broken free of his Durance. When Lord Foul had said, I have merely whispered a word of counsel here and there, and awaited events, he may have been speaking of Kastenessen.

She knew how powerful the Elohim could be, any of themKastenessen had provided for her escape from the horde. Had he also enabled Covenant and Jeremiah to reach her? Did he want all three of them alive?

Still scrambling to catch up with the implications of Esmer’s revelation, she mused aloud, “So when Anele talks about skurj-” “He names the beasts”- Esmer shook his head- “nay, the monstrous creatures of fire which Kastenessen was Appointed to contain. They come to assail the Land because he has severed or eluded the Durance which compelled him to his doom.” Behind the Mithil’s Plunge, Anele had referred to Kastenessen. I could have preserved the Durance! he had cried. Stopped the skurj. With the Staff! If I had been worthy.

Did you sojourn under the Sunbane with Sunder and Hollian, and learn nothing of ruin?

According to Anele-or to the native stone that he had touched behind the Plunge-the Elohim had done nothing to secure Kastenessen’s imprisonment.

Aching for Anele’s pain, and for her own peril, Linden asked Esmer softly, “What about this morning? The Demondim let Covenant and my son reach Revelstone.” Covenant had given her an explanation. She wanted to know if he had told the truth. “Was that Kastenessen’s doing too?’

“You do not comprehend,” Esmer protested dolefully; as regret-ridden as the wind that drove seafarers into the Soulbiter. “Your ignorance precludes it. Do you not know that the Viles, those beings of terrible and matchless lore, were once a lofty and admirable race? Though they roamed the Land widely, they inhabited the Lost Deep in caverns as ornate and majestic as castles. There they devoted their vast power and knowledge to the making of beauty and wonder, and all of their works were filled with loveliness. For an age of the Earth, they spurned the heinous evils buried among the roots of Gravin Threndor, and even in the time of Berek Lord-Fatherer no ill was known of them.” Esmer’s ambiguous conflicts had grown so loud that Linden could not shut them out. They hurt her nerves like the carnage before Revelstone’s gates, when the Demondim had slaughtered so many Masters and their mounts.

She had asked about Kastenessen-about Covenant-and Esmer talked of Viles.

“Yet a shadow had already fallen upon them,” Cail’s son continued, “like and unlike the shadow upon the hearts of the Elohim. The corruption of the Viles, and of their makings, the Demondim, transpired thus.” Wait, she wanted to insist. Stop. That isn’t what I need to know. But the accentuation of Esmer’s manner held her. He was right: her ignorance precluded her from asking the right questions-and from recognising useful answers.

“Many tales are told,” said Esmer, “some to conceal, some to reveal. Yet it is sooth that long before the Despiser’s coming to the littoral of the Land, he had stretched out his hand to awaken the malevolence of Lifeswallower, the Great Swamp, as it lurked in the heart of Sarangrave Flat, for he delights in cruel hungers. And from that malevolence-conjoined with the rapacity of humankind-had emerged the three Ravers, moksha, turiya, and samadhi. By such means was the One Forest decimated, and its long sentience maimed, until an Elohim came to preserve its remnants.

“Awakened to themselves,” Esmer explained as though the knowledge grieved him, “the trees created the Forestals to guard them, and bound the Elohim into the Colossus of the Fall as an Interdict against the Ravers, repulsing them from the Upper Land.

“Later the Despiser established Ridjeck Thome as his seat of power, though he did not then declare himself to human knowledge. There he gathered the Ravers to his service when the Colossus began to wane. And with his guidance, they together, or some among them, began cunningly to twist the hearts of the sovereign and isolate Viles. Forbidden still by the Colossus, the Ravers could not enter the Lost Deep. Instead they met with Viles that roamed east of Landsdrop, exploring the many facets of the Land. With whispers and subtle blandishments, and by slow increments, the Ravers obliquely taught the Viles to loathe their own forms.

“Being Ravers, the brothers doubtless began by sharing their mistrust and contempt toward the surviving mind of the One Forest, and toward the Forestals. From that beginning, however, the Viles were readily led to despise themselves, for all contempt turns upon the contemptuous, as it must.” Esmer had raised his head: he faced Linden as steadily as he could. But his eyes were the fraught hue of heavy seas crashing against each other, and his raiment gusted about him in the throes of a private storm.

“In that same age,” he went on, “as the perversion of the Viles progressed, samadhi Raver evaded the Interdict by passing beyond the Southron Range to taint the people who gave birth to Berek Lord-Fatherer. By his influence upon their King, samadhi instigated the war which led Berek through terrible years and cruel bloodshed to his place as the first High Lord in the Land.

“Among the crags of Mount Thunder, Berek had sworn himself to the service of the Land. But he was new to power, and much of his effort was turned to the discovering of the One Tree and the forming of the Staff of Law. He could not halt all of humankind’s depredations against the forests. And as the trees dwindled, so the strength of the Colossus was diminished.

“Nonetheless in the time of High Lord Damelon the Interdict endured. When the Viles turned their lore and their self-loathing to the creation of the Demondim in the Lost Deep, the Ravers were precluded from interference.” Esmer nodded as if to himself. His gaze drifted away from Linden. He may have been too absorbed in his tale, in rue and old bitterness, to remember that he was not answering her. Nevertheless the Waynhim and ur-viles heeded him in utter silence, as if their Weird hinged on his words. For their sake, and because she could not evaluate his reasons for speaking, she swallowed her impulse to interrupt him.

“And the Viles were too wise to labour foolishly, or in ignorance. They did not seek to renew their own loathing, but rather to render it impotent. Therefore the Demondim were spawned free of their creators’ stain. Though they lacked some portion of the Viles’ majesty and lore, they were not ruled by contempt. Instead they were a stern race, holding themselves apart from the Viles in renunciation.

“Yet across the years the Demondim also were turned to abhorrence. Dwelling apart from the Viles, they made their habitation in proximity to the IIIearth Stone and other banes. And the evil within the Sarangrave called to them softly, as it had to the Viles. When at last the Demondim ventured to seek the source of that call, they