Fatal Revenant

Sandgorgons did not give chase. Instead they began stamping to death any of their foes which they had merely crippled.

After Esmer’s disappearance, the ur-viles and Waynhim had slipped away, vanishing as imperceptibly as they had appeared.

When finally the last two or three dozen wolves turned to flee, moksha Raver escaped among them, untouched by her flagging vehemence. Within moments, they had crossed the brook northward.

She wanted to pursue them; to go on raining down fire until she reached the Raver itself. But she could not. As the kresh fled, something within her broke, and she lost her grasp on Earthpower. Her flames guttered and faded in the dust of battle; the dust and the tarnished sunlight.

She had already gone too far beyond herself. She did not know how to go farther.

Chapter Seven: An Aftertaste of Victory

In spite of her exhaustion and dismay, Linden tried to keep moving. But she was numb with killing; too profoundly weary to consider what she did. She did not go in search of her friends. She did not ask what had become of them. Instead, trembling, she fell back on years of training and experience: triage, trauma, emergency care. Her depleted spirit she focused on the needs directly in front of her.

Mutely she asked Hyn to bear her among the nearest of the fallen Woodhelvennin.

Some were dead. She ignored them. And some were so close to death that no power of hers would save them. She ignored them as well. But when she found a toddler clutched in his mother’s arms, both savagely mauled, and both still clinging to life, she dropped down from Hyn’s back, knelt beside them, and reached far inside herself to uncover a few faint embers of resolve.

As much as she could, Linden gave herself to the woman and her child.

I am able to convey you to your son.

After a few moments of Earthpower, the woman opened her eyes, gazed about her with dumb incomprehension. The toddler recovered enough to wail.

Linden looked to Hyn again.

The mare stood over a man whose right leg had been nearly severed. Terrible chunks had been ripped from his sides. But he, too, clung to life. Staggering toward him, Linden blessed or cursed him with frail flames until he began to feel his own agony, and she believed that he might live. Then she let Hyn guide her to another breathing victim of the kresh.

As she moved, stumbling, she passed the body of a Master. His flesh was a killing field, torn and bitten almost beyond recognition. Dead wolves were piled around him, blood seeping from their corpses to mingle with his and stain the churned soil. They were his legacy of service to the Land.

Hyn indicated an old couple who had fled holding hands. After they had fallen, they had continued to clasp each other as though that touch might keep them alive. Linden heard blood in their breathing, saw long gashes in their limbs and torsos. She would have passed them by, convinced that they could not be saved; but Hyn seemed to insist. Obediently Linden braced the Staff between them and dripped fire into them like a transfusion. The world tilted around her while she waited for some sign that she had not failed.

She was not the woman she had once been, the healer who had rushed headlong into Berek Halfhand’s camp. Her battle under Melenkurion Skyweir had changed her. And here she had expended herself in bloodshed; drenched herself in it. She no longer knew what she meant when she called herself a physician.

Nevertheless the old man eventually lifted his head, coughing blood as he looked toward his companion. His wife? Linden did not know. But the woman stirred; tightened her grip on the old man’s hand. Seeing her move, feeling her grasp, he smiled as if he no longer feared the consequences of his wounds.

— to convey you-

Weakly Linden reached into her pocket for the twisted remains of Jeremiah’s red racecar. She closed her fingers on it, drew it out to look at it. Then she let the tilting earth lower her to the ground. Hardly conscious that she sat on a dying wolf, she peered at Jeremiah’s ruined toy. It was all that she had left of him; and her heart had become stone.

— to your son.

The Harrow had destroyed ur-viles and Waynhim. More had been killed by the Cavewights. The Sandgorgons may have slain still more as they rampaged among Roger’s army. She had made a promise to the Demondim- spawn. Now many of them were dead.

And the Harrow was gone.

The bullet hole in her shirt seemed a little thing, as trivial as the grass stains written on her jeans; but that small catastrophe had cost her both her life and her son. Around her, the price continued to mount.

There was movement nearby. The villagers wandered among the slain, haunted by death. Some of them searched for friends or families; lovers or elders or children. Others stumbled aimlessly, as though they had lost the meaning of their lives. Doubtless they had seen caesures before. They were acquainted with the depredations of kresh. But they knew nothing of calamities on this scale. The Masters had not prepared them

Hyn nudged Linden, urging her to rise. There was work to be done. No one else could do it. But she had come to the end of herself. She stared at Jeremiah’s toy and made no attempt to stand.

Liand and Pahni found her there. Inspired by some impulse of sanity and simple care beyond her conception, they had gone to pick through the wreckage of First Woodhelven. Now they returned, bearing waterskins, some broken bread, and a small bundle of dried fruit. One of the waterskins held springwine.

While her friends watched, she drank both water and springwine greedily; ate bread until she felt strong enough to chew small bits of apple and fig. Such things could not relieve her deepest prostration, but they reduced her trembling and restored a measure of awareness.

I am able to convey you to your son.

When she regained her feet at last, she put away the racecar and resumed the labour that she had chosen for herself long ago.

Linden, find me.

She knew what Thomas Covenant and Jeremiah and the Land’s plight required of her; but those burdens would have to wait. Guided by Hyn, she walked between the fallen, weaving kind fire into their wounds and gently burning away their agony. And Liand and Pahni went with her, supporting her efforts with orcrest and powdered flakes of amanibhavam, or with springwine and water.

Anele still rested along Hrama’s neck, although he remained alert. His blind gaze regarded the Sandgorgons with apprehension. Yet he did not try to flee. Apparently he found the creatures less terrifying than a Fall.

Linden estimated that thirty or forty of the Woodhelvennin had been ripped down before she struck the kresh. A third of them were already dead: five or six more had passed beyond any succour except the solace of the last sleep. With Liand’s aid, and Pahni’s, she retrieved the rest from their worst wounds. Sepsis would be a serious problem later: the fangs and claws of the wolves had left filth in every hurt. But she spent her scant energies on only the most immediate damage. As she worked, she slowly recovered her concern for Mahrtiir, Bhapa, the Humbled, and their Ranyhyn. When she had done what she could for the villagers in a short time, with little strength, she asked Hyn to lead her to the companions whom she had abandoned.

Even Galt, Clyme, and Branl deserved more than she had done for them.

Along the way, she came upon the other Master who had warded First Woodhelven. His mangled left leg was only the most cruel of his many injuries. Nonetheless Linden found him limping among his charges, urging them to set aside their shock and attend to their fallen. Unable to stand or walk without support, he had improvised a crutch from a branch of the shattered banyan-grove. His pain was as vivid as the blood pulsing from his leg.

His name, he informed Linden, was Vernigil. Stolidly he acknowledged her intervention on behalf of the tree-