Fatal Revenant

But before she could move past Galt, Branl, and Clyme toward the Woodhelvennin, Stave stopped her. Somehow she had failed to notice his approach.

“Chosen,” he said quietly. “you must accompany me.” Like Liand, Pahni, and Anele, he was unharmed. “The Sandgorgons require your attendance.”

Linden gestured vaguely. “I’m needed here.”

How was it possible that only those who had ridden with her against the kresh were whole?

Stave’s gaze held her. “Linden.”

His flat tone hinted at compassion. If he had ever used her given name before, she could not remember it.

“I’m not Linden.” She was dimly surprised to hear herself say those words aloud. “I’m not her anymore. Somebody else took my place under Melenkurion Skyweir.”

The Harrow wanted to trade Jeremiah for the Staff of Law and Covenant’s ring. Esmer and Roger would ensure that she had no opportunity to accept the lnsequent’s offer.

“Nonetheless,” Stave stated inflexibly, the Sandgorgons are insistent.” He was her only friend among the Haruchai. They will accept no reply except yours. If you do not comply, they will turn against the Woodhelvennin.”

Of course, she thought. Perfect. Just what we need.

She was still expected to choose who would live and who would not.

“All right.” Abruptly she addressed the Humbled. “Before you bleed to death, you might as well make yourselves useful.” Her ire was not for them, but she made no attempt to stifle it. “Liand is looking for bandages. We need hot water. Lots of it.” Surely cook pots and fabric could be found among the ruins of First Woodhelven? “And get some hurtloam if you can. These poor people don’t know what it is. They can’t see it.”

Kevin’s Dirt had deprived them of health-sense. The Masters had deprived them of knowledge.

Clyme nodded. At once, he, Galt, and Branl limped away toward the shredded village. They looked like incarnations of pain: each step exacerbated their injuries. Yet they moved stolidly, undeterred by the cost of their actions.

Soon they were joined by a number of Woodhelvennin, sent by Vernigil to assist the Humbled.

For reasons of their own, Hyn, Rhohm, and Naharahn galloped off in the direction of the brook. They may have been thirsty.

Shaking her head, Linden let Stave take her to face the Sandgorgons.

They stood in a united cluster as if the six of them shared one mind. Apart from the wounds Roger had inflicted on them-rank burns and boils that had already begun to heal-they matched her memories of Nom. Interminable ages of the Great Desert’s iron sun had leached them of colour, leaving their hides the distressed whiteness of albinos. They were shorter than Cavewights, but much more powerfully formed, bred to withstand the harshest extremes of sand and heat and gales. Their knees flexed backward, supported by the wide pads of their feet: they could traverse dunes and hardpan alike with tremendous speed.

However, their knees and hides were not their strangest features. Their arms did not include hands. Instead their forearms grew into flexible stumps like elastic truncheons, able to plough through sand or batter down stone. And they had no faces; no features of any kind apart from the subtle ridges of their skulls and two almost hidden slits that resembled gills where humankind and even Cavewights had ears. Like their forearms, their heads were made to crash against obstacles.

Linden remembered Nom well. But she had forgotten how much raw force a Sandgorgon contained. Alone, each of the creatures looked as irrefusable as a tornado. Together they seemed to reify the worst storms of the world. They were cyclones distilled to unmitigated havoc.

Long ago, Thomas Covenant had mastered Nom with wild magic and delirant resolve. At his command, Nom had crossed lands and oceans to aid him against Revelstone and the Clave. With Honninscrave’s help, Nom had torn apart samadhi Sheol. Then, somehow, the Sandgorgon had consumed the scraps of the Raver’s existence-and had thereby gained a form of sentience unknown to Sandgorgons: the ability to communicate as the Haruchai did, mind to mind. Millennia ago, Nom had exchanged understandings with the Haruchai who had fought at Covenant’s side. Now, apparently, these creatures had been speaking to Stave.

“Much has transpired during the millennia of your absence, Chosen,” he said. “I am informed that Nom returned to the Great Desert and Sandgorgons Doom bearing the rent fragments of samadhi Sheol’s spirit. These had been forever torn from coherence, but they were not deprived of intention and malice. Nom distributed them among the Sandgorgons, giving to his kind faint remnants of the Raver’s memories and lore and cruelty. Thus in small tatters the brutish minds of the Sandgorgons acquired knowledge.

“Across a great span of years, they learned to unmake the Doom in which Kasreyn of the Gyre had imprisoned them. And across a far greater span, they discovered purpose. A host of them, all those who share samadhi Sheol’s spirit, have now come to the Land. For that reason, they were able to answer your call without delay.

“Of their host, these are but a few. The rest await the outcome of your summons.”

Linden frowned in confusion. “I’m needed, Stave.” Bhapa had marked her with Whrany’s blood, and his own. “Get to the point.”

The former Master studied the Sandgorgons for a moment. Then he told Linden, “They seek your acknowledgment that they have fulfilled your desire.”

As if so many deaths were not acknowledgment enough.

“Oh, hell.” Bitterly she looked around at the battlefield, the crushed and splattered bodies of the Cavewights. “Sure. Of course.” This, too, was her doing. “There’s nothing left for them here. We can always get more corpses.”

They had threatened to attack the Woodhelvennin

Her spirit also had been torn. But she resembled Esmer more than samadhi Sheol: she was appalled by what she had become.

She needed Thomas Covenant to make her whole.

In response, Stave’s manner became more formal. “Then they are done with you. You are not the ur-Lord. You did not defeat or compel Nom. But you are the last of his companions. In gratitude for the quality of mind which they now possess, they answered your summons. They will not do so again.”

Linden nodded, too weary and aghast to find words. She hardly understood what Stave was saying.

He lowered his voice. “There is darkness in them, Chosen. Rent, samadhi Sheol’s spirit yet clings to Corruption. They have beheld majesty in the Raver’s visions of Doriendor Corishev, of kings and queens and rule. They have learned a hunger for suzerainty. In the Land, samadhi’s thoughts assure them, they will know what it means to hold sway.

“They avow that if you oppose them, they will crush you as ferociously as they slew these Cavewights, and with the same joy.”

“I don’t care.” Linden started to turn away. “I just want them to do their crushing somewhere else.”

But then she stopped. Impulsively she suggested, “Try telling them where Doriendor Corishev is.” Let them follow Doom’s Retreat to the Southron Waste; away from the Land. She trembled to imagine what would happen if a host of Sandgorgons struck at Revelstone. “If they want to “hold sway”, they can start there. No one has held that region for thousands of years.”

Doriendor Corishev’s rulers had made a wilderland of their kingdom. But the Sandgorgons were born to deserts, formed for harsh landscapes. They might like the Southron Waste.

Perhaps the fragmentation of samadhi Sheol’s memories would prevent the Raver from directing the Sandgorgons elsewhere.

“Or if that doesn’t work,” she added. “tell them about the skurj. Tell them that those monsters are more powerful than they can imagine.” Perhaps the Sandgorgons could be taunted into defending the Land. “If they want to rule here, they’ll have to deal with Kastenessen’s creatures.”

For a moment, Stave regarded her as if her advice surprised him. Then he turned back to the