Fatal Revenant

and did not know how to believe them. Her son had become a kind of mage, incomprehensible to her. And Covenant sounded-

Doom seemed to ride on all of her choices, and she had not been convinced.

“So what happens,” she asked, still trembling, if I don’t give up your ring? What will you do if I refuse? Take it?”

Had he changed that much?

If she spurned Covenant’s aid, she might spend days or weeks or months hunting for Jeremiah’s prison. She would almost certainly fail to reach him in time to save his tortured mind.

Covenant dropped his hand; looked down to drink from his flagon, then turned his head to meet Jeremiah’s silted gaze. “I told you that, too, didn’t 17? His voice was full of dreary bitterness. “I told you she wouldn’t trust me.”

Jeremiah nodded. “Yes, you did.”

Still facing the boy, Covenant informed Linden sourly, “Of course I’m not going to take it. I can’t get that close to you. But I know you, so I came prepared. I still know what to do.”

Slowly he swung back toward her; but he did not meet her gaze. His head hung at a defeated angle, and the firelight cast shadows across his eyes. A faint red heat like embers glowed in the depths of his darkened eyes.

If you won’t let me have my ring, what will you do? What do you think you can accomplish? You’ve got Esmer and a hundred or so ur-viles on one side, and the Demondim with the IIIearth Stone on the other. Kevin’s Dirt is going to blind you over and over again. You don’t know where to look for Jeremiah. Joan will keep making caesures. Kastenessen and the skurj are out there, not to mention the Elohim and who knows how many other powers. The Masters don’t like you, and your only friends are three Ramen, a crazy old man, a kid who’s as ignorant as a stone, and one outcast Haruchai.

“What exactly do you propose to do about all that?”

Linden hardly knew how to face him; yet she did not fall or falter. Instead she held up her head, drew back her shoulders. If Covenant thought to daunt her with his recitation of dangers, he had forgotten their time together, forgotten who she had become. And he could not weaken her by disdaining her friends. She knew them better than he did.

He was asking her about decisions which she had already made.

Searching his hidden eyes for embers, she announced as though she were certain, “I’ll put a stop to the Demondim. Then I’m going to take my friends and ride like hell to Andelain. I want to talk to the Dead. They helped you once when you had no idea how to save the Land. Maybe they’ll do the same for me.”

And it was conceivable that the krill of Loric still remained where Sunder had left it, stabbed deep into the blasted tree stump of Caer-Caveral’s body. Such a weapon might enable her to channel the combined force of Covenant’s ring and the Staff of Law safely.

Groaning, Jeremiah buried his face in his hands as if he were ashamed of his mother.

“Hellfire!” Abruptly Covenant slammed the front legs of his stool down onto the floor. With his halfhand, he covered his eyes as if to mask a burst of flame. Then he dragged his touch down his features; and as he did so, every vestige of his drunkenness was pulled away. Almost without transition, he became the man who had ridden a failing horse into the forehall of Revelstone: commanding and severe, beyond compromise.

Through his teeth, he rasped, “Linden Avery, you damn idiot, that is a truly terrible idea.”

“Is it?’ She held his glare without flinching; did not let her son’s reaction diminish her. “Tell me why.”

Vehemently Covenant flung his flagon against the wall. The wood cracked: chips and splinters fell to the floor: springwine splashed across the rug. “Oh, I’ll tell you,” he growled. “Bloody damnation, Linden! And I won’t even mention the fact that you have no idea how powerful the Demondim really are, or what you’ll have to go through just to slow them down. And I won’t talk about the Dead because they don’t really exist anymore. Not the way you remember them. Too many Laws have been broken. The definitions are blurred. Spirits as vague as the Dead can’t hold themselves together. They certainly can’t give you advice.

“No, ignore all that.” With both hands, he seemed to ward off wasted explanations. “Going to Andelain is a terrible idea because that’s where

Kastenessen is. And he commands the skurj.”

Linden stared at him, stricken mute by the force of his revelations. Every solution that she had imagined for her dilemma-and for Jeremiah’s-

“You’ll recognise them when you see them,” continued Covenant trenchantly. “Foul showed you what they’re like.” Dire serpents of magma with the crushing jaws of krakens and the destructive hunger of kresh: monsters which emerged from chancres to devour the earth. “But he didn’t tell you they serve Kastenessen now because that sonofabitch set them free.

“He hasn’t brought very many of them down from the north yet. But he can get more whenever he wants them. And he always knows where you are. He can feel you through that loony old man. So no matter what you try to do, the skurj will be in your way. He’ll send them wherever you are, and they’ll eat you alive. You may think you’re powerful enough to take care of yourself, but you’ve never fought those monsters before. And your friends don’t have any magic. They don’t have any lore. You’ll lose them all.”

Harshly Covenant finished, “Going to Andelain right now is just about the only purely suicidal thing you could do.”

Without lifting his face from his hands, Jeremiah muttered in a muffled voice, “He’s telling the truth, Mom. I swear to God, I don’t know why you have so much trouble believing him. He’s the only real friend I’ve ever had. Can’t you understand that?”

He had called Covenant the best- For that alone, Linden owed Covenant a debt too vast to be repaid.

Now it seemed that all of her choices and desires had been wrong from the beginning. Misguided and fatal.

And yet-

Her heart could not be torn in so many directions and remain whole.

— her impression of disharmony persisted. Covenant was like a man who knew the words but could not remember the song. Her nerves were unable to discern truth or falsehood. And she trusted Jeremiah. Nevertheless her instincts cried at her that she was being misled in some way.

Her Staff was the only thing that still belonged to her beyond question. Holding it tightly, she asked in a small voice, “What should we do instead?”

Covenant sighed as though he had gained an important concession; and his ire seemed to fall away. More quietly, he answered, “Like I said, I know another way to make this mess turn out right.” Again his eyes gave out a brief red glint like a glimpse of ready embers. “But I don’t exactly enjoy being treated this way. Like I’m some damn Raver in disguise. Sure, I’m not how you remember me. But I deserve better than this. I’ve given you a lot here, even if you don’t realise it.

“I need something in return. A little bit of trust.

“Meet us up on the plateau tomorrow. Maybe an hour after dawn. Over on the south edge, near Furl Falls. Then I won’t have to explain what I’m going to do. I can show you.”

Studying him for some hint of what had caused that momentary molten gleam in his eyes, Linden observed cautiously, “You don’t think that I’ll approve of what you’re planning.”

He sighed again. “I don’t know. You might. You might not. It depends on how badly you want to get your son back in one piece.”

There Linden found a small place of clarity in the wide landscape of her hurt and self-doubt. She recognised emotional blackmail when she heard it. Perhaps Covenant was as benign as Jeremiah believed, and as necessary; but to suggest that her love for her son could be measured by her acquiescence to Covenant’s desires was patently manipulative.

No doubt inadvertently, he restored her conviction that there was something wrong with him; or in him.

Jeremiah had raised his head to watch her in the firelight as though his life depended on her. He seemed to plead with her mutely, beseeching her to let Covenant prove himself.