Fatal Revenant

know them.

“But there’s something wrong here. Something dangerous. Maybe it’s just the strain of what they’re doing.” Being in two places at once? “Maybe that’s making them both a little crazy.” Or maybe the Despiser had indeed done something. Maybe the Elohim had sought to warn the Land against the halfhand for good reason. “Whatever it is, I need your help.

“Mahrtiir, I want Bhapa and Pahni to stay with Liand and Anele.” Liand opened his mouth to protest, but Linden’s grip on his shoulder silenced him. “The Masters won’t threaten you,” she told him. “I trust them that far,” in spite of what the Humbled and Handir had done to Stave. They were Haruchai. “But I have to be alone, and I’ll feel better if Bhapa and Pahni are with you.” She had seen Ramen Cords fight: she knew what Bhapa and Pahni could do. “Whatever is going on here, it might have consequences that we can’t imagine.” Don’t touch him! Don’t touch either of us! To Mahrtiir, she added, “They should be safe enough in Liand’s room.”

In response, the Manethrall nodded his assent.

“Anele is confused,” the old man informed the air of the forehall. “He feels Masters and urgency, but the cause is hidden. The stone tells him nothing.”

Linden ignored him Covenant was still speaking to Handir.

“What Jeremiah and I want right now is a place where we can rest without being disturbed. Some food, and maybe some springwine, if you’ve got it. We have to gather our strength.”

Linden tried to ignore him as well. “As for you,” she continued to Mahrtiir, “I need you to guide me out of here. To the plateau.” He and his Cords had spent the night there. He would know the way. “I can’t think like this. I need daylight.”

She might find what she sought in the potent waters of Glimmermere. The lake could not give her answers, but it might help her to remember who she was.

The Manethrall nodded again. When he left her so that he could speak to Pahni and Bhapa, she turned to Stave. The tasks that she had in mind for him would be harder—

Meeting his gaze with her dry, burning eyes, she said, “I want you to find the Mahdoubt for me. Please.” Be cautious of love. “I need to talk to her.” That strange, kindly woman had given Linden a hint of what was in store. If Linden probed her directly, she might say more. And keep the Humbled away from me. If you can. I can’t face their distrust right now.”

Her memories of Glimmermere-of Thomas Covenant as he had once been-were private and precious. She could not expose them, or herself, to anyone: certainly not to the demeaning suspicions of Branl, Galt, or Clyme.

Stave did not hesitate. “Chosen, I will,” he said as if obstructing the actions of the Masters were a trivial challenge.

At least he was still able to hear his people’s thoughts—

Behind Linden, Covenant appeared to be nearing the end of his exchange with Handir. His voice had become a hoarse rasp, thick with effort. Yet when she glanced at him at last, Linden saw that he was smiling again.

At Covenant’s side, Jeremiah seemed hardly able to contain his anticipation. The only sign that he might still be in Lord Foul’s power was the rapid beating at the corner of his eye.

“I know what to do,” Covenant assured the Voice of the Masters. “That’s why we’re here. When we’re done, your problems will be over. But first I’ll have to convince Linden, and that won’t be easy. I’m too tired to face it right now.

“Just give us a place to rest. And keep her away from us until I’m ready. We’ll take care of everything else.” Darkly he avowed, “I know a trick or two to make the Demondim and even the almighty Despiser wish they had never come out of hiding.”

In spite of her clenched dismay, Linden found herself wondering where he had learned such things. How much of his humanity had he lost by his participation in Time? What had the perspective of eons done to him? How much had he changed?

And how much pain had her son suffered in the Despiser’s grasp? How much was he suffering at this moment? If even the tainted respite of being in two places at once filled him with such glee—

In many ways, she had never truly known him. Yet he, too, may have become someone she could no longer recognise.

She needed to do something. She needed to do it now. If she waited for Covenant to explain himself, she would crumble.

While Handir replied to the ur-Lord, the Unbeliever, the Land’s ancient savoir-while the Voice of the Masters promised Covenant everything that he had requested-Linden strode away into the shadows of the forehall, trusting Mahrtiir to claim a torch and catch up with her before she lost herself in darkness.

Chapter Two: Difficult Answers

How Stave accomplished what she had asked of him, Linden could not imagine. Yet when Mahrtiir led her at last past the switchbacks up through the long tunnel which opened onto the plateau above and behind Revelstone-when they finally left gloom and old emptiness behind, and crossed into sunshine under a deep sky stained only by Kevin’s Dirt-she and the Manethrall were alone. The Humbled had not followed them. In spite of Stave’s severance from his people, he had found some argument which had persuaded the Masters to leave her alone.

Here she could be free of their distrust; of denials that appalled her. Here she might be able to think.

Covenant and Jeremiah had been restored to her. And they would not allow her to touch them. They had been changed in some quintessential fashion which excluded her.

And Kevin’s Dirt still exerted its baleful influence, slowly leeching away her health-sense and her courage- and she had been ordered not to use the Staff of Law. Both Covenant and her son had assured her that its power would undo the theurgy which enabled their presence. In dreams, Covenant’s voice had told her, You need the Staff of Law. Through Anele, he had said, You’re the only one who can do this. Yet now she was asked to believe that if she drew any hint of Earthpower from the warm wood, she would effectively erase Covenant and Jeremiah. The two people in all of life whom she had most yearned to see-to have and hold-would vanish.

She believed them, both of them. She did not know whether or not they had told the truth: she believed them nonetheless. They were Thomas Covenant and Jeremiah, her son. She could not do otherwise.

She had repeatedly insisted that she could not be compared to the Land’s true heroes; and now the greatest of them had come.

And he had asked the Masters to keep her away from him until he was ready to talk. I’m too tired- But she did not protest. While she could still think and choose-while she could still determine her own actions-she meant to make use of the time.

As Mahrtiir had guided her up through the Keep, she had resolved to find some answers.

She was on her way to Glimmermere because she had once been there with Thomas Covenant: a brief time of unconstrained love after the defeat of the na-Mhoram and the quenching of the Banefire. She hoped to recapture at the eldritch lake some sense of what she and Covenant had meant to each other; of who she was. But now she had another purpose as well. The strange potency of Glimmermere’s waters might give her the power to be heardWith Mahrtiir beside her and the Staff hugged in her arms, she walked steadily-grim and dry-eyed, as though she were not weeping inside-out of Revelstone onto the low upland hills which rumpled the plateau between Lord’s Keep and the jagged pinnacles of the Westron Mountains.

Here she could see the handiwork of Sunder and Hollian, who had accepted the stewardship of the Land thirty-five centuries ago. When she had walked into these hills with Thomas Covenant, the Sunbane had still ruled the Upper Land; and a desert sun had destroyed every vestige of vegetation. She and Covenant had crossed hard dirt and bare stone baked by the arid unnatural heat of the sun’s corona. But nowAh, now there was thick grass underfoot, abundant forage for herds of cattle and sheep. With her health-sense, she could see that the gentler