Fatal Revenant

He should have known that she was lying. He and Jeremiah both should have known.

Then the tunnel expanded into a widening like a cul-de-sac; and at once, every nerve in her body recognised that she had reached the source of the EarthBlood. Covenant and Jeremiah might not attempt to rush her through the flame of the Staff, but she could not be sure. She trusted nothing. Facing the rill, she turned sideways so that she could glance into the end of the passage without losing sight of her companions.

At the back of the cave, a rude plane of stone as black as obsidian or ebony protruded like the exposed face of a lode from the surrounding granite. Peering at it, Linden blinked furiously, strove to clear her sight. The dark wet rock appeared to shimmer: its sharpness and stark purity overwhelmed her eyes. Through the blur, she seemed to see a facet of weakness in the substance of reality, a place of distortion where the tangible rock and the possibilities of Earthpower merged.

From the whole surface of the plane seeped the gravid liquid of the EarthBlood. Trickling down the face of the lode, it gathered in a shallow trough before it flowed thickly away down the length of the tunnel.

There, Linden thought in wonder and terror: there was the source of the Power of Command. In that trough, the concentration of Earthpower was so extreme that it seemed to fray the fabric of her existence, pulling her apart strand by strand.

She would have to drink-

“Mom!” Jeremiah cried, pleading with her. “I don’t want that. I don’t want you to rescue me if the Land is still at Foul’s mercy! My life isn’t worth it.”

“Hell and blood, Linden!” Covenant shouted. “You don’t have to do this! Weren’t you listening to the Viles? The Power of Command can’t touch wild magic, and whoever holds my ring doesn’t need the Power!

“For God’s sake! If you can’t do anything else, at least give me back my ring! Give me a chance to save the Land!”

For a moment, Linden hesitated; questioned herself. Could she carry out her intent without the EarthBlood, using only the Staff? Both Covenant and Jeremiah feared the fire of Law, that was obvious. But she did not believe that she possessed enough sheer power. No flame of hers would be more potent than the air of the tunnel-and her companions breathed it without wavering. She could not gain what she needed with the Staff alone. And she could not wield the Staff and Covenant’s ring together. She had done so once, when she had unmade the Sunbane. But then she had been insubstantial, already half translated away from the Land. She had occupied a transitional dimension, a place of pure spirit; supernal rather than human. And Lord Foul’s frantic exertion of wild magic had opened the way for her; attuned her to a power which was not hers by right. Here the contradictory theurgies of white gold and the Staff would destroy her.

Either alone will transcend your strength, as they would that of any mortal. Together they will wreak only madness, for wild magic defies all Law.

She had made her decision. The time had come act on it.

Trust yourself.

I want to repay some of this pain.

In the end, she placed more faith in her dreams than in Covenant or her son.

Be cautious of love. It misleads. There is a glamour upon it which binds the heart to destruction.

“Jeremiah, honey,” she said through her determination and woe. “I love you. Try to forgive me.”

Before her companions-or her own fears-could intervene, Linden Avery the Chosen stooped to the trough and drank the Blood of the Earth.

Then she jerked erect, stood rigid as stone, while utter Earthpower reified in liquid transformed her mouth and throat and heart-her entire body-to exquisite unendurable fire.

Now it was not only the Staff of Law that shed flame: her whole being had become a conflagration. She burned like an auto da fe, as if she had been ignited by the sun’s inferno. Yet her flesh was not consumed, and her only pain was the agony of an intolerable exaltation. The EarthBlood raised her so far above her limitations and alarms that the discrepancy threatened to incinerate her, not because it was wrong or hurtful, but because she was inadequate to bear it.

If she did not express her incandescence at once, utter her Command, the puissance she had swallowed would sear her to the marrow of her bones.

All you have to do is want it-

Enfolded from head to foot in unanswerable fire, she turned to her companions.

She could see them clearly now. Flames had burned away her tears; her weakness. Covenant stared at her with his mouth open as if he were enraptured by eagerness and dread; and the red embers which filled his eyes shone so hotly that they fumed in the viscid air. Jeremiah had thrown his head back as if he were howling. In his halfhand, he clutched his racecar; held it out toward her as though it might ward off an attack.

When Linden spoke, her words were a shout of fire. With the full force of the Power of Command, she demanded of her companions. “Show me the truth!”

Then she watched in horror as her loves flew apart like leaves in a high wind.

Chapter Twelve: Transformations

While her Command compelled obedience to her will, Linden remained clad in fire. Briefly she had become Earthpower, and could not be refused. She saw every detail with lucent precision while her desires were imposed on her companions.

Covenant’s jeans and T-shirt slumped away as the truth was revealed. They became an indeterminate grey shirt and khaki slacks. Three bullet holes formed an arc across the centre of his shirt. They had been healed; but their edges were still crusted with blood.

His features blurred as though she had begun to weep again, although she had not; could not. His face became rounder, softer. Lines of severity melted from around his mouth, leaving his cheeks unmarked. The corners of his eyes no longer expressed any intimacy with pain. And he shrank slightly, grew shorter. At the same time, his torso swelled with self-indulgence. Even his posture changed. He stood with a familiar combination of looseness and tension: the looseness of weak muscles; the tension of poor balance.

A glamour upon itIt was not Thomas Covenant who stood before her, exposed by fire and Command. It was Covenant’s son, Roger, seeking such havoc that the bones of mountains tremble to contemplate it. Linden could not fail to recognise him now.

Do you not fear that I will reveal you? The Theomach must have knownThe embers were gone from Roger’s eyes: his gaze had regained the exact hue of his father’s, the troubled colour of suffering and ruin and unalloyed love. Nevertheless he had been altered; terribly transformed. His right hand was whole, but it had lost its humanity. Instead it was composed of magma and theurgy, living lava and anguish. Its fiery brutality reminded her of the devouring serpents she had seen during her translation to the Land, the malefic creatures of lava and hunger that Anele had called the skurj.

Roger Covenant’s right hand had been cut off. It had been replaced by thatAnd when that doesn’t work, he maimsSomewhere in the background of Linden’s mind, a voice gibbered, Oh God. OhGodohGodohGod. But she hardly recognised her own fear.

Kastenessen had merged part of himself with the skurj. Roger himself in his father’s guise had told her that. The deranged and doomed Elohim’s escape from his Durance had been more painful than you can imagine.

Kastenessen is all pain. It’s made him completely insane.

She had been given hints. And she blazed with Earthpower: her perceptions were preternaturally acute. She jumped to conclusions instinctively, instantaneously-and trusted them completely.

Being part skurj isn’t excruciating enough, so he surrounds himself with them, he makes them carry out his rage. And when that doesn’t workSweet Jesus. Kastenessen had severed his own right hand and given it to Roger Covenant. He had granted Roger the magic to conceal himself from her percipience; had turned Roger