Again the creature pressed its strength against hers. Its eyes emerged from the flood of sunfire. The Staff thrummed and twisted in her hands, against her ribs. Concussions ran unsteadily along its shaft: she felt the wood’s desperation pulse like a stricken heart. Every iota of force that she could summon spouted and flared from the iron which bound her Staff—and it was not enough.
Yet even then she was not defeated. They have done this to my son! Instead of recognizing that she was lost, she remembered.
I do not desire the destruction of the Earth.
She did not believe that the Theomach had aided her entirely for his own ends. He had given her as many hints has he could without violating the integrity of the Land’s history.
In this circumstance—
And he had risked revealing secrets to Berek Halfhand in her presence; secrets which she would never have known otherwise.
—her mind cannot be distinguished from the Arch of Time.
She accepted the danger. She was Linden Avery, and did not choose to be defeated.
Bracing her Staff in the trough of EarthBlood, she shouted in her son’s name. “Melenkurion abatha! Duroc minas mill! Harad khabaal!”
Instantly her fire was multiplied. It seemed to increase a hundredfold; a thousand—She herself became stronger, as if she had received a transfusion of vitality. The fear—even the possibility—that she might fall and perish dropped from her. The Staff steadied itself in her clasp. The whole mountain sang in her veins.
They have done this to my son!
She shouted and shouted, and did not stop. “Melenkurion abatha!” And as she pronounced the Seven Words, both Roger’s pyrotic fury and the croyel’s invisible repulsion were driven back. “Duroc minas mill!” Roger gaped in sudden fright. The abominable gaze of the creature wavered, considering retreat. “Harad khabaal!” Flames like a volcanic convulsion staggered her foes.
And the Skyweir’s deepest roots answered her.
From Rivenrock, she had felt the imminence of an earthquake. Roger had confirmed it. It’ll be massive. Irrefusable pressures were accumulating in the gutrock; natural forces so cataclysmic that they would split the tremendous peak. But it won’t happen for years and years.
He had not expected her to fight so fiercely. Their battle must have triggered a premature tectonic shift; loosed a rupture before its time.
She did not care. The granite’s visceral groan meant nothing to her. She fought for her son, and went on shouting; invoking Earthpower on a scale that staggered her foes. When the floor of the cave lurched as though the whole of Melenkurion Skyweir had shrugged, she gave no heed.
But Roger and the croyel cared. Consternation twisted his blunt features: he feared the mountain’s violence. And the creature turned away from her, apparently seeking escape. They assailed her for a moment longer. Then the stone lurched again, and abruptly they fled.
“Melenkurion abatha!”
Pausing only to retrieve Jeremiah’s crumpled racecar, Linden followed them; harried them with fire. As she pursued them along the tunnel, she continued to shout with all of her strength. And she trailed the end of her Staff in the rivulet so that she would not lose the EarthBlood’s imponderable might.
“Duroc minas mill!”
Roger and the croyel did not strike at her now: they fought to preserve themselves. He sent gouts and gobbets of laval ire to hinder the impact of her sunflame. His companion filled the tunnel with a yammer of force, striving to slow her onslaught.
“Harad khabaal!”
Her power was constrained by the tunnel; concentrated by it. But theirs was also. Although she strode after them wreathed in fury, unleashing a continuous barrage of magic and Law, she could not break through their brimstone and repulsion swiftly enough to outpace their retreat. In spite of the EarthBlood and the Seven Words and the Staff of Law—in spite of the extravagance of her betrayed heart—they reached the subterranean waterfall unscathed.
The falls erupted in steam as Roger passed through it; but the croyel’s barrier warded off the scalding detonation. For a moment, no more than a heartbeat or two, Linden lost sight of them as they rushed down the piled rocks. Then the stone shuddered again, harder this time. She lost her footing, fell against the wall of the tunnel. At once, she sprang up again, borne by fire. With Earthpower, she parted the crushing waters and began to hasten perilously over the slick stones. But her foes were already halfway down the length of the cavern, limned in rocklight.
The mountain’s tremors repeated themselves more frequently. Their ferocity mounted. Soon they became an almost constant seizure. As Linden skidded to the cavern floor and tried to race after Roger and her helpless son, slabs of granite and schist the size of houses sheared off from the ceiling and collapsed on all sides.
Thunder filled the air with catastrophe. It seemed as loud as the ruin of worlds.
Now she had to fight for Jeremiah’s life as well as her own. She knew what Roger and the croyel would do. Given any respite from her assault, any relief at all, they would combine their lore to transport themselves out of the mountain. They might fail in the presence of so much Earthpower, but they would certainly make the attempt. She had to do more than compel them to defend themselves. She had to drive them apart, fill the space between them with a ravage of flame. Otherwise her son would be snatched away. She was ten millennia from her proper time, and would never find him again.
But the ceiling was falling. Even the sides of the cavern were falling. Massive stone columns and monoliths toppled as the roots of Melenkurion Skyweir shook. The river danced in its course; overran its rims amid the hail of shattered menhirs and rubble. Orogenic thunder detonated through the cavern.
The croyel repelled the rock. Despite the magnitude of the quake, the creature protected Jeremiah and Roger. But Linden had no defense except Earthpower; no lore except the Seven Words.
The rocklight grew pale and faltered as the damage to the cavern increased.
Screaming, “Melenkurion abatha!” she tuned her fire to the pitch of granite and made powder of every crashing stone that came near her. “Duroc minas mill!” Hardly conscious of what she did, she shaped the mountain’s collapse to her needs; formed pillars to support the Skyweir’s inconceivable mass; dashed debris from her path so that she could strike at Roger and the croyel. “Harad khabaal!” Striding through havoc, she pursued her son’s doom amid the earthquake.
But the titanic convulsion took too much of her strength. More and more, she was forced to ward off her own ruin. And she had lost the direct use of the EarthBlood. She could not reach Roger and Jeremiah; could not strike hard enough, swiftly enough, to penetrate her betrayers’ defenses.
In the Staff’s flame and the last of the rocklight, she saw lightning arch between Roger’s arms and Jeremiah’s. She saw them vanish.
Then the earthquake took her; the river took her; and she was swept from the cavern.
Part Two
“victims and enactors of Despite”
1.
From the Depths
When Linden Avery emerged from the base of Rivenrock into Garroting Deep, the sun was setting behind Melenkurion Skyweir and the Westron Mountains. The trees here had fallen into shadow, and with the loss of the sun, the air had grown cold enough to bite into her bereaved throat and lungs. Winter held sway over the Deep in spite of Caerroil Wildwood’s stewardship. And she had been soaked by frigid springs as well as by diluted EarthBlood during her long struggle through the guts of the mountain. She was chilled to the marrow of her bones, weak with hunger, exhausted beyond bearing.
But she did not care.
Her son was dead, as doomed as she was, shot down when she and Roger had been slain. He belonged to Lord Foul and the croyel: they would never let him go. And she had no hope of reaching him. Too much time separated her arms and his; her love and his torment.
She had become a stillatory of pain, and her heart was stone.
She did not know how she was still a
live, or why. After Roger and Jeremiah’s escape, she had somehow preserved herself with Earthpower and instinct, shaping the stone to her will: knocking aside thunderous slabs of granite; plunging in and out of the lashed river; following water and fire as the earthquake shook Melenkurion Skyweir. The upheaval had split the plateau as well as the vast mountain, buried the edges of the forest under a torrent of rubble, sent a vehement fume of dust skyward, but she was aware of none of it. Nor did she notice how much time passed before the roots of the Skyweir no longer trembled. The watercourse was nearly empty now. Deep springs slowly filled the spaces which she had formed under the peak. But she could not tell how long she scrambled and stumbled through the wreckage until she found her way out of the world of ruin.
When she clambered at last over the new detritus along the south bank of the Black River, and saw the fading sky above her, she knew only that she had lost her son—and that some essential part of her had been extinguished, burned away by battles which surpassed her strength. She was no longer the woman who had endured Roger’s cruelties for Jeremiah’s sake.
She had suffered enough; had earned the right to simply lie down and die. Yet she did not surrender. Instead she trudged on into Garroting Deep. Here the Forestal would surely end her travails, if sorrow and privation did not. Nevertheless she continued to plod among the darkening trees. Her right hand remained cramped to the Staff, unhealed and unheeded. In her left, she held Jeremiah’s crumpled racecar. At the core, she had been annealed like granite. The dross of restraint and inadequacy and acceptance had been consumed in flame. Like granite, she did not yield.
The Staff no longer lit her way. She had lost its fire when she left the mountain. In the evening gloom and the first glimmer of stars, she hardly recognized that the extravagant energies which had enabled her to fight and survive had remade the shaft. Its smooth wood had become a blackness as deep as ebony or fuligin. With the Seven Words and the EarthBlood, she had gone beyond herself; and so she had transformed her Staff as well.
Like her son, the natural cleanliness of the wood was lost.
But she did not concern herself with such things. Nor did she fear the cold night, or the prospect of prostration, or the Forestal’s coming. Her own frailty and the likelihood of death had lost their meaning. Her stone heart still beat: the tears were gone from her eyes. Therefore she walked on with her doom wrapped around her.
She traveled beside the Black River because she had no other guide. In the deeper twilight of the riverbed, a slow trickle of water remained. She caught glimpses of it when it rippled over rocks or twisted in hollows and caught the burgeoning starlight. It looked as unilluminable as blood.
The Ranyhyn had tried to caution her. At the horserite which she had shared with Hyn and Hynyn, and with Stave, she had been warned. Hyn and Hynyn had shown her Jeremiah possessed, in torment; made vile. They had revealed what would happen if she tried to rescue him, heal him, as she had once redeemed Thomas Covenant from his imprisonment by the Elohim. And they had compelled her to remember the depth to which she herself had been damaged. They had caused her to relive the maiming heritage of her parents as well as the eager brutality of moksha Raver.
It was possible that she should have known—
If your son serves me, he will do so in your presence.
But her fears had been fixed on Ravers and the Despiser. She had failed to imagine the true implications of Hyn and Hynyn’s warning. Or she had been distracted by Roger’s glamour and manipulations; by the croyel’s intolerable use of Jeremiah. Ever since they had forbidden her to touch them—ever since they had turned her love and woe against her—she had foundered in confusion; and so she had been made to serve Despite.
You’ve done everything conceivable to help us become gods.
She did not surrender. She would not. But she could not think beyond doggedly placing one foot in front of the other, walking lightless and unassoiled into Garroting Deep.
She did not imagine that she might reach her proper time by creating a caesure. You’ll shatter the world. And even if she did not, she would still be lost. Without the Ranyhyn, she could not navigate the chaos of a Fall.
Nor could she save herself with the Staff of Law. No power available to her would transcend the intervening centuries.
The Theomach had recognized Roger and the croyel, and had said nothing. While they abided by the restrictions which he had placed upon them, he had left her to meet her fate in ignorance.
—her mind cannot be distinguished from the Arch of Time.
In her own way, she chose to keep faith with the Land’s past.
Therefore she stumbled on into Caerroil Wildwood’s angry demesne, guiding herself by the darkness of the watercourse on her left and the star-limned branches of trees on her right. When she tripped, she caught herself with the Staff, although the jolt caused the scabbing of her wounded hand to break open and bleed. She had nowhere else to go.
Roger had called the Forestal an out-and-out butcher.
On his own ground, with the full force of Garroting Deep behind him, nothing could stand against him.
Why had he not already slain her?
Perhaps he had discerned her weakness and knew that there was no need for haste. If a badger took umbrage at her encroachment, she would be unable to defend herself. A single note of Caerroil Wildwood’s multifarious song would overwhelm her.
Some things she knew, however. They did not require thought. She could be sure that Roger and the croyel—and Kastenessen and Joan—had not yet accomplished the Despiser’s desires. The Arch of Time endured. Her boots still scuffed and tripped one after the other along the riverbank. Her heart still beat. Her lungs still sucked, wincing, at the edged air. And above her the cold stars became multitudinous glistening swaths as the last daylight faded behind the western peaks. Even her exhaustion confirmed that the strictures of sequence and causality remained intact.
Therefore the Land’s tale was not done.
Her confrontation with Roger had rubbed the truth like salt into a wound: for her, everything came back to Thomas Covenant. He was her hope when she had failed all of her loves.—help us become gods. In his own way, and for his own reasons, he himself had become a kind of god. While his spirit endured, she could refuse to believe that the Despiser would achieve victory.
The Earth held mysteries which she could not begin to comprehend. Even Jeremiah might someday be released. As long as Thomas Covenant remained—He might guide her friends to rouse the Elohim from their hermetic self-contemplation; or to thwart Roger and Lord Foul in some other fashion.
For that reason, she continued walking when she should not have been able to stay on her feet. She had failed utterly, and been filled with despair; but she no longer knew how to break.
Around her, full night gathered until the ancient ire of the trees seemed to form a palpable barrier. Aside from the soft liquid chatter of water in the riverbed, the whisper of wind among the wrathful boughs, and the unsteady plod of her boots, she heard only her own respiration, ragged and faltering. She might have been alone in the wide forest. Still her heart sustained its dark labor. Intransigent as the Masters, she let neither weakness nor the approach of death stop her.
Some time later, she saw a small blink of light ahead of her. It was too vague to be real: she could more easily believe that she had fallen into dreams. But gradually it gained substance; definition. Soon it resembled the caper of flames, yellow and flickering.
A will-o’-the-wisp, she thought. Or a hallucination induced by fatigue and loss. Yet it did not vanish and reappear, or shift from place to place. In spite of its allusive dance, it remained stationary, casting a faint illumination on the nearby tree trunks, the arched bare branches.
A fire, she realized dully. Someone had set a fire in this protected forest.
She did not hasten toward it. She could not. Her pulse did not quicken. But her uneven trudge took on a more concrete purpose. She was not alone in Garroting Deep. And who
ever had lit that fire was in imminent peril: more so than Linden herself, who could not have raised any hint of flame from her black Staff.
The distance defied her estimation. By slow increments, however, she began to discern details. A small cookfire burned within a ring of stones. A pot that may have been iron rested among the flames. And beside the fire squatted an obscure figure with its back to the river. At intervals, the figure reached out with a spoon or ladle to stir the contents of the pot.
Linden seemed to draw no closer. Nonetheless she saw that the figure wore a tatterdemalion cloak against the winter. She saw a disregarded tangle of old hair, a plump shape. To her depleted senses, the figure appeared female.
Then she entered the fringes of the light; and the figure turned to gaze at her; and she stopped. But she was unaware of her own surprise. She still swayed from side to side, precariously balanced, as if she were walking. Her muscles conveyed the sensations of steps. In her dreams, her legs and the Staff carried her forward.
The fire was small, and the pot shrouded its light. Linden blinked and stared for several moments before she recognized the woman’s blunt and skewed features, her patchwork robe under her open cloak, her mismatched eyes. Briefly those eyes spilled shifting reflections. Then Linden saw that the left was a dark and luminous blue, the right a disconcerting, unmistakable orange.
The woman’s air of comfortable solicitude identified her as readily as her appearance. She was the Mahdoubt. Linden had last seen her in Revelstone ten thousand years from now, when the older woman had warned her to Be cautious of love.
The Mahdoubt was here.
That was impossible.
But Linden did not care about impossibilities. She had left every endurable aspect of her existence behind. At that moment, the only fact which held any significance for her was the Mahdoubt’s cookfire.