At first, she winced in recognition at every step. Until her betrayal under Melenkurion Skyweir, she had not understood people or beings or powers that feasted on death. She had been a physician, opposed to such hungers. Evil she knew, in herself as well as in her foes: she was intimately acquainted with the desire to inflict pain on those who had not caused it. But this unalloyed and unforgiving compulsion toward revenge; this righteous rage—She had not known that she contained such possibilities until she had beheld her son’s suffering.
Here, however, she found that she welcomed the taste of retribution. It made her stronger.
She knew what it meant.
Bringing her to this place sanctified by slaughter, Caerroil Wildwood had already given her a gift.
In starlight and the lucent allusions of the Forestal’s music, she saw two dead black trees standing beyond the lifeless hillcrest. They were ten or more paces apart, as strait and unanswerable as denunciations. All of their branches had been stripped away except for one heavy bough in each trunk above the ground. Long ages ago, these limbs had grown together to form a crossbar between the trees: Caerroil Wildwood’s gibbet. Here he had hanged the most fatal of those adversaries that came within his reach.
Linden’s reluctance beside the Mahdoubt’s gentle cookfire was gone. Gaining strength with every step, she ascended the Howe. She could think now, and begin to strive. On this denuded hill, beneath those pitiless trees, she might accept any boon—and pay any price.
At the crest, she and her companion stopped. For a moment, they appeared to be alone: then Caerroil Wildwood stood before them with song streaming from his robe and bright silver in his eyes. The Mahdoubt lowered her gaze as though she felt a measure of diffidence. But Linden held up her head, gripped her Staff, and waited for the Forestal to reveal his intentions.
For a time, he did not regard either woman. Instead he sang to himself. His song conveyed impressions of Ravers and loss; of a fading Interdict as the Colossus of the Fall waned; of Viles and rapacious kings and disdain. And it implied the era of the One Forest, when the Land had flourished as its Creator had intended, and there was no need of Forestals to defend the ravaged paean of the world. He may have been probing his own intentions, testing his decision to withhold Linden’s death, and the Mahdoubt’s.
Linden suspected that if she listened long enough she might hear extraordinary revelations about the Land’s ancient past. She might be told how the Ravers had been born and nurtured, or how they had come under Lord Foul’s dominion. She might learn how even the great puissance of the Forestals had failed to sustain the forests. But she had lost her patience for long tales which would not aid her. Without conscious forethought, she interrupted the sumptuous reverie of Caerroil Wildwood’s music.
“You can’t stop the Ravers,” she said as though she had forgotten that the Forestal could sing the flesh from her bones. “You know that. When you kill their bodies, their spirits just move on.”
He turned the piercing silver of his gaze on her as if she had offended him. But apparently she had not. In spite of his old anger, he did not strike out.
“Nevertheless,” he countered. “I have a particular hunger—”
Again Linden interrupted him. “But there’s going to come a time when one of them does die.” Samadhi Sheol would be rent by Grimmand Honninscrave and the Sandgorgon Nom. “It can happen. You can hope for that.”
She hazarded Time, and knew it. Speaking of the Land’s future might alter Caerroil Wildwood’s actions at some point during his long existence. But the Mahdoubt did nothing to forestall or caution her. And Linden had already taken greater risks. She was done with hesitation. If she could do or say anything that might encourage the Forestal to side with her, she would not hold back.
However, his response was sorrow rather than grim anticipation. His music became a fugue of mourning, interminable bereavement sung to a counterpoint of forlorn self-knowledge.
“While humans and monsters remain to murder trees, there can be no hope for any Forestal. Each death lessens me. The ages of the Earth are brief, and already I am not as I began.”
Then his melody sharpened. “But you have said that the death of a Raver will come to pass. How do you know of this?”
Linden held his gaze. “I was there.”
Her past was the Land’s future. She hardly dared to imagine that Caerroil Wildwood would understand her, or believe. But her statement did not appear to confound him. Her displacement in time may have been as obvious to him as the stains on her jeans.
“And you played a part?” he asked while the wide forest echoed his words avidly.
“I saw it happen,” she replied steadily. “That’s all.” To explain herself, she added, “I wasn’t what I am now.”
When Thomas Covenant and his companions had faced the na-Mhoram in the Hall of Gifts, Linden had contributed nothing except her fears and her health-sense. But she had borne witness.
The Forestal withdrew his scrutiny. For a long moment, he appeared to muse to himself, harmonizing with the trees. Now the Mahdoubt regarded him complacently. Under her breath, she made a humming sound as if she wished to contribute in some small way to the myriad-throated contemplations of Garroting Deep. When he sang in words again, he seemed to address the farthest reaches of his woods, or the black gibbet towering above him, rather than either Linden or her companion.
“I have granted boons, and may do so again. For each, I demand such payment as I deem meet. But you have not requested that which you most require. Therefore I will exact no recompense. Rather I ask only that you accept the burden of a question for which you have no answer.”
The Mahdoubt smiled with satisfaction; and Linden said. “Just tell me what it is. If I can find an answer, I will.”
Caerroil Wildwood continued singing to the trees rather than to her. “It is this. How may life endure in the Land, if the Forestals fail and perish, as they must, and naught remains to ward its most vulnerable treasures? We were formed to stand as guardians in the Creator’s stead. Must it transpire that beauty and truth shall pass utterly when we are gone?”
Surprised, Linden murmured, “I don’t know.” She had seen Caer-Caveral sacrifice himself, and he was the last. The Sunbane had destroyed every remnant of the ancient forests west of Landsdrop.
Still smiling, the Mahdoubt said. “The Great One is aware of this. Assuredly so. He does not require that which the lady cannot possess. He asks only that she seek out knowledge, for its lack torments him. The fear that no answer exists multiplies his long sorrow.”
“I will,” repeated Linden, although she could not guess what her promise might cost her, and had no idea how she would keep it. Caerroil Wildwood was too extreme to be refused.
“Then I will grant that which you require.” The Forestal sang as though he spoke for every living thing throughout the Deep.
At once, music gathered around Linden’s grasp on the Staff. Involuntarily she flinched. Unbidden, her fingers opened. But the Staff did not fall to the ground. Instead it floated away from her, wafted by song toward the Forestal. When it was near, he reached out to claim it with his free hand; and his clasp shone with the same silver that illumined his eyes.
“This blackness is lamentable”—his tone itself was elegiac—“but I will not alter it. Its import lies beyond my ken. However, other flaws may be amended. The theurgy of the wood’s fashioning is unfinished. It was formed in ignorance, and could not be otherwise than it is. Yet its wholeness is needful. Willingly I complete the task of its creation.”
Then he sang a command that would have been Behold! if it had been expressed in words rather than melody. At the same time, he lifted his gnarled scepter. It, too, radiated silver, telic and irrefusable, as he directed its singing at the Staff.
Slowly a nacre fire began to burn along the dark surface of the shaft from heel to heel; and as it did so, it incised shapes like a jagged script into the wood. Radiance lingered in them after the Forestal’s magi
c had passed: then it faded, line by line in dying streaks of argent, until the Staff had once again lapsed to ebony.
Runes, Linden thought in wonder. Caerroil Wildwood had carved runes—
A moment later, he released the Staff. Midnight between its bands of iron, it drifted through the air to Linden. When she closed her fingers around it, the shapes flared briefly once more, and she saw that they were indeed runes: inexplicable to her, but sequacious and acute. Their implications seemed to glow for an instant through the wound in her right hand. And as they fell away, she felt a renewed severity in the wood, a greater and more exacting commitment, as though the necessary commandments of Law had been fortified.
When the last of the luminance was gone from the symbols, she found that her hand had been healed. Pale against the black shaft, her human flesh too had become whole.
She had entered Garroting Deep bereft of every resource; exhausted beyond bearing; upheld by nothing except clenched intransigence—and thoughts of Thomas Covenant. But the Mahdoubt had fed and warmed her. Comforted her. And now Caerroil Wildwood had given her new power. Gallows Howe itself had made her stronger. All of her burdens except the pressing weight of millennia and incomprehension had been eased.
Finally she roused herself from her astonishment so that she could thank the Forestal. But he had already turned to walk away with his threnody and his silver eyes. And as he passed between the stark uprights of his gibbet, he seemed to shimmer into music and disappear, leaving her alone with the Mahdoubt and the starlight and the ceaseless sorrowing wrath of the trees.
For a long moment, Linden and the older woman listened to Caerroil Wildwood’s departure, hearing it fade like the future of Garroting Deep. Then the Mahdoubt spoke softly, in cadences that echoed the Forestal’s lorn song.
“The words of the Great One are sooth. His passing cannot be averted, though he will cling to his purpose for many centuries. These trees have forgotten the knowledge which enables him, and which also binds the Colossus of the Fall. The dark delight of the Ravers will have its freedom. Alas for the Earth, lady. The tale of the days to come will be one of rue and woe.”
With an effort, Linden shook off the Forestal’s ensorcellment. She had been given a gift which seemed to hold more meaning than she knew how to contain. Yet it changed nothing. The task of returning to her proper time still transcended her.
Standing on wrath and death, she confronted her companion.
“I just made a promise.” Her voice was hoarse with the memory of her promises. She had made so many of them—“But I can’t keep it. Not here. I have to go back where I belong.”
Darkness concealed the strange discrepancy of the Mahdoubt’s eyes, giving her a secretive air in spite of her comfortable demeanor. “Lady,” she replied, “your need for nourishment and rest is not yet sated. Return with the Mahdoubt to warmth and stew and springwine. She urges you, seeing you unsolaced.”
Linden shook her head. In this time, the Mahdoubt had not referred to her as you until now. “You can help me. That’s obvious. You wouldn’t be here if you couldn’t move through time.” Her urgency increased as she persisted. “You can take me back.”
The Mahdoubt seemed tranquil, but her tone hinted at sadness as she said, “Lady, the Mahdoubt may answer none of your queries. Nor may she lightly set aside the strictures of your plight. Nor may she transgress the constraints of her own knowledge. Assuredly not.” She touched the bare skin of Linden’s wrist near the Staff, allowing Linden’s nerves to feel her sincerity. “Will you not accompany her? The Great One cannot grant your desire, and this place”—she inclined her head to indicate Gallows Howe—“augurs only death.
“Will sustenance and companionship harm the lady? The Mahdoubt inquires respectfully, intending only kindness.”
Linden could not think of a reason to refuse. She felt a disquieting kinship with the Howe. And its blood-soaked earth held lessons which she had not yet understood. She was loath to leave it. But the Mahdoubt’s touch evoked a need that she had tried to suppress; a hunger for simple human contact. Jeremiah had refused her for so long—She could plead for her companion’s help beside the cookfire as well as here.
With a stiff shrug, she allowed the Mahdoubt to lead her back down the dead slope in the direction of food and the Black River.
The distance seemed greater than it had earlier. But once Linden and her guide had left Gallows Howe behind, and had spent a while moving like starlight through the bitter woodland, she began to catch glimpses of a soft yellow glow past the trees. Soon they reached the riverbank and the Mahdoubt’s cookfire.
To every dimension of Linden’s senses, the flames looked entirely mundane, as plain as air and cold—and as ordinary as the Mahdoubt’s plump flesh. However, they had not died down while they went untended. The pot still bubbled soothingly. And its contents were undiminished.
Sighing complacently, the older woman returned to her place with her back to the thin trickle of the river. Squatting as she had earlier, she stirred at her pot for a moment, smelled it with contentment, then retrieved Linden’s bowl and filled it. When she had set the bowl down near the warming flask of springwine, she looked up at Linden. Her blue eye regarded Linden directly, but the orange one appeared to focus past or through her, contemplating a vista that Linden could not discern.
“Be seated, lady,” she advised mildly. “Eat that which the Mahdoubt has prepared. And rest also. Sleep if you are able. Will your dreams be troubled, or your slumber disturbed? No, assuredly. The Mahdoubt provides peace as she does food and drink. That gift she may bestow freely, though her infirmities be many, and the years weigh unkindly upon her bones. The Great One will suffer our intrusion.”
Linden considered remaining on her feet. She felt restless, charged with new tensions: she could not imagine sleep. And an impossible journey lay ahead of her. More than food or rest, she needed some reason to believe that it could be accomplished.
The Mahdoubt had not come here merely to feed and comfort her, or to provide for her encounter with the Forestal: Linden was certain of that. While she remained in this time, she could not keep her promise to Caerroil Wildwood, or act on what she had learned from Gallows Howe, or try to rescue her son, or search for Thomas Covenant and hope—
But the aromas arising from the pot insisted that she was still hungry. And the Mahdoubt’s intent was palpably charitable, whatever its limitations. Abruptly Linden sat down within reach of the cookfire’s heat and set the Staff beside her.
Lifting the flask, she found it full. At once, she swallowed several long draughts, then turned the surface of her attention to the stew while her deeper mind tried to probe the conundrum of her companion. Doubtless food and drink and the balm of the cookfire did her good; but those benefits were trivial. In her present straits, even Caerroil Wildwood’s gifts were trivial. What she needed most, required absolutely, was some way to return to her friends and Revelstone.
That she would never find without the Mahdoubt’s help.
When she was ready—as ready as she would ever be—she arose and took her bowl to the edge of the watercourse. There she searched by the dim glitter of the stars until she located a manageable descent. Moving cautiously through mud that reached the ankles of her boots, she approached the small stream. There she rinsed out the bowl; and as she did so, the Earthpower pulsing along the current restored her further. Then, heedless of the damp and dirt that besmirched her clothes, she clambered back up the bank and returned to the Mahdoubt.
Handing the bowl to the older woman, she bowed with as much grace as she could muster. “I should thank you,” she said awkwardly. “I can’t imagine how you came here, or why you care. None of this makes sense to me.” Obliquely the Mahdoubt had already refused Linden’s desire for a passage through time. “But you’ve saved my life when I thought that I was completely alone.” Alone and doomed. “Even if there’s nothing more that you can do to help me, you deserve all the thanks I have.”
The wo
man inclined her head. “You are gracious, lady. Gratitude is always welcome—oh, assuredly—and more so when the years have become long and wearisome. The Mahdoubt has lived beyond her time, and now finds gladness only in service. Aye, and in such gratitude as you are able to provide.”
For a moment longer, Linden remained standing. Gazing down on her companion might give her an advantage. But then, deliberately, she set such ploys aside. They were unworthy of the Mahdoubt’s kindness. When she had resumed her seat beside the fire, and had picked up the Staff to rest it across her lap, she faced the challenge of finding answers.
Carefully, keeping her voice low and her tone neutral, she said, “You’re one of the Insequent.”
The Mahdoubt appeared to consider the night. “May the Mahdoubt reply to such a query? Indeed she may, for she relies on naught which the lady has not gleaned from her own pain. For that reason, no harm will ensue.”
Then she gave Linden a bright glimpse of her orange eye. “It is sooth, lady. The Mahdoubt is of the Insequent.”
Linden nodded. “So you know the Theomach. And—” She paused momentarily, unsure whether to trust what the croyel had told her through Jeremiah. “And the Vizard?”
The Mahdoubt returned her gaze to the shrouded darkness of Garroting Deep. “Lady, it is not so among us.” She spoke with apparent ease, but her manner hinted at caution as if she were feeling her way through a throng of possible calamities. “When the Insequent are young, they join and breed and make merry. But as their years accumulate, they are overtaken by an insatiable craving for knowledge. It compels them. Therefore they turn to questings which consume the remainder of their days.
“However, these questings demand solitude. They must be pursued privately or not at all. Each of the Insequent desires understanding and power which the others do not possess. For that reason, they become misers of knowledge. They move apart from each other, and their dealings are both infrequent and cryptic.”