For the same reason, thousands of years later, Brinn and Cail had withdrawn their service to Thomas Covenant. In their eyes, their seduction by the Dancers of the Sea-their vulnerability to such desires-had demonstrated their unworth. Our folly must end now, ere greater promises than ours become false in consequence.
— and remain unmoved. Shaken by memory and understanding, Linden realised abruptly that Stave had made a similar choice when he had declared himself her friend. He had recanted his devotion to the chosen service of the Masters.
Liand had glimpsed the truth when he had suggested that the Masters feared grief. As a race, Stave and his kinsmen had already known too much of it.
Mourning for the former Master, Linden felt her own sorrow recede. It did not lose its force: perhaps it would not. Nevertheless it seemed to become less immediate. Stave’s words and losses had cleared a space in which she could control her tears, and think, and care about her friends.
“You’re already helping,” she told Stave as firmly as she could. “You’re here. That’s what I need most right now.”
There would be more, but for the moment she had been given enough.
When the Haruchai nodded, accepting her reply, she turned to Manethrall Mahrtiir and his Cords.
“I know that being surrounded by stone like this is hard for you,” she began. A faint quaver betrayed her fragility. However, she anchored herself on Mahrtiir’s combative glare; clung to the insight which Stave had provided for her.
As she did so, she discovered that she could see more in the auras of the Ramen-and of Liand as well-than magically renewed vitality and protective concern. Beneath the surface, their emotions were complicated by hints of a subtler unease. Something had happened to trouble them since she had parted from Mahrtiir.
“But we have a lot to talk about,” she continued. “When we’re done, I won’t ask you to stay. We’ll get together again in the morning.”
Bhapa inclined his head as though he were content with whatever she chose to say. But Pahni still stared at Linden with shadows of alarm in her dark eyes. She rested one of her hands on Liand’s shoulder as if she had come to rely on his support-or as if she feared for him as well as for Linden. And Mahrtiir remained as watchful as a raptor, searching Linden as though he expected her to name her enemies; his prey.
The Manethrall’s manner suggested unforeseen events. Yet his reaction to them tasted of an eagerness which his companions did not share.
His manner strengthened Linden’s ability to hold back the effects of her confrontation with Covenant and Jeremiah.
Finally she shifted her gaze to Liand’s, addressing him last because his uncomplicated concern and affection touched her pain directly.
“Liand, please don’t ask me any questions.” He also seemed privately uneasy, although he conveyed none of the Manethrall’s eagerness-and little of Pahni’s fear. “I’ll tell you everything that happened. I’ll tell you what I plan to do about it. But it will be easier for me if I can just talk. Questions make it harder for me to hold myself together.”
Liand mustered a crooked smile. “As you wish. I am able to hold my peace, as you have seen. Yet allow me to say,” he added with a touch of rueful humour. “that since my departure from Mithil Stonedown, no experience of peril and power, no discovery or exigency, has been as unexpected to me as this, that I must so often remain silent.”
Damn it, Linden thought as her eyes misted, he’s doing it again. The unaffected gallantry of his attempt to jest undermined her self-control. Striving to master her tears again, she turned her back and pretended to busy herself at the hearth; prodded the logs with the toe of her boot although they plainly did not require her attention.
Over her shoulder, she said thickly, “Sit down, please. Have something to eat. It’s been a long day. I want to tell you about Covenant and Jeremiah, and that’s going to be hard for me. But there’s no hurry.” If the Demondim did not strike unexpectedly, she intended to wait until the next morning to confront the horde. “We can afford a little time.”
She meant to speak first. Surely then she would be able to put her pain behind her and listen more clearly to the tales of her friends? But she had one question which could not wait.
With her nerves as much as her ears, she heard her friends shift their feet, glance uncertainly at each other, then begin to comply with her request. Stave remained standing by the door, his arms folded like bars across his stained tunic. But Liand and Pahni urged Anele into a chair and seated themselves beside him. At once, the old man reached for the tray of food and began to eat. At the same time, Bhapa and Mahrtiir also sat down. The older Cord did so with deliberate composure. In contrast, Mahrtiir was tangibly reluctant: he appeared to desire some more active outlet for his emotions.
While her companions settled themselves, poured water or springwine into flagons, took a little food, Linden gathered her resolve. Facing the wall beside the hearth, nearly resting her forehead on the blunt stone, she said uncomfortably, “There’s something that I have to know. And I need the truth. Please don’t hold anything back.
“It’s about the caesures. About what you felt going through them. I’ve already asked Liand about the first one.” In the cave of Waynhim, he had told her only that he had felt pain beyond description; that he would have broken if the black lore of the ur-viles had not preserved him. Is there anything else that any of you can tell me? I mean about being in that specific Fall?”
A moment of fretted silence seemed to press against her back. Then the Manethrall replied stiffly, “Ringthane, the pain was too great to permit clear perception. Within the caesure was unspeakable cold, a terrible whiteness, agony that resembled being flayed, and fathomless despair. As the Stonedownor has said, we were warded by the theurgy of the ur-viles. But the Ranyhyn also played a part in our endurance. That they did not lose their way in time diminished a measure of our suffering.”
Linden heard the faint rustle of bodies as her friends looked at each other and nodded. With her health-sense, she recognised that Liand, Pahni, and Bhapa agreed with Mahrtiir’s assessment.
“What about you, Stave’?” she asked. He had emerged from the Fall apparently unscathed. “What was it like for you?”
The Haruchai did not hesitate. “As the Manethrall has said, both the ur-viles and the Ranyhyn served us well. We rode upon a landscape of the purest freezing while our flesh was assailed as though by the na-Mhoram’s Grim. Also there stood a woman among rocks, lashing out in anguish with wild magic. Toward her I was drawn to be consumed. However, turiya Herem held her. He is known to me, for no Haruchai has forgotten the touch of any Raver. Therefore I remained apart from her, seeking to refuse the doom which befell Korik, Sill, and Doar.”
Remained apart-Linden thought wanly. Damn, he was strong. From birth, he had communicated mind to mind; and yet he had retained more of himself in the Fall than anyone except Anele. Even she, with the strength of the ur-viles in her veins, had been swept into Joan’s madness.
Stave’s severance from his people must have hurt him more than Linden could imagine.
But she could not afford to dwell on the prices that her friends paid to stand at her side: not now, under these circumstances. She had her own costs to bear.
“All right,” she said after a moment of silence. “That was the first one. What about the second?” The caesure which she had created, bringing herself and her companions back to their proper time-and displacing the Demondim. “It must have been different. I need to know how it was different.”