Mahrtiir spoke first. For the Ramen, the distinction was both subtle and profound. Again we were assailed by a white and frozen agony which we were unable to withstand. The ur-viles no longer warded us. We lack the strength of the Haruchai. And we did not bear the Staff of Law on your behalf.” Liand had served Linden in that way, freeing her to concentrate on wild magic. “Yet the certainty of the Ranyhyn seemed greater, and their assurance somewhat diminished our torment. This, we deem, was made possible by the movement of time within the caesure, for we did not seek to oppose the current of the whirlwind.”
Linden nodded to herself. Yes, that made sense. Days ago, she had chosen to believe that the temporal tornado of any Fall would tend to spin out of the past toward the future. Mahrtiir confirmed what she had felt herself during her passage from the foothills of the Southron Range three thousand years ago to the bare ground before the gates of Revelstone.
Cautiously, approaching by increments the question which Covenant had advised her to ask, she said. “What about you, Stave? Can you offer anything more?”
The former Master did not respond immediately. Behind his apparent dispassion, he may have been weighing risks, striving to gauge the effect that his answer might have on her. When he spoke, however, his tone revealed none of his calculations.
“To that which the Manethrall and I have described, I will add one observation. Within the second Fall, the woman possessed by despair and madness was absent. Rather I beheld you mounted upon Hyn. Within you blazed such wild magic that it was fearsome to witness. As in the first passage, I was drawn toward the mind of the wielder. But again I remained apart.”
So. Twice Stave had preserved his separate integrity. Like the Ramen, he could not tell Linden what she needed to know.
— ask that callow puppy-
Liand did not deserve Covenant’s scorn.
She continued to face the wall as though she wished to muffle her voice; conceal her heart. “And you, Liand? You were carrying the Staff. That must have made a difference.”
By its very nature, the Staff may have imposed a small pocket of Law on the swirling chaos of the caesure.
“Linden-” the young man began. But then he faltered. His reluctance scraped along the nerves of her back and scalp, the skin of her neck. But percipience alone could not tell her why he was loath to speak, or what he might reveal.
“Please,” she said softly, almost whispering. “I need to know.”
She felt him gather himself-and felt the Ramen regard him with a kind of apprehension. Stave gazed steadily at the Stonedownor. Only Anele continued to eat and drink as though he were oblivious to his companions.
“Then I must relate,” Liand answered unsteadily, “that within the caesure I rode Rhohm upon an endless plain of the most bitter emptiness and cold. About me, I felt a swarm of stinging hornets, each striving to pierce and devour me, though they were not visible to my sight. And at the same time-” Again he faltered. But the underlying bedrock of his dignity and courage supported him. “At the same time,” he repeated more firmly. “it appeared to me that I was contained within you-that I sat upon Hyn rather than Rhohm, and that from my heart arose a conflagration such as I have never known. There none of my desires or deeds was my own. In some form, I had ceased to exist, for my thoughts were your thoughts, my pain was yours, and no aspect of Liand son of Fostil remained to me.”
Before Linden could press him, he added, “You need not name your query. You wish to hear what it is that I beheld within you.
“Our conjoining was severed when we emerged from the Fall, and I became myself again. Yet while we were one, I participated in your love for your son, and for Thomas Covenant. I was filled with your fear and pain, your extremity and desperation. I shared your resolve, which is greater than valour or might.” Liand did not hesitate now, or hold back. “And I saw that you have it within you to perform horrors. You have known the blackest cruelty and despair, and are able to inflict your full dismay upon any who may oppose you.
“This is the knowledge that you seek,” he concluded. “is it not?”
Facing the unwritten stone, Linden groaned to herself: she may have groaned aloud. Was Covenant Jeremiah’s puppet? Were they both puppets? Or did the fault lie in her? Liand, she believed, had answered those questions. In Covenant’s name, she had prevailed against moksha Jehannum and the Sunbane; but Liand seemed to say that she had never truly healed the capacity for evil which Lord Foul’s servants had exposed in her. Her inability to understand or trust Covenant and Jeremiah now was her failure, not theirs.
Softly, speaking more to the wall than to Liand, she breathed, “And yet you’re still my friend.”
“How could I be otherwise?” returned the Stonedownor. “It is possible that your loves will bind your heart to destruction, as the Mahdoubt has warned. It may be that you will repeatedly seek to accomplish good through evil means, as you have done before. But I am myself now, and I am not afraid. I no longer retain all that I have known of you. Yet I have known your loves, and in their name, I am proud to be both your companion and your friend.”
Helplessly Linden sagged forward, bracing her forehead against the cool stone. A cloudburst of weeping advanced on her across the convoluted terrain of her confusion; and she could not bear it. Covenant had as much as said that he did not trust her-and Liand had told her that the Unbeliever had good reason for his caution-and yet she heard nothing in Liand’s tone except unalloyed candour. He was proud-
She might not have been able to fend off her grief; but abruptly Anele spoke. “Anele has been made free of them,” the old man announced with unmistakable satisfaction. “And”- he turned his head from side to side in a way that suggested surprise- “the dark things, the creatures lost and harsh, demanding remembrance-Anele no longer fears them. He has been spared much.”
The unexpected sound of his voice helped her to step back once more from her clamouring emotions.
He sat on wrought stone, with his bare feet on the polished granite of the floor. As a result, he was in one of the more coherent phases of his madness. He may have understood more than he appeared to grasp. Indeed, he may have been trying in his distorted fashion to reassure Linden.
To some extent, at least, he had already demonstrated the truth of his assertion that he was the Land’s last hope. He had made possible the recovery of the Staff.
“For my part,” Mahrtiir put in while Linden mastered herself, “I aver that there is no surprise in the knowledge which the Stonedownor has gleaned.” The Manethrall’s voice was gruff with unaccustomed tenderness. “Breathes there a being in the Land, or upon the wide Earth, who does not nurture some measure of darkness? Surely Esmer would not be drawn to you as he is, did he not behold in you an aspect of his own torment. And has it not been repeated endlessly of the white gold wielder that he will save or damn the Land? That which Liand has witnessed in you alters nothing.”
Bracing herself on the strength of her friends, Linden set aside her bewilderment and loss; her self-doubt. She could not forget such things. They would affect all of her choices and actions. But the faith of her friends restored her ability to contain herself; to say what needed to be said.
When she had wiped her face once more with the sleeve of her shirt, she turned back toward Stave, Liand, Anele, and the Ramen.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “All of you. The things that I have to tell you are hard for me.” And she still needed to hear what had happened to her companions while she had been with Covenant and Jeremiah. “But I think I can do it now”- she attempted a smile- “without being too messy about it.”