Abruptly, she sprang to her feet. “I'll be back,” she said without meeting the eyes of her companions. “Andelain is too exciting. I need to see more of it.”
The Hills murmured to her, and she answered, sprinting away from the Gilden southward with all the gay speed of her legs.
Behind her, Pitchwife had taken up his flute. At once broken, piercing, and sweet, its awkward tones followed her as she ran. They carried around her like the ghost limbs of the trees, the crouching midnight of the bushes, the unmoonlit loom and pause of the shadows. He was trying to play the song which had streamed so richly from Caer-Caveral.
For a moment, he caught it-or almost caught it-and it went through her like loss and exaltation. Then she seemed to outrun it as she passed over a rise and sped downward again, deeper into the occult night of the Andelainian Hills.
The Forestal had said that she would raise grim shades here; and she thought of her father and mother. Unintentionally, without knowing what they were doing, they had bred her for suicide or murder. But now she defied them. Come on! she panted up at the stars. I dare you! For good or ill, healing or destruction, she had become stronger than her parents. The passion surging in her could not be named or confined by the harsh terms of her inheritance. She taunted her memories, challenging them to appear before her. But they did not.
And because they did not, she ran on, as heedless as a child-altogether unready for the door of might which opened suddenly against her, slapping her to the ground as if she were not strong or real enough to be noticed by the old puissance emerging from it.
A door like a gap in the first substance of the night, as abrupt and stunning as a detonation, and as tall as the heavens. It opened so that the man could stride through it. Then it closed behind him.
Her face was thrust into the grass. She fought for breath, strove to raise her head. But the sheer force of the presence towering over her crushed her prostrate. His bitter outrage seemed to fall on her like the wreckage of a mountain. Beneath his ire, he was so poignant with ruin, so extreme in the ancient and undiminished apotheosis of his despair, that she would have wept for him if she had been able. But his tremendous wrath daunted her, turned her vulnerability against herself. She could not lever her face out of the turf to look at him.
He felt transcendently tall and powerful. For an instant, she believed that he could not be aware of her, that she was too small for his notice. Surely he would pass by her and go about his fell business. But almost immediately her hope failed. His regard lit between her shoulder-blades like the point of a spear.
Then he spoke. His voice was as desolate as the Land under a desert sun, as twisted and torn as the ravages of a sun of pestilence. But anger gave it strength.
“Slayer of your own Dead, do you know me?”
No, she panted. No. Her fingers gouged into the loam as she struggled to shift her abject posture. He had no right to do this to her. Yet his glare impaled her, and she could not move.
He replied as if her resistance had no meaning:.
“I am Kevin. Son of Loric. High Lord of the Council. Founder of the Seven Wards. And enactor of the Land's Desecration by my own hand. I am Kevin Landwaster.”
In response, she was able to do nothing except groan. Dear God. Oh, dear God.
Kevin.
She knew who he was.
He had been the last High Lord of Berek's lineage, the last direct inheritor of the Staff of Law. The wonder and munificence of his reign in Revelstone had won the service of the Bloodguard, confirmed the friendship of the Giants, advanced the Council's dedication to the Earthpower, given beauty and purpose to all the Land. And he had failed. Tricked and defeated by the Despiser, he had proved himself unequal to the Land's defence. By his own mistakes, the object of his love and service had been doomed. And because he had understood that doom, be had fallen into despair.
Madly, he had conceived the ploy of the Ritual of Desecration, believing that Lord Foul would thereby be undone-that the price of centuries of devastation for the Land would purchase the Despiser's downfall. Therefore they had met in Kiril Threndor within the heart of Mount Thunder, mad Lord and malign foe. Together, they had set in motion the dire Ritual.
But in the end it was Kevin who fell while Lord Foul laughed. Desecration had no power to rid the world of Despite.
Yet that was not the whole tale of his woe. Misled by the confusion of her love and hate, the later High Lord, Elena, daughter of Lena and Covenant, had thought that the Landwaster's despair would be a source of irrefusable might; and so she had selected him for her breaking of the Law of Death, had rent him from his natural grave to hurl him in combat against the Despiser. But Lord Foul had turned the attempt against her. Both she and the Staff of Law had been lost; and Dead Kevin had been forced to serve his foe.
The only taste of relief he had been granted had come when Thomas Covenant and Saltheart Foamfollower had defeated the Despiser.
But that victory was now three millennia past. The Sunbane was rampant upon the Land, and Lord Foul had found the path to triumph. Kevin's dismay and wrath poured from him in floods. His voice was as hard as a cable under terrific stress.
“We are kindred in our way-the victims and enactors of Despite. You must heed me. Do not credit that you may exercise choice here. The Land's need admits no choice. You must heed me. Must!”
The word hammered and echoed and pleaded through her. Must. He had not come to appal her, meant her no harm. Rather, he approached her because he had no other way to reach out among the living, exert himself against the Despiser's machinations.
Must.
She understood that. Her fingers relaxed their grasp on the grass; her senses submitted to his vehemence. Tell me what it is, she said as if she had no more need to choose. Tell me what I should do.
"You will not wish to heed me. The truth is harsh. You will seek to deny it. But it will not be denied. I have borne horror upon my head and am not blinded by the hope which refuses truth. You must heed me.”
Must.
Yes.
Tell me.
“Linden Avery, you must halt the Unbeliever's mad intent. His purpose is the work of Despite. As I have done before him, he seeks to destroy that which he loves. He must not be permitted.
“If no other means suffice, you must slay him.”
No! In a rush of trepidation, she strove against his power-and still she had no strength to raise her head. Slay him? Goaded by his gaze, her heart laboured. No! You don't understand. He wouldn't do that.
But his voice came down on her back like a fall of stone.
“No. It is you who do not understand. You have not yet learned to comprehend the cunning of despair. Can you think that I allowed my fellow Lords to guess my purpose when I had set my heart to the Ritual? Have you been granted the gift of such sight, and are you yet unable to see? When evil rises in its full power, it surpasses truth and may wear the guise of good without fear of discovery. In that way was I brought to my own doom.
“He walks the path which his friends among the Dead have conceived for him. But they also do not comprehend despair. They were redeemed from it by his brave mastery of the Despiser-and so they see hope where there is only Desecration. Their vision of evil is incomplete and false.”
He gathered force in the night, became as shattering as a shout of disaster.
“It is his intent to place the white ring into Lord Foul's hand.