His eyes were the only precise part of him.
She had seen them before.
Eyes as bitter as fangs, carious and cruel; eyes of deliberate force, rabid desire; eyes wet with venom and insatiation. In the woods behind Haven Farm, they had shone out of the blaze and pierced her to the pit of her soul, measuring and disdaining every aspect of her as she had crouched in fright.
They had required paralysis of her as if it were the first law of her existence. When she had unlocked her weakness, run down the hillside to try to save Covenant, they had fixed her like a promise that she would never be so brave again, never rise above her mortal contradictions. And now with infinitely multiplied and flagrant virulence they repeated that promise and made it true. Reaching past moksha Jehannum to the clinched relict of her consciousness, they confirmed their absolute commandment Never again.
Never.
In response, her voice said, "He has come to cede his ring. I have brought him to your will,” and chortled like a burst of involuntary fear. Even the Raver could not bear its master's direct gaze and sought to turn that baleful regard aside.
But for a moment Lord Foul did not look away. His eyes searched her for signs of defiance or courage. Then he said, “To you I do not speak.” His voice came from the rocklight and the heat, from the reek of attar and the chiaroscuro of the stalactites-a voice as deep as Mount Thunder's bones and veined with savagery. Orange-red facets glittered and glared in every word. “I have not spoken to you. There was no need-is none. I speak to set the feet of my hearers upon the paths I design for them, but your path has been mine from the first. You have been well bred to serve me, and all your choices conduce to my ends. To attain that which I have desired from you has been a paltry exercise, scarce requiring effort. When I am free”- she heard a grin in the swarming reflections- “you will accompany me, so that your present torment may be prolonged forever. I will gladly mark myself upon such flesh as yours.”
With her mouth, the Raver giggled tense and sweating approval. The Despiser's gaze nailed dismay into her. She was as abject as she had ever been, and she tried to wail; but no sound came.
Then she would have let go. But Covenant did not. His eyes were midnight with rage for her; his passion refused to be crushed. He looked hardly capable of taking another step yet he came to her aid.
“Don't kid yourself,” he snapped like a jibe. “You're already beaten, and you don't even know it. All these threats are just pathetic.”
Assuredly he was out of his mind. But his sarcasm shifted the Despiser toward him. Linden was left to the cunning tortures of her possessor. They slashed and flayed at her, showed her in long whipcuts all the atrocities an immortal could commit against her. But when Lord Foul's gaze left her, she found that she was still able to cling. She was stubborn enough for that.
“Ah,” the Despiser rumbled like the sigh of an avalanche, “at last my foeman stands before me. He does not grovel-but grovelling has become needless. He has spoken words which may not be recalled. Indeed, his abasement is complete. though he is blind to it He does not see that he has sold himself to a servitude more demeaning than prostration. He has become the tool of my Enemy, no longer free to act against me. Therefore he submits himself, deeming in his cowardice that here the burden of havoc and ruin will pass from him.” Soft laughter made the rocklight throb; mute Shrieks volleyed from the walls. “He is the Unbeliever in all sooth. He does not believe that the Earth's doom will at last be laid to his charge.
“Thomas Covenant”- he took an avid step forward- “the spectacle of your puerile strivings gives me glee to repay my long patience, for your defeat has ever been as certain as my will. Were I to be foiled, the opportunity belonged to your companion, not to you-and you see how she has availed herself of it.” With one strong, blurred arm, he made a gesture toward Linden that nearly unseated her reason. Again, he laughed; but his laughter was devoid of mirth. “Had she seduced you of the ring-ah, then would I have been tested. But therefore did I choose her, a woman altogether unable to turn aside from my desires.
“You are a fool,” he went on, “for you have known yourself doomed, and yet you have come to me. Now I require your soul.” The heat of his voice filled Linden's lungs with suffocation. Moksha Jehannum shivered, hungry for violence and ravage. The Despiser sounded unquestionably sane-but that only made him more terrible. One of his hands-a bare smear across the Raver's sight-seemed to curl into a fist; and Covenant was jerked forward, within Lord Foul's reach. The walls spattered light like sobs, as if Mount Thunder itself were appalled.
As soft as the whisper of death, the Despiser said, “Give the ring to me.”
Linden believed that she would have obeyed in Covenant's place. The command of that voice was absolute But he did not move. His right arm hung at his side. The ring dangled as if it were empty of import-as if his numb finger within the band had no significance. His left fist closed and unclosed like the aggrieved labour of his heart. His eyes looked as dark as the loneliness of stars. Somehow, he held his head up, his back straight-upright in conviction or madness.
“Talk's cheap. You can say anything you want. But you're wrong, and you ought to know it. This time you've gone too far. What you did to Andelain. What you're doing to Linden- ” He swallowed acid. “We aren't enemies. That's just another lie. Maybe you believe it-but it's still a lie. You should see yourself. You're even starting to look like me.” The special gleam of his gaze reached Linden like a gift. He was irremediably insane-or utterly indomitable. “You're Just another part of me. Just one side of what it means to be human. The side that hates lepers. The poisonous side.” His certainty did not waver at all. “We are one.”
His assertion made Linden gape at what he had become. But it only drew another laugh from the Despiser-a short, gruff bark of dismissal. “Do not seek to bandy truth and falsehood with me,” he replied. “You are too inane for the task. Lies would better serve the trivial yearning which you style love. The truth damns you here. For three and a half millennia I have mustered my will against the Earth in your absence, groveller. I am the truth. I. And I have no use for the sophistry of your Unbelief.” He levelled his voice at Covenant like the blade of an axe. Fragments of rocklight shot everywhere but could not bring his intense form into any kind of focus. “Give the ring to me.”
Covenant's visage slackened as if he were made ill by the necessity of his plight. But still he withheld submission. Instead, he changed his ground.
“At least let Linden go.” His stance took on an angle of pleading. “You don't need her anymore. Even you should be satisfied with how much she's been hurt. I've already offered her my ring once. She refused it Let her go.”
In spite of everything, he was still trying to spare her.
Lord Foul's response filled Kiril Threndor. “Have done, groveller.” Attar made the Raver ecstatic, wracked Linden. “You weary my long patience. She is forfeit to me by her own acts. Are you deaf to yourself? You have spoken words which can never be recalled.” Concentrated venom dripped from his outlines. As distinct as the breaking of boulders, he demanded a third time, “Give the ring to me.”
And Covenant went on sagging as though he had begun to crumble. All his strength was gone. He could no longer pretend to hold himself upright. One by one, his loves had been stripped from him: he had nothing left. After all, he was only one ordinary man, small and human. Without wild magic, he was no match for the Despiser.