Stephen Donaldson - Fatal Revenant

She did not surrender. She would not. But she could not think beyond doggedly placing one foot in front of the other, walking lightless and unassoiled into Garroting Deep.

She did not imagine that she might reach her proper time by creating a caesure. You’ll shatter the world. And even if she did not, she would still be lost. Without the Ranyhyn, she could not navigate the chaos of a Fall.

Nor could she save herself with the Staff of Law. No power available to her would transcend the intervening centuries.

The Theomach had recognised Roger and the croyel , and had said nothing.

While they abided by the restrictions which he had placed upon them, he had left her to meet her fate in ignorance.

— her mind cannot be distinguished from the Arch of Time.

In her own way, she chose to keep faith with the Land’s past.

Therefore she stumbled on into Caerroil Wildwood’s angry demesne, guiding herself by the darkness of the watercourse on her left and the star-limned branches of trees on her right. When she tripped, she caught herself with the Staff, although the jolt caused the scabbing of her wounded hand to break open and bleed. She had nowhere else to go.

Roger had called the Forestal an out-and-out butcher.

On his own ground, with the full force of Garroting Deep behind him, nothing could stand against him.

Why had he not already slain her?

Perhaps he had discerned her weakness and knew that there was no need for haste. If a badger took umbrage at her encroachment, she would be unable to defend herself. A single note of Caerroil Wildwood’s multifarious song would overwhelm her.

Some things she knew, however. They did not require thought. She could be sure that Roger and the croyel - and Kastenessen and Joan-had not yet accomplished the Despiser’s desires. The Arch of Time endured. Her boots still scuffed and tripped one after the other along the riverbank. Her heart still beat. Her lungs still sucked, wincing, at the edged air. And above her the cold stars became multitudinous glistening swaths as the last daylight faded behind the western peaks. Even her exhaustion confirmed that the strictures of sequence and causality remained intact.

Therefore the Land’s tale was not done.

Her confrontation with Roger had rubbed the truth like salt into a wound: for her, everything came back to Thomas Covenant. He was her hope when she had failed all of her loves. -help us become gods. In his own way, and for his own reasons, he himself had become a kind of god. While his spirit endured, she could refuse to believe that the Despiser would achieve victory.

The Earth held mysteries which she could not begin to comprehend. Even Jeremiah might someday be released. As long as Thomas Covenant remained-He might guide her friends to rouse the Elohim from their hermetic self-contemplation; or to thwart Roger and Lord Foul in some other fashion.

For that reason, she continued walking when she should not have been able to stay on her feet. She had failed utterly, and been filled with despair; but she no longer knew how to break.

Around her, full night gathered until the ancient ire of the trees seemed to form a palpable barrier. Aside from the soft liquid chatter of water in the riverbed, the whisper of wind among the wrathful boughs, and the unsteady plod of her boots, she heard only her own respiration, ragged and faltering. She might have been alone in the wide forest. Still her heart sustained its dark labour. Intransigent as the Masters, she let neither weakness nor the approach of death stop her.

Some time later, she saw a small blink of light ahead of her. It was too vague to be real: she could more easily believe that she had fallen into dreams. But gradually it gained substance; definition. Soon it resembled the caper of flames, yellow and flickering.

A will-o’-the-wisp, she thought. Or a hallucination induced by fatigue and loss. Yet it did not vanish and reappear, or shift from place to place. In spite of its allusive dance, it remained stationary, casting a faint illumination on the nearby tree trunks, the arched bare branches.

A fire, she realised dully. Someone had set a fire in this protected forest.

She did not hasten toward it. She could not. Her pulse did not quicken. But her uneven trudge took on a more concrete purpose. She was not alone in Garroting Deep. And whoever had lit that fire was in imminent peril: more so than Linden herself, who could not have raised any hint of flame from her black Staff.

The distance defied her estimation. By slow increments, however, she began to discern details. A small cookfire burned within a ring of stones. A pot that may have been iron rested among the flames. And beside the fire squatted an obscure figure with its back to the river. At intervals, the figure reached out with a spoon or ladle to stir the contents of the pot.

Linden seemed to draw no closer. Nonetheless she saw that the figure wore a tatterdemalion cloak against the winter. She saw a disregarded tangle of old hair, a plump shape. To her depleted senses, the figure appeared female.

Then she entered the fringes of the light; and the figure turned to gaze at her; and she stopped. But she was unaware of her own surprise. She still swayed from side to side, precariously balanced, as if she were walking. Her muscles conveyed the sensations of steps. In her dreams, her legs and the Staff carried her forward.

The fire was small, and the pot shrouded its light. Linden blinked and stared for several moments before she recognised the woman’s blunt and skewed features, her patchwork robe under her open cloak, her mismatched eyes. Briefly those eyes spilled shifting reflections. Then Linden saw that the left was a dark and luminous blue, the right a disconcerting, unmistakable orange.

The woman’s air of comfortable solicitude identified her as readily as her appearance. She was the Mahdoubt. Linden had last seen her in Revelstone ten thousand years from now, when the older woman had warned her to Be cautious of love.

The Mahdoubt was here.

That was impossible.

But Linden did not care about impossibilities. She had left every endurable aspect of her existence behind. At that moment, the only fact which held any significance for her was the Mahdoubt’s cookfire.

The kindly woman had dared to ignite flames in Caerroil Wildwood’s demesne.

Staring, Linden meant to say, You’ve got to put that out. The fire. This is Garroting Deep. She thought that she would speak aloud. She ought to speak urgently. But those words failed her. Her mouth and tongue seemed incapable of them. Instead she asked, faint as a whisper. “Why didn’t they just kill me?”

At any other time in her life, under any other circumstances, there would have been tears in her eyes and weeping in her voice. But all of her emotions had been melted down, fused into a lump of obsidian. She possessed only anger for which she had no strength.

“Across the years,” the woman replied, “the Mahdoubt has awaited the lady.” She sounded complacent, untroubled. “Oh, assuredly. And once again she offers naught but meagre fare. The lady will think her improvident. Yet here are shallots in a goodly broth”- she waved her ladle at the pot- “with winter greens and some few aliantha . And she has provided as well a flask of springwine. Will the lady not sup with her, and take comfort?”

Linden smelled the savour of the stew. She had eaten nothing, drunk nothing, for a long time. But she did not care. Wanly she tried again.

That fire-The Forestal-

“Why didn’t they just kill me?”

Useless screaming had left her hoarse. She hardly heard her own voice.

The Mahdoubt sighed. For a moment, her orange eye searched Linden while her right regarded the flames. Then she turned her head away. With a hint of sadness, she said. The Mahdoubt may answer none of the lady’s sorrows. Time has been made fragile. It must not be challenged further. Of that she gives assurance. Yet she is grieved to behold the lady thus, weary, unfed, and full of woe. Will she not accept these small comforts?” Again she indicated her pot; her fire. “Here are aliment, and warmth to nurture sleep, and the solace of the Mahdoubt’s goodwill. Refusal will augment her grief.”