Stephen Donaldson - Fatal Revenant

Sleep? A dim anger at herself made Linden frown. At one time, she had ached to speak with the Mahdoubt. There is a glamour upon it which binds the heart to destruction. That, at least, had been the truth.

She made another effort to say what the woman’s kindness required of her. “Please-” she began weakly, still swaying; still unsure that she had stopped moving. “Your fire. The Forestal. He’ll see it.” Surely he had already done so? “We’ll both die.

“Why didn’t they kill me?”

Roger and the croyel could have slain her whenever she slept.

“Pssht, lady,” responded the Mahdoubt. “Is the Mahdoubt disquieted? She is not. In her youth, such concerns may perchance have vexed her, but her old bones have felt their full measure of years, and naught troubles her now.”

Calmly she added, “Hear her, lady. The Mahdoubt implores this. Be seated within her warmth. Accept the sustenance which she has prepared. Her courtesy merits that recompense.”

Again the Mahdoubt lifted her strange gaze to Linden’s face. “There is much in all sooth of which she must not speak. Yet the Mahdoubt may speculate without hazard-yes, assuredly-if she speaks only of that which the lady has properly heard, or which she might comprehend unaided, were she whole in spirit.”

Linden blinked vacantly. She had heard or tasted Caerroil Wildwood’s song: she knew its power. Surely she should have protested? She would have owed that much to a total stranger. The Mahdoubt deserved more-

But the balm of the Mahdoubt’s voice overcame her. She could not refuse that blue eye, or the orange one. As if she were helpless, she took one step toward the fire, then sank to the ground.

It was thickly matted with fallen leaves. They must once have been frozen to the dirt, but they had thawed to a soggy carpet in the heat of the cookfire. Gripping the Staff with her scabbed and seared fist, Linden struggled to sit cross-legged near the ring of stones.

Abruptly the Mahdoubt’s orange eye appeared to flare. The lady must release the Staff. How otherwise will she sup?”

Linden could not let go. Her cramped grasp would not unclose. And she would need the Staff. She had no other defence.

Nevertheless it slipped from her fingers and dropped soundlessly to the damp leaves.

Nodding with apparent satisfaction, the Mahdoubt produced a wooden bowl from a pocket or satchel under her cloak. As she ladled stew from the pot, she spoke to the cookfire and the louring night as though she had forgotten Linden’s presence.

“Assuredly the lady’s treachers required her absence from her condign time, lest she be succoured by such powers as they could not lightly oppose-by ur-viles and Waynhim, and perchance by others as well. Also they feared-and rightly-that which lies hidden within the old man whom the lady has befriended.”

Without glancing at Linden, she reached into her cloak for a spoon. When she had placed the spoon in the stew, she handed the bowl to Linden.

Like a bidden child, Linden began to eat. On some inchoate level, she must have understood that the older woman was saving her life-at least temporarily-but she was not conscious of it. Her attention was fixed on the Mahdoubt’s voice. Nothing existed for her while she ate except the woman’s words, and the looming threat of melody.

“Yet when she had been removed from all aid,” the Mahdoubt informed the trees placidly. “the lady’s death would serve no purpose. Indeed, her foes have never desired her death. They wish her to bear the burden of the Land’s doom. And the virtue of white gold is lessened when it is not freely ceded.

“Nor could she be engaged willingly in such combat as would endanger Time. With the Staff of Law, she might perchance have healed any harm. And she might have slain her betrayers with wild magic. That they assuredly did not desire. Nor could they assail the Arch directly, for the lady would then have surely destroyed them. Such errant evil craves its own preservation more than it desires the ruin of Life and Time.”

Linden nodded to herself as she slowly lifted stew into her mouth. She did not truly grasp what the woman was saying: her fatigue ran too deep. But she understood that Roger’s and the croyel ’s actions could be explained. The Mahdoubt’s unthreatened tranquillity gave her that anodyne.

“Nor could the lady be merely forsaken in this time,” continued the Mahdoubt, “while her treachers sought the Power of Command. She might contrive means or acquire companions to assail them ere their ends were accomplished. Nor could they be assured that any use of that Power would accomplish their ends, for the Blood of the Earth is perilous. Any Command may return against its wielder, bringing calamity to those who fear no death except their own.”

By degrees, Linden began to detect strands of melody among the woman’s words; or she thought that she did. But they had the same quality of hallucination or dream that she had felt earlier. She could not be sure of anything except the Mahdoubt’s voice.

Without realising it, she had emptied the bowl. The Mahdoubt glanced at her, then retrieved the bowl, filled it again, and returned it to her. But the older woman continued to speak as she did so.

“The Mahdoubt merely speculates. Of that she assures herself. Therefore she does not fear to suggest that the chief desire of the lady’s betrayers was the lady’s pain.”

Facing the trees and the blind night, she reached once more into her cloak and withdrew a narrow-necked flask closed with a wooden plug. Its glassy sides shed reflections of viridian and tourmaline as she removed the plug and passed the vessel to Linden.

When Linden drank, she tasted springwine; and her senses lost some of their dullness. Now she was almost sure that she heard notes and words, fragments of song, behind the Mahdoubt’s voice. They may have been dusty waste and hate of hands ; or perhaps rain and heat and snow.

Nevertheless the Mahdoubt went on speaking as though the forest’s anger held nothing to alarm her.

By that hurt, they sought to gain the surrender of white gold. And if they could not obtain its surrender, they desired the lady to exert the ring’s force in the name of her suffering under Melenkurion Skyweir, either for their aid or against their purpose. In such an outcome, the Staff of Law and the EarthBlood and wild magic would exceed the lady’s flesh, and Time would be truly endangered. Her foes could not have believed that she would find within herself force and lore sufficient to oppose them without recourse to white gold.”

At last, Linden raised her head. She had become certain that she heard pieces of music, the scattered notes of an unresolved threnody. They came skirling among the trees, taking shape as they approached, implying words which they did not utter. I know the hate of hands grown bold. She flung a look at the Mahdoubt and saw that both of the woman’s eyes were alight, vivid blue and stark orange. The Mahdoubt had fallen silent; or the song had stilled her voice. Yet she appeared to face the Forestal’s advance with comfortable unconcern.

Since days before the Earth was old

And Time began its walk to doom,

The Forests world’s bare rock anneal,

Forbidding dusty waste and death.

As if in response, the Mahdoubt murmured,

“Though wide world’s winds untimely blow,

And earthquakes rock and cliff unseal,

My leaves grow green and seedlings bloom.”

A wind rose through the woods, adding the dry harmony of barren boughs and brittle evergreen needles to the mournful ire of the music. Stern snatches of melody seemed to gather around the campfire like stars, underscored by the almost subterranean mutter of trunks and roots. Linden had seen and felt and tasted that song before, but in an angrier and less laden key. Now the woodland dirge held notes like questions, brief arcs and broad spans tuned to the pitch of uncertainty. Caerroil Wildwood may have intended to quash those who had raised flames here, but he had other desires as well, purposes which were not those of an out-and-out butcher.