Stephen Donaldson - Fatal Revenant

Under other circumstances, Linden might have been moved by his declaration. But she was too full of doubt, of thwarted joy and unexplained bereavement. Instead of thanking him, she said gruffly, “It isn’t like that. I’m not going to oppose him.” Them. “I can’t. He’s Thomas Covenant.

“I just don’t understand.” Then she looked away; quickened her pace without realising it. Her impatience for the cleansing embrace of Glimmermere was growing. And her dilemma ran deeper than the Manethrall seemed to grasp.

If both Covenant and Jeremiah were here-and they indeed had something wrong with them-she could imagine conditions under which she might be forced to choose between them. To fight for one at the expense of the other.

If that happened, she would cling to Jeremiah, and let Thomas Covenant go. She had spent ten years learning to accept Covenant’s death-and eight of those years devoting herself to her son. Her first loyalty was to Jeremiah. Even if Covenant truly knew how to save the LandThe Mahdoubt had warned her to Be cautious of love.

God, she did not simply need answers. She needed to wash out her mind. J ust be wary of me. Remember that I’m dead. She had been given too many warnings, and she comprehended none of them.

Fortunately the high hills which cupped Glimmermere’s numinous waters were rising before her. She could not yet catch the scent of their magic: the mild spring breeze carried it past the hilltops. And the lake itself was hidden from sight and sound on all sides except directly southward, where the White River began its run toward Furl Falls. Nevertheless she knew where she was. She could not forget the last place where she and Covenant had known simple happiness.

She wanted to run now, in spite of the ascent, but she forced herself to stop at the base of the slope. Turning to Mahrtiir, she asked, “You’ve been here already, haven’t you?’ He and his Cords had spent the previous afternoon and night among these hills with the Ranyhyn. “You’ve seen Glimmermere?” She expected a prompt affirmative; but the Manethrall replied brusquely, “Ringthane, I have not. By old tales, I know of the mystic waters. But my Cords and I came to these hills to care for the Ranyhyn-and also,” he admitted, “to escape the oppression of Revelstone and Masters. Our hearts were not fixed on tales.

“However, the Ranyhyn parted from us when we had gained the open sky. Galloping and glad, they scattered to seek their own desires. Therefore we tended to our refreshment with aliantha and rest, awaiting your summons. We did not venture toward storied Glimmermere.” In spite of her haste, Linden felt a twist of regret on his behalf. “Why not”?” “We are Ramen,” he said as if his reasons were self-evident. We serve the Ranyhyn. That suffices for us. We do not presume to intrude upon other mysteries. No Raman has beheld the tarn of the horserite, yet we feel neither regret nor loss. We are content to be who we are. Lacking any clear cause to approach Glimmermere, I deemed it unseemly to distance ourselves from Revelstone and your uncertain plight.” She sighed. Now she understood the blind distress of Mahrtiir and his Cords when she had met them in the Close. But she had scant regard to spare for the Manethrall’s strict pride. Her own needs were too great.

All right,” she murmured. “Don’t worry about it.

“I’m going on ahead. I want you to stay here. I need to be alone for a while. If the Masters change their minds-if the Humbled decide that they have to know what I’m doing-try to warn me.” Glimmermere’s potency might muffle her perception of anything else. “When I come back, we’ll talk about this again.

“I think that you’ll want to see the lake for yourself.” She held his gaze until he nodded. Then she turned to stride up the hillside without him.

Almost at once, he seemed to fall out of her awareness. Her memories of Covenant and Glimmermere sang to her, dismissing other considerations. At one time, she had been loved here. That experience, and others like it, had taught her how to love her son. She needed to immerse herself in Earthpower and clarity; needed to recover her sense of her own identity. Then she could try to make herself heard; heeded.

She was breathing hard-and entirely unconscious of it-as she passed the crest of the hill and caught sight of the lake where Thomas Covenant had given her a taste of joy; perhaps the first joy that she had ever known.

In one sense, Glimmermere was exactly as she remembered it. The lake was not large: from its edge, she might have been able to throw a stone across it. On all sides except its outlet to the south, it was concealed by hills as though the earth of the plateau had cupped its hands in order to isolate and preserve its treasure. And no streams flowed into it. Even the mighty heads of the Westron Mountains, now no more than a league distant, sent their rivers of rainfall and snowmelt down into the Land by other routes. Instead Glimmermere was fed by hidden springs arising as if in secret from the deep gutrock of the Land.

The surface of the water also was as Linden remembered it: as calm and pure as a mirror, reflecting the hills and the measureless sky perfectly; oblivious to distress. Yet she had not been here for ten long years, and she found now that her human memory had failed to retain the lake’s full vitality, its untrammelled and untarnishable lucid purity. Remembering Glimmermere without percipience to refresh her recall, she had been unable to preserve its image undimmed. Now she was shocked almost breathless by the crystalline abundance and promise of the waters.

Taken by the sight, she began to jog down the hillside. She knew how cold the water would be: she had been chilled to the core when Covenant had called her into the lake. And now there was no desert sun to warm her when she emerged. But she also knew that the cold was an inherent aspect of Glimmermere’s power to cleanse; and she did not hesitate. Covenant and Jeremiah had been returned to her, but she no longer knew them-or herself. When she reached the edge of the lake, she dropped the Staff of Law unceremoniously to the grass; tugged off her boots and socks, and flung them aside; stripped away her grass-stained pants as well as her shirt as if by that means she could remove her mortality; and plunged headlong into the tonic sting of memory and Earthpower.

In the instant of her dive, she saw that she cast no reflection on the water. Nothing of her interrupted Glimmermere’s reiteration of its protective hills and the overarching heavens. The clustered rocks around the deep shadow of the lake’s bottom looked sharp and near enough to break her as soon as she struck the surface. But she knew that she was not in danger. She remembered well that Glimmermere’s sides were almost sheer, and its depths were unfathomable.

Then she went down into a fiery cold so fierce that it seemed to envelop her in liquid flame.

That, too, was as she remembered it: inextricable from her happiness with Covenant; whetted with hope. Nevertheless its incandescence drove the breath from her lungs. Before she could name her hope, or seek for it, she was forced gasping to the surface.

For a brief time, no more than a handful of heartbeats, she splashed and twisted as if she were dancing. But she was too human to remain in the lake: not alone, while Covenant’s recalled love ached within her. Scant moments after she found air, she swam to the water’s edge and pulled herself naked up onto the steep grass. There she rested in spite of the wet cold and the chill of spring, giving herself time to absorb, to recognise, Glimmermere’s effects.

Closing her eyes, she used every other aspect of her senses to estimate what had become of her.