Stephen Donaldson - Fatal Revenant

If these women ever found their way Home, they would tell long tales about Linden’s efforts. Like the other Giants whom she had known, they relished small miracles as much as grander achievements.

When Cabledarm and Latebirth returned, they bore huge stacks of deadwood. For a moment, Cabledarm bowed over the spot where she meant to build a fire as if she were asking the grass and ground to forgive her. Then she readied a small pile of twigs and kindling, took out her pouch of tinder and stones, and began to strike sparks.

As the wood began to burn, Linden cared for Cabledarm and Latebirth with the same attentiveness that she had expended on Coldspray and her other companions.

In the west, the sun was setting among the tallest trees. Long shadows blurred by distance streaked the hillside while darkness accumulated in the margins of Salva Gildenbourne. A soothing breeze wafted like beneficence among the Hills. Pahni and Bhapa brought back an abundance of aliantha to nourish the company. And water was plentiful nearby. The stream which had led the Giants here ran eastward along the foot of the slope until it found its own course into Andelain.

Within the borders of the Land’s essential health and bounty, Rime Coldspray and her comrades formed a circle around Cabledarm’s fire and began their ritual of grief.

They were Giants: they took their time. Dusk and then night covered the hillside. Slowly stars added their cold glitter to the subdued dance of the flames. In the numinous dark, the Swordmainnir raised their voices as if they addressed Andelain and the wide heavens as well as each other.

First the Ironhand spoke sternly of “fault.” The previous night, she had accepted some responsibility for Longwrath’s condition. Now she claimed a similar blame for Scend Wavegift’s death. Certainly Latebirth had erred. She was mortal: she could be taken by surprise, or suffer mishap, as easily as any being defined by birth and death. But she had not caused Longwrath’s plight-and the deed of Wavegift’s end was his, not Latebirth’s.

Then Coldspray assumed the fault-if fault there was-for Moire Squareset, who had been slain by the skurj . Responsibility belonged to the Ironhand, whose decisions led the Swordmainnir. Like Wavegift’s, Squareset’s blood was on Coldspray’s hands or no one’s, for even Longwrath could not be held accountable. While she lived, she would both accuse and forgive herself.

When she was done, she knelt beside the fire and reached into the heart of the flames with both hands as though she sought to burn them clean.

Her flesh refused the harm of fire, but it could not refuse the pain. Her act was a deliberate immolation: in flame and willing agony, she surrendered her bereavement and remorse. This was the Giantish caamora , the articulation of their grief. In some sense, Linden understood it, although it filled her with dismay. Coldspray kept her hands in the fire while Cabledarm stoked it with more and more wood. A scream stretched the lronhand’s mouth, but she did not permit herself to voice it. The flames spoke for her.

The Ramen watched with their fists clenched and a kind of ferocity in their eyes. Long ago, their ancestors had known the Unhomed. Ramen may have witnessed a caamora : they had certainly given the story to their descendants. But millennia had passed since any Ramen had seen what transpired here. Their legends could not have prepared them for the intensity of Coldspray’s chosen excruciation.

Liand stood near Pahni, but he did not touch her. He needed his arms; needed to clasp them across his chest with all of his strength in order to contain his horror and empathy, his protests. Unlike the Ramen and Linden-and the Haruchai - he had nothing except his health-sense to help him comprehend what he was seeing.

Finally Coldspray withdrew. As she regained her feet, her arms trembled, and tears spilled from her eyes. But her hands were whole.

Cirrus Kindwind was the next to speak. In careful detail, alternately grave and humorous, she described Moire Squareset’s training and initiation among the Swordmainnir. Kindwind herself, with Onyx Stonemage and two other Giants, had been charged with developing Squareset’s skills, and she remembered those years with loving vividness. She knew Squareset’s strengths and weaknesses intimately, and she gave them all to the night.

Then she took her turn in the flames. The harsh silence of her pain and rue was so loud that Linden did not know how to bear it.

When Kindwind was done, Stormpast Galesend told similar tales of Scend Wavegift. She, too, thrust her hands into the fire. Grueburn, Bluntfist, and the rest of the Giants related their experiences with Wavegift and Squareset, their shared love and laughter, their memories of blunders and triumphs and longing. Each in turn, they offered their grief to the flames, and endured agony, and were annealed. Separately as well as together, they gave the ambergris of their woe to the dead.

But Linden turned away long before the Giants were done. She could not release her own tears and fury: they had been fused, made adamantine, by Roger’s betrayal and Jeremiah’s immeasurable suffering. She, too, yearned for a caamora - but not like this. Her heart craved an altogether different fire.

When she had gained some distance from the firelight and the Giants, she spent a while studying the vast isolation of the stars. In the expanse of the heavens, only the faintest glimmer of their mourning reached her-or each other. Yet she heeded their infinite lament. They could not burn away their loneliness without extinguishing themselves.

In that aspect of their limitless sojourn, she understood them better than she did the Giants. They calmed her as if she were in the presence of kindred spirits.

Gradually she let her attention return to Andelain, to the gentle embrace of health-and to the reasons that had compelled her here. But she did not rejoin the Giants, or listen to their stories and pain. Instead, certain of Stave’s notice, she beckoned the former Master toward her.

He came to her softly, more silent than the drifting breeze. Under the stars, he asked in a low voice. “Linden?”

It was the second time that he had called her by her given name.

His friendship touched her-and she did not want to be touched. More brusquely than she intended, she asked. “What are the Humbled going to say when they get back to Revelstone?” We will speak with one voice-What will they tell the Masters?”

Stave made a small sound that may have been a snort. “They remain uncertain. The Giants threaten the defined service of the Masters. It is their nature to do so. With tales alone, they wield power to overthrow millennia of dedication and sacrifice. Yet in all ways they merit admiration. Therefore the Humbled withhold appraisal. They will adjudge the Giants according to your deeds rather than theirs.”

Oh, good, Linden thought mordantly. That’s perfect. It galled her to think that the attitude of the Masters toward the Giants depended on her. But then she swallowed her vexation. Whatever the Humbled decided was their problem, not hers. She could not make their choices for them. She would simply have to live with the consequences.

Sighing, she said, “This is Andelain, Stave. You might think that here, at least,” if nowhere else in the Land. “it would be acceptable for the Giants to be who they are.”

“Yet Andelain is not free of peril,” he returned stolidly. “It may be that Kastenessen and the skurj cannot enter. Nonetheless the fate of the Land is the fate of Andelain as well. I do not concur with the Humbled, but I comprehend their doubt. In some measure, I share it.”

You share-? He startled her. In dozens of ways, he had declared his loyalty.