Stephen Donaldson - Fatal Revenant

But he had misinterpreted her clenched frown, her deep consternation. She had forgotten nothing: his prohibition against contact held her as if she had been locked in the manacles of the ur-viles. Nevertheless her attention was focused on Covenant. The smaller changes in him seemed less comprehensible than her son’s profound restoration.

Covenant nodded absently. “Glimmermere,” he observed. “I’m pretty damn strong, but I can’t fight that .” His tongue slurred the edges of his words. “Reality will snap back into place. Then were all doomed.”

Was he-?

In a flat voice, a tone as neutral as she could make it, Linden asked, “What are you drinking?”

Covenant peered into his flagon. “This?” He took a long swallow, then set the flagon back in his lap. “Springwine. You know, I actually forgot how good it tastes. I haven’t been”- he grimaced- “physical for a long time.” Then he suggested, “You should try it. It might help you relax. You’re so tense it hurts to look at you.”

Jeremiah started to giggle; stopped himself sharply.

Linden stepped to the edge of the table, bent down to a pitcher that smelled of treasure-berries and beer. The liquid looked clear, but its fermentation was obvious. Somehow the people of the Land had used the juice of aliantha to make an ale as refreshing as water from a mountain spring.

The Ramen believed that No servant of Fangthane craves or will consume aliantha. The virtue of the berries is too potent.

Facing Covenant again, she said stiffly, “You’re drunk.”

He shrugged, grimacing again. “Hellfire, Linden. A man’s got to unwind once in a while. With everything I’m going through right now, I’ve earned it.

“Anyway,” he added, “Jeremiah’s had as much as I have-“

“I have not,” retorted Jeremiah cheerfully.

“-and he’s not drunk,” Covenant continued. “Just look at him.” As if to himself, he muttered, “Maybe when he swallows it ends up in his other stomach. The one where he’s still Foul’s prisoner.”

Linden shook her head. Covenant’s behaviour baffled her. For that very reason, however, she grew calmer. His strangeness enabled her to reclaim a measure of the professional detachment with which she had for years listened to the oblique ramblings of the psychotic and the deranged: dissociated observations, warnings, justifications, all intended to both conceal and expose underlying sources of pain. She did not suddenly decide that Covenant was insane: she could not. He was too much himself to be evaluated in that way. But she began to hear him as if from a distance. As if she had erected a wall between him and her denied anguish-or had hidden her distress in a room like the secret place where her access to wild magic lurked.

Her tone was deliberately impersonal as she replied, “You said that you wanted to talk to me. Are you in any condition to explain things?”

“What,” Covenant protested, “you think a little alcohol can slow me down? Linden, you’re forgetting who I am. The keystone of the Arch of Time, remember? I know everything. Or I can, if I make the effort.”

He seemed to consider the air, trying to choose an example. Then he turned his smeared gaze toward her again.

“You’ve been to Glimmermere. And you’ve talked to Esmer. Him and something like a hundred ur-viles and Waynhim. Tell me. Why do you think they’re here? I don’t care what he said. He was just trying to justify himself. What do you think’?”

Disturbed by his manner, Linden kept her reactions to herself. Instead of answering, she said cautiously, “I have no idea. He took me by surprise. I don’t know how to think about it.”

Covenant snorted. “Don’t let him confuse you. It’s really pretty simple. He likes to talk about ‘aid and betrayal,’ but with him it’s mostly betrayal. Listening to him is a waste of time.”

While Covenant spoke, Jeremiah took his racecar from the waistband of his pajamas and began to roll the toy over and around the fingers and palm of his halfhand as if he were practicing a conjuring trick; as if he meant to make the car vanish like a coin from the hand of a magician.

Covenant’s awareness of her encounter with Esmer startled Linden; but she clung to her protective detachment. You know what he said to me?”

You must be the first to drink of the EarthBlood. Did Covenant understand what Esmer meant?

“Probably,” Covenant drawled. “Most of it, anyway. But it’s better if you tell me.”

He was Thomas Covenant: she did not question that. But she did not know how to trust him now. Carefully she replied, He said that the ur-viles and Waynhim want to serve me.”

“How?” Suddenly he was angry. “By joining up with all those Demondim? Hell and blood, Linden. Use your brain. They were created by the Demondim, for God’s sake. Even the Waynhim can’t forget that, no matter how hard they try. They were created evil. And the ur-viles have been Foul’s servants ever since they met him.”

“They made Vain,” she countered as if she were speaking to one of her patients. Without the ur-viles, her Staff of Law would not exist.

And you think that’s a good thing?” Covenant demanded. “Sure, you stopped the Sunbane. But it would have faded out on its own after a while. It needed the Banefire. And since then mostly what that thing you insist on carrying around has done is make my job a hell of a lot harder.

“Damn it, Linden, if you hadn’t taken my ring and made that Staff, I would have been able to fix everything ages ago. I could have stopped time around Foul right where he was when you left the Land. Then Kastenessen would still be stuck in his Durance, and the skurj would still be trapped, and Kevin’s Dirt wouldn’t exist, and Foul wouldn’t have been able to find that chink in Joan’s mind, and we wouldn’t have caesures and Demondim and ur-viles and Esmer and the bloody IIIearth Stone to worry about. Not to mention some of the other powers that have noticed what’s happening here and want to take advantage of it.

“Hellfire, I know you like that Staff. You’re probably even proud of it. But you have no idea what it’s costing me.” He glanced over at Jeremiah. “Or your son.”

Jeremiah nodded without raising his eyes from the racecar tumbling in his halfhand.

“What do you think I’m doing here?” Covenant finished. “I’m still trying to clean up your mess.”

Linden flinched in spite of her self-discipline. He held her responsible-? She wanted to protest, But you said-!

In her dreams, he had told her, You need the Staff of Law.

And through Anele, he had urged her to find him. I can’t help you unless you find me.

Yet he was the one who had found her.

“It’s awful, Mom,” Jeremiah said softly as if he were talking to his car. “There aren’t any words for what it feels like. Words aren’t strong enough. The Despiser is ripping me to pieces. And I can’t stop him. Covenant can’t stop him. He just keeps hurting me and laughing like he’s never had so much fun.”

Oh, my son!

Linden bit her lip and forced herself to face Covenant again. She was beginning to understand why he had warned her to be wary of him. The man whom she had loved would never have held her accountable for consequences which she could not have foreseen.

Nevertheless the discrepancy between her recollections and his attitudes helped her to regain her balance. In a moment, the impact of his recrimination was gone; hidden away. She would consider it later. For the present, she stood her ground.

As she had so often with her patients, she responded to his ire by trying to alter the direction of their interaction, attempting to slip past his defences. She hoped to surprise some revelation from him which he could or would not offer voluntarily.