Stephen Donaldson - Fatal Revenant

“Joan’s using wild magic. And she’s out of her mind, you know that. God, Covenant, it seems to me that just one Fall ought to be enough to undo the whole world. But she’s made dozens of them by now. Or hundreds.” Ever since Linden had restored her wedding band. “How can the Arch survive that? How can you? Why hasn’t everybody and everything that’s ever existed already been sucked away?”

Surely Anele, a handful of ur-viles, and Kevin’s Watch were not the only victims of Joan’s agony?

Covenant lifted his unmaimed hand and peered at it; extended his fingers as though he meant to enumerate a list of reasons. But then he appeared to forget what he was doing, or to lose interest in it. Returning his hand to his lap and the handle of his flagon, he answered dully, “Because the Law of Time is still fighting to protect itself. Because I’m still fighting to protect it. And because caesures have limits. They wouldn’t be so easy to make if the Laws of Death and Life hadn’t been damaged. Before that, everything was intact. So there’s a kind of barrier in the Land’s past. It restricts how far back the caesures tend to go.

“Joan’s too far gone to know what she’s doing. She can’t sustain anything. So most of her caesures don’t last very long. If they aren’t kept going by some other power-like the Demondim-they fade pretty quickly. And they don’t usually reach as far back as the Sunbane. That gives the Law of Time a chance to reassert itself. It gives me room to work.”

Covenant’s air of drowsiness grew as he continued, “Plus her caesures are localised. They only cover a certain amount of ground, and they move around. She’s too crazy to make them do anything else. Wherever they are at a particular moment, every bit of time in that precise spot happens at once. For the last three millennia, anyway. But since they’re moving, they give those bits of time back as fast as they pick up new ones.”

Abruptly his head dropped, and Linden feared for a moment that he had fallen asleep. But then he seemed to rally. His head jerked up. He widened his eyes to the firelight; blinked them several times; stared at her owlishly.

“But the real reason,” he continued, “is what the Lords called ‘the necessity of freedom.”‘ For some reason, he sounded bitter. “Wild magic is only as powerful as the will, the determination, of the person it belongs to. The rightful white gold wielder.

“In the wrong hands, it’s still pretty strong. Which is why you can create Falls with it”- the statement was a sneer- “and why Foul was able to kill me. But it doesn’t really come alive until the person it belongs to chooses to use it. Foul might not even have been able to kill me if I hadn’t given him my ring voluntarily. And I did not choose to destroy the Arch.” Covenant’s tone suggested that now he wondered why he had bothered to choose at all. “Since he wasn’t the rightful wielder, the power he unleashed only made me stronger.

“Well,” he snorted, “Joan is the rightful wielder of her ring. But she isn’t choosing anything. All she’s really trying to do is scream. Turiya has her. He feeds her pain. But that only aggravates her craziness. He can’t make her choose because she’s already lost. Oh, he could force her to hand her ring to someone else. But it wouldn’t be her choice. And the ring wouldn’t belong to whoever got it.”

Covenant drank again, and his manner resumed its drift toward somnolence. For what Foul really wants, Joan and her ring are pretty much useless. They’re just a gambit. A ploy. The danger is real enough, but it won’t set him free. Or help him accomplish any of his other goals. He’s counting on you for that. It’s all about manipulating you so you’ll serve him.”

The idea made Linden wince. His other goals-Through Anele, the Despiser had suggested that he did not merely wish to escape the Arch of Time. There is more, he had said, but of my deeper purpose I will not speak.

“Serve him how?” Fear which she could not suppress undermined her voice.

“You’ll have to ask him ,” Covenant said through a yawn. “He hides from me in all kinds of ways. I can’t tell where he’s keeping Jeremiah, or where he is himself, or what he thinks you’re going to do. All I know for sure is, the danger’s real. And I can stop it.”

In spite of her concern, Linden recognised her cue: she was supposed to ask him how. He had blamed her for everything that had happened since she had formed her Staff. Now he would offer to ease her guilt and responsibility.

She assumed that he wanted his ring. How else could he possibly intervene in the Despiser’s designs? Surely he needed his instrument of power? It belonged to him.

Like Joan, he could not exert wild magic without his ring.

With it a master may form perfect works and fear nothing.

But she was not ready for that. Not yet. She could not rid herself of the sensation that he was speaking off key; that his attitude or his drinking obliquely falsified whatever he said. And the fact that he had not already asked for his ring-or demanded it-troubled her. So far, he had given her explanations which made sense. Nevertheless, instinctively, she suspected him of misdirection. In spite of her relief, her apprehension was growing.

Instead of following his lead, she said, “Wait a minute. You’re getting ahead of me. I think I understand why the caesures haven’t destroyed everything. But are you also saying that they won’t ? That they can’t break the Arch?”

Covenant’s head lolled toward Jeremiah. “I told you she was going to do this,” he remarked. “Didn’t I tell you she was going to do this?”

Jeremiah grinned at him. “That’s my Mom.”

Nodding, the Unbeliever faced Linden again. “You’re just like I remember you. You never let anything go.”

He spread his hands as if to show her that he was helpless. “Oh, eventually they’ll destroy everything. You’ve been through two of them now. You know what they’re like. Part of what they do is take you inside the mind of whoever created them. You’ve been in Joan’s mind. You should ask that callow puppy who follows you around what it’s like being in your mind.”

Before she could react to his sarcasm, he added, “Another part, the part that feels like hornets burrowing into your skin, is time itself. It’s all those broken moments being stirred together.

“And another part-the part that’s just freezing cold emptiness forever-” Covenant made a visible effort to appear earnest. “Linden, that’s the future. The eventual outcome of Joan’s craziness. Even that probably won’t bring down the Arch. But there won’t be anything left inside it. No Land, no Earth, no beings of any kind, no past or present or future. No life . Just freezing cold emptiness that can’t escape to consume eternity because it’s still being contained.”

Involuntarily Linden shivered. She remembered too well the featureless wasteland within the Falls, gelid and infinitely unrelieved. She herself had created an instance of that future-and she could not claim the excuse that she had not known what she was doing.

“All right,” she acceded. “I think I understand.” Instead of probing him further, she gave him the question that he had tried to prompt from her. “But how can you stop any of this? You said that you know what to do. What do you mean?”

Wild magic was the keystone of the Arch of Time. How could he step out of his position within its structure-exist in two places at once - and wield power, any kind of power, without causing that structure to crumble?