Stephen Donaldson - Fatal Revenant

Shivering in the cold-at this elevation, the chill resembled shards of glass-she gazed through her steaming breath toward Melenkurion Skyweir and tried to imagine how she might navigate the complex ramifications of her suspicion and grief.

The coming crisis would end her life. If other outcomes were possible, she could not see them.

Her companions were too eager to pause for long. “We should go,” Jeremiah murmured to Covenant. “She lost her supplies back there.” Among the Viles. “She’s hungry and thirsty, and it’s going to get worse. We should try to do this quickly.”

Covenant nodded at once. “Linden,” he said, peremptory with anticipation, “come on. You can pull yourself together later. We’ll have time to talk soon enough.”

Neither he nor Jeremiah felt the cold. They were oblivious to the weaknesses which defined her. Yet she seemed to hear real concern in her son’s voice, and so she did not hesitate. After all, he was right. Covenant’s strange powers could warm her, but they did not spare her from hunger and thirst and weariness. She was already shivering. Soon she would lose more of her frayed strength. And searching for the Blood of the Earth might require hours or days.

Obediently she moved to stand between her companions while Jeremiah and Covenant summoned their eldritch doorway.

Afterward, as she staggered to regain her balance, she found that her son and her former lover had brought her to the centre of Melenkurion Skyweir’s plateau. They were halfway between the towering plunge of the cliffs and the jagged rim of the plateau; at the midpoint of the wide altar. Jeremiah’s collection of torn branches and twigs had landed with a clatter nearby. As always, he and Covenant had stepped away so that she would not touch them inadvertently, either with her hand or with the Staff.

Starving for stability, Linden lowered herself to her knees, then placed the Staff beside her and braced her hands on the bare stone. The granite here was free of ice and snow: the entire plateau appeared to have been swept clean. She thought that if she extended her health-sense toward the mountain’s depths, she might draw some of its knowledge and permanence into herself. Perhaps she would find a form of courage among Melenkurion Skyweir’s fundamental truths.

For a moment, she felt only cold through her palms and fingers, through the knees of her stained jeans; cold as irrefragable as the stone, and as unyielding. But then her percipience grew sharper, and she realised that the chill, the reified frost, was not as severe as she had expected it to be. Somewhere far beneath her, beyond the range of her senses, ran a source of warmth.

The Blood of the Earth: Earthpower in its purest and most absolute incarnation. Its implied presence seemed to throb like a pulse in the veins among the mountain’s roots.

As she attuned her perceptions to the rock, however, she realised that she was wrong, not about the stone’s comparative warmth, but about its pulse. The beating deep under her hands and knees was not the rhythm of Melenkurion Skyweir’s heart. It was a tremor of strain, the slow tectonic grinding of imponderable pressures so distant that they were barely palpable. Somewhere far beneath the plateau and the immense peak, irresistible forces were rising. Her nerves caught the first dim elusive hints of a mounting cataclysm, a convulsion which would alter everything.

The sensation reminded her of the damage which she had felt in Kevin’s Watch when she had first arrived in the Land. But the subcutaneous tremors here were not the result of imposed harm or unnatural powers. Rather they were an expression of the Earth’s internal necessities, as natural as the world’s slow respiration, and as potentially destructive as a hurricane, an avalanche, the calving of icebergs.

Clutching at the Staff, Linden struggled to her feet. When Covenant and Jeremiah turned to look at her, she announced unsteadily. “There’s going to be an earthquake.”

Covenant nodded. “I know.” His unconcern was plain. “And it’ll be massive. It’ll split the Skyweir from top to bottom. Right where we’re standing, there’ll be a crevice all the way down to the Black River. Something like four thousand feet. When he gets here, Damelon is going to call this place Rivenrock. And the mountain will have two crests. The quake will crack it along a seam in the stone. It’ll look like two mountains shoved together.

No one in the Land will even know it happened. Except Wildwood, of course-and he won’t care. Once Earthroot fills up, the flow of water will return to normal. He won’t be affected.” Covenant shrugged. “Oh, sure, people are going to feel the quake. Even as far away as Doriendor Corishev. But this place is so remote-No one will know the quake hit here, or what it did to the mountain. When Damelon shows up, he’ll think Melenkurion Skyweir was always split like that.

“But it won’t happen for years and years. A decade at least. We don’t need to worry about it.”

“All right.” Linden tested her perceptions and found that she believed him. The almost subliminal vibration in the stone disturbed her health-sense as if the surface under her had become subtly unreliable; but the peak’s heavy intransigence held. It might hold for a long time- “That’s a relief,” she admitted. “It makes me nervous.”

According to the Theomach, Melenkurion Skyweir could be approached safely in this time-or more safely than while High Lord Damelon searched for the mountain’s secrets.

“But Jeremiah is right,” she went on. “Without supplies,” or the use of the Staff, “I’ll be in real trouble.” She would need Covenant’s aid-or a bonfire-to survive a night exposed to the mountain winds. She was weary; deeply aggrieved. And she had no idea how long a fumbling trek into the bowels of the Skyweir might take. “Can I assume that you know the way to the EarthBlood?”

Covenant bared his teeth. “I do.” He sounded pleased with himself. “There are two of them. But we won’t use them.”

Before she could react, he explained, “One is way the hell on the other side of the mountain. The other involves getting down into Garroting Deep and then following the Black River upstream. Which naturally Wildwood won’t let us do. But in any case, both routes are bloody difficult. We could be clambering in the dark for days. And you still wouldn’t have any food”- he shrugged again- “although I’m sure we’ll find water easily enough.”

Linden held his gaze warily. “So you’re going to transport us?”

If Jeremiah did not need his wood for campfires and torches, what purpose did it serve?

Covenant’s grin widened. “Unfortunately, no. That won’t work. The Blood of the Earth is just too damn powerful. It puts out too much interference. Once we get close to it, I’m going to need every ounce of power I can muster just to keep the two of us”- he nodded toward Jeremiah- “from evaporating like steam.

“And we still have the Elohim to worry about. They don’t approve of what we’re trying to do. You haven’t stopped us yet, and they don’t know why. If they can tell we’re going in, they might lose patience with you. I don’t want to take the chance.”

Linden studied him. With an effort, she kept her voice low. “Then what are we going to do?”

Still grinning, Covenant looked at her son. “Tell her, Jeremiah. Why should I have all the fun?”

Jeremiah ducked his head as if he were embarrassed; but he, too, was grinning. The fever of his tic contradicted his obvious excitement.

“That’s what all this wood is for. It’s one of the main reasons we had to make the Viles and Wildwood fight each other. So I could get enough branches.