Stephen Donaldson - Fatal Revenant

Another faint shudder undermined the stone, but she did not lose her balance.

If she severed the bond between her son and Covenant, Covenant might become honest. But she did not intend to rely on that slim possibility.

If you err in this, your losses will be greater than you are able to conceive.

“Damnation, Linden.” Covenant still spoke calmly, although he crowded after her with an air of desperation. “It isn’t that simple. What makes you think I can stand by while you use the Power of Command? You’re the only one of us who’s real enough to survive forces on that scale.”

He and Jeremiah pushed toward her. Yet they did not risk coming near enough to be touched by her fire. Upheld by the Staff, she took one step after another.

She could feel the crushing mass of the mountain lean over her. It seemed to hold its breath as though it awaited her decision; her actions. You serve a purpose not your own, and have no purpose. That may have been true earlier. It was not true now.

The intensity in the air increased. It exceeded Linden’s ability to measure its increments-and went on increasing. The untrammelled might of the EarthBlood accumulated at her back.

“I’m not so sure,” she retorted, still pretending ire which she did not feel. “You’re part of the Arch of Time. There’s nothing you can’t do.”

She had seen Thomas Covenant become a being of incarnate wild magic. Even the imponderable capabilities of the Elohim would be too weak to contain him. He could have brushed aside their interference. If he feared them, he had some other reason.

“Hellfire!” he countered more hotly. “That isn’t how it works. Right now, I’m as mortal as you are. You’ve got my ring. You’ve even got your damn Staff. I’ve got nothing. And your kid has less than that.

“When I was here before”- he lowered his voice again- “I had my ring. That’s the only reason I wasn’t wiped off the face of the Earth when Elena summoned Kevin. Without it, I’m vulnerable . Why do you think I had to let the Theomach push me around? Why do you think I’ve been worried about the Elohim ? While I’m in two places at once, two different kinds of reality, I’m practically crippled.”

Linden took another step backward, and another, holding the Staff of Law alight. She could not gain what she needed by any form of argument or persuasion. Through Anele, Covenant had told her, I can’t help you unless you find me. Then he had ridden into Revelstone with her son on the strength of his own will? No. Either the being who had spoken to her days ago had deliberately misled her, or the man who stood before her now was false in ways that exceeded her imagination.

“Maybe that’s true,” she muttered through her teeth. “Maybe it isn’t. I really don’t care.” If her son had let her touch him, she might not have been able to go on lying. But he and Covenant gave her nothing which would have compelled her to tell the truth. “I only care about Jeremiah. I’m going to save him. The Land is your problem.”

He should have known that she was lying. He and Jeremiah both should have known.

Then the tunnel expanded into a widening like a cul-de-sac; and at once, every nerve in her body recognised that she had reached the source of the EarthBlood. Covenant and Jeremiah might not attempt to rush her through the flame of the Staff, but she could not be sure. She trusted nothing. Facing the rill, she turned sideways so that she could glance into the end of the passage without losing sight of her companions.

At the back of the cave, a rude plane of stone as black as obsidian or ebony protruded like the exposed face of a lode from the surrounding granite. Peering at it, Linden blinked furiously, strove to clear her sight. The dark wet rock appeared to shimmer: its sharpness and stark purity overwhelmed her eyes. Through the blur, she seemed to see a facet of weakness in the substance of reality, a place of distortion where the tangible rock and the possibilities of Earthpower merged.

From the whole surface of the plane seeped the gravid liquid of the EarthBlood. Trickling down the face of the lode, it gathered in a shallow trough before it flowed thickly away down the length of the tunnel.

There, Linden thought in wonder and terror: there was the source of the Power of Command. In that trough, the concentration of Earthpower was so extreme that it seemed to fray the fabric of her existence, pulling her apart strand by strand.

She would have to drink-

“Mom!” Jeremiah cried, pleading with her. “ I don’t want that. I don’t want you to rescue me if the Land is still at Foul’s mercy! My life isn’t worth it. ”

“Hell and blood, Linden!” Covenant shouted. “You don’t have to do this! Weren’t you listening to the Viles? The Power of Command can’t touch wild magic, and whoever holds my ring doesn’t need the Power!

“For God’s sake! If you can’t do anything else, at least give me back my ring! Give me a chance to save the Land!”

For a moment, Linden hesitated; questioned herself. Could she carry out her intent without the EarthBlood, using only the Staff? Both Covenant and Jeremiah feared the fire of Law, that was obvious. But she did not believe that she possessed enough sheer power. No flame of hers would be more potent than the air of the tunnel-and her companions breathed it without wavering. She could not gain what she needed with the Staff alone. And she could not wield the Staff and Covenant’s ring together. She had done so once, when she had unmade the Sunbane. But then she had been insubstantial, already half translated away from the Land. She had occupied a transitional dimension, a place of pure spirit; supernal rather than human. And Lord Foul’s frantic exertion of wild magic had opened the way for her; attuned her to a power which was not hers by right. Here the contradictory theurgies of white gold and the Staff would destroy her.

Either alone will transcend your strength, as they would that of any mortal. Together they will wreak only madness, for wild magic defies all Law.

She had made her decision. The time had come act on it.

Trust yourself.

I want to repay some of this pain.

In the end, she placed more faith in her dreams than in Covenant or her son.

Be cautious of love. It misleads. There is a glamour upon it which binds the heart to destruction.

“Jeremiah, honey,” she said through her determination and woe. “I love you. Try to forgive me.”

Before her companions-or her own fears-could intervene, Linden Avery the Chosen stooped to the trough and drank the Blood of the Earth.

Then she jerked erect, stood rigid as stone, while utter Earthpower reified in liquid transformed her mouth and throat and heart-her entire body-to exquisite unendurable fire.

Now it was not only the Staff of Law that shed flame: her whole being had become a conflagration. She burned like an auto da fe, as if she had been ignited by the sun’s inferno. Yet her flesh was not consumed, and her only pain was the agony of an intolerable exaltation. The EarthBlood raised her so far above her limitations and alarms that the discrepancy threatened to incinerate her, not because it was wrong or hurtful, but because she was inadequate to bear it.

If she did not express her incandescence at once, utter her Command, the puissance she had swallowed would sear her to the marrow of her bones.

All you have to do is want it -

Enfolded from head to foot in unanswerable fire, she turned to her companions.

She could see them clearly now. Flames had burned away her tears; her weakness. Covenant stared at her with his mouth open as if he were enraptured by eagerness and dread; and the red embers which filled his eyes shone so hotly that they fumed in the viscid air. Jeremiah had thrown his head back as if he were howling. In his halfhand, he clutched his racecar; held it out toward her as though it might ward off an attack.