And so, Linden Avery waits in the wake of Stave’s declaration…or maybe it’s more like an affirmation…that he intends walk the path Linden has chosen, for she is The Chosen. Knowing the absoluteness of the Haruchai, it stands to reason that this will not be well received by the Masters. On the contrary, it will have an outcome that at this point cannot be fully comprehended.She could not imagine what the Masters would do now. But their accumulated judgment had a tangible force which seemed to bear down upon her from the sides of the Close, as heavy as Revelstone’s unillumined rock.
It felt like animosity.
Linden, with Liand and Mahrtiir at her side, approaches Stave and bows deeply to him. Her mind flooded with questions and implications. But she knows that now is not the time for such inquiries. Instead…
Alright, now for the past 30 some odd years I have been really irked by these Haruchai, but what happens next is the topper on the sundae in my opinion up to this point. They are rigid and blind. This utter resolve that they are superior and right all the time is enough to make me want to just scream. Just who do they think they are???? Didn’t they learn anything from Bannor or the events at Coercri??? I guess I will never understand them, maybe because I know how such absolute thinking leaves one’s mind closed.…”Thank you. I owe you more than I can ever repay.
You’ve already done so much for me. You’ve been true—“ Her voice broke momentarily. “I can’t even begin to describe how glad I am—“
In this place, she could not go further. Handir had not yet pronounced judgment upon her.
Dispassionately, as if he had no interest in her gratitude, Stave replied, “You are Linden Avery The Chosen. The Ranyhyn have taught me that I cannot refuse your service.”
“Still”, she countered, smiling sadly, “I hope that someday you’ll be sure you did the right thing.”
Because she was determined not to weep, she bowed again, as deeply as before. Then she turned toward the Voice of the Masters.
There she froze. The merciless clarity in his eyes chilled her: it seemed to settle like frost on her bones. She had to swallow a mouthful of dread before she could speak.
Awkwardly she asked, “So what’s it going to be? Are we on the same side?” His gaze covered her with rime. She had to cling to the Staff’s warmth to keep her voice from shaking. “Will you let me have Anele? Will you give me your help?”
“How will the Sleepless Ones refuse?” put in Mahrtiir. His tone held a sting of asperity. “Stave has confirmed the will of the Ranyhyn. Naught else signifies.”
But Handir did not choose to heed the Manethrall. Instead he replied, “Stand aside, Linden Avery. Another matter requires precedence. I will reply when it has been addressed.”
Stepping back, Linden moves out of Handir’s way. Three other Humbled move to the Master’s side. Galt approaches Stave, kicks him in the chest. Stave makes no effort to defend himself, takes it. Mahrtiir, with Bhapa and Pahni, begin to rush forward but Linden stops them.
Bah! More Haruchai self-righteousness. Pass judgment…”This is between them.” She understood Galt’s attack. Long ago she had watched the Haruchai pass judgment on Cail. She had feared that their violence would kill him. “Stave has to do this. You know how he feels about help.”
Clyme was next. He leapt high in the air and drove his elbow down into Stave’s shoulder, nearly sending him to his knees. Clyme withdrew and Branl came forward, attacking at once, punching Stave on his blind side against his scar.
Oh for sweet mercy’s sake!! I have no respect for these “Masters”. This time, they have really gone too far. From one crazy extreme (the Vow) to another (abolishing Earthpower and all good sense).Stave’s head rocked as if he had been clubbed: he barely kept his balance. But he did not repay the blow. The flat stare of his right eye suggested an acceptance more profound than resignation.
{snip}
Moving slowly, the Voice of the Masters stepped in front of Stave.
Linden’s restraint broke. “Oh, come on!” she snapped, although she knew that Stave did not desire her intervention, and would not approve. “How much of your self-righteousness do you think he can stand?” (my opinion exactly)
Neither Handir nor Stave answered her. But the Voice of the Masters may have been tired of her objections. Instead of probing mentally, he addressed Stave aloud.
“You have set yourself against the will of the Masters, when that will has not yet been decided. Indeed, you have endeavored to impose your will upon us, shaming us with your words and your example. But the Masters are not shamed. We will not be shamed. (you should be, Handir…you should be)
“We will consider your words and your example when we are ready to determine our path. But we will no longer heed you. Henceforth you are severed from the Masters, as from all of the Haruchai. When the right of our disapproval has been completed, no hand will be raised against you. If you speak as I do now, you will be answered. But you are excluded from the true speech of the Haurchai and if you call out you will not be heard. Nor will you be permitted to return to your home among the mountains. There will be no place for you. You have declared your allegiance. Now you must abide its outcome.
“This is my word. I will not alter it.”
Amen to that.Like the Humbled (boy is that ever a miscue), he struck only once. Unlike them, however, he used just the palm of his hand. And his blow seemed easy and fluid, hardly more than a light thrust. Yet Stave burst backward as though he had been kicked by a Ranyhyn. He tumbled through the air; slammed helplessly to the rough stone. For a heartbeat or two, he lay motionless.
Before Linden could start toward him, however, he raised his head. When he had braced his hands on the floor, he climbed slowly to his feet. Bright blood pulsed from the corner of his mouth as he resumed his stance. She could not imagine where he found the strength to remain standing.
The Voice of the Masters held Stave’s gaze for a long moment. Then he turned to Linden. “Be content,” he told her stolidly. “The rite has been completed.”
Blood splashed the front of Stave’s tunic, staining the ochre fabric with darkness. He did not deign to wipe it away.
“You’re wrong,” Linden panted. “It’s not over.” She needed all of her resolve to withhold the fire from the Staff. “It’ll never be over. Someday you’re going to understand that you’ve made a terrible mistake.”
Yet, with the “rite” completed, Handir refuses to speak anymore of what just occurred. Instead he informs Linden that Haruchai scouts were, at that moment, being chased by a horde of Vile-Spawn (I love that) and with them are two strangers (hmmmmmmmm…who could they be????) toward Revelstone. Handir then releases Anele to Linden and her companions, telling her that all other matters between them will need to remain unresolved at this time. He then leaves the Close to watch the approach of the scouts. Linden rushes to aid Stave…
Oh Stave. Like I said, I will never understand these people. How can he bear it??…”Hurts of the flesh have no significance. The severance from my people is a deeper wound, beyond your succor.” His eye held her stricken gaze without flinching. “In their place, I would have done as they have.”
Stave leads Linden and the others out of the Close.
This paragraph, though seemingly just a descriptive transition from one event to the next, stood out to me like a beacon. Trell?? Wounds?? Something more essential than lamp oil and torches were being consumed?? Not only a flashback reference, but possibly a foreshadow one as well…As she began the ascent to the entryway, Linden’s sense of loss grew. She felt that she was treading across Trell’s pain; that her boot heels wounded the twisted stone. When she reached the entrance, her mouth had gone dry; and the air beyond the chamber smelled of smoke and ashes, as is something more essential than lamp oil and torches were being consumed.
Stave leads them through the halls of Revelstone. When Liand tries to express his feelings of guilt for doubting Stave and thinking ill of him, Stave replies…
Stave continues to lead them down the passages of Revelstone, and Linden feels there is no end to them. However, at last they come to the foot of a winding stairwell, and there waiting for them is the Mahdoubt.”We are all shamed, you no more than I”—he glanced at Linden—“and neither more than the Chosen, who should not have been subjected to the disapproval of the Masters.
“Yet you need have no fear of me. I have claimed a place at the side of the Chosen, and will not withdraw from it.”
“I do not doubt you,” Mahrtiir put in gruffly. “You have won my esteem as well, Stave of the Haruchai. The Ramen will never again err by demeaning you.”
Stave nodded, but made no other reply.
I have claimed—Again Linden fought back tears. She feared that she would never be done with weeping. She had only been in the Land for a few days, and already she needed so much forgiveness—
Even Anele had refused to let her heal him.
What a mystery she is…
Be cautious of love. It misleads. There is a glamour upon it which binds the heart to destruction.Still shadows seemed to trail about the Mahdoubt like wisps of fog. But then she faced Linden with her startling eyes; and at once every scrap and tatter of obscurity dissipated, evaporated by her oblique warmth. Now she became more vivid to Linden’s health-sense than any of her companions; more distinct than the stone of the halls. The Mahdoubt’s presence shone in the dimness, lambent with abundance and implications. She appeared to command a personal dimension which was at once more ordinary and more numinous than any other place in the Keep.
Apparently Mahrtiir had no encountered the Mahdoubt before. He started forward to place himself between Linden and the older woman. But Liand caught his arm and explained quickly, “She is the Mahdoubt. She serves Revelstone. And she has cared for us kindly.”
Mahrtiir peered through the dimness. “She serves?” He sounded surprised. “Yet she is—“ He hesitated. “There is that about her which—“ Then he shook his head. “Perhaps I am mistaken.” To the Mahdoubt, he added, “I crave your pardon. My concerns have misled me.”
Stave said nothing. However, he bowed to the older woman as he had to Linden, acknowledging her worth in spite of his injuries.
The Mahdoubt ignored all of the men. “The lady is thirsty,” she huffed as if to reprove some fault in Revelstone’s hospitality—or in Linden. “She neglects her own needs. Is the Mahdoubt pleased? She is not. Oh, assuredly. Yet it is her burden and her gift to supply care where it is found lacking.”
From within her miswoven robe she produced a flagon of water which she thrust unceremoniously at Linden.
As Linden accepted it, the Mahdoubt continued. “The lady must not delay. Peril awaits her. Peril and pain, most assuredly. Yet the Mahdoubt will hinder her a moment. A little moment.”
The woman stepped closer. “Heed her, lady,” she urged, whispering. “The Masters know not what they do.” She appeared to believe that Stave and the others could not hear her. “Nor does the lady.” She sighed lugubriously. “Nor does the Mahdoubt, alas.”
Then she breathed with an air of intensity, “This, however, she knows assuredly. Be cautious of love. It misleads. There is a glamour upon it which binds the heart to destruction.”
Linden stared at her. “What do you mean? I don’t understand.”
The Mahdoubt did not answer. Instead she turned and walked away. As she moved, she appeared to wrap herself in shadows so that she slipped from sight almost at once.
Be cautious of love?
“Strange—“ Mahrtiir murmured, gazing after the woman. “For a moment—a moment only—I seemed to see another in her place. Yet the seeming was brief. It mystifies me.”
“Stave--?” Linden asked without knowing how to put her question into words.
“She is the Mahdoubt,” he replied stolidly. “She serves Revelstone. Naught else is certain of her.”
Find me
Remember, I am dead.
Stave leads them up the staircase to a balcony over looking the courtyard above the inner gates. There, after crossing a wooden bridge to reach the walled projection on the other side, they looked out beyond the Keep’s Plateau to the bare plain. And there they saw the horde of Vile-Spawn, spouting green from the Ill-Earth Stone, chasing or herding, the small band of scouts o horseback toward the Keep. And with the scouts were the two “strangers”. But, they are not strangers to Linden at all. Falling to her knees and dropping the Staff, she realizes who they are.
And to quote Mr. Donaldson himself in an email response he sent me requarding a GI comment I posted after reading the first snippet of Chapter 1 in “Fatal Revanant”…One was Jeremiah: her son beyond question. As the Master’s mount pounded the dirt, the waved his arms, urging the horse to run faster, and shouted encouragement to the other riders.
Even from so far away, Linden could see that his eyes were afire with excitement.
The other stranger was unmistakably Thomas Covenant.
Here ends
The Runes of the Earth
Book one of
“The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant”
The story continues in Book Two
Fatal Revanant
Hold on, it’s going to be quiet a ride.
I’m ready….
)
