The Runes of the Earth: The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant - Book One (56 page)

Linden glared at him. “And you had to tear into him right then? You couldn't wait until you knew whether the Ranyhyn would accept him?”

Esmer's eyes flared: the muscles at the corner of his jaw knotted. “Did you not hear me?” he said through his teeth. “I am made to be what I am. Every moment of my existence is conflict and pain.”

Linden shook her head. Still he had not answered her. She did not grasp how the loathing of the
merewives
required his violence against Stave. She could see, however, that she would not get a more satisfying response. He may have told her as much as he knew of his own compulsions.

Or—the thought stung her—he may have told her the exact truth. Perhaps his heritage rode and ruled him with such cruelty that he had no choice but to act on his mothers' hatred for his father.

The idea shocked her to silence. She was intimately familiar with such legacies. Her
father had locked her in an attic with him so that she would be forced to watch him kill himself. And her mother—

No one, she wanted to insist, makes you what you are. You have to
choose.
She believed that. Nevertheless his mere proximity nauseated her.

In his case, she might be wrong.

Floundering to recover her intentions, her sense of purpose, she changed directions.

“You told the Cords you wanted to talk to me for my ‘benefit.' What earthly good do you think you can do me?”

This time, he sighed aloud. “Wildwielder, I am
Elohim
and
Haruchai,
theurgy and skill, betrayal and service. Loathing and love. I have wandered the Earth for millennia in pain, awaiting you. I have been given the knowledge of many things, and have learned more. If you ask, I will answer—while I can.”

Until his abhorrence renewed its strength.

Linden's mind reeled. Possibilities stooped through her like striking raptors. She could not hold herself upright. Involuntarily, she sagged forward and braced her elbows on her knees, clutched her thoughts between her hands.

If she asked, Esmer might explain Anele's madness. He might tell her about Kastenessen, or the
skurj,
or Kevin's Dirt. He might describe how ur-viles came to be here, when Lord Foul had striven to destroy them all.

Many things—

Hell, he might even know whether she had truly heard Covenant's voice in her dreams; or in Anele's mouth.

If you ask—

Hardly aware that she spoke aloud, she whispered, “Can you tell me where to find my son?”

Brusquely Esmer replied, “No. The Despiser is hidden from me.”

Esmer knew that she had a son. He knew that Jeremiah had been taken from her by Lord Foul.

Nevertheless his tone gave her the impression that she had wasted a question.

God in Heaven. With an effort, she fought down an impulse to ask—no, to demand—whether she and Jeremiah would ever be able to return to their own world. She knew better. The bullet hole in her shirt confirmed that she had already lost her former life permanently. Stabbed to the heart, Covenant had not eventually awakened in the woods behind Haven Farm. Nor would she.

Instead she replied harshly, “That's convenient. I wonder how many other crucial details just happen to be ‘hidden' from you.”

Then she held up her hands to forestall a response. “All right, I'll try again. Why have you been tormenting Anele? That was you on the ridge, refusing to let him talk.
And you stopped Covenant from—” A sudden clutch of grief closed her throat. She had to swallow several times before she could continue. “He's been through so much—” She meant Anele. “I need to know anything he can tell me, but you forced him to shut up.

“If you're going to answer questions, answer that one.”

Esmer's gaze seemed to wander the night impatiently, as if he no longer knew why he had insisted on speaking to her. His voice held a new asperity as he said, “I have already done so. I must sate the division of my nature. The desires of the
merewives
are compulsory, as are the passions of Cail my father. That which lies hidden within the old man displeases the Dancers of the Sea.”

“Oh, hell,” muttered Linden. “Why do they even care? They aren't exactly here, you know. And they've never had anything to do with the Land.”

As far as she knew—

Still he kept his face turned away. “Yet the woman who made them gleaned both lore and power from Kastenessen. His fate taught her the abhorrence which defines the seductions of the
merewives.
”

Again Linden received the impression that she had wasted a question; that she should have been able to deduce his answer from the things he had said earlier. That her time was running out—

At last, she found the resolve to straighten her back and raise her head so that she could look squarely at Esmer. Soon, she guessed, he would leave her to her confusion and ignorance; her useless ire. If she hoped to gain any “benefit” from his conflicted willingness, she had to do so now.

Fearfully, she asked the question on which she had half consciously decided to stake her survival—and her son's.

“All right,” she repeated roughly. “I'll try this.

“Tell me about
caesures,
Falls. What
are
they? What do they
do
?”

Without shifting his gaze, Esmer nodded. “They are flaws in time, caused and fed by wild magic.”

He sounded oddly gratified, as though this question, at least—or his ability to answer it—vindicated him in some way.

“Within them,” he explained, “the Law of Time, which requires that events transpire in sequence, and that one action must lead to another, is severed. Within them, every moment which has ever passed in their ambit as they move exists at once.”

He seemed oblivious to the way in which his words intensified the air between them. Covenant had told her that white gold fed the Falls.

“Wait a minute,” she protested. “Wait. I need to be sure I understand this. You can't mean that
I'm
doing it?”

“No,” Esmer stated as if the truth should have been obvious. “There is other white gold in the Land, a ring in the possession of a madwoman.”

Linden groaned to herself. As she had feared from the beginning, Joan must have preceded her to the Land; summoned her. Joan was responsible for the
caesures.

“She knows little of what she does,” Esmer continued, “and intends less. Yet there is savagery in her, a hunger for ruin as great as that of the Raver which torments her. As her nightmares devour her, so
caesures
devour the Land, displacing objects and beings and powers, corroding the Law of Time. That the harm is not greater—that the Law of Time has not already been shattered—is due only to the form of her madness.

“There is no
willingness
in her. She is merely haunted and broken and used. She cannot choose freely to abdicate her soul. Thus is her power restrained from utter havoc.”

Oh, Joan. For a moment, Linden could not go on. Now she knew surely that she had caused the Land's peril when she had restored Joan's ring. Her fears then had been accurate; prescient. But she had set them aside because she had not understood that wild magic might reach across the boundary between realities.

Somehow Joan's wedding band, the emblem of her weaknesses and failures, had exposed her to the Despiser. The Falls were born of her despair, her self-inflicted pain.

No wonder she had grown calmer when the ring touched her skin. Inadvertently Linden had given her an outlet for her anguish.

“I did that,” Linden murmured. “I was supposed to take care of her, but I didn't. Instead I made it possible—”

Esmer gave her one quick glance, a look full of emeralds and suffering. Sweat beaded among the shadows on his face, and his lips were pale with strain. Then he turned away once more.

Shaken, she did not immediately recognize that her nausea in his presence was growing worse; that his emanations were becoming more intense. In spite of her dismay, however, her nerves felt him clearly. He lived in endless conflict with himself; and his mothers' harsh loathing had begun to regain its force.

Trembling as if she were chilled, she forced herself to set aside her chagrin. “Are you all right?” she asked hesitantly.

“Your time is short,” retorted Esmer. “You waste me. If I do not depart soon, I will smother this
Haruchai
where he lies. Then the Ranyhyn will be lost to me forever.”

She swore to herself. It was too much. She had too many questions, and could not think quickly enough.

Trying to hurry, she said, “I'm sorry. Make it easy on yourself. Just correct me if I'm wrong.

“Anele is here,” brought forward through the millennia, “because he stumbled into a
caesure.
”

The old man had said as much. But she had not known then that the Falls were composed of severed instants. Now she guessed that within a
caesure
it might be possible to cross time; that anyone who entered a
caesure
would almost inevitably emerge somewhen else.

Esmer nodded: an angry jerk of his head.

Still guessing, Linden offered, “So did the ur-viles.”

That would explain how they had survived Lord Foul's efforts to exterminate them.

Cail's son snorted as if she had missed the point. “They did not ‘stumble.' They knew what they did. They entered the Fall to flee the Despiser. Also they sought a time when they would be needed against him.”

Linden bit her lip. “And they found it here? Now?”

“Wildwielder,” he answered, “they have found you.” Complex ire strained his voice. “It is their intent to serve you.”

Through her nausea, she saw implications of violence gather in him; possible lies. Cail's son would answer her honestly. Would the scion of
merewives
do the same?

“When you were imprisoned by the
Haruchai,
” he continued mordantly, “the ur-viles sent a storm to enable your escape. When you were endangered by
kresh,
they hastened to your aid. And when I first entered your presence, they came to ensure that you would not be harmed.

“They keep watch against me. They know who I am.”

Half sneering, he muttered, “They are puissant after their fashion. Perhaps they might withstand me. But my lore exceeds theirs. Therefore they fear me.”

Linden feared him herself.

Scrambling for some form of confirmation, reassurance, she returned to her earlier question. “But Anele? He really is the son of Sunder and Hollian? He lost the Staff of Law because he left it in his cave?”

Esmer replied with another harsh nod.

Wrapping her arms around herself, Linden finally risked naming her unspoken intent. Hugging her heart, she asked, “Could he find it again? If he went back to the past?”

Abruptly, Esmer jumped to his feet. Linden winced, afraid that he would stride out of the shelter; leave her still too ignorant to proceed. But he did not. Instead he began to articulate his tension by pacing back and forth in front of her. His head jerked as if he were arguing with himself, debating honesty and blows. A sheen of sweat lay on his cheeks.

Still he did not look at her.

“If his madness permits,” he answered between his teeth. “If he is able to remember. Or if he becomes sane.”

Anele had remembered often enough in the past.

Esmer would depart in moments: she felt that clearly. The bifurcation of his nature
was too strong for him. He would never find peace until he had used up his mothers' loathing—or burned away his father's passion.

There was so much that she wanted to know; but she could live without it. For the time being, at least—To one question, however, she positively required an answer. Otherwise she would be helpless.

“Esmer,” she urged softly, “hang on. Just one more.

“How do I do it?”

“Wildwielder?”

“How do I go back there? To the past? How do I find the Staff?”

She could do what Anele had done; enter one of the
caesures.
But Esmer had said that within them every moment existed simultaneously. How could she sort her way through so much time? How could she navigate every possibility of three and a half thousand years?

“For you all things are possible.” He spread his hands in a gesture too rough to be a shrug. “You are the Wildwielder.”

Then he protested, “But do you comprehend that we speak of
Law
? Of sequence and causality which must not be broken? If the past is altered, the Arch of Time itself is threatened. Once rent, it can never be made whole.”

“So I'll have to be careful.” She would not let him sway her. “If the Staff is lost, then it hasn't been used. It hasn't affected anything.” And its mere existence would support the integrity of Time. “If we can retrieve it,” she and Anele, “after it was lost—if we can bring it back to the present without using it—the past won't be altered. Nothing that has already happened will change.”