Caerroil Wildwood could not return her to her proper time. No Forestal had that power.
Carefully she set the Mahdoubt’s flask against a stone; but she did not stand. Instead she looked into the strange discrepancy of the Mahdoubt’s eyes.
You told me to “Be cautious of love”.” There is a glamour upon it- “You knew who they were.” Roger and the croyel. “Why didn’t you just say so?”
If the Mahdoubt had spoken plainly-
For the first time, the older woman’s mien hinted at disquiet; perhaps even at unhappiness. “It is not permitted-” she began, then stopped herself. When she had closed her eyes for a moment, she opened them again and faced Linden with chagrin in her gaze.
“Nay, the Mahdoubt will speak sooth. She does not permit it of herself, though her heart is wrung in her old breast by what has ensued, as it is by what may yet transpire. Her intent is kind, lady. Be assured that it is. But she has acquired neither wisdom nor knowledge adequate to contest that which appears needful. Others do so, to their cost. The Mahdoubt does not. If she craves to be kind in deed as well as intent, she has learned that she must betimes forbear. Yet she has won gratitude from other people in other times, if not from the lady.
“The Great One bids us,” she finished softly. “We must follow.”
Linden wanted to refuse. She wanted to demand, Needful? Needful? The Forestal and even the Mahdoubt surpassed her. But what choice did she have? Ever since she had returned to the Land, she had been guided by other people’s desires and demands, other people’s manipulations, and all of her actions had been fraught with peril. She could not afford to reject aid in any form.
Sighing, she clasped the Staff of Law and pushed herself to her feet.
As she did so, she found that the Mahdoubt’s providence had done her more good than she had realised. Her muscles protested, but they did not fail. Indeed, they hardly trembled. Food and springwine and soothing warmth had eased her weakness, although they could not relieve her exhaustion, or soften her heart.
When the Mahdoubt gestured toward the trees, Linden accompanied her into the forest, led by the majesty and restraint of Caerroil Wildwood’s music.
The way was not far-or it did not seem far in the thrall of the Forestal’s singing. Briefly Linden and the Mahdoubt walked among trees and darkness; and on all sides sycamores and oaks, birches and Gilden, cedars and firs proclaimed their unappeased recriminations. But then they found themselves on barren ground that rose up to form a high hill like a burial-mound. Even through her boots, Linden felt death in the soil. Here centuries or millennia of bloodshed had soaked into the dirt until it would never again support life. This, then, was Gallows Howe: the place where Caerroil Wildwood slew the butchers of his trees.
At first, she winced in recognition at every step. Until her betrayal under Melenkurion Skyweir, she had not understood people or beings or powers that feasted on death. She had been a physician, opposed to such hungers. Evil she knew, in herself as well as in her foes: she was intimately acquainted with the desire to inflict pain on those who had not caused it. But this unalloyed and unforgiving compulsion toward revenge; this righteous rage-She had not known that she contained such possibilities until she had beheld her son’s suffering.
Here, however, she found that she welcomed the taste of retribution. It made her stronger.
She knew what it meant.
Bringing her to this place sanctified by slaughter, Caerroil Wildwood had already given her a gift.
In starlight and the lucent allusions of the Forestal’s music, she saw two dead black trees standing beyond the lifeless hillcrest. They were ten or more paces apart, as strait and unanswerable as denunciations. All of their branches had been stripped away except for one heavy bough in each trunk above the ground. Long ages ago, these limbs had grown together to form a crossbar between the trees: Caerroil Wildwood’s gibbet. Here he had hanged the most fatal of those adversaries that came within his reach.
Linden’s reluctance beside the Mahdoubt’s gentle cookfire was gone. Gaining strength with every step, she ascended the Howe. She could think now, and begin to strive. On this denuded hill, beneath those pitiless trees, she might accept any boon-and pay any price.
At the crest, she and her companion stopped. For a moment, they appeared to be alone: then Caerroil Wildwood stood before them with song streaming from his robe and bright silver in his eyes. The Mahdoubt lowered her gaze as though she felt a measure of diffidence. But Linden held up her head, gripped her Staff, and waited for the Forestal to reveal his intentions.
For a time, he did not regard either woman. Instead he sang to himself. His song conveyed impressions of Ravers and loss; of a fading Interdict as the Colossus of the Fall waned; of Viles and rapacious kings and disdain. And it implied the era of the One Forest, when the Land had flourished as its Creator had intended, and there was no need of Forestals to defend the ravaged paean of the world. He may have been probing his own intentions, testing his decision to withhold Linden’s death, and the Mahdoubt’s.
Linden suspected that if she listened long enough she might hear extraordinary revelations about the Land’s ancient past. She might be told how the Ravers had been born and nurtured, or how they had come under Lord Foul’s dominion. She might learn how even the great puissance of the Forestals had failed to sustain the forests. But she had lost her patience for long tales which would not aid her. Without conscious forethought, she interrupted the sumptuous reverie of Caerroil Wildwood’s music.
“You can’t stop the Ravers,” she said as though she had forgotten that the Forestal could sing the flesh from her bones. “You know that. When you kill their bodies, their spirits just move on.”
He turned the piercing silver of his gaze on her as if she had offended him. But apparently she had not. In spite of his old anger, he did not strike out.
“Nevertheless,” he countered. “I have a particular hunger-”
Again Linden interrupted him. “But there’s going to come a time when one of them does die.” Samadhi Sheol would be rent by Grimmand Honninscrave and the Sandgorgon Nom. “It can happen. You can hope for that.”
She hazarded Time, and knew it. Speaking of the Land’s future might alter Caerroil Wildwood’s actions at some point during his long existence. But the Mahdoubt did nothing to forestall or caution her. And Linden had already taken greater risks. She was done with hesitation. If she could do or say anything that might encourage the Forestal to side with her, she would not hold back.
However, his response was sorrow rather than grim anticipation. His music became a fugue of mourning, interminable bereavement sung to a counterpoint of forlorn self-knowledge.
“While humans and monsters remain to murder trees, there can be no hope for any Forestal. Each death lessens me. The ages of the Earth are brief, and already I am not as I began.”
Then his melody sharpened. But you have said that the death of a Raver will come to pass. How do you know of this?”
Linden held his gaze. “I was there.”
Her past was the Land’s future. She hardly dared to imagine that Caerroil Wildwood would understand her, or believe. But her statement did not appear to confound him. Her displacement in time may have been as obvious to him as the stains on her jeans.
“And you played a part?” he asked while the wide forest echoed his words avidly.
“I saw it happen,” she replied steadily. “That’s all.” To explain herself, she added, “I wasn’t what I am now.”