At last, Linden bowed to Stave. “Thank you.” When the Humbled were gone, some of her tension eased. She was finally able to look at her friends and smile.
Because Liand was the least reserved among them, and his apprehensions darkened his eyes, she faced him, although she spoke to the Ramen and Stave as well. “Please don’t misunderstand,” she urged with as much warmth as she could muster. “I probably don’t look happy to be back. But I am. It’s just that I’ve been through things that I don’t even know how to describe. For a while there, I didn’t think that I would ever see any of you again.” Her voice held steady when it should have quivered. “If the Mahdoubt hadn’t saved me, I would be as good as dead.”
The young Stonedownor’s face brimmed with questions. Linden held up her hand to forestall them.
“But now I know what I have to do. That’s what you see in me,” instead of gladness. “I was betrayed, and I’ve gone so far beyond anger that I might not come back. I want to hear what’s happened to all of you. I need to know how long I’ve been gone, and what the Demondim are doing. Then I have to find a way to leave Revelstone.” Trying to be clear, she finished, “I’ve been too passive. I’m tired of it. I want to start doing things that our enemies don’t expect.”
She was not surprised by Stave’s blunt nod, or by the sudden ferocity of Mahrtiir’s grin. And she took for granted that the Cords would follow their Manethrall in spite of their reasons for alarm, the ominous prophecies which they had heard from Anele. But Linden had expected doubt and worry from Liand: she was not prepared for the immediate excitement that brightened his gentle eyes. And Anele’s reaction actively startled her.
Swallowing a lump of mutton, he jumped to his feet. In a loud voice, he announced, “Anele no longer fears the creatures, the lost ones.” His head jerked from side to side as if he were searching for something. “He fears to remember. Oh, that he fears.” With one hand, he beckoned sharply to Liand, although he seemed unaware of the gesture. “And the Masters must be fled. So he proclaims to all who will heed him.
“But the others-” Abruptly his voice sank to a whisper. “They speak in Anele’s dreams. Their voices he fears more than horror and recrimination.”
His madness was visible in every line of his emaciated form. To some extent, however, it was vitiated by the fact that he stood on wrought stone. Here as on Kevin’s Watch, or in his gaol in Mithil Stonedown, he referred to himself as if he were someone else; but shaped or worn rock occasionally enabled him to respond with oblique poignancy to what was said and done around him.
Still he beckoned for Liand.
The others-?
“Linden-” said Liand awkwardly. The insistence of Anele’s gestures appeared to disturb him. He must have understood them. “I lack words to convey-”
“Then,” Mahrtiir instructed, “permit the Ringthane to witness his plight, as he desires. When she has beheld it, words will follow.”
The young man cast a look like an appeal at Linden; but he obeyed the Manethrall. Sighing unhappily, he reached to a sash at his waist, a pale blue strip of cloth which Linden had not seen before, and from which hung a leather pouch the size of his cupped hand. Untying the pouch, he slipped an object into his hand, took a deep breath to steady himself, then pressed the object into Anele’s grasp.
It was a smooth piece of stone, vaguely translucent-and distinctly familiar. Linden’s health-sense received an impression of compacted possibilities.
Anele’s fingers clenched immediately around the stone. At once, he flung back his head and wailed as though his heart were being torn from him.
Instinctively Linden moved toward the old man. But Liand reached out to stop her; and Mahrtiir barked. “Withhold, Ringthane! Anele wishes this.”
An instant later, a rush of power from Anele’s closed fist washed away every hint of his lunacy.
Linden jerked to a halt and stared. That was Earthpower, but it was not Anele’s inborn strength. Rather his latent force catalysed or evoked a different form of magic; a particular eldritch energy which she had known long ago.
Then the flood of puissance passed, and Anele fell silent. Slowly he lowered his head. When he looked at Linden, his blind gaze focused on her as if he could see.
“Linden Avery,” he said hoarsely. “Chosen and Sun-Sage. White gold wielder. You are known to me.”
“Anele,” she breathed. “You’re sane.”
None of her companions showed any surprise, although their distress was plain. They had recognised the old man’s gestures; must have seen this transformation before-
“I am,” he acknowledged, and do not wish it. It torments me, for it is clarity without succour. I cannot heal the harm that I have wrought. But I must speak and be understood. They ask it of me.”
“They”?” urged Linden. Anele had endured Lord Foul’s brutal presence, and Kastenessen’s. He had felt Esmer’s coercion. And Thomas Covenant had spoken through him as welclass="underline" a more benign possession, but a violation nonetheless. If even sleep had become fear and anguish, how could he retain any vestige of himself?
“They do not possess me,” he replied with fragile dignity, as though he understood her alarm. “Rather they speak in my dreams, imploring this of me. They are Sunder my father and Hollian my mother, whom my weakness has betrayed. And behind them stands Thomas Covenant, who craves only that I assure you of his love. But the intent of Sunder Graveler and Hollian eh-Brand is more urgent.”
Sunder? Linden thought dumbly. Hollian? She gaped at the son of her long-dead friends as he continued, “They sojourn among the Dead in Andelain, and they beg of you that you do not seek them out. They know not how the peril of Kastenessen and the skurj and white gold may be answered. They cannot guide or counsel you. They are certain only that doom awaits you in the company of the Dead.”
His love. “Anele-” Linden’s voice was a croak of chagrin. “Can you talk to them?” They beg of you- “In your dreams? Can you tell them that I know what I’m doing?”
All of her hopes were founded in Andelain. If she were forbidden to approach the Dead, she was truly lost; and Jeremiah would suffer until the Arch of Time crumbled.
The old man shook his head. “Sleeping, I am mute.” His moonstone eyes regarded her in supplication. “In my remorse, I would cry out to them, but they cannot hear. No power of dream or comprehension will shrive me until I have discovered and fulfilled my geas.”
Then he turned away. “Liand,” he panted, faltering, “I beseech you. Relieve me of this burden. I cannot bear the knowledge of myself.”
Doom awaits you in the company of the Dead.
When he extended his hand and opened his fingers, he revealed a piece of orcrest, Sunstone. To Linden’s senses, it appeared identical to the smooth, unevenly shaped rock with which Sunder had warded the folk of Mithil Stonedown from the Sunbane. Its potency made it seem transparent, but it was not. Instead it resembled a void in the substance of Anele’s palm; an opening into some other dimension of reality or Earthpower.
Its touch had restored his mind.
“No.” As Liand reached for the stone, Linden grabbed Anele; forced him to face her again. She wanted to demand, Why? You’re sane now. Tell me why. She had heard too many prophesies of disaster. Even Liand had warned her, You have it within you to perform horrors. She needed to know what Sunder and Hollian feared from her.
But when her hands closed on his gaunt frame, her nerves felt his excruciation like a jolt of lightning. He was sane: oh, he was sane. And for that reason, he was defenceless. Even his heritage of Earthpower could not rebuff the self-denunciation and grief which had broken his mind; blinded him; condemned him to decades of starvation and loneliness while he searched for the implications of his fractured past.