“It was performed with orcrest, or with lomillialor, to distinguish honesty from falsehood, fealty from Corruption. Such testing was known to be imperfect. At one time, Corruption himself accepted the challenge, and was not exposed. Among such lesser beings as the Ravers, however, or those who are mortal, the test of truth did not fail.
“I observed to Branl that Liand himself had met the test, though the lore of the rhadhamaerl has been lost for millennia. He held orcrest in his hand and suffered no hurt. And I proposed to endure the test as well, if Branl would do likewise.”
Liand nodded. In his face, Linden could see that Stave had surprised him then. He was not accustomed to thinking of any Haruchai as a friend.
“That challenge he refused,” Stave continued. “He did not doubt its outcome for himself. But such matters have too much import to be decided by a single Master when the Masters together have become uncertain. They have spurned me. In their sight, I have betrayed their chosen service. If I failed the test of truth, I would confirm their judgment. But if I did not, much would be altered. Therefore Branl permitted us to pass unopposed.
“Now Liand is suffered to hold the orcrest just as Anele is suffered to move freely, and your own actions have not been hindered. We are warded by the uncertainty of the Masters.”
Linden shook her head. “I’m sorry, Stave. I don’t understand. What would be altered?’
“Chosen,” Stave answered without impatience, “the Haruchai have not forgotten their ancient esteem for those dedicated to the rhadhamaerl and lillianrill lore. My kinsmen recall that the Bloodguard honoured the test of truth. If the orcrest did not reject me, the Masters would be compelled to consider that mayhap they had erred when I was made outcast. Thereafter other doubts would necessarily ensue. Then would their uncertainty burgeon rather than decline.
“The Masters in conclave might perchance have accepted the hazard. Branl alone could not. And the extremity of Revelstone’s defence precluded careful evaluation.”
“All right,” Linden said slowly. “Now I get it. I think.” She could never be certain that she grasped the full stringency of the Masters. But her own circumstances demanded all of her conviction. And she had already made her companions wait too long. “Thank you.”
She suspected that the doubts of the Masters would eventually make them more intransigent rather than less. And she did not know how to tell her friends that she had become as rigid and unyielding as Stave’s kindred.
Instead of standing to meet her own test, she allowed herself one last distraction. With as much gentleness as she could summon, she said. “Pahni.”
Quickly the young Cord lifted her troubled gaze to meet Linden’s, then dropped her eyes again. “Ringthane?”
With that one brief look, Pahni seemed to bare her soul.
Linden caught her breath; held it for a moment. Then she murmured like a sigh, “Liand has what Covenant told him to find,” Thomas Covenant himself, not some malign imitation. “Now you’re afraid of what’s going to happen to him.”
Pahni nodded without raising her head. Her grip on Liand’s shoulder looked tight enough to hurt; but he only reached up to rest one of his hands on hers, and did not flinch.
At last, Linden rose to her feet. For her own sake as much as for Pahni’s, she said, “What you’ll have to face is going to be harder.” Covenant had said so through Anele. “I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what’s going to happen to any of us. But I know that you and Liand need each other.” She was intimately familiar with the cruelty of being forced to face her doom unloved. “Try to understand his excitement. For the first time in his life, he has something that you’ve never lacked,” something comparable to the way in which the Ramen served the Ranyhyn. “A reason to believe that what he does matters.” The Masters had taken that away from all of the Land’s people. “A reason to believe in himself.”
Covenant had given Linden’s friends a message for her. She can do this. Tell her I said that. She did not believe him-or disbelieve. She could only promise that she would let nothing stop her.
She had also made a promise to Caerroil Wildwood, which she meant to keep.
Standing, Linden looked around at her companions: at Mahrtiir’s champing frustration and Stave’s impassivity, Bhapa’s conflicted desire to hear and not hear her tale, Anele’s inattentiveness, Liand’s growing concern; at Pahni’s surprise and appreciation. Then, for the first time since the Humbled had left the room, she let her underlying wrath rise to the surface.
“As it turns out,” she said like iron. “the Elohim told the truth.” He or she had given warning of croyel as well as skurj. And both the Ramen and the people of the Land had been urged to Beware the halfhand. “If they hadn’t been so damn cryptic about it, they might have actually done us some good.”
Had you not suffered and striven as you did, you would not have become who you are.
“Liand, would you put more wood on the fire? It’s going to get colder in here.”
Before anyone could react, she walked away into her bedroom.
Temporarily, at least, she had moved past her reluctance. First she opened the shutters over the window so that the comparative chill of the spring night could flow in unhindered. She wanted that small reminder of grim winter and desperation. For a moment, she breathed the air as if she were filling her lungs with darkness. Then she retrieved her Staff and carried its rune-carved ebony back to her waiting friends.
As they caught sight of it, Liand and the Cords winced. They were not surprised: they had seen the Staff when they had brought her here from the plateau. But they did not understand its transformation.
“What has transpired’?” Bhapa’s voice was husky with alarm. “Is this some new Staff?”
“Gaze more closely, Cord,” growled the Manethrall. “This is alteration, not replacement. Some lorewise being has constrained the Ringthane’s Staff, or exalted it. And she has wielded her power in battle greater and more terrible than any we have witnessed. She has met such foes-”
Abruptly he turned to Stave. “Perhaps now we must speak of the Mahdoubt, who has retrieved the Ringthane from the most dire peril.”
Stave studied Linden closely. “The Chosen will speak as she wills. However, I am loath to address such matters. We may consider them with greater assurance when more is known.”
“Anele sees this,” Anele remarked, peering blindly past or through the Staff. “He cannot name it. Yet he sees that it is fitting.”
Linden shook her head. “The Mahdoubt is beside the point.” She had no idea why Stave wanted to avoid the subject; but she did not wish to discuss the Insequent without the older woman’s permission. For reasons of her own-perhaps to evade questions like Mahrtiir’s-the Mahdoubt had avoided encountering Linden’s companions a short time ago. Whatever those reasons were, Linden intended to respect them. Lightly she tapped one shod end of her Staff on the floor. “Even this isn’t the point. I just wanted you to look at it. I don’t know how to describe everything that happened, but I wanted to give you some idea of the scale.”
Now everyone except Anele regarded her intently. While the old man mumbled a disjointed counterpoint, she tried to put what she had experienced into words.
She could not do it. The stone in the centre of her chest left no room for sorrow or regret, or for the urgent bafflement and need which had compelled her actions. She still felt those things, but she could not articulate them. They had melted and joined to form the igneous amalgam of her purpose. Any language except deeds would have falsified her to herself.