How badly did it paralyse the Masters? How vehemently would they react against it?
Stave studied her for a long moment. “I have no answer,” he said finally. Your words suggest an inquiry, but your manner does not. If you wish it, I will speak of the Masters. Yet it appears that your desire lies elsewhere. What is it that you seek in this place?”
Linden heard him. She meant to answer. But her thoughts slipped again, seeking links and meaning which she could not have named. Distracted, she veered away toward the pillars near one end of the Hall, where the Gifts had not suffered from Gibbon Raver’s struggles. Bearing her light with her, she walked between the columns until an odd statue caught her eye. It stood alone, thickly layered with dust, on an open stretch of the floor.
At first glance, it appeared to be a random assortment of rough rocks balanced on top of each other to form a distorted shape nearly as tall as she was. Because it was riddled with gaps, it resembled the framework for a sculpture more than a finished piece. Puzzled, she looked at it from all sides, but could not make sense of it. But then she took several steps backward, and saw that the stones outlined a large head. After a moment, she realised that the statue was the bust of a Giant.
The stones had been cunningly set so that the gaps between them suggested an expression. There was the mouth in a wide grin: there, the heavy bulge of the nose. And there, the holes of the eyes seemed to have crinkles of laughter at their corners.
Linden could almost have believed that the rocks had been selected and placed to convey an impression of Pitchwife’s visage. But clearly the bust had been fashioned long before Pitchwife’s sojourn in the Land.
“Who do you suppose this is?” she asked.
Stave appeared to consider his memories. The Haruchai do not recall the Stonedownor who crafted this countenance, or the name of the Giant here revealed, or indeed the name given to this Gift. The craft itself, however, is suru-pa-maerl. In the ages of the Lords, artisans among the Stonedowns sought long and patiently to discover unwrought stones which might be combined and balanced to form such depictions.”
“When you stand back,” Linden murmured. “it’s pretty impressive.” If Jeremiah had been free, he might have constructed works like this one. Distantly she added. “I’m trying to put the pieces together myself. There’s one thing that I’m sure of now.
“I know why Roger didn’t want me to go to Andelain. Or Esmer either, for that matter.” After she had spoken of her intentions, Cail’s son had left the cave of the Waynhim in apparent vexation or distress. “It’s not just that they don’t want me to meet the Dead. They don’t want me to find the krill. They’re afraid of what I might be able to do with it.”
She had seen how its gem answered to the presence of white gold. According to Thomas Covenant, High Lord Loric had formed the krill so that it would be strong enough to bear any might.
Stave considered her flatly. “Then what is it that you seek to comprehend? You have not yet named your true query.”
Linden turned from the suru-pa-maerl Giant as if she were shying away. Aimlessly she carried the flame of her Staff among the columns, describing in fire slippages and connections which she did not want to put into words. She should have obtained an answer from the Mahdoubt-and had missed her only opportunity.
After a few steps, she asked, still indirectly, “How many times was Covenant summoned to the Land? I mean, before he and I came here together?”
“Four of which the Bloodguard had knowledge,” answered Stave.
“Who summoned him?”
Her companion had apparently accepted her fragmented state. He replied without hesitation, “The first summoning was performed by the Cavewight Drool Rockworm at Corruption’s bidding. The second, by High Lord Elena. The third, by High Lord Mhoram. In each such call, the necessary power was drawn from the Staff of Law. But the fourth was accomplished by the Giant Saltheart Foamfollower and the Stonedownor Triock, enabled only by their own desperation, and by a rod of lomillialor, of High Wood, gifted to Triock by High Lord Mhoram.”
Momentarily distracted, Linden asked, “Lomillialor”?” Stave had mentioned that name once before.
He shrugged. “These are matters of lore, beyond the devoir of the Haruchai. I know only that lomillialor was to the wood-lore of the lillianrill as orcrest was to the stone-lore of the rhadhamaerl. With it, Hirebrands and Lords invoked the test of truth, spoke across great distances, and wrought other acts of theurgy.”
She nodded as though she understood. Wandering, she recovered the thread of what she had been saying.
“But when Covenant and I came here together, we were summoned by Lord Foul. Back then, I didn’t wonder about that. But now I think he made a mistake. It may have been his biggest mistake.” Like Covenant before her, Linden had been freed when her summoner was defeated. “He tied our lives to his.
“That’s why he used Joan this time. Roger’s mother.”
Roger had made that possible. And he had kidnapped Jeremiah. Directly or indirectly, he had delivered Jeremiah to Lord Foul-and to the croyel.
“Was it not Corruption who summoned the ur-Lord’s former wife?” Stave may have been trying to help Linden think.
“Oh, sure.” She shook her head to dismiss the implications. “But she was already lost. What I’m trying to understand is ‘the necessity of freedom.’ I don’t know what that means.”
“Chosen?”
She turned at a column, headed in a different direction. But she clung to her musing. It protected her from a deeper fear.
“Before I came here the first time,” she said. “Lord Foul went after Covenant by attacking Joan. He pushed Covenant to sacrifice himself by threatening her. And Covenant did it. He traded his life for hers.
“The part that I don’t understand-” Linden searched for words. What she sought was only related by inference to what she asked. “When he saved her, did he give up his freedom? Was that why he could only defeat Lord Foul by surrendering? Because in effect he had already surrendered? Did saving Joan cost him his ability to fight?”
Would Linden doom the Land if she sold herself for Jeremiah?
Stave appeared to study the question. “This also is a matter of lore, beyond my ken. Yet I deem that it is not so. The Unbeliever’s surrender was his own, coerced by love and his own nature, not by Corruption’s might. Sacrificing himself, he did not sacrifice his freedom. Rather his submission was an expression of strength freely wielded. Had he been fettered by his surrender in your world, Corruption’s many efforts to mislead and compel him would have been needless.”
Honninscrave also had spent himself to win a precious victory.
Linden sighed as if she were baffled, although she was not. The Mahdoubt’s giggling had receded into the background of her thoughts, but she had not forgotten what she had lost. She understood the importance of choice.
Veering again, she found her attention fixed on a statuette poised on a ledge in one of the columns. It caught her notice because it represented a horse, clearly a Ranyhyn-and because it reared like the beasts ramping across Jeremiah’s pyjamas. It was perhaps as tall as her arm, and charged with an air of majesty, mane and tail flowing, muscles bunched. When she blew away its coat of dust, she saw that it was fashioned of bone. Over the millennia, it had aged to the hue of ivory.