One of them walked out of the west. With a shock, Linden saw that he was Berek Halfhand. But he was not the Berek whom she had met, embattled and weary, baffled by nameless powers. Rather he was High Lord Berek Heartthew, limned in victory and lore. Under the Theomach’s tutelage, he had transcended himself. His eyes were stars, and he gazed upon Linden with sombre gladness, simultaneously concerned and gratified.
From the north came another mighty spectre whom she knew, although she had only met him briefly as a young man. He was Damelon son of Berek, now High Lord Damelon Giantfriend. In his time, he had both discovered and guarded the Blood of the Earth. As he aged, he had put on girth: Dead, he implied the bulk of mountains against the background of Andelain’s darkness and the black heavens. To Linden’s shaken stare, he replied with a beatific smile.
The figure approaching from the south was a man whom she had not encountered; but he could only be Damelon’s son, High Lord Loric Vilesilencer. He was gaunt with striving and mastered anguish, and the dark pits of his eyes held the intimate ache of despair. Yet he gazed upon the krill, his handiwork, with an air of profound vindication. When he looked at Linden, he nodded in approval, as if he were certain of her.
But Kevin Landwaster entered the vale from the east. She knew him too well. He had confronted her once before in Andelain, ordering her to halt the Unbeliever’s mad intent; prevent Covenant from surrendering his ring. We are kindred in our way-the victims and enactors of Despite. In torment and outrage, High Lord Kevin’s ghost had implored or commanded her to kill Covenant if she could find no other way to stop him.
Living, he had fashioned and hidden the Seven Wards to preserve the lore of the Old Lords for future generations. He had greeted the Haruchai with respect, inspiring them to become the Bloodguard. And he had saved them as well as the Ranyhyn, the Ramen, and most of the Land’s people from the consequences of his despair. But his last act had been to join with Lord Foul in the Ritual of Desecration. And when Elena had broken the Law of Death to summon him, he had defeated her, turning the Staff of Law to the Despiser’s service. Now he wore the cost of his deeds in every tortured line of his visage.
When evil rises in its full power, it surpasses truth and may wear the guise of good-
His presence made Linden tremble. Good cannot be accomplished by evil means. He had been wrong about Covenant. He may have been wrong about Despite. There is hope in contradiction. But she could not affirm that he was wrong about her. Too many people had tried to caution her-
Like the other Dead, the four High Lords were silent. And they did not enter the wide circle of the Wraiths. Instead they stood, august, etched in light, beyond the flames as if they had come to bear witness as Linden unveiled the Land’s fate.
But of Covenant himself, who had called Linden here, there was no sign anywhere.
“Now, Linden,” Stave said distinctly. “The time has indeed come. Act or turn aside, according to the dictates of your heart.”
Her sudden anguish resembled both Kevin’s and Honninscrave’s. “Covenant isn’t here. I need him. He’s the reason I came.”
He did not know of your intent.
“Then summon the Law-Breakers,” Stave answered. But he did not explain. Instead he stepped back as if to abjure her.
For a moment, she could not understand him, and she nearly broke. His apparent disapproval hurt her worse than Cail’s mute departure, or Honninscrave’s, or Sunder’s and Hollian’s. She loved them all, but she had accepted their deaths. Stave was alive: as mortal as she was, and as much at risk. He was her friend-
But then her mind was filled with luminescence like the stringent shining of the High Lords. Of course, she thought. Of course. The Law-Breakers. The Laws of Death and Life. If Covenant could not hear or answer her directly, who else might invoke him from his participation in the Arch of Time? Who except the Law-Breakers, those who by their unique desperation had made possible the triumph of his surrender to Lord Foul?
Fearless again, and beyond doubt, Linden raised her head to the stars. “Elena!” she called firmly. “You were Lena’s daughter, but you were also Covenant’s. You drank the Blood of the Earth. Now I need you.
“Hile Troy! First you sacrificed yourself to save the army of the Lords. Then you became Caer-Caveral and sacrificed yourself again. I need you, too.”
As she spoke, the darkness trembled. Around her, the substance of reality seemed to ripple and surge like shaken cloth. Kevin Landwaster glared with unassuaged bitterness. An eager scowl clenched his father’s moonlight face. Damelon continued to beam, but Berek gnawed his lips anxiously.
Beyond the krill and the Wraiths, three ghosts appeared at the rim of the vale.
One was a man, eyeless as an ur-vile, and fretted with commitments. He wore the raiment of a Forestal, apparel that flowed like melody even though the song of his life and power had been stilled; and in his hand, he carried a gnarled staff like an accompaniment to his lost music. To Linden, he was Caer-Caveraclass="underline" she had not known him as Hile Troy. She would never forget his final threnody.
Oh, Andelain! forgive! for I am doomed to fail this war.
Near him walked a woman; surely Elena? But she was not the High Lord whom Covenant had described as one of his Dead, a figure of love and loveliness. Rather she appeared as she must have been when Covenant had destroyed the original Staff of Law, Berek’s Staff, tearing loose her last grasp on life; exposing her soul to the horror of what she had done. Her hair was rent with woe: bleeding galls marked her face as if she had tried to claw away her failures. As she entered the vale and paused with Caer-Caveral, her form flickered, alternately lit and obscured as though clouds scudded across her spectral moonshine.
The Law-Breakers, dead and broken; doomed. The ghosts of all that the Land had lost.
But Linden scarcely saw them. Instead she stared at the man who walked between them, silver and compelled, as if he had been brought forth against his will.
He was Thomas Covenant: he had come to her at last.
And he was more than the Dead, oh, infinitely more: he was a sovereign spirit, suffused with wild magic and Time. In one sense, he was unchanged. Wreathed in argence, he wore the same pierced T-shirt, the same worn jeans and boots, that she remembered. The scar on his forehead was a faint crease of nacre. Even his soul had lost the last two fingers of his right hand. When he met her gaze, he searched her with the same strict and irrefusable compassion which had made her who she was; taught her to love him-and the Land.
But in every other respect, he had gone beyond recognition. He was no more human than the stars: a being of such illimitable loneliness and grandeur that he both defied and deified understanding.
Briefly the krill seemed to grow dim in his presence. Then it blazed brighter, alight with rapture and exaltation. And
Linden blazed with it. She did not hear herself cry out Covenant’s name, or feel the stone of her heart torn asunder. She only knew that when Caer-Caveral and Elena stopped, Covenant continued on down the slope, striding like a prophet of ruin and hope until he had passed among the High Lords, through the ecstasy of the Wraiths, and reached the bottom of the vale, where Linden could see him clearly.
On the far side of Loric’s embedded blade, he halted. There he stood with his arms folded like denial across his chest.