His eyes themselves were the same muddy colour that they had always been: the hue of silted water. But now they focused keenly on his adoptive mother. He watched her avidly, as if he were studying her for signs of acceptance, understanding, love.
If Linden had seen him so in their lost life together, she would have wept for utter joy; would have hugged him until her heart broke apart and was made new. But now her fears-for him, of him-burned in her gaze, and the brief blurring of her vision was not gladness or grief: it was trepidation.
Tell her that I have her son.
He was closed to her, more entirely undecipherable than the Haruchai. Her health-sense could discern nothing of his physical or emotional condition. Past his blue pajamas with their rearing horses, she searched his precious flesh for some sign of the fusillade which had ended her normal life. But the fabric had been torn in too many places, and his exposed skin wore too much grime, to reveal whether or not he had been shot.
Shot and healed.
To her ordinary sight, he looked well; as cared for and healthy as he had been before Roger Covenant took him. She did not know how that was possible. During their separation, he had been in the Despiser’s power. She could not imagine that Lord Foul had attended to his needs.
Covenant claimed that he had folded time, that he and Jeremiah were in two places at once. Or two realities. But she had no idea how such a violation of Time had restored her son’s physical well-being. Or his mind.
Covenant himself was sitting on a stool near Jeremiah. Her former lover had tilted the stool back on two legs so that he could lean against the wall. Lightly held by his left hand, a wooden flagon rested in his lap.
He, too, was smiling: a wry twist of his mouth etiolated by an uncharacteristic looseness in his mouth and cheeks. His gaze regarded her with an expression of dull appraisal. He was exactly the same man whom she had known for so long in the Land: lean to the point of gauntness; strictly formed; apt for extreme needs and catastrophes. The pale scar on his forehead suggested deeper wounds, hurts which he had borne without flinching. And yet he had never before given her the impression that he was not entirely present; that some covert aspect of his mind was fixed elsewhere.
His right arm hung, relaxed, at his side. Dangling, the fingers of his halfhand twitched as though they felt the absence of the ring that he had worn for so long.
“I’m sorry, Mom,” Jeremiah said, grinning. “You still can’t touch us.” He seemed to believe that he knew her thoughts. “You’ve changed. You’re even more powerful now. You’ll make us vanish for sure.”
But he had misinterpreted her clenched frown, her deep consternation. She had forgotten nothing: his prohibition against contact held her as if she had been locked in the manacles of the ur-viles. Nevertheless her attention was focused on Covenant. The smaller changes in him seemed less comprehensible than her son’s profound restoration.
Covenant nodded absently. “Glimmermere,” he observed. “I’m pretty damn strong, but I can’t fight that.” His tongue slurred the edges of his words. “Reality will snap back into place. Then were all doomed.”
Was he-?
In a flat voice, a tone as neutral as she could make it, Linden asked, “What are you drinking?”
Covenant peered into his flagon. “This?” He took a long swallow, then set the flagon back in his lap. “Springwine. You know, I actually forgot how good it tastes. I haven’t been”- he grimaced- “physical for a long time.” Then he suggested, “You should try it. It might help you relax. You’re so tense it hurts to look at you.”
Jeremiah started to giggle; stopped himself sharply.
Linden stepped to the edge of the table, bent down to a pitcher that smelled of treasure-berries and beer. The liquid looked clear, but its fermentation was obvious. Somehow the people of the Land had used the juice of aliantha to make an ale as refreshing as water from a mountain spring.
The Ramen believed that No servant of Fangthane craves or will consumealiantha. The virtue of the berries is too potent.
Facing Covenant again, she said stiffly, “You’re drunk.”
He shrugged, grimacing again. “Hellfire, Linden. A man’s got to unwind once in a while. With everything I’m going through right now, I’ve earned it.
“Anyway,” he added, “Jeremiah’s had as much as I have-“
“I have not,” retorted Jeremiah cheerfully.
“-and he’s not drunk,” Covenant continued. “Just look at him.” As if to himself, he muttered, “Maybe when he swallows it ends up in his other stomach. The one where he’s still Foul’s prisoner.”
Linden shook her head. Covenant’s behaviour baffled her. For that very reason, however, she grew calmer. His strangeness enabled her to reclaim a measure of the professional detachment with which she had for years listened to the oblique ramblings of the psychotic and the deranged: dissociated observations, warnings, justifications, all intended to both conceal and expose underlying sources of pain. She did not suddenly decide that Covenant was insane: she could not. He was too much himself to be evaluated in that way. But she began to hear him as if from a distance. As if she had erected a wall between him and her denied anguish-or had hidden her distress in a room like the secret place where her access to wild magic lurked.
Her tone was deliberately impersonal as she replied, “You said that you wanted to talk to me. Are you in any condition to explain things?”
“What,” Covenant protested, “you think a little alcohol can slow me down? Linden, you’re forgetting who I am. The keystone of the Arch of Time, remember? I know everything. Or I can, if I make the effort.”
He seemed to consider the air, trying to choose an example. Then he turned his smeared gaze toward her again.
“You’ve been to Glimmermere. And you’ve talked to Esmer. Him and something like a hundred ur-viles and Waynhim. Tell me. Why do you think they’re here? I don’t care what he said. He was just trying to justify himself. What do you think’?”
Disturbed by his manner, Linden kept her reactions to herself. Instead of answering, she said cautiously, “I have no idea. He took me by surprise. I don’t know how to think about it.”
Covenant snorted. “Don’t let him confuse you. It’s really pretty simple. He likes to talk about ‘aid and betrayal,’ but with him it’s mostly betrayal. Listening to him is a waste of time.”
While Covenant spoke, Jeremiah took his racecar from the waistband of his pajamas and began to roll the toy over and around the fingers and palm of his halfhand as if he were practicing a conjuring trick; as if he meant to make the car vanish like a coin from the hand of a magician.
Covenant’s awareness of her encounter with Esmer startled Linden; but she clung to her protective detachment. You know what he said to me?”
You must be the first to drink of the EarthBlood. Did Covenant understand what Esmer meant?
“Probably,” Covenant drawled. “Most of it, anyway. But it’s better if you tell me.”
He was Thomas Covenant: she did not question that. But she did not know how to trust him now. Carefully she replied, He said that the ur-viles and Waynhim want to serve me.”
“How?” Suddenly he was angry. “By joining up with all those Demondim? Hell and blood, Linden. Use your brain. They were created by the Demondim, for God’s sake. Even the Waynhim can’t forget that, no matter how hard they try. They were created evil. And the ur-viles have been Foul’s servants ever since they met him.”