Cail guided her deep into a part of Revelstone which was new to her. The movement and confusion of the past day had left her sense of direction so bewildered that she had no idea where she was in relation to the Hall of Gifts; and she could barely discern the sacred enclosure in the distance as the Banefire declined toward extinction. But when she and Cail reached a hall that led like a tunnel toward the source of a weird silver illumination, she guessed their destination.
The hall ended in a wide, round court. Around the walls were doorways at intervals, most of them shut. Above the doors up to the high ceiling of the cavity were coigns which allowed other levels of the Keep to communicate with this place. But she recognized the court because the polished granite of its floor was split from wall to wall with one sharp crack, and the floor itself shone with an essential argence like Covenant's ring. He had damaged and lit that stone in the excess of his power when he had emerged from the soothtell of the Clave. Here had been revealed to him enough of the truth to send him on his quest for the One Tree-but only enough to ensure the outcome Lord Foul intended. In spite of her exhaustion. Linden shivered, wondering how much more had been revealed to him now.
But then she saw him standing in one of the doorways; and all other questions vanished. Her eyes were full of silver; she felt she could hardly see him as he dismissed Cail, came out into the light to meet her.
Mute with shame and longing, she fought the inadequacy of her vision and strove to anele her sore heart with the simple sight of him.
Luminous in silver and tears, he stood before her. All the details were gone, blinded by the pure glow of the floor, his pure presence. She saw only that he carried himself as if he had not come to berate her. She wanted to say in a rush before she lost her sight altogether. Oh, Covenant, I'm so sorry, I was wrong, I didn't understand, forgive me, hold me, Covenant. But the words would not come. Even now, she read him with the nerves of her body; her percipience tasted the timbre of his emanations. And the astonishment of what she perceived stopped her throat.
He was there before her, clean in every limb and line, and strong with the same stubborn will and affirmation which had made him irrefusable to her from the beginning. Alive in spite of the Banefire; gentle toward her regardless of what she had tried to do to him. But something was gone from him. Something was changed. For a moment while she tried to comprehend the difference, she believed that he was no longer a leper.
Blinking furiously, she cleared her vision.
His cheeks and neck were bare, free of the unruly beard which had made him look as hieratic and driven as a prophet. The particular scraped hue of his skin told her that he had not used wild magic to burn his whiskers away: he had shaved himself with some kind of blade. With a blade instead of fire, as if the gesture had a special meaning for him. An act of preparation or acquiescence. But physically that change was only superficial.
The fundamental alteration was internal. Her first guess had been wrong; she saw now that his leprosy persisted. His fingers and palms and the soles of his feet were numb. The disease still rested, quiescent, in his tissues. Yet something was gone from him. Something important had been transformed or eradicated.
“Linden.” He spoke as if her name sufficed for him-as if he had called her here simply so that he could say her name to her.
But he was not simple in any way. His contradictions remained, defining him beneath the surface. Yet he had become new and pure and clean. It was as if his doubt were gone-as if the self-judgments and repudiation which had tormented him had been reborn as certainty, clarity, acceptance in the Banefire.
It was as if he had managed to rid himself of the Despiser's venom.
“Is it-?” she began amazedly. “How did you-?” But the light around him seemed to throng with staggering implications, and she could not complete the question.
In response, he smiled at her-and for one stunned instant his smile seemed to be the same one he had given Joan when he had exchanged his life for hers, giving himself up to Lord Foul's malice so that she would be free. A smile of such valour and rue that Linden had nearly cried out at the sight of it.
But then the angles of his face shifted, and his expression became bearable again. Quietly, he said, “Do you mind if we get out of this light? I'm not exactly proud of it.” With his half-hand, he gestured toward the doorway from which he had emerged.
The cuts on his fingers had been healed.
And there were no scars on his forearm. The marks of Marid's fangs and of the injuries he had inflicted on himself had become whole flesh.
Dumbly, she went where he pointed. She did not know what had happened to him.
Beyond the door, she found herself in a small suite of rooms clearly designed to be someone's private living quarters. They were illuminated on a more human scale by several oil lamps and furnished with stone chairs and a table in the forechamber, a bare bed in one back room and empty pantry-shelves in another. The suite had been unused for an inestimably long time, but the ventilation and granite of Revelstone had kept it clean Covenant must have set the lamps himself-or asked the Haruchai to provide them.
The centre of the table had been strangely gouged, as though a knife had been driven into it like a sharp stick into clay.
“Mhoram lived here,” Covenant explained. “This is where I talked to him when I finally started to believe that he was my friend that he was capable of being my friend-after everything I'd done.” He spoke without gall, as if he had reconciled himself to the memory. "He told me about the necessity of freedom.”
Those words seemed to have a new resonance for him; but almost immediately he shrugged them aside. Indicating the wound in the tabletop, he said, “I did that. With the krill. Elena tried to give it to me. She wanted me to use it against Lord Foul. So I stabbed it into the table and left it there where nobody else could take it out. Like a promise that I was going to do the same thing to the Land.” He tried to smile again; but this time the effort twisted his face like a grimace. “I did that even before I knew Elena was my daughter. But he was still able to be my friend.” For a moment, his voice sounded chipped and battered; yet he stood tall and straight with his back to the open door and the silver lumination as if he had become unbreakable. “He must've removed the krill when he came into his power.”
Across the table, he faced her. His eyes were gaunt with knowledge, but they remained clear. “It's not gone,” he said softly. “I tried to get rid of it, but I couldn't.”
“Then what-?” She was lost before him, astonished by what he had become. He was more than ever the man she loved-and yet she did not know him, could not put one plain question into words.
He sighed, dropped his gaze briefly, then looked up at her again. “I guess you could say it's been fused I don't know how else to describe it. Ifs been burned into me so deeply that there's no distinction. I'm like an alloy-venom and wild magic and ordinary skin and bones melted together until they're all one. All the same. I'll never be free of it.”
As he spoke, she saw that he was right. He gave her the words to see that he was right. Fused. An alloy. Like white gold itself, a blend of metals. And her heart gave a leap of elation within her.
“Then you can control it!” she said rapidly, so rapidly that she did not know what she was about to say until she said it. “You're not at Foul's mercy anymore!” Oh, beloved. “You can beat him!”