Read Online Thomas Covenant 8 - The Fatal Revenant by Stephen R. Donaldson - Free Book Online
Authors: Stephen R. Donaldson
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effects.
Closing her eyes, she used every other aspect of her senses to estimate what had become of her.
The waters healed bruises: they washed away the strain and sorrow of battle. She needed that. They could not undo the emotional cost of the things which she had suffered, but they lifted from her the long physical weariness and privation of recent days, the visceral residue of her passage through caesures, the tangible galls of her
fraught yearning for her son. The eldritch implications of Glimmermere renewed her bodily health and strength as though she had feasted on aliantha.
As cold as the water, Covenant’s ring burned between her breasts.
But the lake did more. The renewed accuracy with which she was able to perceive her own condition told her that the stain of Kevin’s Dirt had been scrubbed from her senses. And when
she reached beyond herself, she felt the ramified richness of the grass beneath her, the imponderable life-pulse of the undergirding soil and stone. She could not detect Mahrtiir’s presence beyond the hills: his emanations were too mortal to penetrate Glimmermere’s glory. Yet spring’s fecundity whispered to her along the gentle breeze, and the faint calling of the birds was as eloquent as melody. The wealth of the lake was now a paean, a sun-burnished
outpouring of the Earth’s essential gladness, as lambent as Earthpower, and as celebratory as an aubade.
In other ways, nothing had changed. Her torn heart could not be healed by any expression of this world’s fundamental bounty. Covenant and Jeremiah had been restored to her and they would not let her touch them. That hurt remained. Glimmermere held no anodyne for the dismay and bereavement which had brought her
here.
Nevertheless the lake had given her its gifts. It had made her stronger, allowing her to feel capable again, more certain of herself. And it had erased the effects of Kevin’s Dirt, when she had been forbidden to do so with the Staff of Law.
She was as ready as she would ever be.
Steady now, and moving without haste, she donned her clothes and boots; retrieved her Staff. Then she climbed a short way up the hillside, back toward Revelstone, until she found a spot where the slope offered a stretch of more level ground. There she planted her feet as though her memories of Thomas Covenant and love stood at her back to support her. Facing southward across the hillside, she braced the Staff in the grass at her feet and gripped it with one hand while she
lifted the white gold ring from under her damp shirt with the other and closed it in her fist.
She took a deep breath; held it for a moment, preparing herself. Then she lifted her face to the sky.
She had ascended far enough to gain a clear view of the mountainheads in the west. Clouds had begun to thicken behind the peaks, suggesting the possibility of rain. It would not come
soon, however. The raw crests still clawed the clouds to high wisps and feathers that streamed eastward like fluttering pennons. As Glimmermere’s waters flowed between the hills into the south, they caught the sunshine and glistened like a spill of gems.
Now, she thought. Now or never.
With her head held high, she announced softly, “It’s time, Esmer. You’ve done enough harm. It’s time to
do some good.
“I need answers, and I don’t know anyone else who can give them to me.”
Her voice seemed to fall, unheard, to the grass. Nothing replied to her except birdsong and the quiet incantations of the breeze.
More loudly, she continued, “Come on, Esmer. I know you can hear me. You said that the Despiser is hidden from
you, and you can’t tell me where to find my son, but those seem to be the only things that you don’t know. There’s too much going on, and all of it matters too much. It’s time to pick a side. I need answers.”
Still she had no reason to believe that he would heed her. She had no idea what his true powers were, or how far they extended. She could not even be
Closing her eyes, she used every other aspect of her senses to estimate what had become of her.
The waters healed bruises: they washed away the strain and sorrow of battle. She needed that. They could not undo the emotional cost of the things which she had suffered, but they lifted from her the long physical weariness and privation of recent days, the visceral residue of her passage through caesures, the tangible galls of her
fraught yearning for her son. The eldritch implications of Glimmermere renewed her bodily health and strength as though she had feasted on aliantha.
As cold as the water, Covenant’s ring burned between her breasts.
But the lake did more. The renewed accuracy with which she was able to perceive her own condition told her that the stain of Kevin’s Dirt had been scrubbed from her senses. And when
she reached beyond herself, she felt the ramified richness of the grass beneath her, the imponderable life-pulse of the undergirding soil and stone. She could not detect Mahrtiir’s presence beyond the hills: his emanations were too mortal to penetrate Glimmermere’s glory. Yet spring’s fecundity whispered to her along the gentle breeze, and the faint calling of the birds was as eloquent as melody. The wealth of the lake was now a paean, a sun-burnished
outpouring of the Earth’s essential gladness, as lambent as Earthpower, and as celebratory as an aubade.
In other ways, nothing had changed. Her torn heart could not be healed by any expression of this world’s fundamental bounty. Covenant and Jeremiah had been restored to her and they would not let her touch them. That hurt remained. Glimmermere held no anodyne for the dismay and bereavement which had brought her
here.
Nevertheless the lake had given her its gifts. It had made her stronger, allowing her to feel capable again, more certain of herself. And it had erased the effects of Kevin’s Dirt, when she had been forbidden to do so with the Staff of Law.
She was as ready as she would ever be.
Steady now, and moving without haste, she donned her clothes and boots; retrieved her Staff. Then she climbed a short way up the hillside, back toward Revelstone, until she found a spot where the slope offered a stretch of more level ground. There she planted her feet as though her memories of Thomas Covenant and love stood at her back to support her. Facing southward across the hillside, she braced the Staff in the grass at her feet and gripped it with one hand while she
lifted the white gold ring from under her damp shirt with the other and closed it in her fist.
She took a deep breath; held it for a moment, preparing herself. Then she lifted her face to the sky.
She had ascended far enough to gain a clear view of the mountainheads in the west. Clouds had begun to thicken behind the peaks, suggesting the possibility of rain. It would not come
soon, however. The raw crests still clawed the clouds to high wisps and feathers that streamed eastward like fluttering pennons. As Glimmermere’s waters flowed between the hills into the south, they caught the sunshine and glistened like a spill of gems.
Now, she thought. Now or never.
With her head held high, she announced softly, “It’s time, Esmer. You’ve done enough harm. It’s time to
do some good.
“I need answers, and I don’t know anyone else who can give them to me.”
Her voice seemed to fall, unheard, to the grass. Nothing replied to her except birdsong and the quiet incantations of the breeze.
More loudly, she continued, “Come on, Esmer. I know you can hear me. You said that the Despiser is hidden from
you, and you can’t tell me where to find my son, but those seem to be the only things that you don’t know. There’s too much going on, and all of it matters too much. It’s time to pick a side. I need answers.”
Still she had no reason to believe that he would heed her. She had no idea what his true powers were, or how far they extended. She could not even be
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