Fatal Revenant by Stephen R. Donaldson

want to talk about what you’ve just done,” she said between her teeth. “That’s pretty obvious. Tell me this instead.
    â€œWho possessed Anele in the Verge of Wandering? Who used him to talk to the Demondim? Who filled him with all of that fire? Give me a name.”
    Covenant and Jeremiah had been herded —If she knew who wished them to reach her, she might begin to grasp the significance of their arrival.
    The abrupt silence of the Waynhim and ur-viles seemed to suck the air from her lungs: it nearly left her gasping. Their raucous clamor was cut off as if they were appalled. Or as if—
    Trying to breathe again, she swallowed convulsively.
    â€”as if she had finally asked a question that compelled their attention.
    Now Esmer did not merely flinch. He almost appeared to cower. In an instant, all of his hauteur fled. Instead of sneering, he ducked his head to escape her gaze. His cymar fluttered about him, independent of the breeze, so that its sunset gilding covered him in disturbed streaks and consternation.
    Together all of the Demondim-spawn, those behind him as well as those with Linden, advanced a few steps, tightening their cordon. Their wide nostrils tasted the air wetly, as though they sought to detect the scent of truth; and their ears twitched avidly.
    When Esmer replied, his voice would have been inaudible without the silence.
    â€œYou speak of Kastenessen.” He may have feared being overheard. “I have named him my grandsire, though the Dancers of the Sea were no get of his. Yet they were formed by the lore and theurgy which he gifted to the mortal woman whom he loved. Therefore I am the descendant of his power. Among the Elohim , no other form of procreation has meaning.”
    The ur-viles and Waynhim responded with a low mutter which may have expressed approval or disbelief. Like them, if in an entirely different fashion, the merewives were artificial beings, born of magic and knowledge rather than of natural flesh.
    Kastenessen, Linden thought. New fears shook her. She believed Esmer instinctively. Kastenessen had burned her with his fury in the open center of the Verge of Wandering. And yesterday he had influenced the Demondim, persuading them to alter their intentions.
    â€œThat’s why you serve him,” she murmured unsteadily. I serve him utterly . “You inherited your power from him.”
    His power—and his hunger for destruction.
    â€œAs I also serve you,” he told her for the second time.
    Kastenessen. The name was a knell; a funereal gong adumbrating echoes in all directions. Her nausea was growing worse. The Elohim had forcibly Appointed Kastenessen to prevent or imprison a peril in the farthest north of the world . But now he had broken free of his Durance. When Lord Foul had said, I have merely whispered a word of counsel here and there, and awaited events , he may have been speaking of Kastenessen.
    She knew how powerful the Elohim could be, any of them—
    Kastenessen had provided for her escape from the horde. Had he also enabled Covenant and Jeremiah to reach her? Did he want all three of them alive?
    Still scrambling to catch up with the implications of Esmer’s revelation, she mused aloud, “So when Anele talks about skurj —”
    â€œHe names the beasts”—Esmer shook his head—“nay, the monstrous creatures of fire which Kastenessen was Appointed to contain. They come to assail the Land because he has severed or eluded the Durance which compelled him to his doom.”
    Behind the Mithil’s Plunge, Anele had referred to Kastenessen. I could have preserved the Durance! he had cried. Stopped the skurj. With the Staff! If I had been worthy .
    Did you sojourn under the Sunbane with Sunder and Hollian, and learn nothing of ruin?
    According to Anele—or to the native stone that he had touched behind the Plunge—the Elohim had done nothing to secure Kastenessen’s