Fatal Revenant by Stephen R. Donaldson

While she walked, the prospect of Glimmermere filled her with memories of Thomas Covenant.
    When the threat of the Banefire had been extinguished, she had joined him in the private chambers which had once been High Lord Mhoram’s home. At that time, she had feared that he would reject her; scorn her love. Earlier his intention to enter alone and undefended into the inferno of the Clave’s evil had appalled her, and she tried to stop him by violating his mind, possessing him. That expression of her own capacity for evil might have destroyed the bond between them. Yet when they were alone at last, she had learned that he held nothing against her; that he forgave her effortlessly. And then he had taken her to Glimmermere, where the lake had helped her to forgive herself.
    She wanted to hold onto that memory until she reached the upland tarn and could endeavor once again to wash away her dismay.
    Don’t touch him! Don’t touch either of us!
    She had risked the destruction of the world in order to retrieve the Staff of Law so that she might have some chance to redeem her son; yet both Jeremiah and Covenant had appeared through no act or decision or hazard of hers. For years and years she had striven to free Jeremiah from the chains of his peculiar dissociative disorder; yet he had reclaimed his mind in her absence, while Lord Foul tormented him. She had used all of her will and insight in an attempt to sway the Masters, and had won only Anele’s freedom and Stave’s friendship—at the cost of Stave’s violent expulsion from the communion of his people. And she had brought the Demondim to this time, recklessly, when Revelstone had no defense.
    Like Kevin’s Dirt, shame threatened to drain her until she was too weak to bear the cost of her life. Without the Staff’s fire to sustain her, she clung to her best memories of Covenant’s love—and to the possibilities of Glimmermere—so that she would not be driven to her knees by the weight of her mistakes and failures.
    But those memories brought others. Alone with her, Covenant had spoken of the time when he had been the helpless prisoner of Kasreyn of the Gyre in Bhrathairealm . There the thaumaturge had described the value and power of white gold; of the same ring which now hung uselessly on its chain around her neck. In a flawed world , Kasreyn had informed Covenant, purity cannot endure . Thus within each of my works I must perforce place one small flaw, else there would be no work at all . But white gold was an alloy; inherently impure. Its imperfection is the very paradox of which the Earth is made, and with it a master may form perfect works and fear nothing .
    The flaw in Kasreyn’s works had permitted the Sandgorgon Nom to escape the prison of Sandgorgons Doom. Without it, Covenant, Linden, and the remnants of the Search might not have been able to breach Revelstone in order to defeat the Clave and quench the Banefire. But that was not the point which Covenant had wished Linden to grasp. Long centuries earlier, his friend Mhoram had told him, You are the white gold . And in the Banefire, Covenant himself had become a kind of alloy, an admixture of wild magic and the Despiser’s venom; capable of perfect power.
    At the time, he had wanted Linden to understand why he would never again use his ring. He had become too dangerous: he was human and did not trust himself to achieve any perfection except ruin. With his own strict form of gentleness, he had tried to prepare her for his eventual surrender to Lord Foul.
    But now she thought that perhaps his words three and a half thousand years ago explained his unexpected appearance here. He had been transformed in death: Lord Foul had burned away the venom, leaving Covenant’s spirit purified. As a result, he may have become a kind of perfect being—
    â€”who could wield wild magic and fear nothing .
    If that were true, he had come to retrieve his ring. He would need