“Don’t bother. He’ll take care of himself. He always has.”
Then he went sourly back to his seat near the fire.
The companions remained still as they ate supper, chewing their separate thoughts with their food. But when they were done, the First faced Covenant across the smoking blaze and made a gesture of readiness. “Now, Earthfriend.” Her tone reminded him of a polished blade, eager for use. “Let us speak of this proud and dire Keep.”
Covenant met her gaze and grimaced in an effort to hold his personal extremity beyond the range of Linden’s percipience.
“It is a doughty work,” the First said firmly. “In it the Unhomed wrought surpassingly well. Its gates have been broken by a puissance that challenges conception—but if I have not been misled, there are gates again beyond the tower. And surely you have seen that the walls will not be scaled. We would be slain in the attempt. The Clave is potent, and we are few. Earthfriend,” she concluded as if she were prepared to trust whatever explanation he gave, “bow do you purpose to assail this donjon?”
In response, he scowled grimly. He had been expecting that question—and dreading it. If he tried to answer it as if he were sane, his resolve might snap like a rotten bone. His friends would be appalled. And perhaps they would try to stop him. Even if they did not, he felt as certain as death that their dismay would be too much for him.
Yet some reply was required of him. Too many lives depended on what he meant to do. Stalling for courage, he looked toward Hollian. His voice caught in his throat as he asked, “What kind of sun are we going to have tomorrow?”
Dark hair framed her mien, and her face itself was smudged with the dirt of long travel; yet by some trick of the firelight—or of her nature—she appeared impossibly clear, her countenance unmuddied by doubt or despair. Her movements were deft and untroubled as she accepted the krill from Sunder, took out her lianar, and invoked the delicate flame of her foretelling.
After a moment, fire bloomed from her wand. Its color was the dusty hue of the desert sun.
Covenant nodded to himself. A desert sun. By chance or design, he had been granted the phase of the Sunbane he would have chosen for his purpose. On the strength of that small grace, he was able to face the First again.
“Before we risk anything else, I’m going to challenge Gibbon. Try to get him to fight me personally. I don’t think he’ll do it,” though surely the Raver would covet the white ring for itself and might therefore be willing to defy its master’s will, “but if he does, I can break the Clave’s back without hurting anybody else.” Even though Gibbon held the whole force of the Banefire; Covenant was ready for that as well.
But the First was not content. “And if he does not?” she asked promptly. “If he remains within his fastness and dares us to harm him?”
Abruptly Covenant lurched to his feet. Linden’s gaze followed him with a flare of alarm as she caught a hint of what drove him; but he did not let her speak. Pieces of moonlight filtered through the dense leaves; and beyond the trees the moon was full—stretched to bursting with promises he could not keep. Above him, the walls and battlements of Revelstone held the silver light as if they were still beautiful. He could not bear it.
Though he was choking, he rasped out, “I’ll think of something.” Then he fled the camp, went blundering through the brush until he reached its verge on the foothills.
The great Keep towered there, as silent and moon-ridden as a cairn for all the dreams it had once contained. No illumination of life showed from it anywhere. He wanted to cry out at it, What have they done to you? But he knew the stone would not hear him. It was deaf to him, blind to its own desecration—as helpless against evil as the Earth itself. The thought that he might hurt it made him tremble.
Cail attended him like an avatar of the night’s stillness. Because he had passed the limit of what he could endure, he turned to the Haruchai and whispered hoarsely, “I’m going to sleep here. I want to be alone. Don’t let any of them near me.”
He did not sleep. He spent the night staring up at the city as though it were the last barrier between his hot grief and Lord Foul’s triumph. Several times, he heard his friends approach him through the brush. Each time, Cail turned them away. Linden protested his refusal, but could not breach it.
That solitary and intimate fidelity enabled Covenant to hang on until dawn.
He saw the light first on the main Keep’s rim beyond the parapets of the watchtower, while the shaft of the Banefire shot toward the east. This daybreak had the hue of deserts, and the sun gave the high gray stone a brown tinge. Once again, Hollian had foretold the Sunbane accurately. As he levered his strain-sore and weary bones upright, he thought of the eh-Brand with an odd pang. Married by the child she bore, she and Sunder had grown steadily closer to each other—and Covenant did not know how to heal the wound between himself and Linden.
Behind him, he heard Linden accost Cail a second time. When the Haruchai denied her again, she snapped in exasperation, “He’s got to eat. He’s still at least that human.” Her voice sounded ragged, as if she also had not slept. Perhaps the air around Revelstone was too full of the taste of Ravers to permit her to sleep. Gibbon had shown her the part of herself which had arisen in hunger to take her mother’s life. Yet now, in this fatal place, she was thinking of Covenant rather than of herself. She would have forgiven him long ago—if he had ever given her the chance.
Stiffly as if all his muscles had been calcified by the night and his long despair, he started up the hill toward Revelstone.
He could not face Linden now, feared to let her look at him almost as much as he feared the massive granite threat of the Keep. Concealment was no longer possible for him; and he dreaded how she would react to what she saw.
The light was on the watchtower, coloring it like a wilderland and dropping rapidly toward the foothills. At the edges of his vision on either side, he saw the treetops start to melt; but the center of his sight was filled by the tower. Its embrasures and abutments were empty, and the darkness behind them made them look like eyes from which the light of life had been extinguished. Light of life and desecration, he thought vaguely, as if he were too weak with inanition and fear to be troubled by contradictions. He knew how to deal with them: he had found that answer in the thronehall of Foul’s Creche, when the impossibility of believing the Land true and the impossibility of believing it false had forced him to take his stand on the still point of strength at the center of his vertiginous plight. But such comprehension was of no use to him now. All the anger had gone out of him during the night; and he ascended toward the gaping mouth of Revelstone like a husk for burning.
Yet the apparent desertion of the city made him uneasy. Was it possible that the Clave had fled—that his mere approach had driven the Riders into hiding? No. The virulence of the Banefire’s beam gave no indication that it had been left untended. And Lord Foul would not have permitted any withdrawal. What better victory for the Despiser than that Covenant should bring down the Arch in conflict with the Clave?
Lord Foul had said, At the last there wilt be but one choice for you, and you will make it in all despair. He had promised that, and he had laughed.
Something that might have been power stirred in Covenant. His hands curled into fists, and he went on upward.
The sun laid his shadow on the bare dirt in front of him. Its heat gripped the back of his neck, searching for the fiber of his will in the same way that it would reduce all the Upper Land’s monstrous verdure to gray sludge and desert. He seemed to see himself spread out for sacrifice on the ground—exposed for the second time to a blow as murderous as the knife which had pierced his chest, stabbed the hope out of his life. An itch like a faint scurry of vermin spread up his right forearm. Unconsciously he quickened his pace.
Then he reached the level ground at the base of the tower, and the tunnel stood open before him among its mined gates. The passage was as dark as a grave until it met the dim illumination reflecting into t
he courtyard from the face of the main Keep. Dimly he saw the inner gates at the far side of the court. They were sealed against him.
Involuntarily he looked back down toward the place where his companions had camped. At first the sun was in his eyes, and he could descry nothing except the eviscerated gray muck which stretched out to the horizons like a sea as the Sunbane denatured life from the terrain. But when he shaded his sight, he saw the company.
His friends stood in a cluster just beyond the edge of the sludge. The First and two Haruchai were restraining Honninscrave. Pitchwife held Linden back.
Covenant swung around in pain to face the tunnel again.
He did not enter it. He was familiar with the windows in its ceiling which allowed the Keep’s defenders to attack anyone who walked that throat. And he did not raise his voice. He was instinctively certain now that Revelstone was listening acutely, in stealth and covert fear. He sounded small against the dusty air, the great city and the growing desert as he spoke.
“I’ve come for you, Gibbon. For you. If you come out, I’ll let the rest of the Riders live.” Echoes mocked him from the tunnel, then subsided. “If you don’t, I’ll take this place apart to find you.
“You know I can do it. I could’ve done it the last time—and I’m stronger now.” You are more dangerous now than you’ve ever been. “Foul doesn’t think you can beat me. He’s using you to make me beat myself. But I don’t care about that anymore. Either way, you’re going to die. Come out and get it over with.”
The words seemed to fail before they reached the end of the passage. Revelstone loomed above him like the corpse of a city which had been slain ages ago. The pressure of the sun drew a line of bitter sweat down his spine.
And a figure appeared in the tunnel. Black against the reflection of the courtyard, it moved outward. Its feet struck soft echoes of crepitation from the stone.
Covenant tried to swallow—and could not. The desert sun had him by the throat.
A pair of hot pains transfixed his forearm. The scars gleamed like fangs. An invisible darkness flowed out of the passage toward him, covering his fire with the pall of venom. The sound of steps swelled.
Then sandaled feet and the fringe of a red robe broached the sunshine; and Covenant went momentarily faint with the knowledge that his first gambit had failed. Light ran swiftly up the lines of the stark scarlet fabric to the black chasuble which formalized the robe. Hands appeared, empty of the characteristic rukh, the black iron rod like a scepter with an open triangle fixed atop it, which a Rider should have held. Yet this was surely a Rider. Not Gibbon: the na-Mhoram wore black. He carried a crozier as tall as himself. The habitual beatitude or boredom of his round visage was punctured only by the red bale of his eyes. The man who came out to meet Covenant was not Gibbon.
A Rider, then. He appeared thick of torso, though his ankles and wrists were thin, and his bearded cheeks had been worn almost to gauntness by audacity or fear. Wisps of wild hair clung like fanaticism to his balding skull. His eyes had a glazed aspect.
He held his palms open before him as if to demonstrate that he had come unarmed.
Covenant wrestled down his weakness, fought a little moisture into his throat so that he could speak. In a tone that should have warned the Rider, he said, “Don’t waste my time. I want Gibbon.”
“Halfhand, I greet you,” the man replied. His voice was steady, but it suggested the shrillness of panic. “Gibbon na-Mhoram is entirely cognizant of you and will waste neither time nor life in your name. What is your purpose here?”
Impressions of danger crawled between Covenant’s shoulderblades. His mouth was full of the copper taste of fear. The Rider’s trunk appeared unnaturally thick; and his robe seemed to move slightly of its own accord as if the cloth were seething. Covenant’s scars began to burn like rats gnawing at his flesh. He hardly heard himself reply, “This has gone on too long. You make the whole world stink. I’m going to put a stop to it.”
The Rider bared his teeth—a grin that failed. His gaze did not focus on Covenant. “Then I must tell you that the na-Mhoram does not desire speech with you. His word has been given to me to speak, if you will hear it.”
Covenant started to ask. What word is that? But the question never reached utterance. With both hands, the Rider unbelted the sash of his robe. In prescient dread, Covenant watched the Rider open his raiment to the sun.
From the line of his shoulders to the flex of his knees, his entire body was covered with wasps.
Great yellow wasps, as big as Covenant’s thumb.
When the light touched them, they began to snarl.
For one hideous moment, they writhed where they were; and the Rider wore them as if he were one of the Sunbane-warped, made savage and abominable by corruption. Then the swarm launched itself at Covenant.
In that instant, the world went black. Venom crashed against his heart like the blow of a sledgehammer.
Black fire; black poison; black ruin. The flame raging from his ring should have been as pure and argent as the metal from which it sprang; but it was not, was not. It was an abyss that yawned around him, a gulf striding through the air and the ground and the Keep to consume them, swallow the world and leave no trace. And every effort he made to turn the dark fire white, force it back to the clean pitch of its true nature, only raised the blaze higher, widened the void. Swiftly it became as huge as the hillside, hungry for ruin.
Linden was not shouting at him. If she had torn her heart with screams, he would not have been able to hear her. She was too far away, and the gathering cataclysm of his power filled all his senses. Yet he heard her in his mind—heard her as she had once cried to him across the Worm’s aura and the white ring’s eruption, This is what Foul wants!—felt the remembered grasp of her arms as she had striven to wrest him back from doom. If he let his conflagration swell, they would all die, she and the others he loved and the Land he treasured, all of them ripped out of life and meaning by blackness.
The strain of self-mastery pushed him far beyond himself. He was driven to a stretched and tenuous desperation from which he would never be able to turn back—a hard, wild exigency that he would have to see through to its conclusion for good or ill, ravage or restitution. But the simple knowledge that he would not be able to turn back and did not mean to try enabled him to strangle the destruction pouring from him.
Abruptly his vision cleared—and he had not been stung. Thousands of small, charred bodies still smoked on the bare ground. Not one of the wasps was left to threaten him.
The Rider remained standing with his mouth open and his eyes white, miraculously unscathed and astonished.
Covenant felt no triumph: he had gone too far for triumph. But he was certain of himself now, at least for the moment. To the Rider, he said, “Tell Gibbon he had his chance.” His voice held neither doubt nor mercy. “Now I’m coming in after him.”
Slowly, the astonishment drained from the man’s face. His frenzy and glee seemed to collapse as if he had suffered a relapse of mortality. Yet he remained a Rider of the Clave, and he knew his enemy. All the Land had been taught to believe that Covenant was a betrayer. The man looked human and frail, reduced by failure; but he did not recant his faith.
“You surpass me, Halfhand.” His voice shook. “You have learned to wield—and to restrain. But you have come to havoc the long service of our lives, and we will not permit you. Look to your power, for it will not aid you against us,”
Turning as if he were still able to dismiss Covenant from consideration, he followed the echoes of his feet back into the tunnel under the watchtower.
Covenant watched him go and cursed the mendacity which enabled Lord Foul to take such men and women, people of native courage and dedication, and convince them that the depredations of the Clave were virtuous. Revelstone was full of individuals who believed themselves responsible for the survival of the Land. And they would be the first to die. The Despiser would sacrifice them before hazarding his truer servants.
Violence taut in his muscles, he started stiffly down the hillside toward his friends.
They began the ascent to meet him. Anxiously they studied the way he moved as if they had seen him emerge from the teeth of hell and could hardly believe it.
Before he reached them, he heard the flat thunder of hooves.
He did not stop: he was wound to his purpose and unbreachable. But he looked back up at Revelstone over his shoulder.
Between the broken gates came Riders mounted on Coursers, half a dozen of them pounding in full career down the slope. The Sunbane-bred Coursers were large enough to carry four or five ordinary men and woman, would have been large enough to support Giants. They had malicious eyes, the faces and fangs of sabertooths, shaggy pelts, and poisoned spurs at the back of each ankle. And the Riders held their rukhs high and bright with flame as they charged. Together they rushed downward as if they believed they could sweep the company off the hillside.
Yet for all their fury and speed they looked more like a charade than a true assault. The Banefire made them dangerous; but they were only six, and they were hurling themselves against ten Haruchai, four Giants, the Appointed of the Elohim, and four humans whose strength had not yet been fully measured. Covenant himself had already killed. Deliberately he left the charge to his companions and walked on.
Behind him, the Coursers suddenly went wild.
Sunder had snatched out his Sunstone and the krill; but now he did not draw his power from the sun. Instead he tapped the huge beam of the Banefire. And he was acquainted with Coursers. At one time, he had learned to use a rukh in order to master a group of the beasts: he knew how to command them. Fierce red flarings shot back and forth through the krill’s white light as he threw his force at the attack; but he did not falter.
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