The Power That Preserves

by Stephen R. Donaldson

There, in the company of the two shaken sentries, he could follow the Raver's movements. Satansfist held his fragment of the Illearth Stone blazing aloft, an oriflamme of gelid fire, and its stark green illumination revealed him clearly as he moved among his forces, barking orders in a hoarse, alien tongue. Without haste he gathered ur-viles about him until their midnight forms spread out under his light like a lake of black water. Then he forged them into two immense wedges, one on either side of him, with their tips at his shoulders, facing Revelstone. In the garish Stone light, the loremasters looked like roynish, compact power, fatal and eager. Waves of other creatures fanned out beyond them on either side as they began to approach the Keep.

  Following the Raver's fire, they moved deliberately straight out of the southeast toward the knuckled and clenched gates at the base of the watchtower.

  High Lord Mhoram tightened his grip on his staff and tried to prepare himself for whatever might happen.

  At his back, he felt Lord Amatin and Hearthrall Borillar arrive, followed shortly by Tohrm and then Quaan. Without taking his eyes off Satansfist's approach, the Warmark reported.

  "I have ordered two Howard into the tower. More would serve no purpose-they would block each other. Half are archers. They are good warriors,'' he added unnecessarily, as if to reassure himself, "and all their Hafts and Warhafts are veterans of the war against Fleshharrower.

  '' The archers bear lor-liarill shafts. They will begin at your signal.''

  Mhoram nodded his approval. "Tell half the archers to strike when the Raver enters arrow range. Hold the rest for my signal."

  The Warmark turned to deliver these instructions, but Mhoram abruptly caught his arm. A chill tightened the High Lord's scalp as he said, "Place more archers upon the battlements above the court of the Gilden. If by some great ill Satansfist breaches the gates, the defenders of the tower will require aid. And-stand warriors ready to cut loose the crosswalks from the Keep."

  "Yes, High Lord." Quaan was a warrior and understood the necessity for such orders. He returned Mhoram's grip firmly, like a clasp of farewell, then left the top of the tower.

  "Breach the gates?" Borillar gaped as if the mere suggestion amazed him. "How is it possible?"

  "It is not possible," Tohrm replied flatly.

  "Nevertheless we must prepare." Mhoram braced his staff on the stone like a standard, and watched samadhi Sheol's approach.

  No one spoke while the army marched forward. It was already less than a hundred yards below the gates. Except for the dead rumble of its myriad feet on the frozen ground, it moved in silence, as if it were stalking the Keep-or as if in spite of their driven hunger many of its creatures themselves dreaded what Satansfist meant to do.

  Mhoram felt that he had only moments left. He asked Amatin if she had seen either Trevor or Loerya.

  "No.'' Her whispered answer had an empty sound, like a recognition of abandonment.

  Moments later, a flight of arrows thrummed from one of the upper levels of the tower. They were invisible in the darkness, and Satansfist gave no sign that he knew they had been fired. But the radiance of the Illearth Stone struck them into flame and knocked them down before they were within thirty feet of him.

  Another flight, and another, had no effect except to light the front of the Raver's army, revealing in lurid green and orange the deadly aspect of its leaders.

  Then samadhi halted. On either side of him, the ur-viles trembled. He coughed his orders. The wedges tightened. Snarling, the Cavewights and other creatures arranged themselves into formations, ready to charge.

  Without haste or hesitation, the Giant-Raver clenched his fist, so that iridescent steam plumed upward from his fragment of the Stone.

  Mhoram could feel the Stone's power mounting, radiating in tumid waves against his face.

  Abruptly, a bolt of force lashed from the Stone and struck the ground directly before one of the loremasters. The blast continued until the soil and rock caught fire, burned with green flames, crackled like firewood. Then samadhi moved his bolt, drew it over the ground in a wide, slow arc toward the other loremaster. His power left behind a groove that flamed and smoldered, flared and groaned in earthen agony.

  When the arc was complete, it enclosed Satansfist from side to side-a half-circle of emerald coals standing in front of him like a harness anchored by the two ur-vile wedges.

  Remembering the vortex of trepidation with which Fleshharrower had attacked the Warward at Doriendor Corishev, Mhoram strode across the tower and shouted up at the Keep, "Leave the battlements! All but the warriors must take shelter! Do not expose yourselves lest the sky itself assail you!" Then he returned to Lord Amatin's side.

  Below him, the two great loremasters raised their staves and jabbed them into the ends of the arc. At once, Demondim vitriol began to pulse wetly along the groove. The green flames turned black; they bubbled, spattered, burst out of the arc as if Satansfist had tapped a vein of EarthBlood in the ground.

  By the time Warmark Quaan had returned to the tower, Mhoram knew that samadhi was not summoning a vortex. The Raver's exertion was like nothing he had ever seen before. And it was slower than he had expected it to be. Once the ur-viles had tied themselves to the arc, Satansfist started to work with his Stone. From its incandescent core, he drew a fire that gushed to the ground and poured into the groove of the arc. This force combined with the black fluid of the ur-viles to make a mixture of ghastly potency. Soon black-green snake-tongues of lightning were flicking into the air from the whole length of the groove, and these bursts carried to the onlookers a gut-deep sense of violation, as if the rocky foundations of the foothills were under assault-as if the Despiser dared traduce even the necessary bones of the Earth.

  Yet the power did nothing except grow. Tongues of lightning leaped higher, joined together, became gradually but steadily more brilliant and wrong. Their violence increased until Mhoram felt that the nerves of his skin and eyes could endure no more-and went on increasing. When dawn began to bleed into the night at Satansfist's back, the individual tongues had merged into three continuous bolts striking without thunder into the deepest darkness of the clouds.

  The High Lord's throat was too dry; he had to swallow roughly several times before he could muster enough moisture to speak. "Hear-thrall Tohrm''-still he almost gagged on the words-"they will attack the gates. This power will attack the gates. Send any Gravelingases who will go to the aid of the stone."

  Tohrm started at the sound of his name, then hurried away as if he were glad to remove himself from the baleful glare of the arc.

  While gray daylight spread over the siege, the three unbroken bolts jumped and gibbered maniacally, raged at the silent clouds, drew closer to each other. Behind them, the army began to howl as the pressure became more and more unendurable.

  Lord Amatin dug her thin fingers into the flesh of Mhoram's arm. Quaan had crossed his arms over his chest, and was straining against himself to keep from shouting. Borillar's hands scrubbed fervidly over his features in an effort to erase the sensation of wrong. His staff lay useless at his feet. The High Lord prayed for them all and fought his dread.

  Then, abruptly, the Raver whirled his Stone and, roaring, threw still more power into the arc.

  The three great columns of lightning sprang together, became one.

  The earth shook with thunder in answer to that single, prodigious bolt. At once, the lightning vanished, though samadhi and the ur-viles did not withdraw their power from the arc.

  The thunder continued; tremors jolted the ground. In moments, the tower was trembling as if its foundations were about to crack open and swallow it.

  Immensely, tortuously, the ground of the foothills began to shift. It writhed, jerked, cracked; and through the cracks, stone shapes thrust upward. To his horror, Mhoram saw the forms of humans and Giants and horses rip themselves out of the earth. The forms were blunt, misshapen, insensate; they were articulated stone, the ancient fossilized remains of buried bodies.

  The memory o
f Asuraka's cry from Revelwood echoed in Mhoram's ears: He resurrected the old death!

  By hundreds and then thousands, the stone shapes heaved up out of the ground. Amid the colossal thunder of the breaking earth, they thrust free of their millennia-long graves and lumbered blindly toward the gates of Revelstone.

  "Defend the tower!" Mhoram cried to Quaan. "But do not waste lives. Amatin! Fight here! Flee if the tower falls. I go to the gates."

  But when he spun away from the parapet, he collided with Hearthrall Tohrm. Tohrm caught hold of him, stopped him. Yet in spite of the High Lord's urgency, a long moment passed before Tohrm could bring himself to speak.

  At last, he wrenched out, "The tunnel is defended."

  "Who?" Mhoram snapped.

  "The Lord Trevor ordered all others away. He and Trell Gravelingas support the gates."

  "Melenkurion!" Mhoram breathed. "Melenkurion abatha!" He turned back to the parapet.

  Below him, the dead, voiceless shapes had almost reached the base of the tower. Arrows flew at them from hundreds of bows, but the shafts glanced uselessly off the earthen forms and fell flaming to the ground without effect.

  He hesitated, muttering to himself in extreme astonishment. The breaking of the Law of Death had consequences beyond anything he had imagined. Thousands of the gnarled shapes were already massed and marching, and at every moment thousands more struggled up from the ground, writhed into motion like lost souls and obeyed the command of Sheol Satansfist's power.

  But then the first shape set its hands on the gates, and High Lord Mhoram sprang forward. Whirling his staff, he sent a blast down the side of the tower, struck the dead form where it stood. At the impact of his Lords-fire, it shattered like sandstone and fell into dirt.

  At once, he and Lord Amatin set to work with all their might. Their staffs rang and fired, rained blue strength like hammer blows down on the marching shapes. And every blow broke the dead into sand. But every one that fell was replaced by a score of others. Across all the terrain between the watchtower and Satansfist's arc, the ground heaved and buckled, pitching new forms into motion like beings dredged up from the bottommost muck of a lifeless sea. First one by one, then by tens, scores, fifties, they reached the gates and piled against them.

  Through the stone, Mhoram could feel the strain on the gates mounting. He could feel Trevor's fire and Trell's mighty subterranean song supporting the interlocked gates, while hundreds, thousands, of the blind, mute forms pressed against them, crushed forward in lifeless savagery like an avalanche leaping impossibly up out of the ground. He could feel the groaning retorts of pressure as if the bones of the tower were grinding together. And still the dead came, shambling out of the earth until they seemed as vast as the Raver's army and as irresistible as a cataclysm. Mhoram and Amatin broke hundreds of them and had no effect.

  Behind the High Lord, Tohrm was on his knees, sharing the tower's pain with his hands and sobbing openly, "Revelstone! Oh, Revelstone, alas! Oh, Revelstone, Revelstone!"

  Mhoram tore himself away from the fighting, caught hold of Tohrm's tunic, hauled the Hearthrall to his feet. Into Tohrm's broken face, he shouted, "Gravelingas! Remember who you are! You are the Hearthrall of Lord's Keep."

  "I am nothing!" Tohrm wept. "Ah! the Earth-!"

  "You are Hearthrall and Gravelingas! Hear me-I, High Lord Mhoram, command you. Study this attack-learn to know it. The inner gates must not fall. The rhadhamaerl must preserve Revelstone's inner gates!"

  He felt the change in the attack. Satansfist's Stone now threw bolts against the gates. Amatin tried to resist, but the Raver brushed her efforts aside as if they were nothing. Yet Mhoram stayed with Tohrm, focused his strength on the Hearthrall until Tohrm met the demand of his eyes and hands.

  "Who will mourn the stone if I do not?" Tohrm moaned.

  Mhoram controlled his desire to yell. "No harm will receive its due grief if we do not survive."

  The next instant, he forgot Tohrm, forgot everything except the silent screams that detonated through him from the base of the tower. Over Trell's shrill rage and the vehemence of Trevor's fire, the gates shrieked in agony.

  A shattering concussion convulsed the stone. The people atop the tower fell, tumbled across the floor. Huge thunder like a howl of victory crashed somewhere between earth and sky, as if the very firmament of existence had been rent asunder.

  The gates split inward.

  Torrents of dead stone flooded into the tunnel under the tower.

  Mhoram was shouting at Quaan and Amatin, "Defend the tower!" The shaking subsided, and he staggered erect. Pulling Tohrm with him, he yelled, "Come! Rally the Gravelingases! The inner gates must not fall." Though the tower was still trembling, he started toward the stairs.

  But before he could descend, he heard a rush of cries, human cries. An anguish like rage lashed through the roiling throng of his emotions. "Quaan!" he roared, though the old Warmark had almost caught up with him. "The warriors attack!" Quaan nodded bitterly as he reached Mhoram's side. "Stop them! They cannot fight these dead. Swords will not avail."

  With Tohrm and Quaan, the High Lord raced down the stairs, leaving Amatin to wield her fire from the edge of the parapet.

  Quaan went straight down through the tower, but Mhoram took Tohrm out over the courtyard between the tower and the Keep on the highest crosswalk. From there, he saw that Trell and Lord Trevor had already been driven back out of the tunnel. They were fighting for their lives against the slow, blind march of the dead. Trevor exerted an extreme force like nothing Mhoram had ever seen in him before, battering the foremost attackers, breaking them rapidly, continuously, into sand. And Trell wielded in both hands a massive fragment of one gate. He used the fragment like a club with such ferocious strength that even shapes vaguely resembling horses and Giants went down under his blows.

  But the two men had no chance. Swords and spears and arrows had no effect on the marching shapes; scores of warriors who leaped into the tunnel and the courtyard were simply crushed underfoot; and the cries of the crushed were fearful to hear. While Mhoram watched, the dead pushed Trell and Trevor back past the old Gilden tree toward the closed inner gates.

  Mhoram shouted to the warriors on the battlements below him, commanding them to stay out of the courtyard. Then he ran across to the Keep and dashed down the stairways toward the lower levels. With Tohrm behind him, he reached the first abutment over the inner gates in time to see Cavewights spill through the tunnel, squirming their way among the dead to attack the side doors which provided the only access to the tower.

  Some of them fell at once with arrows in their throats and bellies, and others were cut down by the few warriors in the court who had avoided being crushed. But their thick, heavy jerkins protected them from most of the shafts and swords. With their great strength and their knowledge of stone, they threw themselves at the doors. And soon the gangrel creatures were swarming through the tunnel in large numbers. The High Lord saw that the warriors alone could not keep samadhi's creatures out of the tower.

  For a harsh moment, he pushed Trevor and Trell, Cavewights, warriors, animated dead earth from his mind, and faced the decision he had to make. If Revelstone were to retain any viable defense, either the tower or the inner gates must be preserved. Without the gates, the tower might still restrict Satansfist's approach enough to keep Revelstone alive; without the tower, the gates could still seal out Satansfist. Without one or the other, Revelstone was defeated. But Mhoram could not fight for both, could not be in both places at once. He had to choose where to concentrate the Keep's defense.

  He chose the gates.

  At once, he sent Tohrm to gather the Gravelingases. Then he turned to the battle of the courtyard. He ignored the Cavewights, focused instead on the shambling dead as they trampled the Gilden tree and pushed Trell and Trevor back against the walls. Shouting to the warriors around him for dingor, he hurled his Lords-fire down at the faceless shapes, battered them into sand. Together, he and Trevor cleared a space in which
the trapped men could make their escape.

  Almost immediately, the sentries brought two tough dingor lines, anchored them, tossed them down to Trevor and Trell. But in the brief delay, a new wave of Cavewights rode into the courtyard on the shoulders of the dead and joined the assault on the doors. With a nauseating sound like the breaking of bones, they tore the doors off the hinges, tossed the stone slabs aside, and charged roaring into the tower. They were met instantly by staunch, dour-handed warriors, but the momentum and strength of the Cavewights carried them inward.

  When he saw the doors broken, Trell gave a cry of outrage, and tried to attack the Cavewights. Slapping aside the clingor line, he rushed the dead as if he believed he could fight his way through them to join the defense of the tower. For a moment, his granite club and his rhadhamaerl lore broke passage for him, and he advanced a few steps across the court. But then even his club snapped. He went down under the prodigious weight of the dead.

  Trevor sprang after him. Aided by Mhoram's fire, the Lord reached Trell. One of the dead stamped a glancing blow along his ankle, but he ignored the pain, took hold of Trell's shoulders, dragged him back.

  As soon as he was able to regain his feet, Trell pushed Trevor away and attacked the insensate forms with his fists.

  Trevor snatched up one of the clingor lines and whipped it several times around his chest. Then he pounced at Trell's back. With his arms under Trell's, he gripped his staff like a bar across Trell's chest, and shouted for the warriors to pull him up. Instantly, ten warriors caught the line and hauled. While Mhoram protected the two men, they were drawn up the wall and over the parapet of the abutment.

  With a sickening jolt, the dead thudded against the inner gates.

  Amid the cries of battle from the tower, and the mute pressure building sharply against the gates, High Lord Mhoram turned his attention to Trell and Lord Trevor.

  The Gravelingas struggled free of Trevor's hold and the hands of the warriors, thrust himself erect, and faced Mhoram as if he meant to leap at the High Lord's throat. His face flamed with exertion and fury.