THE POWER THAT PRESERVES

by default

  He did not wait for them. He swung in the direction Satansfist had taken, intending to pursue the Raver as far as his strength would carry him. But some instinct or intuition tugged him at the last instant, deflected him to one side. He turned and met that part of the avalanche head-on.

  Now the only thing which limited his might was his staff itself. That wood had been shaped by people who had not understood Kevin's Lore; it was not formed to bear the force he now sent blazing through it. But he had no margin for caution. He made the staff surpass itself, sent it bucking and crackling with power to rage against his assailants. His flame grew incandescent, furnace-hot; in brilliance and coruscation it sliced through his foes like a scythe of sun-fire.

  In moments, their sheer numbers filled all his horizons, blocked everything but their dark assault out of his awareness. He saw nothing else, felt nothing but huge waves of misshapen fiends that sought to deluge him, knew nothing but their ravening lust for blood and his blue, fiery passion. Though they threw themselves at him in scores and hundreds, he met them, cut them down, blasted them back. Wading through their corpses as if they were the very sea of death, he fought them with fury in his veins, indomitability in his bones, extravagant triumph in his eyes.

  Yet they outweighed him. They were too many. Any moment now, one of them would drive a sword into his back, and he would be finished. Through the savage clash of combat, he heard a high, strange cry of victory, but he hardly knew that he had made it himself.

  Then, unexpectedly, he glimpsed the light of a fire through a brief gap in his attackers. It disappeared instantly, vanished as if it had never happened. But he had recognized it. He shouted again and began to fight toward it. Ignoring the danger at his back, he reaped a break in the avalanche ahead. There he saw the fire again.

  It was the blaze of a Hirebrand.

  On the rim of the hollow, Hearthrall Borillar and the last of the Waynhim fought together against Mhoram's foes. Borillar used his flaming staff like a mace, and the Waynhim supported him with their own powers. Together they struggled impossibly to rescue the High Lord.

  At the sight of them, Mhoram faltered; he could see immense monsters rising up to smite them, and their peril interrupted his concentration. But he recovered, surged toward them, driving his staff until it screamed in his hands.

  Too many creatures were pressed between him and his rescuers; he could not reach them in time. While he fought slipping and plowing through the blood, he saw Borillar slain, saw the formation of the Waynhim broken, scattered. He almost fell himself under his inability to help them.

  But with their deaths they had purchased a thinning in the flood of attackers at that point. Through that thinning came Drinny of the Ranyhyn, bucking and charging to regain his rider.

  His violent speed carried him down into the hollow. He crashed through creatures, leaped over them, hacked them out of his way. Before they could brace themselves to meet him, Drinny had reached the High Lord.

  Mhoram sprang onto the Ranyhyn's back. From that vantage, he brought his power down on the heads of his assailants, while Drinny kicked and plunged back up the hillside. In moments, they crested the rim and broke into clearer ground beyond it.

  As he guided Drinny ahead, Mhoram caught a glimpse of the War-ward. It had rallied around Quaan and was struggling in the High Lord's direction. The riders charged to break up the ranks of the enemy, then the other warriors rushed to take advantage of the breach. But they were completely engulfed-a small, valiant island in the sea of Satansfist's army. Their progress was tortuous, their losses atrocious. High Lord Mhoram knew of only one effective way to help them, and he took Drinny toward it without an instant of hesitation.

  Together, they pursued samadhi Raver.

  Satansfist was only fifty yards away. He stood on a knoll from which he could direct the battle. And he was alone; all his forces were engaged elsewhere. He towered atop the hill like a monolith of hatred and destruction, wielding his army with the force of green ill.

  Holding his staff ready, Mhoram sent the Ranyhyn lunging straight into the teeth of the winter-straight at samadhi. When he was scant strides away from his foe, he cried his challenge:

  "Melenkurion abatha! Duroc minas mill khabaal!"

  With all his strength, he leveled a blast of Lords-fire at the Raver's leering skull.

  Satansfist knocked the attack down as if it were negligible; disdainfully, he slapped Mhoram's blue out of the air with his Stone and returned a bolt so full of cold emerald force that it scorched the atmosphere as it moved.

  Mhoram sensed its power, knew that it would slay him if it struck. But Drinny dodged with a fleet, fluid motion which belied the wrenching change of his momentum. The bolt missed, crashed instead into the creatures pursuing the High Lord, killed them all.

  That gave Mhoram the instant he needed. He corrected Drinny's aim, cocked his staff over his shoulder. Before samadhi could unleash another blast, the High Lord was upon him.

  Using all Drinny's speed, all the strength of his body, all the violated passion of his love for the Land, Mhoram swung. His staff caught Satansfist squarely across the forehead.

  The concussion ripped Mhoram from his seat like a dry leaf in the wind. His staff shattered at the blow, exploded into splinters, and he hit the ground amid a brief light rain of wood slivers. He was stunned. He rolled helplessly a few feet over the frozen earth, could not stop himself, could not regain his breath. His mind went blank for an instant, then began to ache as his body ached. His hands and arms were numb, paralyzed by the force which had burned through them.

  Yet even in his daze, he had room for a faint amazement at what he had done.

  His blow had staggered Satansfist, knocked him backward. The Giant-Raver had fallen down the far side of the knoll.

  With a gasp, Mhoram began to breathe again. Spikes of sensation dug into his arms; dazzling pain filled his vision. He tried to move, and after a moment succeeded in rolling onto his side. His hands hung curled on the ends of his wrists as if they were crippled, but he shifted his shoulder and elbow, turned himself onto his stomach, then levered himself with his forearms until he gained his knees. There he rested while the pain of returning life stabbed its way down into his fingers.

  The sound of heavy steps, heavy breathing, made him look up.

  Samadhi Sheol stood over him.

  Blood poured from Satansfist's forehead into his eyes, but instead of blinding him, it seemed only to enrich his raving ferocity. His lips were contorted with a paroxysm of savage glee; ecstatic rage shone on his wet teeth. In the interlocked clasp of his fists, the Illearth Stone burned and fumed as if it were on the brink of apotheosis.

  Slowly, he raised the Stone over Mhoram's head like an ax.

  Transfixed, stunned-as helpless as a sacrifice-Mhoram watched his death rise and poise above him.

  In the distance, he could hear Quaan shouting wildly, uselessly, "Mhoram! Mhoram!" On the ground nearby, Drinny groaned and strove to regain his feet. Everywhere else there was silence. The whole battle seemed to have paused in midblow to watch Mhoram's execution. And he could do nothing but kneel and regret that so many lives had been spent for such an end.

  Yet when the change of the air came an instant later, it was so intense, so vibrant and thrilling, that it snatched him to his feet. It made Satansfist arrest his blow, gape uncomprehendingly into the sky, then drop his fists and whirl to shout strident curses at the eastern horizon.

  For that moment, Mhoram also only gaped and gasped. He could not believe his senses, could not believe the touch of the air on his cold-punished face. He seemed to be tasting something which had been lost from human experience.

  Then Drinny lurched up, braced himself on splayed legs, and raised his head to neigh in recognition of the change. His whinny was weak and strained, but it lifted Mhoram's heart like the trumpets of triumph.

  While he and Satansfist and all the armies stared at it, the wind faltered. It limped, spurting and fluttering in the
air like a wounded bird, then fell lifeless to the ground.

  For the first time since Lord Foul's preternatural winter had begun, there was no wind. Some support or compulsion had been withdrawn from samadhi Satansfist.

  With a howl of rage, the Raver spun back toward Mhoram. "Fool!" he screamed as if the High Lord had let out a shout of jubilation.' "That was but one weapon of many! I will yet drink your heart' s blood to the bottom!'' Reeling under the weight of his fury, he lifted his fists again to deliver the executing blow.

  But now Mhoram felt the fire which burned against his flesh under his robe. In a rush of exaltation, he understood it, grasped its meaning intuitively. As the Stone reached its height over his head, he tore open his robe and grasped Loric's krill.

  Its gem blazed like a hot white brazier in his hands. It was charged to overflowing with echoes of wild magic; he could feel its keenness as he gripped its hilt.

  It was a weapon strong enough to bear any might.

  His eyes met Satansfist's. He saw dismay and hesitation clashing against the Raver's rage, against samadhi Sheol's ancient malice and the supreme confidence of the Stone.

  Before Satansfist could defend himself, High Lord Mhoram sprang up and drove the krill deep into his bosom.

  The Raver shrieked in agony. With Mhoram hanging from the blade in his chest, he flailed his arms as if he could not find anything to strike, anywhere to exert his colossal outrage. Then he dropped to his knees.

  Mhoram planted his feet on the ground and braced himself to retain his grip on the krill. Through the focus of that blade, he drove all his might deeper and deeper toward the Giant-Raver's heart.

  Yet samadhi did not die. Faced with death, he found a way to resist. Both his fists clenched the Stone only a foot above the back of Mhoram's neck. With all the rocky, Giantish strength of his frame, he began to squeeze.

  Savage power steamed and pulsed like the beating of a heart of ice-a heart laboring convulsively, pounding and quivering to carry itself through a crisis. Mhoram felt the beats crash against the back of his spine. They kept Satansfist alive while they strove to quench the power which drove the krill

  But Mhoram endured the pain, did not let go; he leaned his weight on the blazing blade, ground it deeper and still deeper toward the essential cords of samadhi's life. Slowly, his flesh seemed to disappear, fade as if he were being translated by passion into a being of pure force, of unfettered spirit and indomitable will. The Stone hammered at his back like a mounting cataclysm, and Satansfist's chest heaved against his hands in great, ragged, bloody gasps.

  Then the cords were cut.

  Pounding beyond the limits of control, the Illearth Stone exploded, annihilated itself with an eruption that hurled Mhoram and Satansfist tumbling inextricably together from the knoll. The blast shook the ground, tore a hole in the silence over the battle. One slow instant of stunned amazement gripped the air, then vanished in the dismayed shrieks of the Despiser's army.

  Moments later, Warmark Quaan and the surviving remnant of his mounted Howard dashed to the foot of the knoll. Quaan threw himself from his horse and leaped to the High Lord's side.

  Mhoram's robe draped his bloodied and begrimed form in tatters; it had been shredded by the explosion. His hands as they gripped the krill were burned so badly that only black rags of flesh still clung to his bones. From head to foot, his body had the look of pain and brokenness. But he was still alive, still breathing faintly, fragilely.

  Fear, weariness, hesitation dropped off Quaan as if they were meaningless . He took the krill, wrapped it, and placed it under his belt, then with celerity and care lifted the High Lord in his arms. For an instant, he looked around. He saw Drinny nearby, shaking his head and mane to throw off the effects of the blast. He saw the Despiser's army seething in confusion and carnage. He hoped that it would fall apart without the Raver's leadership and coercion. But then he saw also that the ur-viles were rallying, taking charge of the creatures around them, reorganizing the hordes.

  In spite of the High Lord's weight, Quaan ran and vaulted onto Drinny's back. Shouting to the Warward, "Retreat! Return to the Keep! The Gray Slayer has not lost his hold!" he clapped Drinny with his heels and took the Ranyhyn at a full gallop toward the open gates of Revel-stone.

  [SIXTEEN] Colossus

  There were gaps in the darkness during which Covenant knew dimly that rank liquids were being forced into him. They nourished him despite their rancid taste; his captors were keeping him alive. But between these gaps nothing interrupted his bereavement, his loss of everything he could grasp or recognize. He was dismembered from himself. The shrill vermilion nail of pain which the ur-viles had driven through his forehead impaled his identity, his memory and knowledge and awareness. He was at the nadir-captured, conquered, bereft-and only that iron stab in his forehead stood between him and the last numbness of the end.

  So when he began to regain consciousness, he jerked toward it like a half-buried corpse, striving to shift the weight which enfolded him like the ready arms of his grave. Cold ebbed into him from the abyss of the winter. His heart labored; shuddering ran through him like a crisis. His hands clutched uselessly at the frozen dirt.

  Then rough hands flopped him onto his back. A grim visage advanced, receded. Something struck his chest. He gasped at the force of the blow. Yet it helped him; it seemed to break him free of imminent hysteria. He began to breathe more easily. In a moment, he became aware that he was beating the back of his head against the ground. With an effort, he stopped himself. Then he concentrated on trying to see.

  He wanted to see, wanted to find some answer to the completeness of his loss. And his eyes were open-must have been open, or he would not have been able to perceive the shadowy countenance snarling over him. Yet he could not make it out. His eyeballs were dry and blind; he saw nothing but cold, universal gray smeared around the more compact gray of the visage.

  "Up, Covenant," a harsh voice rasped. "You are of no use as you are."

  Another blow knocked his head to the side. He lurched soddenly. Through the pain in his cheek, he felt himself gaping into the raw wind. He blinked painfully at the dryness of his eyes, and tears began to resolve his blindness into shapes and spaces.

  "Up, I say!"

  He seemed to recognize the voice without knowing whose it was. But he lacked the strength to turn his head for another look. Resting on the icy ground, he blinked until his sight came into focus on a high, monolithic fist of stone.

  It was perhaps twenty yards from him and forty feet tall-an obsidian column upraised on a plinth of native rock, and gnarled at its top into a clench of speechless defiance. Beyond it he could see nothing; it stood against a background of clouds as if it were erect on the rim of the world. At first, it appeared to him a thing of might, an icon of Earthpower upthrust or set down there to mark a boundary against evil. But as his vision cleared, the stone seemed to grow shallow and slumberous, blank; while he blinked at it, it became as inert as any old rock. If it still lived, he no longer had the eyes to see its life.

  Slowly, fragments of other senses returned to him. He discovered that he could hear the wind hissing ravenously past him like a river thrashing across rapids; and behind it was a deep, muffled booming like the thunder of a waterfall.

  "Up!" the harsh voice repeated. "Must I beat you senseless to awaken you?"

  Mordant laughter echoed after the demand as if it were a jest.

  Abruptly, the rough hands caught hold of his robe and yanked him off the ground. He was still too weak to carry his own weight, too weak even to hold up his head. He leaned against the man's chest and panted at his pain, trying with futile fingers to grasp the man's shoulders.

  "Where-?" he croaked at last. "Where-?"

  The laughter ridiculed him again. Two unrecognizable voices were laughing at him.

  "Where?" the man snapped. "Thomas Covenant, you are at my mercy. That is the only where which signifies."

  Straining, Covenant heaved up his head and found
himself staring miserably into Triock's dark scowl.

  Triock? He tried to say the name, but his voice failed him.

  "You have slain everything that was precious to me. Think on that, Unbeliever"-he invested the title with abysms of contempt-"if you require to know where you are."

  Triock?

  "There is murder and degradation in your every breath. Ah! you stink of it." A spasm of revulsion knotted Triock's face, and he dropped Covenant to the ground again.

  Covenant landed heavily amid sarcastic mirth. He was still too dazed to collect his thoughts. Triock's disgust affected him like a command; he lay prostrate with his eyes closed, trying to smell himself.

  It was true. He stank of leprosy. The disease in his hands and feet reeked, gave off a rotten effluvium out of all proportion to the physical size of his infection. And its message was unmistakable. The ordure in him, the putrefaction of his flesh, was spreading-expanding as if he were contagious, as if at last even his body had become a violation of the fundamental health of the Land. In some ways, this was an even more important violation than the Despiser's winter-or rather his stench was the crown of the wind, the apex of Lord Foul's intent. That intent would be complete when his illness became part of the wind, when ice and leprosy together extinguished the Land's last vitality.

  Then, in one intuitive leap, he understood his sense of bereavement. He identified his loss. Without looking to verify the perception, he knew that his ring had been taken from him; he could feel its absence like destitution in his heart.

  The Despiser's manipulations were complete. The coercion and subterfuge which had shaped Covenant's experiences in the Land had borne fruit. Like a Stone-warped tree, they had fructified to produce this unanswerable end. The wild magic was now in Lord Foul's possession.

  A wave of grief rushed through Covenant. The enormity of the disaster he had precipitated upon the Land appalled him. His chest locked in a clench of sorrow, and he huddled on the verge of weeping.