The Illearth War

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “The krill of Loric came to life,” said Amok. “That is the appointed word. And the Land is in peril. Therefore I have made myself accessible. I can do no more. I must serve my purpose.”

  The High Lord searched him for a moment, then said sternly, “Amok, are my companions unsuitable to your purpose in some way?”

  “Your companions must suit themselves. I am the way and the door. I do not judge those who seek.”

  “Amok”—she hung fire, and her lips moved silently as if she were reciting a list of choices—“are there conditions to be met—before you can guide us onward?”

  Amok bowed in recognition of her question, and answered with a chuckle, “Yes, High Lord.”

  “Will you guide us to the Seventh Ward when the conditions are met?”

  “That is the purpose of my creation.”

  “What are your conditions?”

  “There is only one. If you desire more, you must conceive them without my aid.”

  “What is your condition, Amok?”

  The youth gazed impishly askance at Elena. “High Lord,” he said in a tone of soaring glee, “you must name the power of the Seventh Ward.”

  She gaped at him for an instant, then exclaimed, “Melenkurion! You know I lack that knowledge.”

  He was unmoved. “Then perhaps it is well that the Ranyhyn have not departed. They can bear you to Revelstone. If you gain wisdom there, you may return. You will find me here.” With a bow of infuriating insouciance, he waved his arms and vanished.

  She stared after him and clenched the Staff as if she meant to strike the empty air of his absence. Her back was to Covenant; he could not see what was happening in her face, but the tension of her shoulders made him fear that her eyes were drawing into focus. At that thought, blood pounded in his temples. He reached out, tried to interrupt or distract her.

  His touch caused her to swing around toward him. Her face looked emaciated—her flesh was tight over the pale intensity of her skull—and she seemed astonished, as if she had just discovered her capacity for panic. But she did not move into his arms. She halted, deliberately closed her eyes. The bones of her jaw and cheeks and forehead concentrated on him.

  He felt an abyss opening in his mind.

  He did not comprehend the black, yawning sensation. Elena stood before him in the shadow of Melenkurion Skyweir like an icon of gleaming bone robed in blue; but behind her, behind the solid stone of Rivenrock, darkness widened like a crack across the cistern of his thoughts. The rift sucked at him; he was losing himself.

  The sensation came from Elena.

  Suddenly, he understood. She was attempting to meld her mind with his.

  A glare of fear shot through the sable vertigo which drained him. It illuminated his peril; if he abandoned himself to the melding, she would learn the truth about him. He could not afford such a plunge, could never have afforded it. Crying, No! he recoiled, staggered back away from her within himself.

  The pressure eased. He found that his body was also retreating. With an effort, he stopped, raised his head.

  Elena’s eyes were wide with disappointment and grief, and she leaned painfully on the Staff of Law. “Pardon me, beloved,” she breathed. “I have asked for more than you are ready to give.” For a moment, she remained still, gave him a chance to respond. Then she groaned, “I must think,” and turned away. Supporting herself with the Staff, she moved slowly along the cleft toward the outer edge of the plateau.

  Shaken Covenant sat straight down on the rock, and caught his head in his hands. Conflicting emotions tore at him. He was dismayed by his narrow escape, and angry at his weakness. To save himself, he had hurt Elena. He thought that he should go to her, but something in the focused isolation of her figure warned him not to intrude. For a time, he gazed at her with an ache in his heart. Then he climbed to his feet, muttering at the needless air, “He could’ve had the decency to tell us—at least before she lost her Ranyhyn.”

  To his surprise, the First Mark answered, “Amok acts according to the law of his creation. He cannot break that law merely to avoid pain.”

  Covenant threw up his hands in disgust. Fulminating uselessly, he stalked away across the plateau.

  He spent the remainder of the afternoon roving restlessly from place to place across Rivenrock, searching for some clue to the continuation of Amok’s trail. After a while, he calmed down enough to understand Morin’s comment on Amok. Morin and Bannor were the prisoners of their Vow; they could speak with authority about the exigencies of an implacable law. But if the Bloodguard sympathized with Amok, that was just one more coffin nail in the doom of the High Lord’s quest.

  Covenant’s effectlessness was another such nail. He could hear the inflated fatuity of his bargain mocking him now. How could he help Elena? He did not even know enough to grasp the issues Amok raised. Though his disconsolate hiking covered a wide section of the plateau, he learned nothing of any significance. The barren stone was like his inefficacy—irreducible and binding. While the last sunlight turned to dust in the sky, he bent his steps toward the graveling glow which marked the High Lord’s camp. He was brooding on the familiar idea that futility governed his very existence.

  He found Elena beside her pot of graveling. She looked both worn and whetted, as if the pressure on her ground down her individuality, fitted her to the pattern of her Lord’s duty. Resolution gleamed in the honed patina of her bones. She had accepted all the implications of her burden.

  Covenant cleared his throat awkwardly. “What have you got? Have you figured it out?”

  In a distant voice, she asked, “How great is your knowledge of Warmark Troy’s battle plan?”

  “I know generally what he’s trying to do—nothing specific.”

  “If his plan did not fail, the battle began yesterday.”

  He considered for a moment, then inquired carefully, “Where does that leave us?”

  “We must meet Amok’s condition.”

  He gestured his incomprehension. “How?”

  “I do not know. But I believe that it may be done.”

  “You’re missing four Wards.”

  “Yes,” she sighed. “Kevin clearly intended that we should gain the Seventh Ward only after mastering the first Six. But Amok has already violated that intent. Knowing that we have not comprehended Loric’s krill, he still returned to us. He saw the Land’s peril, and returned. This shows some freedom—some discretion. He is not explicitly bound by his law at all points.”

  She paused, and after a moment Covenant said, “Offhand I would say that makes him dangerous. Why would he drag us all the way out here when he knew we would get stuck—unless he was trying to distract you from the war?”

  “Amok intends no betrayal. I hear no malice in him.”

  To penetrate her abstraction, he snapped, “You can be fooled. Or are you forgetting that Kevin even accepted Foul as a Lord?”

  Steadily Elena replied, “Perhaps the first Six Wards do not contain the name of this power. Perhaps they teach only the way in which Amok may be brought to speak its name himself.”

  “In that case—”

  “Amok guided us here because in some way it is possible for us to meet his condition.”

  “But can you find the right questions?”

  “I must. What other choice exists for me? I cannot rejoin the Wayward now.”

  Her voice had a dull finality, as if she were passing sentence on herself. Early the next morning, she called Amok.

  He appeared, grinning boyishly. She gripped the Staff of Law in both hands and braced it on the rock before her.

  In the dawn under Melenkurion Skyweir, they began to duel for access to the Seventh Ward.

  For two days, High Lord Elena strove to wrest the prerequisite name from Amok. During the second day, a massive storm brooded on the southeastern horizon, but it did not approach Rivenrock, and everyone ignored it. While Covenant sat twisting his ring around his finger, or paced restlessly beside the combatants, or wan
dered muttering away at intervals to escape the strain, she probed Amok with every question she could devise. At times, she worked methodically; at others, intuitively. She elaborated ideas for his assent or denial. She forced him to recite his answers at greater and greater length. She led him through painstaking rehearsals of known ground, and launched him with all her accuracy toward the unknown. She built traps of logic for him, tried to fence him into contradictions. She sought to meld her mind with his.

  It was like dueling with a pool of water. Every slash and counter of her questions touched him as if she had slapped a pond with the flat of her blade. His answers splashed at every inquiry. But when she strove to catch him on her need’s point, she passed through him and left no mark. Occasionally he allowed himself a laughing riposte, but for the most part he parried her questions with his accustomed cheerful evasiveness. Her toil earned no success. By sunset, she was trembling with frustration and suppressed fury and psychic starvation. The very solidity of Rivenrock seemed to jeer at her.

  In the evenings, Covenant comforted her according to the terms of his bargain. He said nothing of his own fears and doubts, his helplessness, his growing conviction that Amok was impenetrable; he said nothing about himself at all. Instead he gave her his best attention, concentrated on her with every resource he possessed.

  But all his efforts could not touch the core of her distress. She was learning that she did not suffice to meet the Land’s need, and that was a grief for which there was no consolation. Late at night, she made muffled grating noises, as if she ground her teeth to keep herself from weeping. And in the morning of the third day—the thirty-second since she had left Revelstone—she neared the end of her endurance. Her gaze was starved and hollow, and it had an angle of farewell.

  Thickly Covenant asked her what she was going to do.

  “I will appeal.” Her voice had a raw, flagellated sound. She looked as frail as a skeleton—mere brave, fragile bones standing in the path of someone who, for all his boyish gaiety, was as unmanageable as an avalanche. A presage like an alarm in his head told Covenant that her crisis was at hand. If Amok did not respond to her appeals, she might turn to the last resort of her strange inner force.

  The violence of that possibility frightened him. He caught himself on the verge of asking her to stop, give up the attempt. But he remembered his bargain; his brain raced after alternatives.

  He accepted her argument that the answer to Amok’s condition must be accessible. But he believed that she would not find it; she was approaching the problem from the wrong side. Yet it seemed to be the only side. Kicking at the rubbish which clogged his mind, he tried to imagine other approaches.

  While his thoughts scrambled for some kind of saving intuition, High Lord Elena took her stance, and summoned Amok. The youth appeared at once. He greeted her with a florid bow, and said, “High Lord, what is your will today? Shall we set aside our sparring, and sing glad songs together?”

  “Amok, hear me.” Her voice grated. Covenant could hear depths of self-punishment in her. “I will play no more games of inquiry with you.” Her tone expressed both dignity and desperation. “The need of the Land will permit no more delay. Already there is war in the distance—bloodshed and death. The Despiser marches against all that High Lord Kevin sought to preserve when he created his Wards. This insisting upon conditions is false loyalty to his intent. Amok, I appeal. In the name of the Land, guide us to the Seventh Ward.”

  Her supplication seemed to touch him, and his reply was inordinately grave. “High Lord, I cannot. I am as I was made to be. Should I make the attempt, I would cease to exist.”

  “Then teach us the way, so that we may follow it alone.”

  Amok shook his head. “Then also I would cease to exist.”

  For a moment, she paused as if she were defeated. But in the silence, her shoulders straightened. Abruptly she lifted the Staff of Law, held it horizontally before her like a weapon. “Amok,” she commanded, “place your hands upon the Staff.”

  The youth looked without flinching into the authority of her face. Slowly he obeyed. His hands rested lightly between hers on the rune-carved wood.

  She gave a high, strange cry. At once, fire blossomed along the Staff; viridian flames opened from all the wood. The blaze swept over her hands and Amok’s; it intensified as if it were feeding on their fingers. It hummed with deep power, and radiated a sharp aroma like the smell of duress.

  “Kevin-born Amok!” she exclaimed through the hum. “Way and door to the Seventh Ward! By the power of the Staff of Law—in the name of High Lord Kevin son of Loric who made you—I adjure you. Tell me the name of the Seventh Ward’s power!”

  Covenant felt the force of her command. Though it was not leveled at him—though he was not touching the Staff—he gagged over the effort to utter a name he did not know.

  But Amok met her without blinking, and his voice cut clearly through the flame of the Staff. “No, High Lord. I am impervious to compulsion. You cannot touch me.”

  “By the Seven!” she shouted. “I will not be denied!” She raged as if she were using fury to hold back a scream. “Melenkurion abatha! Tell me the name!”

  “No,” Amok repeated.

  Savagely she tore the Staff out of his hands. Its flame gathered, mounted, then sprang loudly into the sky like a bolt of thunder.

  He gave a shrug, and disappeared.

  For a long, shocked moment, the High Lord stood frozen, staring at Amok’s absence. Then a shudder ran through her, and she turned toward Covenant as if she had the weight of a mountain on her shoulders. Her face looked like a wilderland. She took two tottering steps, and stopped to brace herself on the Staff. Her gaze was blank; all her force was focused inward, against herself.

  “Failed,” she gasped. “Doomed.” Anguish twisted her mouth. “I have doomed the Land”

  Covenant could not stand the sight. Forgetting all his issueless thoughts, he hurried to say, “There’s got to be something else we can do.”

  She replied with an appalling softness. Tenderly almost caressingly, she said, “Do you believe in the white gold? Can you use it to meet Amok’s condition?” Her voice had a sound of madness. But the next instant, her passion flared outward. With all her strength, she pounded the Staff against Rivenrock, and cried, “Then do so!”

  The power she unleashed caused a wide section of the plateau to lurch like a stricken raft. The rock bucked and plunged; seamless waves of force rolled through it from the Staff.

  The heaving knocked Covenant off his feet. He stumbled, fell toward the cleft.

  Almost at once, Elena regained control over herself. She snatched back the Staff’s power, shouted to the Bloodguard. But Bannor’s reflexes were swifter. While the rock still pitched, he bounded surefootedly across it and caught Covenant’s arm.

  For a moment, Covenant was too stunned to do anything but hang limply in Bannor’s grip. The High Lord’s violence flooded through him, sweeping everything else out of his awareness. But then he noticed the pain of Bannor’s grasp on his arm. He could feel something prophetic in the ancient strength with which Bannor clenched him, kept him alive. The Bloodguard had an iron grip, surer than the stone of Rivenrock. When he heard Elena moan, “Beloved! Have I harmed you?” he was already muttering half aloud, “Wait. Hold on. I’ve got it.”

  His eyes were closed. He opened them, and discovered that Bannor was holding him erect. Elena was nearby; she flung her arms around him and hid her face in his shoulder. He said, “I’ve got it.” She ignored him, started to mumble contrition into his shoulder. To stop her, he said sharply, “Forget it. I must be losing my mind. I should have figured this out days ago.”

  Finally she heard him. She released him and stepped back. Her ravaged face stiffened. She caught her breath between her teeth, pushed a hand through her hair. Slowly she became a Lord again. Her voice was unsteady but lucid as she said, “What have you learned?”

  Bannor released Covenant also, and the Unbeliever stood w
avering on his own. His feet distrusted the stone, but he locked his knees, and tried to disregard the sensation. The problem was in his brain; all his preconceptions had shifted. He wanted to speak quickly, ease Elena’s urgent distress. But he had missed too many clues. He needed to approach his intuition slowly, so that he could pull all its strands together.

  He tried to clear his head by shaking it. Elena winced as if he were reminding her of her outburst. He made a placating gesture toward her, and turned to confront the Bloodguard. Intently, he scrutinized the blank metal of their faces, searched them for some flicker or hue of duplicity, ulterior purpose, which would verify his intuition. But their ancient, sleepless eyes seemed to conceal nothing, reveal nothing. He felt an instant of panic at the idea that he might be wrong, but he pushed it down, and asked as calmly as he could, “Bannor, how old are you?”

  “We are the Bloodguard,” Bannor replied. “Our Vow was sworn in the youth of Kevin’s High Lordship.”

  “Before the Desecration?”

  “Yes, ur-Lord.”

  “Before Kevin found out that Foul was really an enemy?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you personally, Bannor? How old are you?”

  “I was among the first Haruchai who entered the Land. I shared in the first swearing of the Vow.”

  “That was centuries ago.” Covenant paused before he asked, “How well do you remember Kevin?”

  “Step softly,” Elena cautioned. “Do not mock the Bloodguard.”

  Bannor did not acknowledge her concern. He answered the Unbeliever inflexibly, “We do not forget.”

  “I suppose not,” Covenant sighed. “What a hell of a way to live.” For a moment, he gazed away toward the mountain, looking for courage. Then, with sudden harshness, he went on, “You knew Kevin when he made his Wards. You knew him and you remember. You were with him when he gave the First Ward to the Giants. You were with him when he hid the Second in those bloody catacombs under Mount Thunder. How many times did you come here with him, Bannor?”