The Illearth War t1cotc-2

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “He did not ask,” Bannor replied stolidly.

  “Ask? Should help wait for asking?”

  Bannor met her gaze flatly and said nothing, as if he considered his rectitude to be self-evident. But the reproach in her tone gave Covenant an unexpected pang. In Bannor's defence, he said, “I don't need didn't need it. He kept me alive.”

  She sighed without taking her eyes off the Bloodguard. “Well, that may be. But I do not like to see you harmed.” Then, relenting, she said, “Bannor, the ur-Lord and I will go upland. Send for us at once if there is any need.”

  Bannor nodded, bowed slightly, and left the Hall.

  When the hidden door was closed behind him, Elena turned back to Covenant. He tensed instinctively. Now, he muttered to himself. Now she'll do it. But to all appearances her irritation was gone. And she made no reference to the arras; she seemed unaware of the connection between him and that work. With nothing but innocence in her face, she said, “Well, Thomas Covenant. Do you like the Hall? You have not told me.”

  He hardly heard her. Despite her pleasant expression, he could not believe that she did not intend to task him for his encounter with Trell. But then he saw concern mounting in her cheeks again, and he hurried to cover himself.

  “What? Oh, the Hall. I like it fine. But isn't it a little out of the way? What good is a museum if people can't get to it?”

  “All Revelstone knows the way. Now we are alone, but in times of peace-or in times when war is more distant-there are always people here. And the children in the schools spend much time here, learning of the crafts of the Land. Craftmasters come from all the Land to share and increase their skills. The Hall of Gifts is thus deep and concealed because the Giants who wrought the Keep deemed such a place fitting and because if ever Revelstone is whelmed the Hall may be hidden and preserved, in hope of the future.”

  For an instant, the focus of her gaze seemed to swing closer to him, and her vision tensed as if she meant to burn her way through his skull to find out what he was thinking. But then she turned away with a gentle smile, and walked toward another wall of the cavern. “Let me show you another work,” she said. “It is by one of our rarest Craftmasters, Ahanna daughter of Hanna. Here.”

  He followed, and stopped with her before a large picture in a burnished ebony frame. It was a dark work, but glowing bravely near its centre was a figure that he recognized immediately: Lord Mhoram. The Lord stood alone in a hollow tightly surrounded by black fiendish shapes which were about to fall on him like a flood, deluge him utterly. His only weapon was his staff, but he wielded it defiantly; and in his eyes was a hot, potent look of extremity and triumph, as if he had discovered within himself some capacity for peril that made him unconquerable.

  Elena said respectfully, “Ahanna names this `Lord Mhoram's Victory.' She is a prophet, I think.”.

  The sight of Mhoram in such straits hurt Covenant, and he took it as a reproach. “Listen,” he said. “Stop playing around with me like this. If you've got something to say, say it. Or take Troy's advice, and lock me up. But don't do this to me.”

  “Playing around? I do not understand”

  “Hellfire! Stop looking so innocent. You got me down here to let me have it for that run-in with Trell. Well, get it over with. I can't stand the suspense.”

  The High Lord met his glare with such openness that he turned away, muttering under his breath to steady himself.

  “Ur-Lord.” She placed an appealing hand on his arm. “Thomas Covenant. How can you believe such thoughts? How can you understand us so little? Look at me. Look at me!” She pulled his arm until he turned back to her, faced the sincerity she expressed with every line of her face. "I did not ask you here to torment you. I wished to share my last hour in the Hall of Gifts with you. This war is near-near- and I will not soon stand here again. As for the Warmark — I do not take counsel from him concerning you. If there is any blame in your meeting with Trell, it is mine. I did not give you clear warning of my fears. And I did not see the extent of the danger-else I would have told all the Bloodguard to prevent your meeting.

  “No, ur-Lord. I have no hard words to speak to you. You should reproach me. I have endangered your life, and cost Trell Atiaran-mate my grandfather his last self-respect. He was helpless to heal his daughter and his wife. Now he will believe that he is helpless to heal himself.”

  Looking at her, Covenant's distrust fell into dust. He took a deep breath to clean stale air from his lungs. But the movement hurt his ribs. The pain made him fear that she would reach toward him, and he mumbled quickly, “Don't touch me.”

  For an instant, she misunderstood him. Her fingers leaped from his arm, and the otherness of her vision flicked across him with a virulence that made him flinch, amazed and baffled. But what she saw corrected her misapprehension. The focus of her gaze left him; she extended her hand slowly to place her palm on his chest.

  “I hear you,” she said. “But I must touch you. You have been my hope for too long. I cannot give you up. He took her wrist with the two fingers and thumb of his right hand, but he hesitated a moment before he removed her palm. Then he said, ”What happens to Trell now? He broke his Oath. Is anything done to him?"

  “Alas, there is little we can do. It lies with him. We will try to teach him that an Oath which has been broken may still be kept. But it was not his intent to harm you-he did not plan his attack. I know him, and am sure of this. He has known of your presence in Revelstone, yet he made no effort to seek you out. No, he was overcome by his hurt. I do not know how he will recover.”

  As she spoke, he saw that once again he had failed F to comprehend. He had been thinking about punishment rather than healing. Hugging his sore ribs, he said, “You're too gentle. You've got every right to hate me.”

  She gave him a look of mild exasperation. "Neither

  Lena my mother nor I have ever hated you. It is impossible for us. And what would be the good? Without you, I would not be. It may be that Lena would have married Triock, and given birth to a daughter-but that daughter would be another person. I would not be who I am.“ A moment later, she smiled. ”Thomas Covenant, there are few children in all the history of the Land who have ridden a Ranyhyn."

  “Well, at least that part of it worked out.” He shrugged aside her questioning glance. He did not feel equal to explaining the bargain he had tried to make with the Ranyhyn-or the way in which that bargain had failed him.

  A mood of constraint came between them. Elena turned away from it to look again at “Lord Mhoram's Victory.”

  “This picture disturbs me,” she said. “Where am I? If Mhoram is thus sorely beset, why am I not at his side? How have I fallen, that he is so alone?” She touched the picture lightly, brushed her fingertips over Mhoram's lone, beleaguered, invincible stance. “It is in my heart that this war will go beyond me.”

  The thought stung her. Suddenly she stepped back from the painting, stood tall with the Staff of Law planted on the stone before her. She shook her head so that her brown-and-honey hair snapped as if a wind blew about her shoulders, and breathed intensely, “No! I will see it ended! Ended!”

  As she repeated Ended, she struck the floor with the Staff's iron heel. An instant of bright blue fire ignited in the air. The stone lurched under Covenants feet, and he nearly fell. But she quenched her power almost at once; it passed like a momentary intrusion of nightmare. Before he could regain his balance, she caught his arm and steadied him.

  “Ah, you must pardon me,” she said with a look like laughter. “I forgot myself.”

  He braced his feet, tried to determine whether or not he could still trust the floor. The stone felt secure. “Give me fair warning next time,” he muttered, “so I can sit down.”

  The High Lord broke into clear laughter, then subdued herself abruptly. “Your pardon again, Thomas Covenant. But your expression is so fierce and foolish.”

  “Forget it,” he replied. He found that he liked the sound of her laugh. “Ridicule may be the only go
od answer.”

  “Is that a proverb from your world? Or are you a prophet?”

  “A little of both.”

  “You are strange. You transpose wisdom and jest you reverse their meanings.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “Yes, ur-Lord Covenant,” she said lightly, humorously. “That is a fact.” Then she appeared to remember something. “But we must go. I think we are expected. And you have never seen the upland. Will you come with me?”

  He shrugged. She smiled at him, and he followed her toward the door of the Hall.

  “Who's expecting us?” he asked casually.

  She opened the door and preceded him through it. When it was closed behind them, she answered, “I would like to surprise you. But perhaps that would not be fair warning. There is a man-a man who studies dreams-to find the truth in them. One of the Unfettered.”

  His heart jumped again, and he wrapped his arms protectively around his sore chest. Hellfire, he groaned to himself. An interpreter of dreams. Just what I need. An Unfettered One had saved him and Atiaran from the ur-viles at the Celebration of Spring. By a perverse trick of recollection, he heard the Unfettered One's death cry in the wake of Elena's clear voice. And he remembered Atiaran's grim insistence that it was the responsibility of the living to make meaningful the sacrifices of the dead. With a brusque gesture, he motioned for Elena to lead the way, then walked after her, muttering, Hellfire. Hellfire.

  She guided him back up through the levels of Revelstone until he began to recognize his surroundings. Then they moved westward, still climbing, and after a while they joined a high, wide passage like a road along the length of the Keep, rising slowly. Soon the decreasing weight of the stone around him, and the growing autumnal tang of the air, told him that they were approaching the level of the plateau which topped the Keep. After two sharp switchbacks, the passage ended, and he found himself out in the open, standing on thick grass under the roofless heavens. A league or two west of him were the mountains.

  A cool breeze hinting a fall crispness touched him through the late morning sunlight-a low blowing as full of ripe earth and harvests as if it were clairvoyant, foretelling bundled crops and full fruit and seeds ready for rest. But the trees on the plateau and the upland hills were predominantly evergreens, feathery mimosas and tall pines and wide cedars with no turning of leaves. And the hardy grass made no concessions to the changing season.

  The hills of the upland were Revelstone's secret strength. They were protected by sheer cliffs on the east and south, by mountains on the north and west; and so they were virtually inaccessible except through Lord's Keep itself. Here the people of the city could get food and water to withstand a siege. Therefore Revelstone could endure as long as its walls and gates remained impregnable.

  “So you see,” said Elena, “that the Giants wrought well for the Land in all ways. While Revelstone stands, there remains one bastion of hope. In its own way, the Keep is as impervious to defeat as Foul's Creche is said to be-in the old legends. This is vital, for the legends also say that the shadow of Despite will never be wholly driven from the Land while Ridjeck Thome, Lord Foul's dire demesne, endures. So our: debt to the Giants is far greater than for unfaltering friendship. It is greater than anything we can repay.”

  Her tone was grateful, but her mention of the Giants cast a gloom over her and Covenant. She turned away from it, and led him northward along the curve of the upland.

  In this direction, the plateau rose into rumpled hills; and soon, on their left, away from the cliff, they began to pass herds of grazing cattle. Cattleherds saluted the High Lord ceremoniously, and she responded with quiet bows. Later, she and Covenant crossed a hilltop from which they could see westward across the width of the upland. There, beyond the swift river that ran south toward the bead of Furl Falls, were fields where crops of wheat and maize rippled in the breeze. And a league behind the grazeland and the river and the fields stood the mountains, rising rugged and grand out of the hills. The peaks were snow-clad, and their white bemantling made them look hoary and aloof-sheer, wild, and irreproachable. The Haruchai lived west and south in this same range.

  Covenant and the High Lord continued northward, slowly winding away from the cliffs and toward the river as Elena chose an easy path among the hills. She seemed content with the silence between them, so they both moved without speaking. Covenant walked as if he were drinking in the upland with his eyes and ears. The sturdy health of the grass, the clean, hale soil and the inviolate rock, the ripeness of the wheat and maize-all were vivid to his sight. The singing and soaring of the birds sounded like joy in the air. And when he passed close to a particularly tall, magisterial pine, he felt that he could almost hear the climbing of its sap. For a league, he forgot himself in his enjoyment of the Land's late summer.

  Then he began to wonder vaguely how far Elena meant to take him. But before he became willing to interrupt the quietness with a question, they crossed the rise of a high hill, and she announced that they had arrived. “Ah,” she said with a sigh of gladness, “Glimmermere! Lakespring and riverhead-hail, clean pool! It pleases my heart to see you again.”

  They were looking down on a mountain lake, the headwater of the river which ran to Furl Falls. For all the swiftness of the current rushing from it, it was a still pool, with no inflowing streams; all its water came from springs within it. And its surface was as flat, clear, and reflective as polished glass. It echoed the mountains and the sky with flawless fidelity, imaging the world in every detail.

  “Come,” Elena said suddenly. “The Unfettered One will ask us to bathe in Glimmermere.” Throwing a quick smile at him, she ran lightly down the hill. He followed her at a walk, but the springy grass seemed to urge him forward until he was trotting. On the edge of the lake, she dropped the Staff as if she were discarding it, tightened the sash of her robe, and with a last wave toward him dove into the water.

  When he reached Glimmermere, he was momentarily appalled to find that she had vanished. From this range, the reflection was transparent, and behind it he could see the rocky bottom of the lake. Except for a darkness like a deep shadow at its centre, he could see the whole bottom in clear detail, as if the pool were only a few feet deep. But he could not see Elena. She seemed to have dived out of existence.

  He leaned over the water to peer into it, then stepped back sharply as he noticed that Glimmermere did not reflect his image. The noon sun was repeated through him as if he were invisible.

  The next instant, Elena broke water twenty yards out in the lake. She shook her head clear, and called for him to join her. When she saw the wide gape of his astonishment, she laughed gaily. “Does Glimmermere surprise you?”

  He stared at her. He could see nothing of her below the plane where she broke the water. Her physical substance seemed to terminate at the waterline. Above the surface, she bobbed as if she were treading water; below, the bottom of the pool was clearly visible through the space she should have occupied. With an effort, he pulled his mouth shut, then called to her, “I told you to give me fair warning!”

  “Come!” she replied. “Do not be concerned. There is no harm.” When he did not move, she continued, “This is water, like any other-but stronger. There is Earthpower here. Our flesh is too unsolid for Glimmermere. It does not see us. Come!”

  Tentatively, he stooped and dipped his hand in the water. His fingers vanished as soon as they passed below the surface. But when he snatched them back, they were whole and wet, tingling with cold.

  Impelled by a sense of surprise and discovery, he pulled off his boots and socks, rolled up his pant legs, and stepped into the pool.

  At once, he plunged in over his head. Even at its edges, the lake was deep; the clarity with which he could see the bottom had misled him. But the cold, tangy water buoyed him up, and he popped quickly back to the surface. Treading water and sputtering, he looked around until he located Elena. “Fair warning!” He tried to sound angry despite Glimmermere's fresh, exuberant chil
l. “I'll teach you fair warning!” He reached her in a few swift strokes, and shoved her head down.,

  She reappeared immediately, laughing almost before she lifted her head above water. He lunged at her, but she slipped,past him, and pushed him under instead. He grappled for her ankles and missed. When he came up, she was out of sight.

  He felt her tugging at his feet. Grabbing a deep breath, he upended himself and plunged after her. For the first time, he opened his eyes underwater, and found that he could see well. Elena swam near him, grinning. He reached her in a moment, and caught her by the waist.

  Instead of trying to pull away, she turned, put her arms around his neck, and kissed him on the mouth.

  Abruptly, all the air burst from his lungs as if she had kicked his sore ribs. He thrust away from her, scrambled back to the surface. Coughing and gasping, he thrashed over to the edge of the pool where he had left his boots, and climbed out to collapse on the grass.

  His chest hurt as if he had reinjured his ribs, but he knew he had not. The first touch of Glimmermere's potent water had effaced his bruises, simply washed them away, and they did not ache now. This was another pain; in his exertions underwater he seemed to have wrenched his heart.

  He lay panting face down on the grass, and after a while, his breathing relaxed. He became aware of other sensations. The cold, tart touch of the water left his whole body excited; he felt cleaner than he had at any time since he had learned of his leprosy. The sun was warm on his back, and his fingertips tingled vividly. And his heart ached when-Elena joined him on the grass.

  He could feel her eyes on him before she asked quietly, “Are you happy in your world?”

  Clenching himself, he rolled over, and found that she sat close to him, regarding him softly. Unable to resist the sensation, he touched a strand of her wet hair, rubbed it between his fingers. Then he lifted his grey, gaunt eyes to meet her gaze. The way he held himself made his voice unintentionally harsh. “Happiness has got nothing to do with it. I don't think about happiness. I think about staying alive.”