The Illearth War t1cotc-2

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “Could you be happy here?”

  “That's not fair. What would you say if I asked you that?”

  “I would say yes.” But a moment later she saw what he meant, and drew herself up. “I would say that happiness lies in serving the Land. And I would say that there is no happiness in times of war.”

  He lay back on the grass so that he would not have to look at her. Bleakly, he murmured, “Where I come from, there is no Land.' Just ground.' Dead. And there's always war.”

  After a short pause, she said with a smile in her voice, “If I have heard rightly, it is such talk as this which makes Hiltmark Quaan angry with you.”

  “I can't help it. It's the simple fact.”

  “You have a great respect for facts”

  He breathed carefully around his sore heart before answering. “No. I hate them. They're all I've got.”

  A gentle silence came over them. Elena reclined beside him, and they lay still to let the sunlight dry them. The warmth, the smell of the grass, seemed to offer him a sense of well-being; but when he tried to relax and flow with it, his pulse throbbed uncomfortably in his chest. He was too conscious of Elena's presence. But gradually he became aware that a larger silence covered Glimmermere. All the birds and even the breeze had become quiet, hushed. For a time, he kept his breathing shallow and explored the ambience of the air with his ears.

  Shortly, Elena said, “He comes,” and went to retrieve the Staff. Covenant sat up and looked around. Then he heard it a soft, clean sound like a flute, spreading over Glimmermere from one source that he could see, as if the air itself were singing. The tune moved, came closer. Soon he could follow the words.

  Free

  Unfettered

  Shriven

  Free—

  Dream that what is dreamed will be:

  Hold eyes clasped shut until they see,

  And sing the silent prophecy—

  And be

  Unfettered

  Shriven

  Free.

  Lone

  Unfriended

  Bondless

  Lone—

  Drink of loss 'til it is done,

  'Till solitude has come and gone,

  And silence is communion—

  And yet

  Unfriended

  Bondless

  Lone.

  Deep

  Unbottomed

  Endless

  Deep—

  Touch the true mysterious Keep

  Where halls of fealty laugh and weep;

  While treachers through the dooming creep

  In blood

  Unbottomed

  Endless

  Deep.

  “Stand to meet him,” the High Lord said quietly. “He is One of the Unfettered. He has gone beyond the knowledge of the Loresraat, in pursuance of a private vision open to him alone.”

  Covenant arose, still listening to the song. It had an entrancing quality which silenced his questions and doubts. He stood erect, with his head up as if he were eager. And soon the Unfettered One came into sight over the hills north of Glimmermere.

  He stopped singing when he saw Covenant and Elena, but his appearance sustained his influence over them. He wore a long flowing robe that seemed to have no colour of its own; instead it caught the shades around it, so that it was grass-green below his waist, azure on his shoulders, and the rock and snow of the mountains flickered on his right side. His unkempt hair flared, reflecting the sun.

  He came directly toward Covenant and Elena, and soon Covenant could make out his face-soft androgynous features thickly bearded, deep eyes. When he stopped before them, he and the High Lord exchanged no rituals or greetings. He said to her simply, “Leave us,” in a high, fluted voice like a woman's. His tone expressed neither rejection nor command, but rather something that sounded like necessity, and she bowed to it without question.

  But before she left, she put her hand again on Covenant's arm, looked searchingly into his face. “Thomas Covenant,” she said with a low quaver in her voice as if she were afraid of him or for him. “Ur-Lord. When I must leave for this war-will you accompany me?”

  He did not look at her. He stood as if his toes were rooted in the grass, and gazed into the Unfettered One's eyes. When after a time he failed to reply, she bowed her head, squeezed his arm, then moved away toward Revelstone. She did not look back. Soon she was out of sight beyond the hill.

  “Come,” said the Unfettered One in the same tone of necessity. Without waiting for a response, he started to return the way he had come.

  Covenant took two uncertain steps forward, then stopped as a spasm of anxiety clenched his features. He tore his eyes off the Unfettered One's back, looked urgently around him. When he located his socks and boots, he hurried toward them, dropped to the grass and pulled them onto his feet. With a febrile deliberateness, as if he were resisting the tug of some current or compulsion, he laced his boots and tied them securely.

  When his feet were safe from the grass, he sprang up and ran after the interpreter of dreams.

  Ten: Seer and Oracle

  LATE the next evening, Lord Mhoram answered a knock at the door of his private quarters, and found Thomas Covenant standing outside, silhouetted darkly like a figure of distress against the light of the glowing floor. He had an aspect of privation and fatigue, as if he had tasted neither food nor rest since he had gone upland. Mhoram admitted him without question to the bare room, and closed the door while he went to stand before the stone table in the centre of the chamber-the table Mhoram had brought from the High Lord's rooms, with the krill of Loric still embedded and burning in it.

  Looking at the bunched muscles of Covenant's back, Mhoram offered him food or drink or a bed, but Covenant shrugged them away brusquely, despite his inanition. In a flat and strangely closed tone, he said, "You've been beating your brains out on this thing ever since it started. Don't you ever rest?

  I thought you Lords rested down here-in this place.“ Mhoram crossed the room, and stood opposite his guest. The krill flamed whitely between them. He was uncertain of his ground; he could see the trouble in Covenant's face, but its causes and implications were confused, obscure. Carefully, the Lord said, ”Why should I rest? I have no wife, no children. My father and mother were both Lords, and Kevin's Lore is the only craft I have known. And it is difficult to rest from such work."

  “And you're driven. You're the seer and oracle around here. You're the one who gets glimpses of the future whether you want them or not, whether they make you scream in your sleep or not, whether you can stand them or not.” Covenant's voice choked for a moment, and he shook his head fiercely until he could speak again. “No wonder you can't rest. I'm surprised you can stand to sleep at all.”

  “I am not a Bloodguard,” Mhoram returned calmly. “I need sleep like other men.”

  “What have you figured out? Do you know what this thing is good for? What was that Amok business about?”

  Mhoram gazed at Covenant across the krill, then smiled softly. “Will you sit down, my friend? You will hear long answers more comfortably if you ease your weariness.”

  “I'm not tired,” the Unbeliever said with obvious falseness. The next moment, he dropped straight into a chair. Mhoram took a seat, and when he sat down he found that Covenant had positioned himself directly across the table, so that the krill stood between their faces. This arrangement disturbed Mhoram, but he could think of no other way to help Covenant than to listen and talk, so he stayed where he was, and focused his other senses to search for what was blocked from his sight by the gem of the krill.

  "No, I do not comprehend Loric's sword-and I cannot draw it from the table. I might free it by breaking the stone, but that would serve no purpose. We would gain no knowledge-only a weapon we could not touch. If the krill were free, it would not help us. It is a power altogether new to us. We do not know its uses. And we do not like to break wood or stone, for any purpose.

  “As to Amok-that is an open questio
n. Lord Amatin could answer better.”

  “I'm asking you.”

  “It is possible,” Mhoram said steadily, “that he was created by Kevin to defend against the krill itself. Perhaps the power here is so perilous that in unwise hands, or ignorant hands, it would do great harm. If that is true, then it may be that Amok's purpose is to warn us from any unready use of this power, and to guide our learning.”

  “You shouldn't sound so plausible when you say things like that. That isn't right. Didn't you hear what he said? `I have misserved my purpose.”'

  “Perhaps he knows that if we are too weak to bring the krill to life, we are powerless to use it in any way, for good or ill.”

  “All right. Forget it. Just forget that this is something else I did to you without any idea what in hell I was doing. Let it stand. What makes you think that good old Kevin Landwaster who started all this anyway is lurking in back of everything that happens to you like some kind of patriarch, making sure you don't do the wrong thing and blow yourselves to bits? No, forget it. I know better than that, even if I have spent only a few weeks going crazy over this and not forty years like the rest of you. Tell me this. What's so special about Kevin's Lore? Why are you so hot to follow it? If you need power, why don't you go out and find it for yourselves, instead of wasting whole generations of perfectly decent people on a bunch of incomprehensible Wards? In the name of sanity, Mhoram, if not for the sake of mere pragmatic usefulness.”

  “Ur-Lord, you surpass me. I hear you, and yet I am left as if I were deaf or blind.”

  “I don't care about that. Tell me why.”

  "It is not difficult-the matter is clear. The Earthpower is here, regardless of our mastery or use. The Land is here. And the banes and the evil-the Illearth

  Stone, the Despiser-are here, whether or not we can defend against them.

  “Ah, how shall I speak of it? At times, my friend, the most simple, clear matters are the most difficult to utter.” He paused for a moment to think. But through the silence he felt an upsurge of agitation from Covenant, as if the Unbeliever were clinging to the words between them, and could not bear to have them withdrawn. Mhoram began to speak again, though he did not have his answer framed to his satisfaction.

  "Consider it in this way. The study of Kevin's knowledge is the only choice we can accept. Surely you will understand that we cannot expect the Earth to speak to us, as it did to Berek Halfhand. Such things do not happen twice. No matter how great our courage, or how imposing our need, the Land will not be saved that way again. Yet the Earthpower remains, to be used in Landservice-if we are able. But that Power-all power-is dreadful. It does not preserve itself from harm, from wrong use. As you say, we might strive to master the Earthpower in our own way. But the risk forbids.

  "Ur-Lord, we have sworn an Oath of Peace which brooks no compromise. Consider-forgive me, my friend, but I must give you a clear example-consider the fate of Atiaran Trell-mate. She dared powers which were beyond her, and was destroyed. Yet the result could have been far worse. She might have destroyed others, or hurt the Land. How could we, the Lords we who have sworn to uphold all health and beauty how could we justify such hazards?

  “No, we must work in other ways. If we are to gain the power to defend the Earth, and yet not endanger the Land itself, we must be the masters of what we do. And it was for this purpose that Lord Kevin created his Wards-so that those who came after him could hold power wisely.”

  “Oh, right!” Covenant snapped. “Look at the good it did him. Hellfire! Even supposing you're going to have the luck or the brains or even the chance to find all Seven Wards and figure them out, what bloody damnation! — what's going to happen when dear, old, dead Kevin finally lets you have the secret of the Ritual of Desecration? And it's your last chance to stop Foul in a war again! How're you going to rationalize that to the people who'll have to start from scratch a thousand years from now because you just couldn't get out of repeating history? Or do you think that when the crisis comes you're somehow going to do a better job than Kevin did?”

  He spoke coldly, rapidly, but a smudged undercurrent in his voice told Mhoram that he was not talking about what was uppermost in his mind. He seemed to be putting the Lord through a ritual of questions, testing him. Mhoram responded carefully, hoping for Covenant's sake that he would not make a mistake.

  “We know the peril now. We have known it since the Giants returned the First Ward to us. Therefore we have sworn the Oath of Peace--and will keep it so that never again will life and Land be harmed by despair. If we are brought to the point where we must desecrate or be defeated, then we will fight until we are defeated. The fate of the Earth will be in other hands.”

  “Which I'm doing nothing but make difficult for you. Just having this white gold raises prospects of eradication that never occurred to you before-not to mention the fact that it's useless. Before this there wasn't enough power around to make it even worth your while to worry about despair, since you couldn't damage the Land if you wanted to. But now Foul might get my ring-or I might use it against you-but it'll never save you.”

  Covenant's hands twitched on the table as if he were fumbling, for something. His fingers knotted together, tensed, then sprang apart to grope separately, aimlessly. “All right. Forget that, too. I'm coming to that. How in the name of all the gods are you going to fight a war-a war, Mhoram, not just fencing around with a bunch of Cavewights and ur-viles! When everyone you've got who's tall enough to hold a sword has sworn this Oath of Peace? Or are there special dispensations like fine print in your contracts exempting wars from moral strictures or even the simple horror of blood?”

  It was in Mhoram's heart to tell Covenant that he went too far. But the fumbling, graspless jerks of his hands-one maimed, the other carrying his ring like a fetter-told Mhoram that the affront of the Unbeliever's language was directed inward at himself, not at the Lords or the Land. This perception increased Mhoram's concern, and again he replied with steady dignity.

  "My friend, killing is always to be abhorred. It is a measure of our littleness that we cannot evade it. But I must remind you of a few matters. You have heard Berek's Code-it is part of our Oath. It commands us:

  Do not hurt where holding is enough;

  do not wound where hurting is enough;

  do not maim where wounding is enough;

  and kill not where maiming is enough;

  the greatest warrior is he who does not need to kill.

  And you have heard High Lord Prothall say that the Land would not be served by angry bloodshed. There he touched upon the heart of the Oath. We will do all that might or mastery permits to defend the Land from Despite. But we will do nothing-to the Land, to our foes, to each other-which is commanded to us by our hearts' black passions or pain or lust for death. Is this not clear to you, ur-Lord? If we must fight and, yes, kill, then our only defence and vindication is to fight so that we do not become like our Enemy. Here Kevin Landwaster failed-he was weakened by that despair which is the Despiser's strength.

  “No, we must fight-if only to preserve ourselves from watching the evil, as Kevin watched and was undone. But if we harm each other, or the Land, or hate our foes-ah, there will be no dawn to the night of that failure.”

  “That's sophistry.”

  “Sophistry? I do not know this word.”

  "Clever arguments to finance what you've already decided to do. Rationalizations. War in the name of

  Peace. As if when you poke your sword into a foe you aren't slicing up ordinary flesh and blood that has as much right to go on living as you do."

  “Then do you truly believe that there is no difference between fighting to destroy the Land and fighting to preserve it?”

  “Difference? What has that got to do with it? It's still killing. But never mind. Forget that, too. You're doing too good a job. If I can't pick holes in your answers any better than this, I'm going to end up-” His hands began to shake violently, and he snatched them out of sight, shoved them belo
w the table. “I'll end up freezing to death, that's what.”

  Slumped back in his chair, Covenant fell into an aching silence. Mhoram felt the pressure between them build, and decided that the time had come to ask questions of his own. Breathing to himself the Seven Words, he said kindly, “You are troubled, my friend. The High Lord is difficult to refuse, is she not?”

  “So?” Covenant snapped. But a moment later, he groaned, “Yes. Yes, she is. But that isn't it. The whole Land is difficult to refuse. I've felt that way from the beginning. That isn't it.” After a tense pause, he went on: “Do you know what she did to me yesterday? She took me upland to see that Unfettered One — the man who claims to understand dreams. I was there for a day or more-But you're the seer and oracle-I don't have to tell you about him. You've probably gone up there yourself more than anyone, else, couldn't help it, if only because mere ordinary human ears can only stand to hear so much contempt and laughter and no more, regardless of whether you're asleep or not. So you know what it's like. You know how he latches onto you with those eyes, and holds you down, and dissects-But you're the seer and oracle. You probably even know what he said to me.”

  “No,” Mhoram replied quietly.

  “He said-Hellfire!” He shook his head as if he were dashing water from his eyes. “He said that I dream the truth. He said that I am very fortunate. He said that people with such dreams are the true enemies of Despite it isn't Law, the Staff of Law wasn't made to fight Foul with-no, it's wild magic and dreams that are the opposite of Despite.” For an instant, the air around him quivered with indignation. "He also said that I don't believe it. That was a big help. I just wish I knew whether I am a hero or a coward.

  “No, don't answer that. It isn't up to you.”

  Lord Mhoram smiled to reassure Covenant, but the Unbeliever was already continuing, “Anyway, I've got a belief-for what it's worth. It just isn't exactly the one you people want me to have.”

  Probing again, Mhoram said, “That may be. But I do not see it. You do not show us belief, but Unbelief. If this is believing, then it is not belief for, but rather belief against.”