The Illearth War t1cotc-2

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  This was what Troy had first seen when his vision began; this was what Elena had used to teach him the meaning of sight.

  Riding now on Mehryl's back under brilliant sun in Trothgard's luminous ambience, he felt more free of care than he had for a long time.

  As the company of the Lords moved through the early part of the afternoon, the country around them changed. Piles of tumbled rock began to appear among the trees and through the greensward; rugged boulders several times taller than the riders thrust their heads out of the ground, and smaller stones overgrown with moss and lichen lay everywhere. Soon the company seemed to be riding within the ancient rubble of a shattered mountain, a tall, incongruous peak which had risen out of the hills of Kurash Plenethor until some immense force had blasted it to bits.

  They were approaching the rock gardens of the Maerl.

  Troy had never taken the time to study the gardens, but he knew that they were said to be the place where the best suru-pa-maerl Craftmasters of the rhadhamaerl did their boldest work. Though in the past few years he had ridden along this road through the bristling rocks many times, he could not say where the gardens themselves began. Except for a steady increase in the amount of rubble lying on or sticking through the grass, he could locate no specific changes or boundaries until the company crested a hill above a wide valley. Then at least he was sure that he was in one of the gardens.

  Most of the long, high hillside facing the valley was thickly covered with stones, as if it had once been the heart of the ancient shattered peak. The rocks clustered and bulged on all sides, raising themselves up in huge piles or massive single boulders, so that virtually the only clear ground on the steep slope was the roadway.

  None of these rocks and boulders was polished or chipped or shaped in any way, though scattered individual stones and clusters of stones appeared to have had their moss and lichen cleaned away. And they all seemed to have been chosen for their natural grotesquerie. Instead of sitting or resting on the ground, they jutted and splintered and scowled and squatted and gaped, reared and cowered and blustered like a mad, packed throng of troglodytes terrified or ecstatic to be breathing open air. On its way to the valley, the road wandered among the weird shapes as if it were lost in a garish forest, so that as they moved downward the riders were constantly in the shadow of one tormented form or another.

  Troy knew that the jumbled amazement of that hillside was not natural; it had been made by men for some reason which he did not grasp.

  On past journeys, he had never been interested enough in it to ask about its significance. But now he did not object when High Lord Elena suggested that the company go to look at the work from a distance. Across the grassy bottom of the valley was another hill, even steeper and higher than the one it faced. The road turned left, and went away along the bottom of the valley, ignoring the plainer hill. Elena suggested that the riders climb this hill to look back at the gardens.

  She spoke to her companions generally, but her gaze was on Covenant. When he acquiesced with a vague shrug, she responded as if he had expressed the willingness of all the riders.

  The front of the hill was too steep for the horses, so they turned right and cantered up the valley until they found a place where they could swing around and mount the hill from behind. As they rode, Troy began to feel mildly expectant. The High Lord's eagerness to show the view to Covenant invested it with interest. He remembered other surprises-like the Hall of Gifts, which had not interested him until Mhoram had practically dragged him to it.

  At the top, the hill bulged into a bare knoll. The riders left their mounts behind, and climbed the last distance on foot. They moved quickly, sharing Elena's mood, and soon reached the crest.

  Across the valley, the rock garden lay open below them, displayed like a bas-relief. From this distance, they could easily see that all its jumbled rock formed a single pattern.

  Out of tortured stone, the makers of the garden had designed a wide face-a broad countenance with lumped gnarled and twisted features. The unevenness of the rock made the face appear bruised and contorted; its eyes were as ragged as deep wounds, and the roadway cut' through it like an aimless scar. But despite all this, the face was stretched with a grin of immense cheerfulness. The unexpectedness of it startled Troy into a low, glad burst of laughter.

  Though the Lords and Lorewardens were obviously familiar with the garden, all their faces shared a look of joy, as if the displayed hilarious grin were contagious. High Lord Elena clasped her hands together to contain a surge of happiness, and Lord Mhoram's eyes glittered with keen pleasure. Only Covenant did not smile or nod, or show any other sign of gladness. His face was as gaunt as a shipwreck. His eyes held a restless, haggard look of their own, and his right hand fumbled at his ring in a way that emphasized his two missing fingers. After a moment, he muttered through the company's murmuring, “Well, the Giants certainly must be proud of you.”

  His tone was ambiguous, as if he were trying to say two contradictory things at once. But his reference to the Giants overshadowed anything else he might have meant. Lord Amatin's smile faltered, and a sudden scrutinizing gleam sprang from under Mhoram's brows. Elena moved toward him, intending to speak, but before she could begin, he went on, “I knew a woman like that once.” He was striving to sound casual, but his voice was awkward. “At the leprosarium.”

  Troy groaned inwardly, but held himself still.

  “She was beau-Of course, I didn't know her then. And she didn't have any pictures of herself, or if she did she didn't show them. I don't think she could even stand to look in the mirror anymore. But the doctors told me that she used to be beautiful. She had a smile-Even when I knew her, she could still smile. It looked just like that.” He nodded in the direction of the rock garden, but he did not look at it. He was concentrating on his memory.

  “She was a classic case.” As he continued, his tone became harsher and more bitter. He articulated each word distinctly, as if it had jagged edges. "She was exposed to leprosy as a kid in the Philippines or somewhere-her parents were stationed there in the military, I suppose-and it caught up with her right after she got married. Her toes went numb. She should have gone to a doctor right then, but she didn't. She was one of those people whom you can't interrupt. She couldn't take time away from her husband and friends to worry about cold toes.

  "So she lost her toes. She finally went to a doctor when her feet began to cramp so badly that she could hardly walk, and eventually he figured out what was wrong with her, and sent her to the leprosarium, and the doctors there had to amputate. That gave her some trouble-it's hard to walk when you don't have any toes-but she was irrepressible. Before long she was back with her husband.

  "But she couldn't have any kids. It's just criminal folly for lepers who know better to have any kids. Her husband understood that-but he still wanted children, and so in due course he divorced her. That hurt her, but she survived it. Before long, she had a job and new friends and a new life. And she was back in the leprosarium. She was just too full of vitality and optimism to take care of herself. This time, two of her fingers were numb.

  "That cost her her job. She was a secretary, and needed her fingers. And of course her boss didn't want any lepers working for him. But once her disease was arrested again, she learned how to type without using those dead fingers. Then she moved to a new area, got another job, more new friends, and went right on living as if absolutely nothing had happened.

  “At about this time-or so they told me-she conceived a passion for folk dancing. She'd learned something about it in her travels as a kid, and now it became her hobby, her way of making new friends and telling them that she loved them. With her bright clothes and her smile, she was-”

  He faltered, then went on almost at once: "But she was back in the leprosarium two years later. She didn't have very good footing, and she took too many falls. And not enough medication. This time she lost her right leg below the knee. Her sight was starting to blur, and her right hand was pre
tty much crippled. Lumps were growing in her face, and her hair was falling out.

  "As soon as she learned how to hobble around on her artificial limb, she started folk-dancing lessons for the lepers.

  "The doctors kept her a long time, but finally she convinced them to let her out. She swore she was going to take better care of herself this time. She'd learned her lesson, she said, and she wasn't ever coming back.

  "For a long time, she didn't come back. But it wasn't because she didn't need to. Bit by bit, she was whittling herself away. When I met her, she was back at the leprosarium because a nursing home had thrown her out. She didn't have anything left except her smile.

  "I spent a lot of time in her room, watching her lie there in bed-listening to her talk. I was trying to get used to the stench. Her face looked as if the doctors hit her with clubs every morning, but she still had that smile. Of course, most of her teeth were gone but her smile hadn't changed.

  “She tried to teach me to dance. She'd make me stand where she could see me, and then she'd tell me where to put my feet, when to jump, how to move my legs.” Again he faltered. "And in between she used to take hours telling me what a full life she'd had.

  “She must've been all of forty years old.”

  Abruptly, he stooped to the ground, snatched up a stone, and hurled it with all his strength at the grinning face of the rock garden. His throw fell far short, but he did not stop to watch the stone roll into the valley. Turning away from it, he rasped thickly, “If I ever get my hands on her husband, I'll wring his bloody neck.” Then he strode down off the knoll toward the horses. In a moment, he was astride his mount and galloping away to rejoin the road. Bannor was close behind him.

  Troy took a deep breath, trying to shake off the effect of Covenant's tale, but he could think of nothing to say. When he looked over at Elena, he saw that she was melding with Mhoram and Amatin as if she needed their support to bear what she had heard. After a moment, Mhoram said aloud, “Ur-Lord Covenant is a prophet.”

  “Does he foretell the fate of the Land?” Amatin asked painfully.

  “No!” Elena's denial was fierce, and Mhoram breathed also, “No” But Troy could hear that Mhoram meant something different.

  Then the melding ended, and the Lords returned to their mounts. Soon the company was back on the road, riding after Covenant in the direction of Revelwood.

  For the rest of the afternoon, Troy was too disturbed by the Lords' reaction to Covenant to relax and enjoy the journey. But the next day, he found a way to soothe his vague distress. He envisioned in detail the separate progresses of the Warward-the Bloodguard riding with Lord Callindrill, the mounted Eoward rafting and galloping, the warriors marching behind Amorine. On his mental map of the Land, these various thrusts had a deliberate symmetry that pleased him in some fundamental way. Before long, he began to feel better.

  And Trothgard helped him, also. South of the rock gardens, the land's mantle of soil became thicker and more fertile, so that the hills through which the company rode had no bare stone jutting up among the grass and flowers. Instead, copses and broad swaths of woodland grew everywhere, punctuating the slopes and unfurling oratorically across the vales and valleys. Under the bright sky and the autumn balm of Trothgard, Troy put his uncertainty about Covenant behind him like a bad dream.

  At that point, even the problem of communications did not bother him. Ordinarily, he was even more concerned by his inability to convey messages to Quaan than by his ignorance of what was happening to Korik's mission. But he was on his way to Revelwood. High Lord Elena had promised him that the Loresraat was working on his problem. He looked forward hopefully to the chance that the students of the Staff had found a solution for him.

  That evening, he enjoyed the singing and talk of the Lords around the campfire. Mhoram was withdrawn and silent, with a strange look of foreboding in his eyes, and Covenant glowered glum and taciturn into the coals of the fire. But High Lord Elena was in vibrant good spirits. With Amatin, she spread a mood of humour and gaiety over the company until even the sombrest of the Lorewardens seemed to effervesce. Troy thought that she had never looked more lovely.

  Yet he went to the blindness of his bed with an ache in his heart. He could not help knowing that Elena exerted her brilliance for Covenant's sake, not for his.

  He fell at once into sleep as if to escape his sightlessness. But in the darkest part of the moonless night, sharp voices and the stamping of hooves roused him. Through the obscure illumination of the fire embers, he saw a Bloodguard on a Ranyhyn standing in the centre of the camp. The Ranyhyn steamed in the cold air; it had galloped hotly to reach the Lords.

  First Mark Morin and Lord Mhoram already stood by the Ranyhyn, and the High Lord was hurrying from her blankets with Lord Amatin behind her. Troy threw an armful of kindling on the fire. The sudden blaze gave him a better view of the Bloodguard.

  The grime of hard fighting streaked his face, and among the rents there were patches of dried blood on his robe. He dismounted slowly, as if he were tired or reluctant.

  Troy felt his balance suddenly waver, as if the tree limb of his efforts for the Land had jumped under his feet. He recognized the Bloodguard. He was Runnik, one of the members of Korik's mission to Seareach.

  Fourteen: Runnik's Tale

  FOR a moment, Troy groped around him, trying to regain his balance. Runnik should not be here; it was too soon. Only twenty-three days had passed since the departure of Korik's mission. Even the mightiest Ranyhyn could not gallop to Seareach and back in that time. So Runnik's arrival here meant-Even before the High Lord could speak, Troy found himself demanding in a constricted voice, “What happened? What happened?”

  But Elena stopped him with a sharp word. He could see that the implications of Runnik's presence were not lost on her. She stood with the Staff of Law planted firmly on the ground, and her face was full of fire.

  At her side, Covenant had a look of nausea, as if he were already sickened by what he expected to hear. He had the aspect of a man who wanted to know whether or not he had a terminal illness as he rasped at the Bloodguard, “Are they dead?”

  Runnik ignored both Covenant and Troy. He nodded to First Mark Morin, then bowed slightly to the High Lord. Despite its flatness, his countenance had a reluctant cast, an angle of unwillingness, that made Troy groan in anticipation.

  “Speak, Runnik,” Elena said sternly. "What word have you brought to us?“ And after her Morin said, ”Speak so that the Lords may hear you."

  Yet Runnik did not begin. Barely visible in the background of his unblinking gaze, there was an ache-a pang that Troy had never expected to see in any Bloodguard. “Sweet Jesus,” he breathed. “How bad is it?”

  Then Lord Mhoram spoke. “Runnik,” he said softly, “the mission to Seareach was given into the hands of the Bloodguard. This is a difficult burden, for you are Vowed to-the preservation of the Lords above all things. There is no blame for you if your Vow and the mission have come into conflict, requiring that one or the other must be set aside. There can be no doubt of the Bloodguard, whatever the doom that brings you to us thus battle-rent at the dark of the moon.”

  For a moment longer, Runnik hesitated. Then he said, “High Lord, I have come from the depths of Sarangrave Flat from the Defiles Course and the mission to Seareach. To me, and to Pren and Porib with me, Korik said, “Return to the High Lord. Tell her all-all the words of Warhaft Hoerkin, all the struggles of the Ranyhyn, all the attacks of the lurker. Tell her of the fall of Lord Shetra.' ” Amatin moaned in her throat, and Mhoram stiffened. But Elena held Runnik with the intensity of her face. " `She will know how to hear this tale of Giants and Ravers. Tell her that the mission will not fail.'

  " `Fist and faith,' we three responded. `We will not fail.'

  "But for four days we strove with the Sarangrave, and Pren fell to the lurker that has awakened. Then we won our way to the west of the Flat, and there regained our Ranyhyn. With our best speed we rode toward Revelstone. But when we enter
ed Grimmerdhore, we were beset by wolves and ur-viles, though we saw no sign of them when we passed eastward. Porib and his Ranyhyn fell so that I might escape, and I rode onward.

  "Then on the west of Grimmerdhore, I met with scouts of the Warward, and learned that Corruption was marching, and that the High Lord had ridden toward Revelwood. So I turned aside from Revelstone and came in pursuit to find you here.

  “High Lord, there is much that I must say.”

  “We will hear you,” Elena said. “Come.” Turning, she moved to the campfire. There she seated herself with Mhoram and Amatin beside her. At a sign from her, Runnik sat down opposite her, and allowed one of the Lorewardens who had skill as a Healer to clean his cuts. Troy piled wood on the fire so that he could see better, then positioned himself near the Lords on the far side from Covenant. In a moment, Runnik began to speak.

  At first, his narration was brief and awkward. The Bloodguard lacked the Giants' gift for storytelling; he skimmed crucial subjects, and ignored things his hearers needed to know. But the Lords questioned him carefully. And Covenant repeatedly insisted on details. At times, he seemed to be trying to stall the narrative, postpone the moment when he would have to hear its outcome. Gradually, the events of the mission began to emerge in a coherent form.

  Troy listened intensely. He could see nothing beyond the immediate light of the campfire; nothing distracted his attention. Despite the flatness of Runnik's tone, the Warmark seemed to see what he was hearing as if the mission were taking place in the air before him.

  The mission had made its way eastward through Grimmerdhore, and then for three days had ridden in rain. But no rain could halt the Ranyhyn, and this was no great storm. On the eighth day of the mission, when the clouds broke and let sunlight return to the earth, Korik and his party were within sight of Mount Thunder.

  It grew steadily against the sky as they rode through the sunshine. They passed twenty-five leagues to the north of it, and reached the great cliff of Landsdrop late that afternoon. They were at one of its highest points, and could look out over the Lower Land from a vantage of more than four thousand feet. Here Landsdrop was as sheer as if the Lower Land had been cut away with an axe. And below it beyond a hilly strip of grassland less than five leagues wide lay Sarangrave Flat.