The Illearth War t1cotc-2

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “Play, I say! Are you blind, man with no eyes? Does the sun dazzle you?”

  This gibe was met with loud laughter. But Troy stood still in his dismay. The sun? he thought numbly. Then he had chosen the wrong direction, east instead of west; he had walked right into these creatures. He wanted to scream. But he was past screaming. He could feel the light of his life going out. His hands shook as he tried to straighten his sunglasses.

  “Dear God,” he groaned.

  Numbly, as if he did not know what he was doing, he put his fingers to his lips and gave a shrill whistle.

  The whip coiled around his waist and whirled him to the ground.

  “Play!” the voices shouted raggedly together.

  But when he stumbled to his feet again, he heard the sound of hooves. And a moment later, Mehryl's whinny cut through the gibbering voices. It touched Troy's heart like the call of a trumpet. He jerked up; his head, and his ears searched, trying to locate the

  Ranyhyn.

  The voices changed to shouts of hunger as the ` hooves charged. “Ranyhyn!” “Kill it!”

  “Meat!” Hands grabbed Troy. He grappled with a fist that held a knife. But then the noise of hooves rushed close to him. An impact flung his assailant away. He turned, tried to leap onto Mehryl's back. But he only put himself in Mehryl's path. The shoulder of the Ranyhyn struck him, knocked him down.

  Then he could hear bare feet leaping to the attack. The whip cracked, knives swished. Mehryl was forced away from him. Hooves skittered on the stone as the Ranyhyn retreated. Howling triumphantly, the creatures gave chase. The sounds receded.

  Troy pushed himself to his feet. His heart thudded in his chest; pain throbbed sharply in his face. The noises of pursuit seemed to indicate that he was being left alone. But he did not move. Concentrating all his attention, he tried to hear over the beat of his pain.

  For a long moment, the open space around him sounded empty, still. He waved his arms, and touched nothing.

  But then he heard a sharp intake of breath.

  He was trembling violently. He wanted to turn and run. But he forced himself to hold his ground. He concentrated, bent all his alertness toward the sound. In the distance, the other creatures had lost Mehryl. They were returning; he could hear them.

  But the near voice hissed, “I kill you. You hurt my foot. Slayer take them! You are my meat.”

  Troy could sense the creature's approach. It loomed out of the blankness like a faint pressure on his face. The rasp of its breathing grew louder. With every step, he felt its ambience more acutely.

  The tension was excruciating, but he held himself still. He waited. Interminable time passed.

  Suddenly, he felt the creature bunching to spring.

  He snatched Manethrall Rue's cord from his belt, looped it around the neck of his attacker, and jerked as the creature hit him. He put all his strength into the pull. The creature's leap toppled him, but he clung to the cord, heaved on it. The creature landed on top of him. He threw his weight around, got himself onto the creature. He kept pulling. Now he could feel the limpness of the body under him. But he did not release his hold. Straining on the cord; he banged the creature's head repeatedly against the stone.

  He was gasping for breath. Dimly, he could hear the other creatures charging him.

  He did not release his hold

  Then power crackled through the air. Flame burst around him. He heard shouts, and the clash of swords. Bowstrings thrummed. Creatures screamed, ran, fell heavily.

  A moment later, hands lifted Troy. Rue's cord was taken from his rigid fingers. First Haft Amorine cried, “Warmark! Warmark! Praise the Creator, you are safe!” She was weeping with relief. People moved around him. He heard Lord Mhoram say, “My friend, you have led us a merry chase. Without Mehryl's aid, we would not have found you in time.” The voice came disembodied out of the blankness.

  At first, Troy could not speak. His heart struggled through a crisis. It made him gasp so hard that he could barely stand. He sounded as if he were trying to sob.

  “Warmark,” Amorine said, “what has happened to you?”

  “Sun,” he panted, “is-the sun-shining?” The effort of articulation seemed to impale his heart.

  “Warmark? Ah, Warmark! What has been done to you?”

  “The sun!” he retched out. He was desperate to insist, but he could only stamp his foot uselessly.

  “The sun stands overhead,” Mhoram answered. “We have survived the vortex and its creatures. But now Fleshharrower's army enters Doriendor Corishev. We must depart swiftly.”

  “Mhoram,” Troy coughed hoarsely. “Mhoram.” Stumbling forward, he fell into the Lord's arms.

  Mhoram held him in a comforting grip. Without a word, the Lord supported him until some of his pain passed, and he began to breathe more easily. Then Mhoram said quietly, "I see that you slew one of the Despiser's birds. You have done well, my friend. Lord Callindrill and I remain. Perhaps seventy of the Bloodguard survive. First Haft Amorine has preserved a handful of her warriors. After the passing of the vortex, all the Ranyhyn returned. They saved many horses. My friend, we must go."

  Some of Mhoram's steadiness reached Troy, and he began to regain control of himself. He did not want to be a burden to the Lord. Slowly, he drew back, stood on his own. Covering his burned forehead with his hands as if he were trying to hide his eyelessness, he said, “I've got to tell you the rest of my plan.”

  “May it wait? We must depart at once.”

  “Mhoram,” Troy moaned brokenly, “I can't see.”

  Twenty: Garroting Deep

  Two days later-shortly after noon on the day before the dark of the moon-Lord Mhoram led the Warward to Cravenhaw, the southmost edge of Garroting Deep. In noon heat, the army had swung stumbling and lurching like a dying man around the foothills, and had marched northward to a quivering halt before the very lips of the fatal Deep. The warriors stood on a wide, grassy plain-the first healthy green they had seen since leaving the South Plains. Ahead was the Forest. Perhaps half a league away on either side, east and west, were mountains, steep and forbidding peaks like the jaws of the Deep. And behind was the army of moksha Fleshharrower.

  The Giant-Raver drove his forces savagely. Despite the delay at Doriendor Corishev, he was now no more than two leagues away.

  That knowledge tightened Lord Mhoram's cold, weary dread. He had so little time in which to attempt Warmark Troy's plan. From this position, there were no escapes and no hopes except the one Troy had envisioned. If Mhoram were not successful-successful soon! — the Warward would be crushed between the Raver and Garroting Deep.

  Yet he doubted that he could succeed at all, regardless of the time at his disposal. In a year or a score of years, he might still fail. The demand was so great-Even the vortex of trepidation had not made him feel so helpless.

  Yet he shuddered when he thought of the vortex. Although Troy had saved virtually all the Warward, the men and women who had remained in the masterplace had paid heavily for their survival. Something in Lord Callindrill had been damaged by Fleshharrower's attack. The strain of combat against bitter ill had humiliated him in some way, taught him a deep distrust of himself. He had not been able to resist the fear. Now his clear soft eyes were clouded, pained. When he melded his thoughts with Lord Mhoram, he shared knowledge and concern, but not strength; he no longer believed in his strength.

  In her own way, First Haft Amorine suffered similarly. During the Raver's onslaught, she had held the collapsing remains of her command together by the simple force of her courage. She had taken the terror of her warriors upon herself. Every time one of them fell under the power of the vortex, or died in the talons of the birds, she had tightened her grip on the survivors. And after that, when the sirocco had passed, she began a frantic search for Warmark Troy. The perverted, manlike creatures that rushed into the ruins — some with claws for fingers, others with cleft faces and limbs covered with suckers, still others with extra eyes or arms, all of them warped in
some way by the power of the Stone-steadily brought more and more of the city under their control. But she fought her way through them as if they were mere shades to haunt her while she hunted. The idea of following Mehryl was hers.

  But the Warmark's blindness was too much for her. The cause of it was clear. The slain bird's corrosive blood had ravaged his face, and that burning had undone the Land's gift of sight. Neither of the Lords had any hurtloam, rillinlure, or other arts of healing with which to counteract the hurt. When she understood Troy's plight, she appeared to lose herself; independent will deserted her. Until she rejoined the Warward, she followed Lord Mhoram's requests and instructions blankly, like a puppet from which all authority had evaporated. And when she saw Hiltmark Quaan again, she transferred herself to him. As she told him of Troy's plan, she was so numb that she did not even falter.

  The Warmark himself had said nothing more after describing his final strategy. He wrapped himself in his blindness and allowed Mhoram to place him on Mehryl's back. He did not ask about Fleshharrower's army, though only the speed of the Ranyhyn saved him and his companions from being trapped in the city. Despite the scream of frustration which roared after the riders, he carried himself like an invalid who had turned his face to the wall.

  And Lord Mhoram also suffered. After the battle of the masterplace, fatigue and dread had forced tenacious fingers into the crevices and crannies of his soul, so that he could not shake them off. Yet he helped the First Haft and Lord Callindrill as best he could. He knew that only time and victory could heal their wounds; but he absorbed those parts of their burdens which came within his reach, and gave back to them all the consolation he possessed.

  There was nothing he could do to ease the shock which Amorine's report of the Warmark's final plan gave Quaan. As she spoke, the Hiltmark's concern for her gave way to a livid horror on behalf of the warriors. His expression flared, and he erupted, “Madness! Every man and woman will be slain! Troy, what has become of you? By the Seven! Troy Warmark!”-he hesitated awkwardly before uttering his thought “Do you rave? My friend,” he breathed gripping Troy's shoulders, “how can you meditate such folly?”

  Troy spoke for the first time since he had left Doriendor Corishev. “I'm blind,” he said in a hollow voice, as if that explained everything. “I can't help it.” He pulled himself out of Quaan's grasp, sat down near the fire. Locating the flames by their heat, he hunched toward them like a man studying secrets in the coals.

  Quaan turned to Mhoram. “Lord, do you accept this madness? It will mean death for us all-and destruction for the Land.”

  Quaan's protest made the Lord's heart ache. But before he could find words for any answer, Troy spoke suddenly.

  “No, he doesn't,” the Warmark said. “He doesn't actually think I'm a Raver.” Inner pain made his voice harsh. “He thinks Foul had a hand in summoning me-interfered with Atiaran somehow so that I showed up, instead of somebody else who might have looked less friendly.” He stressed the word looked, as if sight itself were inherently untrustworthy. "Foul wanted the Lords to trust me because he knew what kind of man I am. Dear God! It doesn't matter how much I hate him. He knew I'm the kind of man who backs into corners where just being fallible is the same thing as treachery.

  “But you forget that it isn't up to me anymore. I've done my part-I've put you where you haven't got any choice. Now Mhoram has got to save you. It's on his head.”

  Quaan appeared torn between dismay for the Warward and concern for Troy. “Even a Lord may be defeated,” he replied gruffly.

  “I'm not talking about a Lord,” Troy rasped. “I'm talking about Mhoram.”

  In his weariness, Lord Mhoram ached to deny this, to refuse the burden. He said, “Warmark, of course I will do all that lies within my strength. But if Lord Foul has chosen you for the work of our destruction-ah, then, my friend, all aid will not avail. The burden of this plan will return to you at the last.”

  “No.” Troy kept his face toward the fire, as if here reliving the acid burn which had blinded him. “You've given your whole life to the Land, and you're going to give it now.”

  “The Despiser knows me well,” Mhoram breathed. “He ridicules me in my dreams.” He could hear echoes of that belittling mirth, but he held them at a distance. “Do not mistake me, Warmark. I do not flinch this burden. I accept it. On Kevin's Watch I made my promise and you dared this plan because of that promise. You have not done ill. But I must speak what is in my heart. You are the Warmark. I believe that the command of this fate must finally return to you.”

  “I'm blind. There's nothing more I can do. Even Foul can't ask any more of me.” The heat of the fire made the burn marks on his face lurid. He held his hands clasped together, and his knuckles were white.

  In distress, Quaan gazed at Mhoram with eyes that asked if he had been wrong to trust Troy.

  “No,” Lord Mhoram answered. “Do not pass judgment upon this mystery until it is complete. Until that time, we must keep faith.”

  “Very well,” Quaan sighed heavily. “If we have been betrayed, we have no recourse now. To flee into the Desert will accomplish only death. And Cravenhaw is a place to fight and die like any other. The Warward must not turn against itself when the last battle is near. I will stand with Warmark Troy.” Then he went to his blankets to search for sleep among his fears. Amorine followed his example dumbly, leaving Callindrill and Mhoram with Troy.

  Callindrill soon dropped into slumber. And Mhoram was too worn to remain awake. But Troy sat up by the embers of the campfire. As the Lord's eyes closed, Troy was still huddled toward the flames like a cold cipher seeking some kind of remission for its frigidity.

  Apparently, the Warmark found an answer during the long watch. When Lord Mhoram awoke the next morning, he found Troy erect, standing with his arms folded across his breastplate. The Lord studied him closely, but could not discern what kind of answer Troy had discovered. Gently, he greeted the blind man.

  At the sound of Mhoram's voice, Troy turned. He held his head with a slight sideward tilt, as if that position helped him focus his hearing. The old half-smile which he had habitually worn during his years in Revelstone was gone, effaced from his lips. “Call Quaan,” he said flatly. “I want to talk to him.”

  Quaan was nearby; he heard Troy, and approached at once.

  Fixing the Hiltmark with his hearing, Troy said, “Guide me. I'm going to review the Warward.”

  “Troy, my friend,” Quaan murmured, “do not torment yourself.”

  Troy stood stiffly, rigid with exigency. “I'm the Warmark. I want to show my warriors that blindness isn't going to stop me.”

  Mhoram felt a hot premonition of tears, but he held them back. He smiled crookedly at Quaan, nodded his answer to the old veteran's question. Quaan saluted Troy, bravely ignoring the Warmark's inability to see him. Then he took Troy's arm, and led him away to the Eoward.

  Lord Mhoram watched their progress among the warriors-watched Quaan's respectful pain guiding Troy's erect helplessness from Eoman to Eoman. He endured the sight as best he could, and blinked down his own heart hurt. Fortunately, the ordeal did not last long; Fleshharrower's pursuit did not allow Troy time for a full review of the Warward. Soon Mhoram was mounted on his Ranyhyn, Drinny son of Hynaril, and riding on toward Cravenhaw.

  He spent most of that day watching over the Warmark. But the next morning, while the Warward made its final approach to Garroting Deep, he was forced to turn his attention to his task. He had to plan some way in which to keep his promise. He melded his thoughts with Lord Callindrill, and together they searched through their combined knowledges and intuitions for some key to Mhoram's dilemma. In his dread, he hoped to gain courage from the melding, but the ache of Callindrill's self-distrust denied him. Instead of receiving strength, Mhoram gave it.

  With Callindrill's help, he prepared an approach to his task, arranged a series of possible answers according to their peril and likelihood of success. But by noon, he had found nothing definitive. Then h
e ran out of time. The Warward staggered to a halt at the very brink of Garroting Deep.

  There, face-to-face with the One Forest's last remaining consciousness, Lord Mhoram began to taste the full gall of his inadequacy. The Deep's dark, atavistic rage left him effectless; he felt like a man with no fingers. The first trees were within a dozen yards of him. Like irregular columns, they appeared suddenly out of the ground, with no shrubs or bushes leading up to them, and no underbrush cluttering the greensward on which they stood. They were sparse at first. As far back as he could see, they did not grow thickly enough.to close out the sunlight. Yet a shadow deepened on them; mounting dimness spurned the sunlight. In the distance, the benighted will of the Forest became an almost tangible refusal of passage. He felt that he was peering into a chasm. The idea that any bargain could be made with such a place seemed to be madness, vanity woven of dream stuff. For a long time, he only stood before the Deep and stared, with a groan of cold dread on his soul.

  But Troy showed no hesitation. When Quaan told him where he was, he swung Mehryl around and began issuing orders. “All right, Hiltmark,” he barked, “let's get ready for it. Food for everyone. Finish off the supplies, but make it fast. After that, move the warriors back beyond bowshot, and form an arc around Lord Mhoram. Make it as wide as possible, but keep it thick-I don't want Fleshharrower to break through. Lord Callindrill, I think you should fight with the Warward. And Quaan-I'll speak to the warriors while they're eating. I'll explain it all.”

  “Very well, Warmark.” Quaan sounded distant, withdrawn into the recessed stronghold of his courage; and the lines of his face were taut with resolution. He returned Troy's blind salute, then turned and gave his own orders to Amorine. Together, they went to make the Warward's final preparations.

  Troy pulled Mehryl around again. He tried to face Mhoram, but missed by several feet. “Maybe you'd better get started,” he said. “You haven't got much time.”

  “I will wait until you have spoken to the Warward.” Sadly, Mhoram saw Troy grimace with vexation at the discovery that he had misjudged the Lord's position. “I need strength. I must seek it awhile.”