The Illearth War t1cotc-2

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  The Forestal appeared unmoved by this appeal. Instead of replying to it, he hummed darkly, “You spoke of a Raver”

  “The army which destroys us even now is commanded by a Raver, one of the three decimators of the One Forest.”

  “Give me a token that you speak the truth.”

  Lord Mhoram did not dare hesitate. Though the ground he trod was completely trackless, unmapped by any lore but his own intuition, he answered promptly, "He is moksha Raver, also named Jehannum and Fleshharrower. In ages long past, he and turiya his brother taught the despising of trees to the once friendly Demondim. Samadhi his brother guided the monarch of Doriendor Corishev when that mad king sought to master the life and death of the One Forest."

  “Moksha Raver” Caerroil Wildwood trilled lightly, dangerously. “I have a particular hunger for Ravers.”

  “Their might is greatly increased now. They share the unnatural power of the Illearth Stone.”

  “I care nothing for that,” the Forestal replied almost brusquely. “But you offered m Raver to me. How can that be done, when he defeats you even now?”

  The sounds of battle came inexorably nearer as the Warward was driven back. Lord Mhoram heard less combat and more slaughter with every passing moment. And he could feel Warmark Troy panting behind him. With all his hard won serenity, he answered, “That is the boon I ask, Caerroil Wildwood. I ask safe passage for all my people through Garroting Deep. This boon will deliver moksha Raver into your hands. He and all his army, all his ur-viles and Cavewights and creatures, will be yours. When the Raver sees that we flee into the Deep and are not destroyed, he will follow. He will believe that you are weak-or that you have passed away. His hatred for us, and for the trees, will drive him and all his force into your demesne.”

  A moment that throbbed urgently in Mhoram's ears passed while Caerroil Wildwood considered. The battle noise seemed to say that soon there would be nothing of the Wayward left to save. But Mhoram faced the Forestal, and waited

  At last, the Forestal nodded. “It is a worthy bargain,” he sang slowly. “The trees are eager to fight again. I am prepared. But there is a small price to be paid for my help-and for the tainting of my song.”

  The upsurge of Mhoram's hope suddenly gave way to fear, and he spun to try to stop Warmark Troy. But before he could shout a warning, Troy said fervidly, “Then I'll pay it! I'll pay anything. My army is being slaughtered.”

  Mhoram winced at the irrevocable promise, tried to protest. But the Forestal sang keenly, "Very well. I accept your payment. Bring your army cautiously among the trees."

  Troy reacted instantly; he whirled, leaped for Mehryl's back. Some instinct guided him; he landed astride the Ranyhyn as securely as if he could see. At once, he went galloping toward the battle, yelling with all his strength, “Quaan! Retreat! Retreat!”

  The Warward was collapsing as he shouted. The ranks of the warriors were broken, and Fleshharrower's creatures ranged bloodily among them. More than two-thirds of the Eoward had already fallen. But something in Troy's command galvanized the warriors for a final exertion. Breaking away, they turned and ran.

  Their sudden flight opened a brief gap between them and Fleshharrower's army. At once, Lord Callindrill set himself to widen the gap. Protected by a circle of Bloodguard, he unleashed a lightning fire that caught in the grass and crackled across the front of the foe. His blast did little damage, but it caused the Raver's forces to hesitate one instant in their pursuit. Using that instant, he followed the warriors. Together the survivors-hardly more than ten Eoward-ran straight toward Mhoram.

  When he saw them coming, Lord Mhoram went out to meet Troy. He pulled the Warmark from Mehryl's back-it was not safe to ride under the branches of the Deep-took his arm, and guided him toward the trees. The fleeing warriors were almost on their heels when Mhoram and Troy strode into Garroting Deep.

  Caerroil Wildwood had vanished, but his song remained. It seemed to resonate lightly off every leaf in the Forest. Mhoram could feel it piloting him, and he followed it implicitly. Behind him, he heard the warriors consummating their exhaustion in a last rush toward sanctuary or death. He heard Quaan shouting as if from a great distance that all survivors were now among the trees. But he did not look back. The Forestal's song exercised a fascination over him. Gripping Troy's arm and peering steadily ahead into the gloom, he moved at a brisk walk along the path of the melody.

  With Callindrill, Troy, Quaan, Amorine, twoscore Bloodguard, all the Ranyhyn, and more than four thousand warriors, Lord Mhoram passed for a time out of the world of humankind.

  Slowly, the music transmuted his conscious alertness, drew him into a kind of trance. He felt that he was still aware of everything, but that now nothing touched him. He could see the onset of evening in the altered dimness of the Deep, but he felt no passage of time. In openings between the trees, he could see the Westron Mountains. By the changing positions of the peaks, he could gauge his speed. He appeared to be moving faster than a galloping Ranyhyn. But he felt no exertion or strain of travel. The breath of the song wafted him ahead, as if he and his companions were being inhaled by the Deep. It was a weird, dreamy passage, a soul journey, full of speed he could not experience and events he could not feel.

  Night came-the moon was completely dark-but he did not lose sight of his way. Some hint of light in the grass and leaves and song made his path clear to him, and he went on confidently, untouched by any need for rest. The Forestal's song released him from mortality, wrapped him in careless peace.

  Sometime during the darkness, he heard the change of the song. The alteration had no effect on him, but he understood its meaning. Though the Forest swallowed every other sound, so that no howls or screams or cries reached his ears, he knew that Fleshharrower's army was being destroyed. The song described ages of waiting hate, of grief over vast tracts of kindred lost, ages of slow rage which climbed through the sap of the woods until every limb and leaf shared it, lived it, ached to act. And through that melodic narration came whispers of death as roots and boughs and trunks moved together to crush and rend.

  Against the immense Deep, even Fleshharrower's army was small and defenceless-a paltry insult hurled against an ocean. The trees brushed aside the power of the ur-viles and the strength of the Cavewights and the mad, cornered, desperate fear of all the other creatures. Led by Caerroil Wildwood's song, they simply throttled the invaders. Flames were stamped out, blade wielders were slain, lore and force were overwhelmed. Then the trees drank the blood and ate the bodies-eradicated every trace of the enemy in an apotheosis of ancient and exquisite fury.

  When the song resumed its former placid wafting, it seemed to breathe grim satisfaction and victory.

  Soon after that-Mhoram thought it was soon-a rumble like thunder passed over the woods. At first, he thought that he was hearing Fleshharrower's death struggle. But then he saw that the sound had an entirely different source. Far ahead and to the west, some terrible violence occurred in the mountains. Red fires spouted from one part of the range. After every eruption, a concussion rolled over the Deep, and a coruscating exhaust paled the night sky. But Mhoram was immune to it. He watched it with interest, but the song wrapped him in its enchantments and preserved him from all care.

  And he felt no concern when he realized that the Warward was no longer behind him. Except for Lord Callindrill, Troy, Amorine, Hiltmark Quaan, and two Bloodguard, Terrel and Morril, he was alone. But he was not anxious; the song assuaged him with peace and trust. It led him onward and still onward through a measureless night into the dawn of a new day.

  With the return of light, he found that he was moving through a woodland profuse with purple and white orchids. Their soft, pure colours fell in with the music as if they were the notes Caerroil Wildwood sang. They folded Mhoram closely in the consolation of the melody. With a wide, unconscious smile he let himself go as if the current which carried him were an anodyne for all his hurts.

  His strange speed was more apparent now. Already throug
h gaps in the overhanging foliage, he could see the paired spires of Melenkurion Skyweir, the tallest peaks in the Westron Mountains. He could see the high, sheer plateau of Rivenrock as the struggle it concealed continued. Eruptions and muffled booms came echoing from the depths of the mountain, and red bursts of force struck the sky at irregular intervals. But still he was untouched. His speed, his exhilarating, easy swiftness, filled his heart with gay glee. He had covered thirty or forty leagues since entering the Deep. He felt ready to walk that way forever.

  But the day passed with the same timeless evanescence that had borne him through the night. Soon the sun was close to setting, yet he had no sense of duration, no weary or hungry physical impression that he had travelled all day.

  Then the song changed again. Gradually, it no longer floated him forward. The end of his wafting filled him with quiet sadness, but he accepted it. The thunders and eruptions of Rivenrock were now almost due southwest of him. He judged that he and his companions were nearing the Black River.

  The song led him straight through the Forest to a high bald hill that stood up out of the woodland like a wen of barrenness. Beyond it, he could hear a rush of water-the Black River-but the hill itself caught his attention, restored some measure of his self-awareness. The soil of the hill was completely lifeless, as if in past ages it had been drenched with too much death ever to bloom again. And just below its crown on the near side stood two rigid trees like sentinels, witnesses, ten yards or more apart. They were as dead as the hill-blackened, bereft of limbs and leaves, sapless. Each dead trunk had only one bough left. Fifty feet above the ground, the trees reached toward each other, and their limbs interwove to form a crossbar between them.

  This was Gallows Howe, the ancient slaying place of the Forestall. Here, according to the legends of the Land, Caerroil Wildwood and his brethren had held their assizes in the long-past ages when the One Forest still struggled for survival. Here the Ravers who had come within the Forestall' grasp had been executed.

  Now moksha Fleshharrower hung from the gibbet. Black fury congested his face, his swollen tongue protruded like contempt between his teeth, and his eyes stared emptily. A rictus of hate strained and stretched all his muscles. His dying frenzy had been so extravagant that many of his blood vessels had ruptured, staining his skin with dark haemorrhages.

  As Lord Mhoram gazed upward through the thickening dusk, he felt suddenly tired and thirsty. Several moments passed before he noticed that Caerroil Wildwood was nearby. The Forestal stood to one side of the hill, singing quietly, and his eyes shone with a red and silver light.

  At Mhoram's side, Warmark Troy stirred as if he were awakening, and asked dimly, “What is it? What do you see?”

  Mhoram had to swallow several times before he could find his voice. “It is Fleshharrower. The Forestal has slain him.”

  A sharp intensity crossed Troy's face, as if he were straining to see. Then he smiled. “Thank God.”

  “It is a worthy bargain,” Caerroil Wildwood sang. “I know that I cannot slay the spirit of a Raver. But it is a great satisfaction to kill the flesh. He is garroted.” His eyes flared redly for a moment, then faded toward silver again. “Therefore do not think that I have rescinded my word. Your people are unharmed. The presence of so many faithless mortals disturbed the trees. To shorten their discomfort, I have sent your people out of Garroting Deep to the north. But because of the bargain, and the price yet to be paid, I have brought you hers. Behold the retribution of the Forest.”

  Something in his high clear voice made Mhoram shudder. But he remembered himself enough to ask, “What has become of the Raver's Stone?”

  “It was a great evil,” the Forestal hummed severely. “I have destroyed it.”

  Quietly, Lord Mhoram nodded. “That is well.” Then he tried to focus his attention on the matter of Caerroil Wildwood's price. He wanted to argue that Troy should not be held to the bargain; the Warmark had not understood what was being asked of him. But while Mhoram was still searching for words, Terrel distracted him. Silently, the Bloodguard pointed away upriver.

  The night was almost complete; only open starlight and the glow of Caerroil Wildwood's eyes illumined Gallows Howe. But when the Lord followed Terrel's indication, he saw two different lights. Far in the distance, Rivenrock's fiery holocaust was visible. The violence there seemed to be approaching its climacteric. The fires spouted furiously, and dark thunder rolled over the Deep as if great cliffs were cracking. The other light was much closer. A small, grave, white gleam shone through the trees between Mhoram and the river. As he looked at it, it moved out of sight beyond the Howe.

  Someone was travelling through Garroting Deep along the Black River.

  An intuition clutched Lord Mhoram, and at once he found he was afraid. Glimpses and visions which he had forgotten during the past days, returned to him. Quickly, he turned to the Forestal. “Who comes? Have you made other bargains?”

  “If I have,” sang the Forestal, “they are no concern of yours. But these two pass on sufferance. They have not spoken to me. I allow them because the light they bear presents no peril to the trees-and because they hold a power which I must respect. I am bound by the Law of creation.”

  “Melenkurion!” Mhoram breathed. “Creator preserve us!” Catching hold of Troy's arm, he started up the bald hill. His companions hastened after him. He passed the gibbet, gained the crest of the Howe, and looked down beyond it at the river.

  Two men climbed the hill toward him from the riverbank. One of them held a shining stone in his right hand, and supported his comrade with his left arm. They moved painfully, as if they ascended against a weight of barrenness. When they were near the hilltop, in full view of all Mhoram's company, they stopped.

  Slowly, Bannor held up the orcrest so that it lighted the crest of the Howe. With a nod, he acknowledged the Lords.

  When Thomas Covenant realized that all the people on the hill were watching him, he pushed away from Bannor's support, stood on his own. The exertion cost him a sharp effort. As he stood, he wavered unsteadily. In the orcrest light, his forehead gleamed atrociously. His eyes held a sightless stare-a stare without object, and yet of such intensity that his eyes appeared to be crossed, as if he were so conscious of his own duplicities that he could not see singly. His hands clenched each other against his chest. But then a fierce blast from Rivenrock struck him, and he almost lost his balance. He was forced to reach his halfhand toward Bannor. The movement bared his left fist.

  On his wedding finger, the argent ring throbbed hotly.

  PART III The Blood of the Earth

  Twenty One: Lena's Daughter

  TROY had called Thomas Covenant's Unbelief a bluff. But Covenant was not playing a mental game. He was a leper. He was fighting for his life.

  Unbelief was his only defence against the Land, his only way to control the intensity, the potential suicide, of his response to the Land. He felt that he had lost every other form of self-protection. And without self protection he would end up like the old man he had met in the leprosarium-crippled and fetid beyond all endurance. Even madness would be preferable. If he went mad, he would at least be insulated from knowing what was happening to him, blind and deaf and numb to the vulturine disease that gnawed his flesh.

  Yet as he rode westward away from Revelwood with High Lord Elena, Amok, and the two Bloodguard, in quest of Kevin Landwaster's Seventh Ward, he knew that he was changing. By fits and starts, his ground shifted under him; some potent, subtle Earthpower altered his personal terrain. Unstable footing shrugged him toward a precipice. And he felt helpless to do anything about it.

  The most threatening aspect of his immediate situation was Elena. Her nameless inner force, her ancestry, and her strange irrefusability both disturbed and attracted him. As they left the Valley of Two Rivers, he was already cursing himself for accepting her invitation. And yet she had the power to sway him. She tangled his emotions, and pulled unexpected strands of assent out of the knot.

  This w
as not like his other acquiescences. When Lord Mhoram had asked him to go with the Warward, he had agreed because he completely lacked alternatives. He urgently needed to keep moving, keep searching for an escape. No similar reasoning vindicated him when the High Lord had asked him to accompany her. He felt that he was riding away from the crux of his dilemma, the battle against Lord Foul — evading it like a coward. But in the moment of decision he had not even considered refusing. And he sensed that she could draw him farther. Hopelessly, without one jot or tittle of belief to his name, he could be made to follow her, even if she went to attack the Despiser himself. Her beauty, her physical presence, her treatment of him, ate away portions of his armour, exposing his vulnerable flesh.

  Travelling through the crisp autumn of Trothgard, he watched her alertly, timorously.

  High and proud on the back of Myrha, her Ranyhyn, she looked like a crowned vestal, somehow both powerful and fragile-as if she could have shattered his bones with a glance, and yet would have fallen from her seat at the touch of a single hurled handful of mud. She daunted him.

  When Amok appeared beside her as if concretized abruptly out of blank air, she turned to speak with him. They exchanged greetings, and bantered pleasantly like old friends while Revelwood fell into the distance behind them. Amok's reticence on the subject of his Ward did not prevent him from gay prolixity in other matters. Soon he was singing and talking happily as if his sole function were to entertain the High Lord.

  As Amok whiled away the morning, Covenant gazed over the countryside around him.

  The party of the quest rode easily up out of the lowlands of Trothgard. They travelled a few points south of westward, roughly paralleling the course of the Rill River toward the Westron Mountains. The western edge of Trothgard, still sixty or sixty-five leagues away, was at least three thousand feet higher than the Valley of Two Rivers, and the whole region slowly climbed toward the mountains. Already the High Lord's party moved into the gradual uprise. Covenant could feel their relaxed ascent as they rode through woodlands anademed in autumn, ablaze with orange, yellow, gold, red leaf-flames, and over lush grassy hillsides, where the scars of Stricken Stone's ancient wars had been effaced by thick heather and timothy like healthy new flesh over the wounds, green with healing.