The Illearth War t1cotc-2

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “Thomas Covenant, I believe that there is immeasurable strength in the consummation of despair strength beyond all conceiving by an unholocausted soul. I believe that if High Lord Kevin could speak from beyond the grave, he would utter a word which would unmarrow the very bones of Lord Foul's Despite.”

  “That's madness!” Covenant gasped thickly. Elena's gaze wavered on the edge of focus, and he could not bear to look at her. “Do you think that some existence after death is going to vindicate you after you've simply extirpated life from the Earth? That was exactly Kevin's mistake. I tell you, he is roasting in hell!”

  “Perhaps,” she said softly. To his surprise, the storm implied in her voice was gone. “We will never possess such knowledge-and should not need it to live our lives. But I find a danger in Lord Mhoram's belief that the Earth's Creator has chosen you to defend the Land. It is in my heart that this does not account for you.

  “However, I have thought at times that perhaps our dead live in your world. Perhaps High Lord Kevin now restlessly walks your Earth, searching a voice which may utter his word here.”

  Covenant groaned; Elena's suggestion dismayed him. He heard the connection she drew between Kevin Landwaster and himself. And the implications of that kinship made his heart totter as if it were assailed by potent gusts of foreboding. As they rode onward, the new silence between them glistened like white eyes of fear.

  This mood grew stronger through that day and the next. The magnitude of the issues at stake numbed Covenant; he did not have the hands to juggle them. He withdrew into silence as if it were a chrysalis, an armour for some special vulnerability or metamorphosis. An obscure impulse like a memory of his former days with Atiaran prompted him to drop away from Elena's side and ride behind her. At her back, he followed Amok into the upper reaches of Trothgard.

  Then, on the sixth day, the thirteenth since he had left Revelstone, he came to himself again after a fashion. Scowling thunderously, he raised his head, and saw the Westron Mountains ranging above him. High Lord Elena's party was nearing the southwest corner of Trothgard, where the Rill River climbed up into the mountains; and already the crags and snows of the range filled the whole western sky. Trothgard lay unrolled behind him like the Lords' work exposed for review; it beamed in the sunlight as if it were confident of approbation. Covenant frowned at it still more darkly, and turned his attention elsewhere.

  The riders moved near the rim of the canyon of the Rill. The low, incessant rush of its waters, unseen below the edge of the canyon, gave Trothgard a dimension of sound like a subliminal humming made by the mountains and hills. All the views had a new suggestiveness, a timbre of implication. It reminded Covenant that he was climbing into one of the high places of the Land-and he did not like high places. But he clenched his frown to anchor the involuntary reactions of his face, and returned to Elena's side. She gave him a smile which he could not return, and they rode on together toward the mountains.

  Late that afternoon, they stopped, made camp beside a small pool near the edge of the canyon. Water came splashing out of the mountainside directly before them, and collected in a rocky basin before pouring over the rim toward the Rill. That pool could have served as a corner marker for Trothgard. Immediately south of it was the Rill's canyon; on the west, the mountains seemed to spring abruptly out of the ground, like a frozen instant of ambuscade; and Kurash Plenethor lay draped northeastward across the descending terrain. The aggressive imminence of the mountains contrasted vividly with the quiet panoply of Trothgard-and that contrast, multiplied by the lambent sound of the unseen Rill, gave the whole setting a look of surprise, an aspect or impression of suddenness. The atmosphere around the pool carried an almost tangible sense of boundary.

  Covenant did not like it. The air contained too much crepuscular lurking. It made him feel exposed. And the riders were not forced to stop there; enough daylight remained for more travelling. But the High Lord had decided to camp beside the pool. She dismissed Amok, sent the two Bloodguard away with the Ranyhyn and Covenant's horse, then set her pot of graveling on a flat rock near the pool, and asked Covenant to leave her alone so that she could bathe.

  Snorting as if the very air vexed him, he stalked off into the lee of a boulder where he was out of sight of the pool. He sat with his back to the stone, hugged his knees, and gazed down over Trothgard. He found the woodland hills particularly attractive as the mountain shadow began to fall across them. The peaks seemed to exude an austere dimness which by slow degrees submerged Trothgard's lustre. Through simple size and grandeur, they exercised precedence. But he preferred Trothgard. It was lower and more human.

  Then the High Lord interrupted his reverie. She had left her robe and the Staff of Law on the grass by her graveling. Wrapped only in a blanket, and drying her hair with one corner of it, she came to join him. Though the blanket hung about her thickly, revealing even less of her supple figure than did her robe, her presence felt more urgent than ever. The simple movement of her limbs as she seated herself at his side exerted an unsettling influence over him. She demanded responses. He found that his chest hurt again, as it had at Glimmermere.

  Striving to defend himself against an impossible tenderness, he flung away from the boulder, walked rapidly toward the pool. The itching of his beard reminded him that he also seeded a bath. The High Lord remained out of sight; Bannor and Morin were nowhere around. He dropped his clothes by the graveling pot, and went to the pool.

  The water was as cold as snow, but he thrust himself into it like a man exacting penance, and began to scrub at his flesh as if it were stained. He attacked his scalp and cheeks until his fingertips tingled, then submerged himself until his lungs burned. But when he pulled himself out of the water and went to the graveling for warmth, he found that he had only aggravated his difficulties. He felt whetted, more voracious, but no cleaner.

  He could not understand Elena's power over him, could not control his response. She was an illusion, a figment; he should not be so attracted to her. And she should not be so willing to attract him. He was already responsible for her; his one potent act in the Land had doomed him to that. How could she not blame him?

  Moving with an intemperate jerkiness, he dried himself on one of the blankets, then draped it by the pot to dry, and began to dress. He put on his clothes fiercely, as if he were girding for battle-laced and hauled and zipped and buckled himself into his sturdy boots, his T-shirt, his tough, protective jeans. He checked to be sure that he still carried his penknife and Hearthrall Tohrm's orcrest in his pockets.

  When he was properly caparisoned, he went back through the twilight toward the High Lord. He stamped his feet to warn her of his approach, but the grass absorbed his obscure vehemence, and he made no more noise than an indignant spectre.

  He found her standing a short distance downhill from the boulder. She was gazing out over Trothgard with her arms folded across her chest, and did not turn toward him as he drew near. For a time, he stood two steps behind her. The sky was still too sun-pale for stars, but Trothgard lay under the premature gloaming of the mountains. In the twilight, the face of the Lords' promise to the Land was veiled and dark.

  Covenant twisted his ring, wound it on his finger as if he were tightening it to the pitch of some outbreak. Water from his wet hair dripped into his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was harsh with a frustration that he could neither relieve nor repress.

  “Hellfire, Elena! I'm your father!”

  She gave no sign that she had heard him, but after a moment she said in a low, musing tone, "Triock son of Thuler would believe that you have been honoured. He would not utter it kindly-but his heart would speak those words, or hold that thought. Had you not been summoned to the Land, he might have wed Lena my mother. And he would not have taken himself to the Loresraat, for he had no yearning for knowledge-the stewardship of Stonedownor life would have sufficed for him. But had he and Lena my mother borne a child who grew to become High Lord of the Council of Revelstone, he would have felt hon
oured-both elevated and humbled by his part in his daughter.

  “Hear me, Thomas Covenant. Triock Thuler-son of Mithil Stonedown is my true father-the parent of my heart, though he is not the sire of my blood. Lena my mother did not wed him, though he begged her to share her life with him. She desired no other sharing-the life of your child satisfied her. But though she would not share her life, he shared his. He provided for her and for me. He took the place of a son with Trell Lena's father and Atiaran her mother.

  “Ah, he was a dour parent. His heart's love ran in broken channels-yearning and grief and, yes, rage against you were diminishless for him, finding new paths when the old were turned or dammed. But he gave to Lena my mother and to me all a father's tenderness and devotion. Judge of him by me, Thomas Covenant. When dreaming of you took Lena's thoughts from me-when Atiaran lost in torment her capacity to care for me, and called to herself all Trell her husband's attention-then Triock son of Thuler stood beside me. He is my father.”

  Covenant tried to efface his emotions with acid. “He should have killed me when he had the chance.”

  She went on as if she had not heard him. “He shielded my heart from unjust demands. He taught me that the anguishes and furies of my parents and their parents need not wrack or enrage me-that I was neither the cause nor the cure of their pain. He taught me that my life is my own-that I could share in the care and consolation of wounds without sharing the wounds, without striving to be the master of lives other than my own. He taught me this-he who gave his own life to Lena my mother.

  “He abhors you, Thomas Covenant. And yet without him as my father I also would abhor you.”

  “Are you through?” Covenant grated through the clench of his teeth. “How much more do you think I can stand?”

  She did not answer aloud. Instead, she turned toward him. Tears streaked her cheeks. She was silhouetted against the darkening vista of Trothgard, as she stepped up to him, slipped her arms about his neck, and kissed him.

  He gasped, and her breath was snatched into his lungs. He was stunned. A black mist filled his sight as her lips caressed his.

  Then for a moment he lost control. He repulsed her as if her breath carried infection. Crying, “Bastard!” he swung, backhanded her face with all his force.

  The blow staggered her.

  He pounced after her. His fingers clawed her blanket, tore it from her shoulders.

  But his violence did not daunt her. She caught her balance, did not flinch or recoil. She made no effort to cover herself. With her head high, she held herself erect and calm; naked, she stood before him as if she were invulnerable.

  It was Covenant who flinched. He quailed away from her as if she appalled him. “Haven't I committed enough crimes?” he panted hoarsely. “Aren't you satisfied?”

  Her answer seemed to spring clean and clear out of the strange otherness of her gaze. “You cannot ravish me, Thomas Covenant. There is no crime here. I am willing. I have chosen you.”

  “Don't!” he groaned. “Don't say that!” He flung his arms about his chest as if to conceal a hole in his armour. “You're just trying to give me gifts again. You're trying to bribe me.”

  “No. I have chosen you. I wish to share life with you.”

  “Don't!” he repeated. “You don't know what you're doing. Don't you understand how desperately I–I-?”

  But he could not say the words, need you. He choked on them. He wanted her, wanted what she offered him more than anything. But he could not say it. A passion more fundamental than desire restrained him.

  She made no move toward him, but her voice reached out. “How can my love harm you?”

  “Hellfire!” In frustration, he spread his arms wide like a man baring an ugly secret. “I'm a leper! Don't you see that?” But he knew immediately that she did not see, could not see because she lacked the knowledge or the bitterness to perceive the thing he called leprosy. He hurried to try to explain before she stepped closer to him and he was lost. “Look. Look!” He pointed at his chest with one accusing finger. “Don't you understand what I'm afraid of? Don't you comprehend the danger here? I'm afraid I'll become another Kevin! First I'll start loving you, and then I'll learn how to use the wild magic or whatever, and then Foul will trap me into despair, and then I'll be destroyed. Everything will be destroyed. That's been his plan all along. Once I start loving you or the Land or anything, he can just sit back and laugh! Bloody hell, Elena! Don't you see it?”

  Now she moved. When she was within arm's reach, she stopped, and stretched out her hand. With the tips of her fingers, she touched his forehead as if to smooth away the darkness there. “Ah, Thomas Covenant,” she breathed gently, “I cannot bear to see you frown so. Do not fear, beloved. You will not suffer Kevin Landwaster's fate. I will preserve you.”

  At her touch, something within him broke. The pure tenderness of her gesture overcame him. But it was not his restraint which broke; it was his frustration. An answering tenderness washed through him. He could see her mother in her, and at the sight he suddenly perceived that it was not anger which made him violent toward her, not anger which so darkened his love, but rather grief and self-despite. The hurt he had done her mother was only a complex way of hurting himself-an expression of his leprosy. He did not have to repeat that act.

  It was all impossible, everything was impossible, she did not even exist. But at that moment he did not care. She was his daughter. Tenderly, he stooped, retrieved her blanket, wrapped it around her shoulders. Tenderly, he held her face in his hands, touched her sweet face with the impossible aliveness of his fingers. He stroked away the salt pain of her tears with his thumbs, and kissed her forehead tenderly.

  Twenty Two: Anundivian Yajna

  THE next morning, they left Trothgard, and rode into the unfamiliar terrain of the mountains. Half a league into the range, Amok brought them to a bridge of native stone which spanned the narrowing river-gorge of the Rill. To ameliorate his own dread of heights as well as to steady his mount, Covenant led his horse across. The bridge was wide, and the Bloodguard bracketed him with their Ranyhyn; he had no difficulty.

  From there, Amok guided the High Lord's party up into the recesses of the peaks.

  Beyond the foothills, his path became abruptly demanding-precipitous, rugged, and slow. He was reduced to a more careful pace as he led the riders along valleys as littered and wracked as wrecks-up treacherous slides and scree falls which lay against cliffs and cola and coombs as if regurgitated out of the mountain gut-rock- down ledges which traversed weathered stone fronts like scars. But he left no doubt that he knew his way. Time and again he walked directly to the only possible exit from a closed valley, or found the only horse-worthy trail through a rockfall, or trotted without hesitation into a crevice which bypassed a blank peak. Through the rough-hewn bulk and jumble of the mountains, he led the High Lord with the obliqueness of a man threading an accustomed maze.

  For the first day or so, his goal seemed to be simply to gain elevation. He took the riders scrambling upward until the cold appeared to pour down on them from the ice tips of the tallest peaks. Thinner air gave

  Covenant visions of scaling some inaccessible and remorseless mountain, and he accepted a thick half-robe from Bannor with a shiver which was not caused by the chill alone.

  But then Amok changed directions. As if he were finally satisfied by the icy air and the pitch of the mountain-scapes, he sought no more altitude. Instead, he began to follow the private amazement of his trail southward. Rather than plunging deeper into the Westron Mountains, he moved parallel to their eastern borders. By day, he guided his companions along his unmarked way, and at night he left them in sheltered glens and wombs and gorges, where there were unexpected patches of grass for the mounts, to deal as they saw fit with the exhilarating or cruel cold. He did not seem to feel the cold himself. With his thin apparel fluttering against his limbs, he strode ahead in unwearied cheerfulness, as if he ware impervious to fatigue and ice. Often he had to hold himself back so that
the Ranyhyn and Covenant's mustang could keep pace with him.

  The two Bloodguard were like him-unaffected by cold or altitude. But they were Haruchai, born to these mountains. Their nostrils distended at the vapoury breath of dawn or dusk. Their eyes roamed searchingly over the sunward crags, the valleys occasionally bedizened with azure terns, the hoary glaciers crouching in the highest cots, the snow-fed streams. Though they wore nothing but short robes, they never shivered or gasped at the cold. Their wide foreheads and flat cheeks and confident poise betrayed no heart upsurge, no visceral excitement. Yet there was something clear and passionate in their alacrity as they watched over Elena and Covenant and Amok.

  Elena and Covenant were not so immune to the cold. Their susceptibility clung to them, made them eager for each new day's progress toward warmer southern air. But their blankets and extra robes were warm. The High Lord did not appear to suffer. And as long as she did not suffer, Covenant felt no pain. Discomfort he could ignore. He was more at peace than he had been for a long time.

  Since they had left Trothgard-since he had made the discovery which enabled him to love her without despising himself-he had put everything else out of his mind and concentrated on his daughter. Lord Foul, the Warward, even this quest itself, were insubstantial to him. He watched Elena, listened to her, felt her presence at all times. When she was in the mood to talk, he questioned her readily, and when she was not he gave her silence. And in every mood he was grateful to her, poignantly moved by the offer she had made-the offer he had refused.