The Illearth War t1cotc-2

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  He could not help being conscious of the fact that she was not equally content. She had not made her offer lightly, and seemed unwilling to understand his refusal. But the sorrow of having given her pain only sharpened his attentiveness toward her. He concentrated on her as only a man deeply familiar with loneliness could. And she was not blind to this. After the first few days of their mountain trek, she again relaxed in his company, and her smiles expressed a frankness of affection which she had not permitted herself before. Then he felt that he was in harmony with her, and he travelled with her gladly. At times he chirruped to his horse as if he enjoyed riding it.

  But in the days that followed, a change slowly came over her-a change that had nothing to do with him. As time passed-as they journeyed nearer to the secret location of the Seventh Ward-she became increasingly occupied by the purpose of her quest. She questioned Amok more often, interrogated him more tensely. At times, Covenant could see in the elsewhere stare of her eyes that she was thinking of the war-a duty from which she had turned aside-and there were occasional flashes of urgency in her voice as she strove to ask the questions that would unlock Amok's mysterious knowledge.

  This was a burden that Covenant could not help her bear. He knew none of the crucial facts himself. The days passed; the moon expanded to its full, then declined toward its last quarter, but she made no progress. Finally, his desire to assist her in some way led him to speak to Bannor.

  In a curious way, he felt unsafe with the Bloodguard-not physically, but emotionally. There was a tension of disparity between himself and Bannor. The Haruchai's stony gaze had the magisterial air of a man who did not deign to utter his judgment of his companions. And Covenant had other reasons to feel uncomfortable with Bannor. More than once, he had made Bannor bear the brunt of his own bootless outrage. But he had nowhere else to turn. He was entirely useless to Elena.

  Since his days in Revelstone, he had been alert to a fine shade of discrepancy in the Bloodguard's attitude toward Amok-a discrepancy which had been verified but not explained in Revelwood. However, he did not know how to approach the subject. Extracting information from Bannor was difficult; the Bloodguard's habitual reserve baffled inquiry. And Covenant was determined to say nothing which might sound like an offense to Bannor's integrity. Bannor had already proved his fidelity in the Wightwarrens under Mount Thunder.

  Covenant began by trying to find out why the Bloodguard had seen fit to send only Bannor and Morin to protect the High Lord on her quest. He was acutely aware of his infacility as he remarked, “I gather you don't think we're in any great danger on this trip.”

  “Danger, ur-Lord?” The repressed lilt of Bannor's pronunciation seemed to imply that anyone protected by the Bloodguard did not need to think of danger.

  “Danger,” Covenant repeated with a touch of his old asperity. “It's a common word these days”

  Bannor considered for a moment, then said, “These are mountains. There is always danger.”

  “Such as?”

  “Rocks may fall. Storms may come. Tigers roam these low heights. Great eagles hunt here. Mountains” — Covenant seemed to hear a hint of satisfaction in Bannor's tone-“are perilous.”

  “Then why-Bannor, I would really like to know why there are only two of your Bloodguard here.”

  “Is there need for more?”

  "If we're attacked by tigers, or whatever? Or what if there's an avalanche? Are two of you enough?"

  “We know mountains,” Bannor replied flatly. “We suffice.”

  This assertion was not one that Covenant could contradict. He made an effort to approach what he wanted to know in another way, though the attempt took him onto sensitive ground-terrain he would rather have avoided. "Bannor, I feel as if I'm slowly getting to know you Bloodguard. I can't claim that I understand-but I can at least recognize your devotion. I know what it looks like. Now I get the feeling that something is going on here-something- inconsistent. Something I don't recognize.

  “Here we are climbing through the mountains, where anything could happen. We're following Amok who knows where, even though we've got next to no idea what he's doing, never mind why he's doing it. And you're satisfied that the High Lord is safe when she's only got two Bloodguard to protect her. Didn't you learn anything from Kevin?”

  “We are the Bloodguard,” answered Bannor stolidly. “She is safe-as safe as may be.”

  “Safe?” Covenant protested.

  “A score or a hundredscore Bloodguard would not make her more safe.”

  “I admire your confidence.”

  Covenant winced at his own sarcasm, paused for a moment to reconsider his questions. Then he lowered his head as if he meant to batter Bannor's resistance down with his forehead, and said bluntly, “Do you trust Amok?”

  “Trust him, ur-Lord?” Bannor's tone hinted that the question was inane in some way. “He has not led us into hazard. He has chosen a good way through the mountains. The High Lord elects to follow him. We do not ask for more.”

  Still Covenant felt the lurking presence of something unexplained. “I tell you, it doesn't fit,” he rasped in irritation. "Listen. It's a little late in the day for these inconsistencies. I've sort of given up-they don't do me any good anymore. If it's all the same to you, I'd rather hear something that makes sense.

  “Bannor, you-Bear with me. I can't help noticing it. First there was something I don't understand, something-out of pitch-about the way you Bloodguard reacted to Amok when he came to Revelstone. You-I don't know what it was. Anyway, at Revelwood you didn't exactly jump to help Troy when he caught Amok. And after that-only two Bloodguard! Bannor, it doesn't make sense.”

  Bannor was unmoved. “She is the High Lord. She holds the Staff of Law. She is easily defended.”

  That answer foiled Covenant. It did not satisfy him, but he could think of no way around it. He did not know what he was groping for. His intuition told him that his questions were significant, but he could not articulate or justify them in any utile way. And he reacted to Bannor's trenchant blankness as if it were some kind of touchstone, a paradoxically private and unavoidable criterion of rectitude. Bannor made him aware that there was something not altogether honest about his own accompaniment of the High Lord.

  So he withdrew from Bannor, returned his attention to Elena. She had had no better luck with Amok, and her air of escape as she turned toward Covenant matched his. They rode on together, hiding their various anxieties behind light talk of mutual commiseration.

  Then, during the eleventh evening of their sojourn in the mountains, she expressed an opinion to him. As if the guess were hazardous, she said, “Amok leads us to Melenkurion Skyweir. The Seventh Ward is hidden there.” And the next day-the eighteenth since they had left Revelwood, and the twenty-fifth since the War Council of the Lords-the rhythm of their trek was broken.

  The day dawned cold and dull, as if the sunlight were clogged with grey cerements. A troubled smell shrouded the air. Torn fragments of wind flapped back and forth across the camp as Elena and Covenant ate their breakfast, and far away they could hear a flat, detonating sound like the retort of balked canvas on unlashed spars. Covenant predicted a storm. But the First Mark shook his head in flat denial, and Elena said, “This is not the weather of storms.” She glanced warily up at the peaks as she spoke. “There is pain in the air. The Earth is afflicted.”

  “What's happening?” A burst of wind scattered Covenant's voice, and he had to repeat his question at a shout to make himself heard. “Is Foul going to hit us here?”

  The wind shifted and lapsed; she was able to answer normally. “Some ill has been performed. The Earth has been assaulted. We feel its revulsion. But the distance is very great, and time has passed. I feel no peril directed toward us. Perhaps the Despiser does not know what we do.” In the next breath, her voice hardened. “But he has used the Illearth Stone. Smell the air! There has been malice at work in the Land”

  Covenant began to sense what she meant. Whatever amassed these
clouds and roiled this wind was not the impassive natural violence of a storm. The air seemed to carry inaudible shrieks and hints of rot, as if it were blowing through the aftermath of an atrocity. And on a subliminal level, almost indiscernible, the high bluff crags seemed to be shuddering.

  The atmosphere made him feel a need for haste. But though her face was set in grim lines, the High Lord did not hurry. She finished her meal, then carefully packed the food and graveling away before calling to Myrha. When she mounted, she summoned Amok.

  He appeared before her almost at once, and gave her a cheerful bow. After acknowledging him with a nod, she asked him if he could explain the ill in the air.

  He shook his head, and said, “High Lord, I am no oracle.” But his eyes revealed his sensitivity to the atmosphere; they were bright, and a sharp gleam lurking behind them showed for the first time that he was capable of anger. A moment later, however, he turned his face away, as if he did not wish to expose any private part of himself. With a flourishing gesture, he beckoned for the High Lord to follow him.

  Covenant swung into his mount's clingor saddle, and tried to ignore the brooding ambience around him. But he could not resist the impression that the ground under him was quivering. Despite all his recent experience, he was still not a confident rider-he could not shed his nagging distrust of horses-and he worried that he might fulfil the prophecy of his height fear by falling off his mount.

  Fortunately, he was spared cliff ledges and exposed trails. For some time, Amok's path ran along the spine of a crooked rift between looming mountain walls. The enclosed valley did not challenge Covenant's uncertain horsemanship. But the muffled booming in the air continued to grow. As morning passed, the sound became clearer, echoed like brittle groans off the sheer walls.

  Early in the afternoon, Amok led the riders around a final bend. Beyond it, they found an immense landslide. Great, scalloped wounds stood opposite each other high in the walls, and the jumbled mass of rock and scree which had fallen from both sides was piled up several hundred feet above the valley floor.

  It completely blocked the valley.

  This was the source of the detonations. There was no movement in the huge fall; it had an old look, as if its formation had been forgotten long ago by the mountains. But tortured creaks and cracks came from within it as if its bones were breaking.

  Amok walked forward, but the riders halted. Morin studied the blockage for a moment, then said, “It is impassable. It breaks. Perhaps on foot we might attempt it at its edges. But the weight of the Ranyhyn will begin a new fall.” Amok reached the foot of the slide, and beckoned, but Morin said absolutely, “We must find another passage.”

  Covenant looked around the valley. “How long will that take?”

  “Two days. Perhaps three.”

  “That bad? You would think this trip wasn't long enough already. Are you sure that isn't safe? Amok hasn't made any mistakes yet.”

  “We are the Bloodguard,” Morin said.

  And Bannor explained, 'This fall is younger than Amok."

  “Meaning it wasn't here when he learned his trail? Damnation!” Covenant muttered. The landslide made his desire for haste keener.

  Amok came back to them with a shade of seriousness in his face. “We must pass here,” he said tolerantly, as if he were explaining something to a recalcitrant child.

  Morin said, “The way is unsafe.”

  “That is true,” Amok replied. “There is no other.” Turning to the High Lord, he repeated, “We must pass here.”

  While her companions had been speaking, Elena had gazed speculatively up and down the landfall. When Amok addressed her directly, she nodded her head, and responded, “We will.”

  Morin protested impassively, “High Lord”

  “I have chosen,” she answered, then added, “It may be that the Staff of Law can hold the fall until we have passed it.”

  Morin accepted this with an emotionless nod. He took his mount trotting back away from the slide, so that the High Lord would have room in which to work. Bannor and Covenant followed. After a moment, Amok joined them. The four men watched her from a short distance.

  She made no complex or strenuous preparations. Raising the Staff, she sat erect and tall on Myrha's back for a moment, faced the slide. From Covenant's point of view, her blue robe and the Ranyhyn's glossy coat met against the mottled grey background of scree and rubble. She and Myrha looked small in the deep sheer valley, but the conjunction of their colours and forms gave them a potent iconic appearance. Then she moved.

  Singing a low song, she advanced to the foot of the slide. There she gripped the Staff by one end, and lowered the other to the ground. It appeared to pulse as she rode along the slide's front, drawing a line in the dirt parallel to the fall. She walked Myrha to one wall, then back to the other. Still touching the ground with the Staff, she returned to the centre.

  When she faced the slide again, she lifted the Staff, and rapped once on the line she had drawn.

  A rippling skein of verdigris sparks flowed up the fall from her line. They gleamed like interstices of power on every line or bulge of rock that protruded from the slope. After an instant, they disappeared, leaving an indefinite smell like the aroma of orchids in the air.

  The muffled groaning of the fall faded somewhat.

  “Come,” the High Lord said. “We must climb at once. This Word will not endure.”

  Briskly, Morin and Bannor started forward. Amok loped beside them. He easily kept pace with the Ranyhyn.

  As he looked upward, Covenant felt nausea like a presage in his guts. His jaw muscles knotted apprehensively. But he slapped his mount with his heels, and rode at the moaning fall.

  He caught up with the Bloodguard. They took positions on either side of him, followed Elena and Amok onto the slope.

  The High Lord's party angled back and forth up the slide. Their climbing balanced the danger of delay against the hazard of a direct attack on the slope. Covenant's mustang laboured strenuously, and its struggles contrasted with the smooth power of the Ranyhyn. Their hooves kicked scuds of shale and scree down the fail, but their footing was secure, confident. There were no mishaps. Before long, Covenant stood on the rounded V atop the slide.

  He was not prepared for what lay beyond the blockage. Automatically, he had expected the south end of the valley to resemble the north. But from the ridge of the landslide, he could see that the huge scalloped wounds above him were too big to be explained by the slide as it appeared from the north.

  Somewhere buried directly below him, the valley floor plunged dramatically. The two avalanches had interred a precipice. The south face of the slide was three or four times longer than the north. Far below him, the valley widened into a grassy bottom featured by stands of pine and a stream springing from one of the walls. But to reach that alluring sight, he had to descend more than a thousand feet down the detonating undulation of the slide.

  He swallowed thickly. “Bloody hell. Can you hold that?”

  “No,” Elena said bluntly. “But what I have done will steady it. And I can take other action-if the need arises.”

  With a sharp nod, she started Amok down the slope.

  Bannor told Covenant to stay close behind him, then eased his Ranyhyn over the edge after Amok. For a moment, Covenant felt too paralyzed by prophetic trepidation to move. His dry, constricted throat and awkward tongue could not form words. Hellfire, he muttered silently. Hellfire.

  He abandoned himself, pushed his mustang after Bannor.

  Part of him knew that Morin and then Elena followed him, but he paid no attention to them. He locked his eyes on Bannor's back and tried to cling there for the duration of the descent.

  Before he had gone a hundred feet, the skittishness of his mount drove everything else from his mind. Its ears flinched as if it were about to shy at every new groan within the fall. He heaved and sawed at the reins in an effort to control the horse, but he only aggravated its distress. Faintly, he could hear himself mumbli
ng, “Help. Help.”

  Then a loud boom like the crushing of a boulder shivered the air. A swath of slide jumped and shifted. The rubble under Covenant began to slip.

  His mount tried to spring away from the shift. It shied sideways, and started straight down the slope.

  Its lunge only precipitated the slide. Almost at once, the mustang was plunging in scree that poured over its knees.

  It struggled to escape downward. Each heave increased the weight of rubble piling against it.

  Covenant clung frantically to the clingor saddle. He fought to pull the horse's head aside, make his mount angle out of the slide's main force. But the mustang had its teeth on the bit now. He could not turn it.

  Its next plunge buried it to its haunches in the quickening rush of rubble. Covenant could hear Elena shouting stridently. As she yelled, Bannor's Ranyhyn sprang in front of him. Ploughing through the scree, it threw its weight against his mount. The impact almost unseated him, but it deflected his horse. Guided by Bannor, the Ranyhyn shoved against the horse, forced it to fight toward the cliff.

  But the avalanche was already moving too heavily. A small boulder struck the mustang's rump; the horse fell. Covenant sprawled down the slope out of Bannor's reach. The rubble tumbled him over and over, but for a moment he managed to stay above it. He got his feet under him, tried to move across the slide.

  Through the gathering roar of the fall, he heard Morin shout, “High Lord!” The next instant, she flashed by him, riding Myrha straight down the outer edge of the slide. Fifty feet below him, she swung into the avalanche. With a wild cry, she whirled the Staff of Law and struck the fall.

  Fire blazed up through the slide. Like a suddenly clenched fist, the rubble around Covenant stopped moving. His own momentum knocked him backward, but he jumped up again in time to meet Bannor as the Bloodguard landed his Ranyhyn on the small patch of steady ground. Bannor caught Covenant with one hand, swung him across the Ranyhyn's back, charged away out of the slide.

  When they reached the relatively still ground against the cliff wall, Covenant saw that Elena had saved him at the risk of herself. The stasis which she had applied to the slipping tons of the avalanche was not large enough to include her own position. And an instant later, that stasis broke. An extra breaker of rubble dropped toward her.