The Illearth War t1cotc-2

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  In the evenings, Covenant comforted her according to the terms of his bargain. He said nothing of his own fears and doubts, his helplessness, his growing conviction that Amok was impenetrable; he said nothing about himself at all. Instead, he gave her his best attention, concentrated on her with every resource he possessed.

  But all his efforts could not touch the core of her distress. She was learning that she did not suffice to meet the Land's need, and that was a grief for which there was no consolation. Late at night, she made muffled grating noises, as if she ground her teeth to keep herself from weeping. And in the morning of the third day-the thirty-second since she had left Revelstone-she neared the end of her endurance. Her gaze was starved and hollow, and it had an angle of farewell.

  Thickly, Covenant asked her what she was going to do.

  “I will appeal.” Her voice had a raw, flagellated sound. She looked as frail as a skeleton-mere brave, fragile bones standing in the path of someone who, for all his boyish gaiety, was as unmanageable as an avalanche. A presage like an alarm in his head told Covenant that her crisis was at hand. If Amok did not respond to her appeals, she might turn to the last resort of her strange inner force.

  The violence of that possibility frightened him. He caught himself on the verge of asking her to stop, give up the attempt. But he remembered his bargain; his brain raced after alternatives.

  He accepted her argument that the answer to Amok's condition must be accessible. But he believed that she would not find it; she was approaching the problem from the wrong side. Yet it seemed to be the only side. Kicking at the rubbish which clogged his mind, he tried to imagine other approaches.

  While his thoughts scrambled for some kind of saving intuition, High Lord Elena took her stance, and summoned Amok. The youth appeared at once. He greeted her with a florid bow, and said, “High Lord, what is your will today? Shall we set aside our sparring, and sing glad songs together?”

  “Amok, hear me.” Her voice grated. Covenant could hear depths of self-punishment in her. “I will play no more games of inquiry with you.” Her tone expressed both dignity and desperation. “The need of the Land will permit no more delay. Already, there is war in the distance-bloodshed and death. The Despiser marches against all that High Lord Kevin sought to preserve when he created his Wards. This insisting upon conditions is false loyalty to his intent. Amok, I appeal. In the name of the Land, guide us to the Seventh Ward.”

  Her supplication seemed to touch him, and his reply was inordinately grave. “High Lord, I cannot. I am as I was made to be. Should I make the attempt, I would cease to exist.”

  “Then teach us the way, so that we may follow it alone.”

  Amok shook his head. “Then also I would cease to exist.”

  For a moment, she paused as if she were defeated. But in the silence, her shoulders straightened. Abruptly, she lifted the Staff of Law, held it horizontally before her like a weapon. “Amok,” she commanded, “place your hands upon the Staff.”

  The youth looked without flinching into the authority of her face. Slowly, he obeyed. His hands rested lightly between hers on the rune-carved wood.

  She gave a high, strange cry. At once, fire blossomed along the Staff; viridian flames opened from all the wood. The blaze swept over her hands and Amok's; it intensified as if it were feeding on their fingers. It hummed with deep power, and radiated a sharp aroma like the smell of duress.

  “Kevin-born Amok!” she exclaimed through the hum. “Way and door to the Seventh Ward! By the power of the Staff of Law-in the name of High Lord Kevin son of Loric who made you-I adjure you. Tell me the name of the Seventh Ward's power!”

  Covenant felt the force of her command. Though it was not levelled at him-though he was not touching the Staff-he gagged over the effort to utter a name he did not know.

  But Amok met her without blinking, and his voice cut clearly through the flame of the Staff. “No, High Lord. I am impervious to compulsion. You cannot touch me.”

  “By the Seven!” she shouted. “I will not be denied!” She raged as if she were using fury to hold back a scream. “Melenkurion abatha! Tell me the name!”

  “No,” Amok repeated.

  Savagely, she tore the Staff out of his hands. Its flame gathered, mounted, then sprang loudly into the sky like a bolt of thunder.

  He gave a shrug, and disappeared.

  For a long, shocked moment, the High Lord stood frozen, staring at Amok's absence. Then a shudder ran through her, and she turned toward Covenant as if she had the weight of a mountain on her shoulders. Her face looked like a wilderland. She took two tottering steps, and stopped to brace herself on the Staff. Her gaze was blank; all her force was focused inward, against herself.

  “Failed,” she gasped. “Doomed.” Anguish twisted her mouth. “I have doomed the Land”

  Covenant could not stand the sight. Forgetting all his issueless thoughts, he hurried to say, “There's got to be something else we can do.”

  She replied with an appalling softness. Tenderly, almost caressingly, she said, “Do you.believe in the white gold? Can you use it to meet Amok's condition?” Her voice had a sound of madness. But the next instant, her passion flared outward. With all her strength, she pounded the Staff against Rivenrock, and cried, “Then do so!”

  The power she unleashed caused a wide section of the plateau to lurch like a stricken raft. The rock bucked and plunged; seamless waves of force rolled through it from the Staff.

  The heaving knocked Covenant off his feet. He stumbled, fell toward the cleft.

  Almost at once, Elena regained control over herself. She snatched back the Staffs power, shouted to the Bloodguard. But Bannor's reflexes were swifter. While the rock still pitched, he bounded surefootedly across it and caught Covenant's arm.

  For a moment, Covenant was too stunned to do anything but hang limply in Bannor's grip. The High Lord's violence flooded through him, sweeping everything else out of his awareness. But then he noticed the pain of Bannor's grasp on his arm. He could feel something prophetic in the ancient strength with which Bannor clenched him, kept him alive. The Bloodguard had an iron grip, surer than the stone of Rivenrock. When he heard Elena moan, `Beloved! Have I harmed you?“ he was already muttering half aloud, ”Wait. Hold on. I've got it."

  His eyes were closed. He opened them, and discovered that Bannor was holding him erect. Elena was nearby; she flung her arms around him and hid her face in his shoulder. He said, “I've got it.” She ignored him, started to mumble contrition into his shoulder. To stop her, he said sharply, “Forget it. I must be losing my mind. I should have figured this out days ago.”

  Finally she heard him. She released him and stepped back. Her ravaged face stiffened. She caught her breath between her teeth, pushed a hand through her hair. Slowly, she became a Lord again. Her voice was unsteady but lucid as she said, “What have you learned?”

  Bannor released Covenant also, and the Unbeliever stood wavering on his own. His feet distrusted the stone, but he locked his knees, and tried to disregard the sensation. The problem was in his brain; all his preconceptions had shifted. He wanted to speak quickly, ease Elena's urgent distress. But he had missed too many clues. He needed to approach his intuition slowly, so that he could pull all its strands together.

  He tried to clear his head by shaking it. Elena winced as if he were reminding her of her outburst. He made a placating gesture toward her, and turned to confront the Bloodguard. Intently, he scrutinized the blank metal of their faces, searched them for some flicker or hue of duplicity, ulterior purpose, which would verify his intuition. But their ancient, sleepless eyes seemed to conceal nothing, reveal nothing. He felt an instant of panic at the idea that he might be wrong, but he pushed it down, and asked as calmly as he could, “Bannor, how old are you?”

  “We are the Bloodguard,” Bannor replied. “Our Vow was sworn in the youth of Kevin's High Lordship.”

  “Before the Desecration?”

  “Yes, ur-Lord.”

>   “Before Kevin found out that Foul was really an enemy?”

  “Yes”

  “And you personally, Bannor? How old are you?”

  “I was among the first Haruchai who entered the Land. I shared in the first swearing of the Vow.”

  “That was centuries ago.” Covenant paused before he asked, “How well do you remember Kevin?”

  “Step softly,” Elena cautioned. “Do not mock the Bloodguard.”

  Bannor did not acknowledge her concern. He answered the Unbeliever inflexibly, “We do not forget.”

  “I suppose not,” Covenant sighed. “What a hell of a way to live.” For a moment, he gazed away toward the mountain, looking for courage. Then, with sudden harshness, he went on, “You knew Kevin when he made his Wards. You knew him and you remember. You were with him when he gave the First Ward to the Giants. You were with him when he hid the Second in those bloody catacombs under Mount Thunder. How many times did you come here with him, Bannor?”

  The Bloodguard cocked one eyebrow fractionally. “High Lord Kevin made no sojourns to Rivenrock or Melenkurion Skyweir.”

  That answer rocked Covenant. “None?” His protest burst out before he could stop it. “Are you telling me you've never been here before?”

  “We are the first Bloodguard to stand on Rivenrock,” Bannor replied flatly.

  “Then how-? Wait. Hold on.” Covenant stared dizzily, then hit his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Right. If the Ward is some kind of natural phenomenon-like the Illearth Stone-if it isn't something he put here-Kevin wouldn't have to come here to know about it. Loric or somebody could have told him. Loric could have told anybody.”

  He took a deep breath to steady himself. `But everybody who might have known about it died in the Desecration. Except you."

  Bannor blinked at Covenant as if his words had no meaning.

  “Listen to me, Bannor,” he went on. "A lot of things are finally starting to make sense. You reacted strangely-when Amok turned up at Revelstone that first time. You reacted strangely when he turned up at

  Revelwood. And you let the High Lord herself follow him into the mountains with just two Bloodguard to protect her. Just two, Bannor! And when we end up stuck here on this godforsaken rock, Morin has the actual gall to apologize for Amok. Hellfire! Bannor, you should have at least told the High Lord what you know about this Ward. What kind of loyal do you think you are?"

  Elena cautioned Covenant again. But her tone had changed; his thinking intrigued her.

  “We are the Bloodguard,” Bannor said. “You cannot raise doubt against us. We do not know Amok's intent.”

  Covenant heard the slight stress which Bannor placed on the word know. To his own surprise, he felt a sudden desire to take Bannor at his word, leave what the Bloodguard knew alone. But he forced himself to ask, “Know, Bannor? How can you not know? You've trusted him too much for that.”

  Bannor countered as he had previously, “We do not trust him. The High Lord chooses to follow him. We do not ask for more.”

  “The hell you don't.” His effort of self-compulsion made him brutal. "And stop giving me that blank look. You people came to the Land, and you swore a Vow to protect Kevin. You swore to preserve him or at least give your lives for him and the Lords and Revelstone until Time itself came to an end if not forever, or why are you bereft even of the simple decency of sleep? But that poor desperate man outsmarted you. He actively saved you when he destroyed himself and everything else he merely believed in. So there you were, hanging from your Vow in empty space as if all the reasons in the world had suddenly disappeared.

  "And then! Then you get a second chance to do your Vow right when the new Lords come along. But what happens? Amok turns up out of nowhere, and there's a war on against Foul himself-and what do you do? You let this creation of Kevin's lead the High Lord away as if it were safe and she didn't have anything better to do.

  "Let me tell you something, Bannor. Maybe you don't positively know Amok. You must have learned some kind of distrust from Kevin. But you sure as hell understand what Amok is doing. And you approve!“ The abrupt ferocity of his own yell stopped him for an instant. He felt shaken by the moral judgments he saw in Bannor. Thickly, he continued, ”Or why are you risking her for the sake of something created by the only man who has ever succeeded in casting doubt on your incorruptibility?"

  Without warning, Amok appeared. The youth's arrival startled Covenant, but he took it as a sign that he was on the right track. With a heavy sigh, he said, “Why in the name of your Vow or at least simple friendship didn't you tell the High Lord about Amok when he first showed up?”

  Bannor's gaze did not waver. In his familiar, awkward, atonal inflection, he replied, "Ur-Lord, we have seen the Desecration. We have seen the fruit of perilous lore. Lore is not knowledge. Lore is a weapon, a sword or spear. The Bloodguard have no use for weapons. Any knife may turn and wound the hand which wields it. Yet the Lords desire lore. They do work of value with it. Therefore we do not resist it, though we do not touch it or serve it or save it.

  “High Lord Kevin made his Wards to preserve his lore-and to lessen the peril that his weapons might fall into unready hands. This we approve. We are the Bloodguard. We do not speak of lore. We speak only of what we know.”

  Covenant could not go on. He felt that he had already multiplied his offenses against Bannor too much. And he was moved by what Bannor said, despite the Bloodguard's flat tone.

  But Elena had learned enough to pursue his reasoning. Her voice was both quiet and authoritative as she said, "First Mark-Bannor- the Bloodguard must make a decision now. Hear me. I am Elena, High Lord by the choice of the Council. This is a question of loyalty. Will you serve dead Kevin's wisdom, or will you serve me? In the past, you have served two causes, the dead and the living. You have served both well. But here you must choose. In the Land's need, there is no longer any middle way. There will be blood and blame upon us all if we allow Corruption to prevail."

  Slowly, Bannor turned toward the First Mark. They regarded each other in silence for a long moment. Then Morin faced the High Lord with a magisterial look in his eyes. “High Lord,” he said, "we do not know the name of the Seventh Ward's power. We have heard many names-some false, others dead. But one name we have heard only uttered in whispers by High Lord Kevin and his Council.

  “'That name is the Power of Command.”

  When Amok heard the name, he nodded until his hair seemed to dance with glee.

  Twenty Four: Descent to Earthroot

  COVENANT found that he was sweating. Despite the chill breeze, his forehead was damp. Moisture itched in his beard, and cold perspiration ran down his spine. Morin's submission left him feeling curiously depleted. For a moment, he looked up at the sun as if to ask it why it did not warm him.

  Melenkurion's spires reached into the morning like fingers straining to bracket the sun. Their glaciered tips caught the light brilliantly; the reflected dazzle made Covenant's eyes water. The massive stone of the peaks intimidated him. Blinking rapidly, he forced his gaze back to High Lord Elena.

  Through his sun blindness, he seemed to see only her brown, blonde-raddled hair. The lighter tresses gleamed as if they were burnished. But as he blinked, his vision cleared. He made out her face. She was vivid with smiles. A new thrill of life lit her countenance with recovered hope. She did not speak, but her lips formed the one word, Beloved.

  Covenant felt that he had betrayed her.

  Morin and Bannor stood almost shoulder to shoulder behind her. Nothing in the alert poise of their balance, or in the relaxed readiness of their arms, expressed any surprise or regret at the decision they had made. Yet Covenant knew they had fundamentally alerted the character of their service to the Lords. He had exacted that from them. He wished he could apologize in some way which would have meaning to the Bloodguard.

  But there was nothing he could say to them. They were too absolute to accept any gesture of contrition. Their solitary communion with their Vow l
eft him no way in which to approach them. No apology was sufficient.

  “The Power of Command,” he breathed weakly. “Have mercy on me.” Unable to bear the sight of Elena's relieved, triumphant, grateful smile, or of Amok's grin, he turned away and walked wearily out across the plateau toward Rivenrock's edge as if his feet were trying to learn again the solidity of the stone.

  He moved parallel to the cleft, but stayed a safe distance from it. As soon as he could see a substantial swath of Garroting Deep beyond the cliff edge, he stopped. There he remained, hoping both that Elena would come to him and that she would not.

  The prevailing breeze from the Forest blew into his face, and for the first time in many days he was able to distinguish the tang of the season. He found that the autumn of the Land had turned its corner, travelled its annual round from joy to sorrow. The air no longer gleamed with abundance and fruition, with ripeness either glad or grim. Now the breeze tasted like the leading edge of winter-a sere augury, promising long nights and barrenness and cold.

  As he smelled the air, he realized that Garroting Deep had no fall colour change. He could make out stark black stands where the trees had already lost their leaves, but no blazonry palliated the Deep's darkness. It went without transition or adornment from summer to winter. He sensed the reason with his eyes and nose; the old Forest's angry clench of consciousness consumed all its strength and will, left it with neither the ability nor the desire to spend itself in mere displays of splendour.

  Then he heard footsteps behind him, and recognized Elena's tread. To forestall whatever she wanted to tell him or ask him, he said, “You know, where I come from, the people who did this to a forest would be called pioneers-a very special breed of heroes, since instead of killing other human beings they concentrate on slaughtering nature itself. In fact, I know people who claim that all our social discomfort comes from the mere fact that we've got nothing left to pioneer.”