The Illearth War t1cotc-2

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  He squeezed the water out of his eyes, gained a moment in which to make out his surroundings. He stood behind Elena in a wider cave at the tunnel's end. Before him, set into the black stone end-wall like an exposed lode-facet, was a rough, sloping plane of wet rock. This whole plane shimmered; its emanations distorted his ineffectual vision, gave him the impression that he was staring at a mirage, a wavering in the solid stuff of existence. It confronted him like a porous membrane in the foundation of time and space. From top to bottom, it bled moisture which dripped down the slope, collected in a rude trough, and flowed away along the centre of the tunnel.

  “Behold,” Amok said quietly. “Behold the Blood of the Earth. Here I fulfil the purpose of my creation. I am the Seventh Ward of High Lord Kevin's Lore. The power to which I am the way and the door is here.”

  As he spoke, his voice deepened and emptied, grew older. The weary burden of his years bent his shoulders. When he continued, he seemed conscious of a need for haste, a need to speak before his old immunity to time ran out.

  “High Lord, attend. The air of this place unbinds me. I must complete my purpose now.”

  “Then speak, Amok,” she replied. “I hear you.”

  “Ah, hear,” said Amok in a sad, musing tone, as if her answer had dropped him into a reverie. “Where is the good of hearing, if it is not done wisely?” Then he recollected himself. In a stronger voice, he said, "But hear, then, for good or ill. I fulfil the law of my creation. My maker can require no more of me.

  “High Lord, behold the Blood of the Earth. This is the passionate and essential ichor of the mountain rock-the Earthpower which raises and holds peaks high. It bleeds here-perhaps because the great weight of Melenkurion Skyweir squeezes it from the dense rock-or perhaps because the mountain is willing to lay bare its heart's-blood for those who need and can find it. Whatever the cause, its result remains. Any soul who drinks of the EarthBlood gains the Power of Command.”

  He met her intense gaze, and went on, "This Power is rare and potent-and full of hazard. Once it has been taken in from the Blood, it must be used swiftly — lest its strength destroy the drinker. And none can endure more than a single draft-no mortal thew and bone can endure more than a single swallow of the Blood. It is too rare a fluid for any cup of flesh to hold.

  "Yet such hazards do not explain why High Lord Kevin himself did not essay the Power of Command. For this Power is the power to achieve any desired act-to issue any command to the stone and soil and grass and wood and water and flesh of life, and see that command fulfilled. If any drinker were to say to Melenkurion Skyweir, `Crumble and fall,' the great peaks would instantly obey. If any drinker were to say to the Fire-Lions of Mount Thunder, `Leave your bare slopes, attack and lay waste Ridjeck Thome,' they would at once strive with all their strength to obey. This Power can achieve anything which lies within the scope of the commanded. Yet High Lord Kevin did not avail himself of it.

  “I do not know all the purposes which guided his heart when he chose to leave the EarthBlood untasted. But I must explain if I can the deeper hazards of the Power of Command.”

  Amok spoke in a tone of deepening, spectral hollowness, and Covenant listened desperately, as if he were clinging with raw, bruised fingers to the precipice of Amok's words. Hot things hammered in his veins, and tears like rivulets of fire ran unstanchably down his sweating cheeks. He felt that he was suffocating on the smell of EarthBlood. His ring itched horribly. He could not keep his balance; his footing constantly oozed from under him. Yet his perceptions went beyond all this. His flooded senses stretched as if they were at last thrusting their heads above water. As Amok spoke of deeper hazards, Covenant became aware of a new implication in the cave.

  Through the brunt of the Blood, he began to smell something wrong, something ill. It crept insidiously across the whelming odour like an oblique defiance which seemed to succeed in spite of the immense force which it opposed, undercut, betrayed. But he could not locate its source. Either the Power of Command itself was in some way false, or the wrong was elsewhere, making itself apparent slowly through the dense air. He could not tell which.

  No one else appeared to notice the subtle reek of ill. After a short, tired pause, Amok continued his explication.

  "The first of these hazards-first, but perhaps not foremost-is the one great limit of the Power. It holds no sway over anything which is not a natural part of the Earth's creation. Thus it is not possible to Command the Despiser to cease his warring. It is not possible to Command his death. He lived before the arch of Time was forged-the Power cannot compel him.

  "This alone might have given Kevin pause. Perhaps he did not drink of the Blood because he could not conceive how to levy any Command against the Despiser. But there is another and subtler hazard. Here any soul with the courage to drink may give a Command-but there are few who can foresee the outcome of what they have enacted. When such immeasurable force is unleashed upon the Earth, any accomplishment may recoil upon its accomplisher. If a drinker were to Command the destruction of the Illearth Stone, perhaps the Stone's evil would survive uncontained to blight the whole Land. Here the drinker who is not also a prophet risks self-betrayal. Here are possibilities of Desecration which even High Lord Kevin in his despair left slumbering and untouched."

  The stench of wrong grew in Covenant's nostrils, but still he could not identify it. And he could not concentrate on it; he had a question which he fevered to ask Amok. But the tenebrous atmosphere clogged his throat, stifled him.

  While Covenant struggled for breath, something happened to Amok. During his speech, his tone had become older and more cadaverous. And now, in the pause after his last sentence, he suddenly lurched as if some taut cord within him snapped. He staggered a step toward the trough of Blood. A moment passed before he could straighten his stance, raise his head again.

  A look of fear or pain or grief widened his eyes, and around them lines of age spread visibly, as if his skin were being crumpled. The soft flesh of his cheeks eroded; grey ran through his hair. Like a dry sponge, he soaked up his natural measure of years. When he spoke again, his voice was weak and empty. “I can say no more. My time is ended. Farewell, High Lord. Do not fail the Land.”

  Convulsively, Covenant gasped out his question. “What shout the white gold?”

  Amok answered across a great gulf of age, “White gold exists beyond the arch of Time. It cannot be Commanded.”

  Another inward snapping shook him; he jerked closer to the trough.

  “Help him!” croaked Covenant. But Elena only raised the Staff of Law in a mute, fiery salute.

  With an age-palsied exertion, Amok thrust himself erect. Tears ran through the wrinkled lattice of his cheeks as he lifted his face toward the roof of the cave, and cried in a stricken voice, “Ah, Kevin! Life is sweet, and I have lived so short a time! Must I pass away?”

  A third snapping shuddered him like an answer to his appeal. He stumbled as if his bones were falling apart, and tumbled into the trough. In one swift instant, the Blood dissolved his flesh, and he was gone.

  Covenant groaned helplessly, “Amok!” Through the blur of his own ineffectual tears, he gaped at the red, flowing rill of EarthBlood. Imbalance poured into him from the stone, mounted in his muscles like vertigo. He lost all sense of where he was. To steady himself, he reached out to grasp Elena's shoulder.

  Her shoulder was so hard and intense, so full of rigid purpose, that it felt like naked bone under the fabric of her robe. She was poised on the verge of her own climax; her passion was tangible to his touch.

  It appalled him. Despite the dizziness which unanchored his mind, he located the source of the nameless reek of wrong.

  The ill was in Elena, in the High Lord herself.

  She seemed unconscious of it. In a tone of barely controlled excitement, she said, “Amok is gone-his purpose is accomplished. Now there must be no more delay. For the sake of all the Earth, I must drink and Command.” To Covenant's ears, she sounded rife with hungry concl
usions-so packed with needs and duties and intents that she was about to shatter.

  The realization caught him like a damp hand on the back of his neck, forced him inwardly to his knees. When she stepped out of his grasp, moved toward the trough of Blood, he felt that she had torn away his last defence. Elena! he wailed silently, Elena! His cries were cries of abjection.

  For a moment, he knelt within himself as if he were in the grip of a vision. Dizzily, he saw all the manifest ways in which he was responsible for Elena-all the ways in which he had caused her to be who and what and where she was. His duplicity was the cause-his violence, his futility, his need. And he remembered the apocalypse hidden in her gaze. That was the ill. It made him shudder in anguish. He watched her through his blur of tears. When he saw her bend toward the trough, all of him leaped up in defiance of the slick rock, and he cried out hoarsely, “Elena! Don't! Don't do it!”

  The High Lord stopped. But she did not turn. The whole rigor of her back condensed into one question: Why?

  “Don't you see it?” he gasped. “This is all some plot of Foul's. We're being manipulated- you're being manipulated. Something terrible is going to happen.”

  For a time, she remained silent while he ached. Then, in a tone of austere conviction, she said, “I cannot let pass this chance to serve the Land. I am forewarned. If this is Fangthane's best ploy to defeat us, it is also our best means to strike at him. I do not fear to measure my will against his. And I hold the Staff of Law. Have you not learned that the Staff is unsuited to his hands? He would not have delivered it to us if it were in any way adept for his uses. No. The Staff warrants me. Lord Foul cannot contrive my vision.”

  “Your vision!” Covenant extended his hands in pleading toward her. “Don't you see what that is? Don't you see where that comes from? It comes from me-from that unholy bargain I made with the Ranyhyn. A bargain that failed, Elena!”

  “Yet it would appear that you bargained better than you knew. The Ranyhyn kept their promise they gave in return more than you could either foresee or control.” Her answer seemed to block his throat, and into his silence she said, “What has altered you, Unbeliever? Without your help, we would not have gained this place. On Rivenrock you gave aid without stint or price, though my own anger imperilled you. Yet now you delay me. Thomas Covenant, you are not so craven.”

  “Craven? Hellfire! I'm a bloody coward!” Some of his rage returned to him, and he sputtered through the sweat and tears that ran into his mouth, “All lepers are cowards. We have to be!”

  At last, she turned toward him, faced him with the focus, the blazing holocaust, of her gaze. Its force ripped his balance away from him, and he sprawled in fragments on the stone. But he pushed himself up again. Driven by his fear of her and for her, he dared to confront her power. He stood tenuously, and abandoned himself, took his plunge.

  “Manipulation, Elena,” he rasped. “Pin talking about manipulation. Do you understand what that means? It means using people. Twisting them to suit purposes they haven't chosen for themselves. Manipulation. Not Foul's-mine! I've been manipulating you, using you. I told you I’d made another bargain-but I didn't tell you what it is. I've been using-using you to get myself off the hook. I promised myself that I would do everything I could to help you find this Ward. And in return I promised myself that I would do everything I could to make you take my responsibility. I watched you and helped you so that when you got here you would look exactly like that-so you would challenge Foul yourself without stopping to think about what you're doing-so that whatever happens to the Land would be your fault instead of mine. So that I could escape! Hell and blood, Elena! Do you hear me? Foul is going to get us for sure!”

  She seemed to hear only part of what he said. She bent her searing focus straight into him, and said, “Was there ever a time when you loved me?”

  In an agony of protest, he half screamed, “Of course I loved you!” Then he mastered himself, put all his strength back into his appeal. “It never even occurred to me that I might be able to use you until-until after the landslide. When I began to understand what you're capable of. I loved you before that. I love you now. I'm just an unconscionable bastard, and I used you, that's all. Now I regret it.” With all the resources of his voice, he beseeched her, "Elena, please don't drink that stuff. Forget the Power of

  Command and go back to Revelstone. Let the Council decide what to do about all this."

  But the way in which her gaze left his face and burned around the walls of the cave told him that he had not reached her. When she spoke, she only confirmed his failure.

  “I would be unworthy of Lordship if I failed to act now. Amok offered us the Seventh Ward because he perceived that the Land's urgent need surpassed the conditions of his creation. Fangthane is upon the Land now-he wages war now Land and life and all are endangered now. While any power or weapon lies within my grasp, I will not permit him!” Her voice softened as she added, “And if you have loved me, how can I fail to strive for your escape? You need not have bargained in secret. I love you. I wish to serve you. Your regret only strengthens what I must do.”

  Swinging back toward the trough, she raised the Staff's guttering flame high over her head, and shouted like a war cry, “Melenkurion abatha! Ward yourself well, Fangthane! I seek to destroy you!”

  Then she stooped to the EarthBlood.

  Covenant struggled frantically in her direction, but his feet scattered out from under him again, and he went down with a crash like a shock of incapacity. As she lowered her face to the trough, he shouted, “That's not a good answer! What happens to the Oath of Peace?”

  But his cry did not penetrate her exaltation. Without hesitation, she took one steady sip of the Blood, and swallowed it.

  At once, she leaped to her feet, stood erect and rigid as if she were possessed. She appeared to swell, expand like a distended icon. The fire of the Staff ran down the wood to her hands. Instantly, her whole form burst into flame.

  “Elena!” Covenant crawled toward her. But the might of her blue, crackling blaze threw him back like a hard wind. He struck the tears from his eyes to see her more clearly. Within her enveloping fire, she was unharmed and savage.

  While the flame burned about her, enfolded her from head to foot in fiery cerements, she raised her arms, lifted her face. For one fierce moment she stood motionless, trapped in conflagration. Then she spoke as if she were uttering words of flame.

  “Come! I have tasted the EarthBlood! You must obey my will. The walls of death do not prevail. Kevin son of Loric! Come!”

  No! howled Covenant, No! Don't! But even his inner cry was swamped by a great voice which shivered and groaned in the air so hugely that he seemed to hear it, not with his ears, but with the whole surface of his body.

  “Fool! Desist!” Staggering waves of anguish poured from the voice. “Do not do this!”

  “Kevin, hear me!” Elena shouted back in a transported tone. “You cannot refuse! The Blood of the Earth compels you. I have chosen you to meet my Command. Kevin, come!”

  The great voice repeated, “Fool! You know not what you do!”

  But an instant later, the ambience of the cave changed violently, as if a tomb had opened into it. Breakers of agony rolled through the air. Covenant winced at every surge. He braced himself where he knelt, and looked up.

  The spectre of Kevin Landwaster stood outlined in pale light before Elena.

  He dwarfed her-dwarfed the cave itself. Monumentally upright and desolate, he was visible through the stone rather than within the cave. He towered over Elena as if he were part of the very mountain rock. He had a mouth like a cut, eyes full of the effects of Desecration, and on his forehead was a bandage which seemed to cover some mortal wound. “Release me!” he groaned. "I have done harm enough for one

  50111."

  “Then serve me!” she cried ecstatically up to him.

  "I offer you a Command to redeem that harm. You are Kevin son of Loric, the waster of the Land. You have known despa
ir to its dregs you have tasted the full cup of gall. That is knowledge and strength which no one living can equal.

  “High Lord Kevin, I Command you to battle and defeat Lord Foul the Despiser! Destroy Fangthane! By the Power of the EarthBlood, I Command you.”

  The spectre stared aghast at her, and raised his fists as if he meant to strike her. “Fool!” he repeated terribly.

  The next instant, a concussion like the slamming of a crypt shook the cave. One last pulse of anguish pummelled the High Lord's party; Elena's flame was blown out like a weak candle; darkness flooded the cave.

  Then Kevin was gone.

  A long time passed. When Covenant regained consciousness, he rested wearily for a while on his hands and knees, glad of the darkness, and the reduced scale of the cave, and the spectre’s absence. But eventually he remembered Elena. Pushing himself to his feet, he reached toward her with his voice. “Elena? Come on. Elena? Let's get out of here.”

  At first, he received no response. Then blue fire flared as Elena lit the Staff. She was sitting like a wreck on the floor. When she turned her wan, spent face toward him, he saw that her crisis was over. All her exaltation had been consumed by the act of Command. He went to her, helped her gently to her feet. “Come on,” he said again. “Let's go.”

  She shook her head vaguely, and said in an exhausted voice, “He called me a fool. What have I done?”

  “I hope we never find out.” A rough edge of sympathy made him sound harsh. He wanted to care for her, and did not know how. To give her time and privacy to gather her strength, he stepped away. As he glanced dully around the cave, he noticed Bannor, noticed the faint look of surprise in Bannor's face. Something in that unfamiliar expression gave Covenant a twist of apprehension. It seemed to be directed at him. He probed for an explanation by asking, “That was Kevin, wasn't it?”

  Bannor nodded; the speculative surprise remained on his face.

  “Well, at least it wasn't that beggar-At least now we know it wasn't Kevin who picked me for this.”