Still Bannor's gaze did not change. It made Covenant feel uncomfortably exposed, as if there were something indecent about himself that he did not realize.
Confused, he turned back to the High Lord.
Suddenly, a silent blast like a howl of stone jolted the cave, made it tremble and jump like an earthquake. Covenant and Elena lost their footing, slapped against the floor. Morin's warning shout echoed flatly:
“Kevin returns!”
Then the buried tomb of the air opened again; Kevin's presence resonated against Covenant's skin. But this time the spectre brought with him a ghastly reek of rotten flesh and attar, and in the background of his presence was the deep rumble of rock being crushed. When Covenant raised his head from the bucking floor, he saw Kevin within the stone furiously poised, fists cocked. Hot green filled the orbs of his eyes, sent rank steam curling up his forehead; and he dripped with emerald light as if he had just struggled out of a quagmire.
“Fool!” he cried in a paroxysm of anguish. “Damned betrayer! You have broken the Law of Death to summon me-you have unleashed measureless opportunities for evil upon the Earth-and the Despiser mastered me as easily as if I were a child! The Illearth Stone consumes me. Fight, fool! I am Commanded to destroy you!”
Roaring like a multitude of fiends, he reached down and clutched at Elena.
She did not move. She was aghast, frozen by the result of her great dare.
But Morin reacted instantly. Crying, “Kevin! Hold!” he sprang to her aid.
The spectre seemed to hear Morin-hear and recognize who he was. An old memory touched Kevin, and he hesitated. That hesitation gave Morin time to reach Elena, thrust her behind him. When Kevin threw off his uncertainty, his fingers closed around Morin instead of the High Lord.
He gripped the Bloodguard and heaved him into the air.
Kevin's arm passed easily through the rock, but Morin could not. He crashed against the ceiling with tremendous force. The impact tore him from Kevin's grasp. But that impact was sufficient. The First Mark fell dead like a broken twig.
The sight roused Elena. At once, she realized her danger. She whirled the Staff swiftly about her head. Its flame sprang into brilliance, and a hot blue bolt lashed straight at Kevin.
The blast struck him like a physical blow, drove him back a step through the stone. But he shrugged off its effects. With a deep snarl of pain, he moved forward, snatched at her again.
Shouting frantically, “Melenkurion abatha!” she met his attack with the Staff. Its fiery heel seared his palm.
Again he recoiled, gripping his scorched fingers and groaning.
In that momentary reprieve, she cried strange invocations to the Staff, and swung its blaze around her three times, surrounding herself with a shield of power. When the spectre grabbed for her once more, he could not gain a hold on her. He squeezed her shield, and his fingers dripped with emerald ill, but he could not touch her. Whenever he dented her defence, she healed it with the Staff's might.
Yelling in frustration and pain, he changed his tactics. He reared back, clasped his fists together, and hammered them at the floor of the cave. The stone jumped fiercely. The lurch knocked Covenant down, threw Bannor against the opposite wall.
A gasping shudder like a convulsion of torment shot through the mountain. The cave walls heaved; rumblings of broken stone filled the air; power blared.
A crack appeared in the floor directly under Elena. Even before she was aware of it, it started to open. Then, like ravenous jaws, it jerked wide.
High Lord Elena dropped into the chasm.
Kevin pounced after her, and vanished from sight.
His howls echoed out of the cleft like the shrieking of a madman.
But even as they disappeared, their battle went on. Lords-fire spouted hotly up into the cave. The thunder of tortured stone pounded along the tunnel, and the cave pitched from side to side like a nausea in the guts of Melenkurion Skyweir. In his horror, Covenant thought that the whole edifice of the mountain was about to tumble.
Then he was snatched to his feet, hauled erect by Bannor. The Bloodguard gripped him with compelling fingers, and shouted at him through the tumult, “Save her!”
“I can't!” The pain of his reply made him yell. Bannor's demand rubbed so much salt into the wound of his essential futility that he could hardly bear it. “I cannot!”
“You must!” Bannor's grasp allowed no alternatives.
“How?” Waving his empty hands in Bannor's face, he cried, “With these?”
“Yes!” The Bloodguard caught Covenant's left hand, forced him to look at it.
On his wedding finger, his ring throbbed ferrule, pulsed with power and light like a potent instrument panting to be used.
For an instant, he gaped at the argent band as if it had betrayed him. Then forgetting escape, forgetting himself, forgetting even that he did not know how to exert wild magic, he pulled despairingly away from Bannor and stumbled toward the crevice. Like a man battering himself in armless impotence against a blank doom, he leaped after the High Lord.
Twenty Six: Gallows Howe
BUT be failed before he began. He did not know how to brace himself for the kind of battle which raged below him. As he passed the rim of the crevice, he was hit by a blast of force like an eruption from within the rift. He was defenceless against it; it snuffed out his consciousness like a frail flame.
Then for a time he rolled in darkness-ran in a blind, caterwauling void which pitched and broke over him until he staggered like a ship with sprung timbers. He was aware of nothing but the force which thrashed him. But something caught his hand, anchored him. At first he thought that the grip on his hand was Elena's-that she held him now as she had held him and kept him during the night after his summoning. But when he shook clear of the darkness, he saw Bannor. The Bloodguard was pulling him out of the crevice.
That sight-that perception of his failure-undid him. When Bannor set him on his feet, he stood listing amid the riot of battle-detonations, deep, groaning creaks of tormented stone, loud rockfalls-like an empty hulk, a cargoes hull sucking in death through a wound below its waterline. He did not resist or question as Bannor half carried him from the cave of the EarthBlood.
The tunnel was unlit except by the reflected glares of combat, but Bannor moved surely over the black rock. In moments, he brought his shambling charge to the waterfall. There he lifted the Unbeliever in his arms, and bore him like a child through the weight of the falls.
In the rocklight of Earthroot, Bannor moved even more urgently.' He hastened to the waiting boat, installed Covenant on one of the seats, then leaped aboard as he shoved out into the burnished lake. Without hesitation, he began to recite something in the native tongue of the Haruchai. Smoothly, the boat made its way among the cloistral columns.
But his efforts did not carry the craft far. Within a few hundred yards, its prow began to tug against its intended direction. He stopped speaking, and at once the boat swung off to one side. Gradually, it gained speed.
It was in the grip of a current. Standing in the centre of Covenant's sightless gaze, Bannor cocked one eyebrow slightly, as if he perceived an ordeal ahead. For long moments, he waited for the slow increase of the current to reveal its destination.
Then in the distance he saw what caused the current. Far ahead of the craft, rocklight flared along a line in the lake like a cleft which stretched out of sight on both sides. Into this cleft Earthroot rushed and poured in silent cataracts.
He reacted with smooth efficiency, as if he had been preparing for this test throughout the long centuries of his service. First he snatched a coil of clingor from his pack; with it, he lashed Covenant to the boat. In answer to the vague question in Covenant's face, he replied, “The battle of Kevin and the High Lord has opened a crevice in the floor of Earthroot. We must ride the water down, and seek an outlet-below.” He did not wait for a response. Turning, he braced his feet, gripped one of the gilt gunwales, and tore it loose. With this long, curve
d piece of wood balanced in his hands for a steering pole, he swung around to gauge the boat's distance from the cataract.
The hot line of the crevice was less than a hundred yards away now, and the boat slipped rapidly toward it, caught in the mounting suction. But Bannor made one more preparation. Bending toward Covenant, he said quietly, “Ur-Lord, you must use the orcrest.” His voice echoed with authority through the silence.
Covenant stared at him without comprehension.
“You must. It is in your pocket. Bring it out.”
For a moment, Covenant continued to stare. But at last the Bloodguard's command reached through his numbness. Slowly, he dug into his pocket, pulled out the smooth lucid stone. He held it awkwardly in his right hand, as if he could not properly grip it with only two fingers and a thumb.
The cataract loomed directly before the boat now, but Bannor spoke calmly, firmly. “Hold the stone in your left hand. Hold it above your head, so that it will light our way.”
As Covenant placed the orcrest in contact with his troubled ring, a piercing silver light burst from the core of the stone. It flared along the gunwale in Bannor's hands, paled the surrounding rocklight. When Covenant numbly raised his fist, held the stone up like a torch, the Bloodguard nodded his approval. His face wore a look of satisfaction, as if all the conditions of his Vow had been fulfilled.
Then the prow of the boat dropped. Bannor and Covenant rode the torrent of Earthroot into the dark depths.
The water boiled and heaved wildly. But one end of the crevice opened into other caverns. The cataracts turned as they fell, and thrashed through the crevice as if it were an immense chute or channel. By the orcrest light, Bannor saw in time which way the water poured. He poled the boat so that it shot downward along the torrent.
After that, the craft hurtled down the frenetic watercourse in a long nightmare of tumult, jagged rocks, narrows, sudden, heart-stopping falls, close death. The current tumbled, thundered, raced from cavern to cavern through labyrinthian gaps and tunnels and clefts in the fathomless bowels of Melenkurion Skyweir. Many times the craft disappeared under the fierce roil of the rush, but each time its potent wood capable of withstanding Earthroot- bore it to the surface again. And many times Bannor and Covenant foundered in cascades that crashed onto them from above, but the water did not harm them-either it had lost its strength in the fall, or it was already diluted by other buried springs and lakes.
Through it all, Covenant held his orcrest high. Some last unconscious capacity for endurance kept his forgers locked and his arm raised. And the stone's unfaltering fire lighted the boat's way, so that, even in the sharpest hysteria of the current, Bannor was able to steer, avoid rocks and backwaters, fend around curves-preserve himself and the Unbeliever. The torrent's violence soon splintered his pole, but he replaced it with the other gunwale. When that was gone, he used a seat board as a rudder.
Straining and undaunted, he brought the voyage through to its final crisis.
Without warning, the boat shot down a huge flow into a cavern that showed no exit. The water frothed viciously, seeking release, and the air pressure mounted, became more savage every instant. A swift eddy caught the craft, swung it around and under the massive pour of water.
Helplessly, the boat was driven down.
Bannor clawed his way to Covenant. He wrapped his legs around Covenant's waist, snatched the orcrest from him. Clutching the stone as if to sustain himself with it, Bannor clamped his other hand over Covenant's nose and mouth.
He held that position as the boat sank.
The plunging weight of water thrust them straight under. Pressure squeezed them until Bannor's eyes pounded in their sockets, and his ears yowled as if they were about to rupture. He could feel Covenant screaming in his grasp. But he held his grip in the extremity of the last faithfulness-clung to the bright strength of the orcrest with one hand, and kept Covenant from breathing with the other.
Then they were sucked into a side tunnel, an outlet. Immediately, all the pressure of the trapped air and water hurled them upward. Covenant went limp; Bannor's lungs burned. But he retained enough alertness to swing himself upright as the water burst free. In a high, arching spout, it carried the two men into the cleft of Rivenrock, and sent them shooting out into the open morning of the Black River and Garroting Deep.
For a moment, sunshine and free sky and forest reeled around Bannor, and fares of released pressure staggered across his sight. Then the fortitude of his Vow returned. Wrapping both arms around Covenant, he gave one sharp jerk which started the Unbeliever's lungs working again.
With a violent gasp, Covenant began breathing rapidly, feverishly. Some time passed before he showed any signs of consciousness, yet all the while his ring throbbed as if it were sustaining him. Finally, he opened his eyes, and looked at Bannor.
At once, he started to struggle weakly in his clingor bonds. Bannor appeared to him like one of the djinn who watches over the accursed. But then he lapsed. He recognized where he was-how he had arrived there-what he had left behind. He went on staring nakedly while Bannor untied the lines which lashed him to the boat.
Over the Bloodguard's shoulder, he could see the great cliff of Rivenrock-and behind it Melenkurion Skyweir-shrinking as the boat scudded downriver. From the cleft, turgid black smoke broke upward in gouts sporadically emphasized by battle flashes deep within the mountain. Muffled blasts of anguish rent the gut-rock, wreaking havoc in the very grave of the ages. Covenant felt he was floating away on a wave of ravage and destruction.
Fearfully, he looked down at his ring. To his dismay, he found that it still throbbed like an exclamation of purpose. Instinctively, he clasped his right hand over it, concealed it. Then he faced forward in the boat, turned away from Bannor and Rivenrock as if to protect his shame from scrutiny.
He sat huddled there, weak and staring dismally, throughout the swift progress of the day. He did not speak to Bannor, did not help him bail out the boat, did not look back. The current spewing from Rivenrock raised the Black River to near-flood levels, and the light Earthroot craft rode the rush intrepidly between glowering walls of forest. The morning sun glittered and danced off the dark water into Covenant's eyes-but he stared at it without blinking, as if even the protective reflex of his eyelids were exhausted.
And after that, nothing interfered with his sightless vision. The sodden food which Bannor offered to him he ate automatically, with his left hand concealed between his thighs. Midday and afternoon passed unrecognized, and when evening came he remained crouched on his seat, clenching his ring against his chest as if to protect himself from some final stab of realization.
Then, as dusk thickened about him, he became aware of the music. The air of the Deep was full of humming, of voiceless song-an eldritch melody which seemed to arise like passion from the faint throats of all the leaves. It contrasted sharply with the distant, storming climacteric of Melenkurion Skyweir, the song of violence which beat and shivered out of Rivenrock. Gradually, he raised his head to listen. The Deep song had an inflection of sufferance, as if it were deliberately restraining a potent melodic rage, sparing him.
In the light of the orcrest, he saw that Bannor was guiding the boat toward a high, treeless hill which rose against the night sky close to the south bank. The hill was desolate, bereft of life, as if its capacity to nourish even the hardiest plants had been irremediably scalded out of it. Yet it seemed to be the source of the Deep's song. The melody which wafted riverward from the hill sounded like a host of gratified furies.
He regarded the hill incuriously. He had no strength left to care about such places. All his waning sanity was focused on the sounds of battle from Melenkurion Skyweir-and on the grip which concealed his ring. When Bannor secured the boat, and took hold of his right elbow to help him ashore, Covenant leaned on the Bloodguard and followed his guidance woodenly.
Bannor went to the barren hill. Without question, Covenant began to struggle up it.
Despite his weariness, th
e hill impinged upon his awareness. He could feel its deadness with his feet as if he were shambling up n corpse. Yet it was eager death; its atmosphere was thick with the slaughter of enemies. Its incarnate hatred made his joints ache as he climbed it. He began to sweat and tremble as if he were carrying the weight of an atrocity on his shoulders.
Then, near the hilltop, Bannor stopped him. The Bloodguard lifted the orcrest. In its light, Covenant saw the gibbet beyond the crest of the hill. A Giant dangled from it. And between him and the gibbet staring at him as if he were a concentrated nightmare-were people, people whom he knew.
Lord Mhoram stood there erect in his battle-grimed robe. He clasped his staff in his left hand, and his lean face was taut with vision. Behind him were Lord Callindrill and two Bloodguard. The Lord had a dark look of failure in his soft eyes. Quaan and Amorine were with him. And on Mhoram's right, supported by the Lord's right hand, was Hile Troy.
Troy had lost his sunglasses and headband. The eyeless skin of his skull was knotted as if he were straining to see. He cocked his head, moved it from side to side to focus his hearing. Covenant understood intuitively that Troy had lost his Land-born sight.
With these people was one man whom Covenant did not know. He was the singer-a tall, white-haired man with glowing silver eyes, who hummed to himself as if he were dewing the ground with melody. Covenant guessed without thinking that he was Caerroil Wildwood, the Forestal of Garroting Deep.
Something in the singer's gaze-something severe, yet oddly respectful-recalled the Unbeliever to himself. At last he perceived the fear in the faces watching him. He pushed himself away from Bannor's support, took the weight of all his burdens on his own shoulders. For a moment, he met the trepidation before him with a glare so intense that it made his forehead throb. But then, as he was about to speak, a fierce detonation from Rivenrock shook his bones, knocked him off balance. When he reached toward Bannor, he exposed the shame of his ring.
Facing Mhoram and Troy as squarely as he could, he groaned, “She's lost. I lost her.” But his face twisted, and the words came brokenly between his lips, like fragments of his heart.
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