The Power That Preserves t1cotc-3

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  The next morning, Mhoram saw the commencement of Satansfist’s new strategy, but for two days after that he did not comprehend it. The Raver’s hordes moved closer to Revelstone, placed themselves hardly a hundred yards from the walls, and faced the plateau as if they expected its defenders to leap willingly into their jaws. The ur-viles moved among the slavering creatures and Cavewights, and formed scores of wedges which seemed to point toward the very heart of Revelstone. And behind them Satansfist stood in a broad piece of open ground, openly wielding his Stone for the first time. But he launched no physical onslaught, offered the Keep no opportunity to strike or be stricken. Instead, his creatures dropped to their hands and knees, and glared hungrily at Revelstone like crouching preyers. The ur-vile loremasters set the tips of their staves in the ground, began a barking ululation or invocation which carried in shreds to the Keep through the tearing wind. And samadhi Raver, Sheol and Satansfist, squeezed his fragment of the Illearth Stone so that it ran with steam like boiling ice.

  As Mhoram watched, he could feel the upsurge of power on all sides; the exertion of might radiated at him until the skin of his cheeks stung under it despite the raw chill of the wind. But the besiegers took no other action. They held their positions in fierce concentration, scowling murderously as if they were envisioning the blood of their victims.

  Slowly, tortuously, they began to have an effect upon the ground of the foothills. From the unflickering green blaze of the Stone, a rank emerald hue spread to the dirt around Satansfist’s feet and throbbed in the soil. It encircled him, pulsing like a fetid heart, then sent crooked offshoots like green veins through the ground toward Revelstone. These grew with each savage throb, branched out until they reached the backs of the crouching hordes. At that point, red pain sickly tinged with green blossomed from the embedded tips of the loremasters’ staves. Like Satansfist’s emerald, the ill red grew in the ground like arteries or roots of hurt. It shone through the grey ice on the earth without melting it, and expanded with each throb of samadhi’s central power until all of Revelstone was ringed in pulsing veins.

  The process of this growth was slow and deadly; by nightfall, the red-green harm was not far past the feet of the ur-viles; and after a long, lurid darkness, dawn found the veins just halfway to the walls. But it was implacable and sure. Mhoram could conceive no defence against it because he did not know what it was.

  During the next two days, the dread of it spread over Lord’s Keep. People began to talk in whispers. Men and women hurried from place to place as if they feared that the city stone were turning against them. Children whimpered inexplicably, and winced at the sight of well-known faces. A thick atmosphere of fear and incomprehension hovered in Revelstone like the spread wings of an alighting vulture. Yet Mhoram did not grasp what was being done to the city until the evening of the third day. Then by chance he approached Warmark Quaan unseen and unheard, and at the touch of his hand on Quaan’s shoulder, the Warmark reeled away in panic, clawing at his sword. When his eyes finally recognized the High Lord, his face filled with a grey ash of misery, and he trembled like an overwhelmed novice.

  With a groan of insight, Mhoram understood Revelstone’s plight. Dread of the unknown was only the surface of the peril. As he threw his arms around Quaan’s trembling, he saw that the red-green veins of power in the ground were not a physical danger; rather, they were a vehicle for the raw emotional force of the Despiser’s malice-a direct attack on the Keep’s will, a corrosive hurled against the moral fabric of Revelstone’s resistance.

  Fear was growing like a fatal disease in the heart of Lord’s Keep. Under the influence of those lurid veins, the courage of the city was beginning to rot.

  It had no defence. The lillianrill and rhadhamaerl could build vast warming fires within the walls. The Lorewardens could sing in voices that shook helplessly brave songs of encouragement and victory. The Warward could drill and train until the warriors had neither leisure nor stamina for fear. The Lords could flit throughout the city like blue ravens, carrying the light of courage and support and intransigence wherever they went, from grey day to blind night to grey day again. The Keep was not idle. As time dragged its dread-aggravated length along, moved through its skeletal round with an almost audible clatter of fleshless bones, everything that could be done was done. The Lords took to moving everywhere with their staffs alight, so that their bright azure could resist the erosion of Revelstone’s spirit. But still the veined, bloody harm in the ground multiplied its aegis over the city. The malignance of tenscore thousand evil hearts stifled all opposition.

  Soon even the mountain rock of the plateau seemed to be whimpering in silent fear. Within five days, some families locked themselves in their rooms and refused to come out; they feared to be abroad in the city. Others fled to the apparent safety of the upland hills. Mad fights broke out in the kitchens, where any cook or food handler could snatch up a knife to slash at sudden gusts of terror. To prevent such outbursts, Warmark Quaan had to station Eoman in every kitchen and refectory.

  But though he drove them as if he had a gaunt spectre of horror clinging to his shoulders, he could not keep even his warriors from panic. This fact he was finally forced to report to the High Lord, and after hearing it, Mhoram went to stand his watch on the tower. Alone there, he faced the night which fell as heavily as the scree of despair against the back of his neck, faced the unglimmering emerald loathsomeness of the Stone, faced the sick, red-green veined fire-and hugged his own dread within the silence of his heart. If he had not been so desperate, he might have wept in sympathy for Kevin Landwaster, whose dilemma he now understood with a keenness that cut him to the bone of his soul.

  Sometime later-after the darkness had added all its chill to Lord Foul’s winter, and the watch fires of the encampment had paled to mere sparks beside samadhi Raver’s loud, strong lust for death, Loerya Trevor-mate came to the tower, bearing with her a small pot of graveling which she placed before her when she sat on the stone, so that the glow lit her drawn face. The uplift of her visage cast her eyes into shadow, but still Mhoram could see that they were raw with tears.

  “My daughters”-her voice seemed to choke her-“my children-they- You know them, High Lord,” she said as if she were pleading. “Are they not children to make a parent proud?”

  “Be proud,” Mhoram replied gently. “Parents and children are a pride to each other.”

  “You know them, High Lord,” she insisted. “My joy in them has been large enough to be pain. They-High Lord, they will no longer eat. They fear the food-they see poison in the food. This evil maddens them.”

  “We are all maddened, Loerya. We must endure.”

  “How endure? Without hope-? High Lord, it were better if I had not borne children.”

  Gently, quietly, Mhoram answered a different question. “We cannot march out to fight this evil. If we leave these walls, we are ended. There is no other hold for us. We must endure.”

  In a voice suffused with weeping, Loerya said, “High Lord, summon the Unbeliever.”

  “Ah, sister Loerya-that I cannot do. You know I cannot. You know that I chose rightly when I released Thomas Covenant to the demands of his own world. Whatever other follies have twisted the true course of my life, that choice was not folly.”

  “Mhoram!” she beseeched thickly.

  “No. Loerya, think what you ask. The Unbeliever desired to save a life in his world. But time moves in other ways there. Seven and forty years have passed since he came first to Revelstone, yet in that time he has not aged even three cycles of the moon. Perhaps only moments have gone by for him since his last summoning. If he were called again now, perhaps he would still be prevented from saving the young child who needs him.”

  At the mention of a child, sudden anger twisted Loerya’s face. “Summon him!” she hissed. “What are his nameless children to me? By the Seven, Mhoram! Summon-!”

  “No.” Mhoram interrupted her, but his voice did not lose its gentleness. “I will not. He must ha
ve the freedom of his own fate-it is his right. We have no right to take it from him-no, even the Land’s utterest need does not justify such an act. He holds the white gold. Let him come to the Land if he wills. I will not gainsay the one true bravery of my unwise life.”

  Loerya’s anger collapsed as swiftly as it had come. Wringing her hands over the graveling as if even the hope of warmth had gone out of them, she moaned, “This evening my youngest — Yolenid — she is hardly more than a baby-she shrieked at the sight of me.” With an effort, she raised her streaming eyes to the high Lord, and whispered, “How endure?”

  Though his own heart wept for her, Mhoram met her gaze. “The alternative is Desecration.” As he looked into the ragged extremity of her face, he felt his own need crying out, urging him to share his perilous secret. For a moment that made his pulse hammer apprehensively in his temples, he knew that he would answer Loerya if she asked him. To warn her, he breathed softly, “Power is a dreadful thing.”

  A spark of inchoate hope lit her eyes. She climbed unsteadily to her feet, brought her face closer to his and searched him. The first opening of a meld drained the surfaces of his mind. But what she saw or felt in him stopped her. His cold doubt quenched the light in her eyes, and she receded from him. In an awkward voice that carried only a faint vibration of bitterness, she said, “No, Mhoram. I will not ask. I trust you or no one. You will speak when your heart is ready.”

  Gratitude burned under Mhoram’s eyelids. With a crooked smile, he said, “You are courageous, sister Loerya.”

  “No.” She picked up her graveling pot and moved away from him. “Though it is no fault of theirs, my daughters make me craven.” Without a backward glance, she left the High Lord alone in the lurid night.

  Hugging his staff against his chest, he turned and faced once more the flawless green wrong of the Raver’s Stone. As his eyes met that baleful light, he straightened his shoulders, drew himself erect, so that he stood upright like a marker or witness to Revelstone’s inviolate rock.

  Five: Lomillialor

  THE weight of mortality which entombed Covenant seemed to press him deeper and deeper into the obdurate stuff of the ground. He felt that he had given up breathing-that the rock and soil through which he sank sealed him off from all respiration-but the lack of air gave him no distress; he had no more need for the sweaty labour of breathing. He was plunging irresistibly, motionlessly downward, like a man falling into his fate.

  Around him, the black earth changed slowly to mist and cold. It lost none of its solidity, none of its airless weight, but its substance altered, became by gradual increments a pitch-dark fog as massive and unanswerable as the pith of granite. With it, the cold increased. Cold and winter and mist wound about him like cerements.

  He had no sense of duration, but at some point he became aware of a chill breeze in the mist. It eased some of the pressure on him, loosened his cerements. Then an abrupt rift appeared some distance away. Through the gap, he saw a fathomless night sky, unredeemed by any stars. And from the rift shone a slice of green light as cold and compelling as the crudest emerald.

  The cloud rift rode the breeze until it crossed over him. As it passed, he saw standing behind the heavy clouds a full moon livid with green force, an emerald orb radiating ill through the heavens. The sick green light caught at him. When the rift which exposed it blew by him and away into the distance, he felt himself respond. The authority, the sovereignty, of the moon could not be denied: he began to flow volitionlessly through the mist in the wake of the rift.

  But another force intervened. For an instant, he thought he could smell the aroma of a tree’s heart sap, and pieces of song touched him through the cold: be true… answer… soul’s deep curse…

  He clung to them, and their potent appeal anchored him. The darkness of the mist locked around him again, and he went sinking in the direction of the song.

  Now the cold stiffened under him, so that he felt he was descending on a slab, with the breeze blowing over him. He was too chilled to move, and only the sensation of air in his chest told him that he was breathing again. His ribs and diaphragm worked, pumped air in and out of his lungs automatically. Then he noticed another change in the mist. The blank, wet, blowing night took on another dimension, an outer limit; it gave the impression that it clung privately to him, leaving the rest of the world in sunlight. Despite the cloud, he could sense the possibility of brightness in the cold breeze beyond him. And the frigid slab grew harder and harder under him, until he felt he was lying on a catafalque with a cairn of personal darkness piled over him.

  The familiar song left him there. For a time, he heard nothing but the hum of the breeze and the hoarse, lisping sound made by his breath as it laboured past his swollen lip and gum. He was freezing slowly, sinking into icy union with the stone under his back. Then a voice near him panted, “By the Seven! We have done it.”

  The speaker sounded spent with weariness and oddly echoless, forlorn. Only the hum of the wind supported his claim to existence; without it, he might have been speaking alone in the uncomprehended ether between the stars.

  A light voice full of glad relief answered, “Yes, my friend. Your lore serves us well. We have not striven in vain these three days.”

  “My lore and your strength. And the lomillialor of High Lord Mhoram. But see him. He is injured and ill.”

  “Have I not told you that he also suffers?”

  The light voice sounded familiar to Covenant. It brought the sunshine closer, contracted the mist until it was wholly within him, and he could feel cold brightness on his face.

  “You have told me,” said the forlorn man. “And I have told you that I should have killed him when he was within my grasp. But all my acts go astray. Behold-even now the Unbeliever comes dying to my call.”

  The second speaker replied in a tone of gentle reproof, “My friend, you-”

  But the first cut him off. “This is an ill-blown place. We cannot help him here.”

  Covenant felt hands grip his shoulders. He made an effort to open his eyes. At first he could see nothing; the sunlight washed everything out of his sight. But then something came between him and the sun. In its shadow, he blinked at the blur which marred all his perceptions.

  “He awakens,” the first voice said. “Will he know me?”

  “Perhaps not. You are no longer young, my friend.”

  “Better if he does not,” the man muttered. “He will believe that I seek to succeed where I once failed. Such a man will understand retribution.”

  “You wrong him. I have known him more closely. Do you not see the greatness of his need for mercy?”

  “I see it. And I also know him. I have lived with Thomas Covenant in my ears for seven and forty years. He receives mercy even now, whether or not he comprehends it.”

  “We have summoned him from his rightful world. Do you call this mercy?”

  In a hard voice, the first speaker said, “I call it mercy.”

  After a moment, the second sighed. “Yes. And we could not have chosen otherwise. Without him, the Land dies.”

  “Mercy?” Covenant croaked. His mouth throbbed miserably.

  “Yes!” the man bending over him averred. “We give you a new chance to resist the ill which you have allowed upon the Land.”

  Gradually, Covenant saw that the man had the square face and broad shoulders of a Stonedownor. His features were lost in shadow, but woven into the shoulders of his thick, fur-lined cloak was a curious pattern of crossed lightning-a pattern Covenant had seen somewhere before. But he was still too bemused with fog and shock to trace the memory.

  He tried to sit up. The man helped him, braced him in that position. For a moment, his gaze wandered. He found that he was on a circular stone platform edged by a low wall. He could see nothing but sky beyond the parapet. The cold blue void held his eyes as if it were beckoning to him; it appealed to his emptiness. He had to wrestle his gaze into focus on the Stonedownor.

  From this angle, the sun
illuminated the man’s face. With his grey-black hair and weathered cheeks, he appeared to be in his mid-sixties, but age was not his dominant feature. His visage created a self-contradictory impression. He had a hard, bitter mouth which had eaten sour bread for so long that it had forgotten the taste of sweetness, but his eyes were couched in fine lines of supplication, as if he had spent years looking skyward and begging the sun not to blind him. He was a man who had been hurt and had not easily borne the cost.

  As if the words had just penetrated through his haze, Covenant heard the man say, Should have killed him. A man wearing a pattern of crossed lightning on his shoulders had once tried to kill Covenant-and had been prevented by Atiaran Trell-mate. She had invoked the Oath of Peace.

  “Triock?” Covenant breathed hoarsely. “Triock?”

  The man did not flinch from Covenant’s aching gaze. “I promised that we would meet again.”

  Hellfire, Covenant groaned to himself. Hell and blood. Triock had been in love with Lena daughter of Atiaran before Covenant had ever met her.

  He struggled to get to his feet. In the raw cold, his battered muscles could not raise him; he almost fainted at the exertion. But Triock helped him, and someone else lifted him from behind. He stood wavering, clinging helplessly to Triock’s support, and looked out beyond the parapet.

  The stone platform stood in empty air as if it were afloat in the sky, riding the hum of the breeze. In the direction Covenant faced, he could see straight to the farthest horizon, and that horizon was nothing but a sea of grey clouds, a waving, thick mass of blankness like a shroud over the earth. He wobbled a step closer to the parapet, and saw that the deep flood covered everything below him. The platform stood a few hundred feet above the clouds as if it were the only thing in the world on which the sun still shone.

  But a promontory of mountains jutted out of the grey sea on his left. And when he peered over his shoulder past the man who supported him from behind, he found another promontory towering over him on that side; a flat cliff-face met his view, and on either side of it a mountain range strode away into the clouds.