The Power That Preserves t1cotc-3

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “Do you call that faith? There were injured Ranyhyn in that covert, and they were butchered!”

  “They were murdered by Ramen!” Pietten retorted redly. “Vermin! They pretend service to the Ranyhyn, but they do not take the Ranyhyn to the safety of the south. I hold no fealty for them.” Lena tried to leap at Pietten again, but Covenant restrained her. “They are like you-and that Giant-and the Bloodguard! Pah! You feast on Ranyhyn-flesh like jackals.”

  With an effort, Covenant made Lena look at him. “Go!” he whispered rapidly. “Run. Get out of here. Get back across the river-try to find Bannor or Foamfollower. He doesn’t care about you. He won’t chase you. He wants me.”

  Pietten cocked his spear. “If you take one step to flee,” he grated, “I will kill the Ringthane where he stands and hunt you down like a wolf.”

  The threat carried conviction. “All right,” Covenant groaned to Lena. “All right.” Glowering thunderously, he swung back toward Pietten. “Do you remember ur-viles, Pietten? Soaring Woodhelven? Fire and ur-viles? They captured you. Do you remember?”

  Pietten stared back like lightning.

  “They captured you. They did things to you. Just as they did to Llaura. Do you remember her? They hurt her inside so that she had to help trap the Lords. The harder she tried to break free, the worse the trap got. Do you remember? It’s just like that with you. They hurt you so that you would-destroy the Ranyhyn. Listen to me! Foul knew when he started this war that he wouldn’t be able to crush the Ranyhyn unless he found some way to betray the Ramen. So he hurt you. He made you do what he wants. He’s using you to butcher the Ranyhyn! And he’s probably given you special orders about me. What did he tell you to do with my ring?” He hurled the words at Pietten with all his strength. “How many bloody times have you been to Foul’s Creche since this winter started?”

  For a moment, Pietten’s eyes lost their focus. Dimly, he murmured, “I must take it to him. He will use it to save the Ranyhyn.” But the next instant, white fury flared in him again. ” You lie! I love the Ranyhyn! You are the butchers, you and those vermin!”

  “That isn’t true. You know it isn’t true.”

  “Is it not?” Pietten laughed desperately. “Do you think I am blind, Ringthane? I have learned much in-in my journeys. Do you think the Ramen hold the Ranyhyn here out of love?”

  “They can’t help it,” Covenant replied. “The Ranyhyn refuse to go.”

  Pietten did not hear him. “Do you think the Bloodguard are here out of love? You are a fool! Banner is here because he has caused the deaths of so many Ranyhyn that he has become a betrayer. He needs to betray, as he did the Lords. Oh, he fights-he has always fought. He hungers to see every Ranyhyn slain in spite of his fighting so that his need will be fed.

  Pah!”

  Covenant tried to interrupt, protest, but Pietten rushed on: “Do you think the Giant is here out of love? You are anile-sick with trust. Foamfollower is here because he has betrayed his people. Every last Giant, every man, woman, and child of his kindred, lies dead and mouldered in Seareach because he abandoned them! He fled rather than defend them. His very bones are made of treachery, and he is here because he can find no one else to betray. All his other companions are dead.”

  Foamfollower! Covenant cried in stricken silence. All dead? Foamfollower!

  “And you, Ringthane-you are the worst of all. You surpass my contempt. You ask what I remember.” His spear point waved patterns of outrage at Covenant’s chest. “I remember that the Ranyhyn reared to you. I remember that I strove to stop you. But you had already chosen to betray them. You bound them with promises-promises which you knew they could not break. Therefore the Ranyhyn cannot seek the safety of the mountains. They are shackled by commitments which you forced from them, you! You are the true butcher, Ringthane. I have lived my life for the chance to slay you.”

  “No,” Covenant gasped. “I didn’t know.” But he heard the truth in Pietten’s accusation. Waves of crime seemed to spread from him in all directions. “I didn’t know.”

  Bannor? he moaned. Foamfollower? A livid orange mist filled his sight like the radiance of brimstone. How could he have done so much harm? He had only wanted to survive-had only wanted to extract survival from the raw stuff of suicide and madness. The Giants! — lost like Elena. And now the Ranyhyn were being driven down the same bloody road. Foamfollower? Did I do this to you? He knew that he was defenceless, that he could have done nothing to ward off a spear thrust. But he was staring into the abyss of his own actions and could not look away.

  “We’re the same,” he breathed without knowing what he was saying. “Foul and I are the same.”

  Then he became aware that hands were pulling at him. Lena had gripped his jacket and was shaking him as hard as she could. “Is it true?” she shouted at him. “Are they dying because you made them promise to visit me each year?”

  He met her eyes. They were full of firelight; they compelled him to recognize still another of his crimes. In spite of his peril, he could not refuse her the truth.

  “No.” His throat was clogged with grief and horror. “That’s only part-Even if they went to the mountains, they could still reach you. I–I”- his voice ached thickly-“I made them promise to save me-if I ever called them. I did it for myself.”

  Pietten laughed.

  A cry of fury and despair tore between her lips. With the strength of revulsion, she thrust Covenant from her, then started to run out of the hollow.

  “Stop!” Pietten barked after her.” You cannot escape!” He turned as she ran, following her with the tip of his spear.

  In the instant that Pietten cocked his arm to throw, Covenant charged. He got his hands on the spear, heaved his weight against Pietten, tried to tear the spear away. Pietten recoiled a few steps under the onslaught. They wrestled furiously. But the grip of Covenant’s half hand was too weak. With a violent wrench, Pietten twisted the spear free.

  Covenant grappled for Pietten’s arms. Pietten knocked him back with the butt of the spear and stabbed its point at him. Covenant threw himself to the side, managed to avoid the thrust. But he landed heavily on one foot, with the ankle bent under his weight.

  Bones snapped. He heard them retorting through his flesh as he crashed to the ground, heard himself scream. Agony erupted in his leg. But he made himself roll, trying to evade the jabs of the spear.

  As he flopped onto his back, he saw Pietten standing over him with the spear clenched like a spike in both hands.

  Then Lena slammed into the Woodhelvennin. She launched her slight form at him with such ferocity that he fell under her, lost his grip on the spear. It landed across Covenant.

  He grabbed it, tried to lever himself to his feet with it. But the pain in his ankle held him down as if his foot had been nailed to the ground. “Lena!” he shouted wildly. “No!”

  Pietten threw her off him with one powerful sweep of his arm. She sprang up again and pulled a knife out of her robe. Rage contorted her fragile face as she hacked at Pietten.

  He evaded her strokes, backed away quickly for an instant to gather his balance. Then, fiercely, he grinned.

  “No!” Covenant shrieked.

  When Lena charged again, Pietten caught her knife wrist neatly and turned the blade away from him. Slowly, he twisted her arm, forcing her down. She hammered at him with her free hand, but he held her. She could not resist his strength. She fell to her knees.

  “The Ranyhyn!” she gasped to Covenant. “Call the Ranyhyn!”

  “Lena!” Using the spear, he lunged to his feet, fell, tried to crawl forward.

  Slowly, inexorably, Pietten bent her backward until she lay writhing on the ground. Then he pulled his sharp wooden stave from his belt. With one savage blow he stabbed her in the stomach, spiked her to the frozen earth.

  Horror roared in Covenant’s head. He seemed to feel himself shattering; stricken with pain, he lost consciousness momentarily.

  When he opened his eyes, he found Pietten standing i
n front of him.

  Pietten was licking the blood off his hand.

  Covenant tried to raise the spear, but Pietten snatched it from him. “Now, Ringthane!” he cried ecstatically. “Now I will slay you. Kneel there-grovel before me. Bring my dreams to life. I will be fair-I will allow you a chance. From ten paces I will hurl my spear. You may dodge-if your ankle permits. Do so. I relish it.”

  With a grin like a snarl on his face, he strode away, turned and balanced the spear on his palm. “Do you not choose to live?” he jeered. “Kneel, then. Grovelling becomes you.”

  Numbly, as if he did not know what he was doing, Covenant raised the two fingers of his right hand to his mouth and let out a weak whistle.

  A Ranyhyn appeared instantly over the hillcrest, and came galloping down into the hollow. It was miserably gaunt, reduced by the long winter to such inanition that only its chestnut coat seemed to hold its skeleton together. But it ran like indomitable pride straight toward Covenant.

  Pietten did not appear to see it coming. He was in a personal trance, exalted by blood. Obliviously, he drew back his arm, bent his body until his muscles strained with passion-obliviously he launched the spear like a bolt of retribution at Covenant’s heart.

  The Ranyhyn veered, flashed between the two men, then fell tumbling like a sack of dismembered bones. When it came to rest on its side, both men saw Pietten’s spear jutting from its bloodstained coat.

  The sight struck Pietten like a blast of chaos. He gaped at what he had done in disbelief, as if it were inconceivable, unendurable. His shoulders sagged, eyes stared widely. He seemed to lack language for what he saw. His lips fumbled over meaningless whimpers, and the muscles of his throat jerked as if he could not swallow. If he saw Covenant crawling terribly toward him, he gave no sign. His arms dangled at his sides until Covenant reared up in front of him on one leg and drove a sharp Stonedownor knife into his chest with both hands.

  Covenant delivered the blow like a double fistful of hate. Its momentum carried him forward, and he toppled across Pietten’s corpse. Blood pumping from around the blade scored his jacket, slicked his hands, stained his shirt. But he paid no attention to it. That one blow seemed to have spent all his rage. He pushed himself off the body, and crawled away toward Lena, dragging his broken ankle like a millstone of pain behind him.

  When he reached her, he found that she was still alive. The whole front of her robe was soaked, and blood coughed thinly between her lips; but she was still alive. He gripped the spike to draw it out. But the movement drew a gasp of pain from her. With an effort, she opened her eyes. They were clear, as if she were finally free of the confusion which had shaped her life. After a moment, she recognized Covenant, and tried to smile.

  “Lena,” he panted. “Lena.”

  “I love you,” she replied in a voice wet with blood. “I have not changed.”

  “Lena.” He struggled to return her smile, but the attempt convulsed his face as if he were about to shriek.

  Her hand reached toward him, touched his forehead as if to smooth away his scowl. “Free the Ranyhyn,” she whispered.

  The plea took her last strength. She died with blood streaming between her lips.

  Covenant stared at it as if it were vituperation. His eyes had a feverish cast, a look of having been blistered from within. No words came to his mind, but he knew what had happened. Rape, treachery, now murder-he had done them all, he had committed every crime. He had broken the promise he had made after the battle of Soaring Woodhelven, when he swore that he would not kill again. For a long moment, he regarded his numb fingers as if they were things of no importance. Only the blood on them mattered. Then he pushed himself away from Lena. Crawling like an abject passion, he moved toward the Ranyhyn.

  Its muzzle was frothed with pain, and its sides heaved horridly. But it watched Covenant’s approach steadily, as if for the first time in its life it was not afraid of the bearer of white gold. When he reached it, he went directly to its wound. The spear was deeply embedded; at first he did not believe he could draw it out. But he worked at it with his hands, digging his elbows into the Ranyhyn’s panting ribs. At last the shaft tore free. Blood pulsed from the wound, yet the horse lurched to its feet, stood wavering weakly on splayed legs, and nuzzled him as if to tell him that it would live.

  “All right,” he muttered, speaking half to himself. “Go back. Go-tell all the others. Our bargain is over. No more bargains. No more- ” The fire was falling into embers, and his voice faded as if he were losing strength along with it. Dark fog blew into him along the wind. But a moment later, he rallied. “No more bargains. Tell them.”

  The Ranyhyn stood as if it were unwilling to leave him.

  “Go on,” he insisted thickly. “You’re free. You’ve got to tell them. In the-in the name of Kelenbhrabanal, Father of Horses. Go.”

  At the sound of that name, the Ranyhyn turned painfully and started to limp out of the hollow. When it reached the crest of the hill, it stopped and faced him once more. For an instant, he thought he could see it silhouetted against the night, rearing. Then it was gone.

  He did not wait, did not rest. He was past taking any account of the cost of his actions. He caught up Pietten’s spear and used it as a staff to hold himself erect. His ankle screamed at him as it dragged the ground, but he set his teeth and struggled away from the fire. As soon as he left the range of its warmth, his wet clothing began to freeze.

  He had no idea where he was headed, but he knew he had to go. On each breath that panted through his locked teeth, he whispered hate as if it were a question.

  Eleven: The Ritual of Desecration

  AFTER Loerya left him, High Lord Mhoram stayed on the tower for the rest of the night. He kept himself warm against the bitter wind by calling up a flow of power through his staff from time to time and watched in silent dread as the pronged veins of malice in the ground pulsed at Revelstone like sick, green-red lava oozing its way into the Keep’s courage. The ill might which spread from samadhi Raver’s Stone and the staves of the ur-viles lit the night garishly; and at irregular intervals, fervid sparks writhed upward when the attack met resistance in the rock of the foothills.

  Though it moved slowly, the hungry agony of the attack was now only scant yards from Revelstone’s walls. Through his feet, Mhoram could feel the Keep moaning in silent immobility, as if it ached to recoil from the leering threat of those veins.

  But that was not why Mhoram stood throughout the long night exposed to the immedicable gall of the wind. He could have sensed the progress of the assault from anywhere in the Keep, just as he did not need his eyes to tell him how close the inhabitants of the city were to gibbering collapse. He watched because it was only by beholding Satansfist’s might with all his senses, perceiving it with all his resources in all its horror, that he could deal with it.

  When he was away from the sight, dread seemed to fall on him from nowhere, adumbrate against his heart like the knell of an unmotivated doom. It confused his thoughts, paralyzed his instincts. Walking through the halls of Revelstone, he saw faces grey with inarticulate terror, heard above the constant, clenched mumble of sobs children howling in panic at the sight of their parents, felt the rigid moral exhaustion of the stalwart few who kept the Keep alive-Quaan, the three Lords, most of the Lorewardens, lillianrill, and rhadhamaerl. Then he could hardly master the passion of his futility, the passion which urged him to strike at his friends because it blamed him for failing the Land. A wild hopelessness moved in him, shouldered its way toward the front of his responses. And he alone of all the Lords knew how to make such hopelessness bear fruit.

  But alone on the watchtower, with Satansfist’s army revealed below him, he could clarify himself, recognize what was being done to Revelstone. The winter and the attack assumed a different meaning. He no longer accused himself; he knew then that no one could be blamed for being inadequate in the face of such unanswerable malevolence. Destruction was easier than preservation, and when destruction had ri
sen high enough, mere men and women could not be condemned if they failed to throw back the tide. Therefore he was able to resist his own capacity for desecration. His eyes burned like yellow fury at the creeping attack, but he was searching for defences.

  The aspect of the assault which most daunted him was its unwavering ferocity. He could see that the ur-viles maintained their part of the power by rotating their positions, allowing each wedge and loremaster to rest in turn. And he knew from experience that Lord Foul’s strength-his own prodigious might making use of the Illearth Stone-was able to drive armies mad, push them to greater savagery than their flesh could bear. But Satansfist was only one Giant, one body of mortal thew and bone and blood. Even a Giant-Raver should not have been able to sustain such an extravagant exertion for so long.

  In addition, while samadhi concentrated on his attack, he might reasonably have been expected to lose some of his control over his army. Yet the whole horde, legion after legion, remained poised around Revelstone. Each creature in its own way bent the lust of its will at the Keep. And the emerald expenditure of samadhi’s strength never blinked. Clearly, Lord Foul supported his army and its commander with might so immense that it surpassed all Mhoram’s previous conceptions of power.

  He could see no hope for Revelstone anywhere except in the cost of that unwavering exertion. The defenders would have to hope and pray that Satansfist’s aegis broke before they did. If they could not contrive to endure the Raver’s attack, they were doomed.

  When Mhoram returned to the hollow stone halls in the first, grey, dim ridicule of dawn, he was ready to strive for that endurance.

  The hushed, tight wave of panic that struck him as he strode down the main passage into the Keep almost broke his resolve. He could feel people grinding their teeth in fear behind the walls on either side of him. Shouts reached him from a far gallery; two parties had banded together to defend themselves from each other. Around a bend he surprised a hungry group that was attempting to raid one of the food storerooms; the people believed that the cooks in the refectories were preparing poison.