The Power That Preserves t1cotc-3

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  His anger blazed up in him, and he surged forward, intending to strike them where they stood in their folly. But before he reached them, they fell into panic and fled from him as if he were a ghoul. Their retreat left two of Quaan’s warriors standing guard in front of the storeroom as if they were watching each other rather than the supplies. Even these two regarded Mhoram with dread.

  He mastered himself, forced a smile onto his crooked lips, said a few encouraging words to the guards. Then he hastened away.

  He saw now that Revelstone was at the flash point of crisis. To help it, he had to provide the city with something more than moments of temporary aid. Grimly, he ignored the other needs, the multitudes of fear, which cut at his awareness. As he strode along passages and down stairways, he used his staff to summon Hearthrall Tohrm and all the Gravelingases. He put his full authority into the command, so that as many rhadhamaerl as possible might resist their panic and answer.

  When he reached the bright floor of the courtyard around which the Lords’ chambers were situated, he felt a brief surge of relief to see that Tohrm and a dozen Gravelingases were already there, and more were on their way. Soon a score of the rhadhamaerl- nearly all the Keep’s masters of stone-lore- stood on the shining rock, waiting to hear him.

  For a moment, the High Lord gazed at the men, wincing inwardly at their misery. They were Gravelingases of the rhadhamaerl, and were being hurt through the very stone around them. Then he nodded sharply to himself. This was the right place for him to begin; if he could convince these men that they were able to resist Satansfist’s ill, they would be able to do much for the rest of the city.

  With an effort that strained the muscles of his face, he smiled for them. Tohrm answered with an awkward grin which quickly fell into apprehension again.

  “Gravelingases,” Mhoram began roughly, “we have spent too long each of us alone enduring this ill in small ways. We must put our strength together to form a large defence.”

  “We have obeyed your orders,” one man muttered sullenly.

  “That is true,” Mhoram returned. “Thus far we have all given our strength to encourage the people of Revelstone. You have kept your graveling fires bright, as I commanded. But wisdom does not always come swiftly. Now I see with other eyes. I have listened more closely to the voice of the Keep. I have felt the rock itself cry out against this evil. And I say now that we must resist in other ways if Revelstone is to endure.

  “We have mistaken our purpose. The Land does not live for us-we live for the Land. Gravelingases, you must turn your lore to the defence of the stone. Here, in this place”- he touched the radiant floor with the heel of his staff- “slumbers power that perhaps only a rhadhamaerl may comprehend. Make use of it. Make use of any possible lore-do here together whatever must be done. But find some means to seal the heart-rock of Revelstone against this blight. The people can provide for themselves if Revelstone remains brave.”

  As he spoke, he realized that he should have understood these things all along. But the fear had numbed him, just as it had icebound the Gravelingases. And like him they now began to comprehend. They shook themselves, struck their hands together, looked around them with preparations rather than dread in their eyes. Tohrm’s lips twitched with their familiar grin.

  Without hesitation, High Lord Mhoram left the Gravelingases alone to do their work. As he walked along the tunnel away from the courtyard, he felt like a man who had discovered a new magic.

  He directed his steps toward one of the main refectories, whose chief cook he knew to be a feisty, food-loving man not prone to either awe or fear; and as he moved, he sent out more summonses, this time calling his fellow Lords and Hearthrall Borillar’s Hirebrands. Amatin and Trevor answered tensely, and Borillar sent a half-timid sign through the walls. But a long moment passed before Loerya answered, and when her signal came it was torpid, as if she were dazed with dismay. Mhoram hoped that the rhadhamaerl could make themselves felt soon, so that people like Loerya might not altogether lose heart; and he climbed up through the levels of the Keep toward the refectory as if he were surging through viscous dread.

  But as he neared the kitchen, he saw a familiar figure dodge away into a side passage, obviously trying to avoid him. He swung around the corner after the man, and came face to face with Trell Atiaran-mate.

  The big man looked feverish. His greying beard seemed to bristle hotly, his sunken cheeks were flushed, and his dull, hectic eyes slid away from Mhoram’s gaze in all directions, as if he could not control their wandering. He stood under Mhoram’s scrutiny as if he might break and run at any moment.

  “Trell Gravelingas,” Mhoram said carefully, “the other rhadhamaerl are at work against this ill. They need your strength.”

  Trell’s gaze flicked once across Mhoram’s face like a lash of anger. “You wish to preserve Revelstone so that it will be intact for the Despiser’s use.” He filled the word intact with so much bitterness that it sounded like a curse.

  At the accusation, Mhoram’s lips tightened. “I wish to preserve the Keep for its own sake.”

  The roaming of Trell’s eyes had an insatiable cast, as if they were afraid of going blind. “I do not work well with others,” he said dimly after a moment. Then, without transition, he became urgent. “High Lord, tell me your secret.”

  Mhoram was taken aback. “My secret?”

  “It is a secret of power. I must have power.”

  “For what purpose?”

  At first, Trell squirmed under the question. But then his gaze hit Mhoram again. “Do you wish Revelstone intact?” Again, intact spat like gall past his lips. He turned sharply and strode away.

  For an instant, Mhoram felt a cold hand of foreboding on the back of his neck, and he watched Trell go as if the big Gravelingas trailed plumes of calamity. But before he could grasp the perception, Revelstone’s ambience of dread clouded it, obscured it. He did not dare give Trell his secret knowledge. Even a Gravelingas might be capable of invoking the Ritual of Desecration.

  With an effort, he remembered his purpose, and started again toward the refectory.

  Because he had been delayed, all the people he had summoned were waiting for him. They stood ineffectively among the forlorn tables in the great, empty hall, and watched his approach with trepidation, as if he were a paradoxically fatal hope, a saving doom. “High Lord,” the chief cook began at once, quelling his fear with anger, “I cannot control these useless sheep disguised as cooks. Half have deserted me, and the rest will not work. They swing knives and refuse to leave the corners where they hide.”

  “Then we must restore their courage.” Despite the scare Trell had given him, Mhoram found that he could smile more easily. He looked at the Lords and Hirebrands. “Do you not feel it?”

  Amatin nodded with tears in her eyes. Trevor grinned.

  A change was taking place under their feet.

  It was a small change, almost subliminal. Yet soon even the Hirebrands could feel it. Without either heat or light, it warmed and lit their hearts.

  On a barely palpable level, the rock of Revelstone was remembering that it was obdurate granite, not susceptible sandstone.

  Mhoram knew that this change could not be felt everywhere in the Keep-that all the strength of the rhadhamaerl would never suffice to throw back the lurid dread of Satansfist’s attack. But the Gravelingases had made a start. Now anyone who felt the alteration would know that resistance was still possible.

  He let his companions taste the granite for a moment. Then he began the second part of his defence. He asked Hearthrall Borillar for all the healing wood essence — the rillinlure — he could provide, and sent the other Hirebrands to help the chief cook begin working again. “Cook and do not stop,” he commanded. “The other refectories are paralyzed. All who seek food must find it here.”

  Borillar was doubtful. “Our stores of rillinlure will be swiftly consumed in such quantities of food. None will remain for the future of this siege.”

  “That
is as it must be. Our error has been to conserve and portion our strength against future perils. If we fail to endure this assault, we will have no future.” When Borillar still hesitated, Mhoram went on: “Do not fear, Hearthrall. Satansfist himself must rest after such an exertion of power.”

  After a moment, Borillar recognized the wisdom of the High Lord’s decision. He left to obey, and Mhoram turned to the other Lords. “My friends, to us falls another task. We must bring the people here so that they may eat and be restored.”

  “Send the Warward,” said Loerya. Her pain at being away from her daughters was plainly visible in her face.

  “No. Fear will cause some to resist with violence. We must call them, make them wish to come. We must put aside our own apprehension, and send a call like a melding through the Keep, so that the people will choose to answer.”

  “Who will defend Revelstone-while we work here?” Trevor asked.

  “The peril is here. We must not waste our strength on useless watching. While this attack continues, there will be no other. Come. Join your power to mine. We, the Lords, cannot permit the Keep to be thus broken in spirit.”

  As he spoke, he drew a fire bright and luminescent from his staff. Tuning it to the ambience of the stone, he set it against one wall so that it ran through the rock like courage, urging all the people within its range to lift up their heads and come to the refectory.

  At his back, he felt Amatin, Trevor, then Loerya following his example. Their Lords-fire joined his; their minds bent to the same task. With their help, he pushed dread away, shared his own indomitable conviction, so that the appeal which radiated from them into Revelstone carried no flaw or dross of fear.

  Soon people began to answer. Hollow-eyed like the victims of nightmares, they entered the refectory-accepted steaming trays from the chief cook and the Hirebrands-sat at the tables and began to eat. And when they had eaten, they found themselves ushered to a nearby hall, where the Lorewardens enjoined them to sing boldly in the face of defeat:

  Berek! Earthfriend! — help and weal,

  Battle-aid against the foe!

  Earth gives and answers Power’s peal,

  Ringing, Earthfriend! help and heal!

  Clean the Land from bloody death and woe!

  More and more people came, drawn by the music, and the Lords, and the reaffirmation of Revelstone’s granite. Supporting each other, carrying their children, dragging their friends, they fought their fear and came because the deepest impulses of their hearts responded to food, music, rillinlure, rock-to the Lords and the life of Revelstone.

  After the first influx, the Lords took turns resting so that fatigue would not make their efforts waver. When the rillinlure gave out, the Hirebrands provided special fires for the returning cooks, and joined their own lore to the call of the Lords. Quaan’s warriors gave up all pretence of guarding the walls, and came to help the cooks-clearing tables, cleaning pots and trays, carrying supplies from the storerooms.

  Now the city had found a way to resist the dread, and it was determined to prevail. In all, less than half of Revelstone’s people responded. But they were enough. They kept Lord’s Keep alive when the very air they breathed reeked of malice.

  For four days and four nights, High Lord Mhoram did not leave his post. He rested and ate to sustain himself, but he stayed at his station by the refectory wall. After a time, he hardly saw or heard the people moving around him. He concentrated on the stone, wrought himself to the pitch of Revelstone, to the pulse of its existence and the battle for possession of its life rock. He saw as clearly as if he were standing on the watchtower that Satansfist’s livid power oozed close to the outer walls and then halted-hung poised while the Keep struggled against it. He heard the muffled groaning of the rock as it fought to remember itself. He felt the exhaustion of the Gravelingases. All these things he took into himself, and against the Despiser’s wrong he placed his unbreaking will.

  And he won.

  Shortly before dawn on the fifth day, the onslaught broke like a tidal wave collapsing out to sea under its own weight. For a long stunned moment, Mhoram felt jubilation running through the rock under his feet and could not understand it. Around him, people gaped as if the sudden release of pressure astounded them. Then, swept together by a common impulse, he and everyone else dashed toward the outer battlements to look at the siege.

  The ground below them steamed and quivered like wounded flesh, but the malevolence which had stricken it was gone. Satansfist’s army lay prostrate from overexertion in its encampments. The Giant-Raver himself was nowhere to be seen.

  Over all its walls from end to end, Revelstone erupted in the exultation of victory. Weak, hoarse, ragged, starving voices cheered, wept, shouted raucous defiance as if the siege had been beaten. Mhoram found his own vision blurred with relief. When he turned to go back into the Keep, he discovered Loerya behind him, weeping happily and trying to hug all three of her daughters at once. At her side, Trevor crowed, and tossed one of the girls giggling into the air.

  “Rest now, Mhoram,” Loerya said through her joy. “Leave the Keep to us. We know what must be done.”

  High Lord Mhoram nodded his mute gratitude and went wearily away to his bed.

  Yet even then he did not relax until he had felt the Warward resume its defensive stance-felt search parties hunting through the Keep for the most blighted survivors of the assault-felt order slowly reform the city like a mammoth being struggling out of chaos. Only then did he let himself flow with the slow pulse of the gut-rock and lose his burdens in sleep-secure in the confidence of stone.

  By the time he awoke the next morning, Lord’s Keep had been returned as much as possible to battle-readiness. Warmark Quaan brought a tray of breakfast to him in his private quarters, and reported the news of the city to him while he ate.

  Thanks to its training, and to exceptional service by some of the Hafts and Warhafts, the Warward had survived essentially unscathed. The Gravelingases were exhausted, but well. The Lorewardens and Hirebrands had suffered only chance injuries from panic-stricken friends. But the people who had not answered the Lords’ summons had not fared so well. Search parties had found several score dead, especially in ground-level apartments near the outer walls. Most of these people had died of thirst, but some were murdered by their fear-mad friends and neighbours. And of the hundreds of other survivors, four-or fivescore appeared irreparably insane.

  After the search had ended, Lord Loerya had taken to the Healers all those who were physically and mentally damaged, as well as those who seemed to remember having committed murder. She was assisting the Healers now. In other ways, Revelstone was swiftly recovering. The Keep was intact.

  Mhoram listened in silence, then waited for the old Warmark to continue. But Quaan fell studiously silent, and the High Lord was forced to ask, “What of the Raver’s army?”

  Quaan spat in sudden vehemence. “They have not moved.”

  It was true. Satansfist’s hordes had retreated to their encampment and fallen into stasis as if the force which animated them had been withdrawn.

  In the days that followed, they remained essentially still. They moved enough to perform the bare functions of their camp. They received dark supply wains from the south and east. From time to time, an indefinite flicker of power ran among them — a half-hearted whip keeping surly beasts under control. But none of them approached within hailing distance of the Keep. Samadhi Raver did not show himself. Only the unbroken girdle of the siege showed that Lord Foul had not been defeated.

  For five days-ten- fifteen-the enemy lay like a dead thing around Revelstone. At first, some of the more optimistic inhabitants of the city argued that the spirit of the attackers had been broken. But Warmark Quaan did not believe this, and after one long look from the watchtower, Mhoram agreed with his old friend.

  Satansfist was simply waiting for Revelstone to eat up its supplies, weaken itself, before he launched his next assault.

  As the days passed, High Lord Mhora
m lost his capacity to rest. He lay tense in his chambers and listened to the mood of the city turn sour.

  Slowly, day by day, Lord’s Keep came to understand its predicament. The Giants who had delved Revelstone out of the mountain rock thousands of years ago, in the age of Damelon, had made it to be impregnable; and all its inhabitants had lived from birth with the belief that this intention had succeeded. The walls were granite, and the gates, unbreakable. In a crisis the fertile upland plateau could provide the Keep with food. But the Despiser’s unforeseen, unforeseeable winter had laid the upland barren; crops and fruit could not grow, cattle or other animals could not live, in the brazen wind. And the storerooms had already supplied the city since the natural onset of winter.

  For the first time in its long history, Revelstone’s people saw that they might starve.

  In the initial days of waiting, the Lords began a stricter rationing of the supplies. They reduced each person’s daily share of food until everyone in Revelstone felt hungry all the time. They organized the refectories more stringently, so that food would not be wasted. But these measures were palpably inadequate. The city had many thousand inhabitants; even on minimal rations they consumed large portions of the stores every day.

  Their earlier elation ran out of them like water leaking into parched sand. The wait became first stupefying, then heavy and ominous, like pent thunder, then maddening. And High Lord Mhoram found himself yearning for the next attack. He could fight back against an attack.

  Gradually, the cold grey days of suspense began to weaken the Keep’s discretion, its pragmatic sense. Some of the farmers-people whose lifework had been taken from them by the winter-crept out to the upland hills around Glimmermere, sneaking as if they were ashamed to be caught planting futile rows of seeds in the frozen earth.