The Power That Preserves t1cotc-3

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  A moment passed before Mhoram found the self-mastery to ask quietly, “Is he dead?”

  “No. The Healers-he will live. He is a Hirebrand-not defenceless.” She dropped to the stone and slumped against the wall as if the thews which held her up had snapped.

  “I had forgotten he was with you,” Mhoram murmured. “I am ashamed.”

  ” You are ashamed!” The rough croak of Quaan’s voice caught at Mhoram’s attention. The Warmark’s face and arms were smeared with Wood, but he appeared uninjured. He could not meet Mhoram’s gaze. “The tower-lost!” He bit the words bitterly. “It is I who am ashamed. No Warmark would permit-Warmark Hile Troy would have found a means to preserve it.”

  “Then find a means to aid us,” Tohrm groaned. “These gates cannot hold.”

  The livid desperation in his tone pulled all the eyes on the abutment toward him. Tears streamed down his face as if he would never stop weeping, and his hands flinched distractedly in front of him, seeking something impossible in the air, something that would not break. And the gates moaned at him as if they were witnessing to the truth of his distress.

  “We cannot,” he went on. “Cannot. Such force! May the stones forgive me! I am-we are unequal to this stress.”

  Quaan turned sharply on his heel and strode away, shouting for timbers and Hirebrands to shore up the gates.

  But Tohrm did not seem to hear the Warmark. His wet gaze held Mhoram as he whispered, “We are prevented. Something ill maims our strength. We do not comprehend-High Lord, is there other wrong here? Other wrong than weight and dead violence? I hear-all Revelstone’s great rock cries out to me of evil.”

  High Lord Mhoram’s senses veered, and he swung into resonance with the gut-rock of the Keep as if he were melding himself with the stone. He felt all the weight of samadhi’s dead concentrated as if it were impending squarely against him; he felt his own soul gates groaning, detonating, cracking. For an instant, like an ignition of prophecy, he became the Keep, took its life and pain into himself, experienced the horrific might which threatened to rend it-and something else, too, something distinct, private, terrible. When he heard frantic feet clattering toward him along the main hall, he knew that Tohrm had glimpsed the truth.

  One of the two men Mhoram had sent to watch over Trell dashed forward, jerked to a halt. His face was as white as terror, and he could hardly thrust words stuttering through his teeth.

  “High Lord, come! He! — the Close! Oh, help him!”

  Amatin covered her head with her arms as if she could not bear any more. But the High Lord said, “I hear you. Remember who you are. Speak clearly.”

  The man gulped sickly several times. “Trell-you sent-he immolates himself. He will destroy the Close.”

  A hoarse cry broke from Tohrm, and Amatin gasped, “Melenkurion!” Mhoram stared at the warrior as if he could not believe what he had heard. But he believed it; he felt the truth of it. He was appalled by the dreadful understanding that this knowledge also had come too late. Once again, he had failed of foresight, failed to meet the needs of the Keep. Spun by irrefusable exigencies, he wheeled on Lord Trevor and demanded, “Where is Loerya?”

  For the first time since his rescue, Trevor’s exaltation wavered. He stood in his own blood as if his injury had no power to hurt him, but the mention of his wife pained him like a flaw in his new courage. “She,” he began, then stopped to swallow thickly. “She has left the Keep. Last night-she took the children upland-to find a place of hiding. So that they would be safe.”

  “By the Seven!” Mhoram barked, raging at all his failures rather than at Trevor. “She is needed!” Revelstone’s situation was desperate, and neither Trevor nor Amatin were in any condition to go on fighting. For an instant, Mhoram felt that the dilemma could not be resolved, that he could not make these decisions for the Keep. But he was Mhoram son of Variol, High Lord by the choice of the Council. He had said to the warrior: Remember who you are. He had said it to Tohrm. He was High Lord Mhoram, incapable of surrender. He struck the stone with his staff so that its iron heel rang, and sprang to his work.

  “Lord Trevor, can you hold the gates?”

  Trevor met Mhoram’s gaze. “Do not fear, High Lord. If they can be held, I will hold them.”

  “Good.” The High Lord turned his back on the courtyard. “Lord Amatin-Hearthrall Tohrm-will you aid me?”

  For answer, Tohrm met the outreach of Amatin’s arm and helped her to her feet.

  Taking the fear-blanched warrior by the arm, Mhoram hastened away into the Keep.

  As he strode through the halls toward the Close, he asked the warrior to tell him what had happened. “He-it- ” the man stammered. But then he seemed to draw a measure of steadiness from Mhoram’s grip. “It surpassed me, High Lord.”

  “What has happened?” repeated Mhoram firmly.

  “At your command, we followed him. When he learned that we did not mean to leave him, he reviled us. But his cursing showed us a part of the reason for your command. We were resolved to obey you. At last he turned from us like a broken man and led us to the Close.

  “There he went to the great graveling pit and knelt beside it. While we watched over him from the doors, he wept and prayed, begging. High Lord, it is in my heart that he begged for peace. But he found no peace. When he raised his head, we saw-we saw abomination in his face. He-the graveling-flame came from the fire-stones. Fire sprang from the floor. We ran down to him. But the flames forbade us. They consumed my comrade. I ran to you.”

  The words chilled Mhoram’s heart, but he replied to meet the pain and faltering in the warrior’s face. “His Oath of Peace was broken. He lost self-trust, and fell into despair. This is the shadow of the Grey Slayer upon him.”

  After a moment, the warrior said hesitantly, “I have heard-it is said-is this not the Unbeliever’s doing?”

  “Perhaps. In some measure, the Unbeliever is Lord Foul’s doing. But Trell’s despair is also in part my doing. It is Trell’s own doing. The Slayer’s great strength is that our mortal weakness may be so turned against us.”

  He spoke as calmly as he could, but before he was within a hundred yards of the Close, he began to feel the heat of the flames. He had no doubt that this was the source of the other ill Tohrm had sensed. Hot waves of desecration radiated in all directions from the council chamber. As he neared the high wooden doors, he saw that they were smouldering, nearly aflame, and the walls shimmered as if the stone were about to melt. He was panting for breath, wincing against the heat, even before he reached the open doorway and looked down into the Close.

  An inferno raged within it. Floor, tables, seats-all burned madly, spouted roaring flames like a convulsion of thunder. Heat scorched Mhoram’s face, crisped his hair. He had to blink tears away before he could peer down through the conflagration to its centre.

  There Trell stood in the graveling pit like the core of a holocaust, bursting with flames and hurling great gouts of fire at the ceiling with both fists. His whole form blazed like incarnated damnation, white-hot torment striking out at the stone it loved and could not save.

  The sheer power of it staggered Mhoram. He was looking at the onset of a Ritual of Desecration. Trell had found in his own despair the secret which Mhoram had guarded so fearfully, and he was using that secret against Revelstone. If he were not stopped, the gates would only be the first part of the Keep to break, the first and least link in a chain of destruction which might tear the whole plateau to rubble.

  He had to be stopped. That was imperative. But Mhoram was not a Gravelingas, had no stone-lore to counter the might which made this fire possible. He turned to Tohrm.

  “You are of the rhadhamaerl!” he shouted over the raving of the fire. “You must silence this flame!”

  “Silence it?” Tohrm was staring, aghast, into the blaze; he had the stricken look of a man witnessing the ravage of his dearest love. “Silence it?” He did not shout; Mhoram could only comprehend him by reading his lips. “I have no strength to equal th
is. I am a Gravelingas of the rhadhamaerl- not Earthpower incarnate. He will destroy us all.”

  “Tohrm!” the High Lord cried. “You are the Hearthrall of Lord’s Keep! You or no one can meet this need!”

  Tohrm mouthed soundlessly, “How?”

  “I will accompany you! I will give you my strength-I will place all my power in you!”

  The Hearthrall’s eyes rolled fearfully away from the Close and hauled themselves by sheer force of will into focus on the High Lord’s face.

  “We will burn.”

  “We will endure!”

  Tohrm met Mhoram’s demand for a long moment. Then he groaned. He could not refuse to give himself for the sake of the Keep’ s stone. ” If you are with me,” he said silently through the roar.

  Mhoram whirled to Amatin. “Tohrm and I will go into the Close. You must preserve us from the fire. Put your power around us-protect us.”

  She nodded distractedly, pushed a damp strand of hair out of her face. “Go,” she said weakly. “Already the table melts.”

  The High Lord saw that she was right. Before their eyes, the table slumped into magma, poured down to the lowest level of the Close and into the pit around Trell’s feet.

  Mhoram called his power into readiness and rested the shaft of his staff on Tohrm’s shoulder. Together, they faced the Close, waited while Amatin built a defence around them. The sensation of it swarmed over their skin like hiving insects, but it kept back the heat.

  When she signalled to them, they started down into the Close as if they were struggling into a furnace.

  Despite Amatin’s protection, the heat slammed into them like the fist of a cataclysm. Tohrm’s tunic began to scorch. Mhoram felt his own robe blackening. All the hair on their heads and arms shrivelled. But the High Lord put heat out of his mind; he concentrated on his staff and Tohrm. He could feel the Hearthrall singing now, though he heard nothing but the deep, ravenous howl of the blaze. Tuning his power to the pitch of Tohrm’s song, he sent all his resources running through it.

  The savage flames backed slightly away from them as they moved, and patches of unburned rock appeared like stepping-stones under Tohrm’s feet. They walked downward like a gap in the hell of Trell’s rage.

  But the conflagration sealed behind them instantly. As they drew farther from the doors, Amatin’s defence weakened; distance and flame interfered. Mhoram’s flesh stung where his robe smouldered against it, and his eyes hurt so badly that he could no longer see. Tohrm’s song became more and more like a scream as they descended. By the time they reached the level of the pit, where Loric’s krill still stood embedded in its stone, Mhoram knew that if he did not take his strength away from Tohrm and use it for protection they would both roast at Trell’s feet.

  “Trell!” Tohrm screamed soundlessly. “You are a Gravelingas of the rhadhamaerl! Do not do this!”

  For an instant, the fury of the inferno paused. Trell looked at them, seemed to see them, recognize them.

  “Trell!”

  But he had fallen too far under the power of his own holocaust. He pointed a rigid, accusing finger, then stooped to the graveling and heaved a double armful of fire at them.

  At the same moment, a thrill of strength ran through Mhoram. Amatin’s protection steadied, stiffened. Though the force of Trell’s attack knocked Tohrm back into Mhoram’s arms, the fire did not touch them. And Amatin’s sudden discovery of power called up an answer in the High Lord. With a look like joy gleaming in his eyes, he swept aside all his self-restraints and turned to his secret understanding of desecration. That secret contained might-might which the Lords had failed to discover because of their Oath of Peace-might which could be used to preserve as well as destroy. Despair was not the only unlocking emotion. Mhoram freed his own passion and stood against the devastation of the Close.

  Power coursed vividly in his chest and arms and staff. Power made even his flesh and blood seem like invulnerable bone. Power shone out from him to oppose Trell’s ill. And the surge of his strength restored Tohrm. The Hearthrall regained his feet, summoned his lore; with all of his and Mhoram’s energy, he resisted Trell.

  Confronting each other, standing almost face to face, the two Gravelingases wove their lore-secret gestures, sang their potent rhadhamaerl invocations. While the fire raged as if Revelstone were about to crash down upon them, they commanded the blaze, wrestled will against will for mastery of it.

  Tohrm was exalted by Mhoram’s support. With the High Lord’s power resonating in every word and note and gesture, renewing him, fulfilling his love for the stone, he bent back the desecration. After a last convulsive exertion, Trell fell to his knees, and his fire began to fail.

  It ran out of the Close like the recession of a tide-slowly at first, then faster, as the force which had raised it broke. The heat declined; cool fresh air poured around Mhoram from the airways of the Keep. Sight returned to his scorched eyes. For a moment, he feared that he would lose consciousness in relief.

  Weeping with joy and grief, he went to help Tohrm lift Trell Atiaran-mate from the graveling pit. Trell gave no sign that he felt them, knew in any way that they were present. He looked around with hollow eyes, muttering brokenly, “Intact. There is nothing intact. Nothing.” Then he covered his head with his arms and huddled into himself on the floor at Mhoram’s feet, shaking as if he needed to sob and could not.

  Tohrm met Mhoram’s gaze. For a long moment, they looked into each other’s faces, measuring what they had done together. Tohrm’s features had the burned aspect of a wilderland, a place that would never grin again. But his emotion was clear and clean as he murmured at last, “We will grieve for him. The rhadhamaerl will grieve. The time has come for mourning.”

  From the top of the stairs, an excited voice cried, “High Lord! The dead! They have all fallen into sand! Satansfist has exhausted this attack. The gates hold!”

  Through his tears, Mhoram looked around the Close. It was badly damaged. The Lords’ table and chairs had melted, the steps were uneven, and most of the lower tiers had been misshaped by the fire. But the place had survived. The Keep had survived. Mhoram nodded to Tohrm. “It is time.”

  His sight was so blurred with tears that he seemed to see two blue-robed figures moving down the stairs toward him. He blinked his tears away, and saw that Lord Loerya was with Amatin.

  Her presence explained the protection which had saved him and Tohrm; she had joined her strength to Amatin’s.

  When she reached him, she looked gravely into his face. He searched her for shame or distress but saw only regret. “I left them with the Unfettered One at Glimmermere,” she explained quietly. “Perhaps they will be safe. I returned-when I found courage.”

  Then something at Mhoram’s side caught her attention. Wonder lit her face, and she turned him so that he was looking at the table which held Loric’s krill.

  The table was intact.

  In its centre, the gem of the krill blazed with a pure white fire, as radiant as hope.

  Mhoram heard someone say, “Ur-Lord Covenant has returned to the Land.” But he could no longer tell what was happening around him. His tears seemed to blind all his senses.

  Following the light of the gem, he reached out his hand and clasped the krill’s haft. In its intense heat, he felt the truth of what he had heard. The Unbeliever had returned.

  With his new might, he gripped the krill and pulled it easily from the stone. Its edges were so sharp that when he held the knife in his hand he could see their keenness. His power protected him from the heat.

  He turned to his companions with a smile that felt like a ray of sunshine on his face.

  “Summon Lord Trevor,” he said gladly. “I have — a knowledge of power that I wish to share with you.”

  Twelve: Amanibhavam

  HATE.

  It was the only thought in Covenant’s mind. The weight of things he had not known crushed everything else.

  Hate.

  He clung to the unanswered question as he p
ried himself with the spear up over the rim of the hollow and hobbled down beyond the last ember-light of Pietten’s fire.

  Hate.

  His crippled foot dragged along the ground, grinding the splintered bones of his ankle together until beads of excruciation burst from his pores and froze in the winter wind. But he clutched the shaft of the spear and lurched ahead, down that hillside and diagonally up the next. The wind cut against his right cheek, but he paid no attention to it; he turned gradually toward the right because of the steepness of the hill, not because he had any awareness of direction. When the convolution of the next slope bent him northward again, away from the Plains of Ra and his only friends, he followed it, tottered down it, fluttering in the wind like a maimed wildman, thinking only:

  Hate.

  Atiaran Trell-mate had said that it was the responsibility of the living to make meaningful the sacrifices of the dead. He had a whole Land full of death to make meaningful. Behind him, Lena lay slain in her own blood, with a wooden spike through her bell}. Elena was buried somewhere in the bowels of Melenkurion Sky weir, dead in her private apocalypse because of his manipulations and his failures. She had never even existed. Ranyhyn had been starved and slaughtered. Banner and Foamfollower might be dead or in despair. Pietten and Hile Troy and Trell and Triock were all his fault. None of them had ever existed. His pain did not exist. Nothing mattered except the one absolute question.

  He moaned deep in his throat, “Hate?”

  Nothing could have any meaning without the answer to that question. Despite its multitudinous disguises, he recognized it as the question which had shaped his life since the day he had first learned that he was subject to the law of leprosy. Loathing, self-loathing, fear, rape, murder, leper outcast unclean-they were all the same thing. He hobbled in search of the answer.