Quaan tried to counter by having his strongest archers loose arrows at the loremaster. But the shafts were useless. They caught fire in the ur-viles’ black power and burned to ashes.
Behind the company, Lithe was chaffing to pursue the guide of her instinct for daylight. She called repeatedly for the Lords to follow her. But they could not; they did not dare turn their backs on the wedge.
Each clash drove them backward. For all their courage and resolve, they were nearly exhausted, and every blow of the loremaster’s stave weakened them further. Now their flame had a less rampant blaze, and the burning gouts turned black more swiftly. It was clear, that they could not keep up the fight. And no one in the company could take it for them.
Abruptly Mhoram shouted, “Back! Make room!”
His urgency allowed no refusal; even the Bloodguard obeyed.
“Covenant!” Mhoram cried.
Covenant moved forward until he was only an arm’s length from the searing battle.
“Raise your ring!”
Compelled by Mhoram’s intensity, the Unbeliever lifted his left hand. A crimson cast still stained the heart of his wedding band.
The loremaster observed the ring as if suddenly smelling its presence. It recognized white gold, hesitated. The wedge halted, though the loremaster did not drop its guard.
“Melenkurion abatha!” Mhoram commanded. “Blast them!”
Half intuitively, Covenant understood. He jabbed at the loremaster with his left fist as if launching a bolt.
Barking in strident fear, the whole wedge recoiled.
In that instant, the Lords acted. Shouting, “Minas mill khabaal!” on different pitches in half-screamed harmony, they drew with their fire an X which barricaded the tunnel from top to bottom. The flame of the X hung in the air; and before it could die, Prothall placed his staff erect within it. At once, a sheet of blue flared in the passage.
Howling in rage at Mhoram’s ruse, the ur-viles sprang forward. The loremaster struck hugely at the flame with its stave. The fiery wall rippled and fluttered—but did not let the wedge pass.
Prothall and Mhoram took only a moment to see how their power held. Then they turned and dashed down the tunnel.
Gasping for breath, Mhoram told the company, “We have forbidden the tunnel! But it will not endure. We are not strong enough—the High Lord’s staff was needed to make any forbidding at all. And the ur-viles are savage. Drool drives them mad with the Illearth Stone.” In spite of his haste, his voice carried a shudder. “Now we must run. We must escape—must! All our work will go for nothing if we do not take both Staff and Ward to safety.”
“Come!” the Manethrall responded. “I know grass and sky. I can find the way.”
Prothall nodded agreement, but his movements were slow, despite the need for alacrity. He was exhausted, driven far past the normal limits of his stamina. With his breath rattling deep in his chest as if he were drowning in the phlegm of his age, he leaned heavily on the Staff of Law. “Go!” he panted. “Run!”
Two Bloodguard took his arms, and between them he stumbled into a slow run down the passage. Rallying around him, the company started away after Lithe.
At first, they went easily. Their tunnel offered few branchings; at each of these, Lithe seemed instantly sure which held the greatest promise of daylight. Lit from behind by Mhoram’s staff, she loped forward as if following a warm trail of freedom.
After the struggles of close combat, the company found relief in simple, single-minded running. It allowed them to focus and conserve their strength. Furthermore, they were passing, as if slowly liberated, out of the range of Lord Foul’s laughter. Soon they could hear neither mockery nor threat of slaughter at their backs. For once, the silent darkness befriended them.
For nearly a league, they hastened onward. They began to traverse a section of the catacombs which was intricate with small caves and passages and turnings, but which appeared to contain no large halls, crevices, wightworks. Throughout these multiplied corridors, Lithe did not hesitate. Several times she took ways which inclined slowly upward.
But as the complex tunnels opened into broader and blacker ways, where Mhoram’s flame illumined no cave walls or ceilings, the catacombs became more hostile. Gradually the silence changed—lost the hue of relief, and became the hush of ambush. The darkness around Mhoram’s light seemed to conceal more and more. At the turnings and intersections, night thickened in their choices, clouding Lithe’s instinct. She began to falter.
Behind her, Prothall grew less and less able to keep up the pace. His hoarse, wheezing breath was increasingly labored; even the weariest Questers could hear his gasps over their own hard panting. The Bloodguard were almost carrying him.
Still they pushed on into stark midnight. They bore the Staff of Law and the Second Ward, and could not afford surrender.
Then they reached a high cave which formed a crossroads for several tunnels. The general direction they had maintained since Kiril Threndor was continued by one passage across the cave. But Lithe stopped in the center of the junction as if she had been reined to a halt. She searched about her uncertainly, confused by the number of her choices—and by some intuitive rejection of her only obvious selection. Shaking her head as if resisting a bit, she groaned, “Ah, Lords. I do not know.”
Mhoram snapped, “You must! We have no other chance. The old maps do not show these ways. You have led us far beyond our ken.” He gripped her shoulder as if he meant to force her decision. But the next moment he was distracted by Prothall. With a sharp spasm of coughing, the High Lord collapsed to the floor.
One Bloodguard quickly propped him into a sitting position, and Mhoram knelt beside him, peering with intent concern into his old face. “Rest briefly,” mumbled Mhoram. “Our forbidding has long since broken. We must not delay.”
Between fits of coughing, the High Lord replied, “Leave me. Take the Staff and go. I am done.”
His words appalled the company. Covenant and the warriors covered their own breathing to hear Mhoram’s answer. The air was suddenly intense with a fear that Mhoram would accept Prothall’s sacrifice.
But Mhoram said nothing.
“Leave me,” Prothall repeated. “Give your staff to me, and I will defend your retreat as I can. Go, I say. I am old. I have had my time of triumph. I lose nothing. Take the Staff and go.” When the Lord still did not speak, he rattled in supplication, “Mhoram, hear me. Do not let my old bones destroy this high Quest.”
“I hear you.” Mhoram’s voice sounded thick and wounded in his throat. He knelt with his head bowed.
But a moment later he rose to his feet, and put back his head, and began to laugh. It was quiet laughter—unfeverish and unforced—the laughter of relief and undespair. The company gaped at it until they understood that it was not hysteria. Then, without knowing why, they laughed in response. Humor ran like a clean wind through their hearts.
Covenant almost cursed aloud because he could not share it.
When they had subsided into low chuckling, Mhoram said to the High Lord, “Ah, Prothall son of Dwillian. It is good that you are old. Leave you? How will I be able to take pleasure in telling Osondrea of your great exploits if you are not there to protest my boasting?” Gaily he laughed again. Then, as if recollecting himself, he returned to where Lithe stood bewildered in the center of the cave.
“Manethrall,” he said gently, “you have done well. Your instinct is true—remember it now. Put all doubt away. We do not fear to follow where your heart leads.”
Covenant had noticed that she, too, had not joined the laughter of the company. Her eyes were troubled; he guessed that her swift blood had been offended by Mhoram’s earlier sharpness. But she nodded gravely to the Lord. “That is well. My thoughts do not trust my heart.”
“In what way?”
“My thoughts say that we must continue as we have come. But my heart wishes to go there.” She indicated a tunnel opening back almost in the direction from which they had come. “
I do not know,” she concluded simply. “This is new to me.”
But Mhoram’s reply held no hesitation. “You are Manethrall Lithe of the Ramen. You have served the Ranyhyn. You know grass and sky. Trust your heart.”
After a moment, Lithe accepted his counsel.
Two Bloodguard helped Prothall to his feet. Supporting him between them, they joined the company and followed Lithe’s instinct into the tunnel.
This passage soon began to descend slowly, and they set a good pace down it. They were buoyed along by the hope that their pursuers would not guess what they were doing, and so would neither cut them off nor follow them directly. But in the universal darkness and silence, they had no assurances. Their way met no branchings, but it wavered as if it were tracing a vein in the mountain. Finally it opened into a vast impression of blank space, and began to climb a steep, serrated rock face through a series of switchbacks. Now the company had to toil upward.
The difficulties of the ascent slowed them as much as the climbing. The higher they went, the colder the air became, and the more there seemed to be a wind blowing in the dark gulf beside them. But the cold and the wind only accented their dripping sweat and the exhausted wrack of their respiration. The Bloodguard alone appeared unworn by the long days of their exertion; they strode steadily up the slope as if it were just a variation of their restless devotion. But their companions were more death-prone. The warriors and Covenant began to stagger like cripples in the climb.
Finally Mhoram called a halt. Covenant dropped to sit with his back to the rock, facing the black-blown, measureless cavern. The sweat seemed to freeze on his face. The last of the food and drink was passed around, but in this buried place, both appeared to have lost their capacity to refresh—as if at last even sustenance were daunted by the darkness of the catacombs. Covenant ate and drank numbly. Then he shut his eyes to close out the empty blackness for a time. But he saw it whether his eyes were open or not.
Some time later—Covenant no longer measured duration—Lord Mhoram said in a stinging whisper, “I hear them.”
Korik’s reply sounded as hollow as a sigh from a tomb. “Yes. They follow. They are a great many.”
Lurching as if stricken, the Questers began to climb again, pushing themselves beyond the limits of their strength. They felt weak with failure, as if they were moving only because Mhoram’s blue flame pulled them forward, compelled them, beseeched, cajoled, urged, inspired, refused to accept anything from them except endurance and more endurance. Disregarding every exigency except the need for escape, they continued to climb.
Then the wind began to howl around them, and their way changed. The chasm abruptly narrowed; they found themselves on a thin, spiral stair carved into the wall of a vertical shaft. The width of the rude steps made them ascend in single file. And the wind went yelling up the shaft as if it fled the catacombs in stark terror. Covenant groaned when he realized that he would have to risk yet another perilous height, but the rush of the wind was so powerful that it seemed to make falling impossible. Cycling dizzily, he struggled up the stair.
The shaft went straight upward, and the wind yowled in pain; and the company climbed as if they were being dragged by the air. But as the shaft narrowed, the force of the wind increased; the air began to move past them too fast for breathing. As they gasped upward, a light-headed vertigo came over them. The shaft seemed to cant precariously from side to side. Covenant moved on his hands and knees.
Soon the whole company was crawling.
After an airless ache which extended interminably around him, Covenant lay stretched out on the stairs. He was not moving. Dimly he heard voices trying to shout over the roar of the wind. But he was past listening. He felt that he had reached the verge of suffocation, and the only thing he wanted to do was weep. He could hardly remember what prevented him even now from releasing his misery.
Hands grabbed his shoulders, hauled him up onto flat stone. They dragged him ten or fifteen feet along the bottom of a thin crevice. The howl of the wind receded.
He heard Quaan give a choked, panting cheer. With an effort, he raised his head. He was sprawled in the crevice where it opened on one of the eastern faces of Mount Thunder. Across a flat, gray expanse far below him, the sun rose redly.
To his stunned ears, the cheering itself sounded like sobs. It spread as the warriors one by one climbed out past him into the dawn. Lithe had already leaped down a few feet from the crevice, and was on her knees kissing the earth. Far away, across the Sarangrave and the gleaming line of the Defiles Course and the Great Swamp, the sun stood up regally, wreathed in red splendor.
Covenant pushed himself into a sitting position and looked over at the Lords to see their victory.
They had no aspect of triumph. The High Lord sat crumpled like a sack of old bones, with the Staff of Law on his knees. His head was bowed, and he covered his face with both hands. Beside him, Mhoram stood still and dour, and his eyes were as bleak as a wilderness.
Covenant did not understand.
Then Bannor said, “We can defend here.”
Mhoram’s reply was soft and violent. “How? Drool knows many ways. If we prevent him here, he will attack from below—above. He can bring thousands against us.”
“Then close this gap to delay them.”
Mhoram’s voice became softer still. “The High Lord has no staff. I cannot forbid the gap alone—I have not the power. Do you believe that I am strong enough to bring down the walls of this crevice? No—not even if I were willing to damage the Earth in that way. We must escape. There—” He pointed down the mountainside with a hand that trembled.
Covenant looked downward. The crevice opened into the bottom of a ravine which ran straight down the side of Mount Thunder like a knife wound. The spine of this cut was jumbled and tossed with huge rocks—fallen boulders, pieces of the higher cliffs like dead fragments of the mountain. And its walls were sheer, unclimbable. The Questers would have to pick their way tortuously along the bottom of the cut for half a league. There the walls gave way, and the ravine dropped over a cliff. When the company reached the cliff, they would have to try to work around the mountainsides until they found another descent.
Still Covenant did not understand. He groaned at the difficulty of the ravine, but it was escape. He could feel sunlight on his face. Heaving himself to his feet, he muttered, “Let’s get going.”
Mhoram gave him a look thick with suppressed pain. But he did not voice it. Instead, he spoke stiffly to Quaan and Korik. In a few moments, the Questers started down the ravine.
Their progress was deadly slow. In order to make their way, they had to climb from rock to rock, swing themselves over rough boulders, squeeze on hands and knees through narrow gaps between huge fists of stone. And they were weak. The strongest of the warriors needed help time and again from the Bloodguard. Prothall had to be almost entirely carried. He clutched the Staff, and scrabbled frailly at the climbs. Whenever he jumped from a rock, he fell to his knees; soon the front of his robe was spattered with blood.
Covenant began to sense their danger. Their pace might be fatal. If Drool knew other ways onto the slope, his forces might reach the end of the ravine before the company did.
He was not alone in his perception. After their first relief, the warriors took on a haunted look. Soon they were trudging, clambering, struggling with their heads bowed and backs bent as if the weight of all they had ever known were tied around their necks. The sunlight did not allow them to be ignorant of their peril.
Like a prophecy, their fear was fulfilled before the company was halfway down the ravine. One of the Eoman gave a broken cry, pointed back up the mountain. There they saw a horde of ur-viles rushing out of the cleft from which they had come.
They tried to push faster down the littered spine of the cut. But the ur-viles poured after them like a black flood. The creatures seemed to spring over the rocks without danger of misstep, as if borne along by a rush of savagery. They gained on the company with sickening
speed.
And the ur-viles were not alone. Near the end of the ravine, Cavewights suddenly appeared atop one wall. As soon as they spotted the Questers, they began throwing ropes over the edge, scaling down the wall.
The company was caught like a group of mites in the pincers of Drool’s power.
They stopped where they were, paralyzed by dismay. For a moment, even Quaan’s sense of responsibility for his Eoman failed; he stared blankly about him, and did not move. Covenant sagged against a boulder. He wanted to scream at the mountain that this was not fair. He had already survived so much, endured so much, lost so much. Where was his escape? Was this the cost of his bargain, his forbearance? It was too great. He was a leper, not made for such ordeals. His voice shook uncontrollably—full of useless outrage. “No wonder he—let us have the Staff. So it would hurt worse now. He knew we wouldn’t get away with it.”
But Mhoram shouted orders in a tone that cut through the dismay. He ran a short way down the ravine and climbed onto a wide, flat rock higher than the others near it. “There is space for us! Come!” he commanded. “We will make our end here!”
Slowly the warriors shambled to the rock as if they were overburdened with defeat. Mhoram and the Bloodguard helped them up. High Lord Prothall came last, propped between two Bloodguard. He was muttering, “No. No.” But he did not resist Mhoram’s orders.
When everyone was on the rock, Quaan’s Eoman and the Bloodguard placed themselves around its edge. Lithe joined them, her cord taut in her hands, leaving Prothall and Mhoram and Covenant in the ring of the company’s last defense.
Now the ur-viles had covered half the distance to the rock where the company stood. Behind them came hundreds of Cavewights, gushing out of the crevice and pouring down the ravine. And as many more worked upward from the place where they had entered the cut.
Thomas Covenant 01: Lord Foul's Bane Page 48