Gilden-Fire

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  That need sent them eastward, out of the Westron Mountains, intending to conquer by

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  might of fist the forms of sustenance their home did not provide, so that their wives and children would live. Korik had fought his way through a trial of leadership lasting an entire winter to gain a place - with Tuvor, Bannor, Morin, and Terrel - among the commanders of the army which had marched, a thousand strong, through Guards Gap and along the glacial purity of the Llurallin River, to wage war against the Land.

  They passed without resistance across the region which was later to be named Kurash Plenethor, Stricken Stone, and Trothgard. seeking battle, they were received by the inhabitants with quiet and fearless tolerance, were given without struggle all they demanded. These peaceful people had no use for war. Eventually, they even guided the Haruchai to Revelstone, where the Council of High Lord Kevin was still in its youth.

  There began the stuff of which the Blood-guard Vow, and the fealty between the Giants and the Haruchai, were made..

  Revelstone itself met the eyes of the in-

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  vaders with a wonder such as they had never known. They understood mountains, cliffs, indomitable stone, and never in their warmest dreams had they conceived that gutrock could be so made welcoming, habitable, and extravagant. The great Giant-wrought Keep astonished them, inspired them with a fierce joy unmatched by anything except the sight of austere peaks majestically facing heavenward and the enfolding love of wives. And the more they looked, the more ecstatic Revelstone appeared. Half intuitively, they sensed the pattern, the commingling flow and rest of the balconies and coigns and windows and parapets, which the Giants had woven into the rock of the high walls - perceived it dimly, and were enthralled. Here, amid warmth and lushness and fertility and food and sunlight, was a single rock home capacious enough to enclose the entire Haruchai people and hold them free of want forever. The suggestiveness of such luxurience made the very crenellations of the battlements seem luminous, strangely lit by high mysteries and unquenchable possibilities.

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  In the rush of their unfamiliar passion, they swore an oath that they would conquer this and make it their own. Without hesitation one thousand unarmed Haruchai laid siege Revelstone.

  Their war-making did not go far. Almost at once the great stone gates under the watch tower swung wide, and High Lord Kevin rode to meet his besiegers. He was mounted on a Ranyhyn and accompanied by half his council, one Eoman of the Warward, and a coterie of grinning Giants. Solemnly, Kevin listened while First Mark Tuvor delivered his terms of war; and some power of the Staff of Law enabled the High Lord to understand the Haruchai tongue. Then he declared so all the Haruchai might grasp his meaning that under no circumstances would he fight the invaders. He declined to make war. Instead, he invited the five commanders into Revelstone to the hospitality of the Lords. And though they expected treachery, they accepted, because they were proud.

  But there was no treachery. The great

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  gates stood open for three days while the Haruchai commanders tasted the grandeur of Revelstone. They experienced the laughing genial power of the Giants who had made the Keep, received the confident offer of Kevin's Council to supply the Haruchai freely whatever they needed for as long as their need lasted. When the commanders returned to their army, they sat astride prancing Ranyhyn, which had come from the Plains of Ra at Kevin's call and had chosen to bear the Haruchai. Korik and his peers were of one mind. Something new was upon them, something beyond instinctive kinship with the Ranyhyn, beyond friendship and awe for the Giants, beyond even the fine entrancement of Revelstone itself. The Haruchai were fighters, accustomed to wrest what they required: they could not accept gifts without making meet return.

  Therefore that night the army from the Westron Mountains gathered under the south wall of Revelstone. All the Haruchai joined their minds together and out of their common strength forged the metal of the Vow - un-

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  a1loyed and unanswerable, accessible to no appeal or flaw, unambergrised by the promise of any uncorrupt end: a Vow like the infernal oath upon the river of death which binds even the gods. This they wrought out of the extremity and innocence of their hearts, to match the handiwork of the Giants and the mastery of the Lords. As they spoke the hot words - Ha-man rual tayba-sah carab ho-eeal - the ground seemed to grow hot and cognizant under their feet, as if the Earthpower were drawing near the surface to hear them. And when they brought their Vow around full circle, sealing it so that there was no escape, the rocks on which they stood thundered, and fire ran through them, sealing their bones to the promise they had made.

  Thus it was done. Before dawn, the remainder of the army marched away toward Guards Gap and home. The five hundred Haruchai of the Vow went to Revelstone to become the Bloodguard, defenders of the Lords: the last preserving wall between Revelstone. and any blot or stain.

  Yet that was not all. Though Korik now on

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  the eve of the mission to Seareach invoked the old trial of leadership to test his place in the company he had chosen - though the Vow he served was as always impeccable and binding - yet the history of the Bloodguard contained at least two other matters which each of them kept in account. The first of these came at once, the morning after the Vow was taken. When the Haruchai entered Revelstone and announced. their purpose to the Council, High Lord Kevin was dismayed. Like the Lord Mhoram in the later age, Kevin was at times gifted or blighted with presciences; and he treated the Vow as if it proffered disaster. He insisted strangely that the Haruchai had maimed themselves: he strove to refuse the service, so much was he taken aback - and so little did he understand the fierce hearts of these people. But the Giants taught him to understand, and to accept.

  The second matter arose from the last war, before Kevin chose to enact the Ritual of Desecration. When the High Lord knew in secret what he purposed, he set about saving as much of the Land as he could. He fore-

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  warned the Giants and Ranyhyn, so that they might flee the coming havoc. And he ordered the Bloodguard away, into the safety of the mountains.

  This was the question which now plagued the Bloodguard, taught them doubt, this question of judgement. They had obeyed the High Lord, and so survived the Desecration; but the Lords to whom they had sworn their service were lost. The Bloodguard had obeyed because they had never considered that Kevin might wish to thwart their Vow. Even now the fact felt inconceivable, threatening. They had trusted him, assumed that his orders were consonant with their intent. Now they knew otherwise. Kevin had prevented them from dying with him or from opposing his dark purpose. He had betrayed them.

  Now the Bloodguard knew how to doubt. And now their Vow had revealed an additional demand: to fulfil it, they must preserve the Lords from self-destruction.

  Therefore Korik invoked the rites of leadership. He remembered his whole history -

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  the Vow gave no relief from memory - and because of it he acted as he did. He raised hands which knew how to kill against his comrades.

  He did not hold back his strength, or cover his blows, or in any other way fight less fiercely than he would have fought a foe of the Lords. There was no need for restraint. there were no frail or unskilled fighters among the Bloodguard; their devotion to the Vow kept their alertness keen and their thews strong. And the first tests were not long. Runnik and Pren were veterans of the Bloodguard, had measured their strength against his often enough to know him exactly. After a few swift passes, they acknowledged that he was the same warrior who had bested them before. And in deference to their example, the younger Ho-aru and Nimishi also contented themselves with fleet, flurrying ripostes to demonstrate Korik's worthiness - and their own. Cerrin and Sill took longer, more because they respected the Lords they warded than because they desired to take away Korik's command. But he had been one of the original Haruchai commanders for good reason. Fighting

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  with a speed which masked the precision of his movements, he showed Cerrin and Sill in turn that he remained one of the elite.

  When they were satisfied, Korik encountered Tull.

  He was gratified by the strength of Tull's metal. In many ways, Tull was still an untried Bloodguard; and because of this, Korik attacked him relentlessly. But Tull quickly showed that over the generations the Haruchai had not been content with old skills: they had developed new counters and blows, new feints and angles of attack. In moments, Korik was pushed to his limits, and Tull seemed to have the upper hand. But Korik had experienced conflict against many different and versatile opponents. He learned swiftly. When an unusual feint caught him, knocked him back, he spun and twisted, avoided the fall which would have signalled his defeat. Then he met Tull with the same feint. The blow stretched Tull on the rough floor, and the trial was over.

  Tull bounded to his feet, stood with the other Bloodguard facing Korik.

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  - Fist and faith, they said: We are Bloodguard. Tan-Haruchai.

  - Tan-Haruchai, Korik acknowledged. He bowed slightly to his comrades, and they followed him from the chamber. Among them, he was the only one whose pulse or breathing had quickened; but outwardly he revealed nothing of the trial of leadership.

  When his company regained the main halls of Revelstone, they separated to gather supplies. For themselves they would carry nothing but raiment and long coils of clingor, the adhesive leather rope which had been introduced to the Land by the Giants. They bore no weapons. And, in part because of their Vow, they needed little food: as long as the hardy aliantha grew and ripened throughout the Land in all seasons, the Bloodguard required no other sustenance. But the Lords would need more equipage: food and drink, lillianrill rods for torches, some graveling, bedding, cookware, a few knives and other utensils. Such things the Bloodguard would carry on their backs, so that Shetra and Hyrim would not be wearied by

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  packs. Other resources Korik left to the Lords. He took care of the needs within his power.

  Those which were not did not trouble him. He had no answer for Lord Shetra's dour dismay - though he had paid for centuries the cost of the yearning between a man and a woman -and so he stood aloof from it; He had no hand in the unvoiced fear which caused Lord Hyrim to ask Thomas Covenant's company in defiance of the High Lord's wishes: therefore he made no effort to sway or deny the Unbeliever. And he fended away all questions which ranged beyond the ambit of his certainty. Fist and faith. Succeed or die. Aided by the native flatness of his features, he bore himself as if he possessed no emotions which might be touched.

  Yet he grieved for Shetra and respected Hyrim. He judged the Unbeliever coldly. And the arrival of the Ranyhyn, seventeen of the great horses of Ra with their starred foreheads and their strange responsive fidelity, thundering forward in the first hint of day in answer to his call - that pride and beauty was a hymn in his heart. He was Haruchai and Bloodguard. His

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  people had shown in their Vow how extremely they could be touched.

  Thus now there was a special revelling in him as Brabha bore him down out of the foothills of Lord's Keep into the lower plains, the easy farmlands which spread for leagues on all the eastern slopes. There he and his companions began to encounter brief villages - small clustered Stonedowns and an occasional Woodhelven in the old spread banyan trees which dotted this part of the plains, homes for the farmers and artisans who, despite their vital share in the life of Revelstone, preferred not to live in that massed habitation. In the dim dawn light, the riders slowed their pace to a more cautious trot, so that they ran no risk of trampling a groggy farmer or child. But when the sun came up fully, the Ranyhyn greeted it with glad nickering, as if they were welcoming an old dear friend, and stretched their strides again.

  In the fresh day, the country side shone as if it were oblivious to the looming threat of blood. Ripe wheat rippled like sheets of gold in some of the fields; and in others cut hay was stacked into

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  high fragrant mowes. Over them, the air blew its autumn nip: the breeze carried the smells of the crops like a counterpoint to the morning enthusiasm of the birds. The farmland seemed to defy the spectre which hunted it. Korik knew better: he had seen land as fair as this helpless to withstand fire and trampling and the thick unhealthy drench of blood. But he did not forget, could never forget, the heart-wrench of beauty which had in part brought the Haruchai to their Vow. It baffled expression, surpassed any language but its own. He understood the overflowing mood which caused Lord Hyrim to throw back his head and sing as if he were crowing.

  Hail! Weal!

  Land and Life!

  Pulse of power in tree and stone!

  Earth-heart-blood

  vital, vivid surge

  in pith and rock!

  Sun-warmth

  balm-bliss bless

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  all air and sea and lung and life!

  Land's soul's beauty!

  Skyweir

  Earthroot

  weal!

  Hail!'

  The song had a strange power to catch its hearers, as if it actively desired them to join it; and Lord Hyrim relished it. But Shetra did not smile or sing or even look toward Hyrim. She rode on grimly, as if the war were already upon her. This also Korik understood. He sat between them comprehending and mute.

  Thus they rode through the morning until the swift roaming gait of the Ranyhyn had placed most of the fields and villages behind them and the terrain began to give hints of its coming roughness. Lord Hyrim alternately sang and talked as if all the countryside were his enchanted audience; but Lord Shetra and the Bloodguard moved in their private silences.

  Then towards noon they stopped beside a stream to give the Lords rest and the Ranyhyn

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  chance to graze; Hyrim's awkward dismount confirmed an impression which had been growing on Korik: although the Lord had been freely chosen by the Ranyhyn, he was an unusually poor rider. Even an inexperienced person could sit safely on a Ranyhyn if he left himself in the horse's care. And Lord Hyrim was not inexperienced. Yet he rode with erratic jerks, as if repeatedly he lost his balance and nearly fell. His dismount was only half a matter of choice. Korik thought of the hard riding ahead and winced inwardly.

  - He has always ridden thus, Sill answered. His balance is faulty. Almost the tests of the Sword in the Loresraat defeated him, prevented him from Lordship.

  -Yet the Ranyhyn selected him, Korik mused

  -Their judgement is sure.

  -Yes, Korik replied after a moment. And his Ranyhyn knows the danger.

  Nevertheless he felt anxiety. He wondered if the High Lord had known of Hyrim's deficiency as a rider. If she had, why had she

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  chosen him? However, such questions were not within Korik's responsibility, and he recited his Vow to Silence them. The mission would give him the measure of Lord Hyrim's fitness.

  Hyrim himself was obviously aware of the problem. He limped ruefully away from the Ranyhyn and dropped fiat on his stomach to drink from the stream. After a long draught, he pushed himself onto his back, spat a last mouthful of water over the grass, and groaned, 'By the Seven! Is it only noon? Half of one day? Friend Korik, how long will we require to gain Seareach?'

  Korik shrugged. 'Perhaps less than a score of days - if we are not delayed.'

  'A score -? Melenkurion! Then let us pray that we are not delayed. A score of days' - he sat up with a huge show of difficulty 'will leave me eighteen in my grave.'

  'Then,' said Shetra sourly, 'we will be the first folk in life to hear a dead man complain for eighteen days.'

  At this, Lord Hyrim fell back to the grass, laughing gleefully.

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  When his mirth had subsided, he rolled his eyes at Shetra and attempted to stand up smoothly, as if he were not sore and tired.

  But he could not do it: a spasm of strain broke across his face, and he s
tarted to laugh again, as if his own pretensions were the most innocent entertainment imaginable. Still chuckling, he limped a way to a nearby aliantha and fed himself on the viridian berries of the gnarled bush, savouring their crisp tangy flavour and the rush of nourishment they gave him. Scrupulously, he observed the custom of the Land by scattering the seeds around him, so that new bushes might grow. Then with a flourish he indicated his readiness to ride on. In moments, the company was mounted again and cantering eastward.

  As they travelled, they moved into sterner countryside, land which was only hospitable to people who knew how to husband it. And they met with fewer villages. By evening, they were beyond the range of Revelstone's immediate influence; and before the gloaming had thickened into darkness they had passed the last human habitation between that region and

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  Girnmerdhore Forest. Yet they did not stop, though Lord Hyrim suggested the possibility with a genuine yearning in his voice. Korik kept the company riding in spite of Hyrim's groans. So they continued into the night, trusting the Ranyhyn to find their way. Moonrise was near when Lord Shetra said in a low, measured tone, Now we must rest. We must have strength for the morrow and Grimmerdhore.' Korik agreed: