Thomas Covenant 03: Power That Preserves

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “And the Illearth Stone has not yet spoken against us,” Mhoram murmured. He could still feel the force which had rent his defense tingling in his wrists and elbows. As an afterthought, he added, “Except in the voice of this cruel wind and winter.”

  For a moment, he melded his mind with Trevor and Amatin, sharing his strength with them, and reminding them of their own resources. Then, with a sigh, Lord Amatin said, “I am of Woodhelvennin blood. I will assist Hearthrall Borillar in the making of these shafts. It will be slow work, and many of the lillianrill have other tasks.”

  “And I will go to Tohrm,” Trevor said. “I have no lore to match the rhadhamaerl. But it may be that a counter to this Demondim-bane can be found in the fire-stones.”

  Mhoram approved silently, put his arm around the two Lords and hugged them. “I will stand watch,” he said, “and summon Loerya when I am weary.” Then he sent Quaan with them from the tower, so that the Warmark could ready his warriors for all the work they might have to do if the walls were harmed. Alone the High Lord stood and faced the dark encampment of Satansfist’s hordes—stood below the snapping Furl, which was already ragged in the sharp wind, planted the iron heel of his staff on the stone, and faced the encircling enemy as if his were the hand which held the outcome of the siege.

  In the gray dimness toward evening, the ur-viles built another catapult. Beyond the reach of arrows, they constructed a stronger machine, one capable of throwing their power across the additional ground. But High Lord Mhoram summoned no aid. When the black spew of corrosion was launched, it had farther to travel; it was beyond the command of its makers for a longer time. Mhoram’s blue power lashed out at it as it reached the top of its arc. A fervid lightning of Lords-fire bolted into the vitriol, weakened its momentum, caused it to fall short. Splashing angrily, effectlessly, it crashed to the earth, and burned a morbid hole like a charnel pit in the frozen dirt.

  The ur-viles withdrew, returned to the garish watch fires which burned throughout the army for the sake of the misborn creatures that needed light. After a time, Mhoram rubbed the strain from his forehead, and called Lord Loerya to take his place.

  During the blind night, three more catapults were built in the safety of distance, then brought forward to attack Revelstone. None of them assaulted the tower; two of them threw at the walls of the main Keep from the north, one from the south. But each time the defenders were able to react quickly. The loremasters’ exertion of power as they cocked the machines radiated a palpable impression up at the battlements, and this emanation warned the Keep of each new assault. Archers waiting with lor-liarill arrows raced to respond.

  They gained light to aim with by driving arrows into the ground near the catapults; in the sudden revealing fires, they destroyed two of the new threats as they had destroyed the first. But the third remained beyond bowshot, and attacked the south wall from a position out of Loerya’s reach. Yet this assault was defeated also. In a moment of inspiration, the Haft commanding the archers ordered them to direct their shafts at the acid as it arced toward the Keep. The archers fired a dozen shafts in rapid succession into the gout of fluid, and succeeded in breaking it apart, so that it spattered against the stone in weaker pieces and did little harm.

  Fortunately there were no more attacks that night. All the new Gildenlode arrows had been used, and the process of making more was slow and difficult. Throughout the next day also there were no attacks, though the sentries could see ur-viles building catapults in the distance. No move was made against Revelstone until deep in the chattering darkness of midnight. Then alarms rang through the Keep, calling all its defenders from their work or rest. In the wind-torn light of arrows aflame like torches in the frozen earth, the Lords and Hirebrands and Gravelingases and warriors and Lorewardens saw ten catapults being cranked into position beyond the range of the archers.

  Orders hummed through the stone of the Keep. Men and women dashed to take their places. In moments, a Lord or a team of defenders stood opposite each catapult. As the cups were filled, Revelstone braced itself for the onslaught of power.

  At the flash of a dank green signal from Satansfist, the ten catapults threw.

  The defense outlined Revelstone in light, cast so much bright orange, yellow, and blue fire from the walls that the whole plateau blazed in the darkness like a conflagration of defiance. Working together from the tower, Mhoram and Amatin threw bolts of power which cast down two of the vitriol attacks. From the plateau atop Revelstone, the Lords Trevor and Loerya used their advantage of height to help them each deflect one cupful of corrosion into the ground.

  Two of the remaining attacks were torn apart by Hearthrall Borillar’s arrows. Using a piece of orcrest given to them by Hearthrall Tohrm, and a lomillialor rod obtained from Lord Amatin, teams of Lorewardens erected barriers which consumed most of the virulence in two assaults, prevented them from doing any irrecoverable damage.

  Gravelingases met the last two throws of the ur-viles. With one partner, Tohrm had positioned himself on a balcony directly in front of one catapult. They stood on either side of a stone vat of graveling, and sang a deep rhadhamaerl song which slowly brought their mortal flesh into harmony with the mounting radiance of the fire-stones. While the ur-viles filled the cup of the machine, Tohrm and his companion thrust their arms into the graveling, pushed their lore-preserved hands deep among the fire-stones near the sides of the vat. There they waited in the golden heat, singing their earthish song until the catapult threw and the vitriol sprang toward them.

  In the last instant, they heaved a double armful of graveling up at the black gout. The two powers collided scant feet above their heads, and the force of the impact knocked them flat on the balcony. The wet corrosion of the acid turned the graveling instantly to cinders, but in turn the rhadhamaerl might of the fire-stones burned away the acid before the last drop of it touched Tohrm or Revelstone.

  The other pair of Gravelingases were not so successful. They mistimed their countering heave, and as a result their graveling only stopped half the vitriol. Both men died in fluid fire which destroyed a wide section of the balcony.

  But instead of striking again, launching more attacks to wear down the defenses of the Keep, the ur-viles abandoned their catapults and withdrew—apparently satisfied with what they had learned about Revelstone’s mettle.

  High Lord Mhoram watched them go with surprise in his face and cold dread in his heart. Surely the ur-viles had not been intimidated by the defense. If Satansfist chose now to change his tactics, it was because he had measured the weakness of Revelstone, and knew a better way to capitalize on it.

  The next morning, Mhoram saw the commencement of Satansfist’s new strategy, but for two days after that he did not comprehend it. The Raver’s hordes moved closer to Revelstone, placed themselves hardly a hundred yards from the walls, and faced the plateau as if they expected its defenders to leap willingly into their jaws. The ur-viles moved among the slavering creatures and Cavewights, and formed scores of wedges which seemed to point toward the very heart of Revelstone. And behind them Satansfist stood in a broad piece of open ground, openly wielding his Stone for the first time. But he launched no physical onslaught, offered the Keep no opportunity to strike or be stricken. Instead his creatures dropped to their hands and knees, and glared hungrily at Revelstone like crouching prayers. The ur-vile loremasters set the tips of their staves in the ground, began a barking ululation or invocation which carried in shreds to the Keep through the tearing wind. And samadhi Raver, Sheol and Satansfist, squeezed his fragment of the Illearth Stone so that it ran with steam like boiling ice.

  As Mhoram watched, he could feel the upsurge of power on all sides; the exertion of might radiated at him until the skin of his cheeks stung under it despite the raw chill of the wind. But the besiegers took no other action. They held their positions in fierce concentration, scowling murderously as if they were envisioning the blood of their victims.

  Slowly, tortuously, they began to have an effect
upon the ground of the foothills. From the unflickering green blaze of the Stone, a rank emerald hue spread to the dirt around Satansfist’s feet and throbbed in the soil. It encircled him, pulsing like a fetid heart, then sent crooked offshoots like green veins through the ground toward Revelstone. These grew with each savage throb, branched out until they reached the backs of the crouching hordes. At that point, red pain sickly tinged with green blossomed from the embedded tips of the loremasters’ staves. Like Satansfist’s emerald, the ill red grew in the ground like arteries or roots of hurt. It shone through the gray ice on the earth without melting it, and expanded with each throb of samadhi’s central power until all of Revelstone was ringed in pulsing veins.

  The process of this growth was slow and deadly; by nightfall, the red-green harm was not far past the feet of the ur-viles; and after a long, lurid darkness, dawn found the veins just halfway to the walls. But it was implacable and sure. Mhoram could conceive no defense against it because he did not know what it was.

  During the next two days, the dread of it spread over Lord’s Keep. People began to talk in whispers. Men and women hurried from place to place as if they feared that the city stone were turning against them. Children whimpered inexplicably, and winced at the sight of well-known faces. A thick atmosphere of fear and incomprehension hovered in Revelstone like the spread wings of an alighting vulture. Yet Mhoram did not grasp what was being done to the city until the evening of the third day. Then by chance he approached Warmark Quaan unseen and unheard, and at the touch of his hand on Quaan’s shoulder, the Warmark reeled away in panic, clawing at his sword. When his eyes finally recognized the High Lord, his face filled with a gray ash of misery, and he trembled like an overwhelmed novice.

  With a groan of insight, Mhoram understood Revelstone’s plight. Dread of the unknown was only the surface of the peril. As he threw his arms around Quaan’s trembling, he saw that the red-green veins of power in the ground were not a physical danger; rather, they were a vehicle for the raw emotional force of the Despiser’s malice—a direct attack on the Keep’s will, a corrosive hurled against the moral fabric of Revelstone’s resistance.

  Fear was growing like a fatal disease in the heart of Lord’s Keep. Under the influence of those lurid veins, the courage of the city was beginning to rot.

  It had no defense. The lillianrill and rhadhamaerl could build vast warming fires within the walls. The Lorewardens could sing in voices that shook helplessly brave songs of encouragement and victory. The Warward could drill and train until the warriors had neither leisure nor stamina for fear. The Lords could flit throughout the city like blue ravens, carrying the light of courage and support and intransigence wherever they went, from gray day to blind night to gray day again. The Keep was not idle. As time dragged its dread-aggravated length along, moved through its skeletal round with an almost audible clatter of fleshless bones, everything that could be done was done. The Lords took to moving everywhere with their staffs alight, so that their bright azure could resist the erosion of Revelstone’s spirit. But still the veined, bloody harm in the ground multiplied its aegis over the city. The malignance of ten score thousand evil hearts stifled all opposition.

  Soon even the mountain rock of the plateau seemed to be whimpering in silent fear. Within five days, some families locked themselves in their rooms and refused to come out; they feared to be abroad in the city. Others fled to the apparent safety of the upland hills. Mad fights broke out in the kitchens, where any cook or food handler could snatch up a knife to slash at sudden gusts of terror. To prevent such outbursts, Warmark Quaan had to station Eoman in every kitchen and refectory.

  But though he drove them as if he had a gaunt specter of horror clinging to his shoulders, he could not keep even his warriors from panic. This fact he was finally forced to report to the High Lord, and after hearing it, Mhoram went to stand his watch on the tower. Alone there, he faced the night which fell as heavily as the scree of despair against the back of his neck, faced the unglimmering emerald loathsomeness of the Stone, faced the sick, red-green veined fire—and hugged his own dread within the silence of his heart. If he had not been so desperate, he might have wept in sympathy for Kevin Landwaster, whose dilemma he now understood with a keenness that cut him to the bone of his soul.

  Sometime later—after the darkness had added all its chill to Lord Foul’s winter, and the watch fires of the encampment had paled to mere sparks beside samadhi Raver’s loud, strong lust for death, Loerya Trevor-mate came to the tower, bearing with her a small pot of graveling which she placed before her when she sat on the stone, so that the glow lit her drawn face. The uplift of her visage cast her eyes into shadow, but still Mhoram could see that they were raw with tears.

  “My daughters”—her voice seemed to choke her—“my children—they—You know them, High Lord,” she said as if she were pleading. “Are they not children to make a parent proud?”

  “Be proud,” Mhoram replied gently. “Parents and children are a pride to each other.”

  “You know them, High Lord,” she insisted. “My joy in them has been large enough to be pain. They—High Lord, they will no longer eat. They fear the food—they see poison in the food. This evil maddens them.”

  “We are all maddened, Loerya. We must endure.”

  “How endure? Without hope—? High Lord, it were better if I had not borne children.”

  Gently, quietly, Mhoram answered a different question. “We cannot march out to fight this evil. If we leave these walls, we are ended. There is no other hold for us. We must endure.”

  In a voice suffused with weeping, Loerya said, “High Lord, summon the Unbeliever.”

  “Ah, sister Loerya—that I cannot do. You know I cannot. You know that I chose rightly when I released Thomas Covenant to the demands of his own world. Whatever other follies have twisted the true course of my life, that choice was not folly.”

  “Mhoram!” she beseeched thickly.

  “No. Loerya, think what you ask. The Unbeliever desired to save a life in his world. But time moves in other ways there. Seven and forty years have passed since he came first to Revelstone, yet in that time he has not aged even three cycles of the moon. Perhaps only moments have gone by for him since his last summoning. If he were called again now, perhaps he would still be prevented from saving the young child who needs him.”

  At the mention of a child, sudden anger twisted Loerya’s face. “Summon him!” she hissed. “What are his nameless children to me? By the Seven, Mhoram! Summon—!”

  “No.” Mhoram interrupted her, but his voice did not lose its gentleness. “I will not. He must have the freedom of his own fate—it is his right. We have no right to take it from him—no, even the Land’s utterest need does not justify such an act. He holds the white gold. Let him come to the Land if he wills. I will not gainsay the one true bravery of my unwise life.”

  Loerya’s anger collapsed as swiftly as it had come. Wringing her hands over the graveling as if even the hope of warmth had gone out of them, she moaned, “This evening my youngest—Yolenid—she is hardly more than a baby—she shrieked at the sight of me.” With an effort, she raised her streaming eyes to the high Lord, and whispered, “How endure?”

  Though his own heart wept for her, Mhoram met her gaze. “The alternative is Desecration.” As he looked into the ragged extremity of her face, he felt his own need crying out, urging him to share his perilous secret. For a moment that made his pulse hammer apprehensively in his temples, he knew that he would answer Loerya if she asked him. To warn her, he breathed softly, “Power is a dreadful thing.”

  A spark of inchoate hope lit her eyes. She climbed unsteadily to her feet, brought her face closer to his and searched him. The first opening of a meld drained the surfaces of his mind. But what she saw or felt in him stopped her. His cold doubt quenched the light in her eyes, and she receded from him. In an awkward voice that carried only a faint vibration of bitterness, she said, “No, Mhoram. I will not ask. I trust you o
r no one. You will speak when your heart is ready.”

  Gratitude burned under Mhoram’s eyelids. With a crooked smile, he said, “You are courageous, sister Loerya.”

  “No.” She picked up her graveling pot and moved away from him. “Though it is no fault of theirs, my daughters make me craven.” Without a backward glance, she left the High Lord alone in the lurid night.

  Hugging his staff against his chest, he turned and faced once more the flawless green wrong of the Raver’s Stone. As his eyes met that baleful light, he straightened his shoulders, drew himself erect, so that he stood upright like a marker or witness to Revelstone’s inviolate rock.

  FIVE: Lomillialor

  The weight of mortality which entombed Covenant seemed to press him deeper and deeper into the obdurate stuff of the ground. He felt that he had given up breathing—that the rock and soil through which he sank sealed him off from all respiration—but the lack of air gave him no distress; he had no more need for the sweaty labor of breathing. He was plunging irresistibly, motionlessly downward, like a man falling into his fate.

  Around him, the black earth changed slowly to mist and cold. It lost none of its solidity, none of its airless weight, but its substance altered, became by gradual increments a pitch-dark fog as massive and unanswerable as the pith of granite. With it, the cold increased. Cold and winter and mist wound about him like cerements.

  He had no sense of duration, but at some point he became aware of a chill breeze in the mist. It eased some of the pressure on him, loosened his cerements. Then an abrupt rift appeared some distance away. Through the gap, he saw a fathomless night sky, unredeemed by any stars. And from the rift shone a slice of green light as cold and compelling as the crudest emerald.