The Wounded Land (50 page)

There was a fresh tray on the table. The room had been closed against the rain, and the air reeked of smoke. Strangely certain now that the Clave would not try to poison or drug nun, he attacked the
food, wolfing it down to appease his empty rage. But he did not touch the flask of
metheglin;
he did not want anything to dull his alertness, hamper his reflexes. He sensed that Gibbon’s soothtell would be a crisis, and he meant to survive it.

He felt a compelling need to leave his suite and roam Revelstone, measuring his tension and resolve against the huge Keep. But he did not. Exerting a leper’s discipline, he sat down in one of the chairs, stretched his legs to another, rested his sore neck on the chair back, and forced himself to be still. Muscle by muscle, he loosened his body, relaxed his forehead, softened his pulse, in an effort to achieve the concentration and poise he required in order to be ready.

Faces intruded on him: Linden, Sunder, Brinn. Brinn’s visage was as absolute as Banner’s. Linden’s features were strained, not by severity or choice, but by fear. He closed his mind to them, so that his own passion would not blind him. Instead he thought about the hidden door Vain had discovered.

He could sense the answer in him, mumbling toward clarity. But it was still blocked by his preconceptions. Yet its very nearness drew beads of trepidation-sweat from his face. He was not prepared for the mendacity it represented.

Mendacity. He reached out for that idea, tried to take hold of its implications. But the hands of his mind were half-hands, inadequate.

The knock at his door jerked him erect. A pang stung his neck; droplets of sweat spattered the floor.

Before he could leave his chair, the door sprang open. Memla burst into the room.

A tangle of gray-streaked hair framed her pale visage. She clutched her
rukh
as if she meant to strike him with it. But it held no flame. Her eyes were full of broken honesty.

“False!” she gasped. “They have been false to me!”

He lurched to confront her across the table.

She gaped momentarily for words, unable to compress the enormity of her indignation into mere speech. Then she broke out, “They are here! Santonin—your companions! All here!”

Covenant gripped the table to keep himself from falling.

“Two Stonedownors and a stranger. In the hold.” Passion obstructed her breathing. “Santonin I saw, where he did not expect to be seen. The na-Mhoram uttered direct falsehood to me!

“I challenged Santonin. He revealed the truth—why I and others were sent to meet you. Smirking! Not to escort you, no. To ensure that you did not catch him. He gained Revelstone on the second day of the fertile sun. One day before us!”

One day? Something in Covenant began to howl
. One day?

“Had I not halted you—had you walked through the night—you might have come upon him before dawn. He passed near me.”

With an inchoate snarl, Covenant swung his arm, swept the tray from the table. Stoneware broke;
metheglin
splashed the floor. But the act steadied him. “Memla.” He had been unjust to her. He regained control of his limbs, his purpose; but he could not control his voice. “Take me to Gibbon.”

She stared at him. His demand took her aback. “You must flee. You are in peril.”

“Now.” He needed to move, begin, so that the trembling in his chest would not spread to his legs. “Take me to him now.”

She hesitated, then gave a fierce nod. “Yes. It is right,” Turning on her heel, she strode out of the room.

He surged after her in anguish and fury. Down toward the roots of Revelstone she guided him, along ways which he remembered. It was a long descent, but it seemed to pass swiftly. When she entered a familiar hall lit from its end by torches, he recognized the place where the Lords of the Council had had their private quarters.

The wide, round court beyond the hall both was and was not as he remembered it. The floor was burnished granite, as smooth as if it had been polished by ages of use and care. The ceiling rose far above the floor; and the walls were marked at intervals with coigns by which other levels of the Keep communicated with the dwellings spaced around the base of the cavity. These things accorded with his memory. But the light was altogether different. The Lords had not needed torches; the floor itself had shone with Earthpower. According to the old tales, the stone had been set aglow by Kevin Landwaster and the Staff of Law. But that illumination—so expressive of the warmth and fidelity of the Council—was gone now. The torches which replaced it seemed garish and unreliable by comparison.

But Covenant had neither time nor attention to spare for lost wonder. A score of the Clave stood around the center of the floor. All held their
rukhs
ready; and the na-Mhoram’s crozier dominated them. They had turned to the sound of Covenant’s entrance. Their hoods concealed their faces.

Within their circle lay a stone slab like a catafalque. Heavy iron fetters chained a man to it.

One of the
Haruchai
.

When Covenant stalked ahead of Memla to approach the circle, he recognized Brinn.

“Halfhand,” the na-Mhoram said. For the first time, Covenant heard excitement in Gibbon’s tone. “The soothtell is prepared. All your questions will be answered now.”

The vibration of augury in the na-Mhoram’s voice stopped Covenant. The high dome of the space was dark, untouched by the light of the torches; the Riders stood on the dead floor as if it were the bottom of an abyss. Behind the concealment of their hoods, they might have been ur-viles; only the pale flesh of their hands revealed that they were human as they poised their
rukhs
for fire. Santonin was probably among them. Stonemight Woodhelven’s fragment of the Illearth Stone was probably hidden somewhere in this circle. Gibbon’s tone told Covenant that the Clave had not gathered here to do him any benefit.

He came to a halt. Echoes of his rage repeated within him like another voice iterating ridicule. Instinctively he clenched his half-fist around his wedding band. But he did not retreat. In a raw snarl, he demanded, “What the bloody hell have you done with my friends?”

“The soothtell will answer.” Gibbon was eager, hungry. “Do you choose to risk the truth?”

Brinn gazed at Covenant. His mien was impassive; but sweat sheened his forehead. Abruptly he tensed against his fetters, straining with stubborn futility to break the chains.

Memla had not left the mouth of the hall. “Ware, Halfhand!” she warned in a whisper. “There is malice here.”

He felt the force of her warning. Brinn also was striving to warn him. For an instant, he hesitated. But the
Haruchai
had recognized him. Somehow Brinn’s people had preserved among them the tale of the Council and of the old wars against Corruption—the true tale, not a distorted version. And Covenant had met Bannor among his Dead in Andelain.

Gripping his self-control, he stepped into the circle, went to the catafalque. He rested a hand momentarily on Brinn’s arm. Then he faced the na-Mhoram.

“Let him go.”

The na-Mhoram did not reply directly. Instead he turned toward Memla. “Memla na-Mhoram-in,” he said, “you have no part in this soothtell. I desire you to depart.”

“No.” Her tone brandished outrage. “You have been false to him. He knows not what he chooses.”

“Nevertheless,” Gibbon began quietly, then lost his hebetude in a strident yell, “you will
depart
!”

For a moment, she refused. The air of the court was humid with conflicting intentions. Gibbon raised his crozier as if to strike at her. Finally the combined repudiation of the circle was too strong for her. In deep bitterness, she said, “I gave promise to the Halfhand for the safety of his companions. It is greatly wrong that the na-Mhoram holds the word of a na-Mhoram-in in such slight trust.” Turning on her heel, she strode away down the hall.

Gibbon dismissed her as if she had ceased to exist. Facing Covenant once again, he said, “There is no power without blood.” He seemed unable to suppress the acuity of his excitement. “And the soothtell requires power. Therefore this
Haruchai
. We will shed him to answer your questions.”

“No!” Covenant snapped. “You’ve killed enough of them already.”

“We must have blood,” the na-Mhoram said.

“Then kill one of your bloody Riders!” Covenant was white with fury. “I don’t give a good goddamn what you do! Just leave the
Haruchai
alone!”

“As you wish.” Gibbon sounded triumphant.

“Ur-Lord!” Brinn shouted.

Covenant misread Brinn’s warning. He sprang backward, away from the catafalque—into the hands of the Riders behind him. They grappled with him, caught his arms. Faster than he could defend himself, two knives flashed.

Blades slit both his wrists.

Two red lines slashed across his sight, across his soul. Blood spattered to the floor. The cuts were deep, deep enough to kill him slowly. Staring in horror, he sank to his knees. Pulsing rivulets marked his arms to the elbows. Blood dripped from his elbows, spreading his passion on the stone.

Around him, the Riders began to chant. Scarlet rose from their
rukhs
; the air became vermeil power.

He knelt helpless within the circle. The pain in his neck paralyzed him. A spike of utter trepidation had been driven through his spine, nailing him where he crouched. The outcry of his blood fell silently.

Gibbon advanced, black and exalted. With the tip of his crozier, he touched the growing pool, began to draw meticulous red lines around Covenant.

Covenant watched like an icon of desolation as the na-Mhoram enclosed him in a triangle of his blood.

The chanting became words he could not prevent himself from understanding.

When Gibbon had completed the triangle, he stepped back and raised his iron. Flame blossomed thetic and incarnadine from its end.

And Covenant exploded into vision.

He lost none of his self-awareness. The fires around him became more lurid and compelling; his arms felt as heavy as millstones; the chant labored like the thudding of his heart. But behind the walls he saw and the stone he knew, other sights reeled, other knowledge gyred, tearing at his mind.

At first, the vision was chaos, impenetrable. Images ruptured past the catafalque, the Riders, burst in and out of view so feverishly that he comprehended none of them. But when in anguish he surrendered to them, let them sweep him into the eye of their vertigo, some of them sprang toward clarity.

Like three blows of a fist, he saw Linden, Sunder, Hollian. They were in the hold, in cells. Linden lay on her pallet in a stupor as pale as death.

The next instant, those images were erased. With a wrench that shook him to the marrow of his bones, the chaos gathered toward focus. The Staff of Law appeared before him. He saw places: Revelstone besieged by the armies of the Despiser; Foul’s Creche crumbling into the Sea; Glimmermere opening its waters to accept the
krill
of Loric.
He saw faces: dead Elena in ecstasy and horror; High Lord Mhoram wielding the
krill
to slay a Raver’s body; Foamfollower laughing happily in the face of his own death. And behind it all he saw the Staff of Law. Through everything, implied by everything, the Staff. Destroyed by an involuntary deflagration of wild magic when dead Elena was forced to use it against the Land.

Kneeling there like a suicide in a triangle of blood, pinned to the stone by an iron pain, with his life oozing from his wrists, Covenant saw.

The Staff of Law. Destroyed.

The root of everything he needed to know.

For the Staff of Law had been formed by Berek Halfhand as a tool to serve and uphold the Law. He had fashioned the Staff from a limb of the One Tree as a way to wield Earthpower in defense of the health of the Land, in support of the natural order of life. And because Earthpower was the strength of mystery and spirit, the Staff became the thing it served. It was the Law; the Law was incarnate in the Staff. The tool and its purpose were one.

And the Staff had been destroyed.

That loss had weakened the very fiber of the Law. A crucial support was withdrawn, and the Law faltered.

From that seed grew both the Sunbane and the Clave.

They came into being together, gained mastery over the Land together, flourished together.

After the destruction of Foul’s Creche, the Council of Lords had prospered in Revelstone for centuries. Led first by High Lord Mhoram, then by successors equally dedicated and idealistic, the Council had changed the thrust and tenor of its past service. Mhoram had learned that the Lore of the Seven Wards, the knowledge left behind by Kevin Landwaster, contained within it the capacity to be corrupted. Fearing a renewal of Desecration, he had turned his back on that Lore, thrown the
krill
into Glimmermere, and commenced a search for new ways to use and serve the Earthpower.

Guided by his decision, Councils for generations after him had used and served, performing wonders. Trothgard had been brought back to health. All the old forests—Grimmerdhore, Morinmoss, Garroting Deep, Giant Woods—had thrived to such an extent that Caerroil Wildwood, the Forestal of Garroting Deep, had believed his labor ended at last, and had passed away; and even the darkest trees had lost much of their enmity for the people of the Land. All the war-torn wastes along Landsdrop between Mount Thunder and the Colossus of the Fall had been restored to life. The perversity of Sarangrave Flat had been reduced; and much had been done to ease the ruin of the Spoiled Plains.

For a score of centuries, the Council served the Land’s health in peace and fruitfulness. And at last the Lords began to believe that Lord Foul would never return, that Covenant had driven Despite utterly from the Earth. Paradise seemed to be within their grasp. Then in the confidence of peace, they looked back to High Lord Mhoram, and chose to change their names to mark the dawning of a new age. Their High Lord they christened the na-Mhoram; their Council they called the Clave. They saw no limit to the beauty they could achieve. They had no one to say to them that their accomplishments came far too easily.