Thomas Covenant 03: Power That Preserves (34 page)

Lord Trevor began to neglect some of his duties. At odd times, he forgot why he had become a Lord, forgot the impulse which had made him a Lord in defiance of his lack of belief in himself; and he shirked normal responsibilities as if he were inexplicably afraid of failure. Loerya his wife remained staunch in her work, but she became distracted, almost furtive, as she moved through the Keep. She often went hungry so that her daughters could have more food. Whenever she saw the High Lord, she glared at him with a strange resentment in her eyes.

Like Loerya, Lord Amatin grew slowly distant. At every free moment she plunged into a feverish study of the First and Second Wards, searching so hard for the unlocking of mysteries that when she went back to her public duties her forehead looked as sore as if she had been battering it against her table.

Several Hirebrands and Gravelingases took to carrying fire with them wherever they went, like men who were going incomprehensibly blind. And on the twentieth day of the waiting, Warmark Quaan abruptly reversed all his former decisions; without consulting any of the Lords, he sent a party of scouts out of the Keep toward Satansfist’s camp. None of them returned.

Still the Raver’s army lay like dormant chains, constricting the heart of Revelstone.

Quaan berated himself to the High Lord. “I am a fool,” he articulated severely, “an old fool. Replace me before I am mad enough to send the Warward itself out to die.”

“Who can replace you?” Mhoram replied gently. “It is the Despiser’s purpose to make mad all the defenders of the Land.”

Quaan looked around him as if to measure with his eyes the chill of Revelstone’s travail. “He will succeed. He requires no weapon but patience.”

Mhoram shrugged. “Perhaps. But I think it is an unsure tactic. Lord Foul cannot foretell the size of our stores—or the extent of our determination.”

“Then why does he wait?”

The High Lord did not need to be a seer to answer this question. “
Samadhi
Raver awaits a sign—perhaps from us—perhaps from the Despiser.”

Glowering at the thought, Quaan went back to his duties. And Mhoram returned to a problem which had been nagging at him. For the third time, he went in search of Trell.

But once again he could not locate the tormented Gravelingas. Trell must have secreted himself somewhere. Mhoram found no trace, felt no emanation, and none of the other
rhadhamaerl
had seen the big Stonedownor recently. Mhoram ached at the thought of Trell in hiding, gnawing in cataleptic isolation the infested meat of his anguishes. Yet the High Lord could not afford either the time or the energy to dredge all Revelstone’s private places for the sake of one embittered Gravelingas. Before he had completed even a cursory search, he was distracted by a group of Lorewardens who had irrationally decided to go and negotiate a peace with the Raver. Once again, he was compelled to put aside the question of Trell Atiaran-mate.

On the twenty-fourth day, Lord Trevor forsook his duties altogether.

He sealed himself in his study like a penitent, and refused all food and drink. Loerya could get no response from him, and when the High Lord spoke to him, he said nothing except that he wished his wife and daughters to have his ration of food.

“Now even I am a cause of pain to him,” Loerya murmured with hot tears in her eyes. “Because I have given some of my food to my daughters, he believes that he is an insufficient husband and father, and must sacrifice himself.” She gave Mhoram one desperate glance, like a woman trying to judge the cost of abdication, then hurried away before he could reply.

On the twenty-fifth day, Lord Amatin strode up to Mhoram and demanded without preface or explanation that he reveal to her his secret knowledge.

“Ah, Amatin,” he sighed, “are you so eager for burdens?”

She turned at once and walked fragilely away as if he had betrayed her.

When he went to stand his solitary watch on the tower, a dull vermeil mood was on him, and he felt that he had in fact betrayed her; he had withheld dangerous knowledge from her as if he judged her unable to bear it. Yet nowhere in his heart could he find the courage to give his fellow Lords the key to the Ritual of Desecration. That key had a lurid, entrancing weight. It urged him to rage at Trevor, pummel the pain from Loerya’s face, shake Amatin’s frail shoulders until she understood, call down fire from the hidden puissance of the skies on Satansfist’s head—and refused to let him speak.

On the twenty-seventh day, the first of the storerooms was emptied. Together the chief cook and the most experienced Healer reported to Mhoram that the cold and infirm would begin to die of hunger in a few days.

When he went to his chambers to rest, he felt too cold to sleep. Despite the warm graveling, Lord Foul’s winter reached through the stone walls at him as if the gray, unfaltering wind were tuned to his most vulnerable resonances. He lay wide-eyed on his pallet like a man in a fever of helplessness and imminent despair.

The next night he was snatched off his bed shortly after midnight by the sudden thrill of trepidation which raced through the walls like a flame in the extreme tinder of the Keep’s anticipation. He was on his way before any summons could reach him; with his staff clenched whitely in his hand, he hastened toward the highest eastward battlements of the main Keep. He focused on Quaan’s dour presence, found the Warmark on a balcony overlooking the watchtower and the night soot of Satansfist’s army.

As Mhoram joined him, Quaan pointed one rigid arm like an indictment away toward the east. But the High Lord did not need Quaan’s gesture; the sight seemed to spring at him out of the darkness like a bright abomination on the wind.

Running from the east toward Revelstone was a rift in the clouds, a break that stretched out to the north and south as far as Mhoram could see. The rift appeared wide, assertive, but the clouds behind it were as impenetrable as ever.

It was so clearly visible because through it streamed light as green as the frozen essence of emerald.

Its brightness made it seem swift, but it moved like a slow, ineluctable tide across the ice-blasted fields beyond the foothills. Its green, radiant swath swept like a blaze of wrong over the ground, igniting invisible contours into brilliance and then quenching them again. Mhoram watched it in stunned silence as it lit the Raver’s army and rushed on into the foothills of the plateau. Like a tsunami of malignant scorn, it rolled upward and broke across the Keep.

People screamed when they saw the full emerald moon leering evilly at them through the rift. The High Lord himself flinched, raised his staff as if to ward off a nightmare. For a horrific moment while the rift moved, Lord Foul’s moon dominated the clear, starless abysm of the sky like an incurable wound, a maiming of the very Law of the heavens. Emerald radiance covered everything, drowned every heart and drenched Revelstone’s every upraised rock in thetic, green defeat.

Then the rift passed; sick light slid away into the west. Lord’s Keep sank like a broken sea-cliff into irreparable night.

“
Melenkurion!
” Quaan panted as if he were suffocating. “
Melenkurion!
”

Slowly Mhoram realized that he was grimacing like a cornered madman. But while the darkness crashed and echoed around him, he could not relax his features; the contortion clung to his face like the grin of a skull. A long, taut time seemed to pass before he thought to peer through the night at Satansfist’s army.

When at last he compelled himself to look, he saw that the army had come to life. It sloughed off its uneasy repose and began to seethe, bristling in the darkness like reanimated lust.

“Ready the Warward,” he said, fighting an unwonted tremor in his rough voice. “The Raver has been given his sign. He will attack.”

With an effort, Warmark Quaan brought himself back under control and left the balcony, shouting orders as he moved.

Mhoram hugged his staff to his chest and breathed deeply, heavily. At first, the air shuddered in his lungs, and he could not pull the grimace off his face. But slowly he untied his muscles, turned his tension into other channels. His thoughts gathered themselves around the defense of the Keep.

Calling on the Hearthralls and the other Lords to join him, he went to the tower to watch what
samadhi
Raver was doing.

There in the company of the two shaken sentries, he could follow the Raver’s movements. Satansfist held his fragment of the Illearth Stone blazing aloft, an oriflamme of gelid fire, and its stark green illumination revealed him clearly as he moved among his forces, barking orders in a hoarse, alien tongue. Without haste he gathered ur-viles about him until their midnight forms spread out under his light like a lake of black water. Then he forged them into two immense wedges, one on either side of him, with their tips at his shoulders, facing Revelstone. In the garish Stone light, the loremasters looked like roynish, compact power, fatal and eager. Waves of other creatures fanned out beyond them on either side as they began to approach the Keep.

Following the Raver’s fire, they moved deliberately straight out of the southeast toward the knuckled and clenched gates at the base of the watchtower.

High Lord Mhoram tightened his grip on his staff and tried to prepare himself for whatever might happen.

At his back, he felt Lord Amatin and Hearthrall Borillar arrive, followed shortly by Tohrm and then Quaan. Without taking his eyes off Satansfist’s approach, the Warmark reported.

“I have ordered two Eoward into the tower. More would serve no purpose—they would block each other. Half are archers. They are good warriors,” he added unnecessarily, as if to reassure himself, “and all their Hafts and Warhafts are veterans of the war against Fleshharrower.

“The archers bear
lor-liarill
shafts. They will begin at your signal.”

Mhoram nodded his approval. “Tell half the archers to strike when the Raver enters arrow range. Hold the rest for my signal.”

The Warmark turned to deliver these instructions, but Mhoram abruptly caught his arm. A chill tightened the High Lord’s scalp as he said, “Place more archers upon the battlements above the court of the Gilden. If by some great ill Satansfist breaches the gates, the defenders of the tower will require aid. And—stand warriors ready to cut loose the crosswalks from the Keep.”

“Yes, High Lord.” Quaan was a warrior and understood the necessity for such orders. He returned Mhoram’s grip firmly, like a clasp of farewell, then left the top of the tower.

“Breach the gates?” Borillar gaped as if the mere suggestion amazed him. “How is it possible?”

“It is not possible,” Tohrm replied flatly.

“Nevertheless we must prepare.” Mhoram braced his staff on the stone like a standard, and watched
samadhi
Sheol’s approach.

No one spoke while the army marched forward. It was already less than a hundred yards below the gates. Except for the dead rumble of its myriad feet on the frozen ground, it moved in silence, as if it were stalking the Keep—or as if in spite of their driven hunger many of its creatures themselves dreaded what Satansfist meant to do.

Mhoram felt that he had only moments left. He asked Amatin if she had seen either Trevor or Loerya.

“No.” Her whispered answer had an empty sound, like a recognition of abandonment.

Moments later, a flight of arrows thrummed from one of the upper levels of the tower. They were invisible in the darkness, and Satansfist gave no sign that he knew they had been fired. But the radiance of the Illearth Stone struck them into flame and knocked them down before they were within thirty feet of him.

Another flight, and another, had no effect except to light the front of the Raver’s army, revealing in lurid green and orange the deadly aspect of its leaders.

Then
samadhi
halted. On either side of him, the ur-viles trembled. He coughed his orders. The wedges tightened. Snarling the Cavewights and other creatures arranged themselves into formations, ready to charge.

Without haste or hesitation, the Giant-Raver clenched his fist, so that iridescent steam plumed upward from his fragment of the Stone.

Mhoram could feel the Stone’s power mounting, radiating in tumid waves against his face.

Abruptly a bolt of force lashed from the Stone and struck the ground directly before one of the loremasters. The blast continued until the soil and rock caught fire, burned with green flames, crackled like firewood. Then
samadhi
moved his bolt, drew it over the ground in a wide, slow arc toward the other loremaster. His power left behind a groove that flamed and smoldered, flared and groaned in earthen agony.

When the arc was complete, it enclosed Satansfist from side to side—a half-circle of emerald coals standing in front of him like a harness anchored by the two ur-vile wedges.

Remembering the vortex of trepidation with which Fleshharrower had attacked the Warward at Doriendor Corishev, Mhoram strode across the tower and shouted up at the Keep, “Leave the battlements! All but the warriors must take shelter! Do not expose yourselves lest the sky itself assail you!” Then he returned to Lord Amatin’s side.

Below him, the two great loremasters raised their staves and jabbed them into the ends of the arc. At once, Demondim vitriol began to pulse wetly along the groove. The green flames turned black; they bubbled, spattered, burst out of the arc as if Satansfist had tapped a vein of EarthBlood in the ground.

By the time Warmark Quaan had returned to the tower, Mhoram knew that
samadhi
was not summoning a vortex. The Raver’s exertion was like nothing he had ever seen before. And it was slower than he had expected it to be. Once the ur-viles had tied themselves to the arc, Satansfist started to work with his Stone. From its incandescent core, he drew a fire that gushed to the ground and poured into the groove of the arc. This force combined with the black fluid of the ur-viles to make a mixture of ghastly potency. Soon black-green snake-tongues of lightning were flicking into the air from the whole length of the groove, and these bursts carried to the onlookers a gut-deep sense of violation, as if the rocky foundations of the foothills were under assault—as if the Despiser dared traduce even the necessary bones of the Earth.