Thomas Covenant 03: Power That Preserves (46 page)

During a brief moment of dazed half-sleep late that fourth night, the High Lord found himself murmuring, “Covenant, Covenant,” as if he were trying to remind the Unbeliever of a promise.

But the next morning the attacks stopped. A silence like the quietude of open graves blew into Revelstone on the wind. All the creatures had returned to their encampment, and in their absence Revelstone panted and quivered like a scourged prisoner between lashes. Mhoram took the opportunity to eat, but he put food into his mouth without seeing it and chewed without tasting it. In the back of his mind, he was trying to measure the remnant of his endurance. Yet he responded immediately when a messenger hastened up to him, informed him that
samadhi
Raver was approaching the Keep alone.

Protected by flanks of archers from any attack by the enemy occupying the tower, Mhoram and the other Lords went to one of the high balconies near the eastward point of the Keep and faced Satansfist.

The Giant-Raver approached sardonically, with a swagger of confidence and a spring of contempt in his stride. His huge fist gripped his fragment of the Stone, and it steamed frigidly in the freezing air. He stopped just beyond effective bow range, leered up at the Lords, and shouted stertorously, “Hail, Lords! I give you greeting! Are you well?”

“Well!” Quaan grated under his breath. “Let him come five paces nearer, and I will show him ‘well.’ ”

“My master is concerned for you!”
samadhi
continued. “He fears that you have begun to suffer in this unnecessary conflict!”

The High Lord’s eyes glinted at this gibe. “Your master lives for the suffering of others! Do you wish us to believe that he has eschewed Despite?”

“He is amazed and saddened that you resist him. Do you still not see that he is the one word of truth in this misformed world? His is the only strength—the one right. The Creator of the Earth is a being of disdain and cruelty! All who are not folly-blind know this. All who are not cowards in the face of the truth know that Lord Foul is the only truth. Has your suffering taught you nothing? Has Thomas Covenant taught you nothing? Surrender, I say! Give up this perverse and self-made misery—surrender! I swear to you that you will stand as my equals in the service of Lord Foul!”

In spite of his mordant sarcasm, the Raver’s voice carried a strange power of persuasion. The might of the Stone was in his words, compelling his hearers to submit. As
samadhi
spoke, Mhoram felt that the flesh of his resistance was being carved away, leaving his bare bones exposed to the winter. His throat ached at the taste of abdication, and he had to swallow heavily before he could reply.

“
Samadhi
Sheol,” he croaked, then swallowed again and focused all his skeletal resolve in his voice. “
Samadhi
Sheol! You mock us, but we are not mocked. We are not blind—we see the atrocity which underlies your persuasion. Begone! Foul-chattel! Take this army of torment and despication—return to your master. He has made your suffering—let him take joy in it while he can. Even as we stand here, the days of his might are numbered. When his end comes upon him, be certain he will do nothing to preserve your miserable being. Begone, Raver! I have no interest in your cheap taunts.”

He hoped that the Raver would react with anger, do something which would bring him within reach of the archers. But Satansfist only laughed. Barking with savage glee, he turned away and gave a shout that sent his forces forward to renew their assault.

Mhoram turned also, pulled himself painfully around to face his fellow Lords. But they were not looking at him. They were intent on a messenger who stood trembling before them. Fear-sweat slicked his face despite the cold, and the muscles of his throat locked, clenched him silent. Mutely he reached into his tunic, brought out a cloth bundle. His hands shook as he unwrapped it.

After a febrile moment, he exposed the
krill
.

Its gem was as dull as death.

Mhoram thought he heard gasps, groans, cries, but he could not be sure. Dread roared in his ears, made other sounds indistinguishable. He snatched up the
krill
. Staring aghast at it, he fell to his knees, plunged as if his legs had broken. With all the force of his need, he thrust his gaze into the gem, tried to find some gleam of life in it. But the metal was cold to his touch, and the edges of the blade were dull. Blind, lusterless winter filled the furthest depths of the jewel.

The hope of the wild magic was lost. Covenant was gone.

Now Mhoram understood why the Raver had laughed.

“Mhoram?”

“High Lord.”

“Mhoram!”

Supplications reached toward him, asking him for strength, begging him, requiring. He ignored them. He shrugged off the hands of melding which plucked at his mind. The prophecy of his dread had come to pass. He had nothing left with which to answer supplications.

“Ah, High Lord!”

There were tears and despair in the appeals, but he had nothing left with which to answer.

He was only dimly aware that he rose to his feet, returned the
krill
to the messenger. He wanted it removed from his sight as if it were a treacher, yet that feeling occupied only a distant portion of him. With the rest, he tightened his frail blue robe as if he were still fool enough to believe it could protect him from the cold, and walked numbly away from the battlement. The short, stiff shock of his hair, newly grown after the fire in the Close, gave him a demented aspect. People came after him, beseeching, requiring, but he kept up his wooden pace, kept ahead of them so that he would not have to see their needy faces.

He gave no thought to where he was going until he reached a fork in the passage. There, the weight of decision almost crushed him to his knees again—left and down into the Keep, or right and out toward the upland plateau. He turned to the right because he could not bear the unintended recrimination of Revelstone—and because he was a man who already knew that he had no choice.

When he started up the long ascending road, the people behind him slowed, let him go. He heard them whispering:

“He goes to the Unfettered One—to the interpreter of dreams.”

But that was not where he was going; he had no questions to ask an oracle. Oracles were for people to whom ambiguous visions could make a difference, but now the only things which could make a difference to High Lord Mhoram son of Variol were things which would give him courage.

In a stupor of dread, he climbed out into the wind which scythed across the open plateau. Above its chill ululations, he could hear battle crashing against the walls of the Keep, waves of assailants hurling themselves like breakers against a defiant and ultimately frangible cliff. But he put the sound behind him; it was only a symbol, a concentration, of the whole Land’s abominable doom. Without Thomas Covenant—! Mhoram could not complete the thought. He walked up through the barren hills away from Revelstone, up toward the river and northward along it, with an abyss in his heart where the survival of the Land should have been. This, he told himself, was what Kevin Landwaster must have felt when Lord Foul overwhelmed Kurash Plenethor, making all responses short of Desecration futile. He did not know how the pain of it could be endured.

After a time, he found himself standing cold in the wind on a hill above Glimmermere. Below him, the rare, potent waters of the lake lay unruffled despite the buffeting of the wind. Though the skies above it were as gray as the ashes of the world’s end, it seemed to shine with remembered sunlight. It reflected cleanly the hills and the distant mountains, and through its purity he could see its fathomless, rocky bottom.

He knew what he would have to do; he lacked courage, not comprehension. The last exactions of faith lay unrolled before him in his dread like the map of a country which no longer existed. When he stumbled frozenly down toward the lake, he did so because he had nowhere else to turn. There was Earthpower in Glimmermere. He placed his staff on the bank, stripped off his robe, and dropped into the lake, praying that its icy waters would do for him what he could not do for himself.

Though he was already numb with cold, the water seemed to burn instantly over all his flesh, snatch him out of his numbness like a conflagration in his nerves. He had had no thought of swimming when he had slipped into the depths, but the force of Glimmermere triggered reactions in him, sent him clawing up toward the surface. With a whooping gasp, he broke water, sculled for a moment to catch his breath against the fiery chill, then struck out for the bank where he had left his robe.

Climbing out onto the hillside, he felt aflame with cold, but he compelled himself to remain naked while the wind made ice of the water on his limbs and dried him. Then he pulled his robe urgently over his shoulders, hugged his staff to his chest so that its heat warmed him where he most needed warming. His feverish chill took some time to pass, and while he waited, he braced himself, strove to shore up his heart against the obstacles and the dismay which awaited him.

He had to do something which was obviously impossible. He had to slay
samadhi
Satansfist.

He would need help.

Putting grimly aside all his former scruples, he turned to the only possible source of help—the only aid whose faithfulness matched his need. He raised one cold hand to his lips and whistled shrilly three times.

The turbulent wind seemed to snatch the sound to pieces, tatter it instantly. In a place where echoes were common, his call disappeared without resonance or answer; the wind tore it away as if to undo his purpose, make him unheard. Nevertheless he summoned his trust, pried himself up the hillside to stand waiting on the vantage of the crest. A suspense like the either/or of despair filled him, but he faced the western mountains as if his heart knew neither doubt nor fear.

Long moments which sharpened his suspense to the screaming point passed before he saw a dull brown movement making its way toward him out of the mountains. Then his soul leaped up in spite of its burdens, and he stood erect with the wind snapping in his ears so that his stance would be becoming to the Ranyhyn that was answering his call.

The wait nearly froze the blood in his veins, but at last the Ranyhyn reached the hills around Glimmermere, and nickered in salutation.

Mhoram groaned at the sight. In order to answer his call, the Ranyhyn must have left the Plains of Ra scores of days ago—must have fled Satansfist’s army to run straight across the Center Plains into the Westron Mountains, then found its pathless way among the high winter of the peaks northward to the spur of the range which jutted east and ended in the plateau of Revelstone. The long ordeal of the mountain trek had exacted a severe price from the great stallion. His flesh hung slack over gaunt ribs, he stumbled painfully on swollen joints, and his coat had a look of ragged misery. Still Mhoram recognized the Ranyhyn, and greeted him with all the respect his voice could carry:

“Hail, Drinny, proud Ranyhyn! Oh, bravely done! Worthy son of a worthy mother. Tail of the Sky, Mane of the World, I am”—a clench of emotion caught his throat, and he could only whisper—“I am honored.”

Drinny made a valiant effort to trot up to Mhoram, but when he reached the High Lord he rested his head trembling on Mhoram’s shoulder as if he needed the support in order to keep his feet. Mhoram hugged his neck, whispered words of praise and encouragement in his ear, stroked his ice-clogged coat. They stood together as if in their differing weaknesses they were making promises to each other. Then Mhoram answered the nudging of Drinny’s unquenchable pride by springing onto the Ranyhyn’s back. Warming the great horse with his staff, he rode slowly, resolutely, back toward Revelstone.

The ride took time—time made arduous and agonizing by the frailty of Drinny’s muscles, his painful, exhausted stumbling. While they passed down through the hills, Mhoram’s own weariness returned, and he remembered his inadequacy, his stupefying dread. But he had placed his feet on the strait path of his faith; now he held the Ranyhyn between his knees and bound himself in his determination not to turn aside. Drinny had answered his call. While his thoughts retained some vestige of Glimmermere’s clarity, he made his plans.

Then at last his mount limped down into the wide tunnel which led into Lord’s Keep. The clop of hooves echoed faintly against the smooth stone walls and ceiling—echoed and scurried ahead of the High Lord like a murmurous announcement of his return. Soon he could feel the voices of the Keep spreading word of him, proclaiming that he had come back on a Ranyhyn. People left their work and hastened to the main passage of the tunnel to see him. They lined his way, muttered in wonder or pain at the sight of the Ranyhyn, whispered intently to each other about the look of focused danger which shone in his eyes. Down into the Keep he rode as if he were borne on a low current of astonishment and hope.

After he had ridden a few hundred yards along the main ways of Revelstone, he saw ahead of him the other leaders of the city—the Lords Trevor, Amatin, and Loerya, Warmark Quaan, the two Hearthralls, Tohrm and Borillar. They awaited him as if they had come out together to do him honor. When the Ranyhyn stopped before them, they saluted the High Lord and his mount mutely, lacking words for what they felt.

He gazed back at them for a moment, studied them. In their separate ways, they were all haggard, needy, stained with battle. Quaan in particular appeared extravagantly worn. His bluff old face was knotted into a habitual scowl now, as if only the clench of constant belligerence held the pieces of his being together. And Amatin, too, looked nearly desperate; her physical slightness seemed to drain her moral stamina. Borillar’s face was full of tears that Mhoram knew came from the loss of Thomas Covenant. Trevor and Loerya supported each other, unable to remain upright alone. Of them all, only Tohrm was calm, and his calm was the steadiness of a man who had already passed through his personal crisis. Nothing could be worse for him than the stone Desecration he had experienced in the Close—experienced and mastered. The others met Mhoram with concentrated hope and dismay and suspense and effectlessness in their faces—expressions which begged to know what this returning on a Ranyhyn meant.