The 1st Chronicles of Thomas Covenant #2: The Illearth War (11 page)

The high, intricate ways of the Keep had a strange power of suasion, an ability to carry conviction. They had been delved into the mountain promontory by Saltheart Foamfollower’s laughing, story-loving ancestors; and like the Giants they had an air of bluff and inviolable strength. Now Bannor was taking Covenant deeper down into Revelstone than he had ever been before. With his awakening perceptions, he could feel the massive gut-rock standing over him; it was as if he were in palpable contact with absolute weight itself. And on a pitch of hearing that was not quite audible, or not quite hearing, he could sense the groups of people who slept or worked in places beyond the walls from him. Almost he seemed to hear the great Keep breathe. And yet all those myriad, uncountable tons of stone were not fearsome. Revelstone gave him an impression of unimpeachable security; the mountain refused to let him fear that it would fall.

Then he and Bannor reached a dim hall sentried by two Bloodguard standing with characteristic relaxed alacrity on ,either side of the entrance. There were no torches or other lights in the hall, but a strong glow illuminated it from its far end. With a nod to his comrades, Bannor led Covenant inward.

At the end of the hall, they entered a wide, round courtyard under a high cavern, with a stone floor as smooth as if it had been meticulously polished for ages. The bright, pale-yellow light came from this floor; the stone shone as if a piece of the sun had gone into its making.

The courtyard held no other lights. But though it was not blinding at the level of the floor, the glow cast out all darkness. Covenant could survey the cave clearly from bottom to top. At intervals up the walls were railed coigns with doors behind them which provided access to the open space above the court.

Bannor paused for a moment to allow Covenant to look around. Then he walked barefoot out onto the shining floor. Tentatively, Covenant followed, fearing that his feet would be burned. But he felt nothing through his boots except a quiet resonance of power. It set up a tingling vibration in his nerves.

Only after he became accustomed to the touch of the floor did he notice that there were doors widely spaced around the courtyard. He counted fifteen. Bloodguard sentries stood at nine of them, and several feet into the shining floor from each of these nine was a wooden tripod. Three of these tripods held Lords’ staffs-and one of the staffs was the Staff of Law. It was distinguished from the smooth wood of the other staffs by its greater thickness, and by the complex runes carved into it between its iron heels.

Bannor took Covenant to the door behind the Staff. The Bloodguard there stepped forward to meet them, greeted Bannor with a nod.

Bannor said, “I have brought ur-Lord Covenant to the High Lord.”

“She awaits him.” Then the sentry leveled the impassive threat of his gaze at Covenant. “We are the Bloodguard. The care of the Lords is in our hands. I am Morin, First Mark of the Bloodguard since the passing of Tuvor. The High Lord will speak with you alone. Think no harm against her, Unbeliever. We will not permit it.” Without waiting for an answer, Morin, stepped aside to let him approach the door.

Covenant was about to ask what harm he could possibly do the High Lord, but Bannor forestalled him “In this place,” the Bloodguard explained, “the Lords set aside their burdens. Their staffs they leave here, and within these doors they rest, forgetting the cares of the Land. The High Lord honors you greatly in speaking to you here. Without Staff or guard, she greets you as a friend in her sole private place. UrLord, you are not a foe of the. Land. But you give little respect. Respect this.”

He held Covenant’s gaze for a moment as if to enforce his words. Then he went and knocked at the door.

When the High Lord opened her door, Covenant saw her clearly for the first time.

She had put aside her blue Lord’s robe, and instead wore a long, light brown Stonedownor shift with a white pattern woven into the shoulders. A white cord knotted at her waist emphasized her figure, and her thick hair, a rich brown with flashes of pale honey, fell to her shoulders, disguising the pattern there. She appeared younger than he had expected-he would have said that she was in her early thirties at most-but her face was strong, and the white skin of her forehead and throat knew much about sternness and discipline, though she smiled almost shyly when she saw Covenant.

But behind the experience of responsibility and commitment in her features was something strangely evocative. She seemed distantly familiar, as if in. the background of her face she resembled someone he had once known. This impression was both heightened and denied by her eyes. They were gray like his own; but though they met him squarely they had an elsewhere cast, a disunion of focus, as if she were watching something else-as if some other, more essential eyes, the eyes of her mind, were looking somewhere else. Her gaze touched parts of him which had not responded for a long time.

“Please enter,” she said in a voice like a clear spring.

Moving woodenly, Covenant went past her into her rooms, and she shut the door behind him, closing out the light from the courtyard. Her antechamber was illumined simply by a pot of graveling in each corner. Covenant stopped in the center of the room, and looked about him. The space was bare and unadorned, containing nothing but the graveling, a few stone chairs, and a table on which stood a white carving; but still the room seemed quiet and comfortable. The light gave this effect, he decided. The warm graveling glow made even flat stone companionable, enhanced the essential security of Revelstone. It was like being cradled-wrapped in the arms of the rock and cared for.

High Lord Elena gestured toward one of the chairs. “Will you sit? There is much of which I would speak with you.”

He remained standing, looking away from her. Despite the room’s ambience, he felt intensely uncomfortable. Elena was his summoner, and he distrusted her. But when he found his voice, he half surprised himself by expressing one of his most private concerns. Shaking his head, he muttered, “Bannor knows more than he’s telling.”

He caught her off guard. “More?” she echoed, groping. “What has he said that leaves more concealed?”

But he had already said more than he intended. He kept silent, watching her out of the corner of his sight.

“The Bloodguard know doubt,” she went on unsurely. “Since Kevin Landwaster preserved them from the Desecration and his own end, they have felt a distrust of their own fidelity-though none would dare to raise any accusation against them. Do you speak of this?”

He did not want to reply, but her direct attention compelled him. “They’ve already lived too long. Bannor knows it.” Then, to escape the subject, he went over to the table to look at the carving. The white statuette stood on an ebony base. It was a rearing Ranyhyn mare made of a material that looked like bone. The work was blunt of detail, but through some secret of its art it expressed the power of the great muscles, the intelligence of the eyes, the oriftlamme of the guttering mane.

Without approaching him, Elena said, “That is my craft-marrowmeld. Does it please you? It is Myrha, the Ranyhyn that bears me.”

Something stirred in Covenant. He did not want to think about the Ranyhyn, but he thought that he had found a discrepancy. “Foamfollower told me that the marrowmeld craft had been lost.”

“So it was. I alone in the Land practice this Ramen craft. Anundivian yajna, also named marrowmeld or bonesculpting, was lost to the Ramen during their exile in the Southron Range-during the Ritual of Desecration. I do not speak in pride-I have been blessed in many things. When I was a child, a Ranyhyn bore me into the mountains. For three days we did not return, so that my mother thought me dead. But the Ranyhyn taught me much-much- In my learning, I recovered the ancient craft. — The lore to reshape dry bones came to my hands. Now I practice it here, when the work of the Lords wearies me.”

Covenant kept his back to her, but he was not studying her sculpture. He was listening to her voice as if he expected it to change at any moment into the voice of someone he knew. Her tone resonated with implicit meanings. But he could not make them out. Abruptly, he turned to meet her eyes. Again, though ,’ she faced him, she seemed to be looking at or thinking about something else, something beyond him. Her a elsewhere glance disturbed him. Studying her, his frown deepened until he wore the healing of his forehead like a crown of thorns.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

“Will you sit?” she said quietly. “.There is much I would speak of with you.”

“Like what?”

The hardness of his tone did not make her flinch, but she spoke more quietly still.

“I hope to find a way to win your help against the Despiser.”

Thinking self-contemptuous thoughts, he . retorted, “How far are you willing to go?”

For an instant, the other focus of her eyes came close to him, touched him like a lick of fire. Blood rushed to his face, and he almost recoiled a step-so strongly did he feel for that instant that she had the capacity to go far beyond anything he could imagine. But the glimpse passed before he could guess at what it was. She turned unhurriedly away, went briefly into one of her other rooms. When she returned, she bore in her hands a wooden casket bound with old iron.

Holding the casket as if it contained something precious, she said, “‘The Council has been much concerned in this matter. Some said, ‘Such a gift is too great for anyone.

Let it be kept and safe for as long as we may be able to endure.’ And others said, ‘It will fail of its purpose, for he will believe that we seek to buy his aid with gifts. He will be angered against us, and will refuse.’ So spoke Lord Mhoram, whose knowledge of the Unbeliever is more than any other’s. But I said, ‘He is not our foe. He gives us no aid because he cannot give aid. Though he holds the white gold, its use is beyond him or forbidden him. Here is a weapon which surpasses us. It may be that he will be able to master it, and that with such a weapon he will help us, though he cannot use the white gold.’

“After much thought and concern, my voice prevailed. Therefore the Council asks to give you this gift, so that its power will not lie idle, but will turn against the Despiser.

“Ur-Lord Covenant, this is no light offering. Forty years ago, it was not in the possession of the Council. But the Staff of Law opened doors deep in Revelstone -doors which had been closed since the Desecration. The Lords hoped that these chambers contained other Wards of Kevin’s Lore-but no Wards were there. Yet among many things of forgotten use or little power this was found-this which we offer to you.”

She pressed curiously on the sides of the casket, and the lid swung open, revealing a cushioned velvet interior, on which lay a short silver sword. It was a two edged blade, with straight guards and a ribbed hilt; and it was forged around a clear white gem, which occupied the junction of the blade, guards, and hilt. This gem looked strangely lifeless; it reflected no light from the graveling, as if it were impervious or dead to any ordinary flame.

With awe in her low voice, Elena said, “This is the krill of Loric Vilesilencer son of Damelon son of Berek. With this he slew the Demondim guise of moksha Raver, and delivered the Land from the first great peril of the ur-viles. Ur-Lord Covenant, Unbeliever and Ringthane, will you accept it?”

Slowly, full of a leper’s fascinated dread of things that cut, Covenant lifted the krill from its velvet rest. Hefting it, he found that its balance pleased his hand, though his two fingers and thumb could not grip it well. Cautiously, he tested its edges with his thumb. They were as dull as if they had never been honed as dull as the white gem. For a moment, he stood still, thinking that a knife did not need to be sharp to harm him.

“Mhoram was right,” he said out of the dry, lonely hebetude of his heart. “I don’t want any gifts. I’ve had more gifts than I can bear.”

Gifts! It seemed to him that everyone he had ever known in the Land had tried to give him gifts-Foamfollower, the Ranyhyn,- Lord Mhoram, even Atiaran. The Land itself gave him an impossible nerve-health. But the gift of Lena Atiaran-daughter was more terrible than all the others. He had raped her, raped! And afterward, she had gone into hiding so that her people would not learn what had happened to her and punish him. She had acted with an extravagant forbearance so that he could go free-free to deliver Lord Foul’s prophecy of doom to the Lords. Beside that self-abnegation, even Atiaran’s sacrifices paled.

Lena! he cried. A violence of grief and self-recrimination blazed up in him. “I don’t want any more.” Thunder blackened his face. He grasped the krill in both fists, its blade pointing downward. With a convulsive movement, he stabbed the sword at the heart of the table, trying to break its blunt blade on the stone.

A sudden flash of white blinded him like an instant of lightning. The krill wrenched out of his hands. But he did not try to see what had happened to it. He spun instantly back to face Elena. Through the white dazzle that confused his sight, he panted,

“No more gifts! I can’t afford them!”

But she was not looking at him, not listening to him. She held her hands to her mouth as she stared past him at the table. “By the Seven!” she whispered. “What have you done?”

What — ?

He whirled to look.

The blade of the krill had pierced the stone; it was embedded halfway to its guards in the table.

Its white gem burned like a star.

Dimly, he became conscious of a throbbing ache in his wedding finger. His ring felt hot and heavy, almost molten. But he ignored it; he was afraid of it. Trembling, he reached out to touch the krill.

Power burned his fingers.

Hellfire!

He snatched his hand away. The fierce pain made him clasp his fingers under his other arm, and groan.

At once, Elena turned to him. “Are you harmed?” she asked anxiously. “What has happened to you?”

“Don’t touch me!” he gasped.

She recoiled in confusion, then stood watching him, torn between her concern for him and her astonishment at the blazing gem. After a moment, she shook herself as if throwing off incomprehension, and said softly, “Unbeliever-you have brought the krill to life.”