Borillar was doubtful. "Our stores of rillinlure will be swiftly consumed in such quantities of food. None will remain for the future of this siege."
"That is as it must be. Our error has been to conserve and portion our strength against future perils. If we fail to endure this assault, we will have no future.'' When Borillar still hesitated, Mhoram went on: "Do not fear, Hearthrall. Satansfist himself must rest after such an exertion of power."
After a moment, Borillar recognized the wisdom of the High Lord's decision. He left to obey, and Mhoram turned to the other Lords. "My friends, to us falls another task. We must bring the people here so that they may eat and be restored."
"Send the Warward,'' said Loerya. Her pain at being away from her daughters was plainly visible in her face.
"No. Fear will cause some to resist with violence. We must call them, make them wish to come. We must put aside our own apprehension, and send a call like a melding through the Keep, so that the people will choose to answer."
"Who will defend Revelstone-while we work here ?'' Trevor asked.
"The peril is here. We must not waste our strength on useless watching. While this attack continues, there will be no other. Come. Join your power to mine. We, the Lords, cannot permit the Keep to be thus broken in spirit."
As he spoke, he drew a fire bright and luminescent from his staff. Tuning it to the ambience of the stone, he set it against one wall so that it ran through the rock like courage, urging all the people within its range to lift up their heads and come to the refectory.
At his back, he felt Amatin, Trevor, then Loerya following his example. Their Lords-fire joined his; their minds bent to the same task. With their help, he pushed dread away, shared his own indomitable conviction, so that the appeal which radiated from them into Revelstone carried no flaw or dross of fear.
Soon people began to answer. Hollow-eyed like the victims of nightmares, they entered the refectory-accepted steaming trays from the chief cook and the Hirebrands-sat at the tables and began to eat. And when they had eaten, they found themselves ushered to a nearby hall, where the Lorewardens enjoined them to sing boldly in the face of defeat:
Berek! Earthfriend!-help and weal, Battle-aid against the foe!
Earth gives and answers Power's peal,
Ringing, Earthfriend! help and heal! Clean the Land from bloody death and woe!
More and more people came, drawn by the music, and the Lords, and the reaffirmation of Revelstone's granite. Supporting each other, carrying their children, dragging their friends, they fought their fear and came because the deepest impulses of their hearts responded to food, music, rillinlure, rock-to the Lords and the life of Revelstone.
After the first influx, the Lords took turns resting so that fatigue would not make their efforts waver. When the rillinlure gave out, the Hirebrands provided special fires for the returning cooks, and joined their own lore to the call of the Lords. Quaan's warriors gave up all pretense of guarding the walls, and came to help the cooks-clearing tables, cleaning pots and trays, carrying supplies from the storerooms.
Now the city had found a way to resist the dread, and it was determined to prevail. In all, less than half of Revelstone's people responded. But they were enough. They kept Lord's Keep alive when the very air they breathed reeked of malice.
For four days and four nights, High Lord Mhoram did not leave his post. He rested and ate to sustain himself, but he stayed at his station by the refectory wall. After a time, he hardly saw or heard the people moving around him. He concentrated on the stone, wrought himself to the pitch of Revelstone, to the pulse of its existence and the battle for possession of its life rock. He saw as clearly as if he were standing on the watchtower that Satansfist's livid power oozed close to the outer walls and then halted- hung poised while the Keep struggled against it. He heard the muffled groaning of the rock as it fought to remember itself. He felt the exhaustion of the Gravelingases. All these things he took into himself, and against the Despiser's wrong he placed his unbreaking will.
And he won.
Shortly before dawn on the fifth day, the onslaught broke like a tidal wave collapsing out to sea under its own weight. For a long stunned moment, Mhoram felt jubilation running through the rock under his feet and could not understand it. Around him, people gaped as if the sudden release of pressure astounded them. Then, swept together by a common impulse, he and everyone else dashed toward the outer battlements to look at the siege.
The ground below them steamed and quivered like wounded flesh, but the malevolence which had stricken it was gone. Satansfist's army lay prostrate from overexertion in its encampments. The Giant-Raver himself was nowhere to be seen.
Over all its walls from end to end, Revelstone erupted in the exultation of victory. Weak, hoarse, ragged, starving voices cheered, wept, shouted raucous defiance as if the siege had been beaten. Mhoram found his own vision blurred with relief. When he turned to go back into the Keep, he discovered Loerya behind him, weeping happily and trying to hug all three of her daughters at once. At her side, Trevor crowed, and tossed one of the girls giggling into the air.
"Rest now, Mhoram," Loerya said through her joy. "Leave the Keep to us. We know what must be done."
High Lord Mhoram nodded his mute gratitude and went wearily away to his bed.
Yet even then he did not relax until he had felt the Warward resume its defensive stance-felt search parties hunting through the Keep for the most blighted survivors of the assault-felt order slowly reform the city like a mammoth being struggling out of chaos. Only then did he let himself flow with the slow pulse of the gut-rock and lose his burdens in sleep-secure in the confidence of stone.
By the time he awoke the next morning, Lord's Keep had been returned as much as possible to battle-readiness. Warmark Quaan brought a tray of breakfast to him in his private quarters, and reported the news of the city to him while he ate.
Thanks to its training, and to exceptional service by some of the Hafts and Warhafts, the Warward had survived essentially unscathed. The Gravelingases were exhausted, but well. The Lorewardens and Hirebrands had suffered only chance injuries from panic-stricken friends. But the people who had not answered the Lords' summons had not fared so well. Search parties had found several score dead, especially in ground-level apartments near the outer walls. Most of these people had died of thirst, but some were murdered by their fear-mad friends and neighbors. And of the hundreds of other survivors, four- or fivescore appeared irreparably insane.
After the search had ended, Lord Loerya had taken to the Healers all those who were physically and mentally damaged, as well as those who seemed to remember having committed murder. She was assisting the Healers now. In other ways, Revelstone was swiftly recovering. The Keep was intact.
Mhoram listened in silence, then waited for the old Warmark to continue. But Quaan fell studiously silent, and the High Lord was forced to ask, "What of the Raver's army?"
Quaan spat in sudden vehemence. "They have not moved."
It was true. Satansfist's hordes had retreated to their encampment and fallen into stasis as if the force which animated them had been withdrawn.
In the days that followed, they remained essentially still. They moved enough to perform the bare functions of their camp. They received dark supply wains from the south and east. From time to time, an indefinite flicker of power ran among them-a halfhearted whip keeping surly beasts under control. But none of them approached within hailing distance of the Keep. Samadhi Raver did not show himself. Only the unbroken girdle of the siege showed that Lord Foul had not been defeated.
For five days-ten-fifteen-the enemy lay like a dead thing around Revelstone. At first, some of the more optimistic inhabitants of the city argued that the spirit of the attackers had been broken. But Warmark Quaan did not believe this, and after one long look from the watchtower, Mhoram agreed with his old friend.
Satansfist was simply waiting for Revelstone to eat up its supplies, weaken itself, before h
e launched his next assault.
As the days passed, High Lord Mhoram lost his capacity to rest. He lay tense in his chambers and listened to the mood of the city turn sour.
Slowly, day by day, Lord's Keep came to understand its predicament. The Giants who had delved Revelstone out of the mountain rock thousands of years ago, in the age of Damelon, had made it to be impregnable; and all its inhabitants had lived from birth with the belief that this intention had succeeded. The walls were granite, and the gates, unbreakable. In a crisis the fertile upland plateau could provide the Keep with food. But the Despiser's unforeseen, unforeseeable winter had laid the upland barren; crops and fruit could not grow, cattle or other animals could not live, in the brazen wind. And the storerooms had already supplied the city since the natural onset of winter.
For the first time in its long history, Revelstone's people saw that they might starve.
In the initial days of waiting, the Lords began a stricter rationing of the supplies. They reduced each person's daily share of food until everyone in Revelstone felt hungry all the time. They organized the refectories more stringently, so that food would not be wasted. But these measures were palpably inadequate. The city had many thousand inhabitants; even on minimal rations they consumed large portions of the stores every day.
Their earlier elation ran out of them like water leaking into parched sand. The wait became first stupefying, then heavy and ominous, like pent thunder, then maddening. And High Lord Mhoram found himself yearning for the next attack. He could fight back against an attack.
Gradually, the cold gray days of suspense began to weaken the Keep's discretion, its pragmatic sense. Some of the farmers-people whose lifework had been taken from them by the winter-crept out to the upland hills around Glimmermere, sneaking as if they were ashamed to be caught planting futile rows of seeds in the frozen earth.
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 Revel-stone's every upraised rock in the tic, 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.
The Power That Preserves Page 25
