Thomas Covenant 02: The Illearth War

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “Later, I learned what had happened. A young student at the Loresraat had an inspiration about a piece of the Second Ward he was working on. All this was about five years ago. He thought he had figured out how to get help for the Land—how to summon you, actually. He wanted to try it, but the Lorewardens refused to let him. Too dangerous. They took his idea to study, and sent to Revelstone for a Lord to help them decide how to test his theory.

  “Well, he didn’t want to wait. He left the Loresraat and climbed a few miles up into the western hills of Trothgard until he thought he was far enough away to work in peace. Then he started the ritual. Somehow, the Lorewardens felt the power he was using, and went after him. But they were too late. He succeeded—in a manner of speaking. When he was done, I was lying there on the grass, and he—He had burned himself to death. Some of the Lorewardens think he caught the fire that should have killed me. As they said, it was too dangerous.

  “The Lorewardens took me in, cared for me, put hurtloam on my hands—even on my eye sockets. Before long, I began having visions. Colors and shapes started to jump at me out of the—out of whatever it was I was used to. This round, white-orange circle passed over me every day—but I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t even know it was ‘round.’ I had no visual concept of ‘round.’ But the visions kept getting stronger. Finally, Elena—she was the Lord who came down from Revelstone, only she wasn’t High Lord then—she told me that I was learning to see with my mind—as if my brain were actually starting to see through my forehead. I didn’t believe it, but she showed me. She demonstrated how my sense of spatial relationships fitted what I was ‘seeing,’ and how my sense of touch matched the shapes around me.”

  He paused for a moment, remembering. Then he said strongly, “I’ll tell you—I never think about going back. How can I? I’m here, and I can see. The Land’s given me a gift I could never repay in a dozen lifetimes. I’ve got too big a debt—The first time I stood on the top of Revelwood and looked over the valley where the Rill and Llurallin rivers come together—the first time in my life that I had ever seen—the first time, Covenant, I had ever even known that such sights existed—I swore I was going to win this war for the Land. Lacking missiles and bombs, there are other ways to fight. It took me a little while to convince the Lords—just long enough for me to outsmart all the best tacticians in the Wayward. Then they made me their Warmark. Now I’m just about ready. A difficult strategic problem—we’re too far from the best line of defense, Landsdrop. And I haven’t heard from my scouts. I don’t know which way Foul is going to try to get at us. But I can beat him in a fair fight. I’m looking forward to it.

  “Go back? No. Never.”

  Hile Troy had been speaking in a level tone, as if he did not want to expose his emotions to his auditor. But Covenant could hear an undercurrent of enthusiasm in the words—a timbre of passion too unruly to be concealed.

  Now Troy leaned toward Covenant intently, and his ready indignation came back into his voice. “In fact, I can’t understand you at all. Do you know that this whole place”—he indicated Revelstone with a brusque gesture—“revolves around you? White gold. The wild magic that destroys peace. The Unbeliever who found the Second Ward and saved the Staff of Law—unwillingly, I hear. For forty years, the Loresraat and the Lords have worked for a way to get you back. Don’t get me wrong—they’ve done everything humanly possible to try to find other ways to defend the Land. They’ve built up the Warward, racked their brains over the Lore, risked their necks on things like Mhoram’s trip to Foul’s Creche. And they’re scrupulous. They insist that they accept your ambivalent position. They insist that they don’t expect you to save them. All they want is to make it possible for the wild magic to aid the Land, so they won’t have to reproach themselves for neglecting a possible hope. But I tell you—they don’t believe there is any hope but you.

  “You know Lord Mhoram. You should have some idea of just how tough that man is. He’s got backbone he hasn’t even touched yet. Listen. He screams in his sleep. His dreams are that bad. I heard him once. He— I asked him the next morning what possessed him. In that quiet, kind voice of his, he told me that the Land would die if you didn’t save it.

  “Well, I don’t believe that—Mhoram or no Mhoram. But he isn’t the only one. High Lord Elena eats, drinks, and sleeps Unbeliever. Wild magic and white gold, Covenant Ringthane. Sometimes I think r she’s obsessed. She—”

  But Covenant could not remain silent any longer. He could not stand to be held responsible for so much commitment. Roughly, he cut in, “Why?”

  “I don’t know. She doesn’t even know you.”

  “No. I mean, why is she High Lord—instead of Mhoram?”

  “What does it matter?” said Troy irritably. “The Council chose her. A couple of years ago—when Osondrea, the old High Lord, died. They put their minds together—you must have noticed when you were here before how the Lords can pool their thoughts, think together—and she was elected.” As he spoke, the irritation faded from his tone. “They said she has some special quality, some inner mettle that makes her the best leader for this war. Maybe I don’t know what they mean—but I know she’s got something. She’s impossible to refuse. I would fight with stew forks and soup spoons against Foul—

  “So I don’t understand you. You may be the last man alive who’s seen the Celebration of Spring. And there she stands, looking like all the allure of the Land put together—practically begging you. And you!” Troy struck the table with his hand, brandished his empty sockets at Covenant. “You refuse.”

  Abruptly he slapped his sunglasses back on, and flung away from the table to pace the room again, as if he could not sit still in the face of Covenant’s perversity.

  Covenant watched him, seething at the freedom of Troy’s judgment—the trust he placed in his own rectitude. But Covenant had heard something else in Troy’s voice, a different explanation. Probing bluntly, he asked, “Is Mhoram in love with her, too?”

  At that, Troy spun, pointed a finger rigid with accusation at the Unbeliever. “You know what I think? You’re too cynical to see the beauty here. You’re too cheap. You’ve got it made in your ‘real’ world, with all those royalties rolling in. So what if you’re sick? That doesn’t stop you from getting rich. Coming here just gets in the way of hacking out more best-sellers. Why should you fight the Despiser? You’re just like him yourself.”

  Before the Warmark could go on, Covenant rasped thickly, “Get out. Shut up and get out.”

  “Forget it. I’m not going to leave until you give me one—”

  “Get out.”

  “—one good reason for the way you’re acting. I’m not going to walk away and let you destroy the Land just because the Lords are too scrupulous to lean on you.”

  “That’s enough!” Covenant was on his feet. His hurt blazed up before he could catch hold of himself. “Don’t you even know what a leper is?”

  “What difference does that make? It’s no worse than not having any eyes. Aren’t you healthy here?”

  Mustering all the force of his injury, his furious grief, Covenant averred, “No!” He waved his hands.

  “Do you call this health? It’s a lie!”

  That cry visibly stunned Troy. The black assertion of his sunglasses faltered; the inner aura of his spirit was confused by doubt. For the first time, he looked like a blind man.

  “I don’t understand,” he said softly.

  He faced the onslaught of Covenant’s glare for a moment longer. Then he turned and left the room, moving quietly, as if he had been humbled.

  SIX: The High Lord

  When evening came, Thomas Covenant sat on his balcony to watch the sun set behind the Westron Mountains. Though summer was hardly past, there was a gleam of white snow on many of the peaks. As the sun dropped behind them, the western sky shone with a sharing of cold and fire. White silver reflected from the snow across the bottom of a glorious sky, an orange-gold gallant display sailing with full canvas over t
he horizon.

  Covenant watched it bleakly. A scowl knotted his forehead like a fist. He had spent the afternoon in useless rage, but after a time his anger at Troy had died down among the embers of his protest against being summoned to the Land. Now he felt cold at heart, desolate and alone. The resolve he had expressed to Mhoram, his determination to survive seemed pretentious—fey and anile. And the frown clenched his forehead as if the flesh over his skull refused to admit that it had been healed.

  He was thinking of jumping from the balcony. To quell his fear of heights, he would have to wait until the darkness of the night was complete, and he could no longer see the ground. But considered in that way, the idea both attracted and repelled him. It offended his leper’s training, heaped ridicule on everything he had already endured to cling to life. It spoke of a defeat that was as bitter as starkest gall to him. But he yearned for relief from his dilemma. He felt as dry as a wasteland, and rationalizations came easily. Chiefest of these was the argument that since the Land was not real it could not kill him; a death here would only force him back into the reality that was the only thing in which he could believe. In his aloneness, he could not tell whether that argument expressed courage or cowardice.

  Slowly the last of the sun fell behind the mountains, and its emblazonry faded from the sky. Gloaming spread out of the shadow of the peaks, dimming the plains below Covenant until he could only discern them as uneasy, recumbent shapes under the heavens. The stars came out and grew gradually brighter, as if to clarify trackless space; but the voids between them were too great, and the map they made was unreadable. In his dusty, unfertile gaze, they seemed to twinkle inconsolably.

  When he heard the polite knock at his door, his need for privacy groaned at the intrusion. But he had other needs as well. He pushed himself to go answer the knock.

  The stone door swung open easily on noiseless hinges, and light streamed into the room from the bright-lit hall, dazzling him so that for a moment he did not recognize either of the men outside. Then one of them said, “Ur-Lord Covenant, we bid you welcome,” in a voice that seemed to bubble with good humor. Covenant identified Tohrm.

  “Welcome and true,” said Tohrm’s companion carefully, as if he were afraid he would make a mistake. “We are the Hearthralls of Lord’s Keep. Please accept welcome and comfort.”

  As Covenant’s eyes adjusted, he considered the two men. Tohrm’s companion wore a gray-green Woodhelvennin cloak, and had a small wreath in his hair—the mark of a Hirebrand. In his hands he carried several smooth wooden rods for torches. Both the Hearthralls were clean-shaven, but the Hirebrand was taller and slimmer than his partner. Tohrm had the stocky, muscular frame of a Stonedownor, and he wore a loam-colored tunic with soft trousers. His companion’s cloak was bordered in Lords’ blue; he had blue epaulets woven into the shoulders of his tunic. Cupped in each of his hands was a small, covered, stone bowl.

  Covenant scrutinized Tohrm’s face. The Hearthrall’s nimble eyes and swift smile were soberer than Covenant remembered them, but still essentially unchanged. Like Mhoram, he did not show enough years to account for the full forty.

  “I am Borillar,” Tohrm’s companion recited, “Hirebrand of the lillianrill and Hearthrall of Lord’s Keep. This is Tohrm, Gravelingas of the rhadhamaerl and likewise Hearthrall of Lord’s Keep. Darkness withers the heart. We have brought you light.”

  But as Borillar spoke, a look of concern touched Tohrm’s face, and he said, “Ur-Lord, are you well?”

  “Well?” Covenant murmured vaguely.

  “There is a storm on your brow, and it gives you pain. Shall I call a Healer?”

  “What?”

  “Ur-Lord Covenant, I am in your debt. I am told that at the hazard of your life you rescued my old friend Birinair from beyond the forbidding fire under Mount Thunder. That was bravely done—though it came too late to save his life. Do not hesitate to ask of me. For Birinair’s sake, I will do all in my power for you.”

  Covenant shook his head. He knew he should correct Tohrm, tell him that he had braved that fire in an effort to immolate himself, not to save Birinair. But he lacked the courage. Dumbly he stepped aside and let the Hearthralls into his rooms.

  Borillar immediately set about lighting his torches; he moved studiously to the wall sockets as if he were trying to create a good, grave impression. Covenant watched him for a moment, and Tohrm said with a covered smile, “Good Borillar is in awe of you, ur-Lord. He has heard the legends of the Unbeliever from his cradle. And he has not been Hearthrall long. His former master in the lillianrill lore resigned this post to oversee the completion of the Gildenlode keels and rudders which they have been devising for the Giants—as High Lord Loric Vilesilencer promised. Borillar feels himself untimely thrust into responsibility. My old friend Birinair would have called him a whelp.”

  “He’s young,” Covenant said dully. Then he turned to Tohrm, forced himself to ask the question which most concerned him. “But you—you’re too young. You should be older. Forty years.”

  “Ur-Lord, I have seen fifty-nine summers. Forty-one have passed since you came to Revelstone with the Giant, Saltheart Foamfollower.”

  “But you’re not old enough. You don’t look more than forty now.”

  “Ah,” said Tohrm, grinning broadly, “the service of our lore, and of Revelstone, keeps us young. Without us, these brave Giant-wrought halls would be dark, and in winter—to speak truly—they would be cold. Who could grow old on the joy of such work?”

  Happily he moved off, set one of his pots on the table in the sitting room, and another in the bedroom by the bed. When he uncovered the pots, the warm glow of the graveling joined the fight of the torches, and gave the illumination in the suite a richer and somehow kinder cast.

  Tohrm breathed the graveling’s aroma of newly broken earth with a glad smile. He finished while his companion was lighting the last of his torches in the bedroom. Before Borillar could return to the sitting room, the older Hearthrall stepped close to Covenant and whispered, “Ur-Lord, say a word to good Borillar. He will cherish it.”

  A moment later, Borillar walked across the room to stand stiffly by the door. He looked like a resolute acolyte, determined not to fail a high duty. Finally his young intentness, and Tohrm’s appeal, moved Covenant to say, awkwardly, “Thank you, Hirebrand.”

  At once, pleasure transformed Borillar’s face. He tried to maintain his gravity, to control his grin, but the man of legends, Unbeliever and Ringthane, had spoken to him, and he blurted out, “Be welcome, ur-Lord Covenant. You will save the Land.”

  Tohrm cocked an amused eyebrow at his fellow Hearthrall, gave Covenant a gay, grateful bow, and ushered the Hirebrand from the room. As they departed, Tohrm started to close the door, then stopped, nodded to someone in the hall, and went away leaving the door open.

  Bannor stepped into the room. He met Covenant’s gaze with eyes that never slept—that only rarely blinked—and said, “The High Lord would speak with you now.”

  “Oh, hell,” Covenant groaned. He looked back with something like regret at his balcony and the night beyond. Then he went with the Bloodguard.

  Walking down the hall, he gave himself a quick VSE. It was a pointless exercise, but he needed the habit of it, if for no other reason than to remind himself of who he was, what the central fact of his life was. He did it deliberately, as a matter of conscious choice. But it did not hold his attention. As he moved, Revelstone exerted its old influence over him again.

  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.