Thomas Covenant 02: The Illearth War

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  Accompanied by the rest of the Bloodguard, Troy and the two Lords made their way on foot to the east wall.

  While they passed through the ruins, Lord Mhoram asked, “Warmark, do you believe that Fleshharrower will not attempt to surround us? Why would he do otherwise?” ’

  “Instinct,” Troy replied curtly. “I think he’ll be very careful to let us escape on the west side. You heard him laugh—back at Doom’s Retreat—when he saw where we were going. I think that what he really wants is to trap us against Garroting Deep. He’s a Raver. He probably thinks the idea of using that Forest against us is hilarious.”

  Then he was grateful that Mhoram refrained from asking him what his own ideas about Garroting Deep were. He did not want to think about that. Instead he tried to concentrate on the layout of the city, so that he could find his way through it at night if necessary. But his heart was not in the task. Too many other anxieties occupied him.

  When he reached the east wall, and climbed up on some rubble to peer over it, he saw Fleshharrower’s army.

  It approached like a great discoloration, a dark bruise, on the pale ground of the Wastes. Its front stretched away both north and south of the ruins. It was less than a league away.

  And it was immense beyond comprehension. Troy could not imagine how Lord Foul had been able to create such an army.

  It came forward until it reached the foot of the hill upon which Doriendor Corishev stood.

  As he watched, Troy gripped the handle of his sword as if it were the only thing that kept him from panic. Several times, he reached up to adjust the sunglasses he no longer possessed. The movement was like an involuntary prayer or appeal. But neither of the Lords observed him. Their faces were set toward Fleshharrower.

  Troy almost shouted with elation when the Giant-Raver stopped his army at the foot of the hill. The halt ran through his hordes like a shock, as if the force which drove them had struck a wall. The wolves smelled prey; they sent up a howl of frustration at the halt. Ur-viles barked furiously. Warped humans groaned, and Cavewights hopped hungrily from foot to foot. But Fleshharrower’s command mastered them all. They spread out until they formed a ready arc around the entire eastern side of the hill, then set themselves to wait.

  When he was satisfied with the position of his army, the Raver took a few steps up the hill, placed his fists on his hips, and shouted sardonically, “Lords! Warriors! I know you hear me! Listen to my words! Surrender! You cannot escape—you are ensnared between the Desert and the Deep. I can eradicate you from the Earth with only a tenth of my strength. Surrender! If you join me, I may be merciful.” At the word merciful, a yammer of protest and hunger went up from his army. He waited for the outcry to pass before he continued: “If not, I will destroy you! I will burn and blast your homes. I will make Revelwood a charnel, and use Revelstone for an offal ground. I will wreck and ravage the Land until Time itself breaks! Hear me and despair! Surrender or die!”

  At this, an irresistible impulse caught hold of the Warmark; frustration and rage boiled up in him. Without warning, he leaped onto the wall. He braced his feet to steady himself, and raised his fists defiantly. “Fleshharrower!” he shouted. “Vermin! I am Warmark Hile Troy! I command here! I spit in your face, Raver! You’re only a slave! And your master is only a slave! He’s a slave to hunger, and he gnaws his worthlessness like an old bone. Go back! Leave the Land! We’re free people. Despair has no power over us. But I’ll teach you despair if you dare to fight me!”

  Fleshharrower snapped an order. A dozen bowstrings thrummed; shafts flew past Troy’s head as Ruel snatched him down from the wall. Troy stumbled as he landed, but Ruel upheld him. When the Warmark regained his balance, Mhoram said, “You took a grave risk. What have you gained?”

  “I’ve made him mad,” Troy replied unsteadily. “This has got to be done right, and I’m going to do it. The madder he gets, the better off we are.”

  “Are you so certain of what he will do?”

  “Yes.” Troy felt an odd confidence, a conviction that he would not be proved wrong until the end. “He’s already doing it—he’s stopped. If he’s mad enough, he’ll attack us first himself. His army will stay stopped. That’s what we want.”

  “Then I believe that you have succeeded,” Lord Callindrill inserted quietly. He was gazing over the wall as he spoke. Mhoram and Troy joined him, and saw what he meant.

  Fleshharrower had retreated until there was a flat space of ground between himself and the hill. Around him, the army shifted. Several thousand ur-viles moved to form wedges with their loremasters poised on both sides of the space. There they waited while the Giant-Raver marked out a wide circle in the dirt, using the tip of one of the loremaster’s staves. Then Fleshharrower ordered all but the ur-viles away from the circle.

  When the space was cleared, the loremasters began their work.

  Chanting in a rhythmic unison like a mesmerized chorus of dogs, the ur-viles bent their might forward, into the hands of their loremasters. The loremasters thrust the points of their staves into the rim of Fleshharrower’s circle, and began to rock the irons slowly back and forth.

  A low buzzing noise became audible. The ur-viles were singing in their own roynish tongue, and their song made the flat, hard ground vibrate. Slowly, the buzz scaled upward, as if a swarm of huge, mad bees were imprisoned in the dirt. And the earth in the circle began to pulse visibly. A change like an increase of heat came over the rock and soil; hot, red gleams played through the circle erratically, and its surface seethed. The buzz became fiercer, sharper.

  The process was slow, but its horrible fascination made it seem swift to the onlookers. As daylight started to fall out of the stricken sky, the buzz replaced it like a cry of pain from the ground itself. The Raver’s circle throbbed and boiled as if the dirt within it were molten.

  The sound tormented Troy; it clawed at his ears, crawled like lice over his flesh. Sweat slicked his eyeless brows. For a time, he feared that he would be compelled to scream. But at last the cry scaled past the range of his senses. He was able to turn away, rest briefly.

  When he looked back toward the circle, he found that the ur-viles had withdrawn from it. Fleshharrower stood there alone. A demonic look clenched his face as he stared into the hot, red, boiling soil.

  In his hands, he held one of the loremasters. It gibbered fearfully, clung to its stave, but it could not break his grip.

  Laughing Fleshharrower lifted the loremaster over his head and hurled it into the circle. As it hit the ground, its scream died in a flash of fire. Only its stave remained, slowly melting on the surface.

  As the sun set, Fleshharrower began using his fragment of the Stone to reshape the molten iron, forge it into something new.

  Softly as if he feared that the Giant-Raver might hear him, Troy asked the Lords, “What’s this for? What’s he doing?”

  “He makes a tool,” Mhoram whispered, “some means to increase or concentrate his power.”

  The implications of that gave Troy a feeling of grim gratification. His strategy was justified at least to the extent that the main body of the Warward would be spared this particular attack. But he knew that such justification was not enough. His final play lay like a dead weight in his stomach. He expected to lose command of the Warward as soon as he revealed it; it would appall the warriors so much that they would rebel. After all his promises of victory, he felt like a false prophet. Yet his plan was the Warward’s only hope, the Land’s only hope.

  He prayed that Lord Mhoram would be equal to it.

  With the sunset, his sight failed. He was forced to rely on Mhoram to report the Raver’s progress. In the darkness, he felt trapped, bereft of command. All that he could see was the amorphous, dull glow of the liquid earth. Occasionally, he made out flares and flashes of lurid green across the red, but they meant nothing to him. His only consolation lay in the fact that Fleshharrower’s preparations were consuming time.

  Along the wall on both sides of him, First Haft Amorine�
�s Eoward kept watch over the Raver’s labors. No one slept; the poised threat of Fleshharrower’s army transfixed everyone. Moonrise did not ease the blackness; the dark of the moon was only three nights away. But the Raver’s forge-work was bright enough to pale the stars.

  During the whole long watch, Fleshharrower never left his molten circle. Sometime after midnight, he retrieved his newly made scepter, and cooled it by waving it in a shower of sparks over his head. Then he affixed his fragment of the Stone to its end. But when that was done, he remained by the circle. As night waned toward day, he gestured and sang over the molten stone, weaving incantations out of its hot power. It lit his movements luridly, and the Stone flashed across it at intervals, giving green glimpses of his malice.

  But this was indistinct to Troy. He clung to his hope. In the darkness, his calculations were the only reality left to him, and he recited them like counters against the night. When the first slit of dawn touched him from the east, he felt a kind of elation.

  Softly he asked for Amorine.

  “Warmark.” She was right beside him.

  “Amorine, listen. That monster has made his mistake—he’s wasted too much time. Now we’re going to make him pay for it. Get the warriors out of here. Send them after the Warward. Whatever happens, that Giant won’t get as many of us as he thinks. Just keep one warrior for every good horse we have”

  “Perhaps all should depart now,” she replied, “before the Raver attacks.”

  Troy grinned at the idea. He could imagine Fleshharrower’s fury if the Giant’s attack found Doriendor Corishev empty. But he knew that he had not yet gained enough time. He answered, “I want to squeeze another half day out of him. With the Bloodguard and a couple hundred warriors, we’ll be able to do it. Now get going.”

  “Yes, Warmark.” She left his side at once, and soon he could hear most of the warriors withdrawing. He gripped the wall again, and stared away into the sunrise, waiting for sight.

  Shortly he became aware that the dry breeze out of the south was stiffening.

  Then the haze faded from his mind. First he became able to see the ruined wall, then the hillside; finally he caught sight of the waiting army.

  It had not moved during the night.

  It did not need to move.

  Fleshharrower still stood beside his circle. The fire in the ground had died, but before it failed, he had used it to wrap himself in a shimmering, translucent cocoon of power. Within the power, he was as erect as an icon. He held his scepter rigidly above his head; he did not move; he made no sound. But when the sunlight touched him, the wind leaped suddenly into a hard blow like a violent exhalation through the teeth of the Desert. And it increased in ragged gusts like the leading edge of a sirocco.

  Then a low cry from one of the warriors pulled Troy’s attention away from Fleshharrower. Turning his head, he looked down the throat of the mounting gale.

  From the southeast, where the Southron Range met the Gray Desert, a tornado came rushing toward Doriendor Corishev. Its undulating shaft plowed straight across the Wastes.

  It conveyed such an impression of might that several moments passed before Troy realized it was not the kind of whirlwind he understood.

  It brought no rain or clouds with it; it was as dry as the Desert. And it carried no dust or sand; it was as clean as empty air. It should not have been visible at all. But its sheer force made it palpable to Troy’s sight. He could feel it coming. It was so vivid to him that at first he could not grasp the fact that the tornado was not moving with the wind.

  The gale blew straight out of the south, tearing dust savagely from the ground as it came. And the tornado cut diagonally across it, ignored the wind to howl straight toward Doriendor Corishev.

  Troy stared at it. Dust clogged his mouth, but he did not know this until he tried to shout something. Then, coughing convulsively, he wrenched himself away from the sight. At once, the sirocco hit him. When he stopped looking at the tornado, the force of the wind sent him reeling. Ruel caught him. He pivoted around the Bloodguard, and threw himself toward Lord Mhoram.

  When he reached Mhoram, he shouted, “What is it.

  “Creator preserve us!” Mhoram replied. The yowling wind whipped his voice from his lips, and Troy barely heard him. “It is a vortex of trepidation.”

  Troy tried to thrust his words past the wind to Mhoram’s ears. “What will it do?”

  Shouting squarely into Troy’s face, Mhoram answered, “It will make us afraid!”

  The next moment, he pulled at Troy’s arm, and pointed upward, toward the top of the tornado. There a score of dark creatures flew, riding the upper reaches of the vortex.

  The tornado had already covered more than half the distance to Doriendor Corishev, and Troy saw the creatures vividly. They were birds as large as kresh. They had clenched satanic faces like bats, wide eagle wings, and massive barbed claws. As they flew, they called to each other, showing double rows of hooked teeth. Their wings beat with lust.

  They were the most fearsome creatures Troy had ever seen. As he stared, he tried to rally himself against them—judge their speed, calculate the time left before their arrival, plan a defense. But they staggered his mind; he could not comprehend an existence which permitted them.

  He struggled to move, regain his balance enough to tell himself that he was already tasting the vortex of trepidation. But he was paralyzed. Voices shouted around him. He had a vague impression that Fleshharrower’s hordes greeted the vortex with glee—or were they afraid of it, too? He could not tell.

  Then Ruel grabbed his arm, snatched him away from the wall, shouted into his ear, “Warmark, come! We must make a defense!”

  Troy could not remember ever having heard a Bloodguard shout before. But even now Ruel’s voice did not sound like panic. Troy felt that there was something terrible in such immunity. He tried to look around him, but the wind lashed so much dust across the ruins that all details were lost. Both Lords were gone. Warriors ran in all directions, stumbling against the wind. Bloodguard bobbed in and out of view like ghouls.

  Ruel shouted at him again. “We must save the horses! They will go mad with fear!”

  For one long moment, Troy wished High Lord Elena were with him, so that he could tell her this was not his fault. Then abruptly he realized that he had made another mistake. If he were killed, no one would know how to save the Warward. His final plan would die with him, and every man and woman of his army would be butchered as a result.

  The realization seemed to push him over an edge. He plunged to his knees. The sirocco and the dust were strangling him.

  Ruel shouted, “Warmark! Corruption attacks!”

  At the word Corruption, a complete lucidity came over Troy. Fear filled all his thoughts with crystalline incisiveness. At once, he perceived that the Bloodguard was trying to undo him; Ruel’s impenetrable fidelity was a deliberate assault upon his fitness for command.

  The understanding made him reel, but he reacted lucidly, adroitly. He took one last look around him, saw one or two figures still surging back and forth through the livid anguish of the dust. Ruel was moving to capture him. Overhead the dark birds dropped toward the ruins. Troy picked up a rock and climbed to his feet. When Ruel touched him, he suddenly gestured away behind the Bloodguard. Ruel turned to look. Troy hit him on the back of the skull with the rock.

  Then the Warmark ran. He could not make progress against the wind, so he worked across it. The walls of buildings loomed out of the dust at him. He started toward a door.

  Without warning, he stumbled into First Haft Amorine.

  She caught at him, buffeted him with cries like fear. But she, too, was someone faithful, someone who threatened him. He lunged at her with his shoulder, sent her sprawling. Immediately he dodged into the maze of the masterplace.

  He fell several times as the wind sprang at him through unexpected gaps in the walls. But he forced himself ahead. The clarity of his terror was complete; he knew what he had to do.

  Af
ter a swift, chaotic battle, he found what he needed. With a rush, he lurched out into the center of a large, open space—the remains of one of Doriendor Corishev’s meeting halls. In this unsheltered expanse, the force of the wind belabored him venomously. He welcomed it. He felt a paradoxical glee of fear; his own terror delighted him. He stood like an exalted fanatic in the open space, and looked up to see how long he would have to wait.

  When he glanced behind him, his heart leaped. One of the birds glided effortlessly toward him, as if it were in total command of the wind. It had a clear approach to him. The ease of its movement thrilled him, and he poised himself to jump into its jaws.

  But as it neared him, he saw that it carried Ruel’s crumpled body in its mighty talons. He could see Ruel’s flat, dispassionate features. The Bloodguard looked as if he had been betrayed.

  A convulsion shook Troy. As the bird swooped toward him, he remembered who he was. The strength of terror galvanized his muscles; he snatched out his sword and struck.

  His blow split the bird’s skull. Its weight bowled him over. Green blood spewed from it over his head and shoulders. The hot blood burned him like a corrosive, and it smelled so thickly of attar that it asphyxiated him. With a choked cry, he clawed at his forehead, trying to tear the pain away. But the acid fire consumed his headband, burned through his skull into his brain. He lost consciousness.

  He awoke to silence and the darkness of night.

  After a long lapse of time like an interminable scream, he raised his head. The wind had piled dust over him, and his movement disturbed it. It filled his throat and mouth and lungs. But he bit back a spasm of coughing, and listened to the darkness.

  All around him, Doriendor Corishev was as still as a cairn. The wind and the vortex were gone, leaving only midnight dust and death to mark their path. Silence lay over the ruins like a bane.

  Then he had to cough. Gasping, retching, he pushed himself to his knees. He sounded explosively loud to himself. He tried to control the violence of his coughing, but he was helpless until the spasm passed.