Thomas Covenant 02: The Illearth War

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  When he reached the flat bottom, he took a few wooden steps toward the lake, then stopped, covered his eyes against the deep, fiery, red light, and shuddered as if his nerves jangled on the edge of hysteria.

  Ahead of him, Amok crowed jubilantly, “Behold, High Lord! The sunless lake of Earthroot! Unheavened sap and nectar of great Melenkurion Skyweir, the sire of mountains! Ah, behold it. The long years of my purpose are nearly done.” His words echoed clearly away, as if they were seconded by scores of light crystal voices.

  Drawing a tremulous breath, Covenant opened his eyes. He was standing on the gradual shore of a still lake which spread out before him as far as he could see. Its stone roof was high, hidden in shadows, but the lake was lit everywhere by rocklight burning in the immense pillars which stood up like columns through the lake—or like roots of the mountain reaching down to the water. These columns or roots were evenly spaced along and across the cavern; they were repeated regularly into the vast distance. Their rocklight, and the vibrant stillness of the lake, gave the whole place a cloistral air, despite its size. Earthroot was a place to make mere mortals humble and devout.

  It made Covenant feel like a sacrilege in the sanctified and august temple of the mountains.

  The lake was so still—it conveyed such an impression of weight, massiveness—that it looked more like fluid bronze than water, a liquid cover for the unfathomable abysses of the Earth. The rocklight gleamed on it as if it were burnished.

  “Is this—?” Covenant croaked, then caught himself as his question ran echoing lightly over the water, restating itself without diminishment into the distance. He could not bring himself to go on. Even the low shuffling of his boots on the stone echoed as if it carried some kind of prophetic significance.

  But Amok took up the question gaily. “Is the Power of Command here, in Earthroot?” The echoes laughed as he laughed. “No. Earthroot but partakes. The heart of the Seventh Ward lies beyond. We must cross over.”

  High Lord Elena asked the next question carefully, as if she, too, were timid in the face of the awesome lake. “How?”

  “High Lord, a way will be provided. I am the way and the door—I have not brought you to a pathless end. But the use of the way will be in your hands. This is the last test. Only one word am I permitted to say: do not touch the water. Earthroot is strong and stern. It will take no account of mortal flesh.”

  “What must we do now?” she inquired softly to minimize the echoes.

  “Now?” Amok chuckled. “Only wait, High Lord. The time will not be long. Behold! Already the way approaches.”

  He was standing with his back to the lake, but as he spoke he gestured behind him with one arm. As if in answer to this signal, a boat came into sight around a pillar some distance from the shore.

  The boat was empty. It was a narrow wooden craft, pointed at both ends. Except for a line of bright reflective gilt along its gunwales and thwarts, it was unadorned—a clean, simple work smoothly formed of light brown wood, and easily long enough to seat five people. But it was unoccupied; no one rowed or steered it. Without making a ripple, it swung gracefully around the pillar, and glided shoreward. Yet in Earthroot’s sacramental air, it did not seem strange; it was a proper and natural adjunct of the bronze lake. Covenant was not surprised to see that it carried no oars.

  He watched its approach as if it were an instrument of dread. It made his wedding ring itch on his finger. He glanced quickly at his hand, half expecting to see that the band glowed or changed color. The argent metal looked peculiarly vivid in the rocklight; it weighed heavily on his hand, tingled against his skin. But it revealed nothing. “Have mercy,” he breathed as if he were speaking directly to the white gold. Then he winced as his voice tripped away in light echoes, spread by a multitude of crystal repetitions.

  Amok laughed at him, and clear peals of glee joined the mimicry.

  High Lord Elena was now too enrapt in Earthroot to attend Covenant. She stood on the shore as if she could already smell the Power of Command, and waited like an acolyte for the empty boat.

  Soon the craft reached her. Silently it slid its prow up the dry slope, and stopped as if it were ready, expectant.

  Amok greeted it with a deep obeisance, then leaped lithely aboard. His feet made no sound as they struck the planks. He moved to the far end of the craft, turned, and seated himself with his arms on the gunwales, grinning like a monarch.

  First Mark Morin followed Amok. Next High Lord Elena entered the craft, and placed herself on a seat board near its middle. She held the Staff of Law across her knees. Covenant saw that his turn had come. Trembling he walked down the shore to the wooden prow. Apprehension beat in his temples, but he repressed it. He clutched the gunwales with both hands, climbed into the craft. His boots thudded and echoed on the planks. As he sat down, he seemed to be surrounded by the clatter of unseemly burdens.

  Bannor shoved the boat into the lake, and sprang immediately aboard. But by the time he had taken his seat, the boat had glided to a halt. It rested as if it were fused to the burnished water a few feet from shore.

  For a moment, no one moved or spoke. They sat bated and hushed, waiting for the same force which had brought the boat to carry it away again. But the craft remained motionless—fixed like a censer in the red, still surface of the lake.

  The pulse in Covenant’s head grew sharper. Harshly he defied the echoes. “Now what do we do?”

  To his surprise, the boat slid forward a few feet. But it stopped again when the repetitions of his voice died. Once again, the High Lord’s party was held, trapped.

  He stared about him in astonishment. No one spoke. He could see thoughts concentrate the muscles of Elena’s back. He looked at Amok once, but the youth’s happy grin so dismayed him that he tore his gaze away. The ache of his suspense began to seem unendurable.

  Bannor’s unexpected movement startled him. Turning he saw that the Bloodguard had risen to his feet. He lifted his seat board from its slots.

  For an oar! Covenant thought. He felt a sudden upsurge of excitement.

  Bannor held the board in both hands, braced himself against the side of the boat, and prepared to paddle.

  As the end of the board touched the water, some power grabbed it, wrenched it instantly from his grasp. It was snatched straight down into the lake. There was no splash or ripple, but the board vanished like a stone hurled into the depths.

  Bannor gazed after it, and cocked one eyebrow as if he were speculating abstractly on the kind of strength which could so easily tear something away from a Bloodguard. But Covenant was not so calm. He gaped weakly, “Hellfire.”

  Again the boat moved forward. It coasted for several yards until the echoes of Covenant’s amazement disappeared. Then it stopped, resumed its reverent stasis.

  Covenant faced Elena, but he did not need to voice his question. Her face glowed with comprehension. “Yes, beloved,” she breathed in relief and triumph. “I see.” And as the boat once more began to glide over the lake, she continued, “It is the sound of our voices which causes the boat to move. That is the use of Amok’s way. The craft will seek its own destination. But to carry us it must ride upon our echoes.”

  The truth of her perception was immediately apparent. While her clear voice cast replies like ripples over Earthroot, the boat slid easily through the water. It steered itself between the pillars as if it were pursuing the lodestone of its purpose. Soon it had passed out of sight of Earthrootstair. But when she stopped speaking—when the delicate echoes had chimed themselves into silence—the craft halted again.

  Covenant groaned inwardly. He was suddenly afraid that he would be asked to talk, help propel the boat. He feared that he would give his bargain away if he were forced into any kind of extended speech. In self-defense, he turned the demand around before it could be directed at him. “Well, say something,” he growled at Elena.

  A light, ambiguous smile touched her lips—a response, not to him, but to some satisfying inner prospect. “Beloved
,” she replied softly, “we will have no difficulty. There is much which has not been said between us. There are secrets and mysteries and sources of power in you which I perceive but dimly. And in some ways I have not yet spoken of myself. This is a fit place for the opening of hearts. I will tell you of that Ranyhyn—ride which took the young daughter of Lena from Mithil Stonedown into the Southron Range, and there at the great secret horserite of the Ranyhyn taught her—taught her many things.”

  With a stately movement, she rose to her feet facing Covenant. She set the Staff of Law firmly on the planks, and lifted her head to the ceiling of Earthroot’s cavern. “Ur-Lord Thomas Covenant,” she said, and the echoes spread about her like a skein of gleaming rocklight, interweaving the burnished water, “Unbeliever and white gold wielder, Ringthane—beloved—I must tell you of this. You have known Myrha. In her youth, she came to Lena my mother, according to the promise of the Ranyhyn. She carried me away to the great event of my girlhood. Thus you were the unknowing cause. Before this war reaches its end for good or ill, I must tell you what your promises have wrought.”

  Have mercy on me! he cried again in the obdurate incapacity of his heart. But he was too numb, too intimidated by the lake and the echoes, to stop her. He sat in mute dread, and listened as Elena told him the tale of her experience with the Ranyhyn. And all the time, the craft bore them on an oblique, intimate course between the lake pillars, floated them on the resonances of her voice as if it were ferrying them to a terrible shore.

  Her adventure had occurred the third time that Lena her mother had allowed her to ride a Ranyhyn. During the two previous annual visits to Mithil Stonedown, dictated by the Ranyhyn promise to Covenant Ringthane, the old horse from the Plains of Ra had rolled his eyes strangely at the little girl as Trell her grandfather had boosted her onto its broad back. And the next year young Myrha took the old stallion’s place. The mare gazed at Elena with that look of deliberate intention which characterized all the Ranyhyn—and Elena, sensing the Ranyhyn’s offer without understanding it, gladly gave herself up to Myrha. She did not look back as the mare carried her far away from Mithil Stonedown into the mountains of the Southron Range.

  For a day and a night, Myrha galloped, bearing Elena far south along mountain trails and over passes unknown to the people of the Land. At the end of that time, they gained a high valley, a grassy glen folded between sheer cliffs, with a rugged, spring-fed tam near its center. This small lake was mysterious, for its dark waters did not reflect the sunlight. And the valley itself was wondrous to behold, for it contained hundreds of Ranyhyn—hundreds of proud, glossy, star-browed stallions and mares-gathered together for a rare and secret ritual of horses.

  But Elena’s wonder quickly turned to fear. Amid a chorus of wild, whinnied greetings, Myrha carried the little girl toward the lake, then shrugged her to the ground and dashed away in a flurry of hooves. And the rest of the Ranyhyn began to run around the valley. At first they trotted in all directions, jostling each other and sweeping by the child as if they were barely able to avoid crushing her. But gradually their pace mounted. Several Ranyhyn left the pounding mob to drink at the tare, then burst back into the throng as if the dark waters roiled furiously in their veins. While the sun passed overhead, the great horses sprinted and bucked, drank at the tam, rushed away to run again in the unappeasable frenzy of a dance of madness. And Elena stood among them, imperiled for her life by the savage flash and flare of hooves—frozen with terror. In her fear, she thought that if she so much as flinched she would be instantly trampled to death.

  Standing there—engulfed in heat and thunder and abysmal fear as final as the end of life—she lost consciousness for a time. She was still standing when her eyes began to see again; she was erect and petrified in the last glow of evening. But the Ranyhyn were no longer running. They had surrounded her; they faced her, studied her with a force of compulsion in their eyes. Some were so close to her that she inhaled their hot, damp breath. They wanted her to do something—she could feel the insistence of their wills battering at her immobile fear. Slowly, woodenly, choicelessly, she began to move.

  She went to the tare and drank.

  Abruptly the High Lord dropped her narration, and began to sing—a vibrant, angry, and anguished song which cast ripples of passion across the air of Earthroot. For reasons at which Covenant could only guess instinctively, she broke into Lord Kevin’s Lament as if it were her own private and immedicable threnody.

  Where is the Power that protects

  beauty from the decay of life?

  preserves truth pure of falsehood?

  secures fealty from that slow stain of chaos

  which corrupts?

  How are we so rendered small by Despite?

  Why will the very rocks not erupt

  for their own cleansing,

  or crumble into dust for shame?

  While echoes of the song’s grief ran over the lake, she met Covenant’s gaze for the first time since she had begun her tale.

  “Beloved,” she said in a low, thrilling voice, “I was transformed—restored to life. At the touch of those waters, the blindness or ignorance of my heart fell away. My fear melted, and I was joined to the communion of the Ranyhyn. In an instant of vision, I understood—everything. I saw that in honor of your promise I had been brought to the horserite of Kelenbhrabanal, Father of Horses—a Ranyhyn ritual enacted once each generation to pass on and perpetuate their great legend, the tale of mighty Kelenbhrabanal’s death in the jaws of Fangthane the Render. I saw that the turmoiled running of the Ranyhyn was their shared grief and rage and frenzy at the Father’s end.

  “For Kelenbhrabanal was the Father of Horses, Stallion of the First Herd. The Plains of Ra were his demesne and protectorate. He led the Ranyhyn in their great war against the wolves of Fangthane.

  “But the war continued without issue, and the stench of shed blood and rent flesh became a sickness in the Stallion’s nostrils. Therefore he made his way to Fangthane. He stood before the Render, and said, ‘Let this war end. I smell your hate—I know that you must have victims, else in your passion you will consume yourself. I will be your victim. Slaughter me, and let my people live in peace. Appease your hate on me, and end this war.’ And Fangthane agreed. So Kelenbhrabanal bared his throat to the Renders teeth, and soaked the earth with his sacrifice.

  “But Fangthane did not keep his word—the wolves attacked again. The Ranyhyn were leaderless, heart-stricken. They could not fight well. The remnant of the Ranyhyn was compelled to flee into the mountains. They could not return to their beloved Plains until they had gained the service of the Ramen, and with that aid had driven the wolves away.

  “Thus each generation of the Ranyhyn holds its horserite to preserve the tale of the Stallion—to hold pure in memory all their pride at his self-sacrifice, and all their grief at his death, and all their rage at the Despite which betrayed him. Thus they drink of the mind-uniting waters, and hammer out against the ground the extremity of their passion for one day and one night. And thus, when I had tasted the water of the tam, I ran and wept and raged with them throughout the long exaltation of that night. Heart and mind and soul and all, I gave myself to a dream of Fangthane’s death.”

  Listening to her, clinging to her face with his eyes, Covenant felt himself knotted by the clench of unreleasable grief. She was the woman who had offered herself to him. He understood her passion now, understood the danger she was in. And her elsewhere glance was drawing into focus; already he could feel conflagrations blazing at the corners of her vision.

  His dread of that focus gave him the impetus to speak. With his voice rent between fear and love, he wrenched out hoarsely, “What I don’t understand is what Foul gets out of all this.”

  TWENTY-FIVE: The Seventh Ward

  For a long moment, High Lord Elena gripped the Staff of Law and glared down at him. Focus crackled on the verge of her gaze; it was about to lash out and scourge him. But then she seemed to recollect who he was. Slowly t
he passion dimmed in her face, went behind in inward veil. She lowered herself to her seat in the boat. Quietly, dangerously, she asked, “All this? Do you ask what Lord Foul gains from what I have told you?”

  He answered her with quivering promptitude. Careless now of the illimitable range of implications with which the echoes multiplied his voice, he hastened to explain himself, ameliorate at least in this way the falseness of his position.

  “That, too. You said it yourself—that old, insufferable bargain I made with the Ranyhyn put you—where you are. Never mind what I did to your mother. That, too. But it’s really this time I’m thinking about. You summoned me, and we’re on our way to the Seventh Ward—and I want to know what Foul gets out of it. He wouldn’t waste a chance like this”

  “This is no part of his intent,” she replied coldly. “The choice to summon you was mine, not his.”

  “Right. That’s the way he works. But what made you decide to summon me?—I mean aside from the fact that you were going to call me anyway at some time or other because I have the simple misfortune to wear a white gold wedding ring and have two fingers missing. What made you decide then—when you did?”

  “Dukkha Waynhim gave us new knowledge of Fangthane’s power.”

  “New knowledge, by hell!” Covenant croaked. “Do you think that was an accident? Foul released him.” He shouted the word released, and its echoes jabbered about him like dire significances. “He released that poor suffering devil because he knew exactly what you would do about it. And he wanted me to be in the Land then, at that precise time, not sooner or later.”

  The importance of what he was saying penetrated her; she began to hear him seriously. But her voice remained noncommittal as she asked, “Why? How are his purposes served?”