Thomas Covenant 02: The Illearth War

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  The High Lord stopped. But she did not turn. The whole rigor of her back condensed into one question: Why?

  “Don’t you see it?” he gasped. “This is all some plot of Foul’s. We’re being manipulated—you’re being manipulated. Something terrible is going to happen.”

  For a time, she remained silent while he ached. Then, in a tone of austere conviction, she said, “I cannot let pass this chance to serve the Land. I am forewarned. If this is Fangthane’s best ploy to defeat us, it is also our best means to strike at him. I do not fear to measure my will against his. And I hold the Staff of Law. Have you not learned that the Staff is unsuited to his hands? He would not have delivered it to us if it were in any way adept for his uses. No. The Staff warrants me. Lord Foul cannot contrive my vision.”

  “Your vision!” Covenant extended his hands in pleading toward her. “Don’t you see what that is? Don’t you see where that comes from? It comes from me—from that unholy bargain I made with the Ranyhyn. A bargain that failed, Elena!”

  “Yet it would appear that you bargained better than you knew. The Ranyhyn kept their promise—they gave in return more than you could either foresee or control.” Her answer seemed to block his throat, and into his silence she said, “What has altered you, Unbeliever? Without your help, we would not have gained this place. On Rivenrock you gave aid without stint or price, though my own anger imperiled you. Yet now you delay me. Thomas Covenant, you are not so craven.”

  “Craven? Hellfire! I’m a bloody coward!” Some of his rage returned to him, and he sputtered through the sweat and tears that ran into his mouth, “All lepers are cowards. We have to be!”

  At last, she turned toward him, faced him with the focus, the blazing holocaust, of her gaze. Its force ripped his balance away from him, and he sprawled in fragments on the stone. But he pushed himself up again. Driven by his fear of her and for her, he dared to confront her power. He stood tenuously, and abandoned himself, took his plunge.

  “Manipulation, Elena,” he rasped. “I’m talking about manipulation. Do you understand what that means? It means using people. Twisting them to suit purposes they haven’t chosen for themselves. Manipulation. Not Foul’s—mine! I’ve been manipulating you, using you. I told you I’d made another bargain—but I didn’t tell you what it is. I’ve been using you to get myself off the hook. I promised myself that I would do everything I could to help you find this Ward. And in return I promised myself that I would do everything I could to make you take my responsibility. I watched you and helped you so that when you got here you would look exactly like that—so you would challenge Foul yourself without stopping to think about what you’re doing—so that whatever happens to the Land would be your fault instead of mine. So that I could escape! Hell and blood, Elena! Do you hear me? Foul is going to get us for sure!”

  She seemed to hear only part of what he said. She bent her searing focus straight into him, and said, “Was there ever a time when you loved me?”

  In as agony of protest, he half screamed, “Of course I loved you!” Then he mastered himself, put all his strength back into his appeal. “It never even occurred to me that I might be able to use you until—until after the landslide. When I began to understand what you’re capable of. I loved you before that. I love you now. I’m just an unconscionable bastard, and I used you, that’s all. Now I regret it.” With all the resources of his voice, he beseeched her, “Elena, please don’t drink that stuff. Forget the Power of Command and go back to Revelstone. Let the Council decide what to do about all this.”

  But the way in which her gaze left his face and burned around the walls of the cave told him that he had not reached her. When she spoke, she only confirmed his failure.

  “I would be unworthy of Lordship if I failed to act now. Amok offered us the Seventh Ward because he perceived that the Land’s urgent need surpassed the conditions of his creation. Fangthane is upon the Land now—he wages war now—Land and life and all are endangered now. While any power or weapon lies within my grasp, I will not permit him!” Her voice softened as she added, “And if you have loved me, how can I fail to strive for your escape? You need not have bargained in secret. I love you. I wish to serve you. Your regret only strengthens what I must do.”

  Swinging back toward the trough, she raised the Staff’s guttering flame high over her head, and shouted like a war cry, “Melenkurion abatha! Ward yourself well, Fangthane! I seek to destroy you!”

  Then she stooped to the EarthBlood.

  Covenant struggled frantically in her direction, but his feet scattered out from under him again, and he went down with a crash like a shock of incapacity. As she lowered her face to the trough, he shouted, “That’s not a good answer! What happens to the Oath of Peace?”

  But his cry did not penetrate her exaltation. Without hesitation, she took one steady sip of the Blood, and swallowed it.

  At once, she leaped to her feet, stood erect and rigid as if she were possessed. She appeared to swell, expand like a distended icon. The fire of the Staff ran down the wood to her hands. Instantly her whole form burst into flame.

  “Elena!” Covenant crawled toward her. But the might of her blue, crackling blaze threw him back like a hard wind. He struck the tears from his eyes to see her more clearly. Within her enveloping fire, she was unharmed and savage.

  While the flame burned about her, enfolded her from head to foot in fiery cerements, she raised her arms, lifted her face. For one fierce moment she stood motionless, trapped in conflagration. Then she spoke as if she were uttering words of flame.

  “Come! I have tasted the EarthBlood! You must obey my will. The walls of death do not prevail. Kevin son of Loric! Come!”

  No! howled Covenant, No! Don’t! But even his inner cry was swamped by a great voice which shivered and groaned in the air so hugely that he seemed to hear it, not with his ears, but with the whole surface of his body.

  “Fool! Desist!” Staggering waves of anguish poured from the voice. “Do not do this!”

  “Kevin, hear me!” Elena shouted back in a transported tone. “You cannot refuse! The Blood of the Earth compels you. I have chosen you to meet my Command. Kevin, come!”

  The great voice repeated, “Fool! You know not what you do!”

  But an instant later, the ambience of the cave changed violently, as if a tomb had opened into it. Breakers of agony rolled through the air. Covenant winced at every surge. He braced himself where he knelt, and looked up.

  The specter of Kevin Landwaster stood outlined in pale light before Elena.

  He dwarfed her—dwarfed the cave itself. Monumentally upright and desolate, he was visible through the stone rather than within the cave. He towered over Elena as if he were part of the very mountain rock. He had a mouth like a cut, eyes full of the effects of Desecration, and on his forehead was a bandage which seemed to cover some mortal wound. “Release me!” he groaned. “I have done harm enough for one soul.”

  “Then serve me!” she cried ecstatically up to him. “I offer you a Command to redeem that harm. You are Kevin son of Loric, the waster of the Land. You have known despair to its dregs—you have tasted the full cup of gall. That is knowledge and strength which no one living can equal.

  “High Lord Kevin, I Command you to battle and defeat Lord Foul the Despiser! Destroy Fangthane! By the Power of the EarthBlood, I Command you.”

  The specter stared aghast at her, and raised his fists as if he meant to strike her. “Fool!” he repeated terribly.

  The next instant, a concussion like the slamming of a crypt shook the cave. One last pulse of anguish pummeled the High Lord’s party; Elena’s flame was blown out like a weak candle; darkness flooded the cave.

  Then Kevin was gone.

  A long time passed. When Covenant regained consciousness, he rested wearily for a while on his hands and knees, glad of the darkness, and the reduced scale of the cave, and the specter’s absence. But eventually he remembered Elena. Pushing himself to his feet, he reached towa
rd her with his voice. “Elena? Come on. Elena? Let’s get out of here.”

  At first, he received no response. Then blue fire flared as Elena lit the Staff. She was sitting like a wreck on the floor. When she turned her wan, spent face toward him, he saw that her crisis was over. All her exaltation had been consumed by the act of Command. He went to her, helped her gently to her feet. “Come on,” he said again. “Let’s go.”

  She shook her head vaguely, and said in an exhausted voice, “He called me a fool. What have I done?”

  “I hope we never find out.” A rough edge of sympathy made him sound harsh. He wanted to care for her, and did not know how. To give her time and privacy to gather her strength, he stepped away. As he glanced dully around the cave, he noticed Bannor, noticed the faint look of surprise in Bannor’s face. Something in that unfamiliar expression gave Covenant a twist of apprehension. It seemed to be directed at him. He probed for an explanation by asking, “That was Kevin, wasn’t it?”

  Bannor nodded; the speculative surprise remained on his face.

  “Well, at least it wasn’t that beggar— At least now we know it wasn’t Kevin who picked me for this.”

  Still Bannor’s gaze did not change. It made Covenant feel uncomfortably exposed, as if there were something indecent about himself that he did not realize.

  Confused he turned back to the High Lord.

  Suddenly a silent blast like a howl of stone jolted the cave, made it tremble and jump like an earthquake. Covenant and Elena lost their footing, slapped against the floor. Morin’s warning shout echoed flatly:

  “Kevin returns!”

  Then the buried tomb of the air opened again; Kevin’s presence resonated against Covenant’s skin. But this time the specter brought with him a ghastly reek of rotten flesh and attar, and in the background of his presence was the deep rumble of rock being crushed. When Covenant raised his head from the bucking floor, he saw Kevin within the stone furiously poised, fists cocked. Hot green filled the orbs of his eyes, sent rank steam curling up his forehead; and he dripped with emerald light as if he had just struggled out of a quagmire.

  “Fool!” he cried in a paroxysm of anguish. “Damned betrayer! You have broken the Law of Death to summon me—you have unleashed measureless opportunities for evil upon the Earth—and the Despiser mastered me as easily as if I were a child! The Illearth Stone consumes me. Fight, fool! I am Commanded to destroy you!”

  Roaring like a multitude of fiends, he reached down and clutched at Elena.

  She did not move. She was aghast, frozen by the result of her great dare.

  But Morin reacted instantly. Crying, “Kevin! Hold!” he sprang to her aid.

  The specter seemed to hear Morin—hear and recognize who he was. An old memory touched Kevin, and he hesitated. That hesitation gave Morin time to reach Elena, thrust her behind him. When Kevin threw off his uncertainty, his fingers closed around Morin instead of the High Lord.

  He gripped the Bloodguard and heaved him into the air.

  Kevin’s arm passed easily through the rock, but Morin could not. He crashed against the ceiling with tremendous force. The impact tore him from Kevin’s grasp. But that impact was sufficient. The First Mark fell dead like a broken twig.

  The sight roused Elena. At once, she realized her danger. She whirled the Staff swiftly about her head. Its flame sprang into brilliance, and a hot blue bolt lashed straight at Kevin.

  The blast struck him like a physical blow, drove him back a step through the stone. But he shrugged off its effects. With a deep snarl of pain, he moved forward, snatched at her again.

  Shouting frantically, “Melenkurion abatha!” she met his attack with the Staff. Its fiery heel seared his palm.

  Again he recoiled, gripping his scorched fingers and groaning.

  In that momentary reprieve, she cried strange invocations to the Staff, and swung its blaze around her three times, surrounding herself with a shield of power. When the specter grabbed for her once more, he could not gain a hold on her. He squeezed her shield, and his fingers dripped with emerald ill, but he could not touch her. Whenever he dented her defense, she healed it with the Staff’s might.

  Yelling in frustration and pain, he changed his tactics. He reared back, clasped his fists together, and hammered them at the floor of the cave. The stone jumped fiercely. The lurch knocked Covenant down, threw Bannor against the opposite wall.

  A gasping shudder like a convulsion of torment shot through the mountain. The cave walls heaved; rumblings of broken stone filled the air; power blared.

  A crack appeared in the floor directly under Elena. Even before she was aware of it, it started to open. Then, like ravenous jaws, it jerked wide.

  High Lord Elena dropped into the chasm.

  Kevin pounced after her, and vanished from sight. His howls echoed out of the cleft like the shrieking of a madman.

  But even as they disappeared, their battle went on. Lordsfire spouted hotly up into the cave. The thunder of tortured stone pounded along the tunnel, and the cave pitched from side to side like a nausea in the guts of Melenkurion Skyweir. In his horror, Covenant thought that the whole edifice of the mountain was about to tumble.

  Then he was snatched to his feet, hauled erect by Bannor. The Bloodguard gripped him with compelling fingers, and shouted at him through the tumult, “Save her!”

  “I can’t!” The pain of his reply made him yell. Bannor’s demand rubbed so much salt into the wound of his essential futility that he could hardly bear it. “I cannot!”

  “You must!” Bannor’s grasp allowed no alternatives.

  “How?” Waving his empty hands in Bannor’s face, he cried, “With these?”

  “Yes!” The Bloodguard caught Covenant’s left hand, forced him to look at it.

  On his wedding finger, his ring throbbed ferrule, pulsed with power and light like a potent instrument panting to be used.

  For an instant, he gaped at the argent band as if it had betrayed him. Then forgetting escape, forgetting himself, forgetting even that he did not know how to exert wild magic, he pulled despairingly away from Bannor and stumbled toward the crevice. Like a man battering himself in armless impotence against a blank doom, he leaped after the High Lord.

  TWENTY-SIX: Gallows Howe

  But be failed before he began. He did not know how to brace himself for the kind of battle which raged below him. As he passed the rim of the crevice, he was hit by a blast of force like an eruption from within the rift. He was defenseless against it; it snuffed out his consciousness like a frail flame.

  Then for a time he rolled in darkness—ran in a blind, caterwauling void which pitched and broke over him until he staggered like a ship with sprung timbers. He was aware of nothing but the force which thrashed him. But something caught his hand, anchored him. At first he thought that the grip on his hand was Elena’s—that she held him now as she had held him and kept him during the night after his summoning. But when he shook clear of the darkness, he saw Bannor. The Bloodguard was pulling him out of the crevice.

  That sight—that perception of his failure—undid him. When Bannor set him on his feet, he stood listing amid the riot of battle—detonations, deep, groaning creaks of tormented stone, loud rockfalls—like an empty hulk, a cargoes hull sucking in death through a wound below its waterline. He did not resist or question as Bannor half carried him from the cave of the EarthBlood.

  The tunnel was unlit except by the reflected glares of combat, but Bannor moved surely over the black rock. In moments, he brought his shambling charge to the waterfall. There he lifted the Unbeliever in his arms, and bore him like a child through the weight of the falls.

  In the rocklight of Earthroot, Bannor moved even more urgently. He hastened to the waiting boat, installed Covenant on one of the seats, then leaped aboard as he shoved out into the burnished lake. Without hesitation, he began to recite something in the native tongue of the Haruchai. Smoothly the boat made its way among the cloistral columns.

  But
his efforts did not carry the craft far. Within a few hundred yards, its prow began to tug against its intended direction. He stopped speaking, and at once the boat swung off to one side. Gradually it gained speed.

  It was in the grip of a current. Standing in the center of Covenant’s sightless gaze, Bannor cocked one eyebrow slightly, as if he perceived an ordeal ahead. For long moments, he waited for the slow increase of the current to reveal its destination.

  Then in the distance he saw what caused the current. Far ahead of the craft, rocklight flared along a line in the lake like a cleft which stretched out of sight on both sides. Into this cleft Earthroot rushed and poured in silent cataracts.

  He reacted with smooth efficiency, as if he had been preparing for this test throughout the long centuries of his service. First he snatched a coil of clingor from his pack; with it, he lashed Covenant to the boat. In answer to the vague question in Covenant’s face, he replied, “The battle of Kevin and the High Lord has opened a crevice in the floor of Earthroot. We must ride the water down, and seek an outlet below.” He did not wait for a response. Turning he braced his feet, gripped one of the gilt gunwales, and tore it loose. With this long, curved piece of wood balanced in his hands for a steering pole, he swung around to gauge the boat’s distance from the cataract.

  The hot line of the crevice was less than a hundred yards away now, and the boat slipped rapidly toward it, caught in the mounting suction. But Bannor made one more preparation. Bending toward Covenant, he said quietly, “Ur-Lord, you must use the orcrest.” His voice echoed with authority through the silence.

  Covenant stared at him without comprehension.

  “You must. It is in your pocket. Bring it out.”

  For a moment, Covenant continued to stare. But at last the Bloodguard’s command reached through his numbness. Slowly he dug into his pocket, pulled out the smooth lucid stone. He held it awkwardly in his right hand, as if he could not properly grip it with only two fingers and a thumb.