THE POWER THAT PRESERVES

by default

  He drugged me.

  Where had that conviction come from? Covenant fumbled with numb fingers through his unconsciousness, while an unshakable sense of peril clutched his heart. Darkness and harm crowded toward him. Behind his sleep-behind the glaucous music-he seemed to see Triock's campfire still burning.

  How did he light that fire?

  How did he find me?

  The urgent gleams were trying to tell him things he could not hear. Triock was a danger. Triock had drugged him. He must get up and flee-flee somewhere-flee into the Forest.

  He struggled into a sitting position, wrenched his eyes open. He faced the low campfire in the last dead light of evening. Winter blew about him as if it were salivating gall. He could smell the approach of snow; already a few fetid flakes were visible at the edges of the firelight. Triock sat cross-legged opposite him, stared at him out of the smoldering abomination of his eyes.

  In the air before Covenant danced faint glaucous gleams, fragments of inaudible song. They were shrill with insistence: flee! flee!

  "What is it?" He tried to beat off the clinging hands of slumber. "What are they doing?"

  "Send it away,'' Triock answered in a voice full of fear and loathing. "Rid yourself of it. He cannot claim you now."

  "What is it?" Covenant lurched to his feet and stood trembling, hardly able to contain the panic in his muscles. "What's happening?"

  "It is the voice of a Forestal.'' Triock spoke simply, but every angle of his inflection expressed execration. He jumped erect and balanced himself as if he meant to give chase when Covenant began to run. "Garroting Deep has sent Caer-Caveral to Morinmoss. But he cannot claim you. I can"-his voice shook-"I cannot permit it."

  "Claim? Permit?" The peril gripping Covenant's heart tightened until he gasped. Something in him that he could not remember urged him to trust the gleams. "You drugged me!"

  "So that you would not escape!" White, rigid fear clenched Triock, and he stammered through drawn lips, "He urges you to destroy me. He cannot reach far from Morinmoss, but he urges-the white gold-! Ah!" Abruptly, his voice sharpened into a shriek. "Do not toy with me! I cannot-! Destroy me and have done! I cannot endure it!"

  The cries cut through Covenant's own dread. His distress receded, and he found himself grieving for the Stonedownor. Across the urging of the gleams, he breathed thickly, "Destroy you? Don't you know that you're safe from me? Don't you understand that I haven't got one godforsaken idea how to use this-this white gold? I couldn't hurt you if that were my heart's sole desire."

  "What?" Triock howled. "Still? Have I feared you for nothing?"

  "For nothing," groaned Covenant.

  Triock gaped bleakly out from under his hood, then threw back his head and began to laugh. Mordant glee barked through his teeth, making the music shiver as if its abhorrence were no less than his. "Powerless!" he laughed. "By the mirth of my master! Powerless!"

  Chuckling savagely, he started toward Covenant.

  At once, the silent song rushed gleaming between them. But Triock advanced against the lights. "Begone!" he growled. "You also will pay for your part in this.'' With a deft movement, he caught one spangle in each fist. Their wailing shimmered in the air as he crushed them between his fingers.

  Ringing like broken crystal, the rest of the music vanished.

  Covenant reeled as if an unseen support had been snatched away. He flung up his hands against Triock's approach, stumbled backward. But the man did not touch him. Instead, he stamped one foot on the hard ground. The earth bucked under Covenant, stretched him at Triock's feet.

  Then Triock threw off his hood. His visage was littered with broken possibilities, wrecked faiths and loves, but behind his features his skull shone with pale malice. The backs of his eyes were as black as night, and his teeth gaped as if they were hungry for the taste of flesh. Leering down at Covenant, he smirked, "No, groveler. I will not strike you again. The time for masquerading has ended. My master may frown upon me if I harm you now."

  "Master?" Covenant croaked.

  "I am turiya Raver, also called Herem-and Kinslaughterer-and Triock." He laughed again grotesquely. "This guise has served me well, though 'Triock' is not pleased. Behold me, groveler! I need no longer let his form and thoughts disguise me. You are powerless. Ah, I savor that jest! So now I permit you to know me as I am. It was I who slew the Giants of Seareach-I who slew the Unfettered One as he sought to warn that fool Mhoram-I who have captured the white gold! Brothers! I will sit upon the master's right hand and rule the universe!"

  As he gloated, he reached into his cloak and drew out the lomillialor rod. Brandishing it in Covenant's face, he barked, "Do you see it? High Wood! I spit on it. The test of truth is not a match for me." Then he gripped it between his hands as if he meant to break it, and shouted quick cruel words over it. It caught fire, blazed for an instant in red agony, and fell into cinders.

  Gleefully, the Raver snarled at Covenant, "Thus I signal your doom, as I was commanded. Breathe swiftly, groveler. There are only moments left to you."

  Covenant's muscles trembled as if the ground still pitched under him, but he braced himself, struggled to his feet. He felt stunned with horror, helpless. Yet in the back of his mind he strained to find an escape. "The ring," he panted. "Why don't you just take the ring?"

  A black response leaped in Triock's eyes. "Would you give it to me?"

  "No!" He thought desperately that if he could goad Triock into some act of power, Caer-Caveral's glaucous song might return to aid him.

  "Then I will tell you, groveler, that I do not take your ring because the command of my master is too strong. He does not choose that I should have such power. In other times, he did not bind us so straitly, and we were free to work his will in our several ways. But he claims-and-I obey."

  "Try to take it!" Covenant panted. "Be the ruler of the universe yourself. Why should he have it?"

  For an instant, he thought he saw something like regret in Triock's face. But the Raver only snarled, "Because the Law of Death has been broken, and he is not alone. There are eyes of compulsion upon me even now-eyes which may not be defied." His leer of hunger returned. "Perhaps you will see them before you are slain-before my brother and I tear your living heart from you and eat it in your last sight."

  He laughed harshly, and as if in answer the darkness around the campfire grew thicker. The night blackened like an accumulation of spite, then drew taut and formed discrete figures that came forward. Covenant heard their feet rustling over the cold ground. He whirled, and found himself surrounded by ur-viles.

  When their eyeless faces felt his stricken stare, they hesitated for an instant. Their wide, drooling nostrils quivered as they tasted the air for signs of power, evidence of wild magic. Then they rushed forward and overwhelmed him.

  Livid red blades wheeled above him like the shattering of the heavens. But instead of stabbing him, they pressed flat against his forehead. Red waves of horror crashed through him. He screamed once and went limp in the grasp of the ur-viles.

  [FIFTEEN] "Lord Mhoram's Victory"

  The exertion of hauling the dead forms from the ground and throwing them at Revelstone had exhausted samadhi Satansfist, drained him until he could no longer sustain that expenditure of force. He had seen High Lord's Furl torn from its flagpole atop the tower by his Cavewights. He knew he had met at least part of his master's objective in this assault. While his forces held the tower-while tons of sand blocked the inner gates of the Keep-while winter barrened the upland plateau above Revelstone-the Lords and all their people were doomed. They could not feed themselves within those stone walls indefinitely. If last came to last, the Giant-Raver knew that he could through patience alone make the great Keep into one reeking tomb or crypt. He let his dead collapse into sand.

  Yet his failure to burst those inner gates enraged him, made him pant for recompense even though he lacked the strength to assail the walls himself. He was a Raver, insatiable for blood despite the mortal limits of the Giant
ish body he occupied. And other things compelled him also. There was an implacable coercion in the wind, a demand which brooked no failure, however partial or eventually meaningless.

  As the dead fell apart, Satansfist ordered his long-leashed army to the attack.

  With a howl that shivered the air, echoed savagely off the carven walls, beat against the battlements like an ululation of fangs and claws and hungry blades, the Despiser's hordes charged. They swept up through the foothills like a shrill gray flood and hurled themselves at Revelstone.

  Lord Foul's Stone-spawned creatures led the attack-not because they were effective against granite walls and abutments, but because they were expendable. The Raver's army included twice a hundred thousand of them, and more arrived every day, marching to battle from Foul's Creche through the Center Plains. So samadhi used them to absorb the defense of the Keep, thus protecting his Cavewights and ur-viles. Thousands of perverted creatures fell with arrows, spears, javelins jutting from them, but many many thousands more forged ahead. And behind them came the forces which knew how to damage Revelstone.

  In moments, the charge hit. Rabid, rockwise Cavewights found crafty holds in the stone, vaulted themselves up onto the lowest battlements and balconies. Mighty ur-vile wedges used their black vitriol to wipe clear the parapets above them, then pounced upward on sturdy wooden ladders brought to the walls by other creatures. Within a short time, Revelstone was under assault all along its south and north faces.

  But the ancient Giants who made Lord's Keep had built well to defend against such an attack. Even the lowest parapets were high off the ground; they could be sealed off, so that the attackers were denied access to the city; they were defended by positions higher still in the walls. And Warmark Quaan had drilled the Warward year after year, preparing it for just this kind of battle. The prearranged defenses of the Keep sprang into action instantly as alarms sounded throughout the city. Warriors left secondary tasks and ran to the battlements; relays formed to supply the upper defenses with arrows and other weapons; concerted Eoman charged the Cavewights and ur-viles which breached the lower abutments. Then came Lore wardens, Hirebrands, Gravelingases. Lorewardens repulsed the attacks with songs of power, while Hirebrands set fire to the ladders, and Gravelingases braced the walls themselves against the strength of the Cavewights.

  As he commanded the struggle from a coign in the upper walls, Quaan soon saw that his warriors could have repulsed this assault if they had not been outnumbered thirty or more to one-if every life in his army had not been so vital, and every life in the Raver's so insignificant. But the Warward was outnumbered; it needed help. In response to the fragmentary reports which reached him from the Close-reports of fire and power and immense relief-he sent an urgent messenger to summon the Lords to Revelstone's aid.

  The messenger found High Lord Mhoram in the Close, but Mhoram did not respond to Quaan's call. It only reached the outskirts of his mind, and he held it gently distant, away from himself. When he heard one of the guards explain to the messenger what had transpired in the fire-ruined Close, he let his own awareness of the battle slip away-let all thought of the present danger drop from him, and gave himself to the melding of the Lords.

  They sat on the slumped floor around the graveling pit with their staffs on the stone before them-Trevor and Loerya on Mhoram's left, Amatin on his right. In his trembling hands, the krill blazed in hot affirmation of white gold. Yet he barely saw the light; his eyes were heat-scorched, and he was blinded by tears of release that would not stop. Through the silent contact of the meld, he spread strength about him, and shared knowledge which had burdened him more than he had ever realized. He told his fellow Lords how he had been able to remove the krill from its stone rest, and why now it did not burn his vulnerable flesh.

  He could feel Amatin shrink from what he said, feel Trevor shake with a pain that only in part came from his injury, feel Loerya appraise his communication as she might have appraised any new weapon. To each of them, he gave himself; he showed them his conviction, his understanding, his strength. And he held the proof in his hands, so that they could not doubt him. With such evidence shining amid the ravage of the Close, they followed the process which had led him to his secret knowledge and shared the dismay which had taught him to keep it secret.

  Finally, Lord Amatin framed her question aloud. It was too large for silence; it required utterance, so that Revelstone itself could hear it. She swallowed awkwardly, then floated words in the untarnished acoustics of the chamber. "So it is we-we ourselves who have-for so many generations the Lords themselves have inured themselves to the power of Kevin's Lore."

  "Yes, Lord," Mhoram whispered, knowing that everyone in the Close could hear him.

  "The Oath of Peace has prevented-"

  "Yes, Lord."

  Her breathing shuddered for a moment. "Then we are lost."

  Mhoram felt the lorn dilemma in her words and stood up within himself, pulling the authority of his High Lordship about his shoulders. "No."

  "Without power, we are lost," she countered. "Without the Oath of Peace, we are not who we are, and we are lost."

  "Thomas Covenant has returned," responded Loerya.

  Brusquely, Amatin put this hope aside. "Nevertheless. Either he has no power, or his power violates the Peace with which we have striven to serve the Land. Thus also we are lost."

  "No," the High Lord repeated. "Not lost. We-and ur-Lord Covenant-must find the wisdom to attain both Peace and power. We must retain our knowledge of who we are, or we will despair as Kevin Land-waster despaired, in Desecration. Yet we must also retain this knowledge of power, or we will have failed to do our utmost for the Land. Perhaps the future Lords will find that they must turn from Kevin's Lore-that they must find lore of their own, lore which is not so apt for destruction. We have no time for such a quest. Knowing the peril of this power, we must cling to ourselves all the more, so that we do not betray the Land."

  His words seemed to ring in the Close, and time passed before Amatin said painfully, "You offer us things which contradict each other, and tell us that we must preserve both, achieve both together. Such counsel is easily spoken."

  In silence, the High Lord strove to share with her his sense of how the contradiction might be mastered, made whole; he let his love for the Land, for Revelstone, for her, flow openly into her mind. And he smiled as he heard Lord Trevor say slowly, "It may be done. I have felt something akin to it. What little strength I have returned to me when the Keep's need became larger for me than my fear of the Keep's foe."

  "Fear," Loerya echoed in assent.

  And Mhoram added, "Fear-or hatred."

  A moment later, Amatin began to weep quietly in comprehension. With Loerya and Trevor, Mhoram wrapped courage around her and held her until her dread of her own danger, her own capacity to Desecrate the Land, relaxed. Then the High Lord put down the krill and opened his eyes to the Close.

  Dimly, blurrily, his sight made out Hearthrall Tohrm and Trell. Trell still huddled within himself, shirking the horror of what he had done. And Tohrm cradled his head, commiserating in rhadhamaerl grief with the torment of soul which could turn a Gravelingas against beloved stone. They were silent, and Mhoram gazed at them as if he were to blame for Trell's plight.

  But before he could speak, another messenger from Warmark Quaan arrived in the Close, demanded notice. When the High Lord looked up at him, the messenger repeated Quaan's urgent call for help.

  "Soon," Mhoram sighed, "soon. Tell my friend that we will come when we are able. The Lord Trevor is wounded. I am"-with a brief gesture, he indicated the scalded skin of his head-"the Lord Amatin and I must have food and rest. And the Lord Loerya-"

  " I will go," Loerya said firmly. " I have not yet fought as I should for Revelstone.'' To the messenger, she responded, ''Take me to the place of greatest need, then carry the High Lord's reply to Warmark Quaan." Moving confidently, as if the new discovery of power answered her darkest doubts, she climbed the stairs and followe
d the warrior away toward the south wall of the Keep.

  As she departed, she sent the guards to call the Healers and bring food. The other Lords were left alone for a short time, and Tohrm took that opportunity to ask Mhoram what was to be done with Trell.

  Mhoram gazed around the ruined galleries as if he were trying to estimate the degree to which he had failed Trell. He knew that generations of rhadhamaerl work would be required to restore some measure of the chamber's useful Tightness, and tears blurred his vision again as he said to Tohrm, "The Healers must work with him. Perhaps they will be able to restore his mind."

  "What will be the good? How will he endure the knowledge of what he has done?"

  "We must help him to endure. I must help him. We must attempt all healing, no matter how difficult. And I who have failed him cannot deny the burden of his need now."

  "Failed him?" Trevor asked. The pain of his injury had drawn the blood from his face, but he had not lost the mood which had inspired him to bear such a great share of the Keep's defense. "In what way? You did not cause his despair. Had you treated him with distrust, you would have achieved nothing but the confirmation of his distress. Distrust-vindicates itself."

  Mhoram nodded. "And I distrusted-I distrusted all. I kept knowledge secret even while I knew the keeping wrong. It is fortunate that the harm was no greater."

  "Yet you could not prevent-"

  "Perhaps. And perhaps-if I had shared my knowledge with him, so that he had known his peril-known- Perhaps he might have found the strength to remember himself-remember that he was a Gravelingas of the rhadhamaerl, a lover of stone."

  Tohrm agreed stiffly, and his sympathy for Trell made him say, "You have erred, High Lord."

  "Yes, Hearthrall," Mhoram replied with deep gentleness in his voice. "I am who I am-both human and mortal. I have-much to learn."