The Illearth War

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  But before long Bannor halted, facing a blank wall of stone. In the dim light of one torch, he spread his arms to the wall as if he were invoking it, and spoke three words in a language that came awkwardly to his tongue. When he lowered his arms, a door became visible. It swung inward, admitting the Bloodguard and Covenant to a high, brilliant cavern.

  The makers of Revelstone had done little to shape or work this spacious cave. They had given it a smooth floor, but had left untouched the raw rough stone of its walls and ceiling; and they had not altered the huge rude columns which stood thickly through it like massive tree trunks, reaching up from the floor to take the burden of the ceiling upon their shoulders. However, the whole cavern was lit by large urns of graveling placed between the columns so that all the surfaces of the walls and columns were clearly illumined.

  Displayed on these surfaces everywhere were works of art. Paintings and tapestries hung on the walls; large sculptures and carvings rested on stands between the columns and urns; smaller pieces, carvings and statuettes and stoneware and suru-pa-maerl works, sat on wooden shelves cunningly attached to the columns.

  In his fascination, Covenant forgot why he had been brought here. He began moving around the hall, looking avidly. The smaller works caught his attention first. Many of them appeared in some way charged with action, imminent heat, as if they had been captured in a moment of incarnation; but the differences in materials and emotions were enormous. Where an oaken figure of a woman cradling a baby wept protectively over the griefs and hurts of children, a similar granite subject radiated confident generative power; where a polished Gildenlode flame seemed to yearn upward, a suru-pa-maerl blaze expressed comfort and practical warmth. Studies of children and Ranyhyn and Giants abounded; but scattered among them were darker subjects—roynish ur-viles, strong, simpleminded Cavewights, and mad, valorous Kevin, reft of judgment and foresight but not courage or compassion by sheer despair. There was little copying of nature among them; the materials used were not congenial to mirroring or literalism. Instead they revealed the comprehending hearts of their makers. Covenant was entranced.

  Bannor followed him as he moved around the columns, and after a while the Bloodguard said, “This is the Hall of Gifts. All these were made by the people of the Land, and given to the Lords. Or to Revelstone.” He gazed about him with unmoved eyes. “They were given for honor or love. Or to be seen. But the Lords do not desire such gifts. They say that no one can possess such things. The treasure comes from the Land, and belongs to the Land. So all gifts given to the Lords are placed here, so that any who wish it may behold them.”

  Yet Covenant heard something deeper in Bannor’s voice. Despite its monotone, it seemed to articulate a glimpse of the hidden and unanswerable passion which bound the Bloodguard to the Lords. But Covenant did not pursue it, did not intrude on it.

  From among the first columns, he was drawn to a large, thick arras hanging on one of the walls. He recognized it. It was the same work he had once tried to destroy. He had thrown it out of his room in the watchtower in a fit of outrage at the fable of Berek’s life—and at the blindness which saw himself as Berek reborn. He could not be mistaken. The arras was tattered around the edges, and had a carefully repaired rent down its center halfway through the striving, irenic figure of Berek Halfhand. In scenes around the central figure, it showed the hero’s soul-journey to his despair on Mount Thunder, and to his discovery of the Earthpower. From it, Berek gazed out at the Unbeliever with portents in his eyes.

  Roughly Covenant turned away, and a moment later he saw High Lord Elena walking toward him from the opposite side of the hall. He remained where he was, watched her. The Staff of Law in her right hand increased the stateliness and authority of her step, but her left hand was open in welcome. Her robe covered her without disguising either the suppleness or the strength of her movements. Her hair hung loosely about her shoulders, and her sandals made a whispering noise on the stone.

  Quietly she said, “Thomas Covenant, be welcome to the Hall of Gifts. I thank you for coming.”

  She was smiling as if she were glad to see him.

  That smile contradicted his expectations, and he distrusted it. He studied her face, trying to discern her true feelings. Her eyes invited study. Even while they regarded him, they seemed to look beyond him or into him or through him, as if the space he occupied were shared by something entirely different. He thought fleetingly that perhaps she did not actually, concretely, see him at all.

  As she approached, she said, “Do you like the Hall? The people of the Land are fine artists, are they not?” But when she neared him, she stopped short with a look of concern, and asked, “Thomas Covenant, are you in pain?”

  He found that he was breathing rapidly again. The air in the Hall seemed too rarefied for him. When he shrugged his shoulders, he could not keep the ache of the movement off his face.

  Elena reached her hand toward his chest. He half winced, thinking that she meant to strike him. But she only touched his bruised ribs gently with her palm for a moment, then turned away toward Bannor. “Bloodguard,” she said sharply, “the ur-Lord has been hurt. Why was he not taken to a Healer?”

  “He did not ask,” Bannor replied stolidly.

  “Ask? Should help wait for asking?”

  Bannor met her gaze flatly and said nothing, as if he considered his rectitude to be self-evident. But the reproach in her tone gave Covenant an unexpected pang. In Bannor’s defense, he said, “I don’t need—didn’t need it. He kept me alive.”

  She sighed without taking her eyes off the Bloodguard. “Well, that may be. But I do not like to see you harmed.” Then, relenting, she said, “Bannor, the ur-Lord and I will go upland. Send for us at once if there is any need.”

  Bannor nodded, bowed slightly, and left the Hall.

  When the hidden door was closed behind him, Elena turned back to Covenant. He tensed instinctively. Now, he muttered to himself. Now she’ll do it. But to all appearances her irritation was gone. And she made no reference to the arras; she seemed unaware of the connection between him and that work. With nothing but innocence in her face, she said, “Well, Thomas Covenant. Do you like the Hall? You have not told me.”

  He hardly heard her. Despite her pleasant expression, he could not believe that she did not intend to task him for his encounter with Trell. But then he saw concern mounting in her cheeks again, and he hurried to cover himself.

  “What? Oh, the Hall. I like it fine. But isn’t it a little out of the way? What good is a museum if people can’t get to it?”

  “All Revelstone knows the way. Now we are alone, but in times of peace—or in times when war is more distant—there are always people here. And the children in the schools spend much time here, learning of the crafts of the Land. Craftmasters come from all the Land to share and increase their skills. The Hall of Gifts is thus deep and concealed because the Giants who wrought the Keep deemed such a place fitting—and because if ever Revelstone is whelmed the Hall may be hidden and preserved, in hope of the future.”

  For an instant, the focus of her gaze seemed to swing closer to him, and her vision tensed as if she meant to burn her way through his skull to find out what he was thinking. But then she turned away with a gentle smile, and walked toward another wall of the cavern. “Let me show you another work,” she said. “It is by one of our rarest Craftmasters, Ahanna daughter of Hanna. Here.”

  He followed, and stopped with her before a large picture in a burnished ebony frame. It was a dark work, but glowing bravely near its center was a figure that he recognized immediately: Lord Mhoram. The Lord stood alone in a hollow tightly surrounded by black fiendish shapes which were about to fall on him like a flood, deluge him utterly. His only weapon was his staff, but he wielded it defiantly; and in his eyes was a hot, potent look of extremity and triumph, as if he had discovered within himself some capacity for peril that made him unconquerable.

  Elena said respectfully, “Ahanna names this ‘Lord Mhoram’s Victo
ry.’ She is a prophet, I think.”

  The sight of Mhoram in such straits hurt Covenant, and he took it as a reproach. “Listen,” he said. “Stop playing around with me like this. If you’ve got something to say, say it. Or take Troy’s advice, and lock me up. But don’t do this to me.”

  “Playing around? I do not understand”

  “Hellfire! Stop looking so innocent. You got me down here to let me have it for that run-in with Trell. Well, get it over with. I can’t stand the suspense.”

  The High Lord met his glare with such openness that he turned away, muttering under his breath to steady himself.

  “Ur-Lord.” She placed an appealing hand on his arm. “Thomas Covenant. How can you believe such thoughts? How can you understand us so little? Look at me. Look at me!” She pulled his arm until he turned back to her, faced the sincerity she expressed with every line of her face. “I did not ask you here to torment you. I wished to share my last hour in the Hall of Gifts with you. This war is near – near—and I will not soon stand here again. As for the Warmark—I do not take counsel from him concerning you. If there is any blame in your meeting with Trell, it is mine. I did not give you clear warning of my fears. And I did not see the extent of the danger—else I would have told all the Bloodguard to prevent your meeting.

  “No, ur-Lord. I have no hard words to speak to you. You should reproach me. I have endangered your life, and cost Trell Atiaran-mate my grandfather his last self-respect. He was helpless to heal his daughter and his wife. Now he will believe that he is helpless to heal himself.”

  Looking at her, Covenant’s distrust fell into dust. He took a deep breath to clean stale air from his lungs. But the movement hurt his ribs. The pain made him fear that she would reach toward him, and he mumbled quickly, “Don’t touch me.”

  For an instant, she misunderstood him. Her fingers leaped from his arm, and the otherness of her vision flicked across him with a virulence that made him flinch, amazed and baffled. But what she saw corrected her misapprehension. The focus of her gaze left him; she extended her hand slowly to place her palm on his chest.

  “I hear you,” she said. “But I must touch you. You have been my hope for too long. I cannot give you up.”

  He took her wrist with the two fingers and thumb of his right hand, but he hesitated a moment before he removed her palm. Then he said, “What happens to Trell now? He broke his Oath. Is anything done to him?”

  “Alas, there is little we can do. It lies with him. We will try to teach him that an Oath which has been broken may still be kept. But it was not his intent to harm you—he did not plan his attack. I know him, and am sure of this. He has known of your presence in Revelstone, yet he made no effort to seek you out. No, he was overcome by his hurt. I do not know how he will recover.”

  As she spoke, he saw that once again he had failed to comprehend. He had been thinking about punishment rather than healing. Hugging his sore ribs, he said, “You’re too gentle. You’ve got every right to hate me.”

  She gave him a look of mild exasperation. “Neither Lena my mother nor I have ever hated you. It is impossible for us. And what would be the good? Without you, I would not be. It may be that Lena would have married Triock, and given birth to a daughter—but that daughter would be another person. I would not be who I am.” A moment later, she smiled. “Thomas Covenant, there are few children in all the history of the Land who have ridden a Ranyhyn.”

  “Well, at least that part of it worked out.” He shrugged aside her questioning glance. He did not feel equal to explaining the bargain he had tried to make with the Ranyhyn—or the way in which that bargain had failed him.

  A mood of constraint came between them. Elena turned away from it to look again at “Lord Mhoram’s Victory.”

  “This picture disturbs me,” she said. “Where am I? If Mhoram is thus sorely beset, why am I not at his side? How have I fallen, that he is so alone?” She touched the picture lightly, brushed her fingertips over Mhoram’s lone, beleaguered, invincible stance. “It is in my heart that this war will go beyond me.”

  The thought stung her. Suddenly she stepped back from the painting, stood tall with the Staff of Law planted on the stone before her. She shook her head so that her brown-and-honey hair snapped as if a wind blew about her shoulders, and breathed intensely, “No! I will see it ended! Ended!”

  As she repeated Ended, she struck the floor with the Staff’s iron heel. An instant of bright blue fire ignited in the air. The stone lurched under Covenants feet, and he nearly fell. But she quenched her power almost at once; it passed like a momentary intrusion of nightmare. Before he could regain his balance, she caught his arm and steadied him.

  “Ah, you must pardon me,” she said with a look like laughter. “I forgot myself.”

  He braced his feet, tried to determine whether or not he could still trust the floor. The stone felt secure. “Give me fair warning next time,” he muttered, “so I can sit down.”

  The High Lord broke into clear laughter, then subdued herself abruptly. “Your pardon again, Thomas Covenant. But your expression is so fierce and foolish.”

  “Forget it,” he replied. He found that he liked the sound of her laugh. “Ridicule may be the only good answer.”

  “Is that a proverb from your world? Or are you a prophet?”

  “A little of both.”

  “You are strange. You transpose wisdom and jest—you reverse their meanings.”

  “Is that a fact?”

  “Yes, ur-Lord Covenant,” she said lightly, humorously. “That is a fact.” Then she appeared to remember something. “But we must go. I think we are expected. And you have never seen the upland. Will you come with me?”

  He shrugged. She smiled at him, and he followed her toward the door of the Hall.

  “Who’s expecting us?” he asked casually.

  She opened the door and preceded him through it. When it was closed behind them, she answered, “I would like to surprise you. But perhaps that would not be fair warning. There is a man—a man who studies dreams—to find the truth in them. One of the Unfettered.”

  His heart jumped again, and he wrapped his arms protectively around his sore chest. Hellfire, he groaned to himself. An interpreter of dreams. Just what I need. An Unfettered One had saved him and Atiaran from the ur-viles at the Celebration of Spring. By a perverse trick of recollection, he heard the Unfettered One’s death cry in the wake of Elena’s clear voice. And he remembered Atiaran’s grim insistence that it was the responsibility of the living to make meaningful the sacrifices of the dead. With a brusque gesture, he motioned for Elena to lead the way, then walked after her, muttering, Hellfire. Hellfire.

  She guided him back up through the levels of Revelstone until he began to recognize his surroundings. Then they moved westward, still climbing, and after a while they joined a high, wide passage like a road along the length of the Keep, rising slowly. Soon the decreasing weight of the stone around him, and the growing autumnal tang of the air, told him that they were approaching the level of the plateau which topped the Keep. After two sharp switchbacks, the passage ended, and he found himself out in the open, standing on thick grass under the roofless heavens. A league or two west of him were the mountains.

  A cool breeze hinting a fall crispness touched him through the late morning sunlight—a low blowing as full of ripe earth and harvests as if it were clairvoyant, foretelling bundled crops and full fruit and seeds ready for rest. But the trees on the plateau and the upland hills were predominantly evergreens, feathery mimosas and tall pines and wide cedars with no turning of leaves. And the hardy grass made no concessions to the changing season.

  The hills of the upland were Revelstone’s secret strength. They were protected by sheer cliffs on the east and south, by mountains on the north and west; and so they were virtually inaccessible except through Lord’s Keep itself. Here the people of the city could get food and water to withstand a siege. Therefore Revelstone could endure as long as its walls and ga
tes remained impregnable.

  “So you see,” said Elena, “that the Giants wrought well for the Land in all ways. While Revelstone stands, there remains one bastion of hope. In its own way, the Keep is as impervious to defeat as Foul’s Creche is said to be—in the old legends. This is vital, for the legends also say that the shadow of Despite will never be wholly driven from the Land while Ridjeck Thome, Lord Foul’s dire demesne, endures. So our: debt to the Giants is far greater than for unfaltering friendship. It is greater than anything we can repay.”

  Her tone was grateful, but her mention of the Giants cast a gloom over her and Covenant. She turned away from it, and led him northward along the curve of the upland.

  In this direction, the plateau rose into rumpled hills; and soon, on their left, away from the cliff, they began to pass herds of grazing cattle. Cattleherds saluted the High Lord ceremoniously, and she responded with quiet bows. Later, she and Covenant crossed a hilltop from which they could see westward across the width of the upland. There, beyond the swift river that ran south toward the bead of Furl Falls, were fields where crops of wheat and maize rippled in the breeze. And a league behind the grazeland and the river and the fields stood the mountains, rising rugged and grand out of the hills. The peaks were snow-clad, and their white bemantling made them look hoary and aloof—sheer, wild, and irreproachable. The Haruchai lived west and south in this same range.

  Covenant and the High Lord continued northward, slowly winding away from the cliffs and toward the river as Elena chose an easy path among the hills. She seemed content with the silence between them, so they both moved without speaking. Covenant walked as if he were drinking in the upland with his eyes and ears. The sturdy health of the grass, the clean, hale soil and the inviolate rock, the ripeness of the wheat and maize—all were vivid to his sight. The singing and soaring of the birds sounded like joy in the air. And when he passed close to a particularly tall, magisterial pine, he felt that he could almost hear the climbing of its sap. For a league, he forgot himself in his enjoyment of the Land’s late summer.