The Illearth War

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  There was a bayamo upon the Sea.

  Then a different lightning struck upward into the heavens—a bolt as green as blazing emerald. It came from the levee. Looking through the darkness, Korik discerned the form of the Raver, Kinslaughterer. He stood down in the levee, so close to the tide that the waves broke against his knees. With his stone, he hurled green blasts into the sky, and shook his arms as if the windstorm were his to command.

  On the levee behind him were three dead forms—the three Bloodguard whom Korik had sent to the northern end of the city.

  For a time, Korik did not comprehend what Kinslaughterer was doing. But then he perceived that the seas out beyond the piers moved in consonance with Kinslaughterer’s arms. As the Giant-Raver waved and gestured, they heaved and reared and broke and piled themselves together.

  Farther away, the situation was worse. Slowly with great pitchings and shudders, a massive wall of water rose out of the ocean. Kinslaughterer’s green lightning glared across the face of it as it mounted, tossed its crest higher and higher. And as it grew, it moved toward the cliff.

  The Raver was summoning a tsunami.

  Korik turned to rouse his companions.

  Sill and Tull were soon conscious and alert. But Lord Hyrim lay still, and blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. Swiftly Sill ran his hands over the Lord’s body, reported that Hyrim had several broken ribs, but no other injuries. Together, Korik and Sill chafed his wrists, slapped his neck. At last, his eyelids fluttered, and he awakened.

  He was dazed. At first, he could not grasp Korik’s tidings. But when he looked out into the night, he understood. Already the mounting tidal wave appeared half as high as the cliff, and its writhing had a dark, ill cast. There was enough hatred concentrated in it to shatter The Grieve. When Lord Hyrim turned from it, his face was taut with terrible purpose.

  He had to shout to make himself heard over the roar of waves and wind and thunder. “We must stop him! He violates the Sea! If he succeeds—if he bends the Sea to his will—the Law that preserves it will be broken. It will serve the Despiser like another Raver!”

  Korik answered, “Yes!” There was a fury in the Bloodguard. They would have disobeyed any other decision.

  Yet Sill remembered caution enough to say, “He has the Illearth Stone.”

  “No!” Lord Hyrim searched the floor for the pieces of his staff. When he found them, he called for clingor. Tull gave him a length of line. He used it to lash the two pieces of his staff together, metal heels joined. Clutching this unwieldy instrument, he said, “That is only a fragment of the Stone! The Illearth Stone itself—is much larger! But in our worst dreams we did not guess that the Despiser would dare cut pieces of the Stone for his servants. His mastery of it must—must be very great. Thus he is able to subdue Giants—the Ravers and the Stone together, the Stone empowering the Raver, and the Raver using the stone! And the others—Fleshharrower, Satansfist—they also must possess fragments of the Stone. Do you hear, Korik?”

  “I hear,” Korik replied. “The High Lord will be warned.”

  Lord Hyrim nodded. The pain in his ribs made him wince. But he thrust his way out of the cell into the howling wind. Korik, Sill, and Tull followed at once.

  Ahead of them, Kinslaughterer labored in an ecstasy of power. Though it was still some distance from the piers, the tsunami towered over him, dwarfed

  his stolen form. Now he was chanting to it, invoking it. His words cut through the tumult of the storm.

  Come, Sea!

  Obey me!

  Raise high!

  crash down!

  Break rock!

  break stone:

  crush heart:

  grind soul:

  rend flesh:

  crack whole!

  Eat dead

  for bread!

  Come, Sea!

  Obey me!

  And the seas answered, piled still higher. Now the wave’s crest frothed and lashed level with the upper ramparts of Coercri.

  The Bloodguard wished to attack instantly, but Lord Hyrim held them back. So that he would not be heard by Kinslaughterer, he mouthed the words, “I must strike the first blow.” Then he moved over the headrock as fast as his damaged chest permitted.

  When the four started into the levee, the huge wall of water already appeared to be leaning over them. Only the might of Kinslaughterer’s Stone kept it erect. As they approached, he was too consumed by the spectacle of his own power to sense them. But in the last moment, some instinct warned him. He spun suddenly, found Lord Hyrim within a few yards of him.

  Roaring savagely, he raised his glowing fist to hurl a blast at the Lord.

  But while the Raver cocked his arm, Lord Hyrim leaped the last distance toward him. With the lashed fragments of his staff, the Lord struck upward.

  The metal heels hit Kinslaughterer’s hand before his bolt was ready.

  The two powers clashed in a blaze of green and blue. Kinslaughterer’s greater force drove his might like lightning down the length of Lord Hyrim’s arms into his head and body. The green fire burned within him, burned his brain and heart. When the flame ceased, he collapsed.

  But the clash scorched Kinslaughterer’s hand, and its recoil knocked his arm back. He lost the Stone. It fell, rolled away from him across the headrock.

  At once, the three Bloodguard sprang; together they struck the Raver with all their strength. And in that assault their Vow at last found utterance. The Giant-Raver was dead before his form fell into the water.

  Yet still for a long moment the Bloodguard hurled blows at him, driven by the excess of their rage and abomination. Then the splashing of saltwater cooled them, and they perceived that the storm had begun to fade.

  Without the compulsion of the Stone, the wind failed. The lightning stopped. After a few last rolls, the thunder fell away.

  The tidal wave made a sound like an avalanche as it fell backward into the Sea. Its spray wet the faces of the Bloodguard, and its waves broke over their thighs. Then it was gone.

  Together the three hastened back to Lord Hyrim.

  He still clung to life, but he was almost at an end; the Raver’s blast had burned him deeply. His eye sockets were empty, and from between his hollow lids a thin green smoke rose up into the starlight. As Sill lifted him into a sitting position, his hands groped about him as if they were searching for his staff, and he said weakly, “Do not—do not touch—take—”

  He could not speak it. The effort burst his heart. With a groan, he died in Sill’s arms.

  For a time, the Bloodguard stood over him in silence, gave him what respect they could. But they had no words to say. Soon Korik went and took up Kinslaughterer’s fragment of the Illearth Stone. Without a will to drive it, it was dull; it showed only fitful gleams in its core. But it hurt his hand with a deep and fiery cold. He clenched it in his fist.

  “We will take it to the High Lord,” he said. “Perhaps the other Ravers have such power. The High Lord may use this power to defeat them.”

  Sill and Tull nodded. In the ruin of the mission, there was no other hope left to them.

  “Then we sent homeward the bodies of our fallen comrades,” Tull said softly. “There was no need for haste—we knew that their Ranyhyn could find a way in safety north of the Sarangrave. And when that task was done, we returned to the five who stood watch at the lighthouse. Two of them Korik charged to return to Lord’s Keep with all possible speed, so that Revelstone might be warned. And because he judged that the war had already begun—that the High Lord would be marching in the South Plains with the Warward—I was charged, and Shull and Vale with me, to bear these tidings southward, the way I have come. With Sill and Doar, Korik undertook the burden of the Illearth Stone, so that it might be taken in safety to Revelstone for the Lords.”

  At last the Bloodguard fell silent. For a long time, Troy sat gazing sightlessly at the stone before him. He felt deaf and numb—too shocked to hear the low breeze blowing around Kevin’s Watch, too stunned to
feel the chill of the mountain air. Dead? he asked silently. All dead? But it seemed to him that he felt nothing. In him there was a pain so deep that he was not conscious of it.

  But in time he recollected himself enough to raise his head, look over at Lord Mhoram. He could see the Lord dimly. His forehead was tight with pain, and his eyes bled tears.

  With an effort, Troy found his voice. It was husky with emotion as he asked, “Is this what you saw—last night? Is this it?”

  “No.” Mhoram’s reply was abrupt. But it was not abrupt with anger; it was abrupt with the exertion of suppressing his sobs. “I saw Bloodguard fighting in the service of the Despiser.”

  There was a long and heartrending pause before Tull said through his teeth, “That is impossible.”

  “They should not have touched the Stone,” the Lord breathed weakly. “They should not—!”

  Troy wanted to question Mhoram, ask him what he meant. But then suddenly he realized that he was seeing more clearly. His fog was lifting.

  At once, he rose to his knees, turned, braced his chest on the edge of the parapet. Instinctively, he tightened his sunglasses on his face.

  Along the rim of the eastern horizon dawn had already begun.

  EIGHTEEN: Dooms Retreat

  Immediately Troy jumped erect to face the sun.

  His companions stood with him in tense silence, as if they intended to share what he would see. But he knew that even the Bloodguard could not match his mental sight. He paid no attention to them. All his awareness was consumed by the gradual revelations of the dawn.

  At first, he could see only a fading gray and purple blankness. But then the direct rays of the sun caught the platform, and his surroundings began to lift their heads out of the mist. Above the long fall into shadow, he received his first visual sense of the wide open air in which Kevin’s Watch stood as if on the tip of a dark finger accusing the heavens. In the west, across a distance too great for any sight but his, he saw sunlight touch the thin snowcaps of the mountain wedge which separated the South Plains from Garroting Deep. And as the sun climbed higher, he made out the long curve of peaks running south and then west from the valley of Mithil Stonedown to Doom’s Retreat.

  Then the light reached down to the hills which formed the eastern border of the Plains between Kevin’s Watch and Andelain. Now he could follow the whole course of the Mithil River northwest and then north until it joined the Black. He felt strangely elevated and mighty. His gaze had never comprehended so much before, and he understood how High Lord Kevin must have felt. Standing on the Watch was like being on the pinnacle of the Earth.

  But the sun kept rising. Like a tide of illumination, it flooded across the Plains, washing away the last of his blindness.

  What he saw staggered him where he stood. Horror filled his eyes like the rush of an avalanche. It was worse than anything he could have imagined.

  He made out the Warward first. His army had just begun to march; it crept south along the mountain wedge. He saw it as hardly more than a smudge in the foothills, but he could gauge its speed. It was still two days from Doom’s Retreat.

  Hiltmark Quaan’s force was closer to him, and farther from the Retreat. But the horsemen were moving faster. He estimated their numbers instinctively, instantly; he knew at once that they had been decimated. More than a third of the two hundred Bloodguard were gone, and of Quaan’s twelve Eoward less than six remained. They hurried raggedly, almost at a dead rout.

  Raging at their heels came a vast horde of kresh—at least ten thousand of the savage yellow wolves. The mightiest of them, the most powerful two thousand, bore black riders—ur-viles. The ridden kresh ran in tight wedges, and the ur-vile loremasters at the wedge tips threw torrents of dark force at every rider who fell within their reach.

  In an effort to control the pace, restrain it from utter flight, Eoman turned at intervals. Twenty or forty warriors threw themselves together at the yellow wall to slow the charge of the kresh. Troy could see flashes of blue fire in these sorties; Callindrill and Verement were alive. But two Lords were not enough. The riders were hopelessly outnumbered. And they were already well beyond the Mithil River in their race toward Doom’s Retreat. Even if they ran no faster, they would reach the Retreat before the marching Warward.

  Quaan had been unable to gain the last day that the marchers needed.

  Yet even that was not the most crushing sight. Behind the wolves came the main body of Lord Foul’s army. This body was closer than the others to Kevin’s Watch, and Troy could see it with appalling clarity.

  The Giant striding at its head was the least of its horrors. At the Giant’s back marched immense ranks of Cavewights—at least twenty thousand of the strong, ungainly rock delvers. Behind them hurried an equal number of ur-viles, loping on all fours for better speed. Through their ranks, hundreds of fearsome, lion-like griffins alternately trotted and flew. And after the Demondim-spawn came a seething, grim army so huge that Troy could not even guess its numbers: humans, wolves, Waynhim, forest animals, creatures of the Flat, all radiating the fathomless blood-hunger which coerced them—many myriad of warped, rabid creatures, the perverted handiwork of Lord Foul and the Illearth Stone.

  Most of this prodigious army had already crossed the Mithil in pursuit of Hiltmark Quaan and his command. It moved with such febrile speed that it was little more than three days from Doom’s Retreat. And it was so mighty that no ambush, however well-conceived, could hope to stand against it.

  But there would be no ambush. The Warward did not know its peril, and would not reach the Retreat in time.

  Like jagged hunks of rock, these facts beat Warmark Troy to his knees. “Dear God!” he breathed in anguish. “What have I done?” The avalanche of revelations battered him down. “Dear God. Dear God. What have I done?”

  Behind him, Lord Mhoram insisted with mounting urgency, “What is it? What do you see? Warmark, what do you see?” But Troy could not answer. His world was reeling around him. Through the vertigo of his perceptions, his clutching mind could grasp only one thought: this was his fault, all of it was his fault. The futility of Korik’s mission, the end of the Giants, the inevitable slaughter of the Warward—everything was on his head. He had been in command. And when the debacle of his command was over, the Land would be defenseless. He had served the Despiser from the start without knowing it, and what Atiaran Trell-mate had given her life for was worse than nothing.

  “Worse,” he gasped. He had condemned his warriors to death. And they were only the beginning of the toll Lord Foul would exact for his misjudgment. “Dear God.” He wanted to howl, but his chest was too full of horror; it had no room for outcries.

  He did not understand how the Despiser’s army could be so big. It surpassed his most terrible nightmares.

  Wildly he surged to his feet. He tore at his breast, trying to wrest enough air from his unbreathable failure for just one cry. But he could not get it; his lungs were clogged with ruin. A sudden loud helplessness roared in his ears, and he pitched forward.

  He did not realize that he had tried to jump until Terrel and Ruel caught his legs and hauled him back over the parapet.

  Then he felt a burning in his cheeks. Lord Mhoram was slapping him. When he flinched, the Lord pulled close to him, shouted into his eyeless face, “Warmark! Hile Troy! Hear me! I understand—the Despiser’s army is great. And the Warward will not reach Doom’s Retreat in time. I can help!”

  Dumbly, instinctively, Troy tried to straighten his sunglasses on his face, and found that they were gone. He had lost them over the edge of Kevin’s Watch.

  “Hear me!” Mhoram cried. “I can send word. If either Callindrill or Verement lives, I can be heard. They can warn Amorine.” He grabbed Troy’s shoulders, and his fingers dug in, trying to gain a hold on Troy’s bones. “Hear! I am able. But I must have reason, hope. I cannot—if it is useless. Answer!” he demanded through clenched teeth. “You are the Warmark. Find hope! Do not leave your warriors to die!”

&nbs
p; “No,” Troy whispered. He tried to break away from Mhoram’s grip, but the Lord’s fingers were too strong. “There’s no way. Foul’s army is too big.”

  He wanted to weep, but Mhoram did not let him. “Discover a way!” the Lord raged. “They will be slain! You must save them!”

  “I can’t!” Troy shouted in sudden anger. The stark impossibility of Mhoram’s demand touched a hidden resource in him, and he yelled, “Foul’s army is too goddamn big! Our forces are going to get there too late! The only way they can stay alive just a little longer is to run straight through the Retreat and keep going until they drop! There’s nothing out there—just Wastes, and Desert, and a clump of ruins, and—!”

  Abruptly his heart lurched. Kevin’s Watch seemed to tilt under him, and he grabbed at Mhoram’s wrists to steady himself. “Sweet Jesus!” he whispered. “There is one chance.”

  “Speak it!”

  “There’s one chance,” Troy repeated in a tone of wonder. “Jesus.” With an effort, he forced his attention into focus on Mhoram. “But you’ll have to do it.”

  “Then I will do it. Tell me what must be done.”

  For a moment longer, the sweet sense of reprieve amazed Troy, outweighing the need to act, almost dumbfounding him. “It’s going to be rough,” he murmured to himself. “God! It’s going to be rough.” But Mhoram’s insistent grip held him. Speaking slowly to help himself collect his thoughts, he said, “You’re going to have to do it. There’s no other way. But first you’ve got to get through to Callindrill or Verement.”

  Lord Mhoram’s piercing gaze probed Troy. Then Mhoram helped the Warmark to his feet. Quietly the Lord asked, “Do Callindrill and Verement live?”

  “Yes. I saw their fire. Can you reach them? They don’t have any of that High Wood.”

  Mhoram smiled grimly. “What message shall I give?”