The Illearth War

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  The Bloodguard cocked one eyebrow fractionally. “High Lord Kevin made no sojourns to Rivenrock or Melenkurion Skyweir.”

  That answer rocked Covenant. “None?” His protest burst out before he could stop it. “Are you telling me you’ve never been here before?”

  “We are the first Bloodguard to stand on Rivenrock,” Bannor replied flatly.

  “Then how—? Wait. Hold on.” Covenant stared dizzily, then hit his forehead with the heal of his hand. “Right. If the Ward is some kind of natural phenomenon—like the Illearth Stone—if it isn’t something he put here—Kevin wouldn’t have to come here to know about it. Loric or somebody could have told him. Loric could have told anybody.”

  He took a deep breath to steady himself. “But everybody who might have known about it died in the Desecration. Except you.”

  Bannor blinked at Covenant as if his words had no meaning.

  “Listen to me, Bannor,” he went on. “A lot of things are finally starting to make sense. You reacted strangely—when Amok turned up at Revelstone that first time. You reacted strangely when he turned up at Revelwood. And you let the High Lord herself follow him into the mountains with just two Bloodguard to protect her. Just two, Bannor! And when we end up stuck here on this godforsaken rock, Morin has the actual gall to apologize for Amok. Hellfire! Bannor, you should have at least told the High Lord what you know about this Ward. What kind of loyal do you think you are?”

  Elena cautioned Covenant again. But her tone had changed; his thinking intrigued her.

  “We are the Bloodguard,” Bannor said. “You cannot raise doubt against us. We do not know Amok’s intent.”

  Covenant heard the slight stress which Bannor placed on the word know. To his own surprise, he felt a sudden desire to take Bannor at his word, leave what the Bloodguard knew alone. But he forced himself to ask, “Know, Bannor? How can you not know? You’ve trusted him too much for that.”

  Bannor countered as he had previously, “We do not trust him. The High Lord chooses to follow him. We do not ask for more.”

  “The hell you don’t.” His effort of self-compulsion made him brutal. “And stop giving me that blank look. You people came to the Land, and you swore a Vow to protect Kevin. You swore to preserve him or at least give your lives for him and the Lords and Revelstone until Time itself came to an end if not forever, or why are you bereft even of the simple decency of sleep? But that poor desperate man outsmarted you. He actively saved you when he destroyed himself and everything else he merely believed in. So there you were, hanging from your Vow in empty space as if all the reasons in the world had suddenly disappeared.

  “And then! Then you get a second chance to do your Vow right when the new Lords come along. But what happens? Amok turns up out of nowhere, and there’s a war on against Foul himself—and what do you do? You let this creation of Kevin’s lead the High Lord away as if it were safe and she didn’t have anything better to do.

  “Let me tell you something, Bannor. Maybe you don’t positively know Amok. You must have learned some kind of distrust from Kevin. But you sure as hell understand what Amok is doing. And you approve!” The abrupt ferocity of his own yell stopped him for an instant. He felt shaken by the moral judgments he saw in Bannor. Thickly he continued, “Or why are you risking her for the sake of something created by the only man who has ever succeeded in casting doubt on your incorruptibility?”

  Without warning, Amok appeared. The youth’s arrival startled Covenant, but he took it as a sign that he was on the right track. With a heavy sigh, he said, “Why in the name of your Vow or at least simple friendship didn’t you tell the High Lord about Amok when he first showed up?”

  Bannor’s gaze did not waver. In his familiar, awkward, atonal inflection, he replied, “Ur-Lord, we have seen the Desecration. We have seen the fruit of perilous lore. Lore is not knowledge. Lore is a weapon, a sword or spear. The Bloodguard have no use for weapons. Any knife may turn and wound the hand which wields it. Yet the Lords desire lore. They do work of value with it. Therefore we do not resist it, though we do not touch it or serve it or save it.

  “High Lord Kevin made his Wards to preserve his lore—and to lessen the peril that his weapons might fall into unready hands. This we approve. We are the Bloodguard. We do not speak of lore. We speak only of what we know.”

  Covenant could not go on. He felt that he had already multiplied his offenses against Bannor too much. And he was moved by what Bannor said, despite the Bloodguard’s flat tone.

  But Elena had learned enough to pursue his reasoning. Her voice was both quiet and authoritative as she said, “First Mark—Bannor—the Bloodguard must make a decision now. Hear me. I am Elena, High Lord by the choice of the Council. This is a question of loyalty. Will you serve dead Kevin’s wisdom, or will you serve me? In the past, you have served two causes, the dead and the living. You have served both well. But here you must choose. In the Land’s need, there is no longer any middle way. There will be blood and blame upon us all if we allow Corruption to prevail.”

  Slowly Bannor turned toward the First Mark. They regarded each other in silence for a long moment. Then Morin faced the High Lord with a magisterial look in his eyes. “High Lord,” he said, “we do not know the name of the Seventh Ward’s power. We have heard many names—some false, others dead. But one name we have heard only uttered in whispers by High Lord Kevin and his Council.

  “That name is the Power of Command.”

  When Amok heard the name, he nodded until his hair seemed to dance with glee.

  TWENTY-FOUR: Descent to Earthroot

  Covenant found that he was sweating. Despite the chill breeze, his forehead was damp. Moisture itched in his beard, and cold perspiration ran down his spine. Morin’s submission left him feeling curiously depleted. For a moment, he looked up at the sun as if to ask it why it did not warm him.

  Melenkurion’s spires reached into the morning like fingers straining to bracket the sun. Their glaciered tips caught the light brilliantly; the reflected dazzle made Covenant’s eyes water. The massive stone of the peaks intimidated him. Blinking rapidly, he forced his gaze back to High Lord Elena.

  Through his sun blindness, he seemed to see only her brown, blond-raddled hair. The lighter tresses gleamed as if they were burnished. But as he blinked, his vision cleared. He made out her face. She was vivid with smiles. A new thrill of life lit her countenance with recovered hope. She did not speak, but her lips formed the one word, Beloved.

  Covenant felt that he had betrayed her.

  Morin and Bannor stood almost shoulder to shoulder behind her. Nothing in the alert poise of their balance, or in the relaxed readiness of their arms, expressed any surprise or regret at the decision they had made. Yet Covenant knew they had fundamentally alerted the character of their service to the Lords. He had exacted that from them. He wished he could apologize in some way which would have meaning to the Bloodguard.

  But there was nothing he could say to them. They were too absolute to accept any gesture of contrition. Their solitary communion with their Vow left him no way in which to approach them. No apology was sufficient.

  “The Power of Command,” he breathed weakly. “Have mercy on me.” Unable to bear the sight of Elena’s relieved, triumphant, grateful smile, or of Amok’s grin, he turned away and walked wearily out across the plateau toward Rivenrock’s edge as if his feet were trying to learn again the solidity of the stone.

  He moved parallel to the cleft, but stayed a safe distance from it. As soon as he could see a substantial swath of Garroting Deep beyond the cliff edge, he stopped. There he remained, hoping both that Elena would come to him and that she would not.

  The prevailing breeze from the Forest blew into his face, and for the first time in many days he was able to distinguish the tang of the season. He found that the autumn of the Land had turned its corner, traveled its annual round from joy to sorrow. The air no longer gleamed with abundance and fruition, with ripeness either glad or grim. No
w the breeze tasted like the leading edge of winter—a sere augury, promising long nights and barrenness and cold.

  As he smelled the air, he realized that Garroting Deep had no fall color change. He could make out stark black stands where the trees had already lost their leaves, but no blazonry palliated the Deep’s darkness. It went without transition or adornment from summer to winter. He sensed the reason with his eyes and nose; the old Forest’s angry clench of consciousness consumed all its strength and will, left it with neither the ability nor the desire to spend itself in mere displays of splendor.

  Then he heard footsteps behind him, and recognized Elena’s tread. To forestall whatever she wanted to tell him or ask him, he said, “You know, where I come from, the people who did this to a forest would be called pioneers—a very special breed of heroes, since instead of killing other human beings they concentrate on slaughtering nature itself. In fact, I know people who claim that all our social discomfort comes from the mere fact that we’ve got nothing left to pioneer.”

  “Beloved,” she said softly, “you are not well. What is amiss?”

  “Amiss?” He could not bring himself to look at her. His mouth was full of his bargain, and he had to swallow hard before he could say, “Don’t mind me. I’m like that Forest down there. Sometimes I can’t seem to help remembering.”

  In the silence, he sensed how little this answer satisfied her. She cared about him, wanted to understand him. But the rebirth of hope had restored the urgency of her duty. He knew that she could not spare the time to explore him now. He nodded morosely as she said, “I must go—the Land’s need bears heavily upon me.” Then she added, “Will you remain here—await my return?”

  At last, he found the strength to turn and face her. He met the solemn set of her face, the displaced otherness of her gaze, and said gruffly, “Stay behind? And miss risking my neck again? Nonsense. I haven’t had a chance like this since I was in Mount Thunder.”

  His sarcasm was sharper than he had intended, but she seemed to accept it. She smiled, touched him lightly on the arm with the fingers of one hand. “Come, then, beloved,” she said. “The Bloodguard are prepared. We must depart before Amok places other obstacles in our way.”

  He tried to smile in return, but the uncertain muscles of his face treated the attempt like a grimace. Muttering at his failure, he went with her back toward the Bloodguard and Amok. As they walked, he watched her sidelong, assessed her covertly. The strain of the past three days had been pushed into the background; her forthright stride and resolute features expressed new purpose, strength. The resurgence of hope enabled her to discount mere exhaustion. But her knuckles were tense as she gripped the Staff, and her head was thrust forward at a hungry angle. She made Covenant’s bargain lie unquiet in him, as if he were an inadequate and unbinding grave.

  In his mind, he could still feel Rivenrock heaving. He needed steadier footing; nothing would save him if he could not keep his balance.

  Vaguely he observed that the First Mark and Bannor were indeed ready to travel. They had bound all the supplies into bundles, and had tied these to their backs with clingor thongs. And Amok sparkled with eagerness; visions seemed to caper in his gay hair. The three of them gave Covenant an acute pang of unpreparedness. He did not feel equal to whatever lay ahead of the High Lord’s party. A pulse of anxiety began to run through his weary mood. There was something that he needed to do; he needed to try to recover his integrity in some way. But he did not know how.

  He watched as the High Lord bade farewell to the Ranyhyn. They greeted her gladly, stamping their feet and nickering in pleasure at the prospect of activity after three days of patient waiting. She embraced each of the great horses, then stepped back, gripping the Staff, and saluted them in the Ramen fashion.

  The Ranyhyn responded by tossing their manes. They regarded her with proud, laughing eyes as she addressed them.

  “Brave Ranyhyn—first love of my life—I thank you for your service. We have been honored. But now we must go on foot for a time. If we survive our path, we will call upon you to carry us back to Revelstone in victory or defeat, we will need the broad backs of your strength.

  “For the present, be free. Roam the lands your hearts and hooves desire. And if it should come to pass that we do not call—if you return unsummoned to the Plains of Ra—then, brave Ranyhyn, tell all your kindred of Myrha. She saved my life in the landslide, and gave her own for a lesser horse. Tell all the Ranyhyn that Elena daughter of Lena, High Lord by the choice of the Council, and holder of the Staff of Law, is proud of your friendship. You are the Tail of the Sky, Mane of the World.”

  Raising the Staff, she cried, “Ranyhyn! Hail!”

  The great horses answered with a whinny that echoed off the face of Melenkurion Skyweir. Then they wheeled and galloped away, taking with them Covenant’s mustang. Their hooves clattered like a roll of fire on the stone as they swept northward and out of sight around the curve of the mountain.

  When Elena turned back toward her companions, her sense of loss showed clearly in her face. In a sad voice, she said, “Come. If we must travel without the Ranyhyn, then let us at least travel swiftly.”

  At once, she turned expectantly to Amok. The ancient youth responded with an ornate bow, and started walking jauntily toward the place where the Skyweir’s cliff joined the cleft of the plateau.

  Covenant tugged at his beard, and watched hopelessly as Elena and Morin followed Amok.

  Then, as abruptly as gasping, he exclaimed, “Wait!” The fingers of his right hand tingled in his beard. “Hang on.” The High Lord looked questioningly at him. He said, “I need a knife. And some water. And a mirror, if you’ve got one—I don’t want to cut my throat.”

  Elena said evenly, “Ur-Lord, we must go. We have lost so much time—and the Land is in need.”

  “It’s important,” he snapped. “Have you got a knife? The blade of my penknife isn’t long enough.”

  For a moment, she studied him as if his conduct were a mystery. Then, slowly, she nodded to Morin. The First Mark unslung his bundle, opened it, and took out a stone knife, a leather waterskin, and a shallow bowl. These be handed to the Unbeliever. At once, Covenant sat down on the stone, filled the bowl, and began to wet his beard.

  He could feel the High Lord’s presence as she stood directly before him—he could almost taste the tension with which she held the Staff—but he concentrated on scrubbing water into his whiskers. His heart raced as if he were engaged in something dangerous. He had a vivid sense of what he was giving up. But he was impelled by the sudden conviction that his bargain was false because it had not cost him enough. When he picked up the knife, he did so to seal his compromise with his fate.

  Elena stopped him. In a low, harsh voice, she said, “Thomas Covenant.”

  The way she said his name forced him to raise his head.

  “Where is the urgency in this?” She controlled her harshness by speaking quietly, but her indignation was tangible in her voice. “We have spent three days in delay and ignorance. Do you now mock the Land’s need? Is it your deliberate wish to prevent this quest from success?”

  An angry rejoinder leaped to his lips. But the terms of his bargain required him to repress it. He bent his head again, splashed more water into his beard. “Sit down. I’ll try to explain.”

  The High Lord seated herself cross-legged before him.

  He could not comfortably meet her gaze. And he did not want to look at Melenkurion Skyweir; it stood too austerely, coldly, behind her. Instead he watched his hands as they toyed with the stone knife.

  “All right,” he said awkwardly. “I’m not the kind of person who grows beards. They itch. And they make me look like a fanatic. They— So I’ve been letting this one grow for a reason. It’s a way of proving—a way to demonstrate so that even somebody as thickheaded and generally incoherent as I am can see it when I wake up in the real world and find that I don’t have this beard I’ve been growing, then I’ll know for sure that all thi
s is a delusion. It’s proof. Forty or fifty days’ worth of beard doesn’t just vanish. Unless it was never really there.”

  She continued to stare at him. But her tone changed. She recognized the importance of his self-revelation. “Then why do you now wish to cut it away?”

  He trembled to think of the risks he was taking. But he needed freedom, and his bargain promised to provide it. Striving to keep the fear of discovery out of his voice, he told her as much of the truth as he could afford.

  “I’ve made another deal—like the one I made with the Ranyhyn. I’m not trying to prove that the Land isn’t real anymore.” In the back of his mind, he pleaded, Please don’t ask me anything else. I don’t want to lie to you.

  She probed him with her eyes. “Do you believe, then—do you accept the Land?”

  In his relief, he almost sighed aloud. He could look at her squarely to answer this. “No. But I’m willing to stop fighting about it. You’ve done so much for me”

  “Ah, beloved!” she breathed with sudden intensity. “I have done nothing—I have only followed my heart. Within my Lord’s duty, I would do anything for you.”

  He seemed to see her affection for him in the very hue of her skin. He wanted to lean forward, touch her, kiss her, but the presence of the Bloodguard restrained him. Instead he handed her the knife.

  He was abdicating himself to her, and she knew it. A glow of pleasure filled her face as she took the knife. “Do not fear, beloved,” she whispered. “I will preserve you.”

  Carefully as if she were performing a rite, she drew close to him and began to cut his beard.

  He winced instinctively when the blade first touched him. But he gritted himself into stillness, locked his jaw, told himself that he was safer in her hands than in his own. He could feel the deadliness of the keen edge as it passed over his flesh—it conjured up images of festering wounds and gangrene—but he closed his eyes, and remained motionless.

  The knife tugged at his beard, but the sharpness of the blade kept the pull from becoming painful. And soon her fingers found his knotted jaw muscles. She stroked his clenching to reassure him. With an effort, he opened his eyes. She met his gaze as if she were