The Illearth War

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  The cataract loomed directly before the boat now, but Bannor spoke calmly, firmly. “Hold the stone in your left hand. Hold it above your head, so that it will light our way.”

  As Covenant placed the orcrest in contact with his troubled ring, a piercing silver light burst from the core of the stone. It flared along the gunwale in Bannor’s hands, paled the surrounding rocklight. When Covenant numbly raised his fist, held the stone up like a torch, the Bloodguard nodded his approval. His face wore a look of satisfaction, as if all the conditions of his Vow had been fulfilled.

  Then the prow of the boat dropped. Bannor and Covenant rode the torrent of Earthroot into the dark depths.

  The water boiled and heaved wildly. But one end of the crevice opened into other caverns. The cataracts turned as they fell, and thrashed through the crevice as if it were an immense chute or channel. By the orcrest light, Bannor saw in time which way the water poured. He poled the boat so that it shot downward along the torrent.

  After that, the craft hurtled down the frenetic watercourse in a long nightmare of tumult, jagged rocks, narrows, sudden, heart-stopping falls, close death. The current tumbled, thundered, raced from cavern to cavern through labyrinthine gaps and tunnels and clefts in the fathomless bowels of Melenkurion Skyweir. Many times the craft disappeared under the fierce roil of the rush, but each time its potent wood—wood capable of withstanding Earthroot—bore it to the surface again. And many times Bannor and Covenant foundered in cascades that crashed onto them from above, but the water did not harm them—either it had lost its strength in the fall, or it was already diluted by other buried springs and lakes.

  Through it all, Covenant held his orcrest high. Some last unconscious capacity for endurance kept his forgers locked and his arm raised. And the stone’s unfaltering fire lighted the boat’s way, so that, even in the sharpest hysteria of the current, Bannor was able to steer, avoid rocks and backwaters, fend around curves—preserve himself and the Unbeliever. The torrent’s violence soon splintered his pole, but he replaced it with the other gunwale. When that was gone, he used a seat board as a rudder.

  Straining and undaunted, he brought the voyage through to its final crisis.

  Without warning, the boat shot down a huge flow into a cavern that showed no exit. The water frothed viciously, seeking release, and the air pressure mounted, became more savage every instant. A swift eddy caught the craft, swung it around and under the massive pour of water.

  Helplessly the boat was driven down.

  Bannor clawed his way to Covenant. He wrapped his legs around Covenant’s waist, snatched the orcrest from him. Clutching the stone as if to sustain himself with it, Bannor clamped his other hand over Covenant’s nose and mouth.

  He held that position as the boat sank.

  The plunging weight of water thrust them straight under. Pressure squeezed them until Bannor’s eyes pounded in their sockets, and his ears yowled as if they were about to rupture. He could feel Covenant screaming in his grasp. But he held his grip in the extremity of the last faithfulness—clung to the bright strength of the orcrest with one hand, and kept Covenant from breathing with the other.

  Then they were sucked into a side tunnel, an outlet. Immediately all the pressure of the trapped air and water hurled them upward. Covenant went limp; Bannor’s lungs burned. But he retained enough alertness to swing himself upright as the water burst free. In a high, arching spout, it carried the two men into the cleft of Rivenrock, and sent them shooting out into the open morning of the Black River and Garroting Deep.

  For a moment, sunshine and free sky and forest reeled around Bannor, and fares of released pressure staggered across his sight. Then the fortitude of his Vow returned. Wrapping both arms around Covenant, he gave one sharp jerk which started the Unbeliever’s lungs working again.

  With a violent gasp, Covenant began breathing rapidly, feverishly. Some time passed before he showed any signs of consciousness, yet all the while his ring throbbed as if it were sustaining him. Finally he opened his eyes, and looked at Bannor.

  At once, he started to struggle weakly in his clingor bonds. Bannor appeared to him like one of the djinn who watches over the accursed. But then he lapsed. He recognized where he was—how he had arrived there—what he had left behind. He went on staring nakedly while Bannor untied the lines which lashed him to the boat.

  Over the Bloodguard’s shoulder, he could see the great cliff of Rivenrock—and behind it Melenkurion Skyweir—shrinking as the boat scudded downriver. From the cleft, turgid black smoke broke upward in gouts sporadically emphasized by battle flashes deep within the mountain. Muffled blasts of anguish rent the gut-rock, wreaking havoc in the very grave of the ages. Covenant felt he was floating away on a wave of ravage and destruction.

  Fearfully he looked down at his ring. To his dismay, he found that it still throbbed like an exclamation of purpose. Instinctively he clasped his right hand over it, concealed it. Then he faced forward in the boat, turned away from Bannor and Rivenrock as if to protect his shame from scrutiny.

  He sat huddled there, weak and staring dismally, throughout the swift progress of the day. He did not speak to Bannor, did not help him bail out the boat, did not look back. The current spewing from Rivenrock raised the Black River to near-flood levels, and the light Earthroot craft rode the rush intrepidly between glowering walls of forest. The morning sun glittered and danced off the dark water into Covenant’s eyes—but he stared at it without blinking, as if even the protective reflex of his eyelids were exhausted. And after that, nothing interfered with his sightless vision. The sodden food which Bannor offered to him he ate automatically, with his left hand concealed between his thighs. Midday and afternoon passed unrecognized, and when evening came he remained crouched on his seat, clenching his ring against his chest as if to protect himself from some final stab of realization.

  Then, as dusk thickened about him, he became aware of the music. The air of the Deep was full of humming, of voiceless song—an eldritch melody which seemed to arise like passion from the faint throats of all the leaves. It contrasted sharply with the distant, storming climacteric of Melenkurion Skyweir, the song of violence which beat and shivered out of Rivenrock. Gradually he raised his head to listen. The deep song had an inflection of sufferance, as if it were deliberately restraining a potent melodic rage, sparing him.

  In the light of the orcrest, he saw that Bannor was guiding the boat toward a high, treeless hill which rose against the night sky close to the south bank. The hill was desolate, bereft of life, as if its capacity to nourish even the hardiest plants had been irremediably scalded out of it. Yet it seemed to be the source of the Deep’s song. The melody which wafted riverward from the hill sounded like a host of gratified furies.

  He regarded the hill incuriously. He had no strength left to care about such places. All his waning sanity was focused on the sounds of battle from Melenkurion Skyweir—and on the grip which concealed his ring. When Bannor secured the boat, and took hold of his right elbow to help him ashore, Covenant leaned on the Bloodguard and followed his guidance woodenly.

  Bannor went to the barren hill. Without question, Covenant began to struggle up it.

  Despite his weariness, the hill impinged upon his awareness. He could feel its deadness with his feet as if he were shambling up n corpse. Yet it was eager death; its atmosphere was thick with the slaughter of enemies. Its incarnate hatred made his joints ache as he climbed it. He began to sweat and tremble as if he were carrying the weight of an atrocity on his shoulders.

  Then, near the hilltop, Bannor stopped him. The Bloodguard lifted the orcrest. In its light, Covenant saw the gibbet beyond the crest of the hill. A Giant dangled from it. And between him and the gibbet staring at him as if he were a concentrated nightmare—were people, people whom he knew.

  Lord Mhoram stood there erect in his battle-grimed robe. He clasped his staff in his left hand, and his lean face was taut with vision. Behind him were Lord Callindrill and two Bloodguard.
The Lord had a dark look of failure in his soft eyes. Quaan and Amorine were with him. And on Mhoram’s right, supported by the Lord’s right hand, was Hile Troy.

  Troy had lost his sunglasses and headband. The eyeless skin of his skull was knotted as if he were straining to see. He cocked his head, moved it from side to side to focus his hearing. Covenant understood intuitively that Troy had lost his Land-born sight.

  With these people was one man whom Covenant did not know. He was the singer—a tall, white-haired man with glowing silver eyes, who hummed to himself as if he were dewing the ground with melody. Covenant guessed without thinking that he was Caerroil Wildwood, the Forestal of Garroting Deep.

  Something in the singer’s gaze—something severe, yet oddly respectful—recalled the Unbeliever to himself. At last he perceived the fear in the faces watching him. He pushed himself away from Bannor’s support, took the weight of all his burdens on his own shoulders. For a moment, he met the trepidation before him with a glare so intense that it made his forehead throb. But then, as he was about to speak, a fierce detonation from Rivenrock shook his bones, knocked him o$ balance. When he reached toward Bannor, he exposed the shame of his ring.

  Facing Mhoram and Troy as squarely as he could, he groaned, “She’s lost. I lost her.” But his face twisted, and the words came brokenly between his lips, like fragments of his heart.

  His utterance seemed to pale the music, making the muffled clamor from Rivenrock louder. He felt every blast of the battle like an internal blow. But the deadness under his feet became more and more vivid to him. And the gibbeted Giant hung before him with an immediacy he could not ignore. He began to realize that he was facing people who had survived ordeals of their own. He flinched, but did not fall, when their protests began—when Troy gave a strangled cry, “Lost? Lost?” and Mhoram asked in a stricken voice, “What has happened?”

  Under the night sky on the lifeless hilltop—lit by the stars, and the twin gleams of Caerroil Wildwood’s eyes, and the orcrest fire—Covenant stood braced on Bannor like a crippled witness against himself, and described in stumbling sentences High Lord Elena’s plight. He made no mention of the focus of her gaze, her consuming passion. But he told all the rest—his bargain, Amok’s end, the summoning of Kevin Landwaster, Elena’s solitary fall. When he was done, he was answered by an aghast silence that echoed in his ears like a denunciation.

  “I’m sorry,” he concluded into the stillness. Forcing himself to drink the bitter dregs of his personal inefficacy, he added, “I loved her. I would have saved her if I could.”

  “Loved her?” Troy murmured. “Alone?” His voice was too disjointed to register the degree of his pain.

  Lord Mhoram abruptly covered his eyes, bowed his head.

  Quaan, Amorine, and Callindrill stood together as if they could not endure what they had heard alone.

  Another blast from Rivenrock shivered the air. It snatched Mhoram’s head up, and he faced Covenant with tears streaming down his cheeks. “It is as I have said,” he breathed achingly. “Madness is not the only danger in dreams.”

  At this, Covenant’s face twisted again. But he had nothing more to say; even the release of assent was denied him. However, Bannor seemed to hear something different in the Lord’s tone. As if to correct an injustice, he went to Mhoram. As he moved, he took from his pack Covenant’s marrowmeld sculpture.

  He handed the work to Mhoram. “The High Lord gave it to him as a gift.”

  Lord Mhoram gripped the bone sculpture tightly, and his eyes shone with sudden comprehension. He understood the bond between Elena and the Ranyhyn; he understood what the giving of such a gift to Covenant meant. A gasp of weeping swept over his face. But when it passed, it left his self-mastery intact. His crooked lips took on their old humane angle. When he turned to Covenant again, he said gently, “It is a precious gift.”

  Bannor’s unexpected support, and Mhoram’s gesture of conciliation, touched Covenant. But he had no strength to spare for either of them. His gaze was fixed on Hile Troy.

  The Warmark winced eyelessly under repeated blows of realization, and within him a gale brewed. He seemed to see Elena in his mind—remember her, taste her beauty, savor all the power of sight which she had taught him. He seemed to see her useless, solitary end. “Lost?” he panted as his fury grew. “Lost? Alone?”

  All at once, he erupted. With a livid howl, he raged at Covenant, “Do you call that love?! Leper! Unbeliever!” He spat the words as if they were the most damning curses he knew. “This is all just a game for you! Mental tricks. Excuses. You’re a leper! A moral leper! You’re too selfish to love anyone but yourself. You have the power for everything, and you won’t use it. You just turned your back on her when she needed you. You—despicable—leper! Leper!” He shouted with such force that the muscles of his neck corded. The veins in his temples bulged and throbbed as if he were about to burst with execration.

  Covenant felt the truth of the accusation. His bargain exposed him to such charges, and Troy hit the heart of his vulnerability as if some prophetic insight guided his blindness. Covenant’s right hand twitched in a futile fending motion. But his left clung to his chest as if to localize his shame in that one place. When Troy paused to gather himself for another assault, Covenant said weakly, “Unbelief has got nothing to do with it. She was my daughter.”

  “What?!”

  “My daughter.” Covenant pronounced it like an indictment. “I raped Trell’s child. Elena was his granddaughter.”

  “Your daughter.” Troy was too stunned to shout. Implications like glimpses of depravity rocked him. He groaned as if Covenant’s crimes were so multitudinous that he could not hold them all in his mind at one time.

  Mhoram spoke to him carefully. “My friend—this is the knowledge which I have withheld from you. The withholding gave you unintended pain. Please pardon me. The Council feared that this knowledge would cause you to abominate the Unbeliever.”

  “Damn right,” Troy panted. “Damn right.”

  Suddenly his accumulated passion burst into action. Guided by a sure instinct, he reached out swiftly, snatched away Lord Mhoram’s staff. He spun once to gain momentum, and leveled a crushing blow with the staff at Covenant’s head.

  The unexpectedness of the attack surpassed even Bannor. But he recovered, sprang after Troy, jolted him enough to unbalance his swing. As a result, only the heel of the staff clipped Covenant’s forehead. But that sent him tumbling backward down the hill.

  He caught himself, got to his knees. When he raised a hand to his head, he found that he was bleeding profusely from a wound in the center of his forehead.

  He could feel old hate and death seeping into him from the blasted earth. Blood ran down his cheeks like spittle.

  The next moment, Mhoram and Quaan reached Troy. Mhoram tore the staff from his grasp; Quaan pinned his arms. “Fool!” the Lord rasped. “You forget the Oath of Peace. Loyalty is due!”

  Troy struggled against Quaan. Rage and anguish mottled his face. “I haven’t sworn any Oath! Let go of me!”

  “You are the Warmark of the Warward,” said Mhoram dangerously. “The Oath of Peace binds. But if you cannot refrain from murder for that reason, refrain because the Despiser’s army is destroyed. Fleshharrower hangs dead on the gibbet of Gallows Howe.”

  “Do you call that victory? We’ve been decimated! What good is a victory that costs so much?” Troy’s fury rose like weeping. “It would have been better if we’d lost! Then it wouldn’t have been such a waste!” The passion in his throat made him gasp for air as if he were asphyxiating on the reek of Covenant’s perfidy.

  But Lord Mhoram was unmoved. He caught Troy by the breastplate and shook him. “Then refrain because the High Lord is not dead.”

  “Not?” Troy panted. “Not dead?”

  “We hear her battle even now. Do you not comprehend the sound? Even as we listen, she struggles against dead Kevin. The Staff sustains her—and he has not the might she believed of him. But the proof o
f her endurance is here, in the Unbeliever himself. She is his summoner—he will remain in the Land until her death. So it was when Drool Rockworm first called him.

  “She’s still fighting?” Troy gaped at the idea. He seemed to regard it as the conclusive evidence of Covenant’s treachery. But then he turned to Mhoram and cried, “We’ve got to help her!”

  At this, Mhoram flinched. A wave of pain broke through his face. In a constricted voice, he asked, “How?”

  “How?” Troy fumed. “Don’t ask me how. You’re the Lord! We have got to help her!”

  The Lord pulled himself erect, clenched his staff for support. “We are fifty leagues from Rivenrock. A night and a day would pass before any Ranyhyn could carry us to the foot of the cliff. Then Bannor would be required to guide us into the mountain in search of the battle. Perhaps the effects of the battle have destroyed all approaches to it. Perhaps they would destroy us. Yet if we gained the High Lord, we would have nothing to offer her but the frail strength of two Lords. With the Staff of Law, she far surpasses us. How can we help her?”

  They faced each other as if they met mind to mind across Troy’s eyelessness. Mhoram did not falter under the Warmark’s rage. The hurt of his inadequacy showed clearly in his face, but he neither denied nor cursed at his weakness.

  Though Troy trembled with urgency, he had to take his demand elsewhere.

  He swung toward Covenant. “You!” he shouted stridently. “If you’re too much of a coward to do anything yourself, at least give me a chance to help her! Give me your ring!—I can feel it from here. Give it to me! Come on, you bastard. It’s her only chance.”

  Kneeling on the dead, sabulous dirt of the Howe, Covenant looked up at Troy through the blood in his eyes. For a time, he was unable to answer. Troy’s adjuration seemed to drop on him like a rockfall. It swept away his last defense, and left bare his final shame. He should have been able to save Elena. He had the power; it pulsed like a wound on his wedding finger. But he had not used it. Ignorance was no excuse. His claim of futility no longer covered him.