Behind her, Prothall grew less and less able to keep up the pace. His hoarse, wheezing breath was increasingly laboured; even the weariest Questers could hear his gasps over their own hard panting. The Bloodguard were almost carrying him.
Still they pushed on into stark midnight. They bore the Staff of Law and the Second Ward, and could not afford surrender.
Then they reached a high cave which formed a crossroads for several tunnels. The general direction they had maintained since Kiril Threndor was continued by one passage across the cave. But Lithe stopped in the centre of the junction as if she had been reined to a halt. She searched about her uncertainly, confused by the number of her choices-and by some intuitive rejection of her only obvious selection. Shaking her head as if resisting a bit, she groaned, “Ah, Lords. I do not know.”
Mhoram snapped, “You must!” We have no other chance. The old maps do not show these ways. You have led us far beyond our ken." He gripped her shoulder as if he meant to force her decision. But the next moment he was distracted by Prothall. With a sharp spasm of coughing, the High Lord collapsed to the floor.
One Bloodguard quickly propped him into a sitting position, and Mhoram knelt beside him, peering with intent concern into his old face. “Rest briefly,” mumbled Mhoram. “Our forbidding has long since broken. We must not delay.”
Between fits of coughing, the High Lord replied, “Leave me. Take the Staff and go. I am done.”
His words appalled the company. Covenant and the warriors covered their own breathing to hear Mhoram's answer. The air was suddenly intense with a fear that Mhoram would accept Prothall's sacrifice.
But Mhoram said nothing.
“Leave me,” Prothall repeated. “Give your staff to me, and I will defend your retreat as I can. Go, I say. I am old. I have had my time of triumph. I lose nothing. Take the Staff and go.” When the Lord still did not speak, he rattled in supplication, “Mhoram, hear me. Do not let my old bones destroy this high Quest.”
“I hear you.” Mhoram's voice sounded thick and wounded in his throat. He knelt with his head bowed.
But a moment later he rose to his feet, and put back his head, and began to laugh. It was quiet laughter-unfeverish and unforced-the laughter of relief and indespair. The company gaped at it until they understood that it was not hysteria. Then, without knowing why, they laughed in response. Humour ran like a clean wind through their hearts.
Covenant almost cursed aloud because he could not share it.
When they had subsided into low chuckling, Mhoram said to the High Lord, “Ah, Prothall son of Dwillian. It is good that you are old. Leave you? How will I be able to take pleasure in telling Osondrea of your great exploits if you are not there to protest my boasting?” Gaily, he laughed again. Then, as if recollecting himself, he returned to where Lithe stood bewildered in the centre of the cave.
“Manethrall,” he said gently, “you have done well. Your instinct is true-remember it now. Put all doubt away. We do not fear to follow where your heart leads.”
Covenant had noticed that she, too, had not joined the laughter of the company. Her eyes were troubled; he guessed that her swift blood had been offended by Mhoram's earlier sharpness. But she nodded gravely to the Lord. “That is well. My thoughts do not trust my heart.”
“In what way?”
“My thoughts say that we must continue as we have come. But my heart wishes to go there.” She indicated a tunnel opening back almost in the direction from which-they had come. “I do not know,” she concluded simply. “This is new to me.”
But Mhoram's reply held no hesitation. “You are Manethrall Lithe of the Ramen. You have served the Ranyhyn. You know grass and sky. Trust your heart.”
After a moment, Lithe accepted his counsel.
Two Bloodguard helped Prothall to his feet. Supporting him between them, they joined the company and followed Lithe's instinct into the tunnel.
This passage soon began to descend slowly, and they set a good pace down it. They were buoyed along by the hope that their pursuers would not guess what they were doing, and so would neither cut them off nor follow them directly. But in the universal darkness and silence, they had no assurances. Their way met no branchings, but it wavered as if it were tracing a vein in the mountain. Finally it opened into a vast impression of blank space, and began to climb a steep, serrated rock face through a series of switchbacks. Now the company had to toil upward.
The difficulties of the ascent slowed them as much as the climbing. The higher they went, the colder the air became, and the more there seemed to be a wind blowing in the dark gulf beside them. But the cold and the wind only accented their dripping sweat and the exhausted wrack of their respiration. The Bloodguard alone appeared unworn by the long days of their exertion; they strode steadily up the slope as if it were just a variation of their restless devotion. But their companions were more death-prone. The warriors and Covenant began to stagger like cripples in the climb.
Finally Mhoram called a halt. Covenant dropped to sit with his back to the rock, facing the black-blown, measureless cavern. The sweat seemed to freeze on his face. The last of the food and drink was passed around, but in this buried place, both appeared to have lost their capacity to refresh-as if at last even sustenance were daunted by the darkness of the catacombs. Covenant ate and drank numbly. Then he shut his eyes to close out the empty blackness for a time. But he saw it whether his eyes were open or not.
Some time later-Covenant no longer measured duration-Lord Mhoram said in a stinging whisper, “I hear them.”
Korik's reply sounded as hollow as a sigh from a tomb. “Yes. They follow. They are a great many.”
Lurching as if stricken, the Questers began to climb again, pushing themselves beyond the limits of their strength. They felt weak with failure, as if they were moving only because Mhoram's blue flame pulled them forward, compelled them, beseeched, cajoled, urged, inspired, refused to accept anything from them except endurance and more endurance. Disregarding every exigency except the need for escape, they continued to climb.
Then the wind began to howl around them, and their way changed. The chasm abruptly narrowed; they found themselves on a thin, spiral stair carved into the wall of a vertical shaft. The width of the rude steps made them ascend in single file. And the wind went yelling up the shaft as if it fled the catacombs in stark terror. Covenant groaned when he realized that he would have to risk yet another perilous height, but the rush of the wind was so powerful that it seemed to make falling impossible. Cycling dizzily, he struggled up the stair.
The shaft went straight upward, and the wind yowled in pain; and the company climbed as if they were being dragged by the air. But as the shaft narrowed, the force of the wind increased; the air began to move past them too fast for breathing. As they gasped upward, a light-headed vertigo came over them. The shaft seemed to cant precariously from side to side. Covenant moved on his hands and knees.
Soon the whole company was crawling.
After an airless ache which extended interminably around him, Covenant lay stretched out on the stairs. He was not moving. Dimly, he heard voices trying to shout over the roar of the wind. But he was past listening. He felt that he had reached the verge of suffocation, and the only thing he wanted to do was weep. He could hardly remember what prevented him even now from releasing his misery.
Hands grabbed his shoulders, hauled him up onto flat stone. They dragged him ten or fifteen feet along the bottom of a thin crevice. The howl of the wind receded.
He heard Quaan give a choked, panting cheer. With an effort, he raised his head. He was sprawled in the crevice where it opened on one of the eastern faces of Mount Thunder. Across a flat, grey expanse far below him, the sun rose redly.
To his stunned ears, the cheering itself sounded like sobs. It spread as the warriors one by one climbed out past him into the dawn. Lithe had already leaped down a few feet from the crevice, and was on her knees kissing the earth. Far away, across the Sarangrave and th
e gleaming line of the Defiles Course and the Great Swamp, the sun stood up regally, wreathed in red splendour.
Covenant pushed himself into a sitting position and looked over at the Lords to see their victory.
They had no aspect of triumph. The High Lord sat crumpled like a sack of old bones, with the Staff of Law on his knees. His head was bowed, and he covered his face with both hands. Beside him, Mhoram stood still and dour, and his eyes were as bleak as a wilderness.
Covenant did not understand.
Then Bannor said, “We can defend here.”
Mhoram's reply was soft and violent. “How? Drool knows many ways. If we prevent him here, he will attack from below-above. He can bring thousands against us.”
“Then close this gap to delay them.”
Mhoram's voice became softer still. “The High Lord has no staff. I cannot forbid the gap alone-I have not the power. Do you believe that I am strong enough to bring down the walls of this crevice? No-not even if I were willing to damage the Earth in that way. We must escape. There-” He pointed down the mountainside with a hand that trembled.
Covenant looked downward. The crevice opened into the bottom of a ravine which ran straight down the side of Mount Thunder like a knife wound. The spine of this cut was jumbled and tossed with huge rocks-fallen boulders, pieces of the higher cliffs like dead fragments of the mountain. And its walls were sheer, unclimbable. The Questers would have to pick their way tortuously along the bottom of the cut for half a league. There the walls gave way, and the ravine dropped over a cliff. When the company reached the cliff, they would have to try to work around the mountainsides until they found another descent.
Still Covenant did not understand. He groaned at the difficulty of the ravine, but it was escape. He could feel sunlight on his face. Heaving himself to his feet, he muttered, “Let's get going.”
Mhoram gave him a look thick with suppressed pain. But he did not voice it. Instead, he spoke stiffly to Quaan and Korik. In a few moments, the Questers started down the ravine.
Their progress was deadly slow. In order to make their way, they had to climb from rock to rock, swing themselves over rough boulders, squeeze on hands and knees through narrow gaps between huge fists of stone. And they were weak. The strongest of the warriors needed help time and again from the Bloodguard.
Prothall had to be almost entirely carried. He clutched the Staff, and scrabbled frailly at the climbs. Whenever he jumped from a rock, he fell to his knees; soon the front of his robe was spattered with blood.
Covenant began to sense their danger. Their pace might be fatal. If Drool knew other ways onto the slope, his forces might reach the end of the ravine before the company did.
He was not alone in his perception. After their first relief, the warriors took on a haunted look. Soon they were trudging, clambering, struggling with their heads bowed and backs bent as if the weight of all they had ever known were tied around their necks. The sunlight did not allow them to be ignorant of their peril.
Like a prophecy, their fear was fulfilled before the company was halfway down the ravine. One of the Eoman gave a broken cry, pointed back up the mountain. There they saw a horde of ur-viles rushing out of the cleft from which they had come.
They tried to push faster down the littered spine of the cut. But the ur-viles poured after them like a black flood. The creatures seemed to spring over the rocks without danger of misstep, as if borne along by a rush of savagery. They gained on the company with sickening speed.
And the ur-viles were not alone. Near the end of the ravine, Cavewights suddenly appeared atop one wall. As soon as they spotted the Questers, they began throwing ropes over the edge, scaling down the wall.
The company was caught like a group of mites in the pincers of Drool's power.
They stopped where they were, paralyzed by dismay. For a moment, even Quaan's sense of responsibility for his Eoman failed; he stared blankly about him, and did not move. Covenant sagged against a boulder. He wanted to scream at the mountain that this was not fair. He had already survived so much, endured so much, lost so much. Where was his escape? Was this the cost of his bargain, his forbearance? It was too great. He was a leper, not made for such ordeals. His voice shook uncontrollably full of useless outrage. “No wonder he-let us have the Staff. So it would hurt worse now. He knew we wouldn't get away with it.”
But Mhoram shouted orders in a tone that cut through the dismay. He ran a short way down the ravine and climbed onto a wide, flat rock higher than the others near it. “There is space for us! Come!” he commanded. “We will make our end here!”
Slowly, the warriors shambled to the rock as if they were overburdened with defeat. Mhoram and the Bloodguard helped them up. High Lord Prothall came last, propped between two Bloodguard. He was muttering, “No. No.” But he did not resist Mhoram's orders.
When everyone was on the rock, Quaan's Eoman and the Bloodguard placed themselves around its edge. Lithe joined them, her cord taut in her hands, leaving Prothall and Mhoram and Covenant in the ring of the company's last defence.
Now the ur-viles had covered half the distance to the rock where the company stood. Behind them came hundreds of Cavewights, gushing out of the crevice and pouring down the ravine. And as many more worked upward from the place where they had entered the cut.
Surveying Drool's forces, Mhoram said softly, “Take heart, my friends. You have done well. Now let us make our end so bravely that even our enemies will remember it. Do not despair. There are many chances between the onset of a war and victory. Let us teach Lord Foul that he will never taste victory until the last friend of the Land is dead.”
But Prothall whispered, “No. No.” Facing upward toward the crest of Mount Thunder, he planted his feet and closed his eyes. With slow resolution, he raised the Staff of Law level with his heart and gripped it in both fists. “It must be possible,” he breathed. “By the Seven! It must.” His knuckles whitened on the intricate runed and secret surface of the Staff. “Melenkurion Skyweir, help me. I do not accept this end.” His brows slowly knotted over his shut, sunken eyes, and his head bowed until his beard touched his heart. From between his pale lips came a whispered, wordless song. But his voice rattled so huskily in his chest that his song sounded more like a dirge than an invocation.
Drool's forces poured down and surged up at the company inexorably. Mhoram watched them with a rictus of helplessness on his humane lips.
Suddenly, a desperate chance blazed in his eyes. He spun, gripped Covenant with his gaze, whispered, “There is a way! Prothall strives to call the Fire-Lions. He cannot succeed-the power of the Staff is closed, and we have not the knowledge to unlock it. But white gold can release that power. It can be done!”
Covenant recoiled as if Mhoram had betrayed him. No! he panted. I made a bargain-!
Then, with a sickening, vertiginous twist of insight, he caught a glimpse of Lord Foul's plan for him, glimpsed what the Despiser was doing to him. Here was the killing blow which had lain concealed behind all the machinations, all the subterfuge.
Hell and blood!
Here was the point of impact between his opposing madnesses. If he attempted to use the wild magic if his ring had power-if it had no power-He flinched at the reel and strike of dark visions-the company slain-the Staff destroyed thousands of creatures dead, all that blood on his head, his head.
“No,” he gasped thickly. “Don't ask me. I promised I wouldn't do any more killing. You don't know what I've done-to Atiaran-to- I made a bargain so I wouldn't have to do any more killing.”
The ur-viles and Cavewights were almost within bowshot now. The Eoman had arrows nocked and ready. Drool's hordes slowed, began to poise for the last spring of attack.
But Mhoram's eyes did not release Covenant. “There will be still more killing if you do not. Do you believe that Lord Foul will be content with our deaths? Never! He will slay and slay again until all life without exception is his to corrupt or destroy. All life, do you hear? Even these cr
eatures that now serve him will not be spared.”
“No!” Covenant groaned again. “Don't you see? This is just what he wants. The Staff will be destroyed or Drool will be destroyed-or we'll-No matter what happens, he'll win. He'll be free. You're doing just what he wants.”
“Nevertheless!” Mhoram returned fervidly. “The dead are dead-only the living may hope to resist Despite.”
Hellfire! Covenant groped for answers like a man incapable of his own distress. But he found none. No bargain or compromise met his need. In his pain, he cried out wildly, protested, appealed, “Mhoram! It's suicide! You're asking me to go crazy!”
The peril in Mhoram's eyes did not waver. “No, Unbeliever. You need not lose your mind. There are other answers other songs. You can find them. Why should the Land be destroyed for your pain? Save or damn! Grasp the Staff!”
“Damnation!” Fumbling furiously for his ring, Covenant shouted, “Do it yourself!” He wrenched the band from his finger and tried to throw it at Mhoram. But he was shaking madly; his fingers slipped. The ring dropped to the stone, rolled away.
He scrambled after it. He did not seem to have enough digits to catch it; it skidded past Prothall's feet. He lurched toward it again-then missed his footing, fell, and smacked his forehead on the stone.
Distantly, he heard the thrum of bowstrings; the battle had begun. But he paid no attention. He felt that he had cracked his skull. When he raised his head, he found that his vision was wrong; he was seeing double.
The moss-stain chart of his robe smeared illegibly in his sight. Now he had lost whatever chance he had to read it, decipher the cryptic message of Morinmoss. He saw two of Mhoram as the Lord held up the ring. He saw two Prothalls above him, clutching the Staff and trying with the last strength of his life-force to compel its power to his will. Two Bannors turned away from the fight toward the Lords.
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