And this was possible because the Staff had been destroyed. The Law which had limited him and resisted him since the creation of the earth had been weakened; and he was able to endure it while he conceived new strength, new being. And while he endured, he also corrupted. As he gained stature, the Law sickened.
The first result of this decay was to make the work of the Council more easy; but every increment strengthened Lord Foul, and all his might went to increase the infection. Slowly he warped the Law to his will.
His Ravers shared his recovery; and he did not act overtly against the Land until samadhi Sheol had contrived his way into the Council, had begun its perversion, until several generations of na-Mhorams, each cunningly mastered by samadhi, had brought the Clave under Lord Foul’s sway.
Slowly the Oath of Peace was abandoned; slowly the ideals of the Clave were altered. Therefore when the Clave made a secret door to its new hold and Aumbrie, it made one such as the Ravers had known in Foul’s Creche. Slowly the legends of Lord Foul were transmogrified into the tales of a-Jeroth, both to explain the Sunbane and to conceal Lord Foul’s hand in it.
Laboring always in secret, so that the Clave at all times had many uncorrupted members—people like Memla, who believed the Raver’s lies, and were therefore sincere in their service—samadhi Sheol fashioned a tool for the Despiser, ill enough to preach the shedding of blood, pure enough to be persuasive. Only then did Lord Foul let his work be seen.
For the Staff of Law had been destroyed, and his hands were on the reins of nature. By degrees, mounting gradually over centuries, he inflicted his abhorrence upon the Land, corrupting the Earthpower with Sunbane. This he was able to do because the Clave had been made incapable of conceiving any true defense. The Banefire was not a defense, had never been a defense. Rather it was samadhi’s means to commit further afflictions. The shedding of blood to invoke the Sunbane only made the Sunbane stronger. Thus Lord Foul caused the increase of the Sunbane without cost to himself.
And all this, Covenant saw as his blood deepened around his knees, had been done in preparation for one thing, the capstone and masterstroke of Lord Foul’s mendacity: the summoning of white gold to the Land. Lord Foul desired possession of the wild magic; and he did to the Land what he had done to Joan, so that Covenant would have no final choice except surrender.
The loss of the Staff explained why Covenant’s summoning had been so elaborate. In the past, such summons had always been an act of Law, performed by the holder of the Staff. Only when he had been close to death from starvation and rattlesnake venom, and the Law of Death had been broken, had summoning been possible without the Staff. Therefore this time the Despiser had been forced to go to great lengths to take hold of Covenant. A specific location had been required, specific pain, a triangle of blood, freedom of choice and death. Had any of these conditions failed, the summoning would have failed, and Lord Foul would have been left to harm the Land, the Earth, without hope of achieving his final goal—the destruction of the Arch of Time. Only by destroying the Arch could he escape the prison of Time. Only with wild magic could he gain freedom and power to wage his hatred of the Creator across the absolute heavens of the cosmos.
But the summoning had not failed, and Covenant was dying. He understood now why Gibbon had driven Memla from the court. If she had shared this vision of the truth, her outrage might have led her to instigate a revolt among the uncorrupted Riders; for Gibbon, too, was a Raver.
He understood what had happened to the Colossus of the Fall, It had been an avatar of the ancient forests, erected on Landsdrop to defend against Ravers; and the Sunbane had destroyed the forests, unbinding the will of wood which had upheld for millennia that stone monolith.
He understood how Caer-Caveral had been driven to Andelain by the erosion of Morinmoss—and why the last of the Forestals was doomed to fail. At its root, the power of the Forestal was an expression of Law, just as Andelain was the quintessence of Law; and the Sunbane was a corruption Caer-Caveral could resist but not defeat.
He understood what had become of the Ranyhyn, the great horses, and of the Ramen who served them. Perceiving the ill of the Sunbane in its earliest appearances, both Ranyhyn and Ramen had simply fled the Land, sojourning south along the marge of the Sunbirth Sea in search of safer grasslands.
These things came to him in glimpses, flares of vision across the central fact of his situation. But there were also things he could not see: a dark space where Caer-Caveral had touched his mind; a blur that might have explained Vain’s purpose; a blankness which concealed the reason why Linden was chosen. Loss gripped him: the ruin of the Land he loved; all the fathomless ill of the Sunbane and the Clave was his fault, his doing.
He had no answer for the logic of his guilt. The Staff of Law had been destroyed—and he had destroyed it. Wild magic had burst from his ring to save his life; power beyond all choice or mastery had riven the Staff, so that nothing remained but its heels. For such an act, he deserved to die. The lassitude of blood-loss seemed condign and admirable. His pulse shrank toward failure. He was culpable beyond any redemption and had no heart to go on living.
But a voice spoke in his mind:
Ur-Lord.
It was a voice without sound, a reaching of thought to thought. It came from Brinn. He had never before heard the mind-speech of the Haruchai; but he recognized the speaker in the intensity of Brian’s gaze. The power of the soothtell made possible things which could not otherwise have occurred.
Unbeliever. Thomas Covenant.
Unbeliever, he answered to himself. Yes. It’s my fault. My responsibility.
You must fight.
The images before him whirled toward chaos again.
Responsible. Yes. On my head. He could not fight. How could any man hope to resist the Desecration of a world?
But guilt was the voice of the Clave, the Riders and the Raver who had committed such atrocities. Brinn strained against his bonds as if he would rupture his thews rather than accept failure. Linden still lay in the hold, unconscious or dead. And the Land—Oh, the Land! That it should die undefended!
Fight!
Somewhere deep within him, he found the strength for curses. Are you nothing but a leper? Even lepers don’t have to surrender.
Visions reeled through the air. The scarlet light faded as Gibbon brought the soothtell to an end.
Stop! He still needed answers: how to fight the Sunbane; how to restore the Law; to understand the venom in him; to cure it. He groped frantically among the images, fought to bring what he needed into clarity.
But he could not. He could see nothing now but the gaping cuts in his wrists, the ooze of his blood growing dangerously slower. The Riders took the soothtell away from him before he gained the most crucial knowledge. They were reducing their power—No, they were not reducing it, they were changing it, translating it into something else.
Into coercion.
He could feel them now, a score of wills impending on the back of his neck, commanding him to abandon resistance, take off his ring and surrender it before he died. Telic red burned at him from all sides; every rukh was aflame with compulsion. Release the ring. Set it aside. Before you die. This, he knew, was not part of Lord Foul’s intent. It was Gibbon’s greed; samadhi Sheol wanted the white gold for himself.
The ring!
Brinn’s mind-voice was barely audible:
Unbeliever! They will slay us all!
All, he thought desperately. Three score and seven of the Haruchai. Vain, if they could. Sunder. Hollian. Linden.
The Land.
Release the ring!
No.
His denial was quiet and small, like the first ripple presaging a tsunami.
I will not permit this.
Extravagant fury and need gathered somewhere beyond the shores of his consciousness, piled upward like a mighty sea.
His mind was free now of everything except helplessness and determination. He knew he could not call up wild magic to save him.
He required a trigger; but the Riders kept their power at his back, out of reach. At the same time, his need was absolute. Slashing his wrists was a slow way to kill him, but it would succeed unless he could stop the bleeding, defend himself.
He did not intend to die. Brinn had brought him back to himself. He was more than a leper. No abjections could force him to abide his doom. No. There were other answers to guilt. If he could not find them, he would create them out of the raw stuff of his being.
He was going to fight.
Now.
The tsunami broke. Wrath erupted in him like the madness of venom.
Fire and rage consumed all his pain. The triangle and the will of the Clave splintered and fell away.
A wind of passion blew through him. Wild argent exploded from his ring.
White blazed over his right fist. Acute incandescence covered his hand as if his flesh were power. Conflagration tore the red air.
Fear assailed the Clave. Riders cried out in confusion. Gibbon shouted commands.
For a moment, Covenant remained where he was. His ring flamed like one white torch among the vermeil rukhs. Deliberately he drew power to his right wrist; shaping the fire with his will, he stopped the flow of blood, closed the knife wound. A flash of ire seared and sealed the cut. Then he turned the magic to his left wrist.
His concentration allowed Gibbon time to marshal a defense. Covenant could feel the Riders surging around him, mustering the Banefire to their rukhs. But he did not care. The venom in him counted no opposition, no cost. When his wrists were healed, he rose direly to his feet and stood erect like a man who had lost no blood and could not be touched.
His force staggered the atmosphere of the court. It blasted from his entire body as if his very bones were avid for fire.
Gibbon stood before him. The Raver wielded a crozier so fraught with heat and might that the iron screamed. A shaft of red malice howled at Covenant’s heart.
Covenant quenched it with a shrug.
One of the Riders hurled a coruscating rukh at his back.
Wild magic evaporated the metal in mid-flight.
Then Covenant’s wrath became ecstasy, savage beyond all restraint. In an instant of fury which shocked the very gutrock of Revelstone, his wild magic detonated.
Riders screamed, fell. Doors in the coigns above the floor burst from their hinges. The air sizzled like frying flesh.
Gibbon shouted orders Covenant could not hear, threw an arc of emerald across the court, then disappeared.
Under a moil of force, the floor began to shine like silver magma.
Somewhere amid the wreckage of the soothtell, he heard Lord Foul laughing.
The sound only strung his passion tighter.
When he looked about him, bodies lay everywhere. Only one Rider was left standing. The man’s hood had been blown back, revealing contorted features and frantic eyes.
Intuitively Covenant guessed that this was Santonin.
In his hands, he grasped a flake of stone which steamed like green ice, held it so that it pressed against his rukh. Pure emerald virulence raged outward.
The Illearth Stone.
Covenant had no limits, no control. A rave of force hurled Santonin against the far wall, scorched his raiment to ashes, blackened his bones.
The Stone rolled free, lay pulsing like a diseased heart on the bright floor.
Reaching out with flames, Covenant drew the Stone to himself. He clenched it in his half-hand. Foamfollower had died so that the Illearth Stone could be destroyed.
Destroyed!
A silent blast stunned the cavity—a green shriek devoured by argent. The Stone-flake vanished in steam and fury.
With a tremendous splitting noise, the floor cracked from wall to wall.
“Unbeliever!”
He could barely hear Brinn.
“Ur-Lord!”
He turned and peered through fire at the Haruchai.
“The prisoners!” Brinn barked. “The Clave holds your friends! Lives will be shed to strengthen the Banefire!”
The shout penetrated Covenant’s mad rapture. He nodded. With a flick of his mind, he shattered Brinn’s chains.
At once, Brinn sprang from the catafalque and dashed out of the cavity.
Covenant followed in flame.
At the end of the hall, the Haruchai launched himself against three Riders. Their rukhs burned. Covenant lashed argent at them, sent them sprawling, reduced their rukhs to scoria.
He and Brinn hastened away through the passages of Revelstone.
Brinn led; he knew how to find the hidden door to the hold. Shortly he and Covenant reached the Raver-made entrance. Covenant summoned fire to break down the door; but before he could strike, Brinn slapped the proper spot in the invisible architrave. Limned in red tracery, the portal opened.
Five Riders waited within the tunnel. They were prepared to fight; but Brinn charged them with such abandon that their first blasts missed. In an instant, he had felled two of them. Covenant swept the other three aside, and followed Brinn, running toward the hold.
The dungeon had no other defenders; the Clave had not had time to organize more Riders. And if Gibbon were still alive, he might conceivably withdraw his forces rather than risk losses which would cripple the Clave. When Brinn and Covenant rushed into the hold and found it empty, Brinn immediately leaped to the nearest door and began to throw back the bolts.
But Covenant was rife with might, wild magic which demanded utterance. Thrusting Brinn aside, he unleashed an explosion that made the very granite of Revelstone stagger. With a shrill scream of metal, all the cell doors sprang from their moorings and clanged to the floor, ringing insanely.
At once, scores of Haruchai emerged, ready to fight. Ten of them raced to defend the entrance to the tunnel; the rest scattered toward other cells, searching for more prisoners.
Eight or nine people of the Land—Stonedownors and Woodhelvennin—appeared as if they were dazzled by the miracle of their reprieve.
Vain left his cell slowly. When he saw Covenant, saw Covenant’s passionate fire, his face stretched into a black grin, the grin of a man who recognized what Covenant was doing. The grin of a fiend.
Two Haruchai supported Sunder. The Graveler had a raw weal around his neck, as if he had been rescued from a gibbet, and he looked weak. He gaped at Covenant.
Hollian came, wan and frightened, from her cell. Her eyes flinched from Covenant as if she feared to know him. When she saw Sunder, she hastened to him and wrapped herself in his arms.
Covenant remained still, aching for Linden. Vain grinned like the sound of Lord Foul’s laughter.
Then Brinn and another Haruchai bore Linden out into the hall. She lay limp in their arms, dead or unconscious, in sopor more compulsory than any sleep.
When Covenant saw her, he let out a howl which tore chunks from the ceiling and pulverized them until the air was full of fine powder.
He could not stop himself until Brinn yelled to him that she was alive.
PART III: Purpose
TWENTY: The Quest
He left the hold, left his companions, because he could not bear to watch the impenetrable nightmares writhe across Linden’s mien. She was not afraid of his leprosy. She had supported him at every crisis. This was the result. No one could rouse her. She lay in a stupor like catatonia, and dreamed anguish.
He went toward the upland plateau because he needed to recover some kind of hope.
Already the frenzy of his power had begun to recoil against him. Vain’s smile haunted him like an echo of horror and scorn. His rescue from Stonemight Woodhelven was no different than this. How many people had he killed? He had no control over his power. Power and venom controlled him.
Yet he did not release the wild magic. Revelstone was still full of Riders. He glimpsed them running past the ends of long halls, preparing themselves for defense or counterattack. He did not have enough blood in his veins to sustain himself without the fire of his ring: once he dropped his p
ower, he would be beyond any self-protection. He would have to trust the Haruchai to save him, save his friends. And that thought also was bitter to him. Bannor’s people had paid such severe prices in his name. How could he permit them to serve him again?
How many people had he killed?
Shedding flames like tears, he climbed up through the levels of Revelstone toward the plateau.
And Brinn strode at his side as if the Haruchai had already committed himself to this service. Somewhere he had found a cloak which he now draped across Covenant’s shoulders. The Unbeliever shrugged it into place, hardly noticing. It helped to protect him against the shock of blood-loss.
Covenant needed hope. He had gained much from the soothtell; but those insights paled beside the shock of Linden’s straits, paled beside the mounting self-abomination of what he had done with his power. He had not known he was so capable of slaughter. He could not face the demands of his new knowledge without some kind of hope.
He did not know where else to turn except to Glimmermere. To the Earthpower which remained still vital enough to provide Glimmermere with water, even when all the Land lay under a desert sun. To the blade which lay in the deeps of the lake.
Loric’s krill.
He did not want it because it was a weapon. He wanted it because it was an alternative, a tool of power which might prove manageable enough to spare him any further reliance upon his ring.
And he wanted it because Vain’s grin continued to knell through his head. In that grin, he had seen Vain’s makers, the roynish and cruel beings he remembered. They had lied to Foamfollower. Vain’s purpose was not greatly to be desired. It was the purpose of a fiend. Covenant had seen Vain kill, seen himself kill, and knew the truth.
And Loric, who was Kevin’s father, had been called Vilesilencer. He had formed the krill to stem the harm of Vain’s ancestors. Perhaps the krill would provide an answer to Vain.
That, too, was a form of hope. Covenant needed hope. When he reached the open plateau, the brightness of his power made the night seem as black and dire as Vain’s obsidian flesh.
The Wounded Land Page 40
