Daughter of Regals

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  When Korik left the Close, he went without hesitation about the task of selecting his comrades.

  He had no qualm about his choices. the Bloodguard shared a community of prowess and responsibility; and any individual member of the community could be elected or replaced without causing any falter in the service of the Vow Yet he exercised care in his decisions. Cerrin and Sill he included as a matter of course: they had borne the direct care of Shetra and Hyrim since those Lords had first joined he Council. Then he added Runnik and Pren because they were among the senior members of the two ancient Haruchai clans, the Ho-aru and Nimishi, that in the mountain fastnesses of their home had warred together for generations until the Bond which had united them. Similarly, he Included five younger Bloodguard from each clan, so that both would have a fair hand in the mission. Among these was Tull, the youngest of the Bloodguard.

  Some time ago, when Lord Mhoram had made his scouting sojourn to the Spoiled Plains and Hotash Slay, and had been forced to flee, the Bloodguard with him had fallen. In keeping with the ritual of the Vow, the fallen had been Ranyhyn-borne to Guards Gap and the Westron Mountains for burial in native grave-grounds, and the Haruchai had sent new men to replace them. Tull was among them. He was centuries younger than Korik; and though the Vow bound him and straitened him and sustained him and kept him from sleep, so that he was a Bloodguard like any other, still he did not know the Giants as his older comrades did. For this reason, Korik chose him. It would gratify Tull to see that the unflawed fealty of the Bloodguard was not unmatched: the Giants of Seareach could also be trusted beyond any possibility of Corruption.

  As he walked soundlessly through the halls of Revelstone, sending out his mental summons, Korik considered the advantages in taking either Morril or Koral with him. They were the Bloodguard who watched over the Lords Callindrill and Amatin: Morril and Koral had accompanied. those Lords when they had attempted to reach the Giants and were driver back by some lurking power in the Sarangrave Both these Bloodguard had previous experience with the dangers which faced the mission. But Korik had heard all that Morril and Koral could tell concerning the danger. And they had the right to remain with the Lords whom they had personally warded.

  The choosing completed, Korik went to the place where his comrades would meet him— the one place in Revelstone reserved for the Bloodguard. It was a dim uncompromising hall, with unrubbed walls and a rough raw floor on which no one but a Bloodguard would walk barefoot. The whole space was unfurnished and unadorned, but it served them as it was. They needed only an open space with a punishing floor and freedom from observation.

  Korik did not have to wait long for his chosen comrades. They came promptly, though without any appearance of hurry, for the word of Mhoram’s vision had gone out ahead of Korik’s summons: they had heard it in the mental talk of the Haruchai, in the orders of the Lords, in the altered and quickened beat of Revelstone’s rhythms. But when Cerrin and Sill, Runnik and Pren; Tull and the others gathered around him, Korik still took the time to speak to them. The mission which First Mark Morin had given him was special, perhaps higher than any other burden the Bloodguard would bear in this war. Their responsibility had always been to the Lords: they had Vowed to preserve the Lords while the Council went about its work. Rarely had any Bloodguard been given a command which was not part of his direct service. But the mission to the Giants had been entrusted to the Haruchai. Summon or succour. To meet this uncommon charge, Korik gathered his company about him for the old rites.

  — Faith, he greeted them.

  — Fist and faith, they replied together.

  — Hail, chosen brothers, Korik returned. The mission to the Giants of Seareach is in our hands. These are Bloodguard times. War marches. The end of the Giants’ exile is near, as foretold by Damelon Giantfriend. Dour fist and unbroken faith prevail.

  The Bloodguard answered in the words of the ancient Haruchai Vow:

  — Ha-man rual tayba-sah carab ko-eeal neeta par-raoul. We are the Bloodguard, the keepers the Vow — the keepers and the kept, sanctified beyond decline and the last evil of death. Tan Haruchai. We accept.

  — Tan-Haruchai, Korik said. Bowing to his comrades, he repeated the old war-cry: Fist and faith.

  They bowed in turn, stepped back so that there was a clear space around him. Then they began the trial of leadership, as prescribed by the rites he had invoked. One by one, they came forward to fight with him, to measure their strength against his.

  Although he had been given the mission by the First Mark, Korik wanted to affirm his leadership among his company, so that in any future extremity no question of his right to command could arise. Therefore he fought for his leadership as he had once fought to be among the commanders of the army which had invaded the Land in the early years of High Lord Kevin son of Loric.

  This trial came instinctively to the proud Haruchai, for they had been born to fighting in the same way that their forefathers had been born to it, and their forefathers before them, as the old tellers described. For them, it was not enough that they made their home in one of the most demanding places of the Earth. It was not enough that the fastnesses which they inhabited, the caves and crags, the ice-grottoes and crevasses and eyries, were snow-locked three seasons a year and in places perpetually clamped in blue glaciers — that simple survival from day to day, the preservation of the home-fires, and the tending of the goats and the bare gardening they did when in summer some of the valleys were free of snow and ice, took all the strength and fortitude which any people could ask of themselves — that blizzards and mountain winds and avalanches provided them with so much disaster that even the hardiest and most cunning of them could not look to have a long life. No, in addition the Haruchai were always at war.

  Before the Bond, they had fought each other, battling Ho-aru against Nimishi, generation after generation, across cliffs and cols and scree and ravines, wherever they met. They were a hot people, strong-loined and prolific: but without food and shelter and warmth, children died at birth —and often the women died as well. Caught thus constantly between the need to replenish the people and the mortality of love, the clans strove to wrest every possible scrap of food or flicker of heat or shadow of shelter from each other, so that their wives and children might not die.

  Yet in time a kind of understanding came to the Ho-aru and Nimishi. They saw that they fought a feud they could not win. First, the clans were too evenly matched for one side to retain for long any brief ascendance. And second, even victory offered no solution to the need, for a victorious family would quickly grow in size until it was as large as two; and then the lack of food and warmth and shelter would kill as before. So the leaders of the clans met and formed the Bond. Enmity was set aside, and hands were joined. From that time onward, Ho-aru and Nimishi warred together against their common need.

  That need sent them eastward, out of the Westron Mountains, intending to conquer by might of fist the forms of sustenance their home did not provide, so that their wives and children would live. Korik had fought his way through a trial of leadership lasting an entire winter to gain a place — with Tuvor, Bannor, Morin, and Terrel — among the commanders of the army which had marched, a thousand strong, through Guards Gap and along the glacial purity of the Llurallin River, to wage war against the Land.

  They passed without resistance across the region which was later to be named Kurash Plenethor, Stricken Stone, and Trothgard. seeking battle, they were received by the inhabitants with quiet and fearless tolerance, were given without struggle all they demanded. These peaceful people had no use for war. Eventually, they even guided the Haruchai to Revelstone, where the Council of High Lord Kevin was still in its youth.

  There began the stuff of which the Bloodguard Vow, and the fealty between the Giants and the Haruchai, were made..

  Revelstone itself met the eyes of the invaders with a wonder such as they had never known. They understood mountains, cliffs, indomitable stone, and never in their warmest dreams had they conceive
d that gutrock could be so made welcoming, habitable, and extravagant. The great Giant-wrought Keep astonished them, inspired them with a fierce joy unmatched by anything except the sight of austere peaks majestically facing heavenward and the enfolding love of wives. And the more they looked, the more ecstatic Revelstone appeared. Half intuitively, they sensed the pattern, the commingling flow and rest of the balconies and coigns and windows and parapets, which the Giants had woven into the rock of the high walls — perceived it dimly, and were enthralled. Here, amid warmth and lushness and fertility and food and sunlight, was a single rock home capacious enough to enclose the entire Haruchai people and hold them free of want forever. The suggestiveness of such luxuriance made the very crenellations of the battlements seem luminous, strangely lit by high mysteries and unquenchable possibilities.

  In the rush of their unfamiliar passion, they swore an oath that they would conquer this and make it their own. Without hesitation one thousand unarmed Haruchai laid siege Revelstone.

  Their war-making did not go far. Almost at once the great stone gates under the watch tower swung wide, and High Lord Kevin rode to meet his besiegers. He was mounted on a Ranyhyn and accompanied by half his council, one Eoman of the Warward, and a coterie of grinning Giants. Solemnly, Kevin listened while First Mark Tuvor delivered his terms of war; and some power of the Staff of Law enabled the High Lord to understand the Haruchai tongue. Then he declared so all the Haruchai might grasp his meaning that under no circumstances would he fight the invaders. He declined to make war. Instead, he invited the five commanders into Revelstone to the hospitality of the Lords. And though they expected treachery, they accepted, because they were proud.

  But there was no treachery. The great gates stood open for three days while the Haruchai commanders tasted the grandeur of Revelstone. They experienced the laughing genial power of the Giants who had made the Keep, received the confident offer of Kevin’s Council to supply the Haruchai freely whatever they needed for as long as their need lasted. When the commanders returned to their army, they sat astride prancing Ranyhyn, which had come from the Plains of Ra at Kevin’s call and had chosen to bear the Haruchai. Korik and his peers were of one mind. Something new was upon them, something beyond instinctive kinship with the Ranyhyn, beyond friendship and awe for the Giants, beyond even the fine entrancement of Revelstone itself. The Haruchai were fighters, accustomed to wrest what they required: they could not accept gifts without making meet return.

  Therefore that night the army from the Westron Mountains gathered under the south wall of Revelstone. All the Haruchai joined their minds together and out of their common strength forged the metal of the Vow — unalloyed and unanswerable, accessible to no appeal or flaw, unambergrised by the promise of any uncorrupt end: a Vow like the infernal oath upon the river of death which binds even the gods. This they wrought out of the extremity and innocence of their hearts, to match the handiwork of the Giants and the mastery of the Lords. As they spoke the hot words — Ha-man rual tayba-sah carab ho-eeal — the ground seemed to grow hot and cognizant under their feet, as if the Earthpower were drawing near the surface to hear them. And when they brought their Vow around full circle, sealing it so that there was no escape, the rocks on which they stood thundered, and fire ran through them, sealing their bones to the promise they had made.

  Thus it was done. Before dawn, the remainder of the army marched away toward Guards Gap and home. The five hundred Haruchai of the Vow went to Revelstone to become the Bloodguard, defenders of the Lords: the last preserving wall between Revelstone. and any blot or stain.

  Yet that was not all. Though Korik now on the eve of the mission to Seareach invoked the old trial of leadership to test his place in the company he had chosen — though the Vow he served was as always impeccable and binding — yet the history of the Bloodguard contained at least two other matters which each of them kept in account. The first of these came at once, the morning after the Vow was taken. When the Haruchai entered Revelstone and announced. their purpose to the Council, High Lord Kevin was dismayed. Like the Lord Mhoram in the later age, Kevin was at times gifted or blighted with presciences; and he treated the Vow as if it proffered disaster. He insisted strangely that the Haruchai had maimed themselves: he strove to refuse the service, so much was he taken aback — and so little did he understand the fierce hearts of these people. But the Giants taught him to understand, and to accept.

  The second matter arose from the last war, before Kevin chose to enact the Ritual of Desecration. When the High Lord knew in secret what he purposed, he set about saving as much of the Land as he could. He forewarned the Giants and Ranyhyn, so that they might flee the coming havoc. And he ordered the Bloodguard away, into the safety of the mountains.

  This was the question which now plagued the Bloodguard, taught them doubt, this question of judgement. They had obeyed the High Lord, and so survived the Desecration; but the Lords to whom they had sworn their service were lost. The Bloodguard had obeyed because they had never considered that Kevin might wish to thwart their Vow. Even now the fact felt inconceivable, threatening. They had trusted him, assumed that his orders were consonant with their intent. Now they knew otherwise. Kevin had prevented them from dying with him or from opposing his dark purpose. He had betrayed them.

  Now the Bloodguard knew how to doubt. And now their Vow had revealed an additional demand: to fulfil it, they must preserve the Lords from self-destruction.

  Therefore Korik invoked the rites of leadership. He remembered his whole history — the Vow gave no relief from memory — and because of it he acted as he did. He raised hands which knew how to kill against his comrades.

  He did not hold back his strength, or cover his blows, or in any other way fight less fiercely than he would have fought a foe of the Lords. There was no need for restraint. there were no frail or unskilled fighters among the Bloodguard; their devotion to the Vow kept their alertness keen and their thews strong. And the first tests were not long. Runnik and Pren were veterans of the Bloodguard, had measured their strength against his often enough to know him exactly. After a few swift passes, they acknowledged that he was the same warrior who had bested them before. And in deference to their example, the younger Ho-aru and Nimishi also contented themselves with fleet, flurrying ripostes to demonstrate Korik’s worthiness — and their own. Cerrin and Sill took longer, more because they respected the Lords they warded than because they desired to take away Korik’s command. But he had been one of the original Haruchai commanders for good reason. Fighting with a speed which masked the precision of his movements, he showed Cerrin and Sill in turn that he remained one of the elite.

  When they were satisfied, Korik encountered Tull.

  He was gratified by the strength of Tull’s metal. In many ways, Tull was still an untried Bloodguard; and because of this, Korik attacked him relentlessly. But Tull quickly showed that over the generations the Haruchai had not been content with old skills: they had developed new counters and blows, new feints and angles of attack. In moments, Korik was pushed to his limits, and Tull seemed to have the upper hand. But Korik had experienced conflict against many different and versatile opponents. He learned swiftly. When an unusual feint caught him, knocked him back, he spun and twisted, avoided the fall which would have signalled his defeat. Then he met Tull with the same feint. The blow stretched Tull on the rough floor, and the trial was over.

  Tull bounded to his feet, stood with the other Bloodguard facing Korik.

  — Fist and faith, they said: We are Bloodguard. Tan-Haruchai.

  — Tan-Haruchai, Korik acknowledged. He bowed slightly to his comrades, and they followed him from the chamber. Among them, he was the only one whose pulse or breathing had quickened; but outwardly he revealed nothing of the trial of leadership.

  When his company regained the main halls of Revelstone, they separated to gather supplies. For themselves they would carry nothing but raiment and long coils of clingor, the adhesive leather rope which had been intro
duced to the Land by the Giants. They bore no weapons. And, in part because of their Vow, they needed little food: as long as the hardy aliantha grew and ripened throughout the Land in all seasons, the Bloodguard required no other sustenance. But the Lords would need more equipage: food and drink, lillianrill rods for torches, some graveling, bedding, cookware, a few knives and other utensils. Such things the Bloodguard would carry on their backs, so that Shetra and Hyrim would not be wearied by packs. Other resources Korik left to the Lords. He took care of the needs within his power.

  Those which were not did not trouble him. He had no answer for Lord Shetra’s dour dismay — though he had paid for centuries the cost of the yearning between a man and a woman —and so he stood aloof from it; He had no hand in the unvoiced fear which caused Lord Hyrim to ask Thomas Covenant’s company in defiance of the High Lord’s wishes: therefore he made no effort to sway or deny the Unbeliever. And he fended away all questions which ranged beyond the ambit of his certainty. Fist and faith. Succeed or die. Aided by the native flatness of his features, he bore himself as if he possessed no emotions which might be touched.

  Yet he grieved for Shetra and respected Hyrim. He judged the Unbeliever coldly. And the arrival of the Ranyhyn, seventeen of the great horses of Ra with their starred foreheads and their strange responsive fidelity, thundering forward in the first hint of day in answer to his call — that pride and beauty was a hymn in his heart. He was Haruchai and Bloodguard. His people had shown in their Vow how extremely they could be touched.

  Thus now there was a special revelling in him as Brabha bore him down out of the foothills of Lord’s Keep into the lower plains, the easy farmlands which spread for leagues on all the eastern slopes. There he and his companions began to encounter brief villages — small clustered Stonedowns and an occasional Woodhelven in the old spread banyan trees which dotted this part of the plains, homes for the farmers and artisans who, despite their vital share in the life of Revelstone, preferred not to live in that massed habitation. In the dim dawn light, the riders slowed their pace to a more cautious trot, so that they ran no risk of trampling a groggy farmer or child. But when the sun came up fully, the Ranyhyn greeted it with glad nickering, as if they were welcoming an old dear friend, and stretched their strides again.