The 1st Chronicles of Thomas Covenant #2: The Illearth War (18 page)

“No.” Covenant struggled to give his refusal some force. “No. It isn’t like that.

What white gold does in the Land has nothing to do with me. It isn’t me. I can’t touch it, make it work, influence it. It’s just another thing that’s happened to me. I’ve got no power.

For all I know or can do about it, this wild magic could turn on tomorrow or five seconds from now and blast us all. It could crown Foul king of the universe whether I want it to or not. It has nothing to do with me.”

“Is that a fact?” Troy said sourly. “And since you don’t have any power, no one can hold you to blame.”

Troy’s tone gave Covenant something on which to focus his anger. “That’s right!”

he flared. “Let me tell you something. The only person in life who’s free at all, ever, is a person who’s impotent. Like me. Or what do you think freedom is? Unlimited potential?

Unrestricted possibilities? Hellfire! Impotence is freedom. When you’re incapable of anything, no one can expect anything from you. Power has its own limit seven ultimate power. Only the impotent are free.

“No!” he snapped to stop Troy’s protest. “I’ll tell you something else. What you’re really asking me to do is learn how to use this wild magic so I can go around butchering the poor, miserable creatures in Foul’s army. Well, I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to do any more killing-and certainly not in the name of something that isn’t even real!”

“Hooray,” muttered Troy in tight sarcasm. “Sweet Jesus. Whatever happened to people who used to believe in things?”

“They got leprosy and died. Weren’t you listening to that song?”

Before Troy could reply, they rounded a corner, and entered an intersection where several halls came together. Bannor stood in the junction as if he were waiting for them.

He blocked the hall Covenant had intended to take. “Choose another way,” he said expressionlessly. “Turn aside. Now.”

Troy did not hesitate; he swung away to his right. While he moved, he asked quickly, “Why? What’s going on?”

But Covenant did not follow. The crest of his anger, his bone-deep frustration, still held him up. He stopped where he was and glared at the Bloodguard.

“Turn aside,” Bannor repeated. “The High Lord desires that you should not meet.”

From the next hallway, Troy called, “Covenant! Come on!”

For a moment, Covenant maintained his defiance. But Bannor’s impervious gaze deflated him. The Bloodguard looked as immune to affront or doubt as a stone wall.

Muttering uselessly under his breath, Covenant started after Troy.

But he had delayed too long. Before he was hidden in the next hallway, a man came into the intersection from the passage behind Bannor. He was as tall, thick, and solid as a pillar; his deep chest easily supported his broad massive shoulders and brawny arms. He walked with his head down, so that his heavy, regret beard rested like a burden on his breast; and his face had a look of ruddy strength gone ominously rancid, curdled by some admixture of gall.

Woven into the shoulders of his brown Stonedownor tunic was a pattern of white leaves.

Covenant froze; a spasm of suspense and fear gripped his guts. He recognized the Stonedownor. In the still place at the center of the spasm, he felt sorrow and remorse for this man whose life he had ruined as if he were incapable of regret.

Striding back into the intersection, Troy said, “I don’t understand. Why shouldn’t we meet this man? He’s one of the rhadhamaerl. Covenant, this is — ”

Covenant cut Troy off. “I know him.”

Trell’s eyes held Covenant readily, as if after years of pressure they were charged with too much blood. “And I know you, Thomas Covenant.” His voice came out stiffly; it sounded disused, cramped, as if he had kept it fettered for a long time, fearing that it would betray him. “Are you not satisfied? Have you come to do more harm?”

Through a roar of pounding blood in his ears, Covenant heard himself saying for the second time, “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Trell almost choked on the word. “Is that enough? Does it raise the dead?” For a moment, he shuddered as if he were about to break apart. His breath came in deep, hoarse gasps. Then, convulsively, he threw his strong arms wide like a man breaking bonds. Jumping forward, he caught Covenant around the chest, lifted him off the floor. With a fierce snarl, he hugged Covenant, striving to crush his ribs.

Covenant wanted to cry out, howl his pain, but he could make no sound. The vise of Trell’s arms drove the air from his lungs, stunned his heart. He felt himself collapsing inwardly, destroying himself with his own pressure.

Dimly, he saw Bannor at Trell’s back. Twice Bannor punched at Trell’s neck. But the Gravelingas only increased his grip, growling savagely.

Someone, Troy, shouted, “Trell! Trell!”

Bannor turned and stepped away. For one frantic instant, Covenant feared that the Bloodguard was abandoning him. But Bannor only needed space for his next attack. He leaped high in the air; and as he dropped toward Trell, he chopped the Gravelingas across the base of his neck with one elbow. Trell staggered; his grip loosened. Continuing the same motion, Bannor caught Trell under the chin with his other arm. The sharp backward jerk pulled Trell off balance. As he toppled, he lost his hold on Covenant.

Covenant landed heavily on his side, retching for air. Through his dizzy gasps, he heard Troy shouting, heard the warning in Troy’s voice. He looked up in time to see Trell charge toward him again. But Bannor was swifter. As Trell lunged, Bannor met him head-on, butted him with such force that he reeled backward, crashed against the wall, fell to his hands and knees.

The impact stunned him. His massive frame writhed in pain, and his fingers gouged involuntarily at the stone, as if he were digging for breath.

They clenched into the floor as if it were only stiff clay. In a moment, both his fists were knotted in the rock.

Then he drew a deep shuddering breath, and snatched his hands out of the floor.

He stared at the holes he had made; he was appalled to see that he had damaged stone.

When he raised his head, he was panting hugely, so that his broad chest strained at the fabric of his tunic.

Bannor and Troy stood between him and Covenant. The Warmark held his sword poised. “Remember your Oath!” he commanded sharply. “Remember what you swore.

Don’t betray your own life.”

Tears started running soundlessly from Trell’s eyes as he stared past the Warmark at Covenant. “My Oath?” he rasped. “He brings me to this. What Oath does he take?”

With a sudden exertion, he heaved himself to his feet. Bannor stepped slightly ahead of Troy to defend against another attack, but Trell did not look at Covenant again. Breathing strenuously, as if there were not enough air for him in the Keep, he turned and shambled away down one of the corridors.

Hugging his bruised chest, Covenant moved over to sit with his back against the wall. The pain made him cough thickly. Troy stood nearby, tight-upped and intense. But Bannor appeared completely unruffled; nothing surprised his comprehensive dispassion.

“Jesus! Covenant,” Troy said at last. “What has he got against you?”

Covenant waited until he found a clear space between coughs. Then he answered,

“I raped his daughter.”

“You’re joking!”

“No.” He kept his head down, but he was avoiding Bannor’s eyes rather than Troy’s.

“No wonder they call you the Unbeliever.” Troy spoke in a low voice to keep his rage under control. “No wonder your wife divorced you. You must have been unsufferable.”

No! Covenant panted. I was never unfaithful to her. Never. But he did not raise his head, made no effort to meet the injustice of Troy’s accusation.

“Damn you, Covenant.” Troy’s voice was soft, fervid. He sounded too furious to shout. As if he could no longer bear the sight of the Unbeliever, he turned on his heel and strode away. But as he moved he could no longer contain his rage. “Good God!” he yelled. “I don’t know why you don’t drop him in some dungeon and throw away the key!

We’ve got enough trouble as it is!” Soon he was out of view down one of the halls, but his voice echoed after him like an anathema.

Sometime later, Covenant climbed to his feet, hugging the pain in his chest. His voice was weak from the effort of speaking around his hurt. “Bannor.”

“Ur-Lord?”

“Tell the High Lord about this. Tell her everything about Trell and me — and Troy.”

“Yes.”

“And, Bannor — ”

The Bloodguard waited impassively.

“I wouldn’t do it again-attack a girl like that. I would take it back if I could.” He said it as if it were a promise that he owed Bannor for saving his life.

But Bannor gave no sign that he understood or cared what the Unbeliever was saying.

After a while, Covenant went on, “Bannor, you’re practically the only person around here who hasn’t at least tried to forgive me for anything.”

“The Bloodguard do not forgive.”

“I know. I remember. I should count my blessings” With his arms wrapped around his chest to hold the pieces of himself together, he went back to his rooms.

NINE: GLIMMERMERE

ANOTHER evening and night passed without any word or sign of Lord Foul’s army-no glimmer of the fire warnings which the Lords had prepared across the Center and North Plains, no returning scouts, no omens. Nevertheless Covenant felt an increase in the tension of Revelstone; as the suspense mounted, the ambient air almost audibly quivered with strain, and Lord’s Keep breathed with a sharper intake, a more cautious release. Even the walls of his room expressed a mood of imminence. So he spent the evening on his balcony, drinking springwine to soothe the ache in his chest, and watching the vague shapes of the twilight as if they were incipient armies, rising out of the very ground to thrust bloodshed upon him. After a few flasks of the fine, clear beverage, he began to feel that only the tactile sensation of beard under his fingertips stood between him and actions war and killing-which he could not stomach.

When he slept that night, he had dreams of bloodwounds glutted with death in a vindictive and profligate expenditure which horrified him because he knew so vividly that only a few drops from an untended scratch were enough; there was no need or use for this hacking and slaughtering of flesh. But his dreams went on, agitating his sleep until at last he threw himself out of bed and went to stand on his balcony in the dawn, groaning over his bruised ribs.

Wrapped in the Keep’s suspense, he tried to compose himself to continue his private durance-waiting in mixed anxiety and defiance for a peremptory summons from the High Lord. He did not expect her to take his encounter with her grandfather calmly, and he had kept to his rooms since the previous afternoon so that she would know where to find him. Still, when it came, the knock at his door made his heart jump. His fingers and toes tingled-he could feel his pulse in them-and he found himself breathing hard again, in spite of the pain in his chest. He had to swallow down a quick sour taste before he could master his voice enough to answer the knock.

The door opened, and Bannor entered the room. “The High Lord wishes to speak with you,” he said without inflection. “Will you come?”

Yes, Covenant muttered grimly to himself. Of course. Do I have a choice?

Holding his chest to keep himself from wincing, he strode out of his suite and down the hall.

He started in the direction of the Close. He expected that Elena would want to make her anger at him public-to make him writhe before the assembled disapproval of Revelstone. He could have avoided Trell; it would have cost him nothing more than one instant of simple trust or considerateness. But Bannor soon steered him into other corridors. They passed through a small, heavy door hidden behind a curtain in one of the meeting halls, and went down a long, twisting stairwell into a deep part of the Keep unfamiliar to Covenant. The stair ended in a series of passages so irregular and dim that they confused him until he knew nothing about where he was except that he was deep in the gut-rock of Revelstone-deeper than the private quarters of the Lords.

But before long Bannor halted, facing a blank wall of stone. In the dim light of one torch, he spread his arms to the wall as if he were invoking it, and spoke three words in a language that came awkwardly to his tongue. When he lowered his arms, a door became visible. It swung inward, admitting the Bloodguard and Covenant to a high, brilliant cavern.

The makers of Revelstone had done little to shape or work this spacious cave.

They had given it a smooth floor, but had left untouched the raw rough stone of its walls and ceiling; and they had not altered the huge rude columns which stood thickly through it like massive tree trunks, reaching up from the floor to take the burden of the ceiling upon their shoulders. However, the whole cavern was lit by large urns of graveling placed between the columns so that all the surfaces of the walls and columns were clearly illumined.

Displayed on these surfaces everywhere were works of art. Paintings and tapestries hung on the walls; large sculptures and carvings rested on stands between the columns and urns; smaller pieces, carvings and statuettes and stoneware and suru-pa-maerl works, sat on wooden shelves cunningly attached to the columns.

In his fascination, Covenant forgot why he had been brought here. He began moving around the hall, looking avidly. The smaller works caught his attention first.

Many of them appeared in some way charged with action, imminent heat, as .if they had been captured in a moment of incarnation; but the differences in materials and emotions were enormous. Where an oaken figure of a woman cradling a baby wept protectively over the griefs and hurts of children, a similar granite subject radiated confident generative power; where a polished Gildenlode flame seemed to yearn upward, a suru pa-maerl blaze expressed comfort and practical warmth. Studies of children and Ranyhyn and Giants abounded; but scattered among them were darker subjects roynish ur-viles, strong, simpleminded Cavewights, and mad, valorous Kevin, reft of judgment and foresight but not courage or compassion by sheer despair. There was little copying of nature among them; the materials used were not congenial to mirroring or literalism.