Thomas Covenant 03: Power That Preserves Page 6

  It stood near the graveling like an icon of the Lords’ futility, but Mhoram kept his thoughts away from it. He did not need to look around to learn who was already present in the Close; the perfect acoustics of the hall carried every low noise and utterance to his ears. In the first row of the gallery, above and behind the seats of the Lords, sat warriors, Hafts of the Warward, occupying the former places of the Bloodguard. The two Hearthralls, Tohrm the Gravelingas and Borillar the Hirebrand, sat with Warmark Quaan in their formal positions high in the gallery behind the High Lord’s chair. Several Lorewardens had taken seats in tiers above the table; the weary dust of their flight from Revelwood was still on them, but they were too taut with the news of the tree’s fall to miss this Council. And with them were virtually all the lillianrill of Lord’s Keep. The burning of a tree struck at the very hearts of the Hirebrands, and they watched the High Lord’s approach with pain in their eyes.

  Mhoram reached his seat but did not sit down immediately. As Lord Amatin moved to her place on the right side of the table, he felt a sharp pang at the sight of the stone seat which Callindrill should have filled. And he could sense the remembered presence of the others who had occupied the High Lord’s chair: Variol, Prothall, Osondrea, and Elena among the new Lords, Kevin, Loric, and Damelon of the Old. Their individual greatness and courage humbled him, made him realize how small a figure he was to bear such losses and duties. He stood on the brink of the Land’s doom without Variol’s foresight or Prothall’s ascetic strength or Osondrea’s dour intransigence or Elena’s fire; and he had not power enough to match the frailest Lord in the weakest Council led by Kevin or Loric or Damelon or Berek Heartthew the Lord-Fatherer. Yet none of the remaining Lords could take his place. Amatin lacked physical toughness. Trevor did not believe in his own stature; he felt that he was not the equal of his fellow Lords. And Loerya was torn between her love for the Land and her desire to protect her own family. Mhoram knew that more than once she had almost asked him to release her from her Lordship, so that she could flee with her daughters into the relative sanctuary of the Westron Mountains.

  With Callindrill gone, High Lord Mhoram was more alone than he had ever been before.

  He had to force himself to pull out his chair and sit down.

  He waited for Trevor and Loerya in a private reverie, gathering his fortitude. Finally the main doors of the Close opened opposite him, and the two Lords started down the broad steps, accompanying Eldest Corimini. He moved with slow difficulty, as if the end of Revelwood had exhausted the last elasticity of his thews, leaving him at the mercy of his age; and Trevor and Loerya supported him gently on either side. They helped him to a chair down the table from Amatin, then walked around and took their places on the High Lord’s left.

  When they were seated, the Close grew quiet. All talking stopped, and after a brief shuffle of feet and positions, silence filled the warm yellow light of the torches and graveling. Mhoram could hear nothing but the low susurration of hushed breathing. Slowly he looked around the table and the galleries. Every eye in the chamber was on him. Stiffening himself, he placed his staff flat on the table before him, and stood up.

  “Friends and servants of the Land,” he said steadily, “be welcome to the Council of Lords. I am Mhoram son of Variol, High Lord by the choice of the Council. There are dire matters upon us, and we must take action against them. But first we must welcome the Lorewardens of the Loresraat. Corimini, Eldest of the Loresraat, be at home in Lord’s Keep with all your people. You have brought the great school of lore safely to Revelstone. How may we honor you?”

  Corimini rose infirmly to his feet as if to meet the High Lord’s salutation, but the diffusion of his gaze showed that his mind was elsewhere. “Faer,” he began in a tremulous old voice, “Faer begs me to apologize for the absence of Callindrill her husband. He will be unable to attend the Council.” Dislocation gathered in his tone while he spoke, and his voice trailed off as if he had forgotten what he meant to say. Slowly his thoughts slipped out of contact with his situation. As he stood before the Council, the power of the lore which had preserved him for so long from the effects of age seemed to fail within him. After a moment, he sat down, murmuring aimlessly to himself, wandering in his mind like a man striving to comprehend a language he no longer knew. At last he found the word, “Revelwood.” He repeated it several times, searching to understand it. Softly he began to weep.

  Tears burned the backs of Mhoram’s eyes. With a quick gesture he sent two of the Lorewardens to Corimini’s aid. They lifted him from his seat and bore him between them up the stairs toward the high wooden doors. “Take him to the Healers,” Mhoram said thickly. “Find Peace for him. He has served the Land with courage and devotion and wisdom for more years than any other now living.”

  The Lords came to their feet, and at once all the people in the Close stood. Together they touched their right hands to their hearts, then extended the palms toward Corimini in a traditional salute. “Hail, Corimini,” they said, “Eldest of the Loresraat. Be at Peace.”

  The two Lorewardens took Corimini from the Close, and the doors shut behind them. Sadly the people in the galleries reseated themselves. The Lords looked toward Mhoram with mourning in their eyes, and Loerya said stiffly, “This is an ill omen.”

  Mhoram gripped himself with a stern hand. “All omens are ill in these times. Despite is abroad in the Land. For that reason we are Lords. The Land would not require us if there were no harm at work against it.”

  Without meeting Mhoram’s gaze, Amatin replied, “If that is our purpose, then we do not serve it.” Her anger and pain combined to give her a tone of defiance. She held her palms flat on the table and watched them as if she were trying to push them through the stone. “Only Callindrill of all the Lords lifted his hand in Revelwood’s defense. He burned in my place.”

  “No!” the High Lord snapped at once. He had hoped to deal with the issues before the Council on other terms, but now that Amatin had spoken, he could not back away. “No, Lord Amatin. You cannot take upon your shoulders responsibility for the death of Callindrill Faer-mate. He died in his own place, by his own choice. When you believed that you were no longer the Lord best suited to watch over Revelwood, you expressed your belief to the Council. The Council accepted your belief and asked Lord Callindrill to take that burden upon himself.

  “At the same time, the Council decided that the defenders of the Land should not spend themselves in a costly and bootless battle for Revelwood.” As he spoke, the tightness around his eyes expressed how hard, how poignantly hard, that decision had been to make. “The home of the Loresraat was not made for war, and could not be well defended. The Council decided for the sake of the Land that we must save our strength, put it to its best use here. Callindrill chose”—the authority of Mhoram’s tone faltered for an instant—“Lord Callindrill Faer-mate chose otherwise. There is no blame for you in this.”

  He saw the protest in her eyes and hastened to answer her. He did not want to hear her thought uttered aloud. “Further, I tell you that there is no blame for us in the wisdom or folly, victory or defeat, of the way we have elected to defend the Land. We are not the Creators of the Earth. Its final end is not on our heads. We are creations, like the Land itself. We are accountable for nothing but the purity of our service. When we have given our best wisdom and our utterest strength to the defense of the Land, then no voice can raise accusation against us. Life or death, good or ill—victory or destruction—we are not required to solve these riddles. Let the Creator answer for the doom of his creation.”

  Amatin stared at him hotly, and he could feel her probing the estranged, secret place in his heart. Speaking barely above a whisper, she said, “Do you blame Callindrill then? There is no ‘best wisdom’ in his death.”

  The misdirection of her effort to understand him pained the High Lord, but he answered her openly. “You are not deaf to me, Lord Amatin. I loved Callindrill Faer-mate like a brother. I have no wisdom or strength or willin
gness to blame him.”

  “You are the High Lord. What does your wisdom teach you?”

  “I am the High Lord,” Mhoram affirmed simply. “I have no time for blame.”

  Abruptly Loerya joined the probing. “And if there is no Creator? Or if the creation is untended?”

  “Then who is there to reproach us? We provide the meaning of our own lives. If we serve the Land purely to the furthest limit of our abilities, what more can we ask of ourselves?”

  Trevor answered, “Victory, High Lord. If we fail, the Land itself reproaches us. It will be made waste. We are its last preservers.”

  The force of this thrust smote Mhoram. He found that he still lacked the courage to retort nakedly, Better failure than desecration. Instead, he turned the thrust with a wry smile and said, “The last, Lord Trevor? No. The Haruchai yet live within their mountain fastness. In their way, they know the name of the Earthpower more surely than any Lord. Ramen and Ranyhyn yet live. Many people of the South and North Plains yet live. Many of the Unfettered yet live. Caerroil Wildwood, Forestal of Garroting Deep, has not passed away. And somewhere beyond the Sunbirth Sea is the homeland of the Giants—yes, and of the Elohim and Bhrathair, of whom the Giants sang. They will resist Lord Foul’s hold upon the Earth.”

  “But the Land, High Lord! The Land will be lost! The despiser will wrack it from end to end.”

  At once, Mhoram breathed intensely, “By the Seven! Not while one flicker of love or faith remains alive!”

  His eyes burned into Trevor’s until the Lord’s protest receded. Then he turned to Loerya. But in her he could see the discomfortable fear for her daughters at work, and he refrained from touching her torn feelings. Instead, he looked toward Amatin and was relieved to see that much of her anger had fallen away. She regarded him with an expression of hope. She had found something in him that she needed. Softly she said, “High Lord, you have discovered a way in which we may act against this doom.”

  The High Lord tightened his hold upon himself. “There is a way.” Raising his head, he addressed all the people in the Close. “My friends, Satansfist Raver has burned Revelwood. Trothgard is now in his hands. Soon he will begin to march upon us. Scant days remain before the siege of Revelstone begins. We can no longer delay.” The gold in his eyes flared as he said, “We must attempt to summon the Unbeliever.”

  At this, a stark silence filled the Close. Mhoram could feel waves of surprise and excitement and dread pouring down on him from the galleries. Warmark Quaan’s passionate objection struck across his shoulders. But he waited in the silence until Lord Loerya found her voice to say, “That is impossible. The Staff of Law has been lost. We have no means for such a summoning.” The soft timbre of her voice barely covered its hard core.

  Still Mhoram waited, looking toward the other Lords for answers to Loerya’s claim. After a long moment, Trevor said hesitantly, “But the Law of Death has been broken.”

  “And if the Staff has been destroyed,” Amatin added quickly, “then the Earthpower which it held and focused has been released upon the Land. Perhaps it is accessible to us.”

  “And we must make the attempt,” said Mhoram. “For good or ill, the Unbeliever is inextricably linked to the Land’s doom. If he is not here, he cannot defend the Land.”

  “Or destroy it!” Quaan rasped.

  Before Mhoram could respond, Hearthrall Borillar was on his feet. He said in a rush, “The Unbeliever will save the Land.”

  Quaan growled, “This is odd confidence, Hearthrall.”

  “He will save,” Borillar said as if he were surprised at his own temerity. Seven years ago, when he had met Covenant, he had been the youngest Hirebrand ever to take the office of Hearthrall. He had been acutely aware of his inexperience, and he was still deferential—a fact which amused his friend and fellow Hearthrall, Tohrm. “When I met the Unbeliever, I was young and timid—afraid.” Tohrm grinned impishly at the implication that Borillar was no longer young and timid. “Ur-Lord Covenant spoke kindly to me.”

  He sat down again, blushing in embarrassment. But no one except Tohrm smiled, and Tohrm’s smile was always irrepressible. It expressed only amused fondness, not mockery. The pitch of Borillar’s conviction seemed to reproach the doubts in the Close. When Lord Loerya spoke again, her tone had changed. With a searching look at the young Hearthrall, she said, “How shall we make this attempt?”

  Mhoram gravely nodded his thanks to Borillar, then turned back to the Lords. “I will essay the summoning. If my strength fails, aid me.” The Lords nodded mutely. With a final look around the Close, he sat down, bowed his head, and opened his mind to the melding of the Lords.

  He did so, knowing that he would have to hold back part of himself, prevent Trevor and Loerya and Amatin from seeing into his secret. He was taking a great risk. He needed the consolation, the sharing of strength and support, which a complete mind melding could give; yet any private weakness might expose the knowledge he withheld. And in the melding his fellow Lords could see that he did withhold something. Therefore it was an expensive rite. Each meld drained him because he could only protect his secret by giving fortitude rather than receiving it. But he believed in the meld. Of all the lore of the new Lords, only this belonged solely to them; the rest had come to them through the Wards of Kevin Landwaster. And when it was practiced purely, melding brought the health and heart of any Lord to the aid of all the others.

  As long as the High Lord possessed any pulse of life or thew of strength, he could not refuse to share them.

  At last, the contact was broken. For a moment, Mhoram felt that he was hardly strong enough to stand; the needs of the other Lords, and their concern for him, remained on his shoulders like an unnatural burden. But he understood himself well enough to know that in some ways he did not have the ability to surrender. Instead he had an instinct for absolute exertions which frightened him whenever he thought of the Ritual of Desecration. After a momentary rest, he rose to his feet and took up his staff. Bearing it like a standard, he walked around the table to the stairs and started down toward the open floor around the graveling pit.

  As Mhoram reached the floor, Tohrm came down out of the gallery to join him. The Gravelingas’s eyes were bright with humor, and he grinned as he said, “You will need far sight to behold the Unbeliever.” Then he winked as if this were a jest. “The gulf between worlds is dark, and darkness withers the heart. I will provide more light.”

  The High Lord smiled his thanks, and the Hearthrall stepped briskly to one side of the graveling pit. He bent toward the fire-stones, and at once seemed to forget the other people in the Close. Without another look at his audience, he softly began to sing.

  In a low rocky language known only to those who shared the rhadhamaerl lore, he hymned an invocation to the fire-stones, encouraging them, stoking them, calling to life their latent power. And the red-gold glow of the graveling reflected like a response from his face. After a moment, Mhoram could see the brightness growing. The reddish hue faded from the gold; the gold turned purer, whiter, hotter; and the new-earth aroma of the graveling rose up like incense in the Close.

  In silence, the three Lords stood, and the rest of the people joined them in a mute expression of respect for the rhadhamaerl and the Earthpower. Before them, the radiance of the pit mounted until Tohrm himself was pale in the light.

  With a slow, stately movement, High Lord Mhoram lifted his staff, held it in both hands level with his forehead.

  The summoning song of the Unbeliever began to run in his mind as he focused his thoughts on the power of his staff. One by one, he eliminated the people in the Close, and then the Close itself, from his awareness. He poured himself into the straight, smooth wood of his staff until he was conscious of nothing but the song and the light—and the illimitable implications of the Earthpower beating like ichor in the immense mountain-stone around him. Then he gathered as many strands of the pulse as he could hold together in the hands of his staff, and rode them outward through the warp a
nd weft of Revelstone’s existence. And as he rode, he sang to himself:

  There is wild magic graven in every rock,

  contained for white gold to unleash or control—

  gold, rare metal, not born of the Land,

  nor ruled, limited, subdued

  by the Law with which the Land was created—

  but keystone rather, pivot, crux

  for the anarchy out of which Time was made.

  The strands carried him out through the malevolent wind, so that his spirit shivered against gusts of spite; but his consciousness passed beyond them swiftly, passed beyond all air and wood and water and stone until he seemed to be spinning through the quintessential fabric of which actuality was made. For an interval without dimension in time and space, he lost track of himself. He felt that he was floating beyond the limits of creation. But the song and the light held him, steadied him. Soon his thoughts pointed like a compass to the lodestone of the white gold.

  Then he caught a glimpse of Thomas Covenant’s ring. It was unmistakable; the Unbeliever’s presence covered the chaste circlet like an aura, bound it, sealed up its power. And the aura itself ached with anguish.

  High Lord Mhoram reached toward that presence and began to sing:

  Be true, Unbeliever—

  Answer the call.

  Life is the Giver:

  Death ends all.

  The promise is truth,

  And banes disperse

  With promise kept:

  But soul’s deep curse

  On broken faith

  And faithless thrall,

  For doom of darkness

  Covers all.

  Be true, Unbeliever—

  Answer the call.

  Be true.

  He caught hold of Covenant with his song and started back toward the Close.

  The efficacy of the song took much of the burden from him, left him free to return swiftly to himself. As he opened his eyes to the dazzling light, he almost fell to his knees. Sudden exhaustion washed over him; he felt severely attenuated, as if his soul had been stretched to cover too great a distance. For a time, he stood strengthless, even forgetting to sing. But the other Lords had taken up the song for him, and in the place of his power their staffs vitalized the summoning.