Thomas Covenant 03: Power That Preserves (7 page)

“Burned,” she repeated.

“Yes, Faer.” He could find no words adequate for the ache in his heart. “He fought to preserve Revelwood.”

“High Lord, there was doubt in him—here.” She pointed to her bosom. “He forgot himself.”

Mhoram heard the truth in her voice. But he could not let her bare statement pass. “Perhaps. He did not forget the Land.”

With a low moan, Lord Amatin turned and hastened painfully back to her chambers. But Faer paid no attention to her. Without meeting Mhoram’s intent gaze, she asked, “Is it possible?”

He had no answer for that question. Instead he replied as if she had repeated Asuraka’s cry. “The Law of Death has been broken. Who can say what is possible now?”

“Revelwood,” groaned Corimini. His voice trembled with age and sorrow. “He died bravely.”

“He forgot himself.” Faer moved out of the Eldest’s hands as if she had no use for his consolation. Turning away from the High Lord, she walked stiffly back to her rooms. After a moment, Corimini followed, blinking uselessly against his tears.

With an effort, Mhoram loosened his grip on his staff, flexed his clawed fingers.

Firmly, deliberately, he made his decision.

His lips were tight and hard as he faced Quaan. “Summon the Council,” he said as if he expected the Warmark to protest. “Invite the Lorewardens, and any of the
rhadhamaerl
and
lillianrill
who desire to come. We can no longer delay.”

Quaan did not mistake Mhoram’s tone. He saluted the High Lord crisply, and at once began shouting orders to the sentries.

Mhoram did not wait for the Warmark to finish. Taking his staff in his right hand, he strode off the bright floor and down the hallway which separated the apartments of the Lords from the rest of Revelstone. He nodded to the guards at the far end of the hall, but did not stop to answer their inquiring faces. Everybody he encountered had felt the disturbance of Revelstone’s ambience, and their eyes thronged with anxiety. But he ignored them. They would have their answers soon enough. Sternly he began to climb up through the levels of Lord’s Keep toward the Close.

Haste mounted around him as word of Asuraka’s message spread through the walls of the city. The usual busyness of life which pulsed in the rock, concerting the rhythms of the Keep’s inhabitants, gave way to an impression of focus, as if Revelstone itself were telling the people what had happened and how to respond. In this same way, the mountain rock had helped to order the lives of its denizens for generations, centuries.

Deep in his aching heart, Mhoram knew that even this rock could come to an end. In all the ages of its existence, it had never been besieged. But Lord Foul was powerful enough now. He could tear these massive walls down, reduce the Land’s last bastion to rubble. And he would begin the attempt soon.

This, at least, Callindrill had understood clearly. The time had come for desperate hazards. And the High Lord was full to bursting with the damage Satansfist had already done in his long march from Ridjeck Thome. He had chosen his own risk.

He hoped to turn the breaking of the Law of Death to the Land’s advantage.

He found himself hurrying, though he knew he would have to wait when he reached the Close. The pressure of decision impelled him. Yet when Trell hailed him from a side passage, he stopped at once, and turned to meet the approach of the big Gravelingas. Trell Atiaran-mate had claims which Mhoram could neither deny nor evade.

Trell was traditionally dressed as a Stonedownor—over his light brown pants he wore a short tunic with his family symbol, a white leaf pattern, woven into its shoulders—and he had the broad, muscular frame which characterized the people of the rock villages; but the Stonedownors were usually short, and Trell was tall. He created an impression of immense physical strength, which was only augmented by his great skill in the
rhadhamaerl
lore.

He approached the High Lord with his head lowered in an attitude of shyness, but Mhoram knew that it was not embarrassment which caused Trell to avoid meeting the eyes of other people. Another explanation glowered behind the thick intensity of Trell’s red and gray beard and the graveling ruddiness of his features. Involuntarily Mhoram shivered as if the wind of winter had found its way through Revelstone to his heart.

Like the other
rhadhamaerl
, Trell had given his whole life to the service of stone. But he had lost his wife and daughter and granddaughter because of Thomas Covenant. The simple sight of Covenant seven years ago had driven him to damage the rock of the Keep; he had gouged his fingers into the granite as if it were nothing more than stiff clay.

He avoided other people’s eyes in an effort to conceal the conflicting hate and hurt which knotted themselves within him.

He usually kept to himself, immersing himself in the stone labors of the Keep. But now he accosted the High Lord with an air of grim purpose.

He said, “You go to the Close, High Lord.” Despite the severity of his mien, his voice held an odd note of supplication.

“Yes,” Mhoram answered.

“Why?”

“Trell Atiaran-mate, you know why. You are not deaf to the Land’s need.”

Flatly Trell said, “Do not.”

Mhoram shook his head gently. “You know that I must make this attempt.”

Trell pushed this statement aside with a jerk of his shoulders, and repeated, “Do not.”

“Trell, I am High Lord of the Council of Revelstone. I must do what I can.”

“You will denounce—you will denounce the fall of Elena my daughter’s daughter.”

“Denounce?” Trell’s assertion surprised the High Lord. He cocked an eyebrow and waited for the Gravelingas to explain.

“Yes!” Trell averred. His voice sounded awkward, as if in the long, low, subterranean songs of his
rhadhamaerl
service he had lost his familiarity with human speech; and he looked as if he were resisting an impulse to shout. “Atiaran my wife said—she said that it is the responsibility of the living to justify the sacrifices of the dead. Otherwise their deaths have no meaning. You will undo the meaning Elena earned. You must not—approve her death.”

Mhoram heard the truth in Trell’s words. His decision might well imply an affirmation, or at least an acceptance, of Elena’s fall under
Melenkurion
Skyweir; and that would be bitter bread for Trell’s distress to swallow. Perhaps this explained the inchoate fear which he sensed behind Trell’s speech. But Mhoram’s duty to the Land bound him straitly. So that Trell could not mistake him, he said, “I must make this attempt.” Then he added gently, “High Lord Elena broke the Law of Death. In what way can I approve?”

Trell’s gaze moved around the walls, avoiding the face of the High Lord, and his heavy hands clutched his hips as if to prevent themselves from striking out—as if he did not trust what his hands might do if he failed to hold them down. “Do you love the Land?” he said in a thick voice. “You will destroy it.”

Then he met Mhoram’s gaze, and his sore eyes gleamed with moist fire. “It would have been better if I had”—abruptly his hands tore loose from his sides, slapped together in front of him, and his shoulders hunched like a strangler’s—“crushed Lena my own daughter at birth.”

“No!” Mhoram affirmed softly. “No.” He yearned to put his arms around Trell, to console the Gravelingas in some way. But he did not know how to untie Trell’s distress; he was unable to loosen his own secret dilemma. “Hold Peace, Trell,” he murmured. “Remember the Oath.” He could think of nothing else to say.

“Peace?” Trell echoed in ridicule or grief. He no longer seemed to see the High Lord. “Atiaran believed in Peace. There is no Peace.” Turning vaguely from Mhoram, he walked away down the side passage from which he had come.

Mhoram stared after him down the passage for a long moment. Duty and caution told him that he should have warriors assigned to watch the Gravelingas. But he could not bear to torment Trell with such an expression of distrust; that judgment might weaken the last clutch of Trell’s self-control. And he, Mhoram, had seen men and women rise to victory from anguish as bad as Trell’s.

Yet the Gravelingas had not looked like a man who could wrest new wholeness out of the ruins of his old life. Mhoram was taking a grave risk by not acting in some way. As he started again toward the Close, the weight of his responsibilities bore heavily on him. He did not feel equal to the multitude of dooms he carried.

The Lords possessed nothing of their own with which to fight the long cruel winter that fettered the Land.

He strode down a long, torch-lit corridor, climbed a spiral stairway, and approached one of the Lords’ private entrances to the Close. Outside the door, he paused to gauge the number of people who had already gathered for the Council, and after a moment he heard Lord Amatin coming up the stair behind him. He waited for her. When she reached the landing where he stood, he saw that her eyes were red-rimmed, her forlorn mouth aggravated by tension. He was tempted to speak to her now, but he decided instead to deal with her feelings before the Council. If he were ever to reveal his secret knowledge, he would first have to prepare the ground for it. With a quiet, sympathetic smile, he opened the door for her and followed her into the Close.

From the door, he and Amatin went down the steps to the Lords’ table, which stood below the level of the tiered galleries in the high, round council hall. The hall was lit by four huge, lore-burning
lillianrill
torches set into the walls above the galleries, and by an open pit of graveling in the base of the Close, below and within the wide
C
of the table. Stone chairs for the Lords and their special guests waited around the outer edge of the table, facing in toward the open floor and the graveling pit; and at the head of the table was the high-backed seat of the High Lord.

On the floor of the Close beside the graveling pit was a round stone table with a short silver sword stabbed halfway to the hilt in its center. This was the
krill
of Loric, left where Covenant had driven it seven years ago. In that time, the Lords had found no way to remove it from the stone. They left it in the Close so that anyone who wished to study the
krill
could do so freely. But nothing had changed except the clear white gem around which the guards and haft of the two-edged blade were forged.

When Mhoram and Callindrill had returned from their plunge into Garroting Deep, they had found the gem lightless, dead. The hot fire which Covenant had set within it had gone out.

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?”