White Gold Wielder (36 page)

Nom’s trembling mounted—and abruptly subsided. Lowering itself to the ground, the beast placed its forehead in the dirt at Covenant’s feet.

Slowly he let pent air leak away through his teeth. A muffled sigh of relief passed through the company. Linden covered her face momentarily, then thrust her fingers through her hair as if she were trying to pull courage up out of her alarm.

“Nom,” he said, and his voice shook. “Thanks for coming.”

He did not know to what extent the beast was able to understand him; but it surged erect by unfolding its knees and stood waiting before him.

He did not let himself hesitate. The bond which held Nom was fragile. And he could feel venom gnawing in him like acid. His purpose was as clear to him as the soothtell which had sent him on his futile quest for the One Tree. Turning to his companions, he addressed them as a group.

“I want you to stay here.” Gritting his will, he strove to suppress the tremors which made his tone harsh. “Leave it to Nom and me. Between us, we’re already too much for the job.” And I can’t bear to lose any of you.

He had no right to say such things. Every member of the company had earned a place in this hazard. But when he considered what might happen to them, he burned to spare them.

“I’ll need Linden,” he went on before anyone could protest. “Gibbon’s going to try to hide from me. I won’t be able to locate the Raver without her.” The mere thought hurt him; he knew how deeply she dreaded Ravers. “And I’ll take Cail and Fole. To guard our backs,” Even that concession made him want to rage. But Linden might need the protection. “The rest of you just wait. If I fail, you’ll have to do it for me.”

Unable to face what his friends wanted to say, the pained indignation in their eyes, the expostulations rising from their hearts, he impelled Linden into motion with his hand on the small of her back. A gesture called Nom to his side. Striding stiffly past the people who had served him with their lives and deserved better than this, he started up the slope toward Revelstone.

Then for a moment he came so close to tears that his courage nearly broke. Not one of his companions obeyed. Without a word, they arranged themselves for battle and followed him.

Under her breath, Linden murmured, “I understand. You think it all depends on you. Why should people as good as they are have to suffer and maybe get killed for it? And I’m so scared—” Her face was pale and drawn and urgent. “But you have got to stop trying to make other people’s decisions for them.”

He did not reply. Keeping his attention fixed on the open tunnel under the watchtower, he forced his power-clogged muscles to bear him steadily upward. But now he feared that he was already defeated. He had too much to lose. His friends were accompanying him into his nightmares as if he were worthy of them. Because he had to do something, no matter how insufficient or useless it might be, he moved closer to Cail and whispered, “This is enough. Bannor said you’d serve me. Brinn told you to take his place. But I don’t need this kind of service anymore. I’m too far gone. What I need is hope.”

“Ur-Lord?” the
Haruchai
responded softly.

“The Land needs a future. Even if I win. The Giants’ll go Home. You’ll go about your business. But if anything happens to Sunder or Hollian—” The idea appalled him. “I want you to take care of them. All of you. No matter what.” He was prepared to endanger even Linden for this. “The Land has got to have a future.”

“We hear you.” Cail’s tone did not betray whether he was relieved, moved, or offended. “If the need arises, we will remember your words.”

With that Covenant had to be content.

Nom had moved somewhat ahead of him, thrusting toward the great Keep as if it triggered a racial memory of the Sandwall which the
Bhrathair
had raised to oppose the Sandgorgons in the years before Kasreyn had bound them to their Doom. The beast’s arms swung in anticipation. Grimly Covenant quickened his pace.

In that way, with Linden beside him, two Stonedownors and four Giants behind him, and eleven
Haruchai
nearby, Thomas Covenant went to pit himself against the Clave and the Banefire.

There was no reaction from Revelstone. Perhaps the na-Mhoram did not know what a Sandgorgon was, wanted to see what it would do before he attempted to provoke Covenant again. Or perhaps he had given up provocation in order to prepare his defenses. Perhaps the Raver had found a small worm of fear at the bottom of his malice. Covenant liked that idea. What the Clave and the Banefire had done to the Land could not be forgiven. The way in which this Raver had transformed to ill the ancient and honorable Council of Lords could not be forgiven. And for Gibbon’s attack on Linden, Covenant would accept no atonement except the cleansing of the Keep.

Those who hold the Earth in their hands have no justification for vengeance
.

Like hell, Covenant gritted. Like hell they don’t.

But when he reached the base of the watchtower, he commanded Nom to halt and paused to consider the tunnel. The sun was high enough now to make the inner courtyard bright; but that only deepened the obscurity of the passage. The windows of the tower gaped as if the rooms behind them were abandoned. A silence like the cryptic stillness of the dead hung over the city. There was no wind—no sign of life except the stark hot shaft of the Banefire. Between the two slain Coursers, dead wasps littered the ground. The Riders had taken their own fallen with them for the sake of the blood. But red splotches marked the rocks in front of the tower as if to tell Covenant that he had come to the right place.

He turned to Linden. Her taut pallor frightened him, but he could no longer afford to spare her. “The tower,” he said as the company stopped behind him. “I need to know if it’s empty.”

The movement of her head as she looked upward seemed fatally slow, as if her old paralysis had its hand on her again. The last time she was here, Gibbon’s touch had reduced her to near catatonia.
The principal doom of the Land is upon your shoulders. Through eyes and ears and touch, you are made to be what the Despiser requires. Once she had pleaded with Covenant, You’ve got to get me out of here. Before they make me kill you
.

But she did not plead now or seek to shirk the consequences of her choices. Her voice sounded dull and stunned; yet she accepted Covenant’s demands. “It’s hard,” she murmured. “Hard to see past the Banefire. It wants me—wants to throw me at the sun. Throw me at the sun forever.” Fear glazed her eyes as if that cast had already begun. “It’s hard to see anything else.” However, a moment later she frowned. Her gaze sharpened. “But Gibbon isn’t there. Not there. He’s still in the main Keep. And I don’t feel anything else.” When she looked at Covenant again, she appeared as severe as she had at their first meeting. “I don’t think they’ve ever used the tower.”

A surge of relief started up in Covenant, but he fought it down. He could not afford that either. It blunted his control, let hints of blackness leak through his mind. Striving to match her, he muttered, “Then let’s go.”

With Nom and Linden, Cail and Fole, he walked into the tunnel; and his companions followed him like echoes.

As he traversed the passage, be instinctively hunched his shoulders, bracing himself against the attack he still expected from the ceiling of the tunnel. But no attack came. Linden had read the tower accurately. Soon he stood in the courtyard. The sun shone before him on the high, buttressed face of the Keep and on the massive inner gates.

Those stone slabs were notched and beveled and balanced so that they could open outward smoothly and marry exactly when they closed. They were heavy enough to rebuff any force of which their makers had been able to conceive. And they were shut, interlocking with each other like teeth. The lines where they hinged and met were barely distinguishable.

“I have said it,” the First breathed behind Covenant. “The Unhomed wrought surpassingly well in this place.”

She was right; the gates looked ready to stand forever.

Suddenly Covenant became urgent for haste. If he did not find an answer soon, he would go up like tinder and oil. The sun had not yet reached midmoming; and the shaft of the Banefire stood poised above him like a scythe titanic and bloody enough to reap all the life of the world. Sunder’s hands clutched the
krill
and his
orcrest
, holding them ready; but he looked strangely daunted by the great Keep, by what it meant and contained. For the first time in the ordeal of the Search, Pitchwife seemed vulnerable to panic, capable of flight. Linden’s skin was the color of ashes. But Honninscrave held his fists clinched at his sides as if he knew he was close to the reasons for Seadreamer’s death and did not mean to wait for them much longer.

Covenant groaned to himself. He should have begun his attack last night, while most of his friends slept. He was sick of guilt.

With a fervid sweep of his arm, he sent Nom at the gates.

The Sandgorgon seemed to understand instinctively. In three strides, it reached full speed.

Hurtling forward like a juggernaut, it crashed headlong against the juncture of the clenched slabs.

The impact boomed across the courtyard, thudded in Covenant’s lungs, rebounded like a cannonade from the tower. The stones underfoot shivered; a vibration like a wail ran through the abutments. The spot Nom struck was crushed and dented as if it were formed of wood.

But the gates stood.

The beast stepped back as if it were astonished. It turned its head like a question toward Covenant. But an instant later it rose up in the native savagery of all Sandgorgons and began to beat at the gates with the staggering might of its arms.

Slowly at first, then more and more rapidly, the beast struck, one sledgehammer arm and then the other in accelerating sequence, harder and faster, harder and faster, until the courtyard was full of thunder and the stone yowled distress. Covenant was responsible for that—and still the gates held, bore the battery. Chips and splinters spat in all directions; granite teeth screamed against each other; the flagstones of the court seemed to ripple and dance. Still the gates held.

To herself, Linden whimpered as if she could feel every blow in her frangible bones.

Covenant started to shout for Nom to stop. He did not understand what the Sandgorgon was doing. The sight of such an attack would have rent Mhoram’s heart.

But an instant later he heard the rhythm of Nom’s blows more clearly, heard how that pulse meshed with the gutrock’s protesting retorts and cries; and he understood. The Sandgorgon had set up a resonance in the gates, and each impact increased the frequency and amplitude of the vibrations. If the beast did not falter, the slabs might be driven to tear themselves apart.

Abruptly red fire poured down off the abutment immediately above the gates. Riders appeared brandishing their
rukhs
: four or five of them. Wielding the Banefire together, they were more mighty than an equal number of individuals; and they shaped a concerted blast to thrust Nom back from the gates.

But Covenant was ready for them. He had been expecting something like this, and his power was hungry for utterance, for any release that would ease the strain within him. Meticulous with desperation, he put out wild magic to defend the Sandgorgon.

His force was a sickening mixture of blackness and argence, mottled and leprous. But it was force nonetheless, fire capable of riving the heavens. It covered the Riders, melted their
rukhs
to slag, then pitched them back into the Keep with their robes aflame.

Nom went on hammering at the gates in a transport of destructive ecstasy as if it had finally met an obstacle worthy of it.

Honninscrave quivered to hurl himself forward; but the First restrained him. He obeyed her like a man who would soon be beyond reach of any command.

Then Nom struck a final blow—struck so swiftly that Covenant did not see how the blow was delivered. He saw only the small still fraction of time as the gates passed from endurance to rupture. They stood—and the change came upon them like the last inward suck of air before the blast of a hurricane—and then they were gone, ripped apart in a wrench of detonation with fragments whining like agony in all directions and stone-powder billowing so thickly that Nom disappeared and the broken mouth of Revelstone was obscured.

Slowly the high, wide portal became visible through the dust. It was large enough for Coursers, suitable for Giants, But the Sandgorgon did not reappear. Covenant’s stunned ears were unable to pick out the slap of Nom’s feet as the beast charged alone into the stone city.

“Oh my God,” Linden muttered over and over again, “oh my God.” Pitchwife breathed, “Stone and Sea!” as if he had never seen a Sandgorgon at work before. Hollian’s eyes were full of fear. But Sunder had been taught violence and killing by the Clave, had never learned to love Revelstone: his face was bright with eagerness.

Half deafened by the pain of the stone. Covenant entered the Keep because now he had no choice left but to go forward or die. And he did not know what Nom would do to the city. At a wooden run, he crossed the courtyard and passed through the dust into Revelstone as if he were casting the die of his fate.

Instantly his companions arranged themselves for battle and followed him. He was only one stride ahead of Cail, two ahead of the First, Linden, and Honninscrave, as he broached the huge forehall of the na-Mhoram’s Keep.

It was as dark as a pit.

He knew that hall; it was the size of a cavern. It had been formed by Giants to provide a mustering-space for the forces of the former Lords. But the sun angled only a short distance into the broken entrance; and some trick of the high stone seemed to absorb the light; and there was no other illumination.

Too late, he understood that the forehall had been prepared to meet him.

With a crash, heavy wooden barriers slammed shut across the entryway. Sudden midnight echoed around the company.

Instinctively Covenant started to release a blaze from his ring. Then he yanked it back. His fire was entirely black now, as corrupt as poison. It shed no more light than the scream that swelled against his self-control, threatening to tear his throat and split Revelstone asunder.