Stephen Donaldson - The Illearth War

But Amok met her without blinking, and his voice cut clearly through the flame of the Staff. “No, High Lord. I am impervious to compulsion. You cannot touch me.”

“By the Seven!” she shouted. “I will not be denied!” She raged as if she were using fury to hold back a scream. “ Melenkurion abatha ! Tell me the name!”

“No,” Amok repeated.

Savagely, she tore the Staff out of his hands. Its flame gathered, mounted, then sprang loudly into the sky like a bolt of thunder.

He gave a shrug, and disappeared.

For a long, shocked moment, the High Lord stood frozen, staring at Amok's absence. Then a shudder ran through her, and she turned toward Covenant as if she had the weight of a mountain on her shoulders. Her face looked like a wilderland. She took two tottering steps, and stopped to brace herself on the Staff. Her gaze was blank; all her force was focused inward, against herself.

“Failed,” she gasped. “Doomed.” Anguish twisted her mouth. “I have doomed the Land”

Covenant could not stand the sight. Forgetting all his issueless thoughts, he hurried to say, “There's got to be something else we can do.”

She replied with an appalling softness. Tenderly, almost caressingly, she said, “Do you.believe in the white gold? Can you use it to meet Amok's condition?” Her voice had a sound of madness. But the next instant, her passion flared outward. With all her strength, she pounded the Staff against Rivenrock, and cried, “Then do so!”

The power she unleashed caused a wide section of the plateau to lurch like a stricken raft. The rock bucked and plunged; seamless waves of force rolled through it from the Staff.

The heaving knocked Covenant off his feet. He stumbled, fell toward the cleft.

Almost at once, Elena regained control over herself. She snatched back the Staffs power, shouted to the Bloodguard. But Bannor's reflexes were swifter. While the rock still pitched, he bounded surefootedly across it and caught Covenant's arm.

For a moment, Covenant was too stunned to do anything but hang limply in Bannor's grip. The High Lord's violence flooded through him, sweeping everything else out of his awareness. But then he noticed the pain of Bannor's grasp on his arm. He could feel something prophetic in the ancient strength with which Bannor clenched him, kept him alive. The Bloodguard had an iron grip, surer than the stone of Rivenrock. When he heard Elena moan, `Beloved! Have I harmed you?“ he was already muttering half aloud, ”Wait. Hold on. I've got it."

His eyes were closed. He opened them, and discovered that Bannor was holding him erect. Elena was nearby; she flung her arms around him and hid her face in his shoulder. He said, “I've got it.” She ignored him, started to mumble contrition into his shoulder. To stop her, he said sharply, “Forget it. I must be losing my mind. I should have figured this out days ago.”

Finally she heard him. She released him and stepped back. Her ravaged face stiffened. She caught her breath between her teeth, pushed a hand through her hair. Slowly, she became a Lord again. Her voice was unsteady but lucid as she said, “What have you learned?”

Bannor released Covenant also, and the Unbeliever stood wavering on his own. His feet distrusted the stone, but he locked his knees, and tried to disregard the sensation. The problem was in his brain; all his preconceptions had shifted. He wanted to speak quickly, ease Elena's urgent distress. But he had missed too many clues. He needed to approach his intuition slowly, so that he could pull all its strands together.

He tried to clear his head by shaking it. Elena winced as if he were reminding her of her outburst. He made a placating gesture toward her, and turned to confront the Bloodguard. Intently, he scrutinized the blank metal of their faces, searched them for some flicker or hue of duplicity, ulterior purpose, which would verify his intuition. But their ancient, sleepless eyes seemed to conceal nothing, reveal nothing. He felt an instant of panic at the idea that he might be wrong, but he pushed it down, and asked as calmly as he could, “Bannor, how old are you?”

“We are the Bloodguard,” Bannor replied. “Our Vow was sworn in the youth of Kevin's High Lordship.”

“Before the Desecration?”

“Yes, ur-Lord.”

“Before Kevin found out that Foul was really an enemy?”

“Yes”

“And you personally, Bannor? How old are you?”

“I was among the first Haruchai who entered the Land. I shared in the first swearing of the Vow.”

“That was centuries ago.” Covenant paused before he asked, “How well do you remember Kevin?”

“Step softly,” Elena cautioned. “Do not mock the Bloodguard.”

Bannor did not acknowledge her concern. He answered the Unbeliever inflexibly, “We do not forget.”

“I suppose not,” Covenant sighed. “What a hell of a way to live.” For a moment, he gazed away toward the mountain, looking for courage. Then, with sudden harshness, he went on, “You knew Kevin when he made his Wards. You knew him and you remember. You were with him when he gave the First Ward to the Giants. You were with him when he hid the Second in those bloody catacombs under Mount Thunder. How many times did you come here with him, Bannor?”

The Bloodguard cocked one eyebrow fractionally. “High Lord Kevin made no sojourns to Rivenrock or Melenkurion Skyweir.”

That answer rocked Covenant. “None?” His protest burst out before he could stop it. “Are you telling me you've never been here before?”

“We are the first Bloodguard to stand on Rivenrock,” Bannor replied flatly.

“Then how-? Wait. Hold on.” Covenant stared dizzily, then hit his forehead with the heel of his hand. “Right. If the Ward is some kind of natural phenomenon-like the Illearth Stone-if it isn't something he put here-Kevin wouldn't have to come here to know about it. Loric or somebody could have told him. Loric could have told anybody.”

He took a deep breath to steady himself. `But everybody who might have known about it died in the Desecration. Except you."

Bannor blinked at Covenant as if his words had no meaning.

“Listen to me, Bannor,” he went on. "A lot of things are finally starting to make sense. You reacted strangely-when Amok turned up at Revelstone that first time. You reacted strangely when he turned up at

Revelwood. And you let the High Lord herself follow him into the mountains with just two Bloodguard to protect her. Just two, Bannor! And when we end up stuck here on this godforsaken rock, Morin has the actual gall to apologize for Amok. Hellfire! Bannor, you should have at least told the High Lord what you know about this Ward. What kind of loyal do you think you are?"

Elena cautioned Covenant again. But her tone had changed; his thinking intrigued her.

“We are the Bloodguard,” Bannor said. “You cannot raise doubt against us. We do not know Amok's intent.”

Covenant heard the slight stress which Bannor placed on the word know . To his own surprise, he felt a sudden desire to take Bannor at his word, leave what the Bloodguard knew alone. But he forced himself to ask, “Know, Bannor? How can you not know? You've trusted him too much for that.”

Bannor countered as he had previously, “We do not trust him. The High Lord chooses to follow him. We do not ask for more.”

“The hell you don't.” His effort of self-compulsion made him brutal. "And stop giving me that blank look. You people came to the Land, and you swore a Vow to protect Kevin. You swore to preserve him or at least give your lives for him and the Lords and Revelstone until Time itself came to an end if not forever, or why are you bereft even of the simple decency of sleep? But that poor desperate man outsmarted you. He actively saved you when he destroyed himself and everything else he merely believed in. So there you were, hanging from your Vow in empty space as if all the reasons in the world had suddenly disappeared.