Stephen Donaldson - The Illearth War

Savagely, Covenant threw off the Lord's hand. “Don't touch me!” he raged in Mhoram's face. “Are you deaf as well as blind?! I was talking to Joan! On the phone!” His hand jerked convulsively, struggling to produce the receiver out of the empty air. “She needed”-abruptly his throat clenched, and he swallowed roughly-“she said she needed me. Me!” But his voice was helpless to convey the crying of his heart. He slapped at the blood on his forehead, trying to clear his eyes.

The next instant, he grabbed the front of Mhoram's sky-blue robe in his fists, hissed, “Send me back! There's still time! If I can get back fast enough!”

Above them, the woman spoke carefully. “Ur-Lord Covenant, it grieves me to hear that our summoning has done you harm. Lord Mhoram has told us all he could of your pain, and we do not willingly increase it. But it is our doom that we must. Unbeliever, our need is great. The devastation of the Land is nearly upon us.”

Pushing away from Mhoram to confront her, Covenant fumed, “I don't give a bloody damn about the Land!” His words came in such a panting rush that he could not shout them. “I don't care what you need. You can drop dead for all I care. You're a delusion! A sickness in my mind. You don't exist! Send me back! You've got to send me back. While there's still time!”

“Thomas Covenant.” Mhoram spoke in a tone of authority that pulled Covenant around. “Unbeliever. Listen to me.”

Then Covenant saw that Mhoram had changed. His face was still the same-the gentleness of his mouth still balanced the promise of peril in his gold concentrated irises-but he was older, old enough now to be Covenant's father. There were lines of use around his eyes and mouth, and his hair was salted with white. When he spoke, his lips twisted with self-deprecation, and the depths of his eyes stirred uneasily. But he met the fire of Covenant's glare without flinching.

“My friend, if the choice were mine, I would return you at once to your world. The decision to summon you was painfully made, and I would willingly undo it. The Land has no need of service which is not glad and free. But, ur-Lord he gripped Covenant's arm again to steady him- ”my friend, we cannot return you."

“Cannot?” Covenant groaned on a rising, half hysterical note.

“We have no lore for the releasing of burdens. I know not how it is in your world-you appear unchanged to my eyes but forty years have passed since we stood together on the slopes of Mount Thunder, and you freed the Staff of Law for our hands. For long years we have striven-”

“Cannot?” Covenant repeated more fiercely.

“We have striven with power which we fail to master, and Lore which we have been unable to penetrate. It has taken forty years to bring us here, so that we may ask for your aid. We have reached the limit of what we can do.”

“No!” He turned away because he could not bear the honesty he saw in Mhoram's face, and yelled up at the woman with the Staff, “Send me back!”

For a moment, she looked at him squarely, measuring the extremity of his demand. Then she said, “I entreat you to understand. Hear the truth of our words. Lord Mhoram has spoken openly. I hear the hurt we have done you. I am not unmoved.” She was twenty or thirty feet away from him, beyond the pit of graveling and behind the stone table, but her voice carried to him clearly through the crystal acoustics of the Close. “But I cannot undo your summoning. Had I the power, still the Land's need would deny me. Lord Foul the Despiser-”

Head back, arms thrown wide, Covenant howled, "I don't came!'

Stung into sharpness, the High Lord said, “Then return yourself. You have the power. You wield the white gold.”

With a cry, Covenant tried to charge at her. But before he could take a step, he was caught from behind. Wrestling around, he found himself in the grasp of Bannor, the unsleeping Bloodguard who had warded him during his previous delusion.

“We are the Bloodguard,” Bannor said in his toneless alien inflection. “The care of the Lords is in our hands. We do not permit any offer of harm to the High Lord.”

“Bannor,” Covenant pleaded, “she was my wife.”

But Bannor only gazed at him with unblinking dispassion.

Throwing his weight wildly, he managed to turn in the Bloodguard's powerful grip until he was facing Elena again. Blood scattered from his forehead as he jerked around. “She was my wife!”

“Enough,” Elena commanded.

“Send me back!”

“Enough!” She stamped the iron heel of the Staff of Law on the floor, and at once blue fire burst from its length. The flame roared vividly, like a rent in the fabric of the gold light, letting concealed power shine through; and the force of the flame drove Covenant back into Bannor's arms. But her hand where she held the Staff was untouched. “I am the High Lord,” she said sternly. “This is Revelstone Lord's Keep, not Foul's Creche. We have sworn the Oath of Peace.”

At a nod from her, Bannor released Covenant, and he stumbled backward, falling in a heap beside the graveling. He lay on the stone for a moment, gasping harshly. Then he pried himself into a sitting position His head seemed to droop with defeat. “You'll get Peace,” he groaned. “He's going to destroy you all.: Did you say forty years? You've only got nine left. Or have you forgotten his prophecy?”

“We know;” Mhoram said quietly. “We do not forget.” With a crooked smile, he bent to examine Covenant's wound.

While Mhoram did this, High Lord Elena quenched the blaze of the Staff, and said to a person Covenant could not see, “We must deal with this matter now, if we are to have any hope of the white gold. Have the captive brought here.”

Lord Mhoram mopped Covenant's forehead gently, peered at the cut, then stood and moved away to consult with someone. Left alone, with most of the blood out of his eyes, Covenant brought his throbbing gaze into focus to take stock of where he was. Some still-uncowed instinct for self-preservation made him try to measure the hazards around him. He was on the lowest level of the tiered chamber, and its high vaulted and groined ceiling arched over him, lit by the gold glow of the graveling, and by four large smokeless lillianrill torches set into the walls. Around the centre of the Close, on the next level, was the three-quarters-round stone council table of the Lords, and above and behind the table were the ranked seats of the gallery. Two Bloodguard stood at the high massive doors, made by Giants to be large enough for Giants, of the main entryway, above and opposite the High Lord's seat.

The gallery was diversely filled with warriors of the Wayward of Lord's Keep, Lorewardens from the Loresraat, several Hirebrands and Gravelingases dressed respectively in their traditional cloaks and tunics, and a few more Bloodguard. High up behind the High Lord sat two people Covenant thought he recognized-the Gravelingas Tohrm, a Hearthrall of Lord's Keep; and Quaan, the Warhaft who had accompanied the Quest for the Staff of Law. With them were two others-one a Hirebrand, judging by his Woodhelvennin cloak and the circlet of leaves about his head, probably the other Hearthrall; and one the First Mark of the Bloodguard. Vaguely, Covenant wondered who had taken that position after the loss of Tuvor in the catacombs under Mount Thunder.

His gaze roamed on around the Close. Standing at the table were seven Lords, not counting the High Lord and Mhoram. Covenant recognized none of them. They must all have passed the tests and joined the Council in the last forty, years. Forty years? he asked dimly. Mhoram had aged, but he did not look forty years older. And Tohrm, who had been hardly more than a laughing boy when Covenant had known him, now seemed far too young for middle age. The Bloodguard were not changed at all. Of course, Covenant groaned to himself, remembering how old they were said to be. Only Quaan showed a believable age: white thinning hair gave the former Warhaft the look of sixty or sixty-five summers. But his square commanding shoulders did not stoop. And the openness of his countenance had not changed; he frowned down on the Unbeliever with exactly the frank disapproval that Covenant remembered.