Lord Foul's Bane

He would have to read them their death warrant.

“Get me out of here,” he breathed hoarsely. “I can't stand it.”

Bannor held him, guided him. Abruptly, a door opened into the brilliance of the outer corridor. Covenant half fell through the doorway. Without a word, Bannor refit his torch at one of the flaming brands set into the wall. Then he took Covenant's arm to support him.

Covenant threw off his hand. “Don't touch me,” he panted inchoately. “Can't you see I'm sick?”

No flicker of expression shaded Bannor's fiat countenance. Dispassionately, he turned and led Covenant away from the sacred enclosure.

Covenant followed, bent forward and holding his stomach as if he were nauseated. -that the uttermost limit- How could he help them? He could not even help himself. In confusion and heart distress, he shambled back to his room in the tower, stood dumbly in the chamber while Bannor replaced his torch and left, closing the door like a judgment behind him. Then he gripped his temples as if his mind were being torn in two.

None of this is happening, he moaned. How are they doing this to me?

Reeling inwardly, he turned to look at the arras as if it might contain some answer. But it only aggravated his distress, incensed him like a sudden affront. Bloody hell! Berek, he groaned. Do you think it's that easy? Do you think that ordinary human despair is enough, that if you just feel bad enough something cosmic or at least miraculous is bound to come along and rescue you? Damn you! he's going to destroy them! You're just another leper outcast unclean, and you don't even know it!

His fingers curled like feral claws, and he sprang forward, ripping at the arms as if he were trying to rend a black lie off the stone of the world. The heavy fabric refused to tear in his half-unfingered grasp, but he got it down from the wall. Throwing open the balcony, he wrestled the arras out into the crimson tainted night and heaved it over the railing. It fell like a dead leaf of winter.

I am not Berek!

Panting at his effort, he returned to the room, slammed the partition shut against the bloody light.

He threw off his robe, put on his own underwear, then extinguished the fires and climbed into bed. But the soft, clean touch of the sheets on his skin gave him no consolation.

Fourteen: The Council of Lords

HE awoke in a dull haze which felt like the presage of some thunderhead, some black boil and white fire blaring. Mechanically he went through the motions of readying himself for the Council-washed, inspected himself, dressed in his own clothes, shaved again. When Bannor brought him a tray of food, he ate as if the provender were made of dust and gravel. Then he slipped Atiaran's knife into his belt, gripped the staff of Baradakas in his left hand, and sat down facing the door to await the summons.

Finally, Bannor returned to tell him that the time had come. For a few moments, Covenant sat still, holding the Bloodguard in his half-unseeing gaze, and wondering where he could get the courage to go on with this dream. He felt that his face was twisted, but he could not be sure.

— that the uttermost limit -

Get it over with.

He touched the hard, hidden metal of his ring to steady himself, then levered his reluctant bones erect. Glaring at the doorway as if it were a threshold into peril, he lumbered through it and started down the corridor. At Bannor's commanding back, he moved out of the tower, across the courtyard, then inward and down through the ravelled and curiously wrought passages of Revelstone.

Eventually they came through bright-lit halls deep in the mountain to a pair of arching wooden doors. These were closed, sentried by Bloodguard; and lining both walls were stone chairs, some man-sized and others large enough for Giants. Bannor nodded to the sentries. One of them pulled open a door while the other motioned for Bannor and Covenant to enter. Bannor guided Covenant into the council chamber of the Lords.

The Close was a huge, sunken, circular room with a ceiling high and groined, and tiers of seats set around three quarters of the space. The door through which Covenant entered was nearly level with the highest seats, as were the only two other doors-both of them small-at the opposite side of the chamber. Below the lowest tier of seats were three levels: on the first, several feet below the gallery, stood a curved stone table, three-quarters round, with its gap toward the large doors and many chairs around its outer edge; below this, contained within the C of the table, was the flat floor of the Close; and finally, in the centre of the floor, lay a broad, round pit of graveling. The yellow glow of the fire-stones was supported by four huge lillianrill torches, burning without smoke or consumption in their sockets around the upper wall.

As Bannor took him down the steps toward the open end of the table, Covenant observed the people in the chamber. Saltheart Foamfollower lounged nearby at the table in a massive stone chair; he watched Covenant's progress down the steps and grinned a welcome for his former passenger. Beyond him, the only people at the table were the Lords. Directly opposite Covenant, at the head of the table, sat High Lord Prothall. His staff lay on the stone before dim. An ancient man and woman were several feet away on either side of him; an equal distance from the woman on her left was Lord Mhoram; and opposite Mhoram, down the table from the old man, sat a middle- aged woman. Four Bloodguard had positioned themselves behind each of the Lords.

There were only four other people in the Close. Beyond the High Lord near the top of the gallery sat the Hearthralls, Birinair and Tohrm, side by side as if they complemented each other. And just behind them were two more men, one a warrior with a double black diagonal on his breastplate, and the other Tuvor, First Mark of the Bloodguard. With so few people in it, the Close seemed large, hollow, and cryptic.

Bannor steered Covenant to the lone chair below the level of the Lords' table and across the pit of graveling from the High Lord. Covenant seated himself stiffly and looked around. He felt that he was uncomfortably far from the Lords; he feared he would have to shout his message. So he was surprised when Prothall stood and said softly, “Thomas Covenant, be welcome to the Council of Lords.” His rheumy voice reached Covenant as clearly as if they had been standing side by side.

Covenant did not know how to respond; uncertainly, he touched his right fist to his chest, then extended his arm with his palm open and forward. As his senses adjusted to the Close, he began to perceive the presence, the emanating personality and adjudication, of the Lords. They gave him an impression of stern vows gladly kept, of wide-ranging and yet single-minded devotion. Prothall stood alone, meeting Covenant's gaze. The High Lord's appearance of white age was modified by the stiffness of his beard and the erectness of his carriage; clearly, he was strong yet. But his eyes were worn with the experience of an asceticism, an abnegation, carried so far that it seemed to abrogate his flesh-as if he had been old for so long that now only the power to which he devoted himself preserved him from decrepitude.

The two Lords who flanked him were not so preserved. They had dull, age-marked skin and wispy hair; and they bowed at the table as if striving against the antiquity of their bones to distinguish between meditation and sleep. Lord Mhoram Covenant already knew, though now Mhoram appeared more incisive and dangerous, as if the companionship of his fellow Lords whetted his capacities. But the fifth Lord Covenant did not know; she sat squarely and factually at the table, with her blunt, forthright face fixed on him like a defiance.

“Let me make introduction before we begin,” the High Lord murmured. “I am Prothall son of Dwillian, High Lord by the choice of the Council. At my right are Variol Tamarantha-mate and Pentil-son, once High Lord”- as he said this, the two ancient Lords raised their time-latticed faces and smiled privately at each other- “and Osondrea daughter of Sondrea. At my left, Tamarantha Variol-mate and Enesta-daughter, and Mhoram son of Variol. You know the Seareach Giant, Saltheart Foamfollower, and have met the Hearthralls of Lord's Keep. Behind me also are Tuvor, First Mark of the Bloodguard, and Garth, Warmark of the Warward of Lord's Keep. All have the right of presence at the Council of Lords. Do you protest?”

Protest? Covenant shook his head dumbly.

“Then we shall begin. It is our custom to honour those who come before us. How may we honour you?”