The Illearth War

“Why not?” she demanded again. “Are you capricious?” Covenant heard a hint of desperation in her tone.

Amok replied in mild reproof, 'High Lord, I have been created for the purpose I serve. If I appear wilful, you must ask my maker to explain me.'

“In other words,” Covenant interjected heavily, “we're stuck without the other four Wards. This is Kevin's way of protecting-whatever it is. Without the clues he planted with such cleverness in the other Wards, we're up against a blank wall.”

“The krill of Loric came to life,” said Amok. “That is the appointed word. And the Land is in peril. Therefore I have made myself accessible. I can do no more. I must serve my purpose.”

The High Lord searched him for a moment, then said sternly, “Amok, are my companions unsuitable to your purpose in some way?”

“Your companions must suit themselves. I am the way and the door. I do not judge those who seek.”

“Amok”-she hung fire, and her lips moved silently as if she were reciting a list of choices-“are there conditions to be met before you can guide us onward?”

Amok bowed in recognition of her question, and answered with a chuckle, “Yes, High Lord.”

“Will you guide us to the Seventh Ward when the conditions are met?”

“That is the purpose of my creation.”

“What are your conditions?”

“There is only one. If you desire more, you must conceive them without my aid.”

“What is your condition, Amok?”

The youth gazed impishly askance at Elena. “High Lord,” he said in a tone of soaring glee, “you must name the power of the Seventh Ward.”

She gaped at him for an instant, then exclaimed, “Melenkurion! You know I lack that knowledge.”

He was unmoved. “Then perhaps it is well that the Ranyhyn have not departed. They can bear you to Revelstone. If you gain wisdom there, you may return. You will find me here.” With a bow of infuriating insouciance, he waved his arms and vanished.

She stared after him and clenched the Staff as if she meant to strike the empty air of his absence. Her back was to Covenant; he could not see what was happening in her face, but the tension of her shoulders made him fear that her eyes were drawing into focus. At that thought, blood pounded in his temples. He reached out, tried to interrupt or distract her.

His touch caused her to swing around toward him. Her face looked emaciated-her flesh was tight over the pale intensity of her skull-and she seemed astonished, as if she had just discovered her capacity for panic. But she did not move into his arms. She halted, deliberately closed her eyes. The bones of her jaw and cheeks and forehead concentrated on him.

He felt an abyss opening in his mind.

He did not comprehend the black, yawning sensation. Elena stood before him in the shadow of Melenkurion Skyweir like an icon of gleaming bone robed in blue; but behind her, behind the solid stone of Rivenrock, darkness widened like a crack across the cistern of his thoughts. The rift sucked at him; he was losing himself.

The sensation came from Elena.

Suddenly, he understood. She was attempting to meld her mind with his.

A glare of fear shot through the sable vertigo which drained him. It illuminated his peril; if he abandoned himself to the melding, she would learn the truth about him. He could not afford such a plunge, could never have afforded it. Crying, No! he recoiled, staggered back away from her within himself.

The pressure eased. He found that his body was also retreating. With an effort, he stopped, raised his head.

Elena's eyes were wide with disappointment and grief, and she leaned painfully on the Staff of Law. “Pardon me, beloved,” she breathed. “I have asked for more than you are ready to give.” For a moment, she remained still, gave him a chance to respond. Then she groaned, “I must think,” and turned away. Supporting herself with the Staff, she moved slowly along the cleft toward the outer edge of the plateau.

Shaken, Covenant sat straight down on the rock, and caught his head in his hands. Conflicting emotions tore at him. He was dismayed by his narrow escape, and angry at his weakness. To save himself, he had hurt Elena. He thought that he should go to her, but something in the focused isolation of her figure warned him not to intrude. For a time, he gazed at her with an ache in his heart. Then he climbed to his feet, muttering at the needless air, “He could've had the decency to tell us-at least before she lost her Ranyhyn.”

To his surprise, the First Mark answered, “Amok acts according to the law of his creation. He cannot break that law merely to avoid pain.”

Covenant threw up his hands in disgust. Fulminating uselessly, he stalked away across the plateau.

He spent the remainder of the afternoon roving restlessly from place to place across Rivenrock, searching for some clue to the continuation of Amok's trail. After a while, he calmed down enough to understand Morin's comment on Amok. Morin and Bannor were the prisoners of their Vow; they could speak with authority about the exigencies of an implacable law. But if the Bloodguard sympathized with Amok, that was just one more coffin nail in the doom of the High Lord's quest.

Covenant's effectlessness was another such nail. He could hear the inflated fatuity of his bargain mocking him now. How could he help Elena? He did not even know enough to grasp the issues Amok raised. Though his disconsolate hiking covered a wide section of the plateau, he learned nothing of any significance. The barren stone was like his inefficacy-irreducible and binding. While the last sunlight turned to dust in the sky, he bent his steps toward the graveling glow which marked the High Lord's camp. He was brooding on the familiar idea that futility governed his very existence.

He found Elena beside her pot of graveling. She looked both worn and whetted, as if the pressure on her ground down her individuality, fitted her to the pattern of her Lord's duty. Resolution gleamed in the honed patina of her bones. She had accepted all the implications of her burden.

Covenant cleared his throat awkwardly. “What have you got? Have you figured it out?”

In a distant voice, she asked, “How great is your knowledge of Warmark Troy's battle plan?”

“I know generally what he's trying to do-nothing specific:”

“If his plan did not fail, the battle began yesterday.”

He considered for a moment, then inquired carefully, “Where does that leave us?”

“We must meet Amok's condition.”

He gestured his incomprehension. “How?”

“I do not know. But I believe that it may be done.”

“You're missing four Wards.”

“Yes,” she sighed. “Kevin clearly intended that we should gain the Seventh Ward only after mastering the first Six. But Amok has already violated that intent. Knowing that we have not comprehended Loric's krill, he still returned to us. He saw the Land's peril, and returned. This shows some freedom-some discretion. He is not explicitly bound by his law at all points.”

She paused, and after a moment Covenant said, “Offhand, I would say that makes him dangerous. Why would he drag us all the way out here when he knew we would get stuck-unless he was trying to distract you from the war?”

'Amok intends no betrayal. I hear no malice in

To penetrate her abstraction, he snapped, “You can be fooled. Or are you forgetting that Kevin even accepted Foul as a Lord?”

Steadily, Elena replied, “Perhaps the first Six Wards do not contain the name of this power. Perhaps they teach only the way in which Amok may be brought to speak its name himself.”

“In that case-”

“Amok guided us here because in some way it is possible for us to meet his condition.”

“But can you find the right questions?”

“I must. What other choice exists for me? I cannot rejoin the Wayward now.”

Her voice had a dull finality, as if she were passing sentence on herself. Early the next morning, she called