Amok.
He appeared, grinning boyishly. She gripped the Staff of Law in both hands and braced it on the rock before her.
In the dawn under
For two days, High Lord Elena strove to wrest the prerequisite name from Amok. During the second day, a massive storm brooded on the southeastern horizon, but it did not approach Rivenrock, and everyone ignored it. While Covenant sat twisting his ring around his finger, or paced restlessly beside the combatants, or wandered muttering away at intervals to escape the strain, she probed Amok with every question she could devise. At times, she worked methodically; at others, intuitively. She elaborated ideas for his assent or denial. She forced him to recite his answers at greater and greater length. She led him through painstaking rehearsals of known ground, and launched him with all her accuracy toward the unknown. She built traps of logic for him, tried to fence him into contradictions. She sought to meld her mind with his.
It was like duelling with a pool of water. Every slash and counter of her questions touched him as if she had slapped a pond with the flat of her blade. His answers splashed at every inquiry. But when she strove to catch him on her need's point, she passed through him and left no mark. Occasionally he allowed himself a laughing riposte, but for the most part he parried her questions with his accustomed cheerful evasiveness. Her toil earned no success. By sunset, she was trembling with frustration and suppressed fury and psychic starvation. The very solidity of Rivenrock seemed to jeer at her.
In the evenings, Covenant comforted her according to the terms of his bargain. He said nothing of his own fears and doubts, his helplessness, his growing conviction that Amok was impenetrable; he said nothing about himself at all. Instead, he gave her his best attention, concentrated on her with every resource he possessed.
But all his efforts could not touch the core of her distress. She was learning that she did not suffice to meet the Land's need, and that was a grief for which there was no consolation. Late at night, she made muffled grating noises, as if she ground her teeth to keep herself from weeping. And in the morning of the third day-the thirty- second since she had left Revelstone-she neared the end of her endurance. Her gaze was starved and hollow, and it had an angle of farewell.
Thickly, Covenant asked her what she was going to do.
“I will appeal.” Her voice had a raw, flagellated sound. She looked as frail as a skeleton-mere brave, fragile bones standing in the path of someone who, for all his boyish gaiety, was as unmanageable as an avalanche. A presage like an alarm in his head told Covenant that her crisis was at hand. If Amok did not respond to her appeals, she might turn to the last resort of her strange inner force.
The violence of that possibility frightened him. He caught himself on the verge of asking her to stop, give up the attempt. But he remembered his bargain; his brain raced after alternatives.
He accepted her argument that the answer to Amok's condition must be accessible. But he believed that she would not find it; she was approaching the problem from the wrong side. Yet it seemed to be the only side. Kicking at the rubbish which clogged his mind, he tried to imagine other approaches.
While his thoughts scrambled for some kind of saving intuition, High Lord Elena took her stance, and summoned Amok. The youth appeared at once. He greeted her with a florid bow, and said, “High Lord, what is your will today? Shall we set aside our sparring, and sing glad songs together?”
“Amok, hear me.” Her voice grated. Covenant could hear depths of self-punishment in her. “I will play no more games of inquiry with you.” Her tone expressed both dignity and desperation. “The need of the Land will permit no more delay. Already, there is war in the distance-bloodshed and death. The Despiser marches against all that High Lord Kevin sought to preserve when he created his Wards. This insisting upon conditions is false loyalty to his intent. Amok, I appeal. In the name of the Land, guide us to the Seventh Ward.”
Her supplication seemed to touch him, and his reply was inordinately grave. “High Lord, I cannot. I am as I was made to be. Should I make the attempt, I would cease to exist.”
“Then teach us the way, so that we may follow it alone.”
Amok shook his head. “Then also I would cease to exist.”
For a moment, she paused as if she were defeated. But in the silence, her shoulders straightened. Abruptly, she lifted the Staff of Law, held it horizontally before her like a weapon. “Amok,” she commanded, “place your hands upon the Staff.”
The youth looked without flinching into the authority of her face. Slowly, he obeyed. His hands rested lightly between hers on the rune-carved wood.
She gave a high, strange cry. At once, fire blossomed along the Staff; viridian flames opened from all the wood. The blaze swept over her hands and Amok's; it intensified as if it were feeding on their fingers. It hummed with deep power, and radiated a sharp aroma like the smell of duress.
“Kevin-born Amok!” she exclaimed through the hum. “Way and door to the Seventh Ward! By the power of the Staff of Law-in the name of High Lord Kevin son of Loric who made you-I adjure you. Tell me the name of the Seventh Ward's power!”
Covenant felt the force of her command. Though it was not levelled at him-though he was not touching the Staff-he gagged over the effort to utter a name he did not know.
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. “
“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?”
