are we?”
Behind him, Amok fluted, “We stand in the Aisle of Approach. Soon we will gain Earthrootstair.”
“What”-Covenant tried to clear his head-“what time is it?”
“Time has no measure under
“Oh, bloody hell.” Covenant groaned at the echo he heard in Amok's answer. He had been told too often that white gold was the crux of the arch of Time.
Elena came to his relief. “The sun has risen to midmorning,” she said. “This is the thirty-third day of our journey from Revelstone.” As an afterthought, she added, “Tonight is the dark of the moon.”
The dark of the moon, he muttered mordantly to himself. Have mercy-Terrible things happened when the moon was dark. The Wraiths of Andelain had been attacked by ur-viles- Atiaran had never forgiven him for that.
The High Lord seemed to see his thoughts in his face. “Beloved,” she said calmly, “do not be so convinced of doom.” Then she turned away and started to prepare a spare meal.
Watching her-seeing her resolution and personal force implicit even in the way she performed this simple task Covenant clenched his teeth, and kept the silence of his bargain.
He could hardly eat the food she handed to him. The effort of silence made him feel ill; holding down his passive lie seemed to knot his guts, make sustenance unpalatable. Yet he felt that he was starving. To ease his inanition, he forced down a little of the dry bread and cured meat and cheese. The rest he returned to Elena. He felt almost relieved when she followed Amok again into the darkness.
He went dumbly after her.
Sometime during the previous day, the High Lord's party had left behind the Audience Hall. Now they travelled a wide, featureless tunnel like a road through the stone. Elena's light easily reached the ceiling and walls. Their surfaces were oddly smooth, as if they had been rubbed for long ages by the movement of something rough and powerful. This smoothness made the tunnel seem like a conduit or artery. Covenant distrusted it; he half expected thick, Laval ichor to come rushing up through it. As he moved, he played nervously with his ring, as if that small circle were the binding of his self-control.
Elena quickened her steps. He could see in her back that she was impelled by her mounting eagerness for the Power of Command.
At last, the tunnel changed. Its floor swung in a tight curve to the left, and its right wall broke off, opening into another crevice. This rift immediately became a substantial gulf. The stone shelf of the road narrowed until it was barely ten feet wide, then divided into rude steep stairs as it curved downward. In moments, the High Lord's party was on a stairway which spiralled around a central shaft into the chasm.
Many hundreds of feet below them, a fiery red glow lit the bottom of the gulf. Covenant felt that he was peering into an inferno.
He remembered where he had seen such light before. It was rocklight-radiated stone-shine like that which the Cavewights used under Mount Thunder.
The descent affected him like vertigo. Within three rounds of the shaft, his head was reeling. Only Elena's unwavering light, and his acute concentration as he negotiated the uneven steps, saved him from pitching headlong over the edge. But he was grimly determined not to ask either Elena or Bannor for help. He could afford no more indebtedness; it would nullify his bargain, tip the scales of payment against him. No! he muttered to himself as he lurched down the steps. No. No more. Don't be so bloody helpless. Save something to bargain with. Keep going. Distantly, he heard himself panting, “Don't touch me. Don't touch me.”
A spur of nausea rowelled him. His muscles bunched as if they were bracing for a fall. But he hugged his chest, and clung to Elena's light for support. Her flame bobbed above her like a tongue of courage.
Slowly its blue illumination took on a red tinge as she worked down toward the gulf's glow.
He made the descent grimly, mechanically, like a volitionless puppet stalking down the irregular steps of his designated end. Round by round, he approached the source of the rocklight. Soon the red illumination made the Staffs flame unnecessary, and High Lord Elena extinguished it. Ahead of her, Amok began to move more swiftly, as if he were impatient, jealous of all delays which postponed the resolution of his existence. But Covenant followed at his own pace, effectively unconscious of anything but the spiralling stairs and his imperious dizziness. He went down the last distance through a high wash of rocklight as numbly as if he were sleepwalking.
When he reached the flat bottom, he took a few wooden steps toward the lake, then stopped, covered his eyes against the deep, fiery, red light, and shuddered as if his nerves jangled on the edge of hysteria.
Ahead of him, Amok crowed jubilantly, “Behold, High Lord! The sunless lake of Earthroot! Unheavened sap and nectar of great
Drawing a tremulous breath, Covenant opened his eyes. He was standing on the gradual shore of a still lake which spread out before him as far as he could see. Its stone roof was high, hidden in shadows, but the lake was lit everywhere by rocklight burning in the immense pillars which stood up like columns through the lake- or like roots of the mountain reaching down to the water. These columns or roots were evenly spaced along and across the cavern; they were repeated regularly into the vast distance. Their rocklight, and the vibrant stillness of the lake, gave the whole place a cloistral air, despite its size. Earthroot was a place to make mere mortals humble and devout.
It made Covenant feel like a sacrilege in the sanctified and august temple of the mountains.
The lake was so still-it conveyed such an impression of weight, massiveness-that it looked more like fluid bronze than water, a liquid cover for the unfathomable abysses of the Earth. The rocklight gleamed on it as if it were burnished.
“Is this-?” Covenant croaked, then caught himself as his question ran echoing lightly over the water, restating itself without diminishment into the distance. He could not bring himself to go on. Even the low shuffling of his boots on the stone echoed as if it carried some kind of prophetic significance.
But Amok took up the question gaily. “Is the Power of Command here, in Earthroot?” The echoes laughed as he laughed. “No. Earthroot but partakes. The heart of the Seventh Ward lies beyond. We must cross over.”
High Lord Elena asked the next question carefully, as if she, too, were timid in the face of the awesome lake. “How?”
“High Lord, a way will be provided. I am the way and the door-I have not brought you to a pathless end. But the use of the way will be in your hands. This is the last test. Only one word am I permitted to say: do not touch the water. Earthroot is strong and stern. It will take no account of mortal flesh.”
“What must we do now?” she inquired softly to minimize the echoes.
“Now?” Amok chuckled. “Only wait, High Lord. The time will not be long. Behold! Already the way approaches.”
He was standing with his back to the lake, but as he spoke he gestured behind him with one arm. As if in answer to this signal, a boat came into sight around a pillar some distance from the shore.
The boat was empty. It was a narrow wooden craft, pointed at both ends. Except for a line of bright reflective gilt along its gunwales and thwarts, it was unadorned-a clean, simple work smoothly formed of light brown wood, and easily long enough to seat five people. But it was unoccupied; no one rowed or steered it. Without making a ripple, it swung gracefully around the pillar, and glided shoreward. Yet in Earthroot's sacramental air, it did not seem strange; it was a proper and natural adjunct of the bronze lake. Covenant was not surprised to see that it carried no oars.
He watched its approach as if it were an instrument of dread. It made his wedding ring itch on his finger. He glanced quickly at his hand, half expecting to see that the band glowed or changed colour. The argent metal looked peculiarly vivid in the rocklight; it weighed heavily on his hand, tingled against his skin. But it revealed nothing. “Have mercy,” he breathed as if he were speaking directly to the white gold. Then he winced as his voice tripped away in light echoes, spread by a multitude of crystal repetitions.
Amok laughed at him, and clear peals of glee joined the mimicry.
High Lord Elena was now too enrapt in Earthroot to attend Covenant. She stood on the shore as if she could already smell the Power of Command, and waited like an acolyte for the empty boat.
Soon the craft reached her. Silently, it slid its prow up the dry slope, and stopped as if it were ready, expectant.
