Amok greeted it with a deep obeisance, then leaped lithely aboard. His feet made no sound as they struck the planks. He moved to the far end of the craft, turned, and seated himself with his arms on the gunwales, grinning like a monarch.
First Mark Morin followed Amok. Next, High Lord Elena entered the craft, and placed herself on a seat board near its middle. She held the Staff of Law across her knees. Covenant saw that his turn had come. Trembling, he walked down the shore to the wooden prow. Apprehension beat in his temples, but he repressed it. He clutched the gunwales with both hands, climbed into the craft. His boots thudded and echoed on the planks. As he sat down, he seemed to be surrounded by the clatter of unseemly burdens.
Bannor shoved the boat into the lake, and sprang immediately aboard. But by the time he had taken his seat, the boat had glided to a halt. It rested as if it were fused to the burnished water a few feet from shore.
For a moment, no one moved or spoke. They sat bated and hushed, waiting for the same force which had brought the boat to carry it away again. But the craft remained motionless-fixed like a censer in the red, still surface of the lake.
The pulse in Covenant's head grew sharper. Harshly, he defied the echoes. “Now what do we do?”
To his surprise, the boat slid forward a few feet. But it stopped again when the repetitions of his voice died. Once again, the High Lord's party was held, trapped.
He stared about him in astonishment. No one spoke. He could see thoughts concentrate the muscles of Elena's back. He looked at Amok once, but the youth's happy grin so dismayed him that he tore his gaze away. The ache of his suspense began to seem unendurable.
Bannor's unexpected movement startled him. Turning, he saw that the Bloodguard had risen to his feet. He lifted his seat board from its slots.
For an oar! Covenant thought. He felt a sudden upsurge of excitement.
Bannor held the board in both hands, braced himself against the side of the boat, and prepared to paddle.
As the end of the board touched the water, some power grabbed it, wrenched it instantly from his grasp. It was snatched straight down into the lake. There was no splash or ripple, but the board vanished like a stone hurled into the depths.
Bannor gazed after it, and cocked one eyebrow as if he were speculating abstractly on the kind of strength which could so easily tear something away from a Bloodguard. But Covenant was not so calm. He gaped weakly, “Hellfire.”
Again the boat moved forward. It coasted for several yards until the echoes of Covenant's amazement disappeared. Then it stopped, resumed its reverent stasis.
Covenant faced Elena, but he did not need to voice his question. Her face glowed with comprehension. “Yes, beloved,” she breathed in relief and triumph. “I see.” And as the boat once more began to glide over the lake, she continued, “It is the sound of our voices which causes the boat to move. That is the use of Amok's way. The craft will seek its own destination. But to carry us it must ride upon our echoes.”
The truth of her perception was immediately apparent. While her clear voice cast replies like ripples over Earthroot, the boat slid easily through the water. It steered itself between the pillars as if it were pursuing the lodestone of its purpose. Soon it had passed out of sight of Earthrootstair. But when she stopped speaking-when the delicate echoes had chimed themselves into silence-the craft halted again.
Covenant groaned inwardly. He was suddenly afraid that he would be asked to talk, help propel the boat. He feared that he would give his bargain away if he were forced into any kind of extended speech. In self-defence, he turned the demand around before it could be directed at him. “Well, say something,” he growled at Elena.
A light, ambiguous smile touched her lips-a response, not to him, but to some satisfying inner prospect. “Beloved,” she replied softly, “we will have no difficulty. There is much which has not been said between us. There are secrets and mysteries and sources of power in you which I perceive but dimly. And in some ways I have not yet spoken of myself. This is a fit place for the opening of hearts. I will tell you of that Ranyhyn-ride which took the young daughter of Lena from Mithil Stonedown into the Southron Range, and there at the great secret horserite of the Ranyhyn taught her-taught her many things.”
With a stately movement, she rose to her feet facing Covenant. She set the Staff of Law firmly on the planks, and lifted her head to the ceiling of Earthroot's cavern. “Ur-Lord Thomas Covenant,” she said, and the echoes spread about her like a skein of gleaming rocklight, interweaving the burnished water, 'Unbeliever and white gold wielder, Ringthane-beloved- I must tell you of this. You have known Myrha. In her youth, she came to Lena my mother, according to the promise of the Ranyhyn. She carried me away to the great event of my girlhood. Thus you were the unknowing cause. Before this war reaches its end for good or ill, I must tell you what your promises have wrought.'
Have mercy on me! he cried again in the obdurate incapacity of his heart. But he was too numb, too intimidated by the lake and the echoes, to stop her. He sat in mute dread, and listened as Elena told him the tale of her experience with the Ranyhyn. And all the time, the craft bore them on an oblique, intimate course between the lake pillars, floated them on the resonances of her voice as if it were ferrying them to a terrible shore.
Her adventure had occurred the third time that Lena her mother had allowed her to ride a Ranyhyn. During the two previous annual visits to Mithil Stonedown, dictated by the Ranyhyn promise to Covenant Ringthane, the old horse from the Plains of Ra had rolled his eyes strangely at the little girl as Trell her grandfather had boosted her onto its broad back. And the next year young Myrha took the old stallion's place. The mare gazed at Elena with that look of deliberate intention which characterized all the Ranyhyn-and Elena, sensing the Ranyhyn's offer without understanding it, gladly gave herself up to Myrha. She did not look back as the mare carried her far away from Mithil Stonedown into the mountains of the Southron Range.
For a day and a night, Myrha galloped, bearing Elena far south along mountain trails and over passes unknown to the people of the Land. At the end of that time, they gained a high valley, a grassy glen folded between sheer cliffs, with a rugged, spring-fed tam near its centre. This small lake was mysterious, for its dark waters did not reflect the sunlight. And the valley itself was wondrous to behold, for it contained hundreds of Ranyhyn- hundreds of proud, glossy, star-browed stallions and mares-gathered together for a rare and secret ritual of horses.
But Elena's wonder quickly turned to fear. Amid a chorus of wild, whinnied greetings, Myrha carried the little girl toward the lake, then shrugged her to the ground and dashed away in a flurry of hooves. And the rest of the Ranyhyn began to run around the valley. At first they trotted in all directions, jostling each other and sweeping by the child as if they were barely able to avoid crushing her. But gradually their pace mounted. Several Ranyhyn left the pounding mob to drink at the tare, then burst back into the throng as if the dark waters roiled furiously in their veins. While the sun passed overhead, the great horses sprinted and bucked, drank at the tam, rushed away to run again in the unappeasable frenzy of a dance of madness. And Elena stood among them, imperilled for her life by the savage flash and flare of hooves-frozen with terror. In her fear, she thought that if she so much as flinched she would be instantly trampled to death.
Standing there-engulfed in heat and thunder and abysmal fear as final as the end of life-she lost consciousness for a time. She was still standing when her eyes began to see again; she was erect and petrified in the last glow of evening. But the Ranyhyn were no longer running. They had surrounded her; they faced her, studied her with a force of compulsion in their eyes. Some were so close to her that she inhaled their hot, damp breath. They wanted her to do something-she could feel the insistence of their wills battering at her immobile fear. Slowly, woodenly, choicelessly, she began to move.
She went to the tare and drank.
Abruptly, the High Lord dropped her narration, and began to sing-a vibrant, angry, and anguished song which cast ripples of passion across the air of Earthroot. For reasons at which Covenant could only guess instinctively, she broke into Lord Kevin's Lament as if it were her own private and immedicable threnody.
Where is the Power that protects
beauty from the decay of life?
Preserves truth pure of falsehood?
Secures fealty from that slow stain of chaos
which corrupts?
How are we so rendered small by Despite?
