into place. At once, Amok leaped from the craft, and stood waiting for his companions on the edge of Earthroot. But for a moment they did not follow him. They sat spellbound by the splendour and silence of the falls.
“Come, High Lord,” the youth said. “The Seventh Ward is nigh. I must bring my being to an end.” His tone matched the unwonted seriousness of his countenance.
Elena shook her head vaguely, as if she were remembering her limitations, her weariness and lack of knowledge. And Covenant covered his eyes to block out the disconcerting noiseless tumble and glitter of the falls. But then Morin stepped up onto the levee, and Elena followed him with a sigh. Gripping the gunwales with both hands, Covenant climbed out of the craft. When Bannor joined them, the High Lord's party was complete.
Amok regarded them soberly. He seemed to have aged during the boat ride. The cheeriness had faded from his face, leaving his ancient bones uncontradicted. His lips moved as if he wished to speak. But he said nothing. Like a man looking for support, he gazed briefly at each of his companions. Then he turned away, went with an oddly heavy step toward the waterfall: When he reached the first wet rocks, he, scrambled up them, and stepped into the plunging ` water.
With his legs widely braced against the weight of the falls, he looked back toward his companions. “Do not fear,” he said through the silent torrent. “This is merely water as you have known it. Earthroot's potency springs from another source. Come.” With a beckoning gesture, he disappeared under the falls.
At this, Elena stiffened. The nearness of the Seventh Ward filled her face. Discarding her fatigue, she hastened behind Morin toward the waterfall.
Covenant followed her. Wracked, weary, full of uncomprehending dread, he nevertheless could not hang back now. As Elena pushed through the cascade and passed out of sight, he thrust himself up the wet jumble of rocks, began to crouch toward the falls. Spray dashed into his face. The rocks were too slick for him; he was forced to crawl. But he kept moving to evade Bannor's help. Holding his breath, he burrowed into the water as if it were an avalanche.
It almost flattened him; it pounded him like the accumulated weight of his delusion. But as he propped himself up against it-as the falls drenched him, filled his eyes and mouth and ears-he felt some of its vitality. It attacked him like an involuntary ablution, a cleansing performed as the last prerequisite of the Power of Command. It scrubbed at him as if it meant to peel his bones. But the water force missed his face and chest. It laid bare all his nerves, but failed to purify the marrow of his unfitness. A moment later, he crawled raw and untransmogrified into the darkness beyond the waterfall.
Quivering, he shook his head, blew the water out of his mouth and nose. His hands told him that he was on flat stone, but it felt strange, both dry and slippery. It resisted solid contact with his palms. And he could see nothing, hear no scuffles or whispers from his companions. But his sense of smell reacted violently. He found himself in an air so laden with force that it submerged every other odour of his life. It swamped him like the stink of gangrene, burned him like the reek of brimstone, but it bore no resemblance to these or any other smells he knew. It was like the polished, massive expanse of Earthroot-like the immensity of the rocklit cavern-like the continual, adumbrated weight of the waterfall-like the echoes-like the deathless stability of
It was the smell of Earthpower.
He could not stand it. He was on his knees before it, with his forehead pressed against the cold stone and his hands clasped over the back of his neck.
Then he heard a low, flaring noise as Elena lit the Staff of Law. Slowly, he raised his head. The sting of the air filled his eyes with tears, but he blinked at them, and looked about him.
He was in a tunnel which ran straight and lightless away from the falls. Down its centre-out of the distance and into the falls-flowed a small stream less than a yard wide. Even in the Staffs blue light, the fluid of this stream was as red as fresh blood. This was the source of the smell-the source of Earthroot's dangerous potency. He could see its concentrated might.
He pushed to his feet, scrambled toward the tunnel wall; he wanted to get as far as possible from the stream. His boots slipped on the black stone floor as if it were glazed with ice. He had to struggle to keep his balance. But he reached the wall, pressed himself against it. Then he looked toward Elena.
She was gazing as if with bated breath down the tunnel. A rapt, exultant expression filled her face, and she seemed taller, elevated in stature by her grasp on the Staff of Law-as if the Staffs flame fed a fire within her, a blaze like a vision of victory. She looked like a priestess, an enactor of hallowed and effective rites, approaching the occult ground of her strength. The very gaps of her elsewhere gaze were crowded with exalted and savage possibilities. They made Covenant forget the uncomfortable power of the air, forget the tears which ran from his eyes like weeping, and step forward to warn her.
At once, he lost his footing, barely managed to avoid a fall. Before he could try again, he heard Amok say, “Come. The end is at hand.” The youth's speech sounded as spectral as an invocation of the dead, and High Lord Elena started down the tunnel in answer to his summons. Quickly Covenant looked around, found Bannor behind him. He caught hold of Bannor's arm as if he meant to demand, Stop her! Don't you see what she's going to do? But he could not say it; he had made a bargain. Instead, he thrust away, tried to hurry after Elena.
He could find no purchase for his feet. His boots skidded off the stone; he seemed to have lost his sense of balance. But he scrabbled grimly onward. With an intense effort of will, he relaxed the force of his strides, pushed less sharply against the ground. As a result, he gained some control over his movements, contrived to keep pace with the High Lord.
But he could not catch her. And he could not watch where she was going; his steps required too much concentration. He did not look up until the assailing odour took a leap which almost reduced him to his knees again. Tears flooded his eyes so heavily that they felt irretrievably blurred, bereft of focus. But the smell told him that he had reached the spring of the red stream.
Through his tears, he could see Elena's flame guttering.
He squeezed the water out of his eyes, gained a moment in which to make out his surroundings. He stood behind Elena in a wider cave at the tunnel's end. Before him, set into the black stone end-wall like an exposed lode-facet, was a rough, sloping plane of wet rock. This whole plane shimmered; its emanations distorted his ineffectual vision, gave him the impression that he was staring at a mirage, a wavering in the solid stuff of existence. It confronted him like a porous membrane in the foundation of time and space. From top to bottom, it bled moisture which dripped down the slope, collected in a rude trough, and flowed away along the centre of the tunnel.
“Behold,” Amok said quietly. “Behold the Blood of the Earth. Here I fulfil the purpose of my creation. I am the Seventh Ward of High Lord Kevin's Lore. The power to which I am the way and the door is here.”
As he spoke, his voice deepened and emptied, grew older. The weary burden of his years bent his shoulders. When he continued, he seemed conscious of a need for haste, a need to speak before his old immunity to time ran out.
“High Lord, attend. The air of this place unbinds me. I must complete my purpose now.”
“Then speak, Amok,” she replied. “I hear you.”
“Ah, hear,” said Amok in a sad, musing tone, as if her answer had dropped him into a reverie. “Where is the good of hearing, if it is not done wisely?” Then he recollected himself. In a stronger voice, he said, 'But hear, then, for good or ill. I fulfil the law of my creation. My maker can require no more of me.
“High Lord, behold the Blood of the Earth. This is the passionate and essential ichor of the mountain rock-the Earthpower which raises and holds peaks high. It bleeds here-perhaps because the great weight of
He met her intense gaze, and went on, 'This Power is rare and potent-and full of hazard. Once it has been taken in from the Blood, it must be used swiftly — lest its strength destroy the drinker. And none can endure more than a single draft-no mortal thew and bone can endure more than a single swallow of the Blood. It is too rare a fluid for any cup of flesh to hold.
'Yet such hazards do not explain why High Lord Kevin himself did not essay the Power of Command. For this Power is the power to achieve any desired act-to issue any command to the stone and soil and grass and wood and water and flesh of life, and see that command fulfilled. If any drinker were to say to
