find this Ward. And in return I promised myself that I would do everything I could to make you take my responsibility. I watched you and helped you so that when you got here you would look exactly like that-so you would challenge Foul yourself without stopping to think about what you're doing-so that whatever happens to the Land would be your fault instead of mine. So that I could escape! Hell and blood, Elena! Do you hear me? Foul is going to get us for sure!”
She seemed to hear only part of what he said. She bent her searing focus straight into him, and said, “Was there ever a time when you loved me?”
In an agony of protest, he half screamed, “Of course I loved you!” Then he mastered himself, put all his strength back into his appeal. “It never even occurred to me that I might be able to use you until-until after the landslide. When I began to understand what you're capable of. I loved you before that. I love you now. I'm just an unconscionable bastard, and I used you, that's all. Now I regret it.” With all the resources of his voice, he beseeched her, 'Elena, please don't drink that stuff. Forget the Power of
Command and go back to Revelstone. Let the Council decide what to do about all this.'
But the way in which her gaze left his face and burned around the walls of the cave told him that he had not reached her. When she spoke, she only confirmed his failure.
“I would be unworthy of Lordship if I failed to act now. Amok offered us the Seventh Ward because he perceived that the Land's urgent need surpassed the conditions of his creation. Fangthane is upon the Land now-he wages war now Land and life and all are endangered now. While any power or weapon lies within my grasp, I will not permit him!” Her voice softened as she added, “And if you have loved me, how can I fail to strive for your escape? You need not have bargained in secret. I love you. I wish to serve you. Your regret only strengthens what I must do.”
Swinging back toward the trough, she raised the Staff's guttering flame high over her head, and shouted like a war cry, “
Then she stooped to the EarthBlood.
Covenant struggled frantically in her direction, but his feet scattered out from under him again, and he went down with a crash like a shock of incapacity. As she lowered her face to the trough, he shouted, “That's not a good answer! What happens to the Oath of Peace?”
But his cry did not penetrate her exaltation. Without hesitation, she took one steady sip of the Blood, and swallowed it.
At once, she leaped to her feet, stood erect and rigid as if she were possessed. She appeared to swell, expand like a distended icon. The fire of the Staff ran down the wood to her hands. Instantly, her whole form burst into flame.
“Elena!” Covenant crawled toward her. But the might of her blue, crackling blaze threw him back like a hard wind. He struck the tears from his eyes to see her more clearly. Within her enveloping fire, she was unharmed and savage.
While the flame burned about her, enfolded her from head to foot in fiery cerements, she raised her arms, lifted her face. For one fierce moment she stood motionless, trapped in conflagration. Then she spoke as if she were uttering words of flame.
“Come! I have tasted the EarthBlood! You must obey my will. The walls of death do not prevail. Kevin son of Loric! Come!”
No! howled Covenant, No! Don't! But even his inner cry was swamped by a great voice which shivered and groaned in the air so hugely that he seemed to hear it, not with his ears, but with the whole surface of his body.
“Fool! Desist!” Staggering waves of anguish poured from the voice. “Do not do this!”
“Kevin, hear me!” Elena shouted back in a transported tone. “You cannot refuse! The Blood of the Earth compels you. I have chosen you to meet my Command. Kevin, come!”
The great voice repeated, “Fool! You know not what you do!”
But an instant later, the ambience of the cave changed violently, as if a tomb had opened into it. Breakers of agony rolled through the air. Covenant winced at every surge. He braced himself where he knelt, and looked up.
The spectre of Kevin Landwaster stood outlined in pale light before Elena.
He dwarfed her-dwarfed the cave itself. Monumentally upright and desolate, he was visible through the stone rather than within the cave. He towered over Elena as if he were part of the very mountain rock. He had a mouth like a cut, eyes full of the effects of Desecration, and on his forehead was a bandage which seemed to cover some mortal wound. “Release me!” he groaned. 'I have done harm enough for one
50111.'
“Then serve me!” she cried ecstatically up to him.
'I offer you a Command to redeem that harm. You are Kevin son of Loric, the waster of the Land. You have known despair to its dregs you have tasted the full cup of gall. That is knowledge and strength which no one living can equal.
“High Lord Kevin, I Command you to battle and defeat Lord Foul the Despiser! Destroy Fangthane! By the Power of the EarthBlood, I Command you.”
The spectre stared aghast at her, and raised his fists as if he meant to strike her. “Fool!” he repeated terribly.
The next instant, a concussion like the slamming of a crypt shook the cave. One last pulse of anguish pummelled the High Lord's party; Elena's flame was blown out like a weak candle; darkness flooded the cave.
Then Kevin was gone.
A long time passed. When Covenant regained consciousness, he rested wearily for a while on his hands and knees, glad of the darkness, and the reduced scale of the cave, and the spectre’s absence. But eventually he remembered Elena. Pushing himself to his feet, he reached toward her with his voice. “Elena? Come on. Elena? Let's get out of here.”
At first, he received no response. Then blue fire flared as Elena lit the Staff. She was sitting like a wreck on the floor. When she turned her wan, spent face toward him, he saw that her crisis was over. All her exaltation had been consumed by the act of Command. He went to her, helped her gently to her feet. “Come on,” he said again. “Let's go.”
She shook her head vaguely, and said in an exhausted voice, “He called me a fool. What have I done?”
“I hope we never find out.” A rough edge of sympathy made him sound harsh. He wanted to care for her, and did not know how. To give her time and privacy to gather her strength, he stepped away. As he glanced dully around the cave, he noticed Bannor, noticed the faint look of surprise in Bannor's face. Something in that unfamiliar expression gave Covenant a twist of apprehension. It seemed to be directed at him. He probed for an explanation by asking, “That was Kevin, wasn't it?”
Bannor nodded; the speculative surprise remained on his face.
“Well, at least it wasn't that beggar-At least now we know it wasn't Kevin who picked me for this.”
Still Bannor's gaze did not change. It made Covenant feel uncomfortably exposed, as if there were something indecent about himself that he did not realize.
Confused, he turned back to the High Lord.
Suddenly, a silent blast like a howl of stone jolted the cave, made it tremble and jump like an earthquake. Covenant and Elena lost their footing, slapped against the floor. Morin's warning shout echoed flatly:
“Kevin returns!”
Then the buried tomb of the air opened again; Kevin's presence resonated against Covenant's skin. But this time the spectre brought with him a ghastly reek of rotten flesh and attar, and in the background of his presence was the deep rumble of rock being crushed. When Covenant raised his head from the bucking floor, he saw Kevin within the stone furiously poised, fists cocked. Hot green filled the orbs of his eyes, sent rank steam curling up his forehead; and he dripped with emerald light as if he had just struggled out of a quagmire.
“Fool!” he cried in a paroxysm of anguish. “Damned betrayer! You have broken the Law of Death to summon me-you have unleashed measureless opportunities for evil upon the Earth-and the Despiser mastered me as easily as if I were a child! The Illearth Stone consumes me. Fight, fool! I am Commanded to destroy you!”
Roaring like a multitude of fiends, he reached down and clutched at Elena.
