last he perceived the fear in the faces watching him. He pushed himself away from Bannor's support, took the weight of all his burdens on his own shoulders. For a moment, he met the trepidation before him with a glare so intense that it made his forehead throb. But then, as he was about to speak, a fierce detonation from Rivenrock shook his bones, knocked him off balance. When he reached toward Bannor, he exposed the shame of his ring.
Facing Mhoram and Troy as squarely as he could, he groaned, “She's lost. I lost her.” But his face twisted, and the words came brokenly between his lips, like fragments of his heart.
His utterance seemed to pale the music, making the muffled clamour from Rivenrock louder. He felt every blast of the battle like an internal blow. But the deadness under his feet became more and more vivid to him. And the gibbeted Giant hung before him with an immediacy he could not ignore. He began to realize that he was facing people who had survived ordeals of their own. He flinched, but did not fall, when their protests began-when Troy gave a strangled cry, “Lost? Lost?” and Mhoram asked in a stricken voice, “What has happened?”
Under the night sky on the lifeless hilltop-lit by the stars, and the twin gleams of Caerroil Wildwood's eyes, and the
“I'm sorry,” he concluded into the stillness. Forcing himself to drink the bitter dregs of his personal inefficacy, he added, “I loved her. I would have saved her if I could.”
“Loved her?” Troy murmured. “Alone?” His voice was too disjointed to register the degree of his pain.
Lord Mhoram abruptly covered his eyes, bowed his head.
Quaan, Amorine, and Callindrill stood together as if they could not endure what they had heard alone.
Another blast from Rivenrock shivered the air. It snatched Mhoram's head up, and he faced Covenant with tears streaming down his cheeks. “It is as I have said,” he breathed achingly. “Madness is not the only danger in dreams.”
At this, Covenant's face twisted again. But he had nothing more to say; even the release of assent was denied him. However, Bannor seemed to hear something different in the Lord's tone. As if to correct an injustice, he went to Mhoram. As he moved, he took from his pack Covenant's marrowmeld sculpture.
He handed the work to Mhoram. “The High Lord gave it to him as a gift.”
Lord Mhoram gripped the bone sculpture tightly, and his eyes shone with sudden comprehension. He understood the bond between Elena and the Ranyhyn; he understood what the giving of such a gift to Covenant meant. A gasp of weeping swept over his face. But when it passed, it left his self-mastery intact. His crooked lips took on their old humane angle. When he turned to Covenant again, he said gently, “It is a precious gift.”
Bannor's unexpected support, and Mhoram's gesture of conciliation, touched Covenant. But he had no strength to spare for either of them. His gaze was fixed on Hile Troy.
The Warmark winced eyelessly under repeated blows of realization, and within him a gale brewed. He seemed to see Elena in his mind-remember her, taste her beauty, savour all the power of sight which she had taught him. He seemed to see her useless, solitary end. “Lost?” he panted as his fury grew. “Lost? Alone?”
All at once, he erupted. With a livid howl, he raged at Covenant, “Do you call that love?! Leper! Unbeliever!”- he spat the words as if they were the most damning curses he knew- “This is all just a game for you! Mental tricks. Excuses. You're a leper! A moral leper! You're too selfish to love anyone but yourself. You have the power for everything, and you won't use it. You just turned your back on her when she needed you. You-despicable- leper! Leper!” He shouted with such force that the muscles of his neck corded. The veins in his temples bulged and throbbed as if he were about to burst with execration.
Covenant felt the truth of the accusation. His bargain exposed him to such charges, and Troy hit the heart of his vulnerability as if some prophetic insight guided his blindness. Covenant's right hand twitched in a futile fending motion. But his left clung to his chest as if to localize his shame in that one place.
When Troy paused to gather himself for another assault, Covenant said weakly, “Unbelief has got nothing to do with it. She was my daughter.”
“What?!”
“My daughter.” Covenant pronounced it like an indictment. “I raped Trell's child. Elena was his granddaughter.”
“Your daughter.” Troy was too stunned to shout. Implications like glimpses of depravity rocked him. He groaned as if Covenant's crimes were so multitudinous that he could not hold them all in his mind at one time.
Mhoram spoke to him carefully. “My friend-this is the knowledge which I have withheld from you. The withholding gave you unintended pain. Please pardon me. The Council feared that this knowledge would cause you to abominate the Unbeliever.”
“Damn right,” Troy panted. “Damn right.”
Suddenly, his accumulated passion burst into action. Guided by a sure instinct, he reached out swiftly, snatched away Lord Mhoram's staff. He spun once to gain momentum, and levelled a crushing blow with the staff at Covenant's head.
The unexpectedness of the attack surpassed even Bannor. But he recovered, sprang after Troy, jolted him enough to unbalance his swing. As a result, only the heel of the staff clipped Covenant's forehead. But that sent him tumbling backward down the hill.
He caught himself, got — to his knees. When he raised a hand to his head, he found that he was bleeding profusely from a wound in the centre of his forehead.
He could feel old hate and death seeping into him from the blasted earth. Blood ran down his cheeks like spittle.
The next moment, Mhoram and Quaan reached Troy. Mhoram tore the staff from his grasp; Quaan pinned his arms. “Fool)” the Lord rasped. “You forget the Oath of Peace. Loyalty is duel”
Troy struggled against Quaan. Rage and anguish mottled his face. “I haven't sworn any Oath! Let go of me!”
“You are the Warmark of the Warward,” said Mhoram dangerously. “The Oath of Peace binds. But if you cannot refrain from murder for that reason, refrain because the Despiser's army is destroyed. Fleshharrower hangs dead on the gibbet of Gallows Howe.”
“Do you call that victory? We've been decimated! What good is a victory that costs so much?” Troy's fury rose like weeping. “It would have been better if we'd lost! Then it wouldn't have been such a waste!” The passion in his throat made him gasp for air as if he were asphyxiating on the reek of Covenant's perfidy.
But Lord Mhoram was unmoved. He caught Troy by the breastplate and shook him. “Then refrain because the High Lord is not dead.”
“Not?” Troy panted. “Not dead?”
'We hear her battle even now. Do you not comprehend the sound? Even as we listen, she struggles against dead Kevin. The Staff sustains her-and he has not the might she believed of him. But the proof of her endurance is here, in the Unbeliever himself. She is his summoner-he will remain in the Land until her death. So it was when Drool Rockworm first called him.
“She's still fighting?” Troy gaped at the idea. He seemed to regard it as the conclusive evidence of Covenant's treachery. But then he turned to Mhoram and cried, “We've got to help her!”
At this, Mhoram flinched. A wave of pain broke through his face. In a constricted voice, he asked, “How?”
“How?” Troy fumed. “Don't ask me how.
The Lord pulled himself erect, clenched his staff for support. 'We are fifty leagues from Rivenrock. A night and a day would pass before any Ranyhyn could carry us to the foot of the cliff. Then Bannor would be required to guide us into the mountain in search of the battle. Perhaps the effects of the battle have destroyed all approaches to it. Perhaps they would destroy us. Yet if we gained the High Lord, we would have nothing to offer her but the frail strength of two Lords. With the Staff of Law, she far surpasses us. How can we help her?'
They faced each other-as if they met mind to mind across Troy's eyelessness. Mhoram did not falter under the Warmark's rage. The hurt of his inadequacy showed clearly in his face, but he neither denied nor cursed at his weakness.
