The Illearth War

But the gift of Lena Atiaran-daughter was more terrible than all the others. He had raped her, raped! And afterward, she had gone into hiding so that her people would not learn what had happened to her and punish him. She had acted with an extravagant forbearance so that he could go free-free to deliver Lord Foul's prophecy of doom to the Lords. Beside that self-abnegation, even Atiaran's sacrifices paled.

Lena! he cried. A violence of grief and self-recrimination blazed up in him. “I don't want any more.” Thunder blackened his face. He grasped the krill in both fists, its blade pointing downward. With a convulsive movement, he stabbed the sword at the heart of the table, trying to break its blunt blade on the stone.

A sudden flash of white blinded him like an instant of lightning. The krill wrenched out of his hands. But he did not try to see what had happened to it. He spun instantly back to face Elena. Through the white dazzle that confused his sight, he panted, “No more gifts! I can't afford them!”

But she was not looking at him, not listening to him. She held her hands to her mouth as she stared past him at the table. “By the Seven!” she whispered. “What have you done?”

What-?

He whirled to look.

The blade of the krill had pierced the stone; it was embedded halfway to its guards in the table.

Its white gem burned like a star.

Dimly, he became conscious of a throbbing ache in his wedding finger. His ring felt hot and heavy, almost molten. But he ignored it; he was afraid of it. Trembling, he reached out to touch the krill.

Power burned his fingers.

Hellfire!

He snatched his hand away. The fierce pain made him clasp his fingers under his other arm, and groan.

At once, Elena turned to him. “Are you harmed?” she asked anxiously. “What has happened to you?”

“Don't touch me!” he gasped.

She recoiled in confusion, then stood watching him, torn between her concern for him and her astonishment at the blazing gem. After a moment, she shook herself as if throwing off incomprehension, and said softly, “Unbeliever-you have brought the krill to life.”

Covenant made an effort to match her, but his voice quavered as he said, “It won't make any difference. It won't do you any good. Foul's got all the power that counts.”

“He does not possess the white gold.”

“To hell with the white gold!”

“No!” she retorted vehemently. “Do not say such a thing. I have not lived my life for nothing. My mother, and her mother before her, have not lived for nothing!”

He did not understand her, but her sudden passion silenced him. He felt trapped between her and the krill; he did not know what to say or do. Helpless, he stared at the High Lord as her own emotions grew into speech.

“You say that this makes no difference-that it does no good. Are you a prophet? And if you are, what do you say that we should do? Surrender?” For an instant, her self-possession wavered, and she exclaimed furiously, “Never!” He thought that he heard hatred in her words. But then she lowered her voice, and the sound of loathing faded. “No! There is no one in the Land who could endure to stand aside and allow the Despiser to work his will. H we must suffer and die without hope, then we will do so. But we will not despair, though it is the Unbeliever himself who says that we must ”

Useless emotions writhed across his face, but he could not answer. His own conviction or energy had fallen into dust. Even the pain in his hand was almost gone. He looked away from her, then winced at the sharp sight of the krill. Slowly, as if he had aged in the past few moments, he lowered himself into a chair. “I wish,” he murmured blankly, emptily, “I wish I knew what to do.”

At the edge of his attention, he was aware that Elena had left the room. But he did not raise his head until she returned and stood before him. In her hands she held a flask of springwine which she offered to him.

He could see a concern he did not deserve in the complex otherness of her gaze.

He accepted the flask and drank deeply, searching for a balm to ease the splitting ache in his forehead and for some way to support his failing courage. He dreaded the High Lord's intentions, whatever they were. She was too sympathetic, too tolerant of his violence; she allowed him too much leeway without setting him free. Despite the solidness of Revelstone under his sensitive feet, he was on unsteady ground.

When after a short silence she spoke again, she had an air of bringing herself to the point of some difficult honesty; but there was nothing candid in the unexplained disfocus of her eyes. “I am lost in this matter,” she said. “There is much that I must tell you, if I am to be open and blameless. I do not wish to be reproached with any lack of knowledge in you-the Land will not be served by any concealment which might later be called by another name. Yet my courage fails me, and I know not what words to use. Mhoram offered to take this matter from me, and I refused, believing that the burden is mine. Yet now I am lost, and cannot begin.”

Covenant bent his frown toward her, refusing with the pain in his forehead to give her any aid.

“You have spoken with Hile Troy,” she said tentatively, unsure of this approach. “Did he describe his coming to the Land?”

Covenant nodded without relenting. “An accident. Some misbegotten kid-a young student, he says-was trying to get me.”

Elena moved as if she meant to pursue that idea, but then she stopped herself, reconsidered, and took a different tack. “I do not know your world-but the Warmark tells me that such things do not happen there. Have you observed Lord Mhoram? Or Hiltmark Quaan? Or perhaps Hearthrall Tohrm? Any of those you knew forty years ago? Does it appear to you that-that they are young?”

“I've noticed.” Her question agitated him. He had been clinging to the question of age, trying to establish it as a discrepancy, a breakdown in the continuity of his delusion. “It doesn't fit. Mhoram and Tohrm are too young. It's impossible. They are not forty years older.”

“I also am young,” she said intently, as if she were trying to help him guess a secret. But at the sight of his glowering incomprehension, she retreated from the plunge. To answer him, she said, 'This has been true for as long as there has been such lore in the Land. The Old Lords lived to great age. They were not long-lived as the Giants are-because that is the natural span of their people. No, it was the service of the Earthpower which preserved' them, secured them from age long past their normal years. High Lord Kevin lived centuries as people live decades.

“So, too, it is in this present time, though in a lesser way. We do not bring out all the potency of the Lore. And the Warlore does not preserve its followers, so Quaan and his warriors alone of your former comrades carry their full burden of years. But those of the rhadhamaerl and the lillianrill, and the Lords who follow Kevin's Lore, age more slowly than others. This is a great boon, for it extends our strength. But also it causes grief-”

She fell silent for a moment, sighed quietly to herself as if she were remembering an old injury. But when she spoke again, her voice was clear and steady. “So it has always been. Lord Mhoram has seen ten times seven summers-yet he hardly carries fifty of them. And-” Once again, she stopped herself and changed directions. With a look that searched Covenant, she said, “Does it surprise you to hear that I rode a Ranyhyn as a child? There is no other in the Land who.has had such good fortune.”

He finished his springwine, and got to his feet to pace the room in front of her. The tone in which she recurred to the Ranyhyn was full of suggestions; he sensed wide possibilities of distress in it. More in anxiety than in irritation, he growled at her, “Hellfire. Get on with it.”

She tensed as if in preparation for a struggle, and said, 'Warmark Hile Troy's account of his summoning to the Land may not have been altogether accurate. I have heard him tell his tale, and he confuses something which I-we- have not thought it well to correct. We have kept this matter secret between us.

“Ur-Lord Covenant.” She paused, steadying herself, then said carefully, “Hile Troy was summoned by no young student, ignorant of the perils of power. The summoner was one whom you have known.”

Triock! Covenant almost missed his footing. Triock son of Thuler, of Mithil Stonedown, had reason to hate