The Illearth War

“Watch it, Covenant,” Troy warned softly.

Covenant shot a glare at the Warmark, but his black sunglasses seemed to make him impervious. Covenant turned toward the High Lord. “Is that all?” he insisted. “Don't you even want to know what's going on here?”

Elena faced him levelly. “Do you know?”

“No. Of course not.” He wanted to add, to protest, But Bannor does. But that was something else he could not say. He had no right to make the Bloodguard responsible. Stiffly, he remained silent.

“Then do not be too quick to judge,” Elena replied. “There is much here that requires explanation, and we must seek answers in our own way if we hope to be prepared.”

Prepared for what? he wanted to ask. But he lacked the resolution to challenge the High Lord; he was afraid of her eyes. To escape the situation, he brushed past Bannor and horned out of the Close ahead of the Lords and Troy.

But back in his rooms he found no relief for his frustration. And in the days that followed, nothing happened to give him any relief. Elena, Mhoram, and Troy were as absent from his life as if they were deliberately avoiding him. Bannor answered his aimless questions courteously, curtly, but the answers shed no light. His beard grew until it was thick and full, and made him look to himself like an unravelled fanatic; but it proved nothing, solved nothing. The full of the moon came and went, but the war did not begin; there arrived no word from the scouts, no signs, no insights. Around him, Revelstone palpably trembled in the clench of its readiness; everywhere he went, he heard whispers of tension, haste, urgency, but no action was taken. Nothing. He roamed for leagues in Lord's Keep as if he were treading a maze. He drank inordinate quantities of springwine, and slept the sleep of the dead as if he hoped that he would never be resurrected. At times he was even reduced to standing on the northern battlements of the city to watch Troy and Quaan drill the Warward. But nothing happened.

His only oasis in this static and frustrated wilderland was given to him by Lord Callindrill and his wife, Faer. One day, Callindrill took the Unbeliever to his private quarters beyond the floor-lit courtyard, and there Faer provided him with a meal which almost made him forget his plight. She was a hale Stonedownor woman with a true gift for hospitality. Perhaps he would have been able to forget-but she studied the old suru-pa- maerl craft, as Lena had done, and that evoked too many painful memories in him. He did not visit long with Faer and her husband.

Yet before he left, Callindrill had explained to him some of the oddness of his current position in Revelstone. The High Lord had summoned him, Callindrill said, when the Council had agreed that the war could begin at any moment, when any further postponement of the call might prove fatal. But Warmark Troy's battle plans could not be launched until he knew which of two possible assault routes Lord Foul's army would take. Until the Warmark received clear word from his scouts, he could not afford to commit his Eowards. If he risked a guess, and guessed wrong, disaster would result. So Covenant had been urgently summoned, and yet now was left to himself, with no demands upon him.

In addition, the Lord went on, there was another reason why he had been summoned at a time which now appeared to have been premature. Warmark Troy had argued urgently for the summons. This surprised Covenant until Callindrill explained Troy's reasoning. The Warmark had believed that Lord Foul would be able to detect the summons. So by means of Covenant's call Troy had hoped to put pressure on the Despiser, force him, because of his fear of the wild magic, to launch his attack before he was ready. Time favoured Lord Foul because his war resources far surpassed those of the Council, and if he prepared long enough he might well field an army that no Warward could defeat. Troy hoped that the ploy of summoning Covenant would make the Despiser cut his preparations short.

Lastly, Callindrill explained in a gentle voice, High Lord Elena and Lord Mhoram were in fact evading the Unbeliever. Covenant had not asked that question, but Callindrill seemed to divine some of the causes of his frustration. Elena and Mhoram, each in their separate ways, felt so involved in Covenant's dilemma that they stayed away from him in order to avoid aggravating his distress. They sensed, said Callindrill, that he found their personal appeals more painful than any other. The possibility that he might go to Seareach had jolted Elena. And Mhoram was consumed by his work on the krill. Until the war bereft them of choice, they refrained as much as possible from imposing upon him.

Well, Troy warned me, Covenant muttered to himself as he left Callindrill and Faer. He said that they're scrupulous. After a moment, he added sourly, I would be better off if all these people would stop trying to do me favours.

Yet he was grateful to Faer and her husband. Their companionly gestures helped him to get through the next few days, helped him to keep the vertiginous darkness at bay. He felt that he was rotting inside, but he was not going mad.

But he knew that he could not stand it much longer. The ambience of Revelstone was as tight as a string about to snap. Pressure was building inside him, rising toward desperation. When Bannor knocked at his door one afternoon, he was so startled that he almost cried out.

However, Bannor had not come to announce the start of the war. In his flat voice, he asked Covenant if the Unbeliever would like to go hear a song.

A song, he echoed numbly. For a moment, he was too confused to respond. He had not expected such a question, certainly not from the Bloodguard. But then he shrugged jerkily. “Why not?” He did not stop to ask what had prompted Bannor's unusual initiative. With a scowl, he followed the Bloodguard out of his suite.

Bannor took him up through the levels of the Keep until they were higher in the mountain than he had ever been before. Then the wide passage they followed rounded a corner, and came unexpectedly into open sunlight. They entered a broad, roofless amphitheatre. Rows of stone benches curved downward to form a bowl around a flat centre stage; and behind the topmost row the stone wall rose straight for twenty or thirty feet, ending in the flat of the plateau, where the mountain met the sky. The afternoon sun shone into the amphitheatre, drenching the dull white stone of the stage and benches and wall with warmth and light.

The seats were starting to fill when Bannor and Covenant arrived. People from all the occupations of the Keep, including farmers and cooks and warriors, and the Lords Trevor and Loerya with their daughters, came through several openings in the wall to take seats around the bowl. But the Bloodguard formed the largest single group. Covenant estimated roughly that there were a hundred of them on the benches. This vaguely surprised him. He had never seen more than a score of the Haruchai in one place before. After looking around for a while, he asked Bannor, “What song is this, anyway?”

“Lord Kevin's Lament,” Bannor replied dispassionately.

Then Covenant felt that he understood. Kevin, he nodded to himself. Of course the Bloodguard wanted to hear this song. How could they be less than keenly interested in anything which might help them to comprehend Kevin Landwaster?

For it was Kevin who had summoned Lord Foul to Kiril Threndor to utter the Ritual of Desecration. The legends said that when Kevin had seen that he could not defeat the Despiser, his heart had turned black with despair. He had loved the Land too intensely to let it fall to Lord Foul. And yet he had failed; he could not preserve it. Torn by his impossible dilemma, he had been driven to dare that Ritual. He had known that the unleashing of that fell power would destroy the Lords and all their works, and ravage the Land from end to end, make it barren for generations. He had known that he would die. But he had hoped that Lord Foul would also die, that when at last life returned to the Land it would be life free of Despite. He chose to take that risk rather than permit Lord Foul's victory. Thus he dared the Despiser to join him in Kiril Threndor. He and Lord Foul spoke the Ritual, and High Lord Kevin Landwaster destroyed the Land which he loved.

And Lord Foul had not died. He had been reduced for a time, but he had survived, preserved by the law of Time which imprisoned him upon the Earth so the legends said. So now all the Land and the new Lords lay under the consequences of Kevin's despair.

It was not surprising that the Bloodguard wanted to hear this song-or that Bannor had asked Covenant to come hear it also.

As he mused, Covenant caught a glimpse of blue from across the amphitheatre. Looking up, he saw High Lord Elena standing near one of the entrances. She, too, wanted to hear this song.

With her was Warmark Troy.

Covenant felt an urge to go join them, but before he could make up his mind to move, the singer entered the amphitheatre. She was a tall, resplendent woman, simply clad in a crimson robe, with golden hair that flew like sparks about her head. As she moved down the steps to the stage, her audience rose to its feet and silently gave