The door opened, and Bannor entered the room. “The High Lord wishes to speak with you,” he said without inflection. “Will you come?”
Yes, Covenant muttered grimly to himself. Of course. Do I have a choice? Holding his chest to keep himself from wincing, he strode out of his suite and down the hall.
He started in the direction of the Close. He expected that Elena would want to make her anger at him public-to make him writhe before the assembled disapproval of Revelstone. He could have avoided Trell; it would have cost him nothing more than one instant of simple trust or considerateness. But Bannor soon steered him into other corridors. They passed through a small, heavy door hidden behind a curtain in one of the meeting halls, and went down a long, twisting stairwell into a deep part of the Keep unfamiliar to Covenant. The stair ended in a series of passages so irregular and dim that they confused him until he knew nothing about where he was except that he was deep in the gut-rock of Revelstone-deeper than the private quarters of the Lords.
But before long Bannor halted, facing a blank wall of stone. In the dim light of one torch, he spread his arms to the wall as if he were invoking it, and spoke three words in a language that came awkwardly to his tongue. When he lowered his arms, a door became visible. It swung inward, admitting the Bloodguard and Covenant to a high, brilliant cavern.
The makers of Revelstone had done little to shape or work this spacious cave. They had given it a smooth floor, but had left untouched the raw rough stone of its walls and ceiling; and they had not altered the huge rude columns which stood thickly through it like massive tree trunks, reaching up from the floor to take the burden of the ceiling upon their shoulders. However, the whole cavern was lit by large urns of graveling placed between the columns so that all the surfaces of the walls and columns were clearly illumined.
Displayed on these surfaces everywhere were works of art. Paintings and tapestries hung on the walls; large sculptures and carvings rested on stands between the columns and urns; smaller pieces, carvings and statuettes and stoneware and
In his fascination, Covenant forgot why he had been brought here. He began moving around the hall, looking avidly. The smaller works caught his attention first. Many of them appeared in some way charged with action, imminent heat, as.if they had been captured in a moment of incarnation; but the differences in materials and emotions were enormous. Where an oaken figure of a woman cradling a baby wept protectively over the griefs and hurts of children, a similar granite subject radiated confident generative power; where a polished Gildenlode flame seemed to yearn upward, a
Bannor followed him as he moved around the columns, and after a while the Bloodguard said, “This is the Hall of Gifts. All these were made by the people of the Land, and given to the Lords. Or to Revelstone.” He gazed about him with unmoved eyes. “They were given for honour or love. Or to be seen. But the Lords do not desire such gifts. They say that no one can possess such things. The treasure comes from the Land, and belongs to the Land. So all gifts given to the Lords are placed here, so that any who wish it may behold them.”
Yet Covenant heard something deeper in Bannor's voice. Despite its monotone, it seemed to articulate a glimpse of the hidden and unanswerable passion which bound the Bloodguard to the Lords. But Covenant did not pursue it, did not intrude on it.
From among the first columns, he was drawn to a large, thick arras hanging on one of the walls. He recognized it. It was the same work he had once tried to destroy. He had thrown it out of his room in the watchtower in a fit of outrage at the fable of Berek's life-and at the blindness which saw himself as Berek reborn. He could not be mistaken. The arras was tattered around the edges, and had a carefully repaired rent down its centre halfway through the striving, irenic figure of Berek Halfhand. In scenes around the central figure, it showed the hero's soul-journey to his despair on Mount Thunder, and to his discovery of the Earthpower. From it, Berek gazed out at the Unbeliever with portents in his eyes.
Roughly, Covenant turned away, and a moment later he saw High Lord Elena walking toward him from the opposite side of the hall. He remained where he was, watched her. The Staff of Law in her right hand increased the stateliness and authority of her step, but her left hand was open in welcome. Her robe covered her without disguising either the suppleness or the strength of her movements. Her hair hung loosely about her shoulders, and her sandals made a whispering noise on the stone.
Quietly, she said, “Thomas Covenant, be welcome to the Hall of Gifts. I thank you for coming.”
She was smiling as if she were glad to see him.
That smile contradicted his expectations, and he distrusted it. He studied her face, trying to discern her true feelings. Her eyes invited study. Even while they regarded him, they seemed to look beyond him or into him or through him, as if the space he occupied were shared by something entirely different. He thought fleetingly that perhaps she did not actually, concretely, see him at all.
As she approached, she said, “Do you like the Hall? The people of the Land are fine artists, are they not?” But when she neared him, she stopped short with a look of concern, and asked, “Thomas Covenant, are you in pain?”
He found that he was breathing rapidly again. The air in the Hall seemed too rarefied for him. When he shrugged his shoulders, he could not keep the ache of the movement off his face.
Elena reached her hand toward his chest. He half winced, thinking that she meant to strike him. But she only touched his bruised ribs gently with her palm for a moment, then turned away toward Bannor. “Bloodguard,” she said sharply, “the ur-Lord has been hurt. Why was he not taken to a Healer?”
“He did not ask,” Bannor replied stolidly.
“Ask? Should help wait for asking?”
Bannor met her gaze flatly and said nothing, as if he considered his rectitude to be self-evident. But the reproach in her tone gave Covenant an unexpected pang. In Bannor's defence, he said, “I don't need didn't need it. He kept me alive.”
She sighed without taking her eyes off the Bloodguard. “Well, that may be. But I do not like to see you harmed.” Then, relenting, she said, “Bannor, the ur-Lord and I will go upland. Send for us at once if there is any need.”
Bannor nodded, bowed slightly, and left the Hall.
When the hidden door was closed behind him, Elena turned back to Covenant. He tensed instinctively. Now, he muttered to himself. Now she'll do it. But to all appearances her irritation was gone. And she made no reference to the arras; she seemed unaware of the connection between him and that work. With nothing but innocence in her face, she said, “Well, Thomas Covenant. Do you like the Hall? You have not told me.”
He hardly heard her. Despite her pleasant expression, he could not believe that she did not intend to task him for his encounter with Trell. But then he saw concern mounting in her cheeks again, and he hurried to cover himself.
“What? Oh, the Hall. I like it fine. But isn't it a little out of the way? What good is a museum if people can't get to it?”
“All Revelstone knows the way. Now we are alone, but in times of peace-or in times when war is more distant-there are always people here. And the children in the schools spend much time here, learning of the crafts of the Land. Craftmasters come from all the Land to share and increase their skills. The Hall of Gifts is thus deep and concealed because the Giants who wrought the Keep deemed such a place fitting and because if ever Revelstone is whelmed the Hall may be hidden and preserved, in hope of the future.”
For an instant, the focus of her gaze seemed to swing closer to him, and her vision tensed as if she meant to burn her way through his skull to find out what he was thinking. But then she turned away with a gentle smile, and walked toward another wall of the cavern. “Let me show you another work,” she said. “It is by one of our rarest Craftmasters, Ahanna daughter of Hanna. Here.”
He followed, and stopped with her before a large picture in a burnished ebony frame. It was a dark work, but glowing bravely near its centre was a figure that he recognized immediately: Lord Mhoram. The Lord stood alone in a hollow tightly surrounded by black fiendish shapes which were about to fall on him like a flood, deluge him utterly.
