His only weapon was his staff, but he wielded it defiantly; and in his eyes was a hot, potent look of extremity and triumph, as if he had discovered within himself some capacity for peril that made him unconquerable.
Elena said respectfully, “Ahanna names this `Lord Mhoram's Victory.' She is a prophet, I think.”.
The sight of Mhoram in such straits hurt Covenant, and he took it as a reproach. “Listen,” he said. “Stop playing around with me like this. If you've got something to say, say it. Or take Troy's advice, and lock me up. But don't do this to me.”
“Playing around? I do not understand”
“Hellfire! Stop looking so innocent. You got me down here to let me have it for that run-in with Trell. Well, get it over with. I can't stand the suspense.”
The High Lord met his glare with such openness that he turned away, muttering under his breath to steady himself.
“Ur-Lord.” She placed an appealing hand on his arm. “Thomas Covenant. How can you believe such thoughts? How can you understand us so little? Look at me. Look at me!” She pulled his arm until he turned back to her, faced the sincerity she expressed with every line of her face. 'I did not ask you here to torment you. I wished to share my last hour in the Hall of Gifts with you. This war is near-near- and I will not soon stand here again. As for the Warmark — I do not take counsel from him concerning you. If there is any blame in your meeting with Trell, it is mine. I did not give you clear warning of my fears. And I did not see the extent of the danger-else I would have told all the Bloodguard to prevent your meeting.
“No, ur-Lord. I have no hard words to speak to you. You should reproach me. I have endangered your life, and cost Trell Atiaran-mate my grandfather his last self-respect. He was helpless to heal his daughter and his wife. Now he will believe that he is helpless to heal himself.”
Looking at her, Covenant's distrust fell into dust. He took a deep breath to clean stale air from his lungs. But the movement hurt his ribs. The pain made him fear that she would reach toward him, and he mumbled quickly, “Don't touch me.”
For an instant, she misunderstood him. Her fingers leaped from his arm, and the otherness of her vision flicked across him with a virulence that made him flinch, amazed and baffled. But what she saw corrected her misapprehension. The focus of her gaze left him; she extended her hand slowly to place her palm on his chest.
“I hear you,” she said. “But I must touch you. You have been my hope for too long. I cannot give you up. He took her wrist with the two fingers and thumb of his right hand, but he hesitated a moment before he removed her palm. Then he said, ”What happens to Trell now? He broke his Oath. Is anything done to him?'
“Alas, there is little we can do. It lies with him. We will try to teach him that an Oath which has been broken may still be kept. But it was not his intent to harm you-he did not plan his attack. I know him, and am sure of this. He has known of your presence in Revelstone, yet he made no effort to seek you out. No, he was overcome by his hurt. I do not know how he will recover.”
As she spoke, he saw that once again he had failed F to comprehend. He had been thinking about punishment rather than healing. Hugging his sore ribs, he said, “You're too gentle. You've got every right to hate me.”
She gave him a look of mild exasperation. 'Neither
Lena my mother nor I have ever hated you. It is impossible for us. And what would be the good? Without you, I would not be. It may be that Lena would have married Triock, and given birth to a daughter-but that daughter would be another person. I would not be who I am.“ A moment later, she smiled. ”Thomas Covenant, there are few children in all the history of the Land who have ridden a Ranyhyn.'
“Well, at least that part of it worked out.” He shrugged aside her questioning glance. He did not feel equal to explaining the bargain he had tried to make with the Ranyhyn-or the way in which that bargain had failed him.
A mood of constraint came between them. Elena turned away from it to look again at “Lord Mhoram's Victory.”
“This picture disturbs me,” she said. “Where am I? If Mhoram is thus sorely beset, why am I not at his side? How have I fallen, that he is so alone?” She touched the picture lightly, brushed her fingertips over Mhoram's lone, beleaguered, invincible stance. “It is in my heart that this war will go beyond me.”
The thought stung her. Suddenly she stepped back from the painting, stood tall with the Staff of Law planted on the stone before her. She shook her head so that her brown-and-honey hair snapped as if a wind blew about her shoulders, and breathed intensely, “No! I will see it ended! Ended!”
As she repeated
“Ah, you must pardon me,” she said with a look like laughter. “I forgot myself.”
He braced his feet, tried to determine whether or not he could still trust the floor. The stone felt secure. “Give me fair warning next time,” he muttered, “so I can sit down.”
The High Lord broke into clear laughter, then subdued herself abruptly. “Your pardon again, Thomas Covenant. But your expression is so fierce and foolish.”
“Forget it,” he replied. He found that he liked the sound of her laugh. “Ridicule may be the only good answer.”
“Is that a proverb from your world? Or are you a prophet?”
“A little of both.”
“You are strange. You transpose wisdom and jest you reverse their meanings.”
“Is that a fact?”
“Yes, ur-Lord Covenant,” she said lightly, humorously. “That is a fact.” Then she appeared to remember something. “But we must go. I think we are expected. And you have never seen the upland. Will you come with me?”
He shrugged. She smiled at him, and he followed her toward the door of the Hall.
“Who's expecting us?” he asked casually.
She opened the door and preceded him through it. When it was closed behind them, she answered, “I would like to surprise you. But perhaps that would not be fair warning. There is a man-a man who studies dreams-to find the truth in them. One of the Unfettered.”
His heart jumped again, and he wrapped his arms protectively around his sore chest. Hellfire, he groaned to himself. An interpreter of dreams. Just what I need. An Unfettered One had saved him and Atiaran from the ur-viles at the Celebration of Spring. By a perverse trick of recollection, he heard the Unfettered One's death cry in the wake of Elena's clear voice. And he remembered Atiaran's grim insistence that it was the responsibility of the living to make meaningful the sacrifices of the dead. With a brusque gesture, he motioned for Elena to lead the way, then walked after her, muttering, Hellfire. Hellfire.
She guided him back up through the levels of Revelstone until he began to recognize his surroundings. Then they moved westward, still climbing, and after a while they joined a high, wide passage like a road along the length of the Keep, rising slowly. Soon the decreasing weight of the stone around him, and the growing autumnal tang of the air, told him that they were approaching the level of the plateau which topped the Keep. After two sharp switchbacks, the passage ended, and he found himself out in the open, standing on thick grass under the roofless heavens. A league or two west of him were the mountains.
A cool breeze hinting a fall crispness touched him through the late morning sunlight-a low blowing as full of ripe earth and harvests as if it were clairvoyant, foretelling bundled crops and full fruit and seeds ready for rest. But the trees on the plateau and the upland hills were predominantly evergreens, feathery mimosas and tall pines and wide cedars with no turning of leaves. And the hardy grass made no concessions to the changing season.
The hills of the upland were Revelstone's secret strength. They were protected by sheer cliffs on the east and south, by mountains on the north and west; and so they were virtually inaccessible except through Lord's Keep itself. Here the people of the city could get food and water to withstand a siege. Therefore Revelstone could endure as long as its walls and gates remained impregnable.
“So you see,” said Elena, “that the Giants wrought well for the Land in all ways. While Revelstone stands, there remains one bastion of hope. In its own way, the Keep is as impervious to defeat as Foul's Creche is said to be-in the old legends. This is vital, for the legends also say that the shadow of Despite will never be wholly driven from the Land while Ridjeck Thome, Lord Foul's dire demesne, endures. So our: debt to the Giants is far greater
