The Illearth War

Free—

Dream that what is dreamed will be:

Hold eyes clasped shut until they see,

And sing the silent prophecy—

And be

Unfettered

Shriven

Free.

Lone

Unfriended

Bondless

Lone—

Drink of loss 'til it is done,

'Till solitude has come and gone,

And silence is communion—

And yet

Unfriended

Bondless

Lone.

Deep

Unbottomed

Endless

Deep—

Touch the true mysterious Keep

Where halls of fealty laugh and weep;

While treachers through the dooming creep

In blood

Unbottomed

Endless

Deep.

“Stand to meet him,” the High Lord said quietly. “He is One of the Unfettered. He has gone beyond the knowledge of the Loresraat, in pursuance of a private vision open to him alone.”

Covenant arose, still listening to the song. It had an entrancing quality which silenced his questions and doubts. He stood erect, with his head up as if he were eager. And soon the Unfettered One came into sight over the hills north of Glimmermere.

He stopped singing when he saw Covenant and Elena, but his appearance sustained his influence over them. He wore a long flowing robe that seemed to have no colour of its own; instead it caught the shades around it, so that it was grass-green below his waist, azure on his shoulders, and the rock and snow of the mountains flickered on his right side. His unkempt hair flared, reflecting the sun.

He came directly toward Covenant and Elena, and soon Covenant could make out his face-soft androgynous features thickly bearded, deep eyes. When he stopped before them, he and the High Lord exchanged no rituals or greetings. He said to her simply, “Leave us,” in a high, fluted voice like a woman's. His tone expressed neither rejection nor command, but rather something that sounded like necessity, and she bowed to it without question.

But before she left, she put her hand again on Covenant's arm, looked searchingly into his face. “Thomas Covenant,” she said with a low quaver in her voice as if she were afraid of him or for him. “Ur-Lord. When I must leave for this war-will you accompany me?”

He did not look at her. He stood as if his toes were rooted in the grass, and gazed into the Unfettered One's eyes. When after a time he failed to reply, she bowed her head, squeezed his arm, then moved away toward Revelstone. She did not look back. Soon she was out of sight beyond the hill.

“Come,” said the Unfettered One in the same tone of necessity. Without waiting for a response, he started to return the way he had come.

Covenant took two uncertain steps forward, then stopped as a spasm of anxiety clenched his features. He tore his eyes off the Unfettered One's back, looked urgently around him. When he located his socks and boots, he hurried toward them, dropped to the grass and pulled them onto his feet. With a febrile deliberateness, as if he were resisting the tug of some current or compulsion, he laced his boots and tied them securely.

When his feet were safe from the grass, he sprang up and ran after the interpreter of dreams.

Ten: Seer and Oracle

LATE the next evening, Lord Mhoram answered a knock at the door of his private quarters, and found Thomas Covenant standing outside, silhouetted darkly like a figure of distress against the light of the glowing floor. He had an aspect of privation and fatigue, as if he had tasted neither food nor rest since he had gone upland. Mhoram admitted him without question to the bare room, and closed the door while he went to stand before the stone table in the centre of the chamber-the table Mhoram had brought from the High Lord's rooms, with the krill of Loric still embedded and burning in it.

Looking at the bunched muscles of Covenant's back, Mhoram offered him food or drink or a bed, but Covenant shrugged them away brusquely, despite his inanition. In a flat and strangely closed tone, he said, 'You've been beating your brains out on this thing ever since it started. Don't you ever rest?

I thought you Lords rested down here-in this place.“ Mhoram crossed the room, and stood opposite his guest. The krill flamed whitely between them. He was uncertain of his ground; he could see the trouble in Covenant's face, but its causes and implications were confused, obscure. Carefully, the Lord said, ”Why should I rest? I have no wife, no children. My father and mother were both Lords, and Kevin's Lore is the only craft I have known. And it is difficult to rest from such work.'

“And you're driven. You're the seer and oracle around here. You're the one who gets glimpses of the future whether you want them or not, whether they make you scream in your sleep or not, whether you can stand them or not.” Covenant's voice choked for a moment, and he shook his head fiercely until he could speak again. “No wonder you can't rest. I'm surprised you can stand to sleep at all.”

“I am not a Bloodguard,” Mhoram returned calmly. “I need sleep like other men.”

“What have you figured out? Do you know what this thing is good for? What was that Amok business about?”

Mhoram gazed at Covenant across the krill, then smiled softly. “Will you sit down, my friend? You will hear long answers more comfortably if you ease your weariness.”

“I'm not tired,” the Unbeliever said with obvious falseness. The next moment, he dropped straight into a chair. Mhoram took a seat, and when he sat down he found that Covenant had positioned himself directly across the table, so that the krill stood between their faces. This arrangement disturbed Mhoram, but he could think of no other way to help Covenant than to listen and talk, so he stayed where he was, and focused his other senses to search for what was blocked from his sight by the gem of the krill.

'No, I do not comprehend Loric's sword-and I cannot draw it from the table. I might free it by breaking the stone, but that would serve no purpose. We would gain no knowledge-only a weapon we could not touch. If the krill were free, it would not help us. It is a power altogether new to us. We do not know its uses. And we do not like to break wood or stone, for any purpose.

“As to Amok-that is an open question. Lord Amatin could answer better.”

“I'm asking you.”