The Power That Preserves

“Melenkurion!”

Slowly, Mhoram realized that he was grimacing like a cornered madman. But while the darkness crashed and echoed around him, he could not relax his features; the contortion clung to his face like the grin of a skull. A long, taut time seemed to pass before he thought to peer through the night at Satansfist’s army.

When at last he compelled himself to look, he saw that the army had come to life. It sloughed off its uneasy repose and began to seethe, bristling in the darkness like reanimated lust.

“Ready the Warward,” he said, fighting an unwonted tremor in his rough voice. “The Raver has been given his sign. He will attack.”

With an effort, Warmark Quaan brought himself back under control and left the balcony, shouting orders as he moved.

Mhoram hugged his staff to his chest and breathed deeply, heavily. At first, the air shuddered in his lungs, and he could not pull the grimace off his face. But slowly he untied his muscles, turned his tension into other channels. His thoughts gathered themselves around the defence of the Keep.

Calling on the Hearthralls and the other Lords to join him, he went to the tower to watch what samadhi Raver was doing.

There, in the company of the two shaken sentries, he could follow the Raver’s movements. Satansfist held his fragment of the Illearth Stone blazing aloft, an oriflamme of gelid fire, and its stark green illumination revealed him clearly as he moved among his forces, barking orders in a hoarse, alien tongue. Without haste he gathered ur-viles about him until their midnight forms spread out under his light like a lake of black water. Then he forged them into two immense wedges, one on either side of him, with their tips at his shoulders, facing Revelstone. In the garish Stone light, the loremasters looked like roynish, compact power, fatal and eager. Waves of other creatures fanned out beyond them on either side as they began to approach the Keep.

Following the Raver’s fire, they moved deliberately straight out of the southeast toward the knuckled and clenched gates at the base of the watchtower.

High Lord Mhoram tightened his grip on his staff and tried to prepare himself for whatever might happen.

At his back, he felt Lord Amatin and Hearthrall Borillar arrive, followed shortly by Tohrm and then Quaan. Without taking his eyes off Satansfist’s approach, the Warmark reported.

“I have ordered two Howard into the tower. More would serve no purpose-they would block each other. Half are archers. They are good warriors,” he added unnecessarily, as if to reassure himself, “and all their Hafts and Warhafts are veterans of the war against Fleshharrower.

” The archers bear lor-liarill shafts. They will begin at your signal.”

Mhoram nodded his approval. “Tell half the archers to strike when the Raver enters arrow range. Hold the rest for my signal.”

The Warmark turned to deliver these instructions, but Mhoram abruptly caught his arm. A chill tightened the High Lord’s scalp as he said, “Place more archers upon the battlements above the court of the Gilden. If by some great ill Satansfist breaches the gates, the defenders of the tower will require aid. And-stand warriors ready to cut loose the crosswalks from the Keep.”

“Yes, High Lord.” Quaan was a warrior and understood the necessity for such orders. He returned Mhoram’s grip firmly, like a clasp of farewell, then left the top of the tower.

“Breach the gates?” Borillar gaped as if the mere suggestion amazed him. “How is it possible?”

“It is not possible,” Tohrm replied flatly.

“Nevertheless we must prepare.” Mhoram braced his staff on the stone like a standard, and watched samadhi Sheol’s approach.

No one spoke while the army marched forward. It was already less than a hundred yards below the gates. Except for the dead rumble of its myriad feet on the frozen ground, it moved in silence, as if it were stalking the Keep-or as if in spite of their driven hunger many of its creatures themselves dreaded what Satansfist meant to do.

Mhoram felt that he had only moments left. He asked Amatin if she had seen either Trevor or Loerya.

“No.” Her whispered answer had an empty sound, like a recognition of abandonment.

Moments later, a flight of arrows thrummed from one of the upper levels of the tower. They were invisible in the darkness, and Satansfist gave no sign that he knew they had been fired. But the radiance of the Illearth Stone struck them into flame and knocked them down before they were within thirty feet of him.

Another flight, and another, had no effect except to light the front of the Raver’s army, revealing in lurid green and orange the deadly aspect of its leaders.

Then samadhi halted. On either side of him, the ur-viles trembled. He coughed his orders. The wedges tightened. Snarling, the Cavewights and other creatures arranged themselves into formations, ready to charge.

Without haste or hesitation, the Giant-Raver clenched his fist, so that iridescent steam plumed upward from his fragment of the Stone.

Mhoram could feel the Stone’s power mounting, radiating in tumid waves against his face.

Abruptly, a bolt of force lashed from the Stone and struck the ground directly before one of the loremasters. The blast continued until the soil and rock caught fire, burned with green flames, crackled like firewood. Then samadhi moved his bolt, drew it over the ground in a wide, slow arc toward the other loremaster. His power left behind a groove that flamed and smouldered, flared and groaned in earthen agony.

When the arc was complete, it enclosed Satansfist from side to side-a half-circle of emerald coals standing in front of him like a harness anchored by the two ur-vile wedges.

Remembering the vortex of trepidation with which Fleshharrower had attacked the Warward at Doriendor Corishev, Mhoram strode across the tower and shouted up at the Keep, “Leave the battlements! All but the warriors must take shelter! Do not expose yourselves lest the sky itself assail you!” Then he returned to Lord Amatin’s side.

Below him, the two great loremasters raised their staves and jabbed them into the ends of the arc. At once, Demondim vitriol began to pulse wetly along the groove. The green flames turned black; they bubbled, spattered, burst out of the arc as if Satansfist had tapped a vein of EarthBlood in the ground.

By the time Warmark Quaan had returned to the tower, Mhoram knew that samadhi was not summoning a vortex. The Raver’s exertion was like nothing he had ever seen before. And it was slower than he had expected it to be. Once the ur-viles had tied themselves to the arc, Satansfist started to work with his Stone. From its incandescent core, he drew a fire that gushed to the ground and poured into the groove of the arc. This force combined with the black fluid of the ur-viles to make a mixture of ghastly potency. Soon black-green snake-tongues of lightning were flicking into the air from the whole length of the groove, and these bursts carried to the onlookers a gut-deep sense of violation, as if the rocky foundations of the foothills were under assault-as if the Despiser dared traduce even the necessary bones of the Earth.

Yet the power did nothing except grow. Tongues of lightning leaped higher, joined together, became gradually but steadily more brilliant and wrong. Their violence increased until Mhoram felt that the nerves of his skin and eyes could endure no more-and went on increasing. When dawn began to bleed into the night at Satansfist’s back, the individual tongues had merged into three continuous bolts striking without thunder into the deepest darkness of the clouds.

The High Lord’s throat was too dry; he had to swallow roughly several times before he could muster enough moisture to speak. “Hearthrall Tohrm”- still he almost gagged on the words- “they will attack the gates. This power will attack the gates. Send any Gravelingases who will go to the aid of the stone.”

Tohrm started at the sound of his name, then hurried away as if he were glad to remove himself from the baleful glare of the arc.

While grey daylight spread over the siege, the three unbroken bolts jumped and gibbered maniacally, raged at the silent clouds, drew closer to each other. Behind them, the army began to howl as the pressure became more and more unendurable.

Lord Amatin dug her thin fingers into the flesh of Mhoram’s arm. Quaan had crossed his arms over his chest, and was straining against himself to keep from shouting. Borillar’s hands scrubbed fervidly over his features in an effort to erase the sensation of wrong. His staff lay useless at his feet. The High Lord prayed for them all and fought his dread.