The Power That Preserves

inner gates must be preserved. Without the gates, the tower might still restrict Satansfist’s approach enough to keep Revelstone alive; without the tower, the gates could still seal out Satansfist. Without one or the other, Revelstone was defeated. But Mhoram could not fight for both, could not be in both places at once. He had to choose where to concentrate the Keep’s defence.

He chose the gates.

At once, he sent Tohrm to gather the Gravelingases. Then he turned to the battle of the courtyard. He ignored the Cavewights, focused instead on the shambling dead as they trampled the Gilden tree and pushed Trell and Trevor back against the walls. Shouting to the warriors around him for clingor, he hurled his Lords-fire down at the faceless shapes, battered them into sand. Together, he and Trevor cleared a space in which the trapped men could make their escape.

Almost immediately, the sentries brought two tough clingor lines, anchored them, tossed them down to Trevor and Trell. But in the brief delay, a new wave of Cavewights rode into the courtyard on the shoulders of the dead and joined the assault on the doors. With a nauseating sound like the breaking of bones, they tore the doors off the hinges, tossed the stone slabs aside, and charged roaring into the tower. They were met instantly by staunch, dour-handed warriors, but the momentum and strength of the Cavewights carried them inward.

When he saw the doors broken, Trell gave a cry of outrage, and tried to attack the Cavewights. Slapping aside the clingor line, he rushed the dead as if he believed he could fight his way through them to join the defence of the tower. For a moment, his granite club and his rhadhamaerl lore broke passage for him, and he advanced a few steps across the court. But then even his club snapped. He went down under the prodigious weight of the dead.

Trevor sprang after him. Aided by Mhoram’s fire, the Lord reached Trell. One of the dead stamped a glancing blow along his ankle, but he ignored the pain, took hold of Trell’s shoulders, dragged him back.

As soon as he was able to regain his feet, Trell pushed Trevor away and attacked the insensate forms with his fists.

Trevor snatched up one of the clingor lines and whipped it several times around his chest. Then he pounced at Trell’s back. With his arms under Trell’s, he gripped his staff like a bar across Trell’s chest, and shouted for the warriors to pull him up. Instantly, ten warriors caught the line and hauled. While Mhoram protected the two men, they were drawn up the wall and over the parapet of the abutment.

With a sickening jolt, the dead thudded against the inner gates.

Amid the cries of battle from the tower, and the mute pressure building sharply against the gates, High Lord Mhoram turned his attention to Trell and Lord Trevor.

The Gravelingas struggled free of Trevor’s hold and the hands of the warriors, thrust himself erect, and faced Mhoram as if he meant to leap at the High Lord’s throat. His face flamed with exertion and fury.

“Intact!” he rasped horribly. “The tower lost-intact for Sheol’s use! Is that your purpose for Revelstone? Better that we destroy it ourselves!”

Swinging his powerful arms to keep anyone from touching him, he spun wildly and lurched away into the Keep.

Mhoram’s gaze burned dangerously, but he bit his lips, kept himself from rushing after the Gravelingas. Trell had spent himself extravagantly, and failed. He could not be blamed for hating his inadequacy; he should be left in peace. But his voice had sounded like the voice of a man who had lost all peace forever. Torn within himself, Mhoram sent two warriors to watch over Trell, then turned toward Trevor.

The Lord stood panting against the back wall. Blood streamed from his injured ankle; his face was stained with the grime of battle, and he shuddered as the effort of breathing wracked his chest. Yet he seemed unconscious of his pain, unconscious of himself. His eyes gleamed with eldritch perceptions. When Mhoram faced him, he gasped, “I have felt it. I know what it is.”

Mhoram shouted for a Healer, but Trevor shrugged away any suggestion that he needed help. He met the High Lord like a man exalted, and repeated, “I have felt it, Mhoram.”

Mhoram controlled his concern. “Felt it?”

“Lord Foul’s power. The power which makes all this possible.”

“The Stone-” Mhoram began.

“The Stone does not suffice. This weather-the speed with which he became so mighty after his defeat in Garroting Deep-the force of this army, though it is so far from his command-these dead shapes, compelled from the very ground by power so vast-!

“The Stone does not suffice. I have felt it. Even Lord Foul the Despiser could not become so much more unconquerable in seven short years.”

“Then how?” the High Lord breathed.

“This weather-this winter. It sustains and drives the army-it frees Satansfist-it frees the Despiser himself for other work-the work of the Stone. The work of these dead. Mhoram, do you remember Drool Rock-worm’s power over the weather-and the moon?”

Mhoram nodded in growing amazement and dread.

“I have felt it. Lord Foul holds the Staff of Law.”

A cry tore itself past Mhoram’s lips, despite his instantaneous conviction that Trevor was right. “How is it possible? The Staff fell with High Lord Elena under Melenkurion Sky weir.”

“I do not know. Perhaps the same being who slew Elena bore the Staff to Foul’s Creche-perhaps it is dead Kevin himself who wields the Staff on Foul’s behalf, so that the Despiser need not personally use a power not apt for his control. But I have felt the Staff, Mhoram-the Staff of Law beyond all question.”

Mhoram nodded, fought to contain the amazed fear that seemed to echo inimitably within him. The Staff! Battle raged around him; he could afford neither time nor strength for anything but the immediate task. Lord Foul held the Staff! If he allowed himself to think about such a thing, he might lose himself in panic. Eyes flashing, he gave Trevor’s shoulder a hard clasp of praise and comradeship, then turned back toward the courtyard.

For a moment, he pushed his perceptions through the din and clangour, bent his senses to assess Revelstone’s situation. He could feel Lord Amatin atop the tower, still waging her fire against the dead. She was weakening-her continuous exertions had long since passed the normal limits of her stamina-yet she kept her ragged blaze striking downward, fighting as if she meant to spend her last pulse or breath in the tower’s defence. And her labour had its effect. Though she could not stop even a tenth of the shambling shapes, she had now broken so many of them that the unbound sand clogged the approaches to the tunnel. Fewer of the dead could plough forward at one time; her work, and the constriction of the tunnel, slowed their march, slowed the multiplication of their pressure on the inner gates.

But while she strove, battle began to mount up through the tower toward her. Few Cavewights now tried to enter through the doors. Their own dead blocked the corridors; and while they fought for access, they were exposed to the archers of the Keep. But enemies were breaching the tower somehow; Mhoram could hear loud combat surging upward through the tower’s complex passages. With an effort, he ignored everything else around him, concentrated on the tower. Then through the hoarse commands, the clash of weapons, the raw cries of hunger and pain, the tumult of urgent feet, he sensed Satansfist’s attack on the outer wall of the tower. The Raver threw fierce bolts of Illearth power at the exposed coigns and windows, occasionally at Lord Amatin herself; and under the cover of these blasts, his creatures threw up ladders against the wall, swarmed through the openings.

In the stone under his feet, High Lord Mhoram could feel the inner gates groaning.

Quickly, he turned to one of the warriors, a tense Stonedownor woman. “Go to the tower. Find Warmark Quaan. Say that I command him to withdraw from the tower. Say that he must bring Lord Amatin with him. Go.”

She saluted and ran. A few moments later, he saw her dash over the courtyard along one of the crosswalks.

By that time, he had already returned to the battle. With Lord Trevor working doggedly at his side, he renewed his attack on the earthen pressure building against Revelstone’s inner gates. While the supportive power of the Gravelingases vibrated in the stone under him, he gathered all his accumulated ferocity and drove it at the crush of dead. Now he knew clearly what he hoped to achieve; he wanted to cover the flagstones of the courtyard with so much sand that the blind, shambling shapes would have no solid footing from which to press forward. Trevor’s aid seemed to uplift his effectiveness, and he shattered dead by tens and scores until his staff hummed in