The Power That Preserves

cling to ourselves all the more, so that we do not betray the Land.”

His words seemed to ring in the Close, and time passed before Amatin said painfully, “You offer us things which contradict each other, and tell us that we must preserve both, achieve both together. Such counsel is easily spoken.”

In silence, the High Lord strove to share with her his sense of how the contradiction might be mastered, made whole; he let his love for the Land, for Revelstone, for her, flow openly into her mind. And he smiled as he heard Lord Trevor say slowly, “It may be done. I have felt something akin to it. What little strength I have returned to me when the Keep’s need became larger for me than my fear of the Keep’s foe.”

“Fear,” Loerya echoed in assent.

And Mhoram added, “Fear-or hatred.”

A moment later, Amatin began to weep quietly in comprehension. With Loerya and Trevor, Mhoram wrapped courage around her and held her until her dread of her own danger, her own capacity to Desecrate the Land, relaxed. Then the High Lord put down the krill and opened his eyes to the Close.

Dimly, blurrily, his sight made out Hearthrall Tohrm and Trell. Trell still huddled within himself, shirking the horror of what he had done. And Tohrm cradled his head, commiserating in rhadhamaerl grief with the torment of soul which could turn a Gravelingas against beloved stone. They were silent, and Mhoram gazed at them as if he were to blame for Trell’s plight.

But before he could speak, another messenger from Warmark Quaan arrived in the Close, demanded notice. When the High Lord looked up at him, the messenger repeated Quaan’s urgent call for help.

“Soon,” Mhoram sighed, “soon. Tell my friend that we will come when we are able. The Lord Trevor is wounded. I am”-with a brief gesture, he indicated the scalded skin of his head-“the Lord Amatin and I must have food and rest. And the Lord Loerya-“

” I will go,” Loerya said firmly. ” I have not yet fought as I should for Revelstone.” To the messenger, she responded, ”Take me to the place of greatest need, then carry the High Lord’s reply to Warmark Quaan.” Moving confidently, as if the new discovery of power answered her darkest doubts, she climbed the stairs and followed the warrior away toward the south wall of the Keep.

As she departed, she sent the guards to call the Healers and bring food. The other Lords were left alone for a short time, and Tohrm took that opportunity to ask Mhoram what was to be done with Trell.

Mhoram gazed around the ruined galleries as if he were trying to estimate the degree to which he had failed Trell. He knew that generations of rhadhamaerl work would be required to restore some measure of the chamber’s useful Tightness, and tears blurred his vision again as he said to Tohrm, “The Healers must work with him. Perhaps they will be able to restore his mind.”

“What will be the good? How will he endure the knowledge of what he has done?”

“We must help him to endure. I must help him. We must attempt all healing, no matter how difficult. And I who have failed him cannot deny the burden of his need now.”

“Failed him?” Trevor asked. The pain of his injury had drawn the blood from his face, but he had not lost the mood which had inspired him to bear such a great share of the Keep’s defence. “In what way? You did not cause his despair. Had you treated him with distrust, you would have achieved nothing but the confirmation of his distress. Distrust-vindicates itself.”

Mhoram nodded. “And I distrusted-I distrusted all. I kept knowledge secret even while I knew the keeping wrong. It is fortunate that the harm was no greater.”

“Yet you could not prevent-“

“Perhaps. And perhaps-if I had shared my knowledge with him, so that he had known his peril-known- Perhaps he might have found the strength to remember himself-remember that he was a Gravelingas of the rhadhamaerl, a lover of stone.”

Tohrm agreed stiffly, and his sympathy for Trell made him say, “You have erred, High Lord.”

“Yes, Hearthrall,” Mhoram replied with deep gentleness in his voice. “I am who I am-both human and mortal. I have-much to learn.”

Tohrm blinked fiercely, ducked his head. The tautness of his shoulders looked like anger, but Mhoram had shared an ordeal with the Hearthrall, and understood him better.

A moment later, several Healers hurried into the Close. They brought with them two stretchers, and carefully bore Trell away in one. Lord Trevor they carried in the other, peremptorily ignoring his protests. Tohrm went with Trell. Soon Mhoram and Amatin were left with the warrior who brought their food, and a Healer who softly applied a soothing ointment to the High Lord’s burns.

Once Mhoram’s hurts had been treated, he dismissed the warrior and the Healer. He knew that Amatin would want to speak with him, and he cleared the way for her before he began to eat. Then he turned to the food. Through his weariness, he ate deliberately, husbanding his strength so that when he was done he would be able to return to his work.

Lord Amatin matched his silence; she seemed to match the very rhythm of his jaws, as if his example were her only support in the face of a previously unguessed peril. Mhoram sensed that her years of devotion to Kevin’s Wards had left her peculiarly unprepared for what he had told her; her trust in the Lore of the Old Lords had been exceedingly great. So he kept silent while he ate; and when he was done, he remained still, resting himself while he waited for her to speak what was in her heart.

But her question, when it came, took a form he had not anticipated. “High Lord,” she said with a covert nod toward the krill, “if Thomas Covenant has returned to the Land-who summoned him? How was that call performed? And where is he?”

“Amatin-” Mhoram began.

“Who but the Despiser could do such a thing?”

“There are-“

“And if this is not Lord Foul’s doing, then where has Covenant appeared? How can he aid us if he is not here?”

“He will not aid us.” Mhoram spoke firmly to stop the tumble of her questions. “If there is help to be found in him, it will be aid for the Land, not aid for us against this siege. There are other places from which he may serve the Land-yes, and other summoners also. We and Lord Foul are not the only powers. The Creator himself may act to meet this need.”

Her waifish eyes probed him, trying to locate the source of his serenity. “I lack your faith in this Creator. Even if such a being lives, the Law which preserves the Earth precludes-Do not the legends say that if the Creator were to break the arch of Time to place his hand upon the Earth, then the arch and all things in it would come to an end, and the Despiser would be set free?”

“That is said,” Mhoram affirmed. “I do not doubt it. Yet the doom of any creation is upon the head of its Creator. Our work is enough for us. We need not weary ourselves with the burdens of gods.”

Amatin sighed. “You speak with conviction, High Lord. If I were to say such things, they would sound glib.”

“Then do not say them. I speak only of what gives me courage. You are a different person and will have a different courage. Only remember that you are a Lord, a servant of the Land-remember the love that brought you to this work, and do not falter.”

“Yes, High Lord,” she replied, looking intensely into him. “Yet I do not trust this power which makes Desecration possible. I will not hazard it.”

Her gaze turned him back to the krill. Its white gem flamed at him like the light of a paradox, a promise of life and death. Slowly, he reached out and touched its hilt. But his exaltation had faded, and the krill’s heat made him withdraw his hand.

He smiled crookedly. “Yes,” he breathed as if he were speaking to the blade, “it is a hazard. I am very afraid.” Carefully, he took a cloth from within his robe; carefully, he wrapped the krill and set it aside until it could be taken to a place where the Lorewardens could study it. Then he glanced up and saw that Amatin was trying to smile also.

“Come, sister Amatin,” he said to her bravery, “we have delayed our work too long.”

Together, they made their way to the battle, and with Lord Loerya they called fire from their staffs to throw back the hordes of the Despiser.

The three were joined late in the afternoon by a bandaged and hobbling Trevor. But by that time, Revelstone