The Power That Preserves

brokenly, “Ah, my Lord. Then why do you delay? Why do you fear?”

“Because I am mortal, weak. The way is only clear-not sure. In my time, I have been a seer and oracle. Now I–I desire a sign. I require to see.”

He spoke simply, but almost at once his mortality, his weakness, became too much for him. Tears blurred his vision. The burden was not one that he could bear alone. He opened his arms and was swept into the embrace of the Lords.

The melding of their minds reached him, poured into him on the surge of their united concern. Folded within their arms and their thoughts, he felt their love soothe him, fill him like water after a long thirst, feed his hunger. Throughout the siege, he had given them his strength, and now they returned strength to him. With quiet diffidence, Lord Trevor restored his crippled sense of endurance in service-a fortitude which came, not from the server, but from the preciousness of the thing served. Lord Loerya shared with him her intense instinct for protection, her capacity for battle on behalf of children-loved ones who could not defend themselves. And Lord Amatin, though she was still frail herself, gave him the clear, uncluttered concentration of her study, her lore-wisdom- a rare gift which for his sake she proffered separate from her distrust of emotion.

In such melding, he began to recover himself. Blood seemed to return to his veins; his muscles uncramped; his bones remembered their rigor. He accepted the Lords deep into himself, and in response he shared with them all the perceptions which made his decision necessary. Then he rested on their love and let it assuage him.

His appetite for the meld seemed to have no bottom, but after a time the contact was interrupted by a strident voice so full of strange thrills that none of the Lords could refuse to hear it. A sentry raced into the hall clamouring for their attention, and when they looked at her she shouted, “The Raver is attacked! His army-the encampment-! It is under attack. By Waynhim! They are few-few- but the Raver had no defences on that side, and they have already done great damage. He has called his army back from Revelstone to fight them!”

High Lord Mhoram whirled away, ordering the Warward to readiness as he moved. He heard Warmark Quaan echo his commands. A look full of dire consequences for the Raver passed between them; then Quaan leaped onto his own horse, a tough, mountain-bred mustang. To one side among the warriors, Mhoram saw Hearthrall Borillar mounting. He started to order Borillar down; Hirebrands were not fighters. But then he remembered how much hope Borillar had placed in Thomas Covenant, and left the Hearthrall alone.

Loerya was already on her way to aid the defences of the tower, keep it secure so that the Warward would be able to re-enter Revelstone. Trevor had gone to the gates. Only Amatin remained to see the danger shining in Mhoram’s eyes. She held him briefly, then released him, muttering, “It would appear that the-Waynhim have made the same decision.”

Mhoram spun and leaped lightly onto Drinny’s back. The Ranyhyn whinnied; peals of pride and defiance resounded through the hall. As the huge gates opened outward on the courtyard, Mhoram sent Drinny forward at a canter.

The Warward started into motion behind him, and at its head High Lord Mhoram rode out to war.

In a moment, he flashed through the gates, across the courtyard between steep banks of sand and earth, into the straight tunnel under the tower. Drinny stretched jubilantly under him, exalted by health and running and the scent of battle. As Mhoram passed through the splintered remains of the outer gates, he had already begun to outdistance the Warward.

Beyond the gates, he wheeled Drinny once, gave himself an instant in which to look back up at the lofty Keep. He saw no warriors in the tower, but he sensed them bristling behind the fortifications and windows. The bluff stone of the tower, with Revelstone rising behind it like the prow of a great ship, answered his gaze in granite permanence as if it were a prophecy by the old Giants-a cryptic perception that victory and defeat were human terms which had no meaning in the language of mountains.

Then the riders came cantering through the throat of the tower, and Mhoram turned to look at the enemy. For the first time, he saw samadhi’s army from ground level. It stood blackly in the bleak winterscape around him like a garrote into which he had prematurely thrust his neck. Briefly, he remembered other battles-Kiril Threndor, Doom’s Retreat, Doriendor Corishev-as if they had been child’s play, mere shadows cast by the struggle he now faced. But he pushed them out of his mind, bent his attention toward the movements in the foothills below him.

As the sentry had said, Revelstone’s attackers were pelting furiously back toward their encampment. It was only a few hundred yards distant, and Mhoram could see clearly why samadhi’s forces had been recalled. The Giant-Raver was under assault by a tight wedge of ten-or fifteenscore Waynhim.

Satansfist himself was not their target, though he fought against them personally with feral blasts of green. The Waynhim struck against the undefended rear of the encampment in order to destroy its food supplies. They had already incinerated great long troughs of the carrion and gore on which Lord Foul’s creatures fed; and while they warded off the scourge of Satansfist’s Stone as best they could, they assailed other stores, flash-fired huge aggregations of hacked dead flesh into cinders.

Even if they had faced the Raver alone, they would have had no chance to survive. With his Giantish strength and his fragment of the Illearth Stone-with the support of the Staff of Law-he could have beaten back ten or fifteen thousand Waynhim. And he had an army to help him. Hundreds of ur-viles were nearly within striking distance; thousands of other creatures converged toward the fighting from all directions. The Waynhim had scant moments of life left.

Yet they fought on, resisted samadhi’s emerald ill with surprising success. Like the ur-viles, they were Demondim-spawn- masters of a dark and potent lore which no Lord had ever touched. And they had not wasted the seven and forty years since they had gone into hiding. They had prepared themselves to resist Despite. Yelping rare words of power, gesturing urgently, they shrugged off the Raver’s blasts, and continued to destroy every trough and accumulation of food they could reach.

All this High Lord Mhoram took in almost instantly. The raw wind hurt his face, made his eyes burn, but he thrust his vision through the blur to see. And he saw that, because of the Waynhim, he and the Warward had not yet been noticed by Satansfist’s army.

“Warmark,” he snapped, “we must aid the Waynhim! Give the commands.”

Rapidly, Quaan barked his instructions to the mounted warriors and the Hafts of the four unmounted Howard as they came through the tunnel. At once, a hundred riders positioned themselves on either side of the High Lord. The remaining two hundred fell into ranks behind him. Without breaking stride, the unmounted warriors began to run.

Mhoram touched Drinny and started at a slow gallop straight down through the foothills toward the Raver.

Some distant parts of the encampment saw the riders before they had covered a third of the distance. Hoarse cries of warning sprang up on all sides; ur-viles, Cavewights, Stone-made creatures which had not already been ordered to the Giant-Raver’s aid, swept like a ragged tide at the Warward. But the confusion around the Waynhim prevented Satansfist’s immediate forces from hearing the alarm. The Raver did not turn his head. Revelstone’s counterattack was nearly upon him before he saw his danger.

In the last distance, Warmark Quaan shouted an order, and the riders broke into full gallop. Mhoram had time for one final look at his situation. The forces around samadhi were still locked in their concentration on the Waynhim. The Raver’s reinforcements were long moments away. If Quaan’s warriors could hit hard enough, break through toward the Waynhim fast enough, the unmounted Howard might be able to protect their rear long enough for them to strike once at the Raver and withdraw.

That way, some of the warriors might survive to return to the Keep.

Mhoram sent Drinny forward at a pace which put him among the first riders crashing into Satansfist’s unready hordes.

They impacted with a shock that shook the High Lord in his seat. Horses plunged, hacked with their hooves. Swords were brandished like metal lightning. Shrieks of surprised pain and rage shivered the air as disorganized ranks of creatures went down under the assault. Heaving their mounts forward, the warriors cut their way in toward the Raver.

But thousands of creatures milled between them and Satansfist. Though the hordes were in confusion, the’ sheer weight of their numbers slowed the Warward’s charge.

Seeing this, Quaan gave new orders. On his command, the warriors flanking Mhoram turned outward on either side, cleared a space between them for the riders behind the High Lord. These Eoman sprinted forward.