White Gold Wielder

Her tone made his eyes burn, but not with tears. Every word of his answer was as distinct as a coal. “A long time ago,” with the blood of half-mindless Cavewights on his head, “I swore I was never going to kill again. But that hasn't stopped me.” With both hands, he had driven a knife into the chest of the man who had slain Lena; and that blow had come back to damn him. He had no idea how many Bhrathair had died in the collapse of Kemper's Pitch. “The last time I was there, I killed twenty-one of them.” Twenty-one men and women, most of whom did not know that their lives were evil. “I'm sick of guilt. If you think I'm going to do anything that will destroy the Arch of Time, you had better try to stop me now.”

At that, her eyes narrowed as if she were considering the implications of running her blade through his throat. Hollian and Linden stared; and Sunder tried to brace himself to go to Covenant's aid. But the First, too, was the Unbeliever's friend. She had given him the title he valued most. Abruptly, the challenge of her sword dropped. “No, Giantfriend,” she sighed. “We have come too far. I trust you or nothing.”

Roughly, she sheathed her longsword and turned away.

Firelight gleamed in the wet streaks of Linden's concern and relief. After a moment, she came over to Covenant. She did not meet his gaze. But she put one hand briefly on his right forearm like a recognition that he was not like her father.

While that touch lasted, he ached to take hold of her hand and raise it to his lips But he did not move. He believed that if he did he would surely shatter. And every promise he had made would be lost.

The next day, the fruits of the verdant sun were worse. They clogged the ground with the teeming, intractable frenzy of a sea in storm. And Sunder's weariness went too deep to be cured by one night of diamondraught-induced sleep, one swallow of the rare and potent roborant Pitchwife created by combining his liquor with vitrim. But the Clave made no more efforts to take control of the krill or the Haruchai. The shade of the trees held some of the underbrush to bearable proportions. No Grim or other attack came riding out of Revelstone to bar the way. And the travellers had made such good progress during the past two days that they did not need to hurry now. None of them doubted that the Keep of the na-Mhoram was within reach. At infrequent intervals, the distortion of the jungle provided a glimpse of the south-western sky; and then all the companions could see the hot, feral shaft of the Banefire burning toward the sun like an immedicable scald in the green-hued air.

Every glimpse turned Linden's taut, delicate features a shade paler. Memory and emanations of power assaulted her vulnerable senses. She had once been Gibbon-Raver's prisoner in Revelstone, and his touch had raised the darkness coiled around the roots of her soul to the stature of all night. Yet she did not falter. She had aimed the company to this place by the strength of her own will, had wrested this promise from Covenant when he had been immobile with despair. In spite of her unresolved hunger and loathing for power, she did not let herself hang back.

The Stonedownors also held themselves firm They had a score to settle with the Clave, a tally that stretched from the hold of Revelstone and the ruin of the villages down to the Sunbane-shaped foundations of their lives. Whenever Sunder's need for rest became severe, Hollian took the orcrest and krill herself, though she was unskilled at that work and the path she made was not as clear as his. The silent caterwaul and torment of the vegetation blocked the ground at every step; but the company found a way through it.

And as the sun began to sag toward the high ridge of the Westron Mountains-still distant to the south and west beyond the region which had once been named Trothgard, but near at hand in the east jutting promontory of the range-the companions reached the verge of the jungle below the rocky and barren foothills of the high Keep.

Halting in the last shelter of the trees, they looked up at their destination.

Revelstone: once the proud bastion and bourne of the ancient, Land-serving Lords; now the home of the na-Mhoram and the Clave.

Here, at the apex of the promontory, the peaks dropped to form an upland plateau pointing east and sweeping north. All the walls of the plateau were sheer, as effective as battlements; and in the centre of the upland lay Glimmermere, the eldritch tarn with its waters untouched by the Sunbane until they cascaded down Furl Falls in the long south face of the promontory and passed beyond the sources of their potency. But the Keep itself stood to the east of Glimmermere and Furl Falls. The Unhomed had wrought the city of the Lords into the eastward wedge of the plateau, filling that outcrop of the Earth's hard gutrock with habitations and defences.

Directly above the company stood the watchtower, the tip of the wedge Shorter than the plateau, its upper shaft rose free of the main Keep bulking behind it; but its lower half was sealed by walls of native stone to the rest of the wedge. In that way, Revelstone’s sole entrance was guarded. Long ago, massive gates in the southeast curve of the watchtower's base had protected a passage under the tower-a tunnel which gave admittance only to the closed courtyard between the tower and the main Keep, where stood a second set of gates. During the last war, the siege of Revelstone had broken the outer gates, leaving them in rubble. But Covenant knew from experience that the inner gates still held, warding the Clave with their imponderable thickness and weight.

Above the abutment over its opening, the round shaft of the watchtower was marked with battlements and embrasures to the crenellated rim of its crown. They were irregular and unpredictable, shaped to suit the tower's internal convolutions. Yet the face of the watchtower was as simple as child's-work compared to the dramatic complexity of the walls of the main Keep. For a surprising distance into the plateau, the sheer cliffs had been crafted by the Unhomed-written with balconies and buttresses, parapets and walkways, and punctuated with windows of every description, embrasures on the lower levels, oriels and shaded coigns higher up-a prolific and apparently spontaneous multiplication of detail that always gave Covenant an impression of underlying structure, meaning which only Giants could read. The faint green sunset danced and sheened on the south face, confusing his human ability to grasp the organization of something so tall, grand, and timeless.

But even his superficial senses felt the tremendous power of the Banefire's beam as it struck sunward from athwart the great Keep. With one stroke, that red force transgressed all his memories of grandeur and glory, changed the proud habitation of the Lords to a place of malefic peril. When he had approached Revelstone so many days ago to rescue Linden, Sunder, and Hollian, he had been haunted by grief for the Giants and Lords and beauty the Land had lost. But now the knot of his chosen rage was pulled too tight to admit sorrow.

He intended to tear that place down if necessary to root out the Clave-and the bare thought that he might be forced to damage Revelstone made him savage.

Yet when he looked at his companions, saw the rapt faces of the Giants, his anger loosened slightly. The Keep had the power to entrance them. Pitchwife's mien was wide with the glee of appreciation; the First's eyes shone pride at the handiwork of her long-dead people; Mistweave gazed upward hungrily, all dismay forgotten for a time. Even Honninscrave had momentarily lost his air of doom, as though he knew intuitively that Revelstone would give him a chance to make restitution.

Conflicting passions rose in Covenant's throat. Thickly, he asked, “Can you read it? Do you know what it means? I've been here three times”- four counting the brief translation during which he had refused Mhoram's summons- “but no one's ever been able to tell me what it means.”

For a moment, none of the Giants answered. They could not step back from the wonder of the Keep They had seen Coercri in Seareach and marvelled at it; but for them Revelstone was transcendent. Watching them Covenant knew with a sudden pang that now they would never turn back-that no conceivable suasion would induce them to set their Search and their private purposes aside, to leave the Sunbane and Lord Foul to him. The Sunbane had eroded them in fundamental ways, gnawing at their ability to believe that their Search might actually succeed. What could Giants do to aid a Land in which nature itself had become the source of horror? But the sight of Revelstone restored them to themselves. They would never give up their determination to fight.

Unless Covenant found his own answer soon, he would not be able to save them.

Swallowing heavily, Pitchwife murmured, “No words-There are none. Your scant human tongue is void-” Tears spread through the creases of his face, mapping his emotion.

But the First said for him, “All tongues, Giantfriend. All tongues lack such language. There is that in the granite glory of the world's heart which may not be uttered with words. All other expression must be dumb when the pure stone speaks. And here that speech has been made manifest-Ah, my heart!” Her voice rose as if she wanted to both sing and keen. But for her also no words were adequate. Softly, she concluded, 'The Giants of the