The 1st Chronicles of Thomas Covenant #2: The Illearth War (56 page)

He could not understand Elena’s power over him, could not control his response.

She was an illusion, a figment; he should not be so attracted to her. And she should not be so willing to attract him. He was already responsible for her; his one potent act in the Land had doomed him to that. How could she not blame him?

Moving with an intemperate jerkiness, he dried himself on one of the blankets, then draped it by the pot to dry, and began to dress. He put on his clothes fiercely, as if he were girding for battle-laced and hauled and zipped and buckled himself into his sturdy boots, his T-shirt, his tough, protective jeans. He

checked to be sure that he still carried his penknife and Hearthrall Tohrm’s orcrest in his pockets.

When he was properly caparisoned, he went back through the twilight toward the High Lord. He stamped his feet to warn her of his approach, but the grass absorbed his obscure vehemence, and he made no more noise than an indignant specter.

He found her standing a short distance downhill from the boulder. She was gazing out over Trothgard. with her arms folded across her chest, and did not turn toward him as he drew near. For a time, he stood two steps behind her. The sky was still too sun-pale for stars, but Trothgard lay under the premature gloaming of the mountains. In the twilight, the face of the Lords’ promise to the Land was veiled and dark.

Covenant twisted his ring, wound it on his finger as if he were tightening it to the pitch of some outbreak. Water from his wet hair dripped into his eyes. When he spoke, his voice was harsh with a frustration that he could neither relieve nor repress.

“Hellfire, Elena! I’m your father!”

She gave no sign that she had heard him, but after a moment she said in a low, musing tone, “Triock son of Thuler would believe that you have been honored. He would not utter it kindly-but his heart would speak those words, or hold that thought. Had you not been summoned to the Land, he might have wed Lena my mother. And he would not have taken himself to the Loresraat, for he had no yearning for knowledge -the stewardship of Stonedownor life would have sufficed for him. But had he and Lena my mother borne a child who grew to become High Lord of the Council of Revelstone, he would have felt honored-both elevated and humbled by his part in his daughter.

“Hear me, Thomas Covenant. Triock Thuler-son of Mithil Stonedown is my true father-the parent of my heart, though he is not the sire of my blood. Lena my mother did not wed him, though he begged her to share her life with him. She desired no other sharing -the life of your child satisfied her. But though she would not share her life, he shared his. He pro

vided for her and for me. He took the place of a son with Trell Lena’s father and Atiaran her mother.

“Ah, he was a dour parent. His heart’s love ran in broken channels-yearning and grief and, yes, rage against you were diminishless for him, finding new paths when the old were turned or dammed. But he gave to Lena my mother and to me all a father’s tenderness and devotion. Judge of him by me, Thomas Covenant. When dreaming of you took Lena’s thoughts from me-when Atiaran lost in torment her capacity to care for me, and called to herself all Trell her husband’s attention-then Triock son of Thuler stood beside me. He is my father.”

Covenant tried to efface his emotions with acid. “He should have killed me when he had the chance.”

She went on as if she had not heard him. “He shielded my heart from unjust demands. He taught me that the anguishes and furies of my parents and their parents need not wrack or enrage me-that I was neither the cause nor the cure of their pain. He taught me that my life is my own-that I could share in the care and consolation of wounds without sharing the wounds, without striving to be the master of lives other than my own.

He taught me this-he who gave his own life to Lena my mother.

“He abhors you, Thomas Covenant. And yet without him as my father I also would abhor you.”

“Are you through?” Covenant grated through the clench of his teeth. “How much more do you think I can stand?”

She did not answer aloud. Instead, she turned toward him. Tears streaked her cheeks. She was silhouetted against the darkening vista of Trothgard, as she stepped up to him, slipped her arms about his neck, and kissed him.

He gasped, and her breath was snatched into his lungs. He was stunned. A black mist filled his sight as her lips caressed his.

Then for a moment he lost control. He repulsed her as if her breath carried infection. Crying, “Bustard!” he swung, backhanded her face with all his force.

The blow staggered her.

He pounced after her. His fingers clawed her blanket, tore it from her shoulders.

But his violence did not daunt her. She caught her balance, did not flinch or recoil. She made no effort to cover herself. With her head high, she held herself erect and calm; naked, she stood before him as if she were invulnerable.

It was Covenant who flinched. He quailed away from her as if she appalled him.

“Haven’t I committed enough crimes?” he panted hoarsely. “Aren’t you satisfied?”

Her answer seemed to spring clean and clear out of the strange otherness of her gaze. “You cannot ravish me, Thomas Covenant. There is no crime here. I am willing. I have chosen you.”

“Don’t!” he groaned. “Don’t say that!” He flung his arms about his chest as if to conceal a hole in his armor. “You’re just trying to give me gifts again. You’re trying to bribe me.”

“No. I have chosen you. I wish to share life with you.”

“Don’t!” he repeated. “You don’t know what you’re doing. Don’t you understand how desperately II — ?”

But he could not say the words, need you. He choked on them. He wanted her, wanted what she offered him more than anything. But he could not say it. A passion more fundamental than desire restrained him.

She made no move toward him, but her voice reached out. “How can my love harm you?”

“Hellfire!” In frustration, he spread his arms wide like a man baring an ugly secret. “I’m a leper! Don’t you see that?” But he knew immediately that she did not see, could not see because she lacked the knowledge or the bitterness to perceive the thing he called leprosy. He hurried to try to explain before she stepped closer to him and he was lost. “Look. Look!” He pointed at his chest with one accusing finger. “Don’t you understand what I’m afraid of? Don’t you comprehend the danger here? I’m afraid I’ll become another Kevin! First I’ll start loving you, and then I’ll learn how to use the wild magic or whatever, and then Foul will trap me into despair, and then I’ll be destroyed. Everything will be destroyed. That’s been his plan all along. Once I start loving you or the Land or anything, he can just sit back and laugh!

Bloody hell, Elena! Don’t you see it?”

Now she moved. When she was within arm’s reach, she stopped, and stretched out her hand. With the tips of her fingers, she touched his forehead as if to smooth away the darkness there. “Ah, Thomas Covenant,” she breathed gently, “I cannot bear to see you frown so. Do not fear, beloved. You will not suffer Kevin Landwaster’s fate. I will preserve you.”

At her touch, something within him broke. The pure tenderness of her gesture overcame him. But it was not his restraint which broke; it was his frustration. An answering tenderness washed through him. He could see her mother in her, and at the sight he suddenly perceived that it was not anger which made him violent toward her, not anger which so darkened his love, but rather grief and self-despite. The hurt he had done her mother was only a complex way of hurting himself-an expression of his leprosy. He did not have to repeat that act.

It was all impossible, everything was impossible, she did not even exist. But at that moment he did not care. She was his daughter. Tenderly, he stooped, retrieved her blanket, wrapped it around her shoulders. Tenderly, he held her face in his hands, touched her sweet face with the impossible aliveness of his fingers. He stroked away the salt pain of her tears with his thumbs, and kissed her forehead tenderly.

TWENTY-TWO: Anundivian Yajna

THE next morning, they left Trothgard, and rode into the unfamiliar terrain of the mountains. Half a league into the range, Amok brought them to a bridge of native stone which spanned the narrowing river-gorge of the Rill. To ameliorate his own dread of heights as well as to steady his mount, Covenant led his horse across. The bridge was wide, and the Bloodguard bracketed him with their Ranyhyn; he had no difficulty.

From there, Amok guided the High Lord’s party up into the recesses of the peaks.

Beyond the foothills, his path became abruptly demanding-precipitous, rugged, and slow. He was reduced to a more careful pace as he led the riders along valleys as littered and wracked as wrecks-up treacherous slides and scree falls which lay against cliffs and cola and coombs as if regurgitated out of the mountain gut-rock-down ledges which traversed weathered stone fronts like scars. But he left no doubt that he knew his way. Time and again he walked directly to the only possible exit from a closed valley, or found the only horse-worthy trail through a rockfall, or trotted without hesitation into a crevice which bypassed a blank peak. Through the rough-hewn bulk and jumble of the mountains, he led the High Lord with the obliqueness of a man threading an accustomed maze.

For the first day or so, his goal seemed to be simply to gain elevation. He took the riders scrambling upward until the cold appeared to pour down on them from the ice tips of the tallest peaks. Thinner air gave

Covenant visions of scaling some inaccessible and remorseless mountain, and he accepted a thick half-robe from Bannor with a shiver which was not caused by the chill alone.

But then Amok changed directions. As if he were finally satisfied by the icy air and the pitch of the mountainscapes, he sought no more altitude. Instead, he began to follow the private amazement of his trail southward. Rather than plunging deeper into the Westron Mountains, he moved parallel to their eastern borders. By day, he guided his companions along his unmarked way, and at night he left them in sheltered glens and wombs and gorges, where there were unexpected patches of grass for the mounts, to deal as they saw fit with the exhilarating or cruel cold. He did not seem to feel the cold himself. With his thin apparel fluttering against his limbs, he strode ahead in unwearied cheerfulness, as if he ware impervious to fatigue and ice. Often he had to hold himself back so that the Ranyhyn and Covenant’s mustang could keep pace with him.

The two Bloodguard were like him-unaffected by cold or altitude. But they were Haruchai, born to these mountains. Their nostrils distended at the vapory breath of dawn or dusk. Their eyes roamed searchingly over the sunward crags, the valleys occasionally bedizened with azure terns, the hoary glaciers crouching in the highest cots, the snow-fed streams. Though they wore nothing but short robes, they never shivered or gasped at the cold. Their wide foreheads and flat cheeks and confident poise betrayed no heart upsurge, no visceral excitement. Yet there was something clear and passionate in their alacrity as they watched over Elena and Covenant and Amok.

Elena and Covenant were not so immune to the cold. Their susceptibility clung to them, made them eager for each new day’s progress toward warmer southern air. But their blankets and extra robes were warm. The High Lord did not appear to suffer. And as long as she did not suffer, Covenant felt no pain. Discomfort he could ignore. He was more at peace than he had been for a long time.

Since they had left Trothgard-since he had made the discovery which enabled him to love her without despising himself-he had put everything else out of his mind and concentrated on his daughter. Lord Foul, the Warward, even this quest itself, were insubstantial to him. He watched Elena, listened to her, felt her presence at all times.

When she was in the mood to talk, he questioned her readily, and when she was not he gave her silence. And in every mood he was grateful to her, poignantly moved by the offer she had made-the offer he had refused.

He could not help being conscious of the fact that she was not equally content.

She had not made her offer lightly, and seemed unwilling to understand his refusal. But the sorrow of having given her pain only sharpened his attentiveness toward her. He concentrated on her as only a man deeply familiar with loneliness could. And she was not blind to this. After the first few days of their mountain trek, she again relaxed in his company, and her smiles expressed a frankness of affection which she had not permitted herself before. Then he felt that he was in harmony with her, and he traveled with her gladly. At times he chirruped to his horse as if he enjoyed riding it.

But in the days that followed, a change slowly came over her-a change that had nothing to do with him. As time passed-as they journeyed nearer to the secret location of the Seventh Ward-she became increasingly occupied by the purpose of her quest. She questioned Amok more often, interrogated him more tensely. At times, Covenant could see in the elsewhere stare of her eyes that she was thinking of the war-a duty from which she had turned aside — and there were occasional flashes of urgency in her voice as she strove to ask the questions that would unlock Amok’s mysterious knowledge.

This was a burden that Covenant could not help her bear. He knew none of the crucial facts himself. The days passed; the moon expanded to its full, then declined toward its last quarter, but she made no progress. Finally, his desire to assist her in some way led him to speak to Bannor.

In a curious way, he felt unsafe with the Bloodguard-not physically, but emotionally. There was a tension of disparity between himself and Bannor. The Haruchai’s stony gaze had the magisterial air of a man who did not deign to utter his judgment of his companions. And Covenant had other reasons to feel uncomfortable with Bannor. More than once, he had made Bannor bear the brunt of his own bootless outrage.

But he had nowhere else to turn. He was entirely useless to Elena.

Since his days in Revelstone, he had been alert to a fine shade of discrepancy in the Bloodguard’s attitude toward Amok-a discrepancy which had been verified but not explained in Revelwood. However, he did not know how to approach the subject.