Nineteen: Soothtell

THE vibration of augury in the na-Mhoram's voice stopped Covenant. The high dome of the space was dark, untouched by the light of the torches; the Riders stood on the dead floor as if it were the bottom of an abyss. Behind the concealment of their hoods, they might have been ur-viles; only the pale flesh of their hands revealed that they were human as they poised their rukhs for fire. Santonin was probably among them. Stonemight Woodhelven's fragment of the Illearth Stone was probably hidden somewhere in this circle. Gibbon's tone told Covenant that the Clave had not gathered here to do him any benefit.

He came to a halt. Echoes of his rage repeated within him like another voice iterating ridicule. Instinctively, he clenched his half-fist around his wedding band. But he did not retreat. In a raw snarl, he demanded, “What the bloody hell have you done with my friends?”

“The soothtell will answer.” Gibbon was eager, hungry. “Do you choose to risk the truth?”

Brinn gazed at Covenant. His mien was impassive; but sweat sheened his forehead. Abruptly, he tensed against his fetters, straining with stubborn futility to break the chains.

Memla had not left the mouth of the hall. “Ware, Halfhand!” she warned in a whisper. “There is malice here.”

He felt the force of her warning. Brinn also was striving to warn him. For an instant, he hesitated. But the Haruchai had recognized him. Somehow, Brinn's people had preserved among them the tale of the Council and of the old wars against Corruption—the true tale, not a distorted version. And Covenant had met Bannor among his Dead in Andelain.

Gripping his self-control, he stepped into the circle, went to the catafalque. He rested a hand momentarily on Brinn's arm. Then he faced the na-Mhoram.

“Let him go.”

The na-Mhoram did not reply directly. Instead, he turned toward Memla. “Memla na-Mhoram-in,” he said, “you have no part in this soothtell. I desire you to depart.”

“No.” Her tone brandished outrage. “You have been false to him. He knows not what he chooses.”

“Nevertheless,” Gibbon began quietly, then lost his hebetude in a strident yell, “you will depart!”

For a moment, she refused. The air of the court was humid with conflicting intentions. Gibbon raised his crozier as if to strike at her. Finally, the combined repudiation of the circle was too strong for her. In deep bitterness, she said, "I gave promise to the Halfhand for the safety of his companions. It is greatly wrong that the na-Mhoram holds the word of a na-Mhoram-in in such slight trust." Turning on her heel, she strode away down the hall.

Gibbon dismissed her as if she had ceased to exist. Facing Covenant once again, he said, “There is no power without blood.” He seemed unable to suppress the acuity of his excitement. “And the soothtell requires power. Therefore this Haruchai. We will shed him to answer your questions.”

“No!” Covenant snapped. “You've killed enough of them already.”

“We must have blood,” the na-Mhoram said.

“Then kill one of your bloody Riders!” Covenant was white with fury. “I don't give a good goddamn what you do! Just leave the Haruchai alone!” _,

“As you wish.” Gibbon sounded triumphant.

“Ur-Lord!” Brinn shouted.

Covenant misread Brinn's warning. He sprang backward, away from the catafalque—into the hands of the Riders behind him. They grappled with him, caught his arms. Faster than he could defend himself, two knives flashed.

Blades slit both his wrists.

Two red lines slashed across his sight, across his soul. Blood spattered to the floor. The cuts were deep, deep enough to kill him slowly. Staring in horror, he sank to his knees. Pulsing rivulets marked his arms to the elbows. Blood dripped from his elbows, spreading his passion on the stone.

Around him, the Riders began to chant. Scarlet rose from their rukhs; the air became vermeil power.

He knelt helpless within the circle. The pain in his neck paralyzed him. A spike of utter trepidation had been driven through his spine, nailing him where he crouched. The outcry of his blood fell silently.

Gibbon advanced, black and exalted. With the tip of his crozier, he touched the growing pool, began to draw meticulous red lines around Covenant.

Covenant watched like an icon of desolation as the na-Mhoram enclosed him in a triangle of his blood.

The chanting became words he could not prevent himself from understanding.

"Power and blood, and blood and flame: 

Soothtell visions without name: 

Truth as deep as Revelstone, 

Making time and passion known.

“Time begone, and space avaunt—

Nothing may the seeing daunt. 

Blood uncovers every lie: 

We will know the truth, or die.” 

When Gibbon had completed the triangle, he stepped back and raised his iron. Flame blossomed thetic and incarnadine from its end.

And Covenant exploded into vision.

He lost none of his self-awareness. The fires around him became more lurid and compelling; his arms felt as heavy as millstones; the chant lobored like the thudding of his heart. But behind the walls he saw and the stone he knew, other sights reeled, other knowledge gyred, tearing at his mind.

At first, the vision was chaos, impenetrable. Images ruptured past the catafalque, the Riders, burst in and out of view so feverishly that he comprehended none of them. But when in anguish he surrendered to them, let them sweep him into the eye of their vertigo, some of them sprang toward clarity.

"Like three blows of a fist, he saw Linden, Sunder, Hollian. They were in the hold, in cells. Linden lay on her pallet in a stupor as pale as death.

The next instant, those images were erased. With a wrench that shook him to the marrow of his bones, the chaos gathered toward focus. The Staff of Law appeared before him. He saw places: Revelstone besieged by the armies of the Despiser; Foul's Creche crumbling into the Sea; Glimmermere opening its waters to accept the krill of Loric. He saw faces: dead Elena in ecstasy and horror; High Lord Mhoram wielding the krill to slay a Raver's body; Foamfollower laughing happily in the face of his own death. And behind it all he saw the Staff of Law. Through everything, implied by everything, the Staff. Destroyed by an involuntary deflagration of wild magic when dead Elena was forced to use it against the Land.

Kneeling there like a suicide in a triangle of blood, pinned to the stone by an iron pain, with his life oozing from his wrists, Covenant saw.

The Staff of Law. Destroyed.

The root of everything he needed to know.

For the Staff of Law had been formed by Berek Halfhand as a tool to serve and uphold the Law. He had fashioned the Staff from a limb of the One Tree as a way to wield Earthpower in defense of the health of the Land, in support of the natural order of life. And because Earthpower was the strength of mystery and spirit, the Staff became the thing it served. It was the Law; the Law was incarnate in the Staff. The tool and its purpose were one.

And the Staff had been destroyed.

That loss had weakened the very fiber of the Law. A crucial support was withdrawn, and the Law faltered.

From that seed grew both the Sunbane and the Clave. 

They came into being together, gained mastery over the Land together, flourished together.

After the destruction of Foul's Creche, the Council of Lords had prospered in Revelstone for centuries. Led first by High Lord Mhoram, then by successors equally dedicated and idealistic, the Council had changed the thrust and tenor of its past service. Mhoram had learned that the Lore of the Seven Wards, the knowledge left behind by Kevin Landwaster, contained within it the capacity to be corrupted. Fearing a renewal of Desecration, he had turned his back on that Lore, thrown the krill into Glimmermere, and commenced a search for new ways to use and serve the Earthpower.

Guided by his decision, Councils for generations after him had used and served, performing wonders. Trothgard had been brought back to health. All the old forests—Grimmerdhore, Morinmoss, Garroting Deep, Giant Woods—had thrived to such an extent that Caerroil Wildwood, the Forestal of Garroting Deep, had believed his lobor ended at last, and had passed away; and even the darkest trees had lost much of their enmity for the people of the Land. All the war-torn wastes along Landsdrop between Mount Thunder and the Colossus of the Fall had been restored to life. The perversity of Sarangrave Flat had been reduced; and much had been done to ease the ruin of the Spoiled Plains. 

For a score of centuries, the Council served the Land's health in peace and fruitfulness. And at last the Lords began to believe that Lord Foul would never return, that Covenant had driven Despite utterly from the Earth. Paradise seemed to be within their grasp. Then in the confidence of peace, they looked back to High Lord Mhoram, and chose to change their names to mark the dawning of a new age. Their High Lord they christened the na-Mhoram; their Council they called the Clave. They saw no limit to the beauty they could achieve. They had no one to say to them that their accomplishments came far too easily.

For the Staff of Law had been destroyed. The Clave flourished in part because the old severity of the Law, the stringency which matched the price paid to the beauty of the thing purchased, had been weakened; and they did not know their peril.

Finding the Third Ward, they had looked no further for knowledge. Through the centuries, they had grown blind, and had lost the means to know that the man who had been named the na-Mhoram, who had transformed the Council in the Clave, was a Raver.

For when Covenant had defeated the Despiser, reduced him by wild magic and laughter to a poverty of spirit so complete that he could no longer remain corporeal, the Despiser had not died. Despite did not die. Fleeing the destruction of his Creche, he had hidden at the fringes of the one power potent enough to heal even him: the Earthpower itself.

And this was possible because the Staff had been destroyed. The Law which had limited him and resisted him since the creation of the earth had been weakened; and he was able to endure it while he conceived new strength, new being. And while he endured, he also corrupted. As he gained stature, the Law sickened.

The first result of this decay was to make the work of the Council more easy; but every increment strengthened Lord Foul, and all his might went to increase the infection. Slowly, he warped the Law to his will.

His Ravers shared his recovery; and he did not act overtly against the Land until samadhi Sheol had contrived his way into the Council, had begun its perversion, until several generations of na-Mhorams, each cunningly mastered by samadhi, had brought the Clave under Lord Foul's sway.

Slowly, the Oath of Peace was abandoned; slowly, the ideals of the Clave were altered. Therefore when the Clave made a secret door to its new hold and Aumbrie, it made one such as the Ravers had known in Foul's Creche. Slowly, the legends of Lord Foul were transmogrified into the tales of a-Jeroth, both to explain the Sunbane and to conceal Lord Foul's hand in it.

loboring always in secret, so that the Clave at all times had many uncorrupted members—people like Memla, who believed the Raver's lies, and were therefore sincere in their service- samadhi Sheol fashioned a tool for the Despiser, ill enough to preach the shedding of blood, pure enough to be persuasive. Only then did Lord Foul let his work be seen.

For the Staff of Law had been destroyed, and his hands were on the reins of nature. By degrees, mounting gradually over centuries, he inflicted his abhorrence upon the Land, corrupting the Earth-power with Sunbane. This he was able to do because the Clave had been made incapable of conceiving any true defense. The Banefire was not a defense, had never been a defense. Rather, it was samadhi's means to commit further afflictions. The shedding of blood to invoke the Sunbane only made the Sunbane stronger. Thus Lord Foul caused the increase of the Sunbane without cost to himself.

And all this, Covenant saw as his blood deepened around his knees, had been done in preparation for one thing, the capstone and masterstroke of Lord Foul's mendacity: the summoning of white gold to the Land. Lord Foul desired possession of the wild magic; and he did to the Land what he had done to Joan, so that Covenant would have no final choice except surrender.

The loss of the Staff explained why Covenant's summoning had been so elaborate. In the past, such summons had always been an act of Law, performed by the holder of the Staff Only when he had been close to death from starvation and rattlesnake venom, and the Law of Death had been broken, had summoning been possible without the Staff. Therefore this time the Despiser had been forced to go to great lengths to take hold of Covenant. A specific location had been required, specific pain, a triangle of blood, freedom of choice and death. Had any of these conditions failed, the summoning would have failed, and Lord Foul would have been left to harm the Land, the Earth, without hope of achieving his final goal—the destruction of the Arch of Time. Only by destroying the Arch could he escape the prison of Time. Only with wild magic could he gain freedom and power to wage his hatred of the Creator across the absolute heavens of the cosmos.

But the summoning had not failed, and Covenant was dying. He understood now why Gibbon had driven Memla from the court. If she had shared this vision of the truth, her outrage might have led her to instigate a revolt among the uncorrupted Riders; for Gibbon, too, was a Raver.

He understood what had happened to the Colossus of the Fall, It had been an avatar of the ancient forests, erected on Landsdrop to defend against Ravers; and the Sunbane had destroyed the forests, unbinding the will of wood which had upheld for millennia that stone monolith.

He understood how Caer-Caveral had been driven to Andelain by the erosion of Morinmoss—and why the last of the Forestals was doomed to fail. At its root, the power of the Forestal was an expression of Law, just as Andelain was the quintessence of Law; and the Sunbane was a corruption Caer-Caveral could resist but not defeat.

He understood what had become of the Ranyhyn, the great horses, and of the Ramen who served them. Perceiving the ill of the Sunbane in its earliest appearances, both Ranyhyn and Ramen had simply fled the Land, sojourning south along the marge of the Sunbirth Sea in search of safer grasslands.

These things came to him in glimpses, flares of vision across the central fact of his situation. But there were also things he could not see: a dark space where Caer-Caveral had touched his mind; a blur that might have explained Vain's purpose; a blankness which concealed the reason why Linden was chosen. Loss gripped him: the ruin of the Land he loved; all the fathomless ill of the Sunbane and the Clave was his fault, his doing.

He had no answer for the logic of his guilt. The Staff of Law had been destroyed—and he had destroyed it. Wild magic had burst from his ring to save his life; power beyond all choice or mastery had riven the Staff, so that nothing remained but its heels. For such an act, he deserved to die. The lassitude of blood-loss seemed condign and admirable. His pulse shrank toward failure. He was culpable beyond any redemption and had no heart to go on living.

But a voice spoke in his mind:

Ur-Lord.

It was a voice without sound, a reaching of thought to thought.

It came from Brinn. He had never before heard the mind-speech of the Haruchai; but he recognized the speaker in the intensity of Brian's gaze. The power of the soothtell made possible things which could not otherwise have occurred.

Unbeliever. Thomas Covenant.

Unbeliever, he answered to himself. Yes. It's my fault. My responsibility.

You must fight.

The images before him whirled toward chaos again.

Responsible. Yes. On my head. He could not fight. How could any man hope to resist the Desecration of a world?

But guilt was the voice of the Clave, the Riders and the Raver who had committed such atrocities. Brinn strained against his bonds as if he would rupture his thews rather than accept failure. Linden still lay in the hold, unconscious or dead. And the Land—Oh, the Land! That it should die undefended!

Fight!

Somewhere deep within him, he found the strength for curses. Are you nothing but a leper? Even lepers don't have to surrender.

Visions reeled through the air. The scarlet light faded as Gibbon brought the soothtell to an end.

Stop! He still needed answers: how to fight the Sunbane; how to restore the Law; to understand the venom in him; to cure it. He groped frantically among the images, fought to bring what he needed into clarity.

But he could not. He could see nothing now but the gaping cuts in his wrists, the ooze of his blood growing dangerously slower. The Riders took the soothtell away from him before he gained the most crucial knowledge. They were reducing their power—No, they were not reducing it, they were changing it, translating it into something else.

Into coercion.

He could feel them now, a score of wills impending on the back of his neck, commanding him to abandon resistance, take off his ring and surrender it before he died. Telic red burned at him from all sides; every rukh was aflame with compulsion. Release the ring. Set it aside. Before you die. This, he knew, was not part of Lord Foul's intent. It was Gibbon's greed; samadhi Sheol wanted the white gold for himself.

The ring!

Brinn's mind-voice was barely audible:

Unbeliever! They will slay us all!

All, he thought desperately. Threescore and seven of the Haruchai. Vain, if they could. Sunder. Hollian. Linden.

The Land.

Release the ring!

No.

His denial was quiet and small, like the first ripple presaging a tsunami.

I will not permit this.

Extravagant fury and need gathered somewhere beyond the shores of his consciousness, piled upward like a mighty sea.

His mind was free now of everything except helplessness and determination. He knew he could not call up wild magic to save him. He required a trigger; but the Riders kept their power at his back, out of reach. At the same time, his need was absolute. Slashing his wrists was a slow way to kill him, but it would succeed unless he could stop the bleeding, defend himself.

He did not intend to die. Brinn had brought him back to himself. He was more than a leper. No abjections could force him to abide his doom. No. There were other answers to guilt. If he could not find them, he would create them out of the raw stuff of his being.

He was going to fight.

Now.

The tsunami broke. Wrath erupted in him like the madness of venom.

Fire and rage consumed all his pain. The triangle and the will of the Clave splintered and fell away.

A wind of passion blew through him. Wild argent exploded from his ring.

White blazed over his right fist. Acute incandescence covered his hand as if his flesh were power. Conflagration tore the red air.

Fear assailed the Clave. Riders cried out in confusion. Gibbon shouted commands.

For a moment, Covenant remained where he was. His ring flamed like one white torch among the vermeil rukhs. Deliberately, he drew power to his right wrist; shaping the fire with his will, he stopped the flow of blood, closed the knife wound. A flash of fire seared and sealed the cut. Then he turned the magic to his left wrist.

His concentration allowed Gibbon time to marshal a defense. Covenant could feel the Riders surging around him, mustering the Banefire to their rukhs. But he did not care. The venom in him counted no opposition, no cost. When his wrists were healed, he rose direly to his feet and stood erect like a man who had lost no blood and could not be touched.

His force staggered the atmosphere of the court. It blasted from his entire body as if his very bones were avid for fire.

Gibbon stood before him. The Raver wielded a crozier so fraught with heat and might that the iron screamed. A shaft of red malice howled at Covenant's heart.

Covenant quenched it with a shrug.

One of the Riders hurled a coruscating rukh at his back.

Wild magic evaporated the metal in mid-flight.

Then Covenant's wrath became ecstasy, savage beyond all restraint. In an instant of fury which shocked the very gutrock of Revelstone, his wild magic detonated.

Riders screamed, fell. Doors in the coigns above the floor burst from their hinges. The air sizzled like frying flesh.

Gibbon shouted orders Covenant could not hear, threw an arc of emerald across the court, then disappeared.

Under a moil of force, the floor began to shine like silver magma.

Somewhere amid the wreckage of the soothtell, he heard Lord Foul laughing.

The sound only strung his passion tighter.

When he looked about him, bodies lay everywhere. Only one Rider was left standing. The man's hood had been blown back, revealing contorted features and frantic eyes.

Intuitively, Covenant guessed that this was Santonin.

In his hands, he grasped a flake of stone which steamed like green ice, held it so that it pressed against his rukh. Pure emerald virulence raged outward.

The Illearth Stone.

Covenant had no limits, no control. A rave of force hurled Santonin against the far wall, scorched his raiment to ashes, blackened his bones.

The Stone rolled free, lay pulsing like a diseased heart on the bright floor.

Reaching out with flames, Covenant drew the Stone to himself. He clenched it in his half-hand. Foamfollower had died so that the Illearth Stone could be destroyed.

Destroyed I

A silent blast stunned the cavity; a green shriek devoured by argent. The Stone-flake vanished in steam and fury.

With a tremendous splitting noise, the floor cracked from wall to wall.

“Unbeliever!”

He could barely hear Brinn.

“Ur-Lord!”

He turned and peered through fire at the Haruchai.

“The prisoners!” Brinn barked. “The Clave holds your friends! Lives will be shed to strengthen the Banefire!”

The shout penetrated Covenant's mad rapture. He nodded. With a flick of his mind, he shattered Brinn's chains.

At once, Brinn sprang from the catafalque and dashed out of the cavity.

Covenant followed in flame.

At the end of the hall, the Haruchai launched himself against three Riders. Their rukhs burned. Covenant lashed argent at them, sent them sprawling, reduced their rukhs to scoria.

He and Brinn hastened away through the passages of Revelstone.

Brinn led; he knew how to find the hidden door to the hold. Shortly, he and Covenant reached the Raver-made entrance. Covenant summoned fire to break down the door; but before he could strike, Brinn slapped the proper spot in the invisible architrave. Limned in red tracery, the portal opened.

Five Riders waited within the tunnel. They were prepared to fight; but Brinn charged them with such abandon that their first blasts missed. In an instant, he had felled two of them. Covenant swept the other three aside, and followed Brinn, running toward the hold.

The dungeon had no other defenders; the Clave had not had time to organize more Riders. And if Gibbon were still alive, he might conceivably withdraw his forces rather than risk losses which would cripple the Clave. When Brinn and Covenant rushed into the hold and found it empty, Brinn immediately leaped to the nearest door and began to throw back the bolts,

But Covenant was rife with might, wild magic which demanded utterance. Thrusting Brinn aside, he unleashed an explosion that made the very granite of Revelstone stagger. With a shrill scream of metal, all the cell doors sprang from their moorings and clanged to the floor, ringing insanely.

At once, scores of Haruchai emerged, ready to fight. Ten of them raced to defend the entrance to the tunnel; the rest scattered toward other cells, searching for more prisoners.

Eight or nine people of the Land—Stonedownors and Woodhelvennin—appeared as if they were dazzled by the miracle of then: reprieve.

Vain left his cell slowly. When he saw Covenant, saw Covenant's passionate fire, his face stretched into a black grin, the grin of a man who recognized what Covenant was doing. The grin of a fiend.

Two Haruchai supported Sunder. The Graveller had a raw weal around his neck, as if he had been rescued from a gibbet, and he looked weak. He gaped at Covenant.

Hollian came, wan and frightened, from her cell. Her eyes flinched from Covenant as if she feared to know him. When she saw Sunder, she hastened to him and wrapped herself in his arms.

Covenant remained still, aching for Linden. Vain grinned like the sound of Lord Foul's laughter.

Then Brinn and another Haruchai bore Linden out into the hall. She lay limp in their arms, dead or unconscious, in sopor more compulsory than any sleep.

When Covenant saw her, he let out a howl which tore chunks from the ceiling and pulverized them until the air was full of fine powder.

He could not stop himself until Brinn yelled to him that she was alive.