One of the two men Mhoram had sent to watch over Trell dashed forward, jerked to a halt. His face was as white as terror, and he could hardly thrust words stuttering through his teeth.
“High Lord, come! He! — the Close! Oh, help him!”
Amatin covered her head with her arms as if she could not bear any more. But the High Lord said, “I hear you. Remember who you are. Speak clearly.”
The man gulped sickly several times. “Trell-you sent-he immolates himself. He will destroy the Close.”
A hoarse cry broke from Tohrm, and Amatin gasped, “Melenkurion!” Mhoram stared at the warrior as if he could not believe what he had heard. But he believed it; he felt the truth of it. He was appalled by the dreadful understanding that this knowledge also had come too late. Once again, he had failed of foresight, failed to meet the needs of the Keep. Spun by irrefusable exigencies, he wheeled on Lord Trevor and demanded, “Where is Loerya?”
For the first time since his rescue, Trevor’s exaltation wavered. He stood in his own blood as if his injury had no power to hurt him, but the mention of his wife pained him like a flaw in his new courage. “She,” he began, then stopped to swallow thickly. “She has left the Keep. Last night-she took the children upland-to find a place of hiding. So that they would be safe.”
“By the Seven!” Mhoram barked, raging at all his failures rather than at Trevor. “She is needed!” Revelstone’s situation was desperate, and neither Trevor nor Amatin were in any condition to go on fighting. For an instant, Mhoram felt that the dilemma could not be resolved, that he could not make these decisions for the Keep. But he was Mhoram son of Variol, High Lord by the choice of the Council. He had said to the warrior: Remember who you are. He had said it to Tohrm. He was High Lord Mhoram, incapable of surrender. He struck the stone with his staff so that its iron heel rang, and sprang to his work.
“Lord Trevor, can you hold the gates?”
Trevor met Mhoram’s gaze. “Do not fear, High Lord. If they can be held, I will hold them.”
“Good.” The High Lord turned his back on the courtyard. “Lord Amatin-Hearthrall Tohrm-will you aid me?”
For answer, Tohrm met the outreach of Amatin’s arm and helped her to her feet.
Taking the fear-blanched warrior by the arm, Mhoram hastened away into the Keep.
As he strode through the halls toward the Close, he asked the warrior to tell him what had happened. “He-it- ” the man stammered. But then he seemed to draw a measure of steadiness from Mhoram’s grip. “It surpassed me, High Lord.”
“What has happened?” repeated Mhoram firmly.
“At your command, we followed him. When he learned that we did not mean to leave him, he reviled us. But his cursing showed us a part of the reason for your command. We were resolved to obey you. At last he turned from us like a broken man and led us to the Close.
“There he went to the great graveling pit and knelt beside it. While we watched over him from the doors, he wept and prayed, begging. High Lord, it is in my heart that he begged for peace. But he found no peace. When he raised his head, we saw-we saw abomination in his face. He-the graveling-flame came from the fire-stones. Fire sprang from the floor. We ran down to him. But the flames forbade us. They consumed my comrade. I ran to you.”
The words chilled Mhoram’s heart, but he replied to meet the pain and faltering in the warrior’s face. “His Oath of Peace was broken. He lost self-trust, and fell into despair. This is the shadow of the Grey Slayer upon him.”
After a moment, the warrior said hesitantly, “I have heard-it is said-is this not the Unbeliever’s doing?”
“Perhaps. In some measure, the Unbeliever is Lord Foul’s doing. But Trell’s despair is also in part my doing. It is Trell’s own doing. The Slayer’s great strength is that our mortal weakness may be so turned against us.”
He spoke as calmly as he could, but before he was within a hundred yards of the Close, he began to feel the heat of the flames. He had no doubt that this was the source of the other ill Tohrm had sensed. Hot waves of desecration radiated in all directions from the council chamber. As he neared the high wooden doors, he saw that they were smouldering, nearly aflame, and the walls shimmered as if the stone were about to melt. He was panting for breath, wincing against the heat, even before he reached the open doorway and looked down into the Close.
An inferno raged within it. Floor, tables, seats-all burned madly, spouted roaring flames like a convulsion of thunder. Heat scorched Mhoram’s face, crisped his hair. He had to blink tears away before he could peer down through the conflagration to its centre.
There Trell stood in the graveling pit like the core of a holocaust, bursting with flames and hurling great gouts of fire at the ceiling with both fists. His whole form blazed like incarnated damnation, white-hot torment striking out at the stone it loved and could not save.
The sheer power of it staggered Mhoram. He was looking at the onset of a Ritual of Desecration. Trell had found in his own despair the secret which Mhoram had guarded so fearfully, and he was using that secret against Revelstone. If he were not stopped, the gates would only be the first part of the Keep to break, the first and least link in a chain of destruction which might tear the whole plateau to rubble.
He had to be stopped. That was imperative. But Mhoram was not a Gravelingas, had no stone-lore to counter the might which made this fire possible. He turned to Tohrm.
“You are of the rhadhamaerl!” he shouted over the raving of the fire. “You must silence this flame!”
“Silence it?” Tohrm was staring, aghast, into the blaze; he had the stricken look of a man witnessing the ravage of his dearest love. “Silence it?” He did not shout; Mhoram could only comprehend him by reading his lips. “I have no strength to equal this. I am a Gravelingas of the rhadhamaerl- not Earthpower incarnate. He will destroy us all.”
“Tohrm!” the High Lord cried. “You are the Hearthrall of Lord’s Keep! You or no one can meet this need!”
Tohrm mouthed soundlessly, “How?”
“I will accompany you! I will give you my strength-I will place all my power in you!”
The Hearthrall’s eyes rolled fearfully away from the Close and hauled themselves by sheer force of will into focus on the High Lord’s face.
“We will burn.”
“We will endure!”
Tohrm met Mhoram’s demand for a long moment. Then he groaned. He could not refuse to give himself for the sake of the Keep’ s stone. ” If you are with me,” he said silently through the roar.
Mhoram whirled to Amatin. “Tohrm and I will go into the Close. You must preserve us from the fire. Put your power around us-protect us.”
She nodded distractedly, pushed a damp strand of hair out of her face. “Go,” she said weakly. “Already the table melts.”
The High Lord saw that she was right. Before their eyes, the table slumped into magma, poured down to the lowest level of the Close and into the pit around Trell’s feet.
Mhoram called his power into readiness and rested the shaft of his staff on Tohrm’s shoulder. Together, they faced the Close, waited while Amatin built a defence around them. The sensation of it swarmed over their skin like hiving insects, but it kept back the heat.
When she signalled to them, they started down into the Close as if they were struggling into a furnace.