As she departed, she sent the guards to call the Healers and bring food. The other Lords were left alone for a short time, and Tohrm took that opportunity to ask Mhoram what was to be done with Trell.
Mhoram gazed around the ruined galleries as if he were trying to estimate the degree to which he had failed Trell. He knew that generations of rhadhamaerl work would be required to restore some measure of the chamber’s useful Tightness, and tears blurred his vision again as he said to Tohrm, “The Healers must work with him. Perhaps they will be able to restore his mind.”
“What will be the good? How will he endure the knowledge of what he has done?”
“We must help him to endure. I must help him. We must attempt all healing, no matter how difficult. And I who have failed him cannot deny the burden of his need now.”
“Failed him?” Trevor asked. The pain of his injury had drawn the blood from his face, but he had not lost the mood which had inspired him to bear such a great share of the Keep’s defence. “In what way? You did not cause his despair. Had you treated him with distrust, you would have achieved nothing but the confirmation of his distress. Distrust-vindicates itself.”
Mhoram nodded. “And I distrusted-I distrusted all. I kept knowledge secret even while I knew the keeping wrong. It is fortunate that the harm was no greater.”
“Yet you could not prevent-“
“Perhaps. And perhaps-if I had shared my knowledge with him, so that he had known his peril-known- Perhaps he might have found the strength to remember himself-remember that he was a Gravelingas of the rhadhamaerl, a lover of stone.”
Tohrm agreed stiffly, and his sympathy for Trell made him say, “You have erred, High Lord.”
“Yes, Hearthrall,” Mhoram replied with deep gentleness in his voice. “I am who I am-both human and mortal. I have-much to learn.”
Tohrm blinked fiercely, ducked his head. The tautness of his shoulders looked like anger, but Mhoram had shared an ordeal with the Hearthrall, and understood him better.
A moment later, several Healers hurried into the Close. They brought with them two stretchers, and carefully bore Trell away in one. Lord Trevor they carried in the other, peremptorily ignoring his protests. Tohrm went with Trell. Soon Mhoram and Amatin were left with the warrior who brought their food, and a Healer who softly applied a soothing ointment to the High Lord’s burns.
Once Mhoram’s hurts had been treated, he dismissed the warrior and the Healer. He knew that Amatin would want to speak with him, and he cleared the way for her before he began to eat. Then he turned to the food. Through his weariness, he ate deliberately, husbanding his strength so that when he was done he would be able to return to his work.
Lord Amatin matched his silence; she seemed to match the very rhythm of his jaws, as if his example were her only support in the face of a previously unguessed peril. Mhoram sensed that her years of devotion to Kevin’s Wards had left her peculiarly unprepared for what he had told her; her trust in the Lore of the Old Lords had been exceedingly great. So he kept silent while he ate; and when he was done, he remained still, resting himself while he waited for her to speak what was in her heart.
But her question, when it came, took a form he had not anticipated. “High Lord,” she said with a covert nod toward the krill, “if Thomas Covenant has returned to the Land-who summoned him? How was that call performed? And where is he?”
“Amatin-” Mhoram began.
“Who but the Despiser could do such a thing?”
“There are-“
“And if this is not Lord Foul’s doing, then where has Covenant appeared? How can he aid us if he is not here?”
“He will not aid us.” Mhoram spoke firmly to stop the tumble of her questions. “If there is help to be found in him, it will be aid for the Land, not aid for us against this siege. There are other places from which he may serve the Land-yes, and other summoners also. We and Lord Foul are not the only powers. The Creator himself may act to meet this need.”
Her waifish eyes probed him, trying to locate the source of his serenity. “I lack your faith in this Creator. Even if such a being lives, the Law which preserves the Earth precludes-Do not the legends say that if the Creator were to break the arch of Time to place his hand upon the Earth, then the arch and all things in it would come to an end, and the Despiser would be set free?”
“That is said,” Mhoram affirmed. “I do not doubt it. Yet the doom of any creation is upon the head of its Creator. Our work is enough for us. We need not weary ourselves with the burdens of gods.”
Amatin sighed. “You speak with conviction, High Lord. If I were to say such things, they would sound glib.”
“Then do not say them. I speak only of what gives me courage. You are a different person and will have a different courage. Only remember that you are a Lord, a servant of the Land-remember the love that brought you to this work, and do not falter.”
“Yes, High Lord,” she replied, looking intensely into him. “Yet I do not trust this power which makes Desecration possible. I will not hazard it.”
Her gaze turned him back to the krill. Its white gem flamed at him like the light of a paradox, a promise of life and death. Slowly, he reached out and touched its hilt. But his exaltation had faded, and the krill’s heat made him withdraw his hand.
He smiled crookedly. “Yes,” he breathed as if he were speaking to the blade, “it is a hazard. I am very afraid.” Carefully, he took a cloth from within his robe; carefully, he wrapped the krill and set it aside until it could be taken to a place where the Lorewardens could study it. Then he glanced up and saw that Amatin was trying to smile also.
“Come, sister Amatin,” he said to her bravery, “we have delayed our work too long.”
Together, they made their way to the battle, and with Lord Loerya they called fire from their staffs to throw back the hordes of the Despiser.
The three were joined late in the afternoon by a bandaged and hobbling Trevor. But by that time, Revelstone had survived the worst frenzy of Satansfist’s assault. The Lords had given the Warward the support it needed. Under Quaan’s stubborn command, the warriors held back the onslaught. Wherever the Lords worked, the casualties among the defenders dropped almost to nothing, and the losses of the attackers increased vastly. In this kind of battle, the ur-viles could not focus their power effectively. As a result, the Lords were able to wreak a prodigious ruin among the Cavewights and other creatures. Before the shrouded day had limped into night, samadhi Raver called back his forces.
But this time he did not allow the Keep to rest. His attacks began again shortly after dark. Under the cover of cold winter blackness, ur-viles rushed forward to throw liquid vehemence at the battlements, and behind them tight companies of creatures charged, carrying shields and ladders. Gone now was the haphazard fury of the assault, the unconcerted wild attempt to breach the whole Keep at once. In its place were precision and purpose. Growling with hunger, the hordes shaped themselves to the task of wearing down Revelstone as swiftly and efficiently as possible.
In the days that followed, there was no let to the fighting. Satansfist controlled his assaults so that his losses did not significantly outrun the constant arrival of his reinforcements; but he exerted pressure remorselessly, allowing the warriors no respite in which to recover. Despite Quaan’s best efforts to rotate his Eoman and Howard, so that each could rest in turn, the Warward grew more and more weary-and weary warriors were more easily slain. And those who fell could not be replaced.
But the Warward did not have to carry the burden of this battle alone. Gravelingases and Hirebrands and Lore wardens fought as well. People who had no other urgent work-homeless farmers and Cattleherds, artists, even older children-took over supporting tasks; they supplied arrows and other weapons, stood sentry duty, ran messages. Thus many Eoman were freed for either combat or rest. And the Lords rushed into action whenever Quaan requested their aid. They were potent and compelling; in their separate ways, they fought with the hard strength of people who knew themselves capable of Desecration and did not intend to be driven to that extreme.