Throwing his weight into the blow, Covenant hit again.
One guard poised himself at the foot of the ladder. The other sprinted toward the Graveller's dwelling.
Covenant grinned fiercely. He went on kicking at the door, but did not tire himself by expending much effort. When the Graveller arrived, he gave the wood one last blow and stopped.
At a command from the Graveller, a guard ascended the ladder. Watching Covenant warily through the hole, he untied the lashings, then sprang away to evade the door if Covenant kicked it again.
Covenant did not. He pushed the door aside with his hand and stood framed in the entryway to confront the Graveller. Before she could address him, he snapped, “I want to talk to you.”
She drew herself up haughtily. “Prisoner, I do not wish to speak with you.”
He overrode her. “I don't give a good goddamn what you wish. If you think I don't have power, you're sadly mistaken. Why else does the Clave want me dead?” Bluffing grimly, he rasped, “Ask your men what happened when they attacked my companion.”
The narrowing of her eyes revealed that she had already been apprised of Vain's apparent invulnerability.
“I'll make a deal with you,” he went on, denying her time to think. “I'm not afraid of you. But I don't want to hurt you. I can wait until you decide to release me yourself. If you'll answer some questions, I'll stop breaking this house down.”
Her eyes wandered momentarily, returned to his face. “You have no power.”
“Then what are you afraid of?”
She hesitated. He could see that she wanted to turn away; but his anger undermined her confidence. Apparently, her confidence had already taken heavy punishment from some other source. After a moment, she murmured thickly, “Ask.”
At once, he said, “You took three prisoners-a woman named Linden Avery and two Stonedownors. Where are they?”
The Graveller did not meet his gaze. Somehow, his question touched the cause of her distress. “They are gone.”
“Gone?” A lurch of dread staggered his heart. “What do you mean?” She did not reply. “Did you kill them?”
“No!” Her look was one of outraged hunger, the look of a predator robbed of its prey. "It was our right! The Stonedownors were enemies! Their blood was forfeit by right of capture. They possessed Sunstone and Iianar, also forfeit. And the blood of their companion was forfeit as well. The friend of enemies is also an enemy. It was our right.
“But we were reft of our right,” A corrupt whine wounded her voice. “The three fell to us in the first day of the fertile sun. And that same night came Santonin na-Mhoram-in on his Courser.” Her malignant grief was louder than shouting. "In the name of the
Clave, we were riven of that which was ours. Your companions are nothing, Halfhand. I acceded them to the Rider without compunction. They are gone to Revelstone, and I pray that their blood may rot within them."
Revelstone? Covenant groaned. Hellfire! The strength drained from his knees; he had to hold himself up on the doorframe.
But the Graveller was entranced by her own suffering, and did not notice him. “Yes, and rot the Clave as well,” she screamed. “The Clave and all who serve the na-Mhoram. For by Santonin we were riven also of the power to live. The Stonemight-!” Her teeth gnashed. “When I discover who betrayed our possession of the Stonemight to Santonin na-Mhoram-in, I will rend the beating heart from that body and crush it in my hands!”
Abruptly, she thrust her gaze, as violent as a lance, at Covenant. “I pray your white ring is such a periapt as the Riders say. That will be our recompense. With your ring, I will bargain for the return of the Stonemight. Yes, and more as well. Therefore make ready to die, Halfhand. In the dawn I will spill your life. It will give me joy.”
Fear and loss whirled through Covenant, deafening him to the Graveller's threat, choking his protests in his throat. He could grasp nothing clearly except the peril of his friends. Because he had insisted on going into Andelain-
The Graveller turned on her heel, strode away: he had to struggle to gasp after her, “When did they go?”
She did not reply. But one of the guards said warily, “At the rising of the second fertile sun.”
Damnation! Almost two days —! On a Courser! As the guards shoved him back into the hovel and retied the door, Covenant was thinking stupidly, I'll never catch up with them.
A sea of helplessness broke over him. He was imprisoned here while every degree of the sun, every heartbeat of time, carried his companions closer to death. Sunder had said that the Earth was a prison for a-Jeroth of the Seven Hells, but that was not true: it was a jail for him alone, Thomas Covenant the Incapable. If Stonemight Woodhelven had released him at this moment, he would not have been able to save his friends.
And the Woodhelven would not release him; that thought penetrated his dismay slowly. They intended to kill him. At dawn. To make use of his blood. He unclenched his fists, raised his head.
Looking through the walls, he saw that the canyon had already fallen into shadow. Sunset was near; evening approached like a leper's fate. Mad anguish urged him to hurl himself against the weakened door; but the futility of that action restrained him. In his fever for escape, for the power to redeem what he had done to his companions, he turned to his wedding band.
Huddling there against the wall in the gathering dusk, he considered everything he knew about wild magic, remembered everything that had ever given rise to white fire. But he found no hope. He had told Linden the truth: in all his past experience, every exertion of wild magic had been triggered by the proximity of some other power. His final confrontation with Lord Foul would have ended in failure and Desecration if the Despiser's own weapon, the Illearth Stone, had not been so mighty, had not raised such a potent response from the white gold.
Yet Linden had told him that in his delirium at Crystal Stonedown his ring had emitted light even before the Rider had put forth power. He clung to that idea. High Lord Mhoram had once said to him, You are the white gold. Perhaps the need for a trigger arose in him, in his own unresolved reluctance, rather than in the wild magic itself. If that were true-Covenant settled into a more comfortable position and composed his turmoil with an effort of will. Deliberately, he began to search his memory, his passions, his need, for the key which had unlocked wild magic in his battle with Lord Foul.
He remembered the completeness of his abjection, the extremity of his peril. He remembered vividly the cruelty with which the Despiser had wracked him, striving to compel the surrender of his ring. He remembered the glee with which Lord Foul had envisioned the Land as a cesspit of leprosy.
And he remembered the awakening of his rage for lepers, for victims and destitution. That passion-clear and pure beyond any fury he had ever felt-had carried him into the eye of the paradox, the place of power between conflicting impossibilities: impossible to believe the Land real; impossible to refuse the Land's need. Anchored by the contradiction itself, made strong by rage, he had faced Lord Foul, and had prevailed.
He remembered it all, re-experienced it with an intensity that wrung his heart. And from his intensity he fashioned a command for the wild magic-a command of fire.
The ring remained inert on the second finger of his half-hand. It was barely visible in the dimness.
Despair twisted his guts; but he repressed it, clenched his purpose in both hands like a strangles Trigger, he panted. Proximity. Bearing memory like an intaglio of flame in his mind, he rose to his feet and confronted the only external source of power available to him. Swinging his half-fist through a tight arc, he struck Vain in the stomach.