“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 laboured 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 defence 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 labour 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.