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 defence. 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.