At once, scores of Haruchai emerged, ready to fight. Ten of them raced to defend the entrance to the tunnel; the rest scattered toward other cells, searching for more prisoners.
Eight or nine people of the Land-Stonedownors and Woodhelvennin-appeared as if they were dazzled by the miracle of then: reprieve.
Vain left his cell slowly. When he saw Covenant, saw Covenant's passionate fire, his face stretched into a black grin, the grin of a man who recognized what Covenant was doing. The grin of a fiend.
Two Haruchai supported Sunder. The Graveller had a raw weal around his neck, as if he had been rescued from a gibbet, and he looked weak. He gaped at Covenant.
Hollian came, wan and frightened, from her cell. Her eyes flinched from Covenant as if she feared to know him. When she saw Sunder, she hastened to him and wrapped herself in his arms.
Covenant remained still, aching for Linden. Vain grinned like the sound of Lord Foul's laughter.
Then Brinn and another Haruchai bore Linden out into the hall. She lay limp in their arms, dead or unconscious, in sopor more compulsory than any sleep.
When Covenant saw her, he let out a howl which tore chunks from the ceiling and pulverized them until the air was full of fine powder.
He could not stop himself until Brinn yelled to him that she was alive.
PART III. PURPOSE
Twenty: The Quest
HE left the hold, left his companions, because he could not bear to watch the impenetrable nightmares writhe across Linden's mien. She was not afraid of his leprosy. She had supported him at every crisis. This was the result. No one could rouse her. She lay in a stupor like catatonia, and dreamed anguish.
He went toward the upland plateau because he needed to recover some kind of hope.
Already, the frenzy of his power had begun to recoil against him. Vain's smile haunted him like an echo of horror and scorn. His rescue from Stonemight Woodhelven was no different than this. How many people had he killed? He had no control over his power. Power and venom controlled him.
Yet he did not release the wild magic. Revelstone was still full of Riders. He glimpsed them running past the ends of long halls, preparing themselves for defence or counterattack. He did not have enough blood in his veins to sustain himself without the fire of his ring: once he dropped his power, he would be beyond any self-protection. He would have to trust the Haruchai to save him, save his friends. And that thought also was bitter to him. Banner's people had paid such severe prices in his name. How could he permit them to serve him again?
How many people had he killed?
Shedding flames like tears, he climbed up through the levels of Revelstone toward the plateau.
And Brinn strode at his side as if the Haruchai had already committed himself to this service. Somewhere he had found a cloak which he now draped across Covenant's shoulders. The
Unbeliever shrugged it into place, hardly noticing. It helped to protect him against the shock of blood-loss.
Covenant needed hope. He had gained much from the soothtell; but those insights paled beside the shock of Linden's straits, paled beside the mounting self-abomination of what he had done with his power. He had not known he was so capable of slaughter. He could not face the demands of his new knowledge without some kind of hope.
He did not know where else to turn except to Glimmermere. To the Earthpower which remained still vital enough to provide Glimmermere with water, even when all the Land lay under a desert sun. To the blade which lay in the deeps of the lake.
Loric's krill.
He did not want it because it was a weapon. He wanted it because it was an alternative, a tool of power which might prove manageable enough to spare him any further reliance upon his ring.
And he wanted it because Vain's grin continued to knell through his head. In that grin, he had seen Vain's makers, the roynish and cruel beings he remembered. They had lied to Foamfollower. Vain's purpose was not greatly to be desired. It was the purpose of a fiend. Covenant had seen Vain kill, seen himself kill, and knew the truth.
And Loric, who was Kevin's father, had been called Vilesilencer. He had formed the krill to stem the harm of Vain's ancestors. Perhaps the krill would provide an answer to Vain.
That, too, was a form of hope. Covenant needed hope. When he reached the open plateau, the brightness of his power made the night seem as black and dire as Vain's obsidian flesh.
No one had been able to rouse Linden. She was caught in the toils of a heinous nightmare, and could not fight free. What evil had been practiced upon her?
And how many people had he killed? He, who had sworn never to kill again, and had not kept that oath. How many?
His own fire blinded him; he could not see any stars. The heavens gaped over him like a leper's doom. How could any man who lacked simple human sensitivity hope to control wild magic? The wild magic which destroys peace. He felt numb, and full of venom, and could not help himself.
Wrapped in argent like a new incarnation of the Sunbane, he traversed the hills toward Glimmermere. The tarn was hidden by the terrain; but he knew his way.
Brinn walked beside him, and did not speak. The Haruchai seemed content to support whatever Covenant intended. In this same way, the Bloodguard had been content to serve the Lords. Their acceptance had cost them two thousand years without love or sleep or death. And it had cost them corruption; like Foamfollower, Banner had been forced to watch his people become the thing they hated. Covenant did not know how to accept Brinn's tacit offer. How could he risk repeating the fate of the Bloodguard? But he was in need, and did not know how to refuse.
Then he saw it: Glimmermere lying nestled among the hills. Its immaculate surface reflected his silver against the black night, so that the water looked like a swath of wild magic surrounded, about to be smothered, by the dark vitriol of ur-viles. Avid white which only made Vain grin. But Covenant's power was failing; he had lost too much blood; the reaction to what he had done was too strong. He lumbered stiff-kneed down to the water's edge, stood trembling at the rim of Glimmermere, and fought himself to remain alight just a little longer.
Fire and darkness sprang back at him from the water. He had bathed once in Glimmermere; but now he felt too tainted to touch this vestige of Earthpower. And he did not know the depth of the pool. High Lord Mhoram had thrown the krill here as an act of faith in the Land's future. Surely he had believed the blade to be beyond reach. Covenant would never be able to swim that far down. And he could not ask Brinn to do it. He felt dismayed by the implications of Brinn's companionship; he could not force himself to utter an active acceptance of Brinn's service. The krill seemed as distant as if it had never existed.
Perhaps none of this had ever existed. Perhaps he was merely demented, and Vain's grin was the leer of his insanity. Perhaps he was already dead with a knife in his chest, experiencing the hell his leprosy had created for him.
But when he peered past the flaming silver and midnight, he saw a faint echo from the depths. The krill. It replied to his power as it had replied when he had first awakened it. Its former arousal had led ineluctably to Elena's end and the breaking of the Law of Death. For a moment, he feared it, feared the keenness of its edges and the weight of culpability it implied. He had loved Elena-But the wild magic was worse. The venom was worse. He could not control them,