With that Covenant had to be content, Nom had moved somewhat ahead of him, thrusting toward the great Keep as if it triggered a racial memory of the Sandwall which the Bhrathair had raised to oppose the Sandgorgons in the years before Kasreyn had bound them to their Doom. The beast's arms swung in anticipation. Grimly, Covenant quickened his pace.
In that way, with Linden beside him. two Stonedownors and four Giants behind him, and eleven Haruchai nearby, Thomas Covenant went to pit himself against the Clave and the Banefire.
There was no reaction from Revelstone. Perhaps the na-Mhoram did not know what a Sandgorgon was, wanted to see what it would do before he attempted to provoke Covenant again. Or perhaps he had given up provocation in order to prepare his defences. Perhaps the Raver had found a small worm of fear at the bottom of his malice Covenant liked that idea. What the Clave and the Banefire had done to the Land could not be forgiven. The way in which this Raver had transformed to ill the ancient and honourable Council of Lords could not be forgiven. And for Gibbon's attack on Linden, Covenant would accept no atonement except the cleansing of the Keep.
Those who hold the Earth in their hands have no justification for vengeance.
Like hell, Coven ant gritted. Like hell they don't.
But when he reached the base of the watchtower, he commanded Nom to halt and paused to consider the tunnel. The sun was high enough now to make the inner courtyard bright; but that only deepened the obscurity of the passage. The windows of the tower gaped as if the rooms behind them were abandoned. A silence like the cryptic stillness of the dead hung over the city. There was no wind-no sign of life except the stark hot shaft of the Banefire. Between the two slain Coursers, dead wasps littered the ground. The Riders had taken their own fallen with them for the sake of the blood. But red splotches marked the rocks in front of the tower as if to tell Covenant that he had come to the right place.
He turned to Linden. Her taut pallor frightened him, but he could no longer afford to spare her. “The tower,” he said as the company stopped behind him. “I need to know if it's empty.”
The movement of her head as she looked upward seemed fatally slow, as if her old paralysis had its hand on her again. The last time she was here, Gibbon's touch had reduced her to near catatonia. The principal doom of the Land is upon your shoulders. Through eyes and ears and touch, you are made to be what the Despiser requires. Once she had pleaded with Covenant, You've got to get me out of here. Before they make me kill you.
But she did not plead now or seek to shirk the consequences of her choices. Her voice sounded dull and stunned; yet she accepted Covenant's demands. “It's hard,” she murmured. “Hard to see past the Banefire. It wants me-wants to throw me at the sun. Throw me at the sun forever.” Fear glazed her eyes as if that cast had already begun. “It's hard to see anything else.” However, a moment later she frowned. Her gaze sharpened. “But Gibbon isn't there. Not there. He's still in the main Keep. And I don't feel anything else.” When she looked at Covenant again, she appeared as severe as she had at their first meeting. "I don't think they've ever used the tower.”
A surge of relief started up in Covenant, but he fought it down. He could not afford that either. It blunted his control, let hints of blackness leak through his mind. Striving to match her, he muttered, "Then let's go. With Nom and Linden, Call and Fole, he walked into the tunnel; and his companions followed him like echoes.
As he traversed the passage, be instinctively hunched his shoulders, bracing himself against the attack he still expected from the ceiling of the tunnel. But no attack came. Linden had read the tower accurately. Soon he stood in the courtyard. The sun shone before him on the high, buttressed face of the Keep and on the massive inner gates.
Those stone slabs were notched and bevelled and balanced so that they could open outward smoothly and marry exactly when they closed. They were heavy enough to rebuff any force of which their makers had been able to conceive. And they were shut, interlocking with each other like teeth. The lines where they hinged and met were barely distinguishable.
“I have said it,” the First breathed behind Covenant. “The Unhomed wrought surpassingly well in this place.”
She was right; the gates looked ready to stand forever.
Suddenly, Covenant became urgent for haste. If he did not find an answer soon. he would go up like tinder and oil. The sun had not yet reached mid-morning; and the shaft of the Banefire stood poised above him like a scythe titanic and bloody enough to reap all the life of the world. Sunder's hands clutched the krill and his orcrest, holding them ready; but he looked strangely daunted by the great Keep, by what it meant and contained. For the first time in the ordeal of the Search, Pitchwife seemed vulnerable to panic, capable of flight. Linden's skin was the colour of ashes. But Honninscrave held his fists clinched at his sides as if he knew he was close to the reasons for Seadreamer's death and did not mean to wait for them much longer.
Covenant groaned to himself. He should have begun his attack last night, while most of his friends slept. He was sick of guilt.
With a fervid sweep of his arm, he sent Nom at the gates.
The Sandgorgon seemed to understand instinctively. In three strides, it reached full speed.
Hurtling forward like a juggernaut, it crashed headlong against the juncture of the clenched slabs.
The impact boomed across the courtyard, thudded in Covenant's lungs, rebounded like a cannonade from the tower. The stones underfoot shivered; a vibration like a wail ran through the abutments. The spot Nom struck was crushed and dented as if it were formed of wood.
But the gates stood.
The beast stepped back as if it were astonished. It turned its head like a question toward Covenant But an instant later it rose up in the native savagery of all Sandgorgons and began to beat at the gates with the staggering might of its arms.
Slowly at first, then more and more rapidly, the beast struck, one sledgehammer arm and then the other in accelerating sequence, harder and faster, harder and faster, until the courtyard was full of thunder and the stone yowled distress. He was responsible for this-and still the gates held, bore the battery. Chips and splinters spat in all directions; granite teeth screamed against each other; the flagstones of the court seemed to ripple and dance. Still the gates held.
To herself, Linden whimpered as if she could feel every blow in her frangible bones.
Covenant started to shout for Nom to stop. He did not understand what the Sandgorgon was doing. The sight of such an attack would have rent Mhoram's heart But an instant later he heard the rhythm of Nom's blows more clearly, heard how that pulse meshed with the gutrock's protesting retorts and cries; and he understood. The Sandgorgon had set up a resonance in the gates, and each impact increased the frequency and amplitude of the vibrations. If the beast did not falter, the slabs might be driven to tear themselves apart.
Abruptly, red fire poured down off the abutment immediately above the gates. Riders appeared brandishing their rukhs: four or five of them. Wielding the Banefire together, they were more mighty than an equal number of individuals; and they shaped a concerted blast to thrust Nom back from the gates.
But Covenant was ready for them. He had been expecting something like this, and his power was hungry for utterance, for any release that would ease the strain within him. Meticulous with desperation, he put out wild magic to defend the Sandgorgon.
His force was a sickening mixture of blackness and argence, mottled and leprous. But it was force nonetheless, fire capable of riving the heavens. It covered the Riders, melted their rukhs to slag, then pitched them back into the Keep with their robes aflame.