Donaldson, Stephen - Thomas Covenant 03 - The Power that Preserves by Donaldson Stephen

Author:Donaldson, Stephen [Donaldson, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

He sealed himself in his study like a penitent, and refused all food and drink. Loerya could get no response from him, and when the High Lord spoke to him, he said nothing except that he wished his wife and daughters to have his ration of food.

"Now even I am a cause of pain to him,'' Loerya murmured with hot tears in her eyes. "Because I have given some of my food to my daughters, he believes that he is an insufficient husband and father, and must sacrifice himself.'' She gave Mhoram one desperate glance, like a woman trying to judge the cost of abdication, then hurried away before he could reply.

On the twenty-fifth day, Lord Amatin strode up to Mhoram and demanded without preface or explanation that he reveal to her his secret knowledge.

"Ah, Amatin," he sighed, "are you so eager for burdens?"

She turned at once and walked fragilely away as if he had betrayed her.

When he went to stand his solitary watch on the tower, a dull vermeil mood was on him, and he felt that he had in fact betrayed her; he had withheld dangerous knowledge from her as if he judged her unable to bear it. Yet nowhere in his heart could he find the courage to give his fellow Lords the key to the Ritual of Desecration. That key had a lurid, entrancing weight. It urged him to rage at Trevor, pummel the pain from Loerya's face, shake Amatin's frail shoulders until she understood, call down fire from the hidden puissance of the skies on Satansfist's head-and refused to let him speak.

On the twenty-seventh day, the first of the storerooms was emptied. Together, the chief cook and the most experienced Healer reported to Mhoram that the cold and infirm would begin to die of hunger in a few days.

When he went to his chambers to rest, he felt too cold to sleep. Despite the warm graveling, Lord Foul's winter reached through the stone walls at him as if the gray, unfaltering wind were tuned to his most vulnerable resonances. He lay wide-eyed on his pallet like a man in a fever of helplessness and imminent despair.

The next night he was snatched off his bed shortly after midnight by the sudden thrill of trepidation which raced through the walls like a flame in the extreme tinder of the Keep' s anticipation. He was on his way before any summons could reach him; with his staff clenched whitely in his hand, he hastened toward the highest eastward battlements of the main Keep. He focused on Quaan's dour presence, found the Warmark on a balcony overlooking the watchtower and the night soot of Satansfist's army.

As Mhoram joined him, Quaan pointed one rigid arm like an indictment away toward the east. But the High Lord did not need Quaan's gesture; the sight seemed to spring at him out of the darkness like a bright abomination on the wind.

Running from the east toward Revelstone was a rift in the clouds, a break that stretched out to the north and south as far as Mhoram could see.

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