Thomas Covenant 3 - The Power That Preserves by Stephen R. Donaldson

Author:Stephen R. Donaldson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2011-03-20T05:00:00+00:00

file:///F|/rah/Stephen%20Donaldson/Donaldson%20Covenant%203%20The%20Power%20That%20Preserves.txt

Then the rift passed; sick light slid away into the west. Lord’s Keep sank like a broken sea—

cliff into irreparable night.

“Melenkurion!” Quaan panted as if he were suffocating. “Melenkurion!”

Slowly, Mhoram realized that he was grimacing like a cornered madman. But while the darkness crashed and echoed around him, he could not relax his features; the contortion clung to his face like the grin of a skull. A long, taut time seemed to pass before he thought to peer through the night at Satansfist’s army.

When at last he compelled himself to look, he saw that the army had come to life. It sloughed off its uneasy repose and began to seethe, bristling in the darkness like reanimated lust.

“Ready the Warward,” he said, fighting an unwonted tremor in his rough voice. “The Raver has been given his sign. He will attack.”

With an effort, Warmark Quaan brought himself back under control and left the balcony, shouting orders as he moved.

Mhoram hugged his staff to his chest and breathed deeply, heavily. At first, the air shuddered in his lungs, and he could not pull the grimace off his face. But slowly he untied his muscles, turned his tension into other channels. His thoughts gathered themselves around the defense of the

Keep.

Calling on the Hearthralls and the other Lords to join him, he went to the tower to watch what samadhi Raver was doing.

There, in the company of the two shaken sentries, he could follow the Raver’s movements.

Satansfist held his fragment of the Illearth Stone blazing aloft, an oriflamme of gelid fire, and its stark green illumination revealed him clearly as he moved among his forces, barking orders in a hoarse, alien tongue. Without haste he gathered ur-viles about him until their midnight forms spread out under his light like a lake of black water. Then he forged them into two immense wedges, one on either side of him, with their tips at his shoulders, facing Revelstone. In the garish Stone light, the loremasters looked like roynish, compact power, fatal and eager. Waves of other creatures fanned out beyond them on either side as they began to approach the Keep.

Following the Raver’s fire, they moved deliberately straight out of the southeast toward the knuckled and clenched gates at the base of the watchtower.

High Lord Mhoram tightened his grip on his staff and tried to prepare himself for whatever might happen.

At his back, he felt Lord Amatin and Hearthrall Borillar arrive, followed shortly by Tohrm and then Quaan. Without taking his eyes off Satansfist’s approach, the Warmark reported.

“I have ordered two Howard into the tower. More would serve no purpose-they would block each other. Half are archers. They are good warriors,” he added unnecessarily, as if to reassure himself, “and all their Hafts and Warhafts are veterans of the war against Fleshharrower.

” The archers bear lor-liarill shafts. They will begin at your signal.”

Mhoram nodded his approval. “Tell half the archers to strike when the Raver enters arrow range.

Hold the rest for my signal.”

The Warmark turned to deliver these instructions, but Mhoram abruptly caught his arm.

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