Daughter of Regals (15 page)

As he walked soundlessly through the halls
of Revelstone, sending out his mental summons, Korik considered the advantages
in taking either Morril or Koral with him. They were the Bloodguard who watched
over the Lords Callindrill and Amatin: Morril and Koral had accompanied. those
Lords when they had attempted to reach the Giants and were driver back by some
lurking power in the Sarangrave Both these Bloodguard had previous experience
with the dangers which faced the mission.  But Korik had heard all that Morril
and Koral could tell concerning the danger. And they had the right to remain
with the Lords whom they had personally warded.

The choosing completed, Korik went to the
place where his comrades would meet him— the one place in Revelstone reserved
for the Bloodguard. It was a dim uncompromising hall, with unrubbed walls and a
rough raw floor on which no one but a Bloodguard would walk barefoot. The whole
space was unfurnished and unadorned, but it served them as it was. They needed
only an open space with a punishing floor and freedom from observation.

Korik did not have to wait long for his
chosen comrades. They came promptly, though without any appearance of hurry,
for the word of Mhoram’s vision had gone out ahead of Korik’s summons: they had
heard it in the mental talk of the
Haruchai
, in the orders of the Lords,
in the altered and quickened beat of Revelstone’s rhythms. But when Cerrin and
Sill, Runnik and Pren; Tull and the others gathered around him, Korik still
took the time to speak to them. The mission which First Mark Morin had given him
was special, perhaps higher than any other burden the Bloodguard would bear in
this war. Their responsibility had always been to the Lords: they had Vowed to 
preserve the Lords while the Council went about its work. Rarely had any
Bloodguard been given a command which was not part of his direct service. But
the mission to the Giants had been entrusted to the
Haruchai
. Summon or
succour. To meet this uncommon charge, Korik gathered his company about him for
the old rites.

— Faith, he greeted them.

— Fist and faith, they replied together.

— Hail, chosen brothers, Korik returned.
The mission to the Giants of Seareach is in our hands. These are Bloodguard
times. War marches. The end of the Giants’ exile is near, as foretold by
Damelon Giantfriend. Dour fist and unbroken faith prevail.

The Bloodguard answered in the words of
the ancient
Haruchai
Vow:

—
Ha-man rual tayba-sah carab ko-eeal
neeta par-raoul
. We are the Bloodguard, the keepers the Vow — the keepers
and the kept, sanctified beyond decline and the last evil of death.
Tan
Haruchai
. We accept.

—
Tan-Haruchai
, Korik said. Bowing
to his comrades, he repeated the old war-cry: Fist and faith.

They bowed in turn, stepped back so that
there was a clear space around him. Then they began the trial of leadership, as
prescribed by the rites he had invoked. One by one, they came forward to fight
with him, to measure their strength against his.

Although he had been given the mission by
the First Mark, Korik wanted to affirm his leadership among his company, so
that in any future extremity no question of his right to command could arise.
Therefore he fought for his leadership as he had once fought to be among the
commanders of the army which had invaded the Land in the early years of High
Lord Kevin son of Loric.

This trial came instinctively to the
proud
Haruchai
, for they had been born to fighting in the same way that
their forefathers had been born to it, and their forefathers before them, as
the old tellers described. For them, it was not enough that they made their
home in one of the most demanding places of the Earth. It was not enough that
the fastnesses which they inhabited, the caves and crags, the ice-grottoes and
crevasses and eyries, were snow-locked three seasons a year and in places
perpetually clamped in blue glaciers — that simple survival from day to day,
the preservation of the home-fires, and the tending of the goats and the bare
gardening they did when in summer some of the valleys were free of snow and
ice, took all the strength and fortitude which any people could ask of
themselves — that blizzards and mountain winds and avalanches provided them
with so much disaster that even the hardiest and most cunning of them could not
look to have a long life. No, in addition the
Haruchai
were always at
war.

Before the Bond, they had fought each
other, battling
Ho-aru
against
Nimishi
, generation after
generation, across cliffs and cols and scree and ravines, wherever they met.
They were a hot people, strong-loined and prolific: but without food and
shelter and warmth, children died at birth —and often the women died as well.
Caught thus constantly between the need to replenish the people and the
mortality of love, the clans strove to wrest every possible scrap of food or
flicker of heat or shadow of shelter from each other, so that their wives and
children might not die.

Yet in time a kind of understanding came
to the
Ho-aru
and
Nimishi
. They saw that they fought a feud they
could not win. First, the clans were too evenly matched for one side to retain
for long any brief ascendance. And second, even victory offered no solution to
the need, for a victorious family would quickly grow  in size until it was as
large as two; and then the lack of food and warmth and shelter would kill as
before. So the leaders of the clans met and formed the Bond. Enmity was set
aside, and hands were joined. From that time onward,
Ho-aru
and
Nimishi
warred together against their common need.

That need sent them eastward, out of the
Westron
Mountains
, intending
to conquer by might of fist the forms of sustenance their home did not provide,
so that their wives and children would live. Korik had fought his way through a
trial of leadership lasting an entire winter to gain a place — with Tuvor,
Bannor, Morin, and Terrel — among the commanders of the army which had marched,
a thousand strong, through Guards Gap and along the glacial purity of the
Llurallin
River
, to wage war
against the Land.

They passed without resistance across the
region which was later to be named Kurash Plenethor, Stricken Stone, and
Trothgard. seeking battle, they were received by the inhabitants with quiet and
fearless tolerance, were given without struggle all they demanded. These
peaceful people had no use for war. Eventually, they even guided the
Haruchai
to Revelstone, where the Council of High Lord Kevin was still in its youth.

There began the stuff of which the
Blood-guard Vow, and the fealty between the Giants and the
Haruchai
,
were made..

Revelstone itself met the eyes of the
invaders with a wonder such as they had never known. They understood mountains,
cliffs, indomitable stone, and never in their warmest dreams had they conceived
that gutrock could be so made welcoming, habitable, and extravagant. The great
Giant-wrought Keep astonished them, inspired them with a fierce joy unmatched
by anything except the sight of austere peaks majestically facing heavenward
and the enfolding love of wives. And the more they looked, the more ecstatic
Revelstone appeared. Half intuitively, they sensed the pattern, the commingling
flow and rest of the balconies and coigns and windows and parapets, which the
Giants had woven into the rock of the high walls — perceived it dimly,  and
were enthralled. Here, amid warmth and lushness and fertility and food and
sunlight, was a single rock home capacious enough to enclose the entire
Haruchai
people and hold them free of want forever. The suggestiveness of such
luxuriance made the very crenellations of the battlements seem luminous,
strangely lit by high mysteries and unquenchable possibilities.

In the rush of their unfamiliar passion,
they swore an oath that they would conquer this and make it their own. Without
hesitation one thousand unarmed
Haruchai
laid siege Revelstone.

Their war-making did not go far. Almost
at once the great stone gates under the watch tower swung wide, and High Lord
Kevin rode to meet his besiegers. He was mounted on a Ranyhyn and accompanied
by half his council, one Eoman of the Warward, and a coterie of grinning
Giants. Solemnly,  Kevin listened while First Mark Tuvor delivered his terms of
war; and some power of the Staff of Law enabled the High Lord to understand the
Haruchai
tongue. Then he declared so all the
Haruchai
might grasp
his meaning that under no circumstances would he fight the invaders. He
declined to make war. Instead, he invited the five commanders into Revelstone
to the hospitality of the Lords. And though they expected treachery, they
accepted, because they were proud.

But there was no treachery. The great
gates stood open for three days while the
Haruchai
commanders tasted the
grandeur of Revelstone. They experienced the laughing genial power of the
Giants who had made the Keep, received the confident offer of Kevin’s Council
to supply the
Haruchai
freely whatever they needed for as long as their
need lasted. When the commanders returned to their army, they sat astride
prancing Ranyhyn, which had come from the Plains of Ra at Kevin’s call and had
chosen to bear the
Haruchai
. Korik and his peers were of one mind.
Something new was upon them, something beyond instinctive kinship with the
Ranyhyn, beyond friendship and awe for the Giants, beyond even the fine
entrancement of Revelstone itself. The
Haruchai
were fighters,
accustomed to wrest what they required: they could not accept gifts without
making meet return.

Therefore that night the army from the
Westron
Mountains
gathered
under the south wall of Revelstone. All the
Haruchai
joined their minds
together and out of their common strength forged the metal of the Vow —
unalloyed and unanswerable, accessible to no appeal or flaw, unambergrised by
the promise of any uncorrupt end: a Vow like the infernal oath upon the river
of death which binds even the gods. This they wrought out of the extremity and
innocence of their hearts, to match the handiwork of the Giants and the mastery
of the Lords. As they spoke the hot words —
Ha-man rual tayba-sah carab
ho-eeal
— the ground seemed to grow hot and cognizant under their feet, as
if the Earthpower were drawing near the surface to hear them. And when they
brought their Vow around full circle, sealing it so that there was no escape,
the rocks on which they stood thundered, and fire ran through them, sealing
their bones to the promise they had made.

Thus it was done. Before dawn, the
remainder of the army marched away toward Guards Gap and home. The five hundred
Haruchai
of the Vow went to Revelstone to become the Bloodguard,
defenders of the Lords: the last preserving wall between Revelstone. and any
blot or stain.

Yet that was not all. Though Korik now on
the eve of the mission to Seareach invoked the old trial of leadership to test
his place in the company he had chosen — though the Vow he served was as always
impeccable and binding — yet the history of the Bloodguard contained at least
two other matters which each of them kept in account. The first of these came
at once, the morning after the Vow was taken. When the
Haruchai
entered
Revelstone and announced. their purpose to the Council, High Lord Kevin was
dismayed. Like the Lord Mhoram in the later age, Kevin was at times gifted or
blighted with presciences; and he treated the Vow as if it proffered disaster.
He insisted strangely that the
Haruchai
had maimed themselves: he strove
to refuse the service, so much was he taken aback — and so little did he
understand the fierce hearts of these people. But the Giants taught him to
understand, and to accept.

The second matter arose from the last
war, before Kevin chose to enact the Ritual of Desecration. When the High Lord
knew in secret what he purposed, he set about saving as much of the Land as he
could. He forewarned the Giants and Ranyhyn, so that they might flee the coming
havoc. And he ordered the Bloodguard away, into the safety of the mountains.

This was the question which now plagued
the Bloodguard, taught them doubt, this question of judgement. They had obeyed
the High Lord, and so survived the Desecration; but the Lords to whom they had
sworn their service were lost. The Bloodguard had obeyed because they had never
considered that Kevin might wish to thwart their Vow. Even now the fact felt
inconceivable, threatening. They had trusted him, assumed that his orders were
consonant with their intent. Now they knew otherwise. Kevin had prevented them
from dying with him or from opposing his dark purpose. He had betrayed them.

Now the Bloodguard knew how to doubt. And
now their Vow had revealed an additional demand: to fulfil it, they must
preserve the Lords from self-destruction.

Therefore Korik invoked the rites of
leadership. He remembered his whole history — the Vow gave no relief from
memory — and because of it he acted as he did. He raised hands which knew how
to kill against his comrades.

He did not hold back his strength, or
cover his blows, or in any other way fight less fiercely than he would have
fought a foe of the Lords. There was no need for restraint. there were no frail
or unskilled fighters among the Bloodguard; their devotion to the Vow kept
their alertness keen and their thews strong. And the first tests were not long.
Runnik and Pren were veterans of the Bloodguard, had measured their strength
against his often enough to know him exactly. After a few swift passes, they
acknowledged that he was the same warrior who had bested them before. And in
deference to their example, the younger
Ho-aru
and
Nimishi
also
contented themselves with fleet, flurrying ripostes to demonstrate Korik’s
worthiness — and their own. Cerrin and Sill took longer, more because they
respected the Lords they warded than because they desired to take away Korik’s
command.  But he had been one of the original
Haruchai
commanders for
good reason. Fighting with a speed which masked the precision of his movements,
he showed Cerrin and Sill in turn that he remained one of the elite.