The 1st Chronicles of Thomas Covenant #2: The Illearth War by Stephen R. Donaldson Page A

Morinmoss, the stern swift Plains of Ra and the rampant Ranyhyn, the great horses. And he remembered what it was like to feel, to have lively nerves in his fingers, capable of touching grass and stone. The poignancy of it made his heart ache.
    “Your hope misleads you,” he groaned into the stillness after Elena’s appeal. “I don’t know anything about power. It has something to do with life, and I’m as good as dead. Or what do you think life is? Life is feeling. I’ve lost that. I’m a leper.”
    He might have started to rage again, but a new voice cut sharply through his protest. “Then why don’t you throw away your ring?”
    He turned, and found himself confronting the warrior who had been sitting at the end of the Lords’ table. The man had come down to the bottom of the Close, where he faced Covenant with his hands on his hips. To Covenant’s surprise, the man’s eyes were covered with dark, wraparound sunglasses. Behind the glasses, his head moved alertly, as if he were studying everything. He seemed to possess a secret. Without the support of his eyes, the slight smile on his lips looked private and unfathomable, like an utterance in an alien tongue.
    Covenant grasped the inconsistency of the sunglasses-they. were oddly out of place in the Close but he was too stung by the speaker’s question to stop for discrepancies. Stiffly, he answered, “It’s my wedding ring.”
    The man shrugged away this reply. “You talk about your wife in the past tense.
    You’re separated-or divorced. You can’t have your life both ways now. Either get rid of the ring and stick to whatever it is you seem to think is real, or get rid of her and do your duty here.”
    “My duty?” The affront of the man’s judgment gave Covenant the energy to object. “How do you know what my duty is?”
    “My name is Hile Troy.” The man gave a slight bow. “I’m the Warmark of the Warward of Lord’s Keep. My job is to figure out how to meet Foul’s army.”
    “Rile Troy,” added Elena slowly, almost hesitantly, “comes from your world, Unbeliever.”
    What?
    The High Lord’s assertion seemed to snatch the ground from under Covenant. The enervation in his bones suddenly swamped him. Vertigo came over him as if he were on the edge of a cliff, and he stumbled.
    Mhoram caught him as he dropped heavily to his knees.
    His movement distracted the Bloodguard holding dukkha. Before they could react, the Waynhim broke away from them and sprang at Covenant, screaming with fury.
    To save Covenant, Mhoram spun and blocked dukkha’s charge with his staff. The next instant, the Bloodguard recaptured the Waynhim. But Covenant did not see it. When Mhoram turned away from him, he fell on his face beside the graveling pit. He felt weak, overburdened with despair, as if he were bleeding to death. For a few moments, he lost consciousness.
    He awoke to the touch of cool relief on his forehead. His head was in Mhoram’s lap, and the Lord was gently spreading hurtloam over his cut brow.
    He could already feel the effect of the mud. A soothing caress spread from his forehead into the muscles of his face, relaxing the tension which gripped his features.
    Drowsiness welled up in him as the healing earth unfettered him, anodyned the restless bondage of his spirit. Though his weariness, he saw the trap of his delusion winding about him. With as much supplication as he could put into his voice, he said to Mhoram,
    “Get me out of here.”
    The Lord seemed to understand. He nodded firmly, then got to his feet, lifting Covenant with him. Without a word to the Council, he turned his back and went up the stairs, half carrying Covenant out of the Close.
    FOUR: “May Be Lost”
    COVENANT hardly heard the shutting of the great doors behind him; he was hardly conscious of his surroundings at all. His attention was focused inward on the hurtloam’s progress. It seemed to spread around his skull and down his flesh, soothing as it radiated within him. It made