Fifteen: “Don't touch me”

THOMAS Covenant saw everything. He heard everything. From the moment when the Elohim had opened the gift of Caer-Caveral, the location of the One Tree, all his senses had functioned normally. Yet he remained as blank as a stone tablet from which every commandment had been effaced. What he saw and heard and felt simply had no meaning to him. In him, the link between action and impact, perception and interpretation, had been severed or blocked. Nothing could touch him.

The strange self-contradictions of the Elohim had not moved him. The storm which had nearly wrecked Starfare's Gem had conveyed nothing to him. The dangers to his own life— and the efforts of people like Brinn, Seadreamer, and Linden to preserve him— had passed by him like babblings in an alien tongue. He had seen it all. Perhaps on some level he had understood it, for he lacked even the exigency of incomprehension. Nothing which impinged upon him was defined by the barest possibility of meaning. He breathed when breath was necessary. He swallowed food which was placed in his mouth. At times, he blinked to moisten his eyes. But these reflexes also were devoid of import. Occasionally an uneasiness as vague as mist rose up in him; but when he uttered his refrain, it went away.

Those three words were all that remained of his soul.

So he watched Kasreyn's attempt to gain possession of him with a detachment as complete as if he were made of stone. The hungry geas which burned from the Kemper's ocular had no effect. He was not formed of any flesh which could be persuaded. And likewise the way his companions defended him sank into his emptiness and vanished without a trace. When Kasreyn, Rant Absolain, and the Chatelaine made their separate ways out of The Majesty, Covenant was left unchanged.

Yet he saw everything. He heard everything. His senses functioned normally. He observed the appraising glance which Findail cast at him as if the Appointed were measuring this Elohim-wrought blankness against the Kemper's hunger. And he witnessed the flush of shame and dismay which rushed into Linden's face as Kasreyn's will lost its hold over her. Her neck corded at the effort she made to stifle her instinctive outcry. She feared possession more than any other thing—and she had fallen under Kasreyn's command as easily as if she lacked all volition. Through her teeth, she gasped, “Jesus God!” But her frightened and furious glare was fixed on Rire Grist, and she did not answer the consternation of her companions. Her taut self-containment said plainly that she did not trust the Caitiffin.

The sight of her in such distress evoked Covenant's miasmic discomfort; but he articulated his three words, and they carried all trouble away from him.

He heard the raw restraint in the First's tone as she replied to the Caitiffin, “We will accompany you. Our need for rest and peace is great. Also we must give thought to what has transpired.”

Rire Grist acknowledged the justice of her tone with a grimace. But he made no effort to placate the company. Instead, he led the gaddhi's guests toward the stairs which descended to the Tier of Riches.

Covenant followed because Brinn's grasp on his arm compelled him to place one foot in front of the other reflexively, as if he were capable of choosing to commit such an act.

Rire Grist took them down to the Second Circinate. In the depths of that level behind the immense forecourt or ballroom, he guided them along complex and gaily lit passages, among bright halls and chambers—sculleries and kitchens, music rooms, ateliers, and galleries—where the company encountered many of the Chatelaine who now contrived to mask their fear. At last he brought the questers to a long corridor marked at intervals by doors which opened into a series of comfortable bedrooms. One room had been set aside for each member of the company. Across the hall was a larger chamber richly furnished with settees and cushions. There the companions were invited to a repast displayed on tables intricately formed of bronze and mahogany.

But at the doorway of each bedroom stood one of the hustin, armed with its spear and broadsword; and two more waited near the tables of food like attendants or assassins. Rire Grist himself made no move to leave. This was insignificant to Covenant. Like the piquant aromas of the food, the unwashed musk of the Guards, it was a fact devoid of content. But it tightened the muscles of Honninscrave's arms, called a glint of ready ire from the First's eyes, compressed Linden's mouth into a white line. After a moment, the Chosen addressed Rire Grist with a scowl.

“Is this another sample of the gaddhi's welcome? Guards all over the place?”

“Chosen, you miscomprehend.” The Caitiffin had recovered his equilibrium. “The hustin are creatures of duty, and these have been given the duty of serving you. If you desire them to depart, they will do so. But they will remain within command, so that they may answer to your wants.”

Linden confronted the two Guards in the chamber. “Get out of here.”

Their bestial faces betrayed no reaction; but together they marched out into the hall.

She followed them. To all the hustin, she shouted, “Go away! Leave us alone!”

Their compliance appeased some of her hostility. When she returned, her weariness was apparent. Again, the emotion she aroused made Covenant speak. But his companions had become accustomed to his litany and gave it no heed.

“I also will depart,” the Caitiffin said, making a virtue of necessity. “As occasion requires, I will bring you word of the gaddhi's will, or his Kemper's. Should you have any need of me, summon the Guard and speak my name. I will welcome any opportunity to serve you.”

Linden dismissed him with a tired shrug; but the First said, “Hold yet a moment, Caitiffin.” The expression in her eyes caused his mien to tense warily. “We have seen much which we do not comprehend, and thereby we are disquieted. Ease me with one answer.” Her tone suggested that he would be wise to comply. “You have spoken of fourscore hundred Guards—of fifteenscore Horse. Battleremes we have seen aplenty. Yet the Sandgorgons are gone to their Doom. And the Kemper's arts are surely proof against any insurgence. What need has Rant Absolain for such might of arms?”

At that, Rire Grist permitted himself a slight relaxation, as if the question were a safe one. “First of the Search,” he replied, “the answer lies in the wealth of Bhrathairealm. No small part of that wealth has been gained in payment from other rulers or peoples for the service of our arms and ships. Our puissance earns much revenue and treasure. But it is a precarious holding, for our wealth teaches other lands and monarchs to view us jealously. Therefore our strength serves also to preserve what we have garnered since the formation of Sandgorgons Doom.”

The First appeared to accept the plausibility of this response. When no one else spoke, the Caitiffin bowed his farewell and departed. At once, Honninscrave closed the door; and the room was filled with terse, hushed voices.

The First and Honninscrave expressed their misgivings. Linden described the power of the Kemper's ocular, the unnatural birth of the hustin. Brinn urged that the company return immediately to Starfare's Gem. But Honninscrave countered that such an act might cause the gaddhi to rescind his welcome before the dromond was sufficiently supplied or repaired. Linden cautioned her companions that they must not trust Rire Grist. Vain and Findail stood aloof together.

With signs and gestures, Seadreamer made Honninscrave understand what he wanted to know; and the Master asked

Brinn how the Haruchai had withstood Kasreyn's geas. Brinn discounted that power in a flat tone. “He spoke to me with his gaze. I heard, but did not choose to listen.” For a moment, he gave Linden a look as straight as an accusation. She bit her lower lip as if she were ashamed of her vulnerability. Covenant witnessed it all. It passed by him as if he were insensate.

The company decided to remain in the Sandhold as long as they could, so that Pitchwife and Sevinhand would have as much time as possible to complete their work. Then the Giants turned to the food. When Linden had examined it, pronounced it safe, the questers ate. Covenant ate when Brinn put food in his mouth; but behind his emptiness he continued to watch and listen. Dangerous spots of color accentuated Linden's cheeks, and her eyes were full of potential panic, as if she knew that she was being cornered. Covenant had to articulate Ms warning several times to keep the trouble at bay.

After that, the time wore away slowly, eroded in small increments by the tension of the company; but it made no impression on Covenant. He might have forgotten that time existed. The toll of days held no more meaning for him than a string of beads—although perhaps it was a preterite memory of bloodshed, rising like blame from the distance of the Land, which caused his vague uneasinesses; rising thicker every day as people he should have been able to save were butchered. Certainly, he had no more need for the One Tree. He was safe as he was.

His companions alternately rested, waited, stirred restlessly, spoke or argued quietly with each other. Linden could not dissuade Brinn from sending Ceer or Hergrom out to explore the Sandhold. The Haruchai no longer heeded her. But when the First supported Linden, they acceded, approving her insistence that the company should stay together.

Vain was as detached as Covenant. But the long pain did not leave Findail's face; and he studied Covenant as if he foresaw some crucial test for the Unbeliever.

Later, Rire Grist returned, bearing an invitation for the company to attend the Chatelaine in banquet. Linden did not respond. The attitude of the Haruchai had drained some essential determination out of her. But the First accepted; and the company followed the Caitiffin to a high bright dining-hall where bedizened ladies and smirking gallants talked and riposted, vied and feasted, to the accompaniment of soft music. The plain attire of the questers contrasted with the self-conscious display around them; but the Chatelaine reacted as though the company were thereby made more sapid and attractive—or as though the gaddhi's court feared to behave otherwise.

Men surrounded Linden with opportunities for dalliance, blind to the possible hysteria in her mien. Women plied the impassive Haruchai determinedly. The Giants were treated to brittle roulades of wit. Neither the gaddhi nor his Kemper appeared; but hustin stood against the walls like listening-posts, and even Honninscrave's most subtle questions gleaned no useful information. The foods were savoury; the wines, copious. As the evening progressed, the interchanges of the Chatelaine became more burlesque and corybantic. Seadreamer stared about him with glazed eyes, and the First's visage was a thunderhead. At intervals, Covenant spoke his ritual repudiation.

His companions bore the situation as long as they could, then asked Rire Grist to return them to their quarters. He complied with diplomatic ease. When he had departed, the company confronted the necessity for sleep.

Bedrooms had been provided for them all; and each contained only a single bed. But the questers made their own arrangements. Honninscrave and Seadreamer took one room together; the First and Ceer shared another. Linden cast one last searching look at Covenant, then went to her rest with Cail to watch over her. Brinn drew Covenant into the next chamber and put him to bed, leaving Hergrom on guard in the hall with Vain and Findail. When Brinn doused the light, Covenant reflexively closed his eyes.

The light returned, and he opened his eyes. But it was not the same light. It came from a small gilt cruse in the hand of a woman. She wore filmy draperies as suggestive as mist; her lush yellow hair spilled about her shoulders. The light spread hints of welcome around her figure.

She was the Lady Alif, one of the gaddhi's Favoured.

Raising a playful finger to her lips, she spoke softly to Brinn. "You need not summon your companions. Kasreyn of the Gyre desires speech with Thomas Covenant. Your accompaniment is welcome. Indeed, all your companions are welcome, should you think it meet to rouse them. The Kemper has repented of his earlier haste. But wherefore should they be deprived of rest? Surely you suffice to ward Thomas Covenant's safety."

Brinn's countenance betrayed no reaction. He measured the risk and the opportunity of this new ploy impassively.

While he considered, the Lady Alif stepped to his side. Her movements were too soft and unwily to be dangerous. Tiny silver bells tinkled around her ankles. Then her free hand opened, exposing a small mound of fulvous powder. With a sudden breath, she blew the powder into Brinn's face.

One involuntary inhalation of surprise undid him. His knees folded, and he sank in a slow circle to the floor.

At once, the Lady swept toward Covenant, smiling with desire. When she pulled him by the arm, he rose automatically from the bed. “Don't touch me,” he said; but she only smiled and smiled, and drew him toward the door.

In the corridor, he saw that Hergrom lay on the stone like Brinn. Vain faced Linden's chamber, observing nothing. But Findail watched the Lady Alif and Covenant with an assaying look.

The gaddhi's Favoured took Covenant away from the bedrooms.

As they moved, he heard a door open, heard bare feet running almost silently as one of the Haruchai came in pursuit. Ceer or Cail must have sensed the sopor of Brinn and Hergrom and realised that something was wrong.

But beyond the last door, the stone of the walls altered, became mirrors. The Lady led Covenant between the mirrors. In an instant, their images were exactly reflected against them from both sides. Image and image and flesh met, fused. Before the Haruchai could catch them, Covenant and his guide were translated to an altogether different part of the Sandhold.

Stepping between two mirrors poised near the walls, they entered a large round chamber. It was comfortably lit by three or four braziers, seductively appointed like a disporting-place. The fathomless blue rugs asked for the pressure of bare feet; the velvet and satin cushions and couches urged abandon. A patina of incense thickened the air. Tapestries hung from the walls, depicting scenes like echoes of lust. Only the two armed hustin, standing opposite each other against the walls, marred the ambience. But they made no impression on Covenant. They were like the spiralling ironwork stairway which rose from the defense of the chamber. He looked at them and thought nothing.

“Now at last,” said the Lady with a sigh like a shiver of relish, “at last we are alone.” She turned to face him. The tip of her tongue moistened her lips. “Thomas Covenant, my heart is mad with desire for you.” Her eyes were as vivid as kohl could make them. “I have brought you here, not for the Kemper's purpose, but for my own. This night will be beyond all forgetting for you. Every dream of your life I will awaken and fulfil.”

She studied him for some response. When none came, she hesitated momentarily. A flicker of distaste crossed her face. But then she replaced it with passion and spun away. Crying softly, “Behold!” as if every line of her form were an ache of need, she began to dance.

Swaying and whirling to the rhythm of her anklets, she performed her body before him with all the art of a proud odalisque. Portraying the self-loss of hunger for him, she danced closer to him, and away, and closer again; and her hands caressed her thighs, her belly, her breasts as if she were summoning the fire in her flesh. At wily intervals, pieces of her raiment wafted in perfume and gauze to settle like an appeal among the cushions. Her skin had the texture of silk. The nipples of her breasts were painted and hardened like announcements of desire; the muscles within her thighs were smooth and flowing invitations.

But when she flung her arms around Covenant, pressed her body to his, kissed his mouth, his lips remained slack. He did not need to utter his refrain. He saw her as if she did not exist.

His lack of reply startled her; and the surprise allowed a pure fear to show in her eyes. “Do you not desire me?” She bit her lips, groping for some recourse. “You must desire me!”

She tried to conceal her desperation with brazenness; but every new attempt to arouse him only exposed her dread of failure more plainly. She did everything which experience or training could suggest. She stopped at no prostration or appeal which might conceivably have attracted a man. But she could not penetrate his Elohim-wrought emptiness. He was as impervious as if their purpose had been to defend rather than harm him.

Abruptly, she wailed in panic. Her fingers made small creeping movements against her face like spiders. Her loveliness had betrayed her. “Ah, Kemper,” she moaned. “Have mercy! He is no man. How could a man refuse what I have done?”

The effort of articulation pulled Covenant's countenance together for a moment. “Don't touch me.”

At that, humiliation gave her the strength of anger. “Fool!” she retorted. “You destroy me, and it will avail you nothing. The Kemper will reduce me to beggary among the public houses of Bhrathairain for this failure, but he will not therefore spare you. You he will rend limb from limb to gain his ends. Were you man enough to answer me, then at least would you have lived. And I would have given you pleasure.” She struck out at him blindly, lashing her hand across his bearded cheek. “Pleasure.”

“Enough, Alif.” The Kemper's voice froze her where she stood. He was watching her and Covenant from the stairs, had already come halfway down them. “It is not for you to harm him.” From that elevation, he appeared as tall as a Giant; yet his arms looked frail with leanness and age. The child cradled at his back did not stir “Return to the gaddhi.” His tone held no anger, but it cast glints of malice into the room. “I have done with you. From this time forth, you will prosper or wane according to his whim. Please him if you can.”

His words condemned her; but this doom was less than the one she had feared, and she did not quail. With a last gauging look at Covenant, she drew herself erect and moved to the stairs, leaving her apparel behind with a disdain which bordered on dignity.

When she was gone, Kasreyn told one of the Guards to bring Covenant. Then he returned upward.

The husta closed a clawed hand around Covenant's upper arm. A prescient tremor forced him to repeat his litany several times before he found ease. The stairs rose like the gyre of Sandgorgons Doom, bearing him high into the seclusion of Kemper's Pitch. When they ended, he was in the lucubrium where Kasreyn practiced his arts.

Long tables held theurgical apparatus of every kind. Periapts and vials of arcane powders lined the walls. Contrivances of mirrors made candles appear incandescent. Kasreyn moved among them, preparing implements. His hands clenched and unclosed repeatedly to vent his eagerness. His rheum-clouded eyes flickered from place to place. But at his back, his putative son slept. His golden robe rustled along the floor like a scurry of small animals. When he spoke, his voice was calm, faintly tinged with a weariness which hinted at the burden of his years.

“In truth, I did not expect her to succeed.” He addressed Covenant as if he knew that the Unbeliever could not reply. “Better for you if she had—but you are clearly beyond her. Yet for her failure I should perhaps have punished her as men have ever punished women. She is a tasty wench withal, and knowledgeable. But that is no longer in me.” His tone suggested a sigh. “In time past, it was otherwise. Then the gaddhi drew his Favoured from those who had first sated me. But latterly that pleasure comes to me solely through observation of the depraved ruttings of others in the chamber below. Therefore almost I hoped that you would succumb. For the unction it would have given me.”

A chair covered with bindings and apparatus stood to one side of the lucubrium. While Kasreyn spoke, the husta guided Covenant to the chair, seated him there. The Kemper set his implements on the nearest table, then began immobilizing Covenant's arms and legs with straps.

“But that is a juiceless pleasure,” he went on after a brief pause, “and does not content me. Age does not content me. Therefore you are here.” He lashed Covenant's chest securely to the back of the chair. With a neck-strap he ensured that the Unbeliever would sit upright. Covenant could still have moved his head from side to side if he had been capable of conceiving a desire to do so; but Kasreyn appeared confident that Covenant had lost all such desires. A faint sense of trouble floated up out of the emptiness, but Covenant dispelled it with his refrain.

Next Kasreyn began to attach his implements to the apparatus of the chair. These resembled lenses of great variety and complexity. The apparatus held them ready near Covenant's face.

“You have seen,” the Kemper continued as he worked, "that I possess an ocular of gold. Purest gold—a rare and puissant metal in such hands as mine. With such aids, my arts work great wonders, of which Sandgorgons Doom is not the greatest. But my arts are also pure, as a circle is pure, and in a flawed world purity cannot endure. Thus within each of my works I must perforce place one small flaw, else there would be no work at all.“ He stepped back for a moment to survey his preparations. Then he leaned his face close to Covenant's as if he wished the Unbeliever to understand him. ”Even within the work of my longevity there lies a flaw, and through that flaw my life leaks from me drop by drop. Knowing perfection—possessing perfect implements—I have of necessity wrought imperfection upon myself.

“Thomas Covenant, I am going to die.” Once again, he withdrew, muttering half to himself. “That is intolerable.”

He was gone for several moments. When he returned, he set a stool before the chair and sat on it. His eyes were level with Covenant's. With one skeletal finger, he tapped Covenant's half-hand.

“But you possess white gold.” Behind their rheum, his orbs seemed to have no color. "It is an imperfect metal—an unnatural alliance of metals—and in all the Earth it exists nowhere but in the ring you bear. My arts have spoken to me of such a periapt, but never did I dream that the white gold itself would fall to me. The white gold! Thomas Covenant, you reck little what you wield. Its imperfection is the very paradox of which the Earth is made, and with it a master may form perfect works and fear nothing.

“Therefore”— with one hand, he moved a lens so that it covered Covenant's eyes, distorting everything—“I mean to have that ring. As you know—or have known—I may not frankly sever it from you. It will be valueless to me unless you choose to give it. And in your present strait you are incapable of choice. Thus I must first pierce this veil which blinds your will. Then, while you remain within my grasp, I must wrest the choice I require from you,” A smile uncovered the old cruelty of his teeth. “Indeed, it would have been better for you if you had succumbed to the Lady Alif.”

Covenant began his warning. But before he could complete it, Kasreyn lifted his ocular, focused his left eye through it and the lens. As that gaze struck Covenant's, his life exploded in pain.

Spikes drove into his joints; knives laid bare all his muscles; daggers dug down the length of every nerve. Tortures tore at his head as if the skin of his skull were being flayed away. Involuntary spasms made him writhe like a madman in his bonds. He saw Kasreyn's eye boring into him, heard the seizing of his own respiration, felt violence hacking every portion of his flesh to pieces. All his senses functioned normally.

But the pain meant nothing. It fell into his emptiness and vanished—a sensation without content or consequence. Even the writhings of his body did not inspire him to turn his head away.

Abruptly, the attack ended. The Kemper sat back, began whistling softly, tunelessly, through his teeth while he considered his next approach. After a moment, he made his decision. He added two more lenses to the distortion of Covenant's vision. Then he applied his eye to the ocular again.

Instantly, fire swept into Covenant as if every drop of his blood and tissue of his flesh were oil and tinder. It howled through him like the wailing of a banshee. It burst his heart, blazed in his lungs, cindered all his vitals. The marrow of his bones burned and ran like scoria. Savagery flamed into his void as if no power in all the world could prevent it from setting fire to the hidden relicts of his soul.

All his senses functioned normally. He should have been driven irremediably mad in that agony. But the void was more fathomless than any fire.From this, too, the Elohim had defended him.

With a snarl of frustration, Kasreyn looked away again. For a moment, he seemed at a loss.

But then new determination straightened his back. Briskly, he removed one of the lenses he had already used, replaced it with several others. Now Covenant could see nothing except an eye-watering smear. In the defense of the blur appeared Kasreyn's golden ocular as the Kemper once again bent his will inward.

For one heartbeat or two, nothing happened. Then the smear expanded, and the lucubrium began to turn. Slowly at first, then with vertiginous speed, the chamber spun. As it wheeled, the walls dissolved. The chair rose, though Kasreyn's compelling orb did not waver, Covenant went gyring into night.

But it was a night unlike any he had known before. It was empty of every star, every implication. Its world-spanning blackness was only a reflection of the inward void into which he fell. Kasreyn was driving him into himself.

He dropped like a stone, spinning faster and faster as the plunge lengthened. He passed through a fire which seared him—traversed tortures of knives until he fell beyond them. Still he sped down the gullet of the whirling, the nausea of his old vertigo. It impelled him as if it meant to hurl him against the blank wall of his doom.

Yet he saw everything, heard everything. Kasreyn's eye remained before him, impaling the smear of the lenses. In the distance, the Kemper's voice said sharply, “Slay him.” But the command was directed elsewhere, did not touch Covenant.

Then up from the bottom of the gyre arose images which Covenant feared to recognize. Kasreyn's gaze coerced them from the pit. They flew and yowled about Covenant's head as he fell.

The destruction of the Staff of Law.

Blood pouring in streams to feed the Banefire.

Memla and Linden falling under the na-Mhoram's Grim because he could not save them.

His friends trapped and doomed in the Sandhold. The quest defeated. The Land lying helpless under the Sunbane. All the Earth at Lord Foul's mercy.

Because he could not save them.

The Elohim had deprived him of everything which might have made a difference. They had rendered him helpless to touch or aid the people and the Land he loved.

Wrapped in his leprosy, isolated by his venom, he had become nothing more than a victim. A victim absolutely. The perceptions which poured into him from Kasreyn's orb seemed to tell the whole truth about him. The gyre swept him downward like an avalanche. It flung him like a spear, a bringer of death, into the pith of the void.

Then he might have broken. The wall defending him might have been pierced, leaving him as vulnerable as the Land to Kasreyn's eye. But at that moment, he heard a series of thuds. The sounds of combat; blows exchanged, gasp and grunt of impact. Two powerful figures were fighting nearby.

Automatically, reflexively, he turned his head to see what was happening.

With that movement, he broke Kasreyn's hold.

Freed from the distortion of the lenses,his vision reeled back into the lucubrium. He sat in the chair where the Kemper had bound him. The tables and equipment of the chamber were unchanged.

But the guard lay on the floor, coughing up the last of his life. Over The Husta stood Hergrom. He was poised to spring. Flatly, he said, "Kemper, if you have harmed him you will answer for it with blood."

Covenant saw everything. He heard everything.

Emptily, he said, "Don't touch me."