Thomas Covenant - 02b - Gilden Fire by Stephen Donaldson Read Free Book Online

by the backlash of the concussion.
     
    During the blast, Korik received an urgent call from Sill. He completed his last blow, then left the remaining urviles to the abundant strength of his comrades and spun away to look around the valley.
     
    Down at the bottom of the bowl, Lord Hyrim was laboring strenuously to save the Gilden. In a voice shrill with strain, he summoned the Earthpower to his aid. And he was making progress. In answer to his invocations, water bubbled up from the grass around the tree   already it was deep enough to touch his ankles   and the fire gradually sloughed away from the broad limbs, dropped down as if the tree were shrugging off of cloak of flame.
     
    Still, the process was hard, slow. Hyrim sounded exhausted, and he had not subdued a quarter of the blaze.
     
    But that was not the meaning of Sill’s shout. After one brief glance at Hyrim, Korik saw the other peril.
     
    There were wolves standing shoulder to shoulder around the entire rim of the valley.
     
    They were poised and silent, gazing intently down into the bowl: their eyes reflected the fire, so that the valley seemed ringed by a thousand red pairs of waiting fireflies. But even as Korik scanned them, took a rough estimate of their numbers, the leader of the pack threw back its head and gave a long high yipping howl.
     
    Brabha returned a furious neigh, as if he were answering a challenge.
     
    It affected the wolves like a tantara. At once, they broke into a hungry growl that pulsed in the air like the turmoil of seas. And they started down into the valley at a slow walk.
     
      A trap, Cerrin said. We have been snared.
     
    Korik called to Lord Shetra, then bounded onto Brabha’s back and pelted down the hillside toward the tree. The rest of the company followed him instantly. As he reached the fire, he ordered the Bloodguard into a defensive formation around him. To Lord Hyrim, he shouted, “Come!”
     
    Hyrim did not turn his head. With sweat running down his cheeks and a wide intensity like obsession in his eyes, he kept working for the tree: he invoked water as if he were heaving it out of the ground by main force of will, vitalized the tree’s resistance to flame, and now pulled at the fire itself, drawing it slowly tongue by tongue, away from the branches. But through the slow beats of the lillianrill chant he wove for the Gilden, he hissed to Korik, “It must be saved!”
     
      This task consumes him, Sill said. He urges the mission to go without him.
     
      He will be slain, Korik snapped.
     
      Not while I live.
     
      You will not live long.
     
      That is the way with him, Sill shrugged silently.
     
    Korik had no time to debate whether or not he should desert one Lord for the sake of the mission. He did not intend to make that choice.
     
    Summon or succour. Swiftly, he threw himseff from Brabha, stepped in front of Hyrim. He would not allow the son of Hoole to commit suicide. Almost wincing at the way he was forced to violate his Vowed service to any Lord, he shouted into Hyrim ‘s concentration, “Will you sacrifice the Giants for one tree?”
     
    The Lord did not stop. His eyes reflected the fire with a ferocity Korik had never seen in him before. He seemed to be sweating passion as he panted, “The choice is not so simple!”
     
    Korik reached out a hand to wrest Hyrim away from his mad purpose. But at that instant Shetra barked, “Korik, you forget yourself!” and cast her power like a shout to Hyrim’s support. The sheer force of their combined exertion made Korik recoil a step.
     
    The wolves were almost upon them: the bristling growl filled the air with the sound of fangs.
     
    Briskly, Korik marshalled his comrades arnund him on their mounts. The Ranyhyn champed and snorted tensely, but held their positions against the stow advance of the wolves.
     
    Together, the Lords gave a wild cry; and the light of Gildenfire fell suddenly out of the night.
     
    As darkness rushed back into the