Lord Foul's Bane (24 page)

“Stone and Sea! We are a long-lived people, compared to your humans- I was born on shipboard during the short voyage which saved us from the Desecration, and my great-grandparents were among the first wanderers. And we have so few children. Rarely does any woman bear more than one child. So now there are only five hundred of us, and our vitality narrows with each generation.

“We cannot forget.”

“But in the old lore-legend, the children of the Creator had hope. He put rainbows in our sky after cleansing rains, as a promise to the stars that somehow, someday, he would find a way to bring them home.

“If we are to survive, we must find the Home that we have lost, the heartland beyond the Sunbirth Sea.”

During Foamfollower's tale the sun had declined into late afternoon; and as he finished, sunset began on the horizon. Then the Soulsease ran out of the west with fiery, orange-gold glory reflected flame for flame in its burnished countenance. In the fathomless heavens the fire radiated both loss and prophecy, coming night and promised day, darkness which would pass; for when the true end of day and light came, there would be no blazonry to make it admirable, no spectacle or fine fire or joy, nothing for the heart to behold but decay and grey ashes.

In splendour, Foamfollower lifted up his voice again, and sang with a plummeting ache:

We set our sails to resail our track; 

but the winds of life blew not the way we chose, 

and the land beyond the Sea was lost.

Covenant pushed himself around to look at the Giant. Foamfollower's head was held high, with wet streaks of gleaming gold-orange fire drawn delicately down his cheeks. As Covenant watched, the reflected light took on a reddish shade and began to fade.

Softly, the Giant said, “Laugh, Thomas Covenant laugh for me. Joy is in the ears that hear.”

Covenant heard the subdued, undemanding throb and supplication in Foamfollower's voice, and his own choked pain groaned in answer. But he could not laugh; he had no laughter of any kind in him. With a spasm of disgust for the limitations that crippled him, he made a rough effort in another direction. “I'm hungry.”

For an instant, Foamfollower's shadowed eyes flared as if he had been stung. But then he put back his head and laughed for himself. His humour seemed to spring straight from his heart, and soon it had banished all tension and tears from his visage.

When he had relaxed into quiet chuckling, he said, "Thomas Covenant, I do not like to be hasty- but I believe you are my friend. You have toppled my pride, and that would be fair service even had I not laughed at you earlier.

“Hungry? Of course you are hungry. Bravely said. I should have offered you food earlier- you have the transparent look of a man who has eaten only
aliantha
for days. Some old seers say that privation refines the soul- but I say it is soon enough to refine the soul when the body has no other choice.

“Happily, I am well supplied with food.” He pushed a prodigious leather sack toward Covenant with his foot, and motioned for him to open it. When Covenant loosened its drawstrings, he found salt beef, cheese, old bread, and more than a dozen tangerines as big as his two fists, as well as a leather jug which he could hardly lift. To postpone this difficulty, he tackled the staples first, washing the salt out of his throat with sections of a tangerine. Then he turned his attention to the jug.

“That is
diamondraught
,” said Foamfollower. “It is a vital brew. Perhaps I should- No, the more I look at you, my friend, the more weariness I see. Just drink from the jug. It will aid your rest.”

Tilting the jug, Covenant sipped the
diamondraught
. It tasted like light whiskey, and he could smell its potency; but it was so smooth that it did not bite or burn. He took several relishing swallows, and at once felt deeply refreshed.

Carefully, he closed the jug, replaced the food in the sack, then with an effort pushed the sack back into Foamfollower's reach. The
diamondraught
glowed in his belly, and he felt that in a little while he would be ready for another story. But as he lay down under the thwarts in the bow, the twilight turned into crystal darkness in the sky, and the stars came out lornly, like scattered children. Before he knew that he was drowsing, he was asleep.

It was an uneasy slumber. He staggered numbly through plague-ridden visions full of dying moons and slaughter and helpless ravaged flesh, and found himself lying in the street near the front bumper of the police car. A circle of townspeople had gathered around him. They had eyes of flint, and their mouths were stretched in one uniform rictus of denunciation. Without exception, they were pointing at his hands. When he lifted his hands to look at them, he saw that they were rife with purple, leprous bruises.

Then two white-clad, brawny men came up to him and manhandled him into a stretcher. He could see the ambulance nearby. But the men did not carry him to it immediately. They stood still, holding him at waist level like a display to the crowd.

A policeman stepped into the circle. His eyes were the colour of contempt. He bent over Covenant and said sternly, “You got in my way. That was wrong. You ought to be ashamed.” His breath covered Covenant with the smell of attar.

Behind the policeman, someone raised his voice. It was as full of unction as that of Joan's lawyer. It said, “That was wrong.”

In perfect unison, all the townspeople vomited gouts of blood onto the pavement.

I don't believe this, Covenant thought.

At once, the unctuous voice purred, “He doesn't believe us.” A silent howl of reality, a rabid assertion of fact, sprang up from the crowd. It battered Covenant until he cowered under it, abject and answerless.

Then the townspeople chorused, “You are dead. Without the community; you can't live. Life is in the community, and you have no community. You can't live if no one cares.” The unison of their voices made a sound like crumbling, crushing. When they stopped, Covenant felt that the air in his lungs had been turned to rubble.

With a sigh of satisfaction, the unctuous voice said, “Take him to the hospital. Heal him. There is only one good answer to death: Heal him and throw him out.”

The two men swung him into the ambulance. Before the door slammed shut, he saw the townspeople shaking hands with each other, beaming their congratulations. After that, the ambulance started to move. He raised his hands, and saw that the purple spots were spreading up his forearms. He stared at himself in horror, moaning, Hellfire hellfire hellfire!

But then a bubbling tenor voice said kindly, “Do not fear. It is a dream.” The reassurance spread over him like a blanket. But he could not feel it with his hands, and the ambulance kept on moving. Needing the blanket, he clenched at the empty air until his knuckles were white with loneliness.

When he felt that he could not ache anymore, the ambulance rolled over, and he fell out of the stretcher into blankness.

Twelve: Revelstone

THE pressure against his left cheek began slowly to wear his skin raw, and the pain nagged him up off the bottom of his slumber. Turbulence rushed under his head, as if he were pillowed on shoals. He laboured his way out of sleep. Then his cheek was jolted twice in rapid succession, and his resting place heaved. Pushing himself up, he smacked his head on a thwart of the boat. Pain throbbed in his skull. He gripped the thwart, swung himself away from the rib which had been rubbing his cheek, and sat up to look over the gunwales.

He found that the situation of the boat had changed radically. No shade or line or resonance of Andelainian richness remained in the surrounding terrain. On the northeast, the river was edged by a high, bluff rock wall. And to the west spread a grey and barren plain, a crippled wilderness like a vast battleground where more than men- had been slain, where the fire that scorched and the blood that drenched had blighted the ground's ability to revitalize itself, bloom again- an uneven despoiled lowland marked only by the scrub trees clinging to life along the river which poured into the Soulsease a few hundred yards ahead of the boat. The eastering wind carried an old burnt odour, and behind it lay the fetid memory of a crime.

Already, the river joining ahead troubled the Soulsease- knotted its current, stained its clarity with flinty mud- and Covenant had to grip the gunwales to keep his balance as the pitching of the boat increased.

Foamfollower held the boat in the centre of the river, away from the turmoil against the northeast rock wall. Covenant glanced back at the Giant. He was standing in the stern- feet widely braced, tiller clamped under his right arm. At Covenant's glance, he called over the mounting clash of the rivers, “Trothgard lies ahead! Here we turn north- the White River! The Grey comes from the west!” His voice had a strident edge to it, as if he had been singing as strongly as he could all night; but after a moment he sang out a fragment of a different song:

For we will not rest-

not turn aside,

lost faith,

or fail-

until the Grey flows Blue,

and Rill and Maerl are as new and clean

as ancient Llurallin.

The heaving of the river mounted steadily. Covenant stood in the bottom of the boat- bracing himself against one of the thwarts, gripping the gunwale- and watched the forced commingling of the clean and tainted waters. Then Foamfollower shouted, “One hundred leagues to the Westron Mountains Guards Gap and the high spring of the Llurallin and one hundred fifty southwest to the Last Hills and Garroting Deep! We are seventy from Lord's Keep!”

Abruptly, the river's moiling growl sprang louder, smothered the Giant's voice. An unexpected lash of the current caught the boat and tore its prow to the right, bringing it broadside to the stream. Spray slapped Covenant as the boat heeled over; instinctively, he threw his weight onto the left gunwale.

The neat instant, he heard a snatch of Foamfollower's plainsong, and felt power thrumming deeply along the keel. Slowly, the boat righted itself, swung into the current again.

But the near-disaster had carried them dangerously close to the northeast wall. The boat trembled with energy as Foamfollower worked it gradually back into the steadier water flowing below the main force of the Grey's current. Then the sensation of power faded from the keel.

“Your pardon!” the Giant shouted. “I am losing my seamanship!” His voice was raw with strain.

Covenant's knuckles were white from clenching the gunwales. As he bounced with the pitch of the boat, he remembered,
There is only one good answer to death
.

One good answer, he thought. This isn't it.

Perhaps it would be better if the boat capsized, tatter if he drowned- better if he did not carry Lord Foul's message halfhanded and beringed to Revelstone. He was not a hero. He could not satisfy such expectations.

“Now the crossing!” Foamfollower called. “We must pass the Grey to go on north. There is no great danger- except that I am weary. And the rivers are high.”

This time, Covenant turned and looked closely at the Giant. He saw now that Saltheart Foamfollower was suffering. His cheeks were sunken, hollowed as if something had gouged the geniality out of his face; and his cavernous eyes burned with taut, febrile volition. Weary? Covenant thought. More like exhausted. He lurched awkwardly from thwart to thwart until he reached the Giant. His eyes were no higher than Foamfollower's waist. He tipped his head back to shout, “I'll steer! You rest!”

A smile flickered on the Giant's lips. “I thank you. But no- you are not ready. I am strong enough. But please lift the
diamondraught
to me.”

Covenant opened the food sack and put his hands on the leather jug. Its weight and suppleness made it unwieldy for him, and the tossing of the boat unbalanced him. He simply could not lift the jug. But after a moment he got his arms under it. With a groan of exertion, he heaved it upward.

Foamfollower caught the neck of the jug neatly in his left hand. “Thank you, my friend,” he said with a ragged grin. Raising the jug to his mouth, he disregarded the perils of the current for a moment to drink deeply. Then he put down the jug and swung the boat toward the mouth of the Grey River.

Another surge of power throbbed through the craft. As it hit the main force of the Grey, Foamfollower turned downstream and angled across the flow. Energy quivered in the floorboards. In a smooth manoeuvre, Foamfollower reached the north side of the current, pivoted upstream with the backwash along the wall, and let it sling him into the untroubled White. Once he had rounded the northward curve, the roar of the joining began to drop swiftly behind the boat.

A moment later, the throb of power faded again. Sighing heavily, Foamfollower wiped the sweat from his face. His shoulders sagged, and his head bowed. With laboured slowness, he lowered the tiller, and at last dropped into the stern of the boat. “Ah, my friend,” he groaned, “even Giants are not made to do such things.”

Covenant moved to the centre of the boat and took a seat in the bottom, leaning against one of the sides. From that position, he could not see over the gunwales, but he was not at present curious about the terrain. He had other concerns. One of them was Foamfollower's condition. He did not know how the Giant had become so exhausted.

He tried to approach the question indirectly by saying, “That was neatly done. How did you do it? You didn't tell me what powers this thing.” And he frowned at the tactless sound of his voice.

“Ask for some other story,” Foamfollower sighed wearily. “That one is nearly as long as the history of the Land. I have no heart to teach you the meaning of life here.”

“You don't know any short stories,” responded Covenant.

At this, the Giant managed a wan smile. “Ah, that is true enough. Well, I will make it brief for you. But then you must promise to tell a story for me- something rare, that I will never guess for myself. I will need that, my friend.”

Covenant agreed with a nod, and Foamfollower said, “Well. Eat, and I will talk.”

Vaguely surprised at how hungry he was, Covenant tackled the contents of Foamfollower's sack. He munched meat and cheese rapidly, satisfied his thirst with tangerines. And while he ate, the Giant began in a voice flat with fatigue: "The time of Damelon Giantfriend came to an end in the Land before my people had finished the making of
Coercri
, their home in Seareach. They carved Lord's Keep, as men call it, out of the mountain's heart before they laboured on their own Lord-given land, and Loric was High Lord when
Coercri
was done. Then my forebearers turned their attention outward- to the Sunbirth Sea, and to the friendship of the Land.

“Now, both
lillianrill
and
rhadhamaerl
desired to study the lore of the Giants, and the time of High Lord Loric Vilesilencer was one of great growth for the
lillianrill
. To help in this growth, it was necessary for the Giants to make many sojourns to Lord's Keep” -he broke into a quiet chant, singing for a while as if in invocation of the old grandeur of Giantish reverence-"to mighty Revelstone. This was well, for it kept Revelstone bright in their eyes.

"But the Giants are not great lovers of walking no more so then than now. So my forebearers bethought them of the rivers which flow from the Westron Mountains to the Sea, and decided to build boats. Well, boats cannot come here from the Sea, as you may know- Landsdrop, on which stands Gravin Threndor, blocks the way. And no one, Giant or otherwise, would willingly sail the Defiles Course from Lifeswallower, the Great Swamp. So the Giants built docks on the Soulsease, upriver from Gravin Threndor and the narrows now called Treacher's Gorge. There they kept such boats as this- there, and at Lord's Keep at the foot of Furl Falls, so that at least two hundred leagues of the journey might be on the water which we love.

“In this journeying, Loric and the
lillianrill
desired to be of aid to the Giants. Out of their power they crafted Gildenlode- a strong wood which they named
lor-liarill
- and from this wood they made rudders and keels for our riverboats. And it was the promise of the Old Lords that, when their omens of hope for us came to pass, then Gildenlode would help us.

“Ah, enough,” Foamfollower sighed abruptly. “In short, it is I who impel this craft.” He lifted his hand from the tiller, and immediately the boat began to lose headway. “Or rather it is I who call out the power of the Gildenlode. There is life and power in the Earth- in stone and wood and water and earth. But life in them is somewhat hidden- somewhat slumberous. Both knowledge and strength are needed yes, and potent vital songs- to awaken them.” He grasped the tiller again, and the boat moved forward once more.

“So I am weary,” he breathed. “I have not rested since the night before we met.” His tone reminded Covenant of Trell's fatigue after the Gravelingas had healed the broken pot. “For two days and two nights I have not allowed the Gildenlode to stop or slow, though my bones are weak with the expense.” To the surprise in Covenant's face, he added, “Yes, my friend- you slept for two nights and a day. From the west of Andelain across the Centre Plains to the marge of Trothgard, more than a hundred leagues.” After a pause, he concluded, “
Diamondraught
does such things to humans. But you had need of rest.”

For a moment, Covenant sat silent, staring at the floorboards as if he were looking for a place to hit them. His mouth twisted sourly when he raised his head and said, “So now I'm rested. Can I help?”

Foamfollower did not reply immediately. Behind the buttress of his forehead, he seemed to weigh his various uncertainties before he muttered, “Stone and Sea! Of course you can. And yet the very fact of asking shows that you cannot. Some unwillingness or ignorance prevents.”

Covenant understood. He could hear dark wings, see slaughtered Wraiths. Wild magic! he groaned. Heroism! This is unsufferable. With a jerk of his head, he knocked transitions aside and asked roughly, “Do you want my ring?”

“Want?” Foamfollower croaked, looking as if he felt he should laugh but did not have the heart for it. “Want?” His voice quavered painfully, as if he were confessing to some kind of aberration. "Do not use such a word, my friend.
Wanting
is natural, and may succeed or fail without wrong. Say
covet
, rather. To covet is to desire something which should not be given. Yes, I covet your un-Earth, wild magic, peace-ending white gold:

There is wild magic graven in every rock, 

contained for white gold to unleash or control-

I admit the desire. But do not tempt me. Power has a way of revenging itself upon its usurpers. I would not accept this ring if you offered it to me."

“But you do know how to use it?” Covenant enquired dully, half dazed by his inchoate fear of the answer.

This time Foamfollower did laugh. His humour was emaciated, a mere wisp of its former self, but it was clean and gay. “Ah, bravely said, my friend. So covetousness collapses of its own folly. No, I do not know. If the wild magic may not be called up by the simple decision of use, then I do not understand it at all. Giants do not have such lore. We have always acted for ourselves- though we gladly use such tools as Gildenlode. Well, I am rewarded for unworthy thoughts. Your pardon, Thomas Covenant.”

Covenant nodded mutely, as if he had been given an unexpected reprieve. He did not want to know how wild magic worked; he did not want to believe in it in any way. Simply carrying it around was dangerous. He covered it with his right hand and gazed dumbly, helplessly, at the Giant.

After a moment, Foamfollower's fatigue quenched his humour. His eyes dimmed, and his respiration sighed wearily between his slack lips. He sagged on the tiller as if laughing had cost him vital energy. “Now, my friend,” he breathed. “My courage is nearly spent. I need your story.”

Story? Covenant thought. I don't have any stories. I burned them.

He had burned them- both his new novel and his best-seller. They had been so complacent, so abjectly blind to the perils of leprosy, which lurked secretive and unpredictable behind every physical or moral existence- and so unaware of their own sightlessness. They were carrion-like himself, like himself- fit only for flames. What story could he tell now?