Thomas Covenant 03: Power That Preserves (17 page)

Under the heavy darkness, they could see nothing below them but the distant watch fires smoldering like sparks in cold black tinder. Covenant could not gauge how far away the fires were, but Foamfollower said tightly, “It is a large band. They will gain the Stonedown by dawn—as Slen said.”

“Then we must make haste,” snapped Triock. He swung away to the left, moving swiftly along the unlit ledge.

The Giant followed at once, and his long strides easily matched Triock’s trotting pace. Soon they had left the ledge, crossed from it to more gradual slopes as their trail worked downward into the valley. Slowly Covenant could feel the air thickening. With the warmth of the graveling pot resting against his chest, he began to feel stronger. He made an effort to remember what this trail had looked like in the spring, but no memories came; he could not escape the impression of bare bleakness which shone through the night at him. He sensed that if he could have seen the unrelieved rock faces of the mountains, or the imposed lifelessness of the foothills, or the blasted tree trunks, or the Mithil River writhing in ice, he would have been dismayed. He was not yet ready for dismay.

Ahead of him, Triock began to run.

Foamfollower’s jogging shook other thoughts out of Covenant’s mind, and he began to concentrate in earnest on the gloomy night. By squinting grotesquely, he found that he could adjust his sight somewhat to the dark; apparently his eyes were remembering their Land-born penetration. As Foamfollower hurried him down the trail, he made out the high loom of the mountains on his left and the depth of the valley on his right. After a while, he caught vague, pale glimpses of the ice-gnarled river. Then the trail neared the end of the valley, and swung down in a wide arc toward the Mithil. When Foamfollower had completed the turn, Covenant saw the first dim lightening of dawn behind the eastern peaks.

Their pace became more urgent. As dawn leaked into the air, Covenant could see shadowy clouts of snow jumping from under the beat of Triock’s feet. Foamfollower’s strong respiration filled his ears, and behind it at odd intervals he heard the river straining in sharp creaks and groans against the weight of its own freezing. He began to feel a need to get down from the Giant’s arms, either to separate himself from this urgency or to run toward it on his own.

Then Quirrel slowed abruptly and stopped. Triock and Foamfollower caught up with her, found her with another Stonedownor woman. The woman whispered quickly, “Triock, the people are ready. Enemies approach. They are many, but the scouts saw no Cavewights or ur-viles. How shall we fight them?”

As she spoke, Covenant dropped to the ground. He stamped his feet to speed the circulation in his knees and stepped close to Triock so that he could hear what was said.

“Someone among them has eyes,” Triock responded. “They hunt the High Wood.”

“So say the elders.”

“We will use it to lure them. I will remain on this side of the Stonedown—away from them, so that they must search all the homes to find me. The houses will disrupt their formations, come between them. The Stonedown itself and surprise will aid us. Tell the people to conceal themselves on this side—behind the walls, in the outer houses. Go.”

The woman turned and ran toward the Stonedown. Triock followed her more slowly, giving instructions to Quirrel and Yeurquin as he moved. With Foamfollower at his side, Covenant hurried after them, trying to figure out how to keep himself alive when the fighting started. Triock seemed sure that the marauders were after the
lomillialor
, but Covenant had other ideas. He was prepared to believe that this band of Foul’s creatures had come for him and the white gold.

He panted his way up a long hill behind Triock, and when they topped it, he found himself overlooking the crouched stone shapes of the village. In the unhale dawn, he made out the rough, circular configuration of the Stonedown; its irregular houses, most of them flat-roofed and single-storied, stood facing inward around its open center, the gathering place for its people.

In the distance, near the mouth of the valley, were the fires of the marauders. They moved swiftly, as if they had the scent of prey in their nostrils.

Triock stopped for a moment to peer through the gloom toward them. Then he said to Foamfollower, “If this also goes astray, I leave the High Wood and the Unbeliever in your care. You must do what I cannot.”

“It must not go astray,” Foamfollower replied. “We cannot allow it. What is there that I could do in your stead?”

Triock jerked his head toward Covenant. “Forgive him.”

Without waiting for an answer, he started at a lope down the hill.

Covenant rushed to catch up with him, but his dead feet slipped so uncertainly through the snow that he could not move fast enough. He did not overtake Triock until they were almost at the bottom of the hill. There Covenant grabbed his arm, stopped him, and panted steamily into his face, “Don’t forgive me. Don’t do any more violence to yourself for me. Just give me a weapon so I can defend myself.”

Triock struck Covenant’s hand away. “A weapon, Unbeliever?” he barked. “Use your ring.” But a moment later he controlled himself, fought down his bitterness. Softly he said, “Covenant, perhaps one day we will come to comprehend each other, you and I.” Reaching into his cloak, he drew out a stone dagger with a long blade, and handed it to Covenant gravely, as if they were comrades. Then he hastened away to join the people scurrying toward their positions on the outskirts of the village.

Covenant regarded the knife as if it were a secret asp. For a moment, he was uncertain what to do with it; now that he had a weapon, he could not imagine using it. He had had other knives, the implications of which were ambiguous. He looked questioningly up at Foamfollower, but the Giant’s attention was elsewhere. He was staring intently toward the approach of the fires, and his eyes held a hot, enthusiastic gleam, as if they reflected or remembered slaughter. Covenant winced inwardly. He passed the knife back and forth between his hands, almost threw it away, then abruptly opened his jacket and slid the blade under his belt.

“Now what?” he demanded, trying to distract Foamfollower’s stare. “Do we just stand here, or should we start running around in circles?”

The Giant looked down sharply and his face darkened. “They fight for their homes,” he said dangerously. “If you cannot aid, at least forbear to ridicule.” With a commanding gesture, he strode away between the nearest houses.

Groaning at the Giant’s unfamiliar ire, Covenant followed him into the Stonedown. Most of the people had stopped moving now and were stealthily crouched behind the houses around that side of the village. They seemed to ignore Covenant, and he went by them after Foamfollower as if he were on his way to bait their trap for the marauders.

Foamfollower halted at the back of one of the inner houses. It was flat-roofed, like most of the buildings around it, and its stone eaves reached as high as the Giant’s throat. When Covenant joined him, he picked up the Unbeliever and tossed him lightly onto the roof.

Covenant landed face down in the snow. At once, he lurched sputtering to his knees, and turned angrily back toward the Giant.

“You will be safer there,” Foamfollower said. He nodded toward a neighboring house. “I will ward you from here. Stay low. They are almost upon us.”

Instinctively Covenant dropped to his belly.

As if on signal, he felt a hushed silence spring up around him. No sound touched the Stonedown except the low, dislocated whistle of the wind. He felt acutely exposed on the roof. But even this height made him dizzy; he could not look or jump down. Hastily he skittered back from the edge, then froze as he heard the noise he made. Though his movements were muffled by the snow, they sounded as loud as betrayal in the stillness. For a moment, he could not muster the courage to turn around. He feared to find cruel faces leering at him over the roof edge.

But slowly the apprehension beating in his temples eased. He began to curse himself. Spread-eagled on the roof, he worked slowly around until he was facing in toward the center of the Stonedown.

Across the valley, light bled into the air through the gray packed clouds. The clouds shut out any other sky completely, and under their cold weight the day dawned bleak and cheerless, irremediably aggrieved. The sight chilled Covenant more than black night. He could see now more clearly than he had from Kevin’s Watch that this shrouded, constant gloom was unnatural, wrong—the pall of Lord Foul’s maddest malice. And he was aghast at the power it implied. Foul had the might to distort the Earth’s most fundamental orders. It would not exhaust him to crush one ineffectual leper. Any purpose to the contrary was mere witless buffoonery.

Covenant’s hand moved toward the knife as if its stone edge could remind him of fortitude, tighten the moorings of his endurance. But a distant, clashing sound, uncertain in the wind, cast all other thoughts from his mind. After straining his ears briefly, he knew that he was hearing the approach of the marauders.

He began to shiver as he realized that they were making no effort to move quietly. The whole valley lay open before them, and they had the hungry confidence of numbers; they came up along the river clattering their weapons, defying the Stonedownors to oppose them. Cautiously Covenant slid into a better position to see over the edge of the roof. His muscles trembled, but he locked his jaws, pressed himself flat in the snow, and peered through the dim air toward the center of the village with an intensity of concentration that made his head ache.

Soon he heard guttural shouts and the clang of iron on stone as the marauders rushed to search the first houses. Still he could see nothing; the roof line of the village blocked his view. He tried to keep his breathing low, so that exhaled vapor would not obscure his sight or reveal his position. When he turned his head to look in other directions, he found that he was clenching fistfuls of snow, squeezing them into ice. He opened his hands, forced his fingers to unclaw themselves, then braced his palms flat on the stone so that he would be ready to move.

The loud approach spread out over the far side of the village and began to move inward, working roughly parallel to the river. Instead of trying to surround and trap the Stonedownors, the marauders were performing a slow sweep of the village; disdaining surprise, they maneuvered so that the people would be forced to flee toward the narrow end of the valley. Covenant could think of no explanation for these tactics but red-eyed confidence and contempt. The marauders wanted to drive the people into the final trap of the valley’s end, thus prolonging and sharpening the anticipated slaughter. Such malicious surety was frightening, but Covenant found relief in it. It was not an approach designed to capture something as reputedly powerful as white gold.

But he soon learned another explanation. As he strained his eyes to peer through the dawn, he saw a sharp flash of green light from the far side of the village. It lasted only an instant, and in its wake a crumbling noise filled the air—a noise like the sound of boulders crushing each other. It startled him so much that he almost leaped to his feet to see what had happened. But he caught himself when he saw the first creatures enter the center of the Stonedown.

Most of them were vaguely human in outline. But their features were tormented, grotesquely arranged, as if some potent fist had clenched them at birth, twisting them beyond all recognition. Eyes were out of place, malformed; noses and mouths bulged in skin that was contorted like clay which had been squeezed between strong fingers; and in some cases all the flesh of face and scalp oozed fluid as if the entire head were a running sore. And the rest of their forms were no healthier. Some had backs bent at demented angles, others bore extra arms or legs, still others wore their heads between their shoulder blades or in the center of their chests. But one quality they shared: they all reeked of perversion as if it were the very lifeblood of their existence; and a hatred of everything hale or well curdled their sight.

Naked except for food sacks and bands to hold weapons, they came snarling and spitting into the open core of Mithil Stonedown. There they stopped until the shouts of their fellows told them that the first half of the village was under their control. Then a tall figure with a knuckled face and three massive arms barked a command to the marauders behind her. In response, a group moved into the open circle, bringing with it three prodigious creatures unlike the others.

These three were as blind and hairless as if they had been spawned from ur-viles, but they had neither ears nor noses. Their small heads sat necklessly on their immense shoulders. At the bottom of trunks as big as hogsheads, their short legs protruded like braces, and their heavy arms were long enough to reach the ground. From shoulder to fingertip, the inner surfaces of their arms were covered with suckers. Together, they seemed to ripple in Covenant’s sight, as if within them they carried so much ill might that his unwarped eyes could not discern their limits.

On command, the marauders led the three to a house at the edge of the circle. They were positioned around the building, and at once they moved close to the walls, spread their arms to their fullest extent, gripped the flat rock with their suckers.

Hoarse, growling power began to mount between them. Their might reached around the house and tightened slowly like a noose.

Covenant watched them in blank dismay. He understood the marauders’ tactics now; the band attacked as it did to protect these three. With a stink of attar, their power increased, tightened, growled, until he could see a hawser of green force running through them around the house, squeezing it in implacable fury. He thought that he should shout to the Stonedownors, warn them of the danger. But he was dry-mouthed and frozen with horror. He hardly knew that he had risen to his hands and knees to gain a better view of what was happening.

Moments passed. Tension crackled in the air as the stone of the house began to scream silently under the stress. Covenant gaped at it as if the mute rock were crying out to him for help.