Thomas Covenant 03: Power That Preserves (55 page)

Even in the cynosural eel light, they did not go much farther. The destruction of the Staff had changed the balance of Lord Foul’s winter; without the wind to hold them, the massed energies of the clouds recoiled. In the deeper chill of darkness, they triggered rain out of the blind sky. Soon torrents fell through the damaged grasp of the clouds, crashed straight down onto the Lower Land as if the vaulting which held up the heavens had broken. Under those conditions, Foamfollower could not find his way. He and Covenant had no choice but to huddle together for warmth in the mud and try to sleep while they waited.

With the coming of dawn, the rain stopped, and Covenant and Foamfollower went on along the Ruinwash in the blurred light of morning. During that day, they saw the last of the
aliantha
; as they penetrated into the Spoiled Plains, the mud became too dead for treasure-berries. The travelers kept themselves going on scant shares of their dwindling supplies. At night, the rains came again, soaking them until they seemed to have its dankness in the marrow of their bones.

The next day, an eagle spotted them through a gap in the gray trees. It cycled twice close over their heads, then soared away, screaming in mockery like a voice from the dead, “Foamfollower! Kinabandoner!”

“They’re after us,” said Covenant.

The Giant spat violently. “Yes. They will hunt us down.” He found a smooth stone the size of Covenant’s two fists and carried it with him to throw at the eagle if it returned.

It did not come back that day, but the next—after another torrential downpour avalanched the Plains as if the cloud lid over the Land were a shattered sea—Lord Foul’s bird circled them twice, morning and afternoon. The first time, it taunted them until Foamfollower had hurled all the stones he could find nearby, then it slashed close to bark scornfully, “Kinabandoner! Groveler!”

The second time, Foamfollower kept one stone hidden. He waited until the eagle had swooped lower to jeer, then threw at it with deadly force. It survived by breaking the blow with its wings, but it flew limping away, barely able to stay aloft.

“Make haste,” Foamfollower growled. “That ill bird has been guiding the pursuit toward us. It is not far off.”

At the best pace Covenant could manage on his numb, battered feet, he pushed ahead through the bosque.

They stayed under tree cover as much as possible to ward against spying birds. This caution slowed them somewhat, but the largest drag on their progress was Covenant’s weariness. His injury and the ordeal of the Colossus appeared to have drained some essential resilience out of him. He got little sleep in the cold wet nights, and he felt that he was slowly starving on his share of the food. In dogged silence he shambled along league after league as if his fear of the hunt were the only thing that kept him moving. And that evening, in the gloaming verdigris of the eel fire, he consumed the last of Foamfollower’s supplies.

“Now what?” he muttered vaguely when he was done.

“We must resign ourselves. There is no more.”

Ah, hell! Covenant groaned to himself. He remembered vividly what had happened to him in the woods behind Haven Farm, when his self-imposed inanition had made him hysterical. The memory filled him with cold dread.

In turn, that dread called up other memories—recollections of his ex-wife, Joan, and his son, Roger. He felt an urge to tell Foamfollower about them, as if they were spirits he could exorcise by simply saying the right thing about them to the right person. But before he could find the words, his thoughts were scattered by the first attack of the hunt.

Without warning, a band of apelike creatures came crashing through the bosque from the south side of the Ruinwash. Voiceless like the rush of a nightmare, they broke through the brittle wood and the eel light. They threw themselves from the low bank and heaved across the current toward their prey.

Either they did not know their danger, or they had forgotten it. Without one shout or cry, they all vanished under a sudden, hot, seething of blue-green iridescence. None of them reappeared.

At once, Covenant and Foamfollower started on their way again. While the crepuscular light lasted, they put as much distance as possible between themselves and the place of the attack.

A short time later the rain began. It fell on them like the collapse of a mountain, made the whole night impenetrable. They were forced to stop. They hunched together like waifs under the scant, leafless shelter of a tree, trying to sleep and hoping that the hunt could not follow them in this weather.

After a while, Covenant dozed. He was hovering near the true depths of sleep when Foamfollower shook him awake.

“Listen!”

Covenant could hear nothing but the uninterrupted smash of the rain.

The Giant’s ears were keener. “The Ruinwash rises! There will be a flood.”

Straggling like blind men, thrashing their way against unseen trees and brush, slipping through water that already reached above their ankles, they tried to climb out of the bosque toward higher ground. After a long struggle, they worked clear of the old riverbed. But the water continued to mount, and the terrain did not. Now beyond the rain, Covenant could hear the deeper roar of the flood; it seemed to tower above them in the night. He was stumbling knee-deep in muddy water, and could see no way to save himself.

But Foamfollower dragged him onward. Some time later, they waded into an erosion gully. Its walls were slick, and the water poured down through it like flowing silt, but the Giant did not hesitate. He attached Covenant to him with a short
clingor
line and began to forge up the gully.

Covenant clung to Foamfollower for a distance that seemed as long as leagues. But at last he could feel that they were climbing. The walls of the gully narrowed. Foamfollower used his hands to help him ascend.

When they reached an open hillside where the flow of water hardly covered their feet, they stopped. Covenant sank exhausted into the mud. The rain faltered to an end, and he went numbly to sleep until another cold gray dawn smeared its way across the clouds from the east.

At last he rubbed the caked fatigue out of his eyes and sat up. Foamfollower was gazing at him with amusement. “Ah, Covenant,” the Giant said, “we are a pair. You are so bedraggled and somber— And I fear my own appearance is not improved.” He struck a begrimed pose. “What is your opinion?”

For a moment, Foamfollower looked as gay and carefree as a playing child. The sight gave Covenant a pang. How long had it been since he had heard the Giant laugh? “Wash your face,” he croaked with as much humor as he could manage. “You look ridiculous.”

“You honor me,” Foamfollower returned. But he did not laugh. As his amusement faded, he turned away and splashed a little water on his face to clean it.

Covenant followed his example, though he was too tired to feel dirty. He drank three swallows from the jug for breakfast, then pried himself unsteadily to his feet.

In the distance, he could see a few treetops sticking out of the broad brown swath of the flood. No other signs remained visible to mark the bosque of the Ruinwash.

Opposite the flood, in the direction he and Foamfollower would now have to take, lay a long ridge of hills. They piled in layers above him until they seemed almost as high as mountains, and their scarred sides looked as desolate as if their very roots had been dead for eons.

He groaned at the prospect. His worn flesh balked. But he had no choice; the lowlands of the Ruinwash were no longer passable.

With nothing to sustain them but frugal rations of water, he and the Giant began to climb.

The ascent was shallower than it had appeared. If Covenant had been well fed and healthy, he would not have suffered. But in his drained condition, he could hardly drag himself up the slopes. The festering wound on his forehead ached like a heavy burden attached to his skull, pulling him backward. The thick humid air seemed to clog his lungs. From time to time, he found himself lying among the stones and could not remember how he had lost his feet.

Yet with Foamfollower’s help he kept going. Late that day, they crested the ridge of hills, started their descent.

Since leaving the Ruinwash, they had seen no sign of pursuit.

The next morning, after a night’s rain as ponderous and rancid as if the clouds themselves were stagnant, they moved down out of the hills. As Covenant’s gaunt flesh adjusted to hunger, he grew steadier—not stronger, but less febrile. He made the descent without mishap, and from the ridge he and Foamfollower traveled generally eastward out into the barren landscape.

After a foodless and dreary noon, they came to an eerie wilderness of thorns. It occupied the bottom of a wide lowland; for nearly a league, dead thorn-trees with limbs like arms and gray barbs as hard as iron stood in their way. The whole bottom looked like a ruined orchard where sharp spikes and hooks had been grown for weapons; the thorns stood in crooked rows as if they had been planted there so that they could be tended and harvested. Here and there, gaps appeared in the rows, but from a distance Covenant could not see what caused them.

Foamfollower did not want to cross the valley. Higher ground bordered the thorn wastes on both sides, and the barren trees offered no concealment; while they were down in the bottom, they could be easily seen. But again they had no choice. The wastes extended far to the north and south. They would need time to circumvent the thorns—time in which hunger could overcome them, pursuit overtake them.

Muttering to himself, Foamfollower scanned all the terrain as far as he could see, searching for any sign of the hunt. Then he led Covenant down the last slope into the thorns.

They found that the lowest branches of the trees were six or seven feet above the ground. Covenant could move erect along the crooked rows of trunks, but Foamfollower had to crouch or bend almost double to keep the barbs from ripping open his torso and head. He risked injury if he moved too quickly. As a result, their progress through the wastes was dangerously slow.

Thick dust covered the ground under their feet. All the rain of the past nights seemed to have left this valley untouched. The lifeless dirt faced the clouds as if years of torrents could never assuage the thirst of its ancient ruin. Choking billows rose up from the strides of the travelers, filled their lungs and stung their eyes—and plumed into the sky to mark their presence as clearly as smoke.

Soon they came to one of the gaps in the thorns. To their surprise, they found that it was a mud pit. Damp clay bubbled in a small pool. In contrast to the dead dust all around it, it seemed to be seething with some kind of muddy life, but it was as cold as the winter air. Covenant shied away from it as if it were dangerous, and hurried on through the thorns as fast as Foamfollower could go.

They were halfway to the eastern edge of the valley when they heard a hoarse shout of discovery in the distance behind them. Whirling, they saw two large bands of marauders spring out of different parts of the hills. The bands came together as they charged in among the thorn-trees, howling for the blood of their prey.

Covenant and Foamfollower turned and fled.

Covenant sprinted with the energy of fear. In the first surge of flight, he had room in his mind for nothing but the effort of running, the pumping of his legs and lungs. But shortly he realized that he was pulling away from Foamfollower. The Giant’s crouched stance cramped his speed; he could not use his long legs effectively without tearing his head off among the thorns. “Flee!” he shouted at Covenant. “I will hold them back!”

“Forget it!” Covenant slowed to match the Giant’s pace. “We’re in this together.”

“Flee!” Foamfollower repeated, flailing one arm urgently as if to hurl the Unbeliever ahead.

Instead of answering, Covenant rejoined his friend. He heard the savage outcry of the pursuit as if it were clawing at his back, but he stayed with Foamfollower. He had already lost too many people who were important to him.

Abruptly Foamfollower lurched to a halt. “Go, I say! Stone and Sea!” He sounded furious. “Do you believe I can bear to see your purpose fail for my sake?”

Covenant wheeled and stopped. “Forget it,” he panted again. “I’m good for nothing without you.”

Foamfollower spun to look at the charging hunters. “Then you must find the way of your white gold now. They are too many.”

“Not if you keep moving! By hell! We can still beat them.”

The Giant swung back to face Covenant. For an instant, his muscles bunched to carry him forward again. But then he went rigid; his head jerked up. He stared hotly through the branches into the distance past Covenant’s head.

A new dread seized Covenant. He turned, followed the Giant’s gaze.

There were ur-viles on the eastern slope of the valley. They rushed in large numbers toward the wastes as if they were swarming, and as they moved, they coalesced into three wedges. Covenant could see them clearly through the thorns. When they reached the bottom, they halted, wielded their staves. All along the eastern edge of the forest, they set fire to the dead trees.

The thorns flared instantly. Flames leaped up with a roar, spread rapidly through the branches from tree to tree. Each trunk became a torch to light its neighbors. In moments, Covenant and Foamfollower were cut off from the east by a wall of conflagration.

Foamfollower snatched his gaze back and forth between the fire and the charging hunters, and his eyes shot gleams of fury like battle-lust from under his massive brows. “Trapped!” he shouted as if the impossibility of the situation outraged him. But his anger had a different meaning. “They have erred! I am not so vulnerable to fire. I can break through and attack!”

“I’m vulnerable,” Covenant replied numbly. He watched the Giant’s rising rage with a nausea of apprehension in his guts. He knew what his response should have been. Foamfollower was far better equipped than he to fight the Despiser. He should have said, Take my ring and go. You can find a way to use it. You can get past those ur-viles. But his throat would not form the words. And the fear that Foamfollower would ask for his wedding band churned in him, inspired him to find an alternative. He croaked, “Can you swim in quicksand?”