THE POWER THAT PRESERVES

by default

  After a wordless consultation with the other Manethralls, Jain got to her feet and confronted Foamfollower across the fire. Unbidden, Bannor joined her. They regarded the Giant gravely for a long moment. Then Jain said, "Saltheart Foamfollower, the Render is cunning in malice. To discover him in all his secret treacheries requires an equal cunning. The Ramen have no such cunning. How is it possible for us to test you?"

  "Inquire of my past," Foamfollower responded evenly. "I was absent from Giant-wrought Coercri when the Ravers put their hands upon my kindred. Since that time, I have roved the Land, striking-slaying marauders. I have fought at the side of the Stonedownors in defense of their homes. I-"

  "They had creatures which destroyed stone!" Lena cut in with sudden vehemence. "Their great, cruel arms tore our homes to rubble. Without the Giant's strength, we could not have preserved one rock upright."

  "Lena." Covenant wanted to applaud, cheer her affirmation, but he stopped her gently, squeezed her arm until she turned her angry gaze toward him. "He doesn't need our help,'' he said as if he were afraid her ire might break the frail bones of her face. "He can answer for himself."

  Slowly, her anger turned to pain. "Why do they torment us? We seek to save the Ranyhyn also. The Ranyhyn trust us."

  Covenant steadied her as best he could. "They've suffered. They've got to answer for themselves too."

  "I also shared somewhat in the returning of Thomas Covenant to the Land," Foamfollower continued. "He would not sit here now, purposing to aid the Land, had I not given of my strength."

  "That does not suffice," said Jain sternly. "The Render would not hesitate to kill his own for the sake of a larger goal. Perhaps you served the Stonedownors and the summoning so that this white gold might fall into Fangthane's hands."

  "And you have not given an account of The Grieve.'' Bannor's voice was soft, withdrawn, as if the question he raised were perilous.

  But Foamfollower turned such issues aside with a jerk of his massive head. "Then discount my past-discount the scars of risk which cover my flesh. It is possible that I am a tool of the Despiser. Inquire of what you see. Behold me. Do you truly believe that a Raver might disguise himself within me?"

  "How can we answer?" Jain muttered. "We have never seen you hale."

  But Foamfollower was facing Bannor now, addressing his question to the Bloodguard.

  Evenly, objectively, Bannor replied, "Giant, you do not appear well. Many things are obscured in this winter-but you do not appear well. There is a lust in you that I do not comprehend. It has the look of Corruption."

  The Manethralls nodded in sharp agreement.

  "Bannor!" Foamfollower breathed intently. His stiff calm broke momentarily, and a pang of anguish twisted his countenance. "Do not damn me with such short words. It may be that I too much resemble Pietten. I have struck blows that I cannot call back or prevent. And you have seen-there is the blood of Giants upon my head."

  The blood of Giants? Covenant moaned. Foamfollower!

  The next instant, Foamfollower regained mastery of himself. "But you have known me, Bannor. You can see that it is not my intent to serve the Despiser. I could not-!" The words ripped themselves savagely past his lips.

  '' I have known you," Bannor agreed simply. " In what way do I know you now?"

  The Giant's hands twitched as if they were eager for a violent answer, but he kept his steadiness. Without dropping Banner's gaze, he knelt by the fire. Even then he was taller than Bannor or Manethrall Jain. His muscles tensed as he leaned forward, and the orange firelight echoed dangerously out of the dark caves of his eyes.

  "You have seen the caamora, Bannor," he said tightly, "the Giantish ritual fire of grief. You have seen its pain. I am not prepared-this is not my time for such rituals. But I will not withdraw until you acknowledge me, Bannor of the Bloodguard."

  He did not release Banner's eyes as he thrust both his fists into the hottest coals of the campfire.

  The Cords gasped at the sight, and the other Manethralls jumped up to join Jain. Covenant followed as if the Giant had snatched him erect.

  Foamfollower was rigid with agony. Though the flames did not consume his flesh, they tortured him horrendously. The muscles of his forehead bulged and worked as if they were tearing his skull apart; the thews of his neck stood out like cables; sweat oozed like blood down his fire-hot cheeks; his lips drew back into a white snarl across his teeth. But his gaze did not waver. In anguish he kept up the demand of his pain.

  Bannor stared back with a look of magisterial indifference on his alien mien.

  The Cords were appalled. They gaped sickly at Foamfollower's hands. And the Manethralls painfully, fearfully, watched Bannor and the Giant, measuring the test of will between them. But Lena gave a low cry and hid her face in Covenant's shoulder.

  Covenant, too, could not bear to see Foamfollower's hurt. He turned on Banner and gasped into the Bloodguard's ear, "Give it up! Admit you know him. Hellfire! Banner-you bloody egomaniac! You're so proud- after the Bloodguard failed you can't stand to admit there might be any faithfulness left anywhere. It's you or nothing. But he's a Giant, Bannor!'' Bannor did not move, but a muscle quivered along his jaw. "Wasn't Elena enough for you?" Covenant hissed. "Are you trying to make another Kevin out of him?"

  For an instant, Banner's white eyebrows gathered into a stark frown. Then he said flatly, "Pardon me, Saltheart Foamfollower. I trust you."

  Foamfollower withdrew his hands. They were rigid with pain, and he hugged them to his chest, panting hoarsely.

  Bannor turned to Covenant. Something in his pose made Covenant flinch as if he expected the Bloodguard to strike him. "You also caused the fall of High Lord Elena," Bannor said brittlely. "You compelled us to reveal the unspoken name. Yet you did not bear the burden of that name yourself. Therefore the Law of Death was broken, and Elena fell. I did not reproach you then, and do not now. But I say to you: beware, ur-Lord Covenant! You hold too many dooms in your unwell hands."

  "I know that," muttered Covenant. He was shaking so badly that he had to keep both arms around Lena to support himself. "I know that. It's the only thing I know for sure.'' He could not look at Foamfollower; he was afraid of the Giant's pain, afraid that the Giant might resent his intervention. Instead, he held onto Lena while his reaction to the strain surged into anger.

  ''But I've had enough of this.'' His voice was too violent, but he did not care. He needed some outlet for his passion. "I'm not interested in asking for help anymore. Now I'm going to tell you what to do. Manethrall Lithe promised that the Ramen would do whatever I wanted. You care about promises-you keep this one. I want food, all we can carry. I want guides to take us to Landsdrop as fast as possible. I want scouts to help us get across the Spoiled Plains.'' Words tumbled through his teeth faster than he could control them. "If Foamfollower's been crippled- By hell, you're going to make it up to him!"

  "Ask for the moon," Manethrall Kam muttered.

  "Don't tempt me!" Hot shouts thronged in his throat like fire; he whirled to fling flames at the Manethralls. But their haunted eyes stopped him. They did not deserve his rage. Like Bannor and Foamfollower, they were the victims of the Despiser-the victims of the things he, Thomas Covenant, had not done, had been unwilling or unable to do, for the Land. Again, he could feel the ground on which he stood tremoring.

  With an effort, he turned back to Bannor, met the Bloodguard's aging gaze. "What happened to Elena wasn't your fault at all," he mumbled. "She and I-did it together. Or I did it to her." Then he pushed himself to go to Foamfollower.

  But as he moved, Lena caught his arm, swung him around. He had been bracing himself on her without paying any attention to her; now she made him look at her. "Elena-my daughter-what has happened to her?" Horror crackled in her eyes. The next instant, she was clawing at his chest with desperate fingers. "What has happened to her?"

  Covenant stared at her. He had half forgotten, he had not wanted to remember that she knew nothing of Elena's end.

  "He
said she fell!" she cried at him. "What have you done to her?"

  He held her at arm's length, backed away from her. Suddenly everything was too much for him. Lena, Foamfollower, Bannor, the Ramen-he could not keep a grip on it all at once. He turned his head toward Foamfollower, ignored Lena, and looked dumbly to the Giant for help. But Foamfollower did not even see Covenant's stricken, silent plea. He was still wrapped in his own pain, struggling to flex his wracked fingers. Covenant lowered his head and turned back toward Lena as if she were a wall against which he had to batter himself.

  "She's dead," he said thickly. "It's my fault-she wouldn't have been in that mess if it hadn't been for me. I didn't save her because I didn't know how."

  He heard shouts behind him, but they made no impression on him. He was watching Lena. Slowly the import of his words penetrated her. "Dead," she echoed emptily. "Fault." As Covenant watched her, the light of consciousness in her eyes seemed to falter and go out.

  "Lena," he groaned. "Lena!"

  Her gaze did not recognize him. She stared blankly through him as if her soul had lapsed within her.

  The shouting behind him mounted. A voice nearby gasped out, "We are betrayed! Ur-viles and Cavewights-! The sentries were slain."

  The urgency in the voice reached him. He turned dully. A young Cord almost chattering with fear stood before the Manethralls and Bannor. Behind her, in the entrance to the covert, fighting had already begun. Covenant could hear the shouts and groans of frantic hand-to-hand combat echoing out of the rift.

  The next instant, a tight pack of Cavewights burst into the canyon, whirling huge broadswords in their powerful, spatulate hands. With a shrill roar, they charged the Ramen.

  Before Covenant could react, Bannor caught hold of him and Lena, began to drag them both toward the other end of the valley. "Flee,'' he said distinctly as he impelled them forward. "The Giant and I will prevent pursuit. We will overtake you-as soon as may be. Flee north, then east.''

  The cliffs narrowed until Covenant and Lena stood in the mouth of another cleft through the hills. Banner thrust them in the direction of the dark crevice. '' Make haste. Keep to the left.'' Then he was gone, running toward the battle.

  Half unconsciously, Covenant checked to be sure that he still had Triock's knife under his belt. Part of him yearned to run after Banner, to throw himself like Banner into the absolution of the fray-to seek forgiveness.

  Clutching hard at Lena's arm, he drew her with him into the cleft.

  [TEN] Pariah

  After the first bend, even the trailing light of the campfires was cut off, and he could see nothing. Lena moved like a puppet in his grasp- empty and unadept. He wanted her to hold onto him, so that he would have both hands free; but when he wrapped her fingers around his arm, they slipped limply off again. He was forced to grope ahead with his left hand, and retain her with his maimed right. His numbness made him feel at every moment that he was about to lose her.

  The shouting pursued him along the crevice, increased his sense of urgency yell by yell. He cursed furiously, trying to keep himself from becoming frantic.

  When the rift divided, he followed the left wall. In a few steps, this crevice became so narrow that he had to move along it sideways, pulling Lena after him. Then it began to descend. Soon it was so steep that the moldering leaves and loam of the floor occasionally shifted under their feet. There the rift became a tunnel. The stone sealed over their heads, while the floor leveled until the ceiling was so close that it made Covenant duck for fear he might crack open his skull. The utter lightlessness of the passage dismayed him. He felt that he was groping his way blindly into the bowels of the earth, felt at every step that the tunnel might pitch him into a chasm. He no longer heard any sound from the canyon; his own loud scrabbling filled his ears. Yet he did not stop. The pressure of his urgency, the pressure of the blind stone impending over the back of his neck, compelled him onward.

  Still Lena gave no sign of life. She stumbled, moved at his pull, bumped dumbly against the walls of the tunnel; but her arm in his grasp was inert. He could not even hear her breathing. He tugged her after him as if she were a mindless child.

  At last the tunnel ended. Without warning, the stone vanished, and Covenant blundered into a thicket. The stems and branches lashed at him as if he were an enemy. Protecting his eyes with his forearm, he thrust ahead until he found himself on open ground, sweating in the teeth of the wind.

  The night was as dank and bitter as ever, but after the pitch blackness of the tunnel he found that he could see vaguely. He and Lena stood below a high, looming bluff. Thickets and brush covered most of its base, but beyond them the ground sloped down barrenly toward the Plains of Ra.

  He paused in the scything wind and tried to take stock of the situation. The tunnel from this side was well disguised by the thickets and underbrush, but still the Ramen should have posted sentries here. Where were they? He saw no one, heard nothing but the wind.

  He was tempted to call out, but the frigid emptiness of the night restrained him. If the Ramen were defeated, the marauders would have no difficulty following him through the tunnel; Cavewights and ur-viles could take such passages in the dark gleefully. Ur-viles might already be watching him from the thicket.

  North, then east, Bannor had said. He knew he had to start moving. But he had no supplies-no food, no bedding, no fire. Even if he were not pursued, he could hardly hope to survive in this cold. If Bannor and the Giant did not come soon, he and Lena were finished.

  But Bannor had said that they would overtake him. It's too late, he muttered to steady his resolve, it's too late to start worrying about the impossible. It's all been impossible from the beginning. Just get going. At least get her out of this wind.

  He put Lena on his left, wrapped his arm around her, and started north across the preternatural current of the winter.

  He hurried as much as possible, supporting Lena, glancing fearfully back over his shoulder to see if they were being followed. When he reached a break in the hills on his left, he faced a difficult decision: Bannor and Foamfollower would locate him more easily if he stayed on the edge of the Plains, but if he moved up among the hills he would have a better chance of finding shelter and aliantha. After a painful moment, he chose the hills. He would have to trust the hunting skills of his friends; Lena was his first concern.

  He labored strenuously up through the break, half carrying his companion. Once he had passed beyond the first crests, he found a shallow valley running roughly northward which provided some cover from the wind. But he did not stop; he was not far enough from the tunnel. Instead, he took Lena along the valley and into the hills beyond it.

  On the way, he stumbled by chance into a battered aliantha. It had few berries, but its presence there reassured him somewhat. He ate two berries himself, then tried to get Lena to take the others. But she neither saw the aliantha nor heard his demands; all her outer senses were blank.

  He ate the rest of the treasure-berries so that they would not be wasted, then left the bush behind and took Lena along and out of the valley. For a long time after that, he could not find an easy way through the hills. He struggled generally northward, searching for usable valleys or paths, but the terrain turned him insistently east, downhill toward the plains. Now the sweat was freezing in his beard again, and his muscles slowly stiffened against the icy cut of the wind. Whenever the wind hit Lena directly, she trembled. At last her need for shelter became imperative in his mind. When he saw a darker shadow which looked like a gully in the wasteland below him, he gave up on the hills and went down to it.

  It had not deceived him. It was a dry arroyo with sheer sides. In places its walls were more than ten feet high. He took Lena down an uneven slope into the gully, then guided her under the lee of the opposite wall and seated her with her back against the packed dirt.

  As he peered at her through the darkness, her condition scared him. She shivered constantly now, and her skin was cold and clammy. Her face held no recogn
ition, no awareness of where she was or what was happening to her. He chafed her wrists roughly, but her arms remained limp, as if the cold had unmarrowed her bones. "Lena,'' he called to her hesitantly, then with more force. "Lena!" She did not answer. She sat slack against the wall as if she had decided to freeze to death rather than acknowledge the fact that the man she loved was a murderer.

  "Lena!" he begged gruffly. "Don't make me do this. I don't want to do it again."

  She did not respond. The irregular moan and catch of her breathing gave no indication that she had heard him. She looked as brittle as frostbitten porcelain.

  With a fierce grimace clenched on his face, he drew back his halfhand and struck her hard across the side of her head for the second time in his life.

  Her head snapped soddenly to the side, swung back toward him. For an instant, her breath shuddered in her lungs, and her lips trembled as if the air hurt her mouth. Then suddenly her hands leaped out like claws. Her nails dug into the flesh of his face around his eyes. She gripped him there, gouging him, poised ready to tear his eyes out.

  A sharp nausea of fear wrenched his guts, made him flinch. But he did not back away.

  After a moment, she said starkly, "You slew Elena my daughter."

  "Yes."

  Her fingers tightened. "I could blind you."

  "Yes."

  "Are you not afraid?"

  "I'm afraid."

  Her fingers tightened again. "Then why do you not resist?'' Her nails drew blood from his left cheek.

  "Because I've got to talk to you-about what happened to Elena. I've got to tell you what she did-and what I did-and why I did it. You won't listen unless you decide-"

  "I will not listen at all!" Her voice shook with weeping. Savagely, she snatched back her hands and returned his blow, struck his cheek with all her strength. The sting brought water to his eyes. When he blinked them clear, he saw that she had clamped her hands to her face to keep herself from sobbing aloud.