Thomas Covenant 03: Power That Preserves

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  The cloud rift rode the breeze until it crossed over him. As it passed, he saw standing behind the heavy clouds a full moon livid with green force, an emerald orb radiating ill through the heavens. The sick green light caught at him. When the rift which exposed it blew by him and away into the distance, he felt himself respond. The authority, the sovereignty, of the moon could not be denied: he began to flow volitionlessly through the mist in the wake of the rift.

  But another force intervened. For an instant, he thought he could smell the aroma of a tree’s heart sap, and pieces of song touched him through the cold: be true … answer … soul’s deep curse …

  He clung to them, and their potent appeal anchored him. The darkness of the mist locked around him again, and he went sinking in the direction of the song.

  Now the cold stiffened under him, so that he felt he was descending on a slab, with the breeze blowing over him. He was too chilled to move, and only the sensation of air in his chest told him that he was breathing again. His ribs and diaphragm worked, pumped air in and out of his lungs automatically. Then he noticed another change in the mist. The blank, wet, blowing night took on another dimension, an outer limit; it gave the impression that it clung privately to him, leaving the rest of the world in sunlight. Despite the cloud, he could sense the possibility of brightness in the cold breeze beyond him. And the frigid slab grew harder and harder under him, until he felt he was lying on a catafalque with a cairn of personal darkness piled over him.

  The familiar song left him there. For a time, he heard nothing but the hum of the breeze and the hoarse, lisping sound made by his breath as it labored past his swollen lip and gum. He was freezing slowly, sinking into icy union with the stone under his back. Then a voice near him panted, “By the Seven! We have done it.”

  The speaker sounded spent with weariness and oddly echoless, forlorn. Only the hum of the wind supported his claim to existence; without it, he might have been speaking alone in the uncomprehended ether between the stars.

  A light voice full of glad relief answered, “Yes, my friend. Your lore serves us well. We have not striven in vain these three days.”

  “My lore and your strength. And the lomillialor of High Lord Mhoram. But see him. He is injured and ill.”

  “Have I not told you that he also suffers?”

  The light voice sounded familiar to Covenant. It brought the sunshine closer, contracted the mist until it was wholly within him, and he could feel cold brightness on his face.

  “You have told me,” said the forlorn man. “And I have told you that I should have killed him when he was within my grasp. But all my acts go astray. Behold—even now the Unbeliever comes dying to my call.”

  The second speaker replied in a tone of gentle reproof, “My friend, you—”

  But the first cut him off. “This is an ill-blown place. We cannot help him here.”

  Covenant felt hands grip his shoulders. He made an effort to open his eyes. At first he could see nothing; the sunlight washed everything out of his sight. But then something came between him and the sun. In its shadow, he blinked at the blur which marred all his perceptions.

  “He awakens,” the first voice said. “Will he know me?”

  “Perhaps not. You are no longer young, my friend.”

  “Better if he does not,” the man muttered. “He will believe that I seek to succeed where I once failed. Such a man will understand retribution.”

  “You wrong him. I have known him more closely. Do you not see the greatness of his need for mercy?”

  “I see it. And I also know him. I have lived with Thomas Covenant in my ears for seven and forty years. He receives mercy even now, whether or not he comprehends it.”

  “We have summoned him from his rightful world. Do you call this mercy?”

  In a hard voice, the first speaker said, “I call it mercy.”

  After a moment, the second sighed. “Yes. And we could not have chosen otherwise. Without him, the Land dies.”

  “Mercy?” Covenant croaked. His mouth throbbed miserably.

  “Yes!” the man bending over him averred. “We give you a new chance to resist the ill which you have allowed upon the Land.”

  Gradually Covenant saw that the man had the square face and broad shoulders of a Stonedownor. His features were lost in shadow, but woven into the shoulders of his thick, fur-lined cloak was a curious pattern of crossed lightning—a pattern Covenant had seen somewhere before. But he was still too bemused with fog and shock to trace the memory.

  He tried to sit up. The man helped him, braced him in that position. For a moment, his gaze wandered. He found that he was on a circular stone platform edged by a low wall. He could see nothing but sky beyond the parapet. The cold blue void held his eyes as if it were beckoning to him; it appealed to his emptiness. He had to wrestle his gaze into focus on the Stonedownor.

  From this angle, the sun illuminated the man’s face. With his gray-black hair and weathered cheeks, he appeared to be in his mid-sixties, but age was not his dominant feature. His visage created a self-contradictory impression. He had a hard, bitter mouth which had eaten sour bread for so long that it had forgotten the taste of sweetness, but his eyes were couched in fine lines of supplication, as if he had spent years looking skyward and begging the sun not to blind him. He was a man who had been hurt and had not easily borne the cost.

  As if the words had just penetrated through his haze, Covenant heard the man say, Should have killed him. A man wearing a pattern of crossed lightning on his shoulders had once tried to kill Covenant—and had been prevented by Atiaran Trell-mate. She had invoked the Oath of Peace.

  “Triock?” Covenant breathed hoarsely. “Triock?”

  The man did not flinch from Covenant’s aching gaze. “I promised that we would meet again.”

  Hellfire, Covenant groaned to himself. Hell and blood. Triock had been in love with Lena daughter of Atiaran before Covenant had ever met her.

  He struggled to get to his feet. In the raw cold, his battered muscles could not raise him; he almost fainted at the exertion. But Triock helped him, and someone else lifted him from behind. He stood wavering, clinging helplessly to Triock’s support, and looked out beyond the parapet.

  The stone platform stood in empty air as if it were afloat in the sky, riding the hum of the breeze. In the direction Covenant faced, he could see straight to the farthest horizon, and that horizon was nothing but a sea of gray clouds, a waving, thick mass of blankness like a shroud over the earth. He wobbled a step closer to the parapet, and saw that the deep flood covered everything below him. The platform stood a few hundred feet above the clouds as if it were the only thing in the world on which the sun still shone.

  But a promontory of mountains jutted out of the gray sea on his left. And when he peered over his shoulder past the man who supported him from behind, he found another promontory towering over him on that side; a flat cliff-face met his view, and on either side of it a mountain range strode away into the clouds.

  He was on Kevin’s Watch again, standing atop a stone shaft which joined that cliff-face somewhere out of sight below him.

  For a moment, he was too surprised to be dizzy. He had not expected this; he had expected to be recalled to Revelstone. Who in the Land beside the Lords had the power to summon him? When he had known Triock, the man had been a Cattleherd, not a wielder of lore. Who but the Despiser could make such a summons possible?

  Then the sight of the long fall caught up with him, and vertigo took the last strength from his legs. Without the hands which held him, he would have toppled over the parapet.

  “Steady, my friend,” Triock’s companion said reassuringly. “I will not release you. I have not forgotten your dislike of heights.” He turned Covenant away from the wall, supporting him easily.

  Covenant’s head rolled loosely on his neck, but when the Watch stopped reeling around him, he forced himself to look toward Triock. “How?” he mumbled thickly. “Who—where did you get the power
?”

  Triock’s lips bent in a hard smile. To his companion, he said, “Did I not say that he would understand retribution? He believes that even now I would break my Oath for him.” Then he directed the bitterness of his mouth at Covenant. “Unbeliever, you have earned retribution. The loss of High Lord Elena has caused—”

  “Peace, my friend,” the other man said. “He has pain enough for the present. Tell him no sad stories now. We must bear him to a place where we may succor him.”

  Again Triock looked at Covenant’s injuries. “Yes,” he sighed wearily. “Pardon me, Unbeliever. I have spent seven and forty years with people who cannot forget you. Be at rest—we will preserve you from harm as best we may. And we will answer your questions. But first we must leave this place. We are exposed here. The Gray Slayer has many eyes, and some of them may have seen the power which summoned you.”

  He slid a smooth wooden rod under his cloak, then said to his companion, “Rockbrother, can you bear the Unbeliever down this stair? I have rope if you desire it.”

  His companion laughed quietly. “My friend, I am a Giant. I have not lost my footing on stone since the first sea voyage of my manhood. Thomas Covenant will be secure with me.”

  A Giant? Covenant thought dumbly. For the first time, he noticed the size of the hands which supported him. They were twice as big as his. They turned him lightly, lifted him into the air as if he were weightless.

  He found himself looking up into the face of Saltheart Foamfollower.

  The Giant did not appear to have changed much since Covenant had last seen him. His short, stiff iron beard was grayer and longer, and deep lines of care furrowed his forehead, on which the mark of the wound he had received at the battle of Soaring Woodhelven was barely visible; but his deep-set eyes still flashed like enthusiastic gems from under the massive fortification of his brows, and his lips curled wryly around a smile of welcome. Looking at him, Covenant could think of nothing except that he had not said good-bye to the Giant when they had parted in Treacher’s Gorge. Foamfollower had befriended him—and he had not even returned that friendship to the extent of one farewell. Shame pushed his eyes from Foamfollower’s face. He glanced down the Giant’s gnarled, oak-like frame. There he saw that Foamfollower’s heavy leather jerkin and leggings were tattered and rent, and under many of the tears were battle scars, both old and new. The newest ones hurt him as if they had been cut into his own flesh.

  “Foamfollower,” he croaked. “I’m sorry.”

  The Giant replied gently, “Peace, my friend. All that is past. Do not condemn yourself.”

  “Hellfire.” Covenant could not master his weakness. “What’s happened to you?”

  “Ah, that is a long tale, full of Giantish episodes and apostrophes. I will save it until we have taken you to a place where we may aid you. You are ill enough to bandy stories with death itself.”

  “You’ve been hurt,” Covenant went on. But the intensity in Foamfollower’s eyes stopped him.

  In mock sternness, the Giant commanded, “Be silent, Unbeliever. I will listen to no sad stories in this place.” Gently he cradled the wounded man in his arms, then said to Triock, “Follow carefully, Rockbrother. Our work has only begun. If you fall, I will be hard pressed to catch you.”

  “Look to yourself,” Triock replied gruffly. “I am not unaccustomed to stone—even stone as chill as this.”

  “Well, then. Let us make what haste we can. We have endured much to come so far, you and I. We must not lose the ur-Lord now.”

  Without waiting for an answer, he started down the rude stair of Kevin’s Watch.

  Covenant turned his face to the Giant’s breast. The breeze had a high lonely sound as it rustled past the cliff and eddied around Foamfollower; it reminded Covenant that the Watch stood more than four thousand feet above the foothills. But Foamfollower’s heart beat with forthright confidence, and his arms felt unbreakable. At each downward step, a slight jolt passed through him, as if that foot had locked itself to the stair stone. And Covenant no longer possessed even strength enough for fear. He rode numbly in the Giant’s hold until the hum of the wind increased, and Foamfollower dropped one step at a time into the cold sea of clouds.

  In moments, the sunlight was gone as if it had been irretrievably lost. The wind took on a raw, dry, cutting edge, too chill to be softened by moisture. Covenant and Foamfollower descended through dim vistaless air as icy as polar mist—cloud as thick and thetic as a fist clenched around the world. Under its pressure, Covenant felt icicles crawling up his spine toward the last warmth of life left in him.

  Then they reached the ledge at the base of Kevin’s Watch. The precipice loomed darkly beside them as Foamfollower turned to the right and moved out along the ledge, but he stepped securely, as if he had no conception of falling. And shortly he left the exposed cliff-face, began to clamber along the trail into the mountains. After that, the last tension faded from the background of Covenant’s mind. His weakness opened in him like a funereal lily, and the mist drew him into a wan, slumberous daze.

  For some time he lost track of where Foamfollower was going. He seemed to feel himself bleeding away into the gray air. Tranquility like the peace of ice surrounded his heart. He no longer understood what Foamfollower was talking about when the Giant whispered urgently, “Triock, he fails. We must aid him now or not at all.”

  “Yes,” Triock agreed. He called commandingly, “Bring blankets and graveling! He must have warmth.”

  “That will not suffice. He is ill and injured. He must have healing.

  Triock snapped, “I see him. I am not blind.”

  “Then what can we do? I am helpless here—the Giants have no lore for cold. We suffer little from it.”

  “Rub his limbs. Put your strength into him. I must think.”

  Something rough began to batter Covenant, but the ice in him was impervious to it. Vaguely, he wondered why Foamfollower and Triock would not let him sleep.

  “Is there no hurtloam here?” asked the Giant.

  “At one time there was,” Triock responded distantly. “Lena—Lena healed him in this same place—when he first came to the Land. But I am not a rhadhamaerl—I do not feel the secret flavors and powers of the Earth. And it is said that the hurtloam has—retreated—that it has hidden itself to escape the ill which is upon the Land. Or that this winter has slain it. We cannot succor him in that way.”

  “We must help him. His very bones freeze.”

  Covenant felt himself being shifted, felt blankets being wrapped around him. In the background of his haze, he thought he saw the kind yellow light of graveling. That pleased him; he could rest better if the gray fog did not dominate everything.

  After a moment, Triock said uncertainly, “It is possible that the power of the High Wood can help him.”

  “Then begin!” the Giant urged.

  “I am no Hirebrand. I have no lillianrill lore—I have only studied this matter in the Loresraat for a year—after High Lord Mhoram gave the lomillialor to me. I cannot control its power.”

  “Nevertheless! You must make the attempt.”

  Triock protested. “The High Wood test of truth may quench the last flicker within him. Hale and whole, he might fail such testing.”

  “Without it he will surely die.”

  Triock snarled under his breath, then said grimly, “Yes. Yes, Rockbrother. You out see me. Keep life within him. I must prepare.”

  In a mood of sadness, Covenant saw that the yellow light was receding into gray around him. He did not know how he could bear to lose it. Raw, reviling fog had no right to outweigh graveling in the balance of the Land. And there was no more hurtloam. No more hurtloam, he repeated with an unexpected pang. His sorrow turned to anger. By hell! Foul, he grated mutely, you can’t do this. I won’t let you. The hate for which he had been groping a night and a world earlier began to return to him. With the strength of anger, he pried his eyes open.

  Triock was standing over him. The Stonedownor held his lom
illialor rod as if he meant to drive it like a spike between Covenant’s eyes. In his hands, the white wood shone hotly, and steam plumed from it into the chill air. A smell of wood sap joined the loamy odor of the graveling.

  Muttering words that Covenant could not understand, Triock brought the rod down until its end touched the infected fever in his forehead.

  At first, he felt nothing from the contact; the lomillialor pulsed effectlessly on his wound as if he were immune to it. But then he was touched from another direction. An exquisite ache of heat cut through the ice in his left palm, spreading from the ring he wore. It sliced into him, then moved up through his wrist. It hurt him as if it were flaying cold and flesh off his bones, but the pain gave him a kind of savage pleasure. Soon his whole left arm was livid with excruciation. And under the heat his bruises reawoke, came back from the dead.

  When the hold of the ice had been broken that far, it began to give way in other places. Warmth from the blankets reached toward his battered ribs. The joints of his legs throbbed as if they had been kicked into consciousness. In moments, his forehead remembered its anguish.

  Then Triock transferred the tip of the High Wood from his forehead to the tight black swelling of his lip. At once, agony erupted within him, and he plunged into it as if it were solace.

  He returned to consciousness slowly, but when he opened his eyes he knew that he had become steadier. His wounds were not healed; both his forehead and mouth ached like goads embedded in his flesh, and his body moaned with bruises. But the ice no longer gnawed his bones. The swelling of his lip was reduced, and his sight had improved, as if the lenses of his eyes had been cleaned. Yet he felt a private grief at the numbness which clung to his hands and feet. His dead nerves had not yet rediscovered the health which he had learned to expect from the Land.

  But he was alive—he was in the Land—he had seen Foamfollower. He set aside the distress of his nerves for another time, and looked around him.

  He lay in a small, sheer valley nestled among the mountains behind Kevin’s Watch. While he had been unconscious, the enshrouding sea of clouds had receded a few hundred feet, and now light snow filled the air like murmuring. Already an inch of it blanketed him. Something in the timbre of the snow gave him the impression that the time was late afternoon. But he was not concerned about time. He had been in this valley once before, with Lena.