THE POWER THAT PRESERVES

by default

  The Giant also was not well-his wounds gave him pain-and he appeared to understand the impulse behind Covenant's refusal. Quietly, he asked, "My friend, do you know the way"-he hesitated as if he were searching for a short name-"the way to Ridjeck Thome, Foul's Creche?"

  "I'm leaving that to you."

  Foamfollower frowned. "I know the way-I have it graven in my heart past all forgetting. But if we are separated-"

  "I don't have a chance if we're separated," Covenant muttered mordantly. He wished that he could leave the sound of leprosy out of his voice, but the malady was too rife in him to be stifled.

  "Separated? Who speaks of separation?" Lena protested before Foamfollower could reply. "Do not utter such things, Giant. We will not be separated. I have preserved-I will not part from him. You are old Giant. You do not remember the giving of life to life in love-or you would not speak of separation."

  In some way, her words twisted the deep knife of Foamfollower's hurt. "Old, yes." Yet after a moment he forced a wry grin onto his lips. "And you are altogether too young for me, fair Lena."

  Covenant winced for them both. Have mercy on me, he groaned. Have mercy. He started forward again, but almost at once he tripped on a snow-hidden roughness in the road.

  Lena and Foamfollower caught him from either side and upheld him.

  He looked back and forth between them. "Treasure-berries. I need aliantha."

  Foamfollower nodded and moved away briskly, as if his Giantish instincts told him exactly where to find the nearest aliantha. But Lena retained her hold on Covenant's arm. She had not pulled the hood of her robe over her head, and her white hair hung like wet snow. She was gazing into Covenant's face as if she were famished for the sight of him.

  He endured her scrutiny as long as he could. Then he carefully removed his arm from her fingers and said, "If I'm going to survive this, I'll have to learn to stand on my own."

  "Why ?'' she asked. "All are eager to aid-and none more eager than I. You have suffered enough for your aloneness."

  Because I'm all I have, he answered. But he could not say such a thing to her. He was terrified by her need for him.

  When he did not reply, she glanced down for a moment, away from the fever of his gaze, then looked up again with the brightness of an idea in her eyes. "Summon the Ranyhyn."

  The Ranyhyn?

  "They will come to you. They come to me at your command. It has hardly been forty days since they last came. They come each year on"- she faltered, looked around at the snow with a memory of fear in her face-"on the middle night of spring.'' Her voice fell until Covenant could hardly hear her. "This year the winter cold in my heart would not go away. The Land forgot spring-forgot- Sunlight abandoned us. I feared- feared that the Ranyhyn would never come again-that all my dreams were folly.

  "But the stallion came. Sweat and snow froze in his coat, and ice hung from his muzzle. His breath steamed as he asked me to mount him. But I thanked him from the bottom of my heart and sent him home. He brought back such thoughts of you that I could not ride."

  Her eyes had left his face, and now she fell silent as if she had forgotten why she was speaking. But when she raised her head, Covenant saw that her old face was full of tears. "Oh, my dear one,'' she said softly, "you are weak and in pain. Summon the Ranyhyn and ride them as you deserve."

  "No, Lena.'' He could not accept the kind of help the Ranyhyn would give him. He reached out and awkwardly brushed at her tears. His fingers felt nothing. "I made a bad bargain with them. I've made nothing but bad bargains."

  "Bad?" she asked as if he amazed her. "You are Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever. How could any doing of yours be bad?"

  Because it let me commit crimes.

  But he could not say that aloud either. He reacted instead as if she had struck the touchstone of his fury.

  ''Listen, I don't know who you think I am these days; maybe you've still got Berek Halfhand on the brain. But I'm not him-I'm not any kind of hero. I'm nothing but a broken-down leper, and I'm doing this because I've had it up to here with being pushed around. With or without your company I'm going to start getting even regardless of any misbegotten whatever that tries to get in my way. I'm going to do it my own way. If you don't want to walk, you can go home."

  Before she had a chance to respond, he turned away from her in shame, and found Foamfollower standing sadly beside him. "And that's another thing," he went on almost without pause. "I have also had it with your confounded misery. Either tell me the truth about what's happened to you or stop sniveling." He emphasized his last two words by grabbing treasure-berries from the Giant's open hands. "Hell and blood! I'm sick to death of this whole thing." Glaring up at the Giant's face, he jammed aliantha into his mouth, chewed them with an air of helpless belligerence.

  "Ah, my friend," Foamfollower breathed. "This way that you have found for yourself is a cataract. I have felt it in myself. It will bear you to the edge in a rush and hurl you into abysses from which there is no recovery.''

  Lena's hands touched Covenant's arm again, but he threw them off. He could not face her. Still glaring at Foamfollower, he said, "You haven't told me the truth.'' Then he turned and stalked away through the snow. In his rage, he could not forgive himself for being so unable to distinguish between hate and grief.

  Treasure-berries supplied by both Foamfollower and Lena kept him going through most of the afternoon. But his pace remained slow and ragged. Finally his strength gave out when Foamfollower guided him off the road and eastward into the foothills beyond the mouth of the valley. By then, he was too exhausted to worry about the fact that the snowfall was ending. He simply lumbered into the lee of a hill and lay down to sleep. Later, in half-conscious moments, he discovered that the Giant was carrying him, but he was too tired to care.

  He awoke sometime after dawn with a pleasant sensation of warmth on his face and a smell of cooking in his nostrils. When he opened his eyes, he saw Foamfollower crouched over a graveling pot a few feet away, preparing a meal. They were in a small ravine. The leaden skies clamped over them like a coffin lid, but the air was free of snow. Beside him, Lena lay deep in weary slumber.

  Softly, Foamfollower said, "She is no longer young. And we walked until near dawn. Let her sleep." With a short gesture around the ravine, he went on: "We will not be easily discovered here. We should remain until nightfall. It is better for us to travel at night." He smiled faintly. "More rest will not harm you."

  "I don't want to rest," Covenant muttered, though he felt dull with fatigue. "I want to keep moving."

  "Rest," Foamfollower commanded. "You will be able to travel more swiftly when your health has improved."

  Covenant acquiesced involuntarily. He lacked the energy to argue. While he waited for the meal, he inspected himself. Inwardly, he felt steadier; some of his self-possession had returned. The swelling of his lip had receded, and his forehead no longer seemed feverish. The infection in his battered feet did not appear to be spreading.

  But his hands and feet were as numb as if they were being gradually gnawed off his limbs by frostbite. The backs of his knuckles and the tops of his arches retained some sensitivity, but the essential deadness was anchored in his bones. At first he tried to believe that the cause actually was frostbite. But he knew better. His sight told him clearly that it was not ice which deadened him.

  His leprosy was spreading. Under Lord Foul's dominion-under the gray malignant winter-the Land no longer had the power to give him health.

  Dream health! He knew that it had always been a lie, that leprosy was incurable because dead nerves could not be regenerated, that the previous impossible aliveness of his fingers and toes was the one incontrovertible proof that the Land was a dream, a delusion. Yet the absence of that health staggered him, dismayed the secret, yearning recusancy of his immedicable flesh. Not anymore, he gaped dumbly. Now he had been bereft of that, too. The cruelty of it seemed to be more than he could bear.

  "Covenant?" Foamfollower asked anxiously. "My f
riend?" Covenant gaped at the Giant as well, and another realization shook him. Foamfollower was closed to him. Except for the restless grief which crouched behind the Giant's eyes, Covenant could see nothing of his inner condition, could not see whether his companion was well or ill, right or wrong. His Land-born sight or penetration had been truncated, crippled. He might as well have been back in his own blind, impervious, superficial

  world.

  "Covenant?" Foamfollower repeated.

  For a time, the fact surpassed Covenant's comprehension. He tested-yes, he could see the interminable corruption eating its ill way toward his wrists, toward his heart. He could smell the potential gangrene in his feet. He could feel the vestiges of poison in his lip, the residual fever in his forehead. He could see hints of Lena's age, Foamfollower's sorrow. He could taste the malevolence which hurled this winter across the Land- that he could perceive without question. And he had surely seen the ill in the marauders at Mithil Stonedown.

  But that was no feat; their wrong was written on them so legibly that even a child could read it. Everything else was essentially closed to him. He could not discern Foamfollower's spirit, or Lena's confusion, or the snow's falseness. The stubbornness which should have been apparent in the rocky hillsides above him was invisible. Even this rare gift which the Land had twice given him was half denied him now.

  "Foamfollower." He could hardly refrain from moaning. "It's not coming back. I can't-this winter-it's not coming back."

  "Softly, my friend. I hear you. I"-a wry smile bent his lips-"I have seen what effect this winter has upon you. Perhaps I should be grateful that you cannot behold its effect upon me."

  "What effect?" Covenant croaked.

  Foamfollower shrugged as if to deprecate his own plight. "At times- when I have been too long unsheltered in this wind-I find I cannot remember certain precious Giantish tales. My friend, Giants do not forget stories."

  "Hell and blood." Covenant's voice shook convulsively. But he neither cried out nor moved from his blankets. "Get that food ready," he juddered. "I've got to eat." He needed food for strength. His purpose required strength.

  There was no question in him about what he meant to do. He was shackled to it as if his leprosy were an iron harness. And the hands that held the reins were in Foul's Creche.

  The stew which Foamfollower handed to him he ate severely, tremorously. Then he lay back in his blankets as if he were stretching himself on a slab, and coerced himself to rest, to remain still and conserve his energy. When the warm stew, and the long debt of recuperation he owed to himself, sent him drifting toward slumber, he fell asleep still glowering thunderously at the bleak, gray, cloud-locked sky.

  He awoke again toward noon and found Lena yet asleep. But she was nestling against him now, smiling faintly at her dreams. Foamfollower was no longer nearby.

  Covenant glanced around and located the Giant keeping watch up near the head of the ravine. He waved when Covenant looked toward him. Covenant responded by carefully extricating himself from Lena, climbing out of his blankets. He tied his sandals securely onto his numb feet, tightened his jacket, and went to join the Giant.

  From Foamfollower's position, he found that he could see over the rims of the ravine into its natural approaches. After a moment, he asked quietly, "How far did we get?" His breath steamed as if his mouth were full of smoke.

  "We have rounded the northmost point of this promontory," Foam-follower replied. Nodding back over his left shoulder, he continued, "Kevin's Watch is behind us. Through these hills we can gain the Plains of Ra in three more nights."

  "We should get going," muttered Covenant. "I'm in a hurry."

  "Practice patience, my friend. We will gain nothing if we hasten into the arms of marauders."

  Covenant looked around, then asked, "Are the Ramen letting marauders get this close to the Ranyhyn? Has something happened to them?"

  "Perhaps. I have had no contact with them. But the Plains are threatened along the whole length of the Roamsedge and Landrider rivers. And the Ramen spend themselves extravagantly to preserve the great horses. Perhaps their numbers are too few for them to ward these hills."

  Covenant accepted this as best he could. "Foamfollower," he murmured, "whatever happened to all that Giantish talk you used to be so famous for? You haven't actually told me what you're worried about. Is it those 'eyes' that saw you and Triock summon me? Every time I ask a question, you act as if you've got lockjaw."

  With a dim smile, Foamfollower said, "I have lived a brusque life. The sound of my own voice is no longer so attractive to me."

  "Is that a fact?" Covenant drawled. "I've heard worse."

  "Perhaps," Foamfollower said softly. But he did not explain.

  The Giant's reticence made Covenant want to ask more questions, attack his own ignorance somehow. He was sure that the issues at stake were large, that the things he did not yet know about the Land's doom were immensely important. But he remembered the way in which he had extracted information from Banner on the plateau of Rivenrock. He could not forget the consequences of what he had done. He left Foamfollower's secrets alone.

  Down the ravine from him, Lena's slumber became more restless. He shivered to himself as she began to flinch from side to side, whimpering under her breath. An impulse urged him to go to her, prevent her from thrashing about for fear that she might break her old, frail bones; but he resisted. He could not afford all that she wanted to mean to him.

  Yet when she jerked up and looked frantically around her, found that he was gone from her side-when she cried out piercingly, as if she had been abandoned-he was already halfway down the ravine toward her. Then she caught sight of him. Surging up from her blankets, she rushed to meet him, threw herself into his arms. There she clung to him so that her sobs were muffled in his shoulder.

  With his right hand-its remaining fingers as numb and awkward as if they should have been amputated-he stroked her thin white hair. He tried to hold her consolingly to make up for his utter lack of comfortable words. Slowly, she regained control of herself. When he eased the pressure of his embrace, she stepped back. "Pardon me, beloved, "she said contritely. "I feared that you had left me. I am weak and foolish, or I would not have forgotten that you are the Unbeliever. You deserve better trust."

  Covenant shook his head dumbly, as if he wished to deny everything and did not know where or how to begin.

  "But I could not bear to be without you," she went on. "In deep nights-when the cold catches at my breast until I cannot keep it out-and the mirror lies to me, saying that I have not kept myself unchanged for you-I have held to the promise of your return. I have not faltered, no! But I learned that I could not bear to be without you-not again. I have earned-I have- But I could not bear it-to sneak alone into the night and crouch in hiding as if I were ashamed-not again."

  "Not again," Covenant breathed. In her old face he could see Elena clearly now, looking so beautiful and lost that his love for her wrenched his heart. "As long as I'm stuck in this thing-I won't go anywhere without you."

  But she seemed to hear only his proviso, not his promise. With anguish in her face, she asked, "Must you depart?"

  "Yes." The stiffness of his mouth made it difficult for him to speak gently; he could not articulate without tearing at his newly formed scabs. "I don't belong here."

  She gasped at his words as if he had stabbed her with them. Her gaze fell away from his face. Panting, she murmured, "Again! I cannot_ cannot- Oh, Atiaran my mother! I love him. I have given my life without regret. When I was young, I ached to follow you to the Loresraat to succeed so boldly that you could say, 'There is the meaning of my life, there in my daughter.' I ached to marry a Lord. But I have given-"

  Abruptly, she caught the front of Covenant's jacket in both hands, pulled herself close to him, thrust her gaze urgently at his face. "Thomas Covenant, will you marry me?"

  Covenant gaped at her in horror.

  The excitement of the idea carried her on in a rush. "Let us mar
ry! Oh, dearest one, that would restore me. I could bear any burden. We do not need the permission of the elders-I have spoken to them many times of my desires. I know the rites, the solemn promises-I can teach you. And the Giant can witness the sharing of our lives." Before Covenant could gain any control over his face, she was pleading with him. "Oh, Unbeliever! I have borne your daughter. I have ridden the Ranyhyn that you sent to me. I have waited-! Surely I have shown the depth of my love for you. Beloved, marry me. Do not refuse."

  Her appeal made him cringe, made him feel grotesque and unclean. In his pain, he wanted to turn his back on her, push her from him and walk away. Part of him was already shouting, You're crazy, old woman! It's your daughter I love! But he restrained himself. With his shoulders hunched like a strangler's to choke the violence of his responses, he gripped Lena's wrists and pulled her hands from his jacket. He held them up so that his fingers were directly in front of her face. "Look at my hands," he rasped. "Look at my fingers."

  She stared at them wildly.

  "Look at the sickness in them. They aren't just cold-they're sick, numb with sickness almost all the way across my palms. That's my disease."

  "You are closed to me," she said desolately.

  "That's leprosy, I tell you! It's there-even if you're blind to it, it's there. And there's only one way you can get it. Prolonged exposure. You might get it if you stayed around me long enough. And children-what's marriage without children?" He could not keep the passion out of his voice. "Children are even more susceptible. They get it more easily--children and-and old people. When I get wiped out of the Land the next time, you'll be left behind, and the only absolutely guaranteed legacy you'll have from me is leprosy. Foul will make sure of it. On top of everything else, I'll be responsible for contaminating the entire Land."

  "Covenant-beloved," Lena whispered, "I beg you. Do not refuse '' Her eyes swam with tears, torn by a cruel effort to see herself as she really was. "Behold, I am frail and faulty. I have neither worth nor courage to preserve myself alone. I have given- Please, Thomas Covenant." Before he could stop her, she dropped to her knees. "I beg-do not shame me in the eyes of my whole life."