THE POWER THAT PRESERVES

by default

  Bannor was not swayed. "Call it bravery, then. It is costly nonetheless. The Land will bleed under the expense for many years, whatever the outcome of your purpose in Foul's Creche."

  Once again, Covenant was forced to say, ''I know.'' He knew with a vividness that felt terrible to him. "I couldn't do anything else. And-and I wasn't ready then. I'm ready now-readier." I'll never be ready, he thought. It's impossible to be ready for this. "Maybe I can do something now that I couldn't do then."

  Bannor held his eyes for another moment, then nodded brusquely. "Will you go now?" he asked without expression. "Corruption will be a hunt for you."

  Covenant sighed, and pushed himself to his feet. "Yes." He did not want to leave the comfort of the Colossus. "Ready or not. Let's get on with it."

  He walked between Bannor and Foamfollower, and they took him up the last of the hills to a place where he could look down the cliff of Landsdrop to the Spoiled Plains.

  The precipice seemed to leap out from behind the hill as if it had been hiding in ambush for Covenant-abruptly, he found himself looking over the edge and down two thousand feet-but he gripped the arms of his friends on either side and breathed deeply to hold back his vertigo. After a moment, the suddenness of the view faded, and he began to notice details.

  At the base of the hill on his right, the River Landrider swooped downward in a final rush to pour heavily over the lip of Landsdrop. The tumult of its roar was complex. In this region, the cliff broke into four or five ragged stairs, so that the waterfall went down by steps, all pounding simultaneously, unharmonically. From the bottom of the Fall, it angled away southeastward into the perpetual wasteland of the Spoiled Plains.

  "There," said Bannor, "there begins its ordeal. There the Landrider becomes the Ruinwash, and flows polluted toward the Sea. It is a murky and repelling water, unfit for use by any but its own unfit denizens. But it is your way for a time. It will provide a path for you through much of these hazardous Plains. And it will place you south of Kurash Qwellinir.

  "You know"-he nodded to Foamfollower-"that the Spoiled Plains form a wide deadland around the promontory of Ridjeck Thome, where Foul's Creche juts into the Sea. Within that deadland lies Kurash Qwellinir, the Shattered Hills. Some say that these Hills were formed by the breaking of a mountain-others, that they were shaped from the slag and refuse of Corruption's war caverns, furnaces, breeding dens. However they were made, they are a maze to bewilder the approach of any foe. And within them lies Gorak Krembal-Hotash Slay. From Sea-cliff to Sea-cliff about the promontory, it defends Corruption's seat with lava, so that none may pass that way to gain the one gateless maw of the

  Creche.

  "Corruption's creatures make their way to and from Ridjeck Thome through tunnels which open in secret places among Kurash Qwellinir. But it is in my heart that such an approach will not avail you. I do not doubt that a Giant may find a tunnel within the maze. But on that road all Corruption's defending armies stand before you. You cannot pass.

  "I will tell you of a passage through the Shattered Hills on their southward side. The narrowest point of Hotash Slay is there, where the lava pours through a gash in the cliff into the Sea. A Giant may find crossing in that place." He spoke as if he were discussing a convenient path among mountains, not an approach to the Corrupter of the Bloodguard. "In that way, it may be that you will take Ridjeck Thome by surprise."

  Foamfollower absorbed this information, and nodded. Then he listened closely while Bannor detailed his route through the maze of Kurash Qwellinir. Covenant tried to listen also, but his attention wandered. He seemed to hear Landsdrop calling to him. Imminent vertigo foiled his concentration. Elena, he breathed to himself. He called her up in his mind, hoping that her image would steady him. But the emerald radiance of her fate made him wince and groan.

  No! he averred into the approach of dizziness. It doesn't have to be that way. It's my dream. I can do something about it.

  Foamfollower and Bannor were looking at him strangely. His fingers gripped them feebly, urgently. He could not take his eyes off the waterfall's rush. It called him downward like the allure of death.

  He took a deep breath. Finger by finger, he forced himself to release his friends. "Let's get going," he murmured. "I can't stand any more waiting."

  The Giant hefted his sack. "I am ready," he said. "Our supplies are scant-but we have no recourse. We must hope for aliantha on the Lower Land."

  Without looking away from the Fall, Covenant addressed Bannor. He could not ask the Bloodguard to change his decision, so he said, "You'll bury Triock? He's earned a decent grave."

  Banner nodded, then said, "I will do another thing also.'' He reached one hand into his short robe and drew out the charred metal heels of the Staff of Law. "I will bear these to Revelstone. When the time of my end comes upon me, I will return to the mountain home of the Haruchai. On the way, I will visit Revelstone-if the Lords and Lord's Keep still stand. I know not what value may remain in this metal, but perhaps the survivors of this war will find some use for it."

  Thank you, Covenant whispered silently.

  Banner put the bands away and bowed once briefly to Covenant and Foamfollower. "Look for help wherever you go," he said. "Even in the Spoiled Plains, Corruption is not entirely master." Before they could reply, he turned and trotted away toward the Colossus. As he passed over the hilltop, his back told them as clearly as speech that they would never see him again.

  Bannor! Covenant groaned. Was it that bad? He felt bereft, deserted, as if half his support had been taken away.

  "Gently, my friend," Foamfollower breathed. "He has turned his back on vengeance. Two thousand years and more of pure service were violated for him-yet he chooses not to avenge them. Such choices are not easily made. They are not easily borne. Retribution-ah, my friend, retribution is the sweetest of all dark sweet dreams."

  Covenant found himself still staring at the waterfall. The complex plunge of the river had a sweetness all its own. He shook himself. "Hell-fire." The emptiness of his curses seemed appropriate to his condition. "Are we going to do it or aren't we?"

  "We will go." Covenant felt the Giant's gaze on him without meeting it. "Covenant-ur-Lord-there is no need for you to endure this descent. Close your eyes, and I will bear you as I did from Kevin's Watch."

  Covenant hardly heard himself answer, ''That was a long time ago.'' Vertigo was beginning to reel in his head. "I've got to do this for myself. For a moment, he let slip his resistance and almost fell to his knees. As the suction tugged at his mind, he comprehended that he would have to go into it rather than away from it, that the only way to master vertigo was to find its center. Somewhere in the center of the spinning would be an eye, a core of stability. "Just go ahead-so you can catch me.'' Only in the eye of the whirl could he find solid ground.

  Foamfollower regarded him dubiously, then started down to the edge of the cliff near the Fall. With Covenant limping in his wake, he went to the rim, glanced down to pick the best place for a descent, then lowered himself out of sight over the edge.

  Covenant stood for a moment teetering on the lip of Landsdrop. The Fall yawed abysmally from side to side; it beckoned to him like relief from delirium. It was such an easy answer. As his vertigo mounted, he did not see how he could refuse it.

  But its upsurge made his pulse hammer in his wounded forehead. He spun around that pain as if it were a pivot, and found that the seductive panic of the plunge was fading. The simple hope that vertigo had a firm center seemed to make his hope come true. The whirl did not stop, but its hold on him receded, withdrew into the background. Slowly, the pounding in his forehead eased.

  He did not fall.

  He felt as weak as a starving penitent-hardly able to carry his own weight. But he knelt on the edge, lowered his legs over the rim. Clinging to the top of the cliff with his arms and stomach, he began to hunt blindly for footholds. Soon he was crawling backward down Landsdrop as if it were the precipice of his personal future.

  T
he descent took a long time, but it was not particularly difficult. Foamfollower protected him all the way down each stage of the broken cliff. And the steeper drops were moderated by enough ledges and cracks and hardy scrub brush to make that whole stretch of the cliff passable. The Giant had no trouble finding a route Covenant could manage, and Covenant eventually gained a measure of confidence, so that he was able to move with less help down the last stages to the foothills.

  When at last he reached the lower ground, he took his drained nerves straight to the pool at the foot of the Fall and dropped into the chill waters to wash away the accumulated sweat of his fear.

  While Covenant bathed, Foamfollower filled his water jug and drank deeply at the pool. This might be the last safe water they would find. Then the Giant set out the graveling for Covenant. As the Unbeliever dried himself, he asked Foamfollower how long their food supplies would last.

  The Giant grimaced. "Two days. Three or four, if we find aliantha a day or two into the Spoiled Plains. But we are far from Foul' s Creche. Even if we were to run straight into Soulcrusher's arms, we would have three or tour foodless days within us before he made sustenance unnecessary." Then he grinned. "But it is said that hunger teaches many things. My friend, a wealth of wisdom awaits us on this journey."

  Covenant shivered. He had had some experience with hunger. And now the possibility of starvation lay ahead of him; his forehead had been reinjured; he would have to walk a long distance on bare feet. One by one the conditions of his return to his own life were being met. As he tightened the sash of his robe, he muttered sourly, "I heard Mhoram say once that wisdom is only skin-deep. Or something like that. Which means that lepers must be the wisest people in the world."

  "Are they?" the Giant asked. "Are you wise, Unbeliever?"

  "Who knows? If I am-wisdom is overrated."

  At this, Foamfollower's grin broadened. "Perhaps it is-perhaps it is. My friend, we are the two wisest hearts in the Land-we who march thus weaponless and unredeemed into the very bosom of the Despiser. Verily, wisdom is like hunger. Perhaps it is a very fine thing-but who would willingly partake of it?"

  Despite the absence of the wind, the air was still wintry. Knuckles of ice clenched the rocky borders of the pool where the spray of the Fall had frozen, and Foamfollower's breath plumed wetly in the humid air. Covenant needed to move to warm himself, keep up his courage. "It's not fine," he grated, half to himself. "But it's useful. Come on."

  Foamfollower repacked his graveling, then swung the sack onto his broad shoulder, and led Covenant away from Landsdrop along the river.

  Night stopped them when they had covered only three or four leagues. But by that time they had left behind the foothills and the last vestiges of the un-Spoiled flatland which had at one time, ages ago in the history of the Earth, stretched from the Southron Wastes north to the Sarangrave and Lifeswallower, the Great Swamp. They were down in the bosk of the Ruinwash.

  Gray, brittle, dead brush and trees-cottonwoods, junipers, once-beautiful tamarisks-stood up out of the dried mud on both sides of the stream, occupying ground which had once been part of the riverbed. But the Ruinwash had shrunk decades or centuries ago, leaving partially fertile mud on either side-mud in which a scattering of tough trees and brush had eked out a bare existence until Lord Foul's preternatural winter had blasted them. As darkness soaked into the air as if it were oozing out of the ground, the trees became spectral shapes of forbidding which made the bosk almost impassable. Covenant resigned himself to camping there for the night, though the dried mud had an old, occluded reek, and the river made a slithering noise like an ambush in its course. He knew that he and Foamfollower would be safer if they traveled at night, but he was weary and did not believe the Giant could find his way in the cloud-locked dark.

  Later, however, he found that the river gave off a light like lambent verdigris; the whole surface of the water glowed dimly. This light came, not from the water, but from the hot eels which flicked back and forth across the current. They had a hungry aspect, and their jaws were rife with teeth. Yet they made it possible for him and Foamfollower to resume their journey.

  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 bosk.

  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 bosk 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 u
nder 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 bosk 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.