THE POWER THAT PRESERVES

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  "Yes, indeed," Covenant muttered. "Only I hate surprises. You never know when one of them is going to ruin your life."

  Grimly, Foamfollower replied, "Perhaps now we will be able to return a measure of ruin to the miner."

  Covenant nodded. "I certainly hope so."

  Together, they crept back toward the entrance, then separated. Following the Giant's instructions, Covenant worked his way down among the boulders and rubble, trying to get as close as he could to the front of the cave without being seen. He moved with extreme caution, took a circuitous route. When he was done, he was still at least forty yards from the abutment. The distance distressed him, but he could find no alternative. He was not trying to sneak past the warder; he only wanted to make it hesitate.

  Come on, Covenant, he snarled. Get on with it. This is no place for cowards.

  He took a deep breath, cursed himself once more as if this were his last chance, and stepped out of his hiding place.

  At once, he felt the warder's gaze spring at him, but he tried to ignore it, strove to pick his way up toward the cave with at least a semblance of nonchalance. Gripping his hands behind him, whistling tunelessly through his teeth, he walked forward as if he expected free admittance to Foul's Creche.

  He avoided the warder's stare. That gaze felt hot enough to lay bare his purpose, expose him for what he was. It made his skin crawl with revulsion. But as he passed from the rubble onto the polished stone apron of the entry way, he forced himself to look into the figure's face.

  Involuntarily, he faltered, stopped whistling. The yellow ill of the warder's gaze smote him with chagrin. Those eyes seemed to know him from skin to soul, seemed to know everything about him and hold everything they knew in the utterest contempt. For a fraction of an instant, he feared that this being was the Despiser himself. But he knew better. Like so many of the marauders, this creature was made of warped flesh-a victim of Lord Foul's Stonework. And there was uncertainty in the way it held itself.

  Feigning cockiness, he strode up the apron until he was almost within sword reach of the warder. There he stopped, deliberately scrutinized the figure for a moment. When he had surveyed it from head to foot, he met its powerful gaze again, and said with all the insolence he could muster, "Don't tell Foul I'm here. I want to surprise him."

  As he said surprise him, he suddenly snatched his hands from behind his back. With his ring exposed on the index finger of his right hand, he lunged forward as if to attack the warder with a blast of wild

  magic.

  The warder jumped into a defensive stance. For an instant, all three of its heads turned toward Covenant.

  In that instant, Foamfollower came leaping over the abutment above the entrance to the Creche.

  The warder was beyond his reach; but as he landed, he dove forward, rolled at it, swept its feet from under it. It went down in a whirl of limbs and blades.

  At once, he straddled it. It was as large as he, perhaps stronger. It was armed. But he hammered it so mightily with his fists, pinned it so effectively with his body, that it could not defend itself. After he dealt it a huge two-fisted blow at the base of its necks, it went limp.

  Quickly, he took one of its swords to behead it.

  "Foamfollower!" Covenant protested.

  Foamfollower thrust himself up from the unconscious figure, faced Covenant with the sword clenched in one fist.

  "Don't kill it."

  Panting slightly at his exertion, the Giant said, "It will alert the Creche against us when it recovers." His expression was grim, but not savage.

  "There's been enough killing," Covenant replied thickly. "I hate it."

  For a moment, Foamfollower held Covenant's gaze. Then he threw back his head and began to laugh.

  Covenant felt suddenly weak with gratitude. His knees almost buckled under him. " That' s better," he mumbled in relief. Leaning against one wall of the entry, he rested while he treasured the Giant's mirth.

  Shortly, Foamfollower subsided. "Very well, my friend," he said quietly. "The death of this creature would gain time for us-time in which we might work our work and then seek to escape. But escape has never been our purpose.'' He dropped the sword across the prostrate warder. "If its unconsciousness allows us to reach our goal, we will have been well enough served. Let escape fend for itself.'' He smiled wryly, then went on: "However, it is in my heart that I can make a better use of this buckler."

  Bending over the warder, he stripped off its garment, and used the leather to cover his own nakedness.

  "You're right," Covenant sighed. He did not intend to escape. "But there's no reason for you to get yourself killed. Just help me find that secret door-then get out of here."

  "Abandon you?" Foamfollower adjusted the ill-fitting buckler with an expression of distaste. "How could I leave this place? I will not attempt Hotash Slay again."

  "Jump into the Sea-swim away-I don't know.'' A sense of urgency mounted in him; they could not afford to spend time debating at the very portal of Foul's Creche. "Just don't make me responsible for you too."

  "On the contrary," the Giant replied evenly, "it is I who am responsible for you. I am your summoner."

  Covenant winced. "I'm not worried about that."

  "Nor am I," Foamfollower returned with a grin. "But I mislike this talk of abandonment. My friend-I am acquainted with such things."

  They regarded each other gravely; and in the Giant's gaze Covenant saw as clearly as words that he could not take responsibility for his friend, could not make his friend's decisions. He could only accept Foamfollower's help and be grateful. He groaned in pain at the outcome he foresaw. "Then let's go," he said dismally. "I'm not going to last much longer."

  In answer, the Giant took his arm, supported him. Side by side, they turned toward the dark mouth of the cave.

  Side by side, they penetrated the gloom of Foul's Creche.

  To their surprise, the darkness vanished as if they had passed through a veil of obscurity. Beyond it, they found themselves in the narrow end of an egg-shaped hall. It was coldly lit from end to end as if green sea-ice were aflame in its walls; the whole place seemed on the verge of bursting into frigid fire.

  Involuntarily, they paused, stared about them. The hall's symmetry and stonework were perfect. At its widest point, it opened into matched passages which led up to the towers, and the floor of its opposite end sank flawlessly down to form a wide, spiral stairway into the rock. Everywhere the stone stretched and met without seams, cracks, junctures; the hall was as smoothly carved, polished, and even, as unblemished by ornament, feature, error, as if the ideal conception of its creator had been rendered into immaculate stone without the interference of hands that slipped, minds that misunderstood. It was obviously not Giant-work; it lacked anything which might intrude on the absolute exaction of its shape, lacked the Giantish enthusiasm for detail. Instead, it seemed to surpass any kind of mortal craft. It was preternaturally perfect.

  Covenant gaped at it. While Foamfollower tore himself away to begin searching the side walls for the door of which the jheherrin had spoken, Covenant moved out into the hall, wandered as if aimlessly toward the great stairway. There was old magic here, might treasured by hate and hunger; he could feel it in the ceremental light, in the sharp cold air, in the immaculate walls. This fiery, frigid place was Lord Foul's home, seat and root of his power. The whole soulless demesne spoke of his suzerainty, his entire and inviolate rule. This empty hall alone made mere gnats and midges out of his enemies. Covenant remembered having heard it said that Foul would never be defeated while Ridjeck Thome still stood. He believed it.

  When he reached the broad spiral of the stairway, he found that its open center was like a great well, curving gradually back into the promontory as it descended. The stair itself was large enough to carry fifteen or twenty people abreast. Its circling drew his gaze down into the bright hole until he was leaning out from the edge to peer as far as he could; and its symmetry lent impetus to the surge of his vertigo, hi
s irrational love and fear of falling.

  But he had learned the secret of that dizziness and did not fall. His eyes searched the stairwell. And a moment later, he saw something which shook away his dangerous fascination.

  Running soundlessly up out of the depths was a large band of ur-viles.

  He pulled himself backward. "You better find it fast," he called to Foamfollower. "They're coming."

  Foamfollower did not interrupt his scrutiny of the walls. As he searched the stone with his hands and eyes, probed it for any sign of a concealed entrance, he muttered, "It is well hidden. I do not know how it is possible for stone to be so wrought. My people were not children in this craft, but they could not have dreamed such walls."

  "They had too many nightmares of their own," gritted Covenant. "Find it! Those ur-viles are coming fast." Remembering the creature that had caused his fall in the catacombs under Mount Thunder, he added, "They can smell white gold."

  "I am a Giant," answered Foamfollower. "Stonework is in the very blood of my people. This doorway cannot be concealed from me."

  Then his hands found a section of the wall which felt hollow. Swiftly, he explored the section, measured its dimensions, though no sign of any door was visible in that immaculate wall.

  When he had located the entrance as exactly as possible, he pressed once on the center of its lintel.

  Glimmering with green tracery, the lintel appeared in the blank wall. Doorposts spread down from it to the floor as if they had at that instant been created out of the rock, and between them the door swung noiselessly inward.

  Foamfollower rubbed his hands in satisfaction. Chuckling, "As you commanded, ur-Lord," he motioned for Covenant to precede him through the doorway.

  Covenant glanced toward the stairs, then hastened into the small chamber beyond the door. Foamfollower came behind him, ducking for the lintel and the low ceiling of the chamber. At once, he closed the door, watched it dissolve back into featureless stone. Then he went ahead of Covenant to the corridor beyond the chamber.

  This passage was as bright and cold as the outer hall. Foamfollower and Covenant could see that it sloped steeply downward, straight into the depths of the promontory. Looking along it, Covenant hoped that it would take him where he needed to go; he was too weak to sneak all through the Creche hunting for his doom.

  Neither of them spoke; they did not want to risk being heard by the ur-viles. Foamfollower glanced at Covenant, shrugged once, and started down into the tunnel.

  The low ceiling forced Foamfollower to move in a crouch, but he traveled down the corridor as swiftly as he could. And Covenant kept pace with him by leaning against the Giant's back and simply allowing gravity to pull his strengthless legs from stride to stride. Like twins, brothers connected to each other despite all their differences by a common umbilical need, they crouched and shambled together through the rock of Ridjeck Thome.

  As they descended, Covenant fell several times. His sense of urgency, his fear, grew in the constriction of the corridor; but it drained rather than energized him, left him as slack as if he had already been defeated. Livid cold drenched him, soaked into his bones like the fire of an absolute chill, surrounded him until he began to feel strangely comfortable in it- comfortable and drowsy, as if, like an exhausted sojourner, he were at last arriving home, sinking down before his rightful hearth. Then at odd moments he caught glimpses of the spirit of this place, the uncompromising flawlessness which somehow gave rise to, affirmed, the most rabid and insatiable malice. In this air, contempt and comfort became the same thing. Foul's Creche was the domain of a being who understood perfection--a being who loathed life, not because it was any threat to him, but because its mortal infestations offended the defining passion of his existence. In those glimpses, Covenant's numb, lacerated feet seemed to miss the stone, and he fell headlong at Foamfollower's back.

  But they kept moving, and at last they reached the end of the tunnel. It opened into a series of unadorned, unfurnished apartments-starkly exact and symmetrical-which showed no sign that they had ever been, or ever would be, occupied by anyone. Yet the cold, green light shone everywhere, and the air was as sharp as ice crystals. Foamfollower's sweat formed a cluster of emeralds in his beard, and he was shivering, despite his normal immunity to temperature.

  Beyond the apartments, they found a chain of stairs which took them downward through blank halls, empty caverns large enough to house the most fearsome banes, uninhabited galleries where an orator could have stormed at an audience of thousands. Here again they found no sign of any occupation. All this part of the Creche was for Lord Foul's private use; no ur-viles or other creatures intruded, had ever intruded. Foamfollower hastened Covenant through the eerie perfection. Down they went, always down, seeking the depths in which Lord Foul would cherish the Illearth Stone. And around them, the ancient ill of Ridjeck Thome grew heavier and more dolorous at each deeper level. In time, Foamfollower became too cold to shiver; and Covenant shambled along at his side as if only an insistent yearning to find the Creche's chillest place, the point of absolute ice, kept him from falling asleep where he was.

  The instinct which took them downward at every opportunity did not mislead them. Gradually, Foamfollower began to sense the location of the Stone; the radiance of that bane became palpable to his sore nerves.

  Eventually, they reached a landing in the wall of an empty pit. There he found another hidden door. Foamfollower opened it as he had the first one, and ducked through it into a high round hall. After Covenant had stumbled across the sill, Foamfollower closed the door and moved warily out into the center of the hall.

  Like the other halls the Giant had seen, this one was featureless except for its entrances. He counted eight large doorways, each perfectly spaced around the wall, perfectly identical to the others, each sealed shut with heavy stone doors. He could sense no life anywhere near him, no activity beyond any of the doors. But all his nerves shrilled in the direction of the Stone.

  "There," Foamfollower breathed softly, pointing at one of the entrances. "There is the thronehall of Ridjeck Thome. There Soulcrusher holds the Illearth Stone."

  Without looking at his friend, he went over to the door, placed his hands on it to verify his perception. "Yes," he whispered. "It is here." Dread and exultation wrestled together in him. Moments passed before he realized that Covenant had not answered him.

  He pressed against the door to measure its strength. "Covenant," he said over his shoulder, "my friend, the end is near. Cling to your courage for one moment longer. I will break open this door. When I do, you must run at once into the thronehall. Go to the Stone-before any power intervenes." Still Covenant did not reply. "Unbeliever! We are at the end. Do not falter now."

  In a ghastly voice, Covenant said, "You don't need to break it down."

  Foamfollower whirled, springing away from the door.

  The Unbeliever stood in the center of the hall. He was not alone.

  An ur-vile loremaster stood before him, slavering from its gaping nostrils. In its hands, it held chains, shackles.

  As Foamfollower watched in horror, it locked the shackles onto Covenant's wrists. Leading him by the chain, it took him to the door of the thronehall.

  The Giant started toward his friend. But Covenant's terrible gaze stopped him. In the dark, starved bruises of Covenant's eyes, he read something that he could not answer. The Unbeliever was trying to tell him something, something for which he did not have words. Foamfollower had studied the injury which other ur-viles had done to Covenant, but he could not fathom the depth of a misery which could make a man surrender to Demondim-spawn.

  "Covenant!" he cried in protest.

  Deliberately, Covenant's gaze flicked away from the Giant-bored intensely into him and then jumped away, pulling Foamfollower's eyes with it.

  The Giant turned in spite of himself, and saw another Giant standing across the hall from him. The newcomer's fists were clenched on his hips, and he was grinning savagely. Foamfollower recog
nized him at once; he was one of the three brothers who had fallen victim to the Ravers. Like Elena, this tormented soul had been resurrected to serve Soulcrusher.

  Before Foamfollower could react, the door to the thronehall opened, then closed behind Covenant.

  At the same time, all the other doors leaped open, pouring Stone-made monsters into the hall.

  [TWENTY] The Unbeliever

  Foamfollower wheeled around, saw that he had been surrounded. Scores of creatures had entered the hall; they were more than enough to deluge him, bury him under their weight if they did not choose to slay him with their weapons. But they did not attack. They spread out along the wall, bunched in tight formations before the doors, so that he could not escape. There they stopped. With the doors closed behind them, they stood leaning eagerly forward as if they yearned to hack him to pieces. But they left him to the dead Giant.

  Foamfollower swung back to face the specter.

  It advanced slowly, jeering at him with its malevolent grin. "Greetings, Foamfollower," it spat. "Kinabandoner. Comrade! I have come to congratulate you. You serve the master well. Not content merely to desert our people in their time of doom, so that our entire race was extirpated from the Land, you have now delivered this groveler and his effectless white gold into the hands of the Despiser, Satansheart and Soulcrusher. Oh, well done! I give you greeting and praise, comrade!" It ejaculated the word comrade as if it were a supreme affront. "I am Kinslaughterer. It was I who slew-adult and child-every Giant in The Grieve. Behold the fruit of your life, Kinabandoner. Behold and despair!"

  Foamfollower retreated a few steps, but his eyes did not for an instant quail from the dead Giant.

  "Retribution!" Kinslaughterer sneered. "I see it in your face. You do not think of despair-you are too blind to perceive what you have done. By the master! You do not even think of your despicable friend. You have retribution in your heart, comrade! You behold me, and believe that if all else in your life fails, you have now at least been made able to exact vengeance for your loss. For your crime! Kinabandoner, I see it in you. It is the dearest desire of your heart to rend me limb from limb with your own hands. Fool! Do I have the appearance of one who fears you?"