At this, Foamfollower stared at Covenant as if the Unbeliever had just laid a curse on him. Covenant tried to hold the Giant's eyes, but an unexpected shame made him drop his head. He looked at the power scorched grass. The burning of the grass was curious. Some patches did not look as wrong as others-apparently Lords-fire did less essential damage than the might of the ur-viles.
After a moment, Foamfollower said, “You forget that there is a difference between a prophet and a seer. Seeing the future is not prophecy.”
Covenant did not want to think about it. To get away from the subject, he demanded, “Why didn't you get some of that hurtloam for your forehead?”
This time, Foamfollower's eyes turned away. Distantly, he said, “There was none left.” His hands opened and closed in a gesture of helplessness. “Others were dying. And others needed the hurtloam to save their arms or legs. And-” His voice stumbled momentarily. “And I thought tiny Pietten might be helped. He is only a child,” he insisted, looking up suddenly with an appeal that Covenant could not understand. “But one of the Cavewights was dying slowly-in such pain.” A new trickle of blood broke open in his forehead and began to drip from his brow. “Stone and Sea!” he moaned. “I could not endure it. Hearthrall Birinair kept aside a touch of hurtloam for me, from all the wounds to be treated. But I gave it to the Cavewight. Not to Pietten-to the Cavewight. Because of the pain.”
Abruptly, he put back his head and took a long pull of diamondraught. With the heel of his palm he wiped roughly at the blood on his brows.
Covenant gazed intently at the Giant's wracked visage. Because he could find no other words for his sympathy, he asked, “How're your hands?”
“My hands?” Foamfollower seemed momentarily confused, but then he remembered. “Ah, the caamora. My friend, I am a Giant,” he explained. “No ordinary fire can harm me. But the pain-the pain teaches many things.” A flinch of self disgust crossed his lips. “It is said that the Giants are made of granite,” he mumbled. “Do not be concerned for me.”
On an impulse, Covenant responded, “In parts of the world where I come from, there are little old ladies who sit by the side of the road pounding away all day on hunks of granite with little iron hammers. It takes a long time-but eventually they turn big pieces into little pieces.”
Foamfollower considered briefly before asking, “Is that prophecy, ur-Lord Covenant?”
“Don't ask me. I wouldn't know a prophecy if it fell on me.”
“Nor would I,” said Foamfollower. A dim smile tinged his mouth.
Shortly, Lord Mhoram called the company to the meal he and Prothall had prepared. Through a haze of suppressed groans, the warriors pried themselves to their feet and moved toward the fire. Foamfollower lurched upright. He and Covenant followed Llaura and Pietten to get something to eat.
The sight and smell of food suddenly brought Covenant's need for decision to a head. He was empty, hollow with hunger, but when he reached out to take some bread, he saw how his arm was befouled with blood and ashes. He had killed-The bread dropped from his fingers. This is all wrong, he murmured. Eating was a form of acquiescence-a submission to the physical actuality of the Land. He could not afford it.
I've got to think.
The emptiness in him ached with demands, but he refused them. He took a drink of springwine to clear his throat, then turned away from the fire with a gesture of rejection. The Lords and Foamfollower looked after him inquiringly, but made no comment.
He needed to put himself to the test, discover an answer that would restore his ability to survive. With a grimace, he resolved to go hungry until he found what he required. Perhaps in hunger he would become lucid enough to solve the fundamental contradiction of his dilemma.
All the abandoned weapons had been cleared from the glade, gathered into a pile. He went to it and searched until he found Atiaran's stone knife. Then, on an obscure impulse, he walked over to the horses to see if Dura had been injured. When he learned that she was unscathed, he felt a vague relief. He did not want under any circumstances to be forced to ride a Ranyhyn.
A short time later, the warriors finished their meal. Wearily, they moved to take up the Quest again.
As Covenant mounted Dura, he heard the Bloodguard whistle sharply for the Ranyhyn. The call seemed to hang in the air for a moment. Then, from various directions around the glade, the great horses came galloping-manes and tails flaring as if afire, hooves pounding in long, mighty, trip-rhythmed strides-nine star-browed chargers as swift and elemental as the life-pulse of the Land. Covenant could hear in their bold nickering the excitement of going home, toward the Plains of Ra.
But the Questers who left dead Soaring Woodhelven that morning had little of the bold or home-going in their attitudes. Quaan's Eoman was now six warriors short, and the survivors were gaunt with weariness and battle. They seemed to carry their shadows in their faces as they rode north toward the Mithil River. The riderless horses they took with them to provide relief for the weaker mounts. Among them, Saltheart Foamfollower trudged as if he were carrying the weight of all the dead. In the crook of one arm he cradled Pietten, who had fallen asleep as soon as the sun cleared the eastern horizon. Llaura rode behind Lord
Mhoram, gripping the sides of his robe. She appeared bent and frail behind his grim-set face and erect posture; but he shared with her an eroded expression, an air of inarticulate grief. Ahead of them moved Prothall, and his shoulders bespoke the same kind of inflexible will which Atiaran had used to make Covenant walk from Mithil Stonedown to the Soulsease River.
Vaguely, Covenant wondered how much farther he would have to follow other people's choices. But he let the thought go and looked at the Bloodguard. They were the only members of the company who did not appear damaged by the battle. Their short robes hung in tatters; they were as filthy as anyone; one of their number had been killed, and several were injured. They had defended the Lords, especially Variol and Tamarantha, to the utmost; but the Bloodguard were unworn and undaunted, free of rue. Bannor rode his prancing, reinless Ranyhyn beside Covenant, and gazed about him with an impervious eye.
The horses of the company could manage only a slow, stumbling walk, but even that frail pace brought the riders to the ford of the Mithil before noon. Leaving their mounts to drink or graze, all of them except the Bloodguard plunged into the stream. Scrubbing at themselves with fine sand from the river bottom, they washed the blood and grit and pain of death and long night into the wide current of the Mithil. Clear skin and eyes reappeared from under the smears of battle; minor un-hurtloamed wounds opened and bled clean; scraps of shredded clothing floated out of reach. Among them, Covenant beat his robe clean, rubbed and scratched stains from his flesh as if he were trying to rid himself of the effects of killing. And he drank quantities of water in an effort to appease the aching hollowness of his hunger.
Then, when the warriors were done, they went to their horses to get new clothing from their saddlebags. After they had dressed and regained command of their weapons, they posted themselves as sentries while First Mark Tuvor and the Bloodguard bathed.
The Bloodguard managed to enter and leave the river without splashing, and they washed noiselessly. In a few moments, they were dressed in new robes and mounted on the Ranyhyn. The Ranyhyn had refreshed themselves by crossing into Andelain and rolling on the grass while their riders bathed. Now the company was ready to travel. High Lord Prothall gave the signal, and — the company rode away eastward along the south bank of the river.
The rest of the day was easy for the riders and their mounts. There was soft grass underhoof, clean water at one side, a tang of vitality in the air, and a nearby view of Andelain itself, which seemed to pulse with robust sap. The people of the Land drew healing from the ambience of the Hills. But the day was hard for Covenant. He was hungry, and the vital presence of Andelain only made him hungrier.
He kept his gaze away from it as best he could, refusing the sight as he had refused food. His gaunt face was set in stern lines
, and his eyes were hollow with determination. He followed a double path: his flesh rode Dura doggedly, keeping his position in the company; but in his mind, he wandered in chasms, and their dark, empty inanition hurt him.
I will not.
He wanted to survive.
I am not.
From time to time, aliantha lay directly in his path like a personal appeal from the Land, but he did not succumb.
Covenant, he thought. Thomas Covenant. Unbeliever. Leper outcast unclean. When a pang from his hunger made him waver, he remembered Drool's bloody grip on his ring, and his resolve steadied.
From time to time, Llaura looked at him with the death of Soaring Woodhelven in her eyes, but he only clenched himself harder and rode on.
I won't do any more killing.
He had to have some other answer.
That night, he found that a change had come over his ring. Now all evidence that it resisted red encroachments was gone. His wedding band burned completely crimson under the dominion of the moon, flaming coldly on his hand as if in greedy response to Drool's power. The next morning, he began the day's riding like a man torn between opposing poles of insanity.
But there was a foretaste of summer in the noon breeze. The air turned warm and redolent with the ripeness of the earth. The flowers had a confident bloom, and the birds sang languidly. Gradually, Covenant grew full of lassitude. Languor loosened the strings of his will. Only the habit of riding kept him on Dura's back; he became numb to such superficial considerations. He hardly noticed when the river began to curve northward away from the company, or when the hills began to climb higher. He moved blankly on the warm currents of the day. That night he slept deeply, dreamlessly, and the next day he rode on in numbness and unconcern.
Waking slumber held him. It was a wilderland that he wandered unaware; he was in danger without knowing it. Lassitude was the first step in an inexorable. logic, the law of leprosy. The next was gangrene, a stink of rotting live flesh so terrible that even some physicians could not bear it-a stench which ratified the outcasting of lepers in a way no mere compassion or unprejudice could oppose. But Covenant travelled his dream with his mind full of sleep.
When he began to recover-early in the afternoon of the third day from Soaring Woodhelven, the eighteenth since the company had left Revelstone-he found himself looking over Morinmoss Forest. The company stood on the last hilltop before the land fell under the dark aegis of the trees.
Morinmoss lay at the foot of the hill like a lapping sea; its edges gripped the hillsides as if the trees had clenched their roots in the slopes and refused to be driven back. The dark, various green of the Forest spread to the horizon north and east and south. It had a forbidding look; it seemed to defy the Quest to pass through it. High Lord Prothall stopped on the crest of the hill, and gazed for a long time over the Forest, weighing the time needed to ride around Morinmoss against the obscure dangers of the trees.
Finally, he dismounted. He looked over the riders, and his eyes were full of potential anger as he spoke. “We will rest now. Then we will ride into Morinmoss, and will not stop until we have reached the far side-a journey of nearly a day and a night. During that ride, we must show neither blade nor spark. Hear you? All swords sheathed, all arrows quivered, all knives cloaked, all spear tips bound. And every spark or gleam of fire quenched. I will have no mistake. Morinmoss is wilder than Grimmerdhore-and none go un-anxious into that wood. The trees have suffered for ages, and they do not forget their kinship with Garroting Deep. Pray that they do not — crush us all, regardless.” He paused, scanning the company until he was sure that all understood him. Then he added more gently, “It is possible that there is still a Forestal in Morinmoss-though that knowledge has been lost since the Desecration.”
Several of the warriors tensed at the word Forestal. But Covenant, coming slowly out of his languor, felt none of the awe which seemed to be expected of him. He asked as he had once before, “Do you worship trees?”
“Worship?” Prothall seemed puzzled. “The word is obscure to me.”
Covenant stared.
A moment later, the High Lord went on, “Do you ask if we reverence the forests? Of course. They are alive, and there is Earthpower in all living things, all stone and earth and water and wood. Surely you understand that we are the servants of that Power. We care for the life of the Land.” He glanced back at the Forest, then continued, “The Earthpower takes many forms between wood and stone. Stone bedrocks the world, and to the best of our comprehension weak as it is-that form of power does not know itself. But wood is otherwise.
“At one time, in the dimmest, lost distance of the past, nearly all the Land was One Forest-one mighty wood from Trothgard and Melenkurion Skyweir to Sarangrave Flat and Seareach. And the Forest was awake. It knew and welcomed the new life which people brought to the Land. It felt the pain when mere men-blind, foolish moments in the ancientness of the Land-cut down and burned out the trees to make space in which to breed their folly. Ah, it is hard to take pride in human history. Before the slow knowledge spread throughout the Forest, so that each tree knew its peril, hundreds of leagues of life had been decimated. By our reckoning, the deed took time-more than a thousand years. But it must have seemed a rapid murder to the trees. At the end of that time, there were only four places left in the Land where the soul of the Forest lingered-survived, and shuddered in its awesome pain-and took resolve to defend itself. Then for many ages Giant Woods and Grimmerdhore and Morinmoss and Garroting Deep lived, and their awareness endured in the care of the Forestals. They remembered, and no human or Vile or Cavewight who dared enter them survived.
“Now even those ages are past. We know not if the Forestall yet live-though only a fool would deny that Caerroil Wildwood still walks in Garroting Deep. But the awareness which enabled the trees to strike back is fading. The Lords have defended the Forests since Berek Halfhand first took up the Staff of Law-we have not let the trees diminish. Yet their spirit fails. Cut off from each other, the collective knowledge of the Forests dies. And the glory of the world becomes less than it was.”
Prothall paused sadly for a moment before concluding, “It is in deference to the remaining spirit, and in reverence for the Earthpower, that we ask permission for so many to enter the Forest at one time. And it is in simple caution that we offer no offense. The spirit is not dead. And the power of Morinmoss could crush a thousand thousand men if the trees were pained into wakefulness
“Are there other dangers?” Quaan asked. “Will we need our weapons?”
“No. Lord Foul's servants have done great harm to the Forests in ages past. Perhaps Grimmerdhore has lost its power, but Morinmoss remembers. And tonight is the dark of the moon. Even Drool Rockworm is not mad enough to order his forces into Morinmoss at such a time. And the Despiser has never been such a fool.”
Quietly, the riders dismounted. Some of the Eoman fed the horses, while others prepared a quick meal. Soon all the company except Covenant had eaten. And after the meal, while the Bloodguard watched, the Questers laid themselves down to rest before the long passage of the Forest.
When they were roused again and ready to travel, Prothall strode up to the edge of the hillcrest. The breeze was stronger there; it guttered his black-sashed blue robe as he raised his staff and cried loudly, “Hail, Morinmoss! Forest of the One Forest! Enemy of our enemies! Morinmoss, hail!” His voice fell into the expanse of the woods forlornly, without echo. "We are the Lords-foes to your enemies, and learners of the lillianrill lore! We must pass through!
“Harken, Morinmoss! We hate the axe and game which hurt you! Your enemies are our enemies. Never have we brought edge of axe or flame of fire to touch you-nor ever shall. Morinmoss, harken! Let us pass!”
His call disappeared into the depths of the Forest. At last, he lowered his arms, then turned and came back to the company. He mounted his horse, looked once more sternly over the riders. At his signal, they rode down toward the knuckled edges of Morinmoss.
They seemed to fall like a stone into the Forest. One moment, they were still winding down the hillside above the trees; the next, they had penetrated the gloomy deep, and the sunlight closed behind them like an unregainable door. Birinair went at the head of the company, with his Hirebrand's staff held across his mount's neck; and behind him rode First Mark Tuvor on the Ranyhyn stallion Marny-for the Ranyhyn had nothing to fear from the old anger of Morinmoss, and Marny could guide Birinair if the aged Hearthrall went astray. Behind Tuvor came Prothall and Mhoram, with Llaura at Mhoram's back; and behind them came Covenant and Foamfollower. The Giant still carried the sleeping child. Then followed Quaan and his Eoman, bunched together among the Bloodguard.
There was room for them to pass. The trees with their dark-mingled ebony and russet trunks were widely placed, leaving space between them for undergrowth and animals; and the riders found their way without difficulty. But the trees were not tall. They rose for fifteen or twenty feet on squat trunks, then spread outward in gnarled, drooping branches heavy with foliage, so that the company was completely enshrouded in the gloom of Morinmoss. The branches interwove until each tree seemed to be standing with its arms braced heavily on the shoulders of its kindred. And from the limbs hung great curtains and strands of moss-dark, thick, damp moss falling from the branches like slow blood caught and frozen as it bled. The moss dangled before the riders as if it were trying to turn them aside, deflect them from their path. And on the deep, mossy ground the hooves of the horses made no sound. The riders went their way as silently as if they had been translated into an illusion.
Instinctively dodging away from the dark touch of the moss, Covenant peered into the Forest's perpetual gloaming. As far as he could see in all directions, he was surrounded by the grotesque ire of moss and branch and trunk. But beyond the limit of his explicit senses he could see more-see, and smell, and in the silence of the Forest hear, the brooding heart of the woods. There the trees contemplated their grim memories-the broad, budding burst of self awareness, when the spirit of the wood lay grandly over hundreds of leagues of rich earth; and the raw plummet of pain and horror and disbelief, spreading like ripples on an ocean until the farthest leaves in the Land shivered, when the slaughter of the trees began, root and branch and all cut and consumed by axe and flame, and stumps dragged away; and the scurry and anguish of the animals, slaughtered too or bereft of home and health and hope; and the clear song of the Forestal, whose tune taught the secret, angry pleasure of crushing, of striking hack at tiny men and tasting their blood at the roots; and the slow weakness which ended even that last fierce joy, and left the trees with nothing but their stiff memories and their despair as they watched their rage fall into slumber.
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