The Power That Preserves t1cotc-3

by Stephen R. Donaldson

  “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 centre 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, his 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 centre 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 travelled 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 sha
mbled 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 centre 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 centre 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 recognized 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 groveller 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?”

  While he held the specter’s gaze, Foamfollower gauged his position measured distances around him. Kinslaughterer’s words affected him. In them, he saw the sweetness of retribution. He knew the fury of killing, the miserable, involuntary delight of crushing flesh with his hands. He quivered as if he were eager, poised the gnarled might of his muscles for a leap.

  “Attempt me, then,” the dead Giant went on. “Unleash the lust which fills you. Do you believe you can vindicate yourself against me? Are you so blind? Comrade! There is nothing that justifies you. If you shed blood enough to wash the Land from east to west, you cannot wash out the ill of yourself. Imbecile! Anile fool! If the master did not control you, you would do his work for him so swiftly that he would be unable to take pleasure in it. Come then, comrade! Attempt me. I am slain already. How will you bring me to death again?”

  ”I will attempt it,” Foamfollower grated softly, “in my own way.” The specter’s unnecessary goading told him what he needed to know. The creatures could have slain him at any time-yet they waited while Kinslaughterer strove to provoke him. Therefore Soulcrusher still had something to gain from him; therefore Covenant was still alive, still unbeaten. Perhaps Lord Foul hoped to use Foamfollower himself against the Unbeliever.

  But Foamfollower had survived the caamora of Hotash Slay. He poised himself, his whole body tensed. Yet when he sprang suddenly into motion, he did not attack Kinslaughterer. Straining mightily, thrusting with all the power of his legs, he launched himself at the guards before the door of the thronehall.

  They ducked under the suddenness of his assault. He dove headlong over them, forearms braced, so that his entire force struck the doors.

  They had not been made to withstand such an impact. With a sharp cry of splintering stone, they burst inward.

  Foamfollower fell in a flurry of door shards, somersaulted, snapped to his feet in the thronehall of Ridjeck Thome.

  The room was a wide round hall like the one he had just left, but it had fewer doors, and its ceiling was far higher, as if to accommodate the immense powers which occupied it. Opposite Foamfollower was the great throne itself. On a low mound against the far wall, old grisly rock had been upreared to form the Despiser’s seat in the shape of jaws, raw hooked teeth bared to grip and tear. It and its base were the only things he had seen in Foul’s Creche which were not perfectly carved, utterly polished. It appeared to have been irremediably crippled, grotesqued, by the age-long weight of Lord Foul’s malice. It looked like a prophecy or foretaste of ultimate doom for all Ridjeck Thome’s immaculate rock.

  Set into the floor directly before it was the Illearth Stone.

  The Stone was not as large as Foamfollower had expected
it to be; it did not appear so big or heavy that he could not have lifted it in his arms. Yet its radiance staggered him like the blow of a prodigious fist. It was not extremely bright-its illumination in the thronehall was only a little stronger than the light elsewhere-but it blazed in its setting like an incarnation of absolute cold. It pulsed like a mad heart, sent out unfetterable gouts and flares of force, radiated violently its power for corruption. Foamfollower slammed into the glare and Stopped as if he could already feel the gelid emerald turning his skin to ice.

  He stared at the Stone for a moment, horrified by its strength. But then his staggered senses became aware of another might in the thronehall. This power seemed oddly subdued in comparison to the Stone. But it was only subtler, more insidious-not weaker. As Foamfollower turned toward it, he knew that it was the Stone’s master.

  Lord Foul.

  He located the Despiser more by tactile impression than by sight. Lord Foul was essentially invisible, though he cast an impenetrable blankness in the air like the erect shadow of a man-a shadow of absence rather than presence which showed where he would have been if he had been physically corporeal-and around the shadow shone a penumbra of glistering green. From within it, he reeked of attar.

  He stood to one side of the Stone, with his back to the door and the Giant. And before him, facing Foamfollower, was Thomas Covenant.

  They were alone; after delivering Covenant, the ur-vile had left the thronehall.

  Covenant seemed unaware of the chains shackling his wrists. He did not appear to be struggling at all. He was already in the last stages of starvation and cold. Pain dripped like dank sweat down his emaciated cheeks; and his gaunt, desolate eyes met Lord Foul as if the Despiser’s power were clenched in the ugly wound on his forehead.

  Neither of them took any notice of Foamfollower’s loud entrance; they were concentrated on each other to the exclusion of everything else. Some interchange had taken place between them-something Foamfollower had missed. But he saw the result. Just as he focused his attention on Lord Foul and Covenant, the Despiser raised one penumbral arm and struck Covenant across the mouth.