The forces met, vitriol and clay pouring bluntly into contact. There was no fighting, no impact of strength or skill. Skest and sur-jheherrin pitted their essential natures against each other. The skest were created to spill green flame over whatever opposed them. But the clay forms absorbed acid and fire. Each sur-jheherrin embraced one of the skest, drew the acid-creature into itself. For an instant, emerald glazed the mud. Then the green was quenched, and the sur-jheherrin moved to another skest.
Covenant watched the contest distantly. To his conflicted passions, the battle seemed to have no meaning apart from the sur-jheherrin themselves. While his eyes followed the struggle, his ears clinched every word of the dialogue between Honninscrave and the first mud-forms. Honninscrave went on questioning them as if he feared that the outcome of the combat was uncertain, and the survival of the Search might come to depend on what he could learn.
“Honninscrave asks”- Pitchwife continued to translate across the mute conflict — “if so many skest may be defeated. The sur-jheherrin reply that they are greatly outnumbered. But in the name of the Pure One, they undertake to clear our way from this trap and to aid our flight from the Sarangrave.”
More clay forms climbed from the mud to join the struggle. They were needed. The sur-jheherrin were not able to absorb skest without cost. As each creature took in more acid, the green burning within it became stronger, and its clay began to lose shape. Already, the leaders were melting like heated wax. With the last of their solidity, they oozed out of the combat and ran down the sides of the peninsula back into the mud.
“Honninscrave asks if the sur-jheherrin who depart are mortally harmed. They reply that their suffering is not fatal. As the acid dissipates, their people will be restored.”
Each of the clay forms consumed several of the skest before being forced to retreat. Slowly, the assault was eaten back, clearing the ground. And more sur-jheherrin continued to rise from the mud, replacing those which fled.
Another part of Covenant knew that his arms were clamped over his stomach, that he was rocking himself from side to side, like a sore child. Everything was too vivid. Past and present collided in him: Foamfollower's agony in Hotash Slay; the despair of the soft ones; innocent men and women slaughtered; Linden helpless in Seadreamer's arms; fragments of insanity.
Yet he could hear Pitchwife's murmur as distinctly as a bare nerve. “Honninscrave asks how the sur-jheherrin are able to survive so intimately with the lurker. They reply that they are creatures of mire, at home in quicksand and bog and claybank, and the lurker cannot see them.”
Absorbing their way forward, the sur-jheherrin reached Vain, shoved past his thighs. The Demondim-spawn did not glance at them. He remained still, as if time meant nothing to him. The clay forms were halfway to the head of the peninsula.
“Honninscrave asks if the sur-jheherrin know this man whom you name Vain. He asks if they were brought to our aid by Vain. They reply that they do not know him. He entered their clay pits to the west, and began journeying at once in this direction, traversing their demesne as if he knew all its ways. Therefore they followed him, seeking an answer to his mystery.” Again, Pitchwife seemed puzzled. “Thus he brought them by apparent chance to an awareness that the people of the Pure One were present in Sarangrave Flat-and imperilled. At once, they discarded the question of this Vain and set themselves to answer their ancient debt.”
Back-lit by emeralds, orange mudfire in his face, Vain gazed enigmatically through the company revealing nothing.
Behind him, the skest began to falter. Some sense of peril seemed to penetrate their dim minds; instead of oozing continuously toward absorption, they started to retreat. The sur-jheherrin advanced more quickly.
Honninscrave made noises with his lips. Pitchwife murmured, “Honninscrave asks the sur-jheherrin to speak to him of this Pure One, whom he does not know.”
“No,” the First commanded over her shoulder. "Inquire into such matters at another time. Our way clears before us. The sur-jheherrin have offered to aid us from this place. We must choose our path.“ She faced Covenant dourly, as if he had given her a dilemma she did not like. ”It is my word that the duty of the Search lies westward. What is your reply?"
Seadreamer stood at her side, bearing Linden lightly. His countenance wore a suspense more personal than any mere question of west or east.
Covenant hugged his chest, unable to stop rocking. “No.” His mind was a jumble of shards like a broken stoneware pot, each as sharp-edged and vivid as blame, “You're wrong.” The Stonedownors stared at him; but he could not read their faces. He hardly knew who he was. “You need to know about the Pure One.”
The First's eyes sharpened. “Thomas Covenant,” she rasped, “do not taunt me. The survival and purpose of the Search are in my hands. I must choose swiftly.”
“Then choose.” Suddenly, Covenant's hands became fists, jerking blows at the invulnerable air. “Choose, and be ignorant.” His weakness hurt his throat. “I'm talking about a Giant.”
The First winced, as if he had unexpectedly struck her to the heart. She hesitated, glancing past the company to gauge the progress of the sur-jheherrin. The head of the peninsula would be clear in moments. To Covenant, she said sternly, “Very well, Giantfriend. Speak to me of this Pure One.”
Giantfriend! Covenant ached. He wanted to hide his face in grief; but the passion of his memories could not be silenced.
“Saltheart Foamfollower. A Giant. The last of the Giants who lived in the Land. They'd lost their way Home.” Foamfollower's visage shone in front of him. It was Honninscrave's face. All his Dead were coming back to him. "Every other hope was gone. Foul had the Land in his hands, to crush it. There was nothing left. Except me. And Foamfollower.
“He helped me. He took me to Foul's Creche, so that I could at least fight, at least make that much restitution, die if I had to. He was burned-” Shuddering, he fought to keep his tale in order. "Before we got there, Foul trapped us. We would have been killed. But the jheherrin- his ancestors-They rescued us. In the name of the Pure One.
“That was their legend-the hope that kept them sane. They believed that someday somebody pure-somebody who didn't have Foul's hands clenched in his soul-would come and free them. If they were worthy. Worthy! They were so tormented. There wasn't enough weeping in all the world to describe their worth. And I couldn't-” He choked on his old rage for victims, the preterite and the dispossessed. “I had power, but I wasn't pure. I was so full of disease and violence-” His hands groped the air, came back empty. “And they still helped us. They thought they had nothing to live for, and they helped-”
His vision of their courage held him silent for a moment. But his friends were waiting; the First was waiting. The sur-jheherrin had begun to move off the peninsula, absorbing skest. He drove himself to continue.
“But they couldn't tell us how to get across Hotash Slay. It was lava. We didn't have any way to get across. Foamfollower-” The Giant had shouted, 'I am the last of the Giants. I will give my life as I choose.' Covenant's memory of that cry would never be healed. “Foamfollower carried me. He just walked the lava until it sucked him down. Then he threw me to the other side.” His grief resounded in him like a threat of wild magic, unaneled power. “I thought he was dead.”
His eyes burned with recollections of magma. “But he wasn't dead. He came back. I couldn't do it alone, couldn't even get into Foul's Creche, never mind find the thronehall, save the Land. He came back to help me. Purified. All his hurts seared, all his hate and lust for killing and contempt for himself gone. He gave me what I needed when I didn't have anything left, gave me joy and laughter and courage. So that I could finish what I had to do without committing another Desecration. Even though it killed him.”
Oh, Foamfollower!
“He was the Pure One. The one who freed the jheherrin. Freed the Land. By laughing. A Giant.”
He glared at the company. In the isolation of what he remembered, he was prepared to fight them all
for the respect Foamfollower deserved. But his unquenched passion had nowhere to go. Tears reflected orange and green from Honninscrave's cheeks. Pitchwife's mien was a clench of sorrow. The First swallowed thickly, fighting for sternness. When she spoke, her words were stiff with the strain of self-mastery,
“I must hear more of the Giants you have known. Thomas Covenant, we will accompany you from this place.”
A spasm of personal misery knotted Seadreamer's face. The scar under his eyes ached like a protest; but he had no voice.
In silence, Brinn took Covenant's arm and drew him away toward the end of the peninsula. The company followed. Ahead, the sur-jheherrin had consumed a passage through the skest. Bruin moved swiftly, pulling Covenant at a half-run toward the free night.
When they had passed the skest, the Haruchai turned eastward.
As the company fled, a screech of rage shivered the darkness, rang savagely across the Sarangrave. But in front of Covenant and Brinn, sur-jheherrin appeared, glowing orange and red.
Guided by clay forms, the company began to run.
Twenty Six: Coercri
FIVE days later, they reached the verge of Sarangrave Flat and broke out of jungle and wetland into the late afternoon of a cloudless sky. The sur-jheherrin were unexpectedly swift, and their knowledge of the Flat was intimate; they set a pace Covenant could not have matched. And Sunder and Hollian were in little better condition. Left to their own strength, they would have moved more slowly. Perhaps they would have died.
So for a large portion of each day, the Giants carried them. Seadreamer still bore Linden supine in his arms to protect her leg; but Sunder sat against the First's back, using her shield as a sling; Hollian straddled Pitchwife's hunched shoulders; and Covenant rode in the crook of Honninscrave's elbow. No one protested this arrangement. Covenant was too weary to feel any shame at his need for help. And peril prevented every other form of pride.
At intervals throughout those five days, the air became turgid screams, afflicting the company with an atavistic dread for which there was no anodyne except flight. Four times, they were threatened. Twice, hordes of skest appeared out of dark streams and tar-pits; twice, the lurker itself attacked. But, aided by the sur-jheherrin and by plentiful supplies of green wood, the Haruchai and the Giants were able to repulse the skest. And Covenant opposed the lurker with the light of the krill, lashing white fire from the unveiled gem until the lurker quailed and fled, yowling insanely.
When he had the chance, during times of rest or less frenetic travel, Honninscrave asked the sur-jheherrin more questions, gleaning knowledge of them. Their story was a terse one, but it delineated clearly enough the outlines of the past.
For a time which must have been measured in centuries after the fall of Foul's Creche, the jheherrin had huddled fearfully in their homes, not daring to trust their redemption, trust that they had been found worthy. But at last they had received proof strong enough for their timorous hearts. Freed from the Despiser's power and from the corruptive might of the Illearth Stone, the jheherrin had regained the capacity to bring forth children. That was redemption, indeed. Their children they named the sur-jheherrin, to mark their new freedom. In the age which followed, the soft ones began the long migration which took them from the place of their former horror.
From cave to mud pit, quagmire to swamp, underground spring to riverbed, they moved northward across the years, seeking terrain in which they could flourish. And they found what they needed in the Sarangrave. For them, it was a place of safety: their clay flesh and mobility, their ability to live in the bottoms of quicksands and streams, suited them perfectly to the Flat. And in safety they healed their old terror, became creatures who could face pain and risk, if need arose.
Thus their gratitude toward the Pure One grew rather than diminished through the generations. When they saw Giants in peril, their decision of aid was made without hesitation for all the sur-jheherrin throughout the Sarangrave.
And with that aid, the company finally reached the narrow strip of open heath which lay between the time-swollen Sarangrave and the boundary hills of Seareach. The quest was in grim flight from the most desperate assault of the skest. But suddenly the trees parted, unfurling the cerulean sky like a reprieve overhead. The smell of bracken replaced the dank stenches and fears of the Flat. Ahead, the grass-mantled hills rose like the battlements of a protected place.
The Giants ran a short distance across the heath like Ranyhyn tasting freedom, then wheeled to look behind them.
The skest had vanished. The air was still, unappalled by lust or rage, empty of any sound except bird calls and breeze. Even the solidity of the ground underfoot was a surcease from trepidation.
The sur-jheherrin, too, melted back into the Flat as if to avoid thanks. At once, Covenant shrugged himself from Honninscrave's arm and returned to the edges of the jungle, trying to find the words he wanted. But his heart had become a wilderland where few words grew. He could do nothing except stare dumbly through the trees with the sun in his face, thinking like an ache, Foamfollower would be proud.
The First joined him and gazed into the Sarangrave with an unwonted softness in her eyes. Brinn joined him; all his companions joined him, standing like a salute to the unquestionable worth of the sur-jheherrin.
Later, the Haruchai unpacked their supplies and prepared a meal. There between the Sarangrave and Seareach, the company fed and tried to measure the implications of their situation.
Linden sat, alert and awkward, with her back braced against Seadreamer's shin; she needed the support because of the rigid splint on her left leg. She had awakened a day and a half after her injury and had taken pains to assure her companions that her ankle was knitting properly. Diamondraught was a potent healer. But since then, Covenant had had no chance to talk to her. Though Seadreamer carried a constant unhappiness on his face, he tended Linden as if she were a child.
Covenant sorely wanted to speak with her. But for the present, sitting in the bracken with the afternoon sun slanting toward evening across his shoulders, he was preoccupied by other questions. The Giants had brought him this far; but they had not been persuaded to give him the help he needed. And he had promised them the tale of the Unhomed. He could not imagine ever having enough courage to tell it.
Yet he had to say something. Sunder and Hollian had moved away into the dark, seeking a private relief. Covenant understood. After all their other losses, they now had before them a world for which they were not equipped-a world without the Sunbane that made them valuable to their companions. But the Giants sat expectantly around the flames, waiting to hear him argue for their aid. Something he must say. Yet it was not in him.
At last, the First broke the silence. “Giantfriend.” She used the title she had given him gently. “You have known Giants-the people of your friend, Saltheart Foamfollower. We deeply desire to hear their story. We have seen in you that it is not a glad tale. But the Giants say that joy is in the ears that hear, not in the mouth that speaks. We will know how to hear you with joy, though the telling pains you.”
“Joy.” Covenant swallowed the breaking of his voice. Her words seemed to leech away what little fortitude he had left. He knew what the Giants would do when they heard his story. “No. Not yet. I'm not ready.”
From his position behind Covenant, Brinn said, “That tale is known among the old tellers of the Haruchai.” He moved closer to the fire, met the sudden dismay in Covenant's face. “I will tell it, though I have not been taught the skill of stories.” In spite of its dispassion, his gaze showed that he was offering a gift, offering to carry one of Covenant's burdens for him.
But Covenant knew the story too well. The fate of the Bloodguard and their Vow was inextricably bound up with the doom of the Seareach Giants. In his Haruchai honesty, Brinn would certainly reveal parts of the story which Covenant would never choose to tell. Brinn would disclose that Korik's mission to the Unhomed had reached Coercri with Lord Hyrim during the slaughter of the Giants by a Gia
nt-Raver. Three of the Bloodguard had survived, had succeeded in killing the Giant-Raver, had captured a fragment of the Illearth Stone. But the Stone had corrupted them, turning them to the service of Lord Foul. And this corruption had so appalled the Bloodguard that they had broken their Vow, had abandoned the Lords during the Land's gravest peril. Surely Brinn would describe such things as if they were not a great grief to his people, not the reason why group after group of Haruchai had returned to the Land, falling prey to the butchery of the Clave. This Covenant could not bear. The Bloodguard had always judged themselves by standards which no mortal could meet.
“No,” Covenant almost moaned. He faced Brinn, gave the only answer he had. You don't have to do that. It's past. It wasn't their fault. “ 'Corruption wears many faces.'” He was quoting Bannor. “ 'Blame is a more enticing face than others, but it is none the less a mask for the Despiser.'” Do you know that Foul maimed those three Bloodguard? Made them into half-hands? “I'll tell it.” It's on my head. “When I'm ready.” A pang of augury told him that Haruchai were going to die because of him.
Brinn studied him for a moment. Then the Haruchai shrugged fractionally, withdrew to his place guarding Covenant's back. Covenant was left with nothing between him and the intent eyes of the Giants.
“Giantfriend,” the First said slowly, "such tales must be shared to be borne. An untold tale withers the heart. But I do not ask that you ease your heart. I ask for myself. Your tale concerns my kindred. And I am the First of the Search. You have spoken of the Sunbane which so appalls the Earth. My duty lies there. In the west. Seadreamer's Earth-Sight is clear. We must seek out this evil and oppose it. Yet you desire our aid. You ask for our proud dromond Starfare's Gem. You assert that your path is the true path of the Search. And you refuse to speak to us concerning our people.
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